10. WW2 – Sandakan Death Marches

Sandakan Death Marches – WW2

Saluting their Service - Grahame Old

Australian and British POW’s

Some 2428 Allied servicemen—1787 Australians and 641 British—held in the Sandakan POW Camp in January 1945 died between January and August 1945 whilst in Japanese captivity.

The Sandakan POW Camp was established during WW2 by the Japanese, eight miles inland from Sandakan, on the east coast of North BORNEO (Sabah). In 1942 and 1943, Australian and British POWs who had been captured in the disastrous fall of Singapore (February 1942) were shipped to North Borneo to construct a military airstrip and the prisoner of war camps at Sandakan. As on the Burma Railway the prisoners were broken, beaten, worked to death, thrown into bamboo cages on the slightest pretext, starved and subjected to the most hideous tortures by their Japanese captors. But this was only the beginning of the nightmare. In late 1944, Allied aircraft were attacking the coastal towns of Sandakan and Jesselton, and in January 1945, (with only 1900 prisoners still alive), to escape the bombardment the Japanese resolved to abandon the Sandakan Prison Camp and move 250 miles inland to Ranua, taking the prisoners with them as slave labour, carriers and draught horses. Their journey became known as the Sandakan Death Marches. Of the 1000 plus prisoners sent on the death marches, only six (all of them Australians) survived. By 15 August 1945 the remaining POWs at the Sandakan camps, too weak to march, were either killed or died of illness/starvation.

‘Collie Boys’ at Sandakan

Three ‘Collie Boys’ were subjected to the unimaginable horrors at the Sandakan Prisoner of War camps. All three were privates in Western Australia’s own ill-fated, 2/4th Machine Gun Battalion. The Battalion suffered heavy casualties in the disastrous fall of Singapore before the surviving members were taken Prisoner of War. The three soldiers were;

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WX7883 Private William Herbert BEARD

(died 10 July 1945, age 34 yrs, Sandakan No2 Camp).

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WX16416 Private Charles HOLME

(died 07 June 1945, age 23 yrs, the second Sandakan-Ranua death march).

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WX17582 Private George LAKE

(died 08 April 1945, age 23 yrs, Sandakan No1 Camp).

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A Tribute to British Corporal Donald Elliot – RAF

The British POWs who died at Sandakan were a lot further from their kith and kin then the Australians. Even now, the fate of that particular group of British prisoners is little known in the United Kingdom, except by their families. In 1945, Christopher Elliot visited Borneo in search of information about his missing brother, Corporal Donald Elliot, Royal Air Force, of Beccles, Suffolk, England. Donald, who was on the first death march and whose will was found near Ranau, died on 17 March 1945 in the vicinity of Paginatan. In 1996, Christopher Elliot returned to Sandakan and Ranau with the next generation—his daughter and Donald's niece, Anne Elliot. Anne wrote the following tribute to her uncle's memory;

Tribute To the spirit of Donald Elliot

You don’t know me.

But I know you

Through my father, he has not forgotten you

And never will.

His life has been greatly affected

By your death.

He always looked up to you, you were his hero.

I will never forget.

Hope that you are at peace here.

And that you didn’t suffer too much pain.

And that you can forgive your enemies

For what they did to you.

I thought of you at the VJ Day March

In Pall Mall, London.

I stood and watched the veterans walk

By--the lucky ones.

I was quite choked but proud.

You did it for me and the likes of me.

Thank you.

I think things would have been

Different if you were still around.

But life isn’t always fair, is it?

The tribute may be allowed to speak for all the Sandakan POWs—Australian and British—and how they might like to be remembered by those who loved them and missed them down the years.

NOTE:

30 ‘Collie Boys’ were held POW of the Japanese during WW2; The majority of these were members of the ill - fated 2/4th Machine Gun Battalion captured in the disastrous fall of Singapore in February 1942. Sadly 13 of the ‘Collie Boys’ died whilst in captivity. One in three Australian prisoners of war of the Japanese died in captivity. A stark reminder of this is shown on a sign at the POW Memorial in Ballarat Vic. The sign boldly displays;