Our Veterans

When You Go Home Tell Them Of Us And Say For Your Tomorrow We Gave Our Today

Every survivor from the Railway left behind a mate, the message they came home with still lives with them today and it motivates so many to keep alive the story of sacrifice.

Without our ex POW volunteers this Association would not attract the interest or the following we have nor the knowledge to pass on to the present generations.

OUR VETERANS

Keith Flanagan served with the 2/3 Machine Gun Battalion in Syria before it and the 2/2 Pioneers were rushed back to Sumatra and Java to meet the new Japanese threat. Two weeks later he was a POW and worked on the Thailand end of the Burma-Thailand railway. A journalist, he returned to Japan after the war as sporting editor and Kure correspondent of BCON (British Commonwealth Occupation Newspaper). On retiring as head o the EPA information section in 1985 he began to tell what he considered the greatest story of his lifetime - that of Weary Dunlop and the Burma-Thailand railway. That year he organised the Weary Dunlop Tour (the forerunner of The Quiet Lion tours) of Java Singapore and Thailand to retrace the path he and others had taken into the Thai jungle with Sir Edward in 1943. When Sir Edward told how a Thai trader had risked torture and death to smuggle money and medicines into the prison camps he initiated the Weary Dunlop-Boonpong Exchange Fellowship to help young Thai surgeons study in Australia. More then 60 have been here so far. Keith also travelled an audio-visual show on "The Life and Times of Weary Dunlop" around WA schools with side trips to Weary's home town of Benalla in Victoria and the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.

Bill Haskell A member of the 2/3 Machine Gun Battalion he and Keith Flanagan were in the same camps in Java Thailand and Japan. After the railway was finished they made an epic 70 day journey to Japan in a bombed and burnt out wreck of a ship they called the Byoki Maru (The sick ship) which some how managed to survive a typhoon on the way. Bill and his wife Dulcie were amongst those on the 1985 tour which was to become the famous Quiet Lion Tour, Bill joined Keith Flanagan in annual story telling tours down the Kwai. Bill leads the group over Hellfire Pass Memorial Walk Trail dedicated by Weary in 1987. He still has vivid memories of what it was like to work barefoot 16 hours a day for months on end piling up huge embankments by scraping dirt into little baskets and passing them from hand-to-hand. Another debilitating task involved gouging out the rock cuttings with “hammer and tap” un protected from the flying rock pieces that were part of the explosions that followed the work On return to Australia Bill worked as an accountant with the Commonwealth Taxation Dept.

Neil MacPherson A member of the 2/2nd Pioneer Battalion, he served in the Middle East & saw action in Java. As a 19 year old he became a prisoner of the Japanese and member of Williams Force later A Force, he was with the first Australians to arrive for work on the Railway in October 1942; Neil worked on the Burma end, which was mostly jungle. Upon completion of the railway he was evacuated to Tamarkan camp on the River Kwai in January 1944, the camp was situated 300 yards from the present Bridge, on the River Kwai. Selected with other POWs in June 1944 for slave labour in Japan he was sent by rail to Singapore, crammed into steel rice wagons for the 6-day sweltering trip. After 6 months working in Singapore he was transported in December 1944 in the Hellship “Awa Maru” to Japan, he spent four weeks battened down in the hold. After eight months work in the coalmines in Kyushu, in September 1942 he was evacuated through Nagasaki 5 weeks after the atom bombing of that devastated city. Post war he rejoined Hardie Trading Limited, and including war service spent 50 years with them, Perth, Melbourne, Adelaide and Launceston retiring as West Australian State Manager in 1986. The 2005 tour is Neil’s 8th Quiet Lion Tour to Thailand following two private tours in 1994 and 1996 with his daughters.

Jack Thorpe A member of 105 Transport Company where he served a period in Palestine. When Japan entered the war his unit was one of those first selected to return to defend Australia. Boarding the SS Orcades he joined a force of 3000 Australians that sailed on The 1st February 1942, arriving in Colombo about the time that the Japanese invaded Singapore, the Orcades was diverted to the Dutch East Indies. Their task was to slow down the enemy advance on Australia, his unit became part of the first Middle East troops go into action against the enemy in Java. As a POW he became one of the first group of Australians to work on the Burma Railway in Black Force. Upon completion of the railway Jack was first sent to Saigon then Singapore where he was selected to go to Japan as a slave labourer. Shipped on the Awa Maru in December 1944 he worked in a coalmine at Honami Camp 22. After returning to Australia he was sent back to Japan with the BCOF where his knowledge of the Japanese language was invaluable. Jack was manager of his father’s hotel in Three Springs, then a farmer, RSL President for 40 years, received the Order Of Australia in 1992. Since 1997 when the first group of students attended the Quiet Lion Tour Jack has raised over $70,000 to help fund the students from Carnamah District High School who have attended all subsequent tours.

Ernie Redman A member of the 2/3 Machine Gun Battalion was with Keith Flanagan and Bill Haskell in POW camps in Java Thailand and Japan. After the surrender of Japan Ernie returned to Victoria where he had enlisted and spent many years travelling with shearing teams. His wanderings took him to places like Nambrok in Gippsland, Longreach in Western Queensland Deniliquin in the Riverina and in 1961 to the West Australian Goldfields, where he took over an existing Shearing Contractor business. In 1983 Ernie retired to Esperance to live and in 2000 travelled to Thailand with the Quiet Lion. Since then Ernie has been the inspiration in organising the annual attendance of students from the Esperance High School on the tour. In year 2005 ten students and three teachers from Esperance will attend the 10 day tour.

Wally Holding A member of the 2/4th Machine Gun Battalion, which played a big part in the defence of Singapore, he spent the first 12 months in Changi. In March 1943 he was sent up to the railway as part of F.Force. Wally took part in the notorious 300 km forced march to Kami Sonkurai where surgeon Major Hunt became Camp Leader; F. Force suffered the worst death rate of any group on the railway, 3150 of the 7000 prisoners died. Returning to Changi in December 1943 he spent the remaining 21 months in Singapore, he was repatriated back to Australia on the Arawa. On discharge he re joined the West Australian Govt Railways, and gave 40 years service. In 2002 Wally returned to Thailand with four of his family to attend the Quiet Lion Tour and to visit the scenes of his wartime experiences and to pay tribute to his dead comrades. An active member of the RSL in Mandurah, he and Wynn have created a personal $10.000 trust fund to partly fund the cost of sending a cadet from the district on the Annual Quiet Lion Tour. An important and valuable part of Wally’s work is to organise the annual ex POW visit to Boyup Brook to attend the Sandakan Death March.

Owen Heron An original member of the 2/2nd Pioneer Battalion he sailed on the 9th April 1941 in the Queen Mary to the Middle East, saw action in Syria and later in Java, captured when Java was invaded by the Japanese he was another of many 19 year old prisoners. A member of William's Force he worked on the Burma side of the Railway and was one of the few survivors who worked right through from October 1942 to where the two ends were joined in October 1943. With Neil MacPherson he was evacuated to Tamarkan in Thailand where he spent six months at the Tamarkan POW Camp in the shadow of the present Kwai Bridge. In July 1944 he was selected for a Japan Party and transported by rail to River Valley Road Camp in Singapore, while waiting for transport to Japan he worked on the wharves, building a dry dock at Jeep Island among other work. Transported to Japan on the Awa Maru, arriving January 15th 1945 after a month crammed below deck, he worked in the Senyru Coal mine until the surrender of Japan. Owen who enlisted in Victoria moved to W.A. some 20 years ago now lives in Kewdale and is an active member of the Belmont Bowling Club, he has made four trips to Thailand with the Quiet Lion Tour and has been recently elected to the BTRMA Committee.