Lynette Ramsay Silver

It is August 1945 and World War 2 is over. Japan has surrendered. As the small number of remaining Australian and British prisoners of war are massacred. Of the 2434 prisoners incarcerated by the Japanese at the Sandakan POW camp, only six, all escapees, have survived.

The POWs, sent from Singapore in 1942-43 to work on airfield construction, endured frequent beatings and were subjected to other, more diabolical punishment. Sustained only by an inadequate and ever-diminishing rice-ration and with little medical attention, many died of malnutrition, maltreatment and disease. In 1945, those still able to walk were sent on a series of death marches into the interior. Anyone unable to keep up was ruthlessly murdered. Those left behind were systematically starved to death, or massacred.
In late 1944 the Allies, aware that POWs were being ‘eliminated’, had evolved a plan for their rescue – a rescue which, after months of bungling, was finally cancelled in April, 1945, in the erroneous belief that the camp had been evacuated.
Gross incompetence and faulty intelligence were to blame for the failed rescue attempt. When it was realised that mistakes and stupidity were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of men, those at the highest level shifted the blame to others, before embarking upon a policy of wilful and deliberate suppression.
Desperate to obtain information, grieving relatives wrote to newspapers, begging for information and asking the reason for the secrecy. ‘The story of the greatest tragedy in Australian military history remain to be written’, wrote one, in 1946. ‘Who will undertake the task?’
Lynette Ramsay Silver, through painstaking research and interviews with survivors, as well as study of Japanese records, has pieced together a detailed and highly readable account of the lived and ultimate fate of Sandakan’s POW’s. She tells a totally gripping and horrifying tale, not only of the prisoners, but the reasons why they, and their story, become World War 2′s most deadly secret.

The eleventh day of the eleventh month, 2001. The magnificent sandstone GPO clock, towering over Sydney’s Martin Place, strikes the eleventh hour. The few hundred people assembled around the cenotaph bow their heads. It is Remembrance Day. A time to pause and reflect on the war to end all wars.

Beyond the ranks of official guests, pedestrians wander past, some pausing momentarily in idle curiosity. Others, ignorant or uncaring of the solemnity of the occasion, scurry along the arched colonnade or push through the edge of the crowd, provoking scowls and murmurs of displeasure. Some, however, take the time to stop and watch as an elderly veteran, red Flanders poppy in his lapel and campaign medals pinned to his chest, places a wreath on the shrine. Later, the Prime Minister, elected to his third term only the previous night, shakes the veteran’s hand, declaring him to be ‘one of a dying breed’. Yet very few of the onlookers have any idea who the old bloke is.

For anyone outside his immediate circle, Marcel Caux’s appearance that Remembrance Day was, like the PM’s, quite unexpected. He was one of only four surviving Great War veterans in New South Wales, yet he was also an enigma. Asked by one reporter why he had remained silent about his war service for eighty-four years, he said he did not want to bring back memories of killing other men. ‘I was trained to kill … and I killed. I can never get that out of my mind. It never leaves me.’ Another journalist who posed the same question was told, ‘Well, no one ever bothered to ask me about it’.

When the questions were finally asked, however, no one could have guessed where the answers would lead …

The story of botched mini-rebellions, failed escape attempts, mutiny, wild rumours, conspiracies, betrayals and personal tragedy. The author reveals the lives of the key rebels and their enemies against a background of Irish politics in the colonial period.
On 5 March 1804, a small group of resolute convicts, many of them Irishmen, staged a revolt against the colonial government. With the cry of ‘Death or Liberty’ a short but bloody rebellion took place, resulting in the death of twenty-four rebels and the arrest of 300 others. yet this event in Australia’s history her largely been ignored.

Among the embezzlers, forgers, petty thieves, sheep stealers and house breakers transported to the colony, were men whose crimes were purely political. The resentment of these political prisoners knew no bounds. Many of the Irish convicts, incensed by the injustice of their situation, were infuriated by the lack of official records and the resulting confusion over the lengths of their sentences. Disillusioned by the impossibility of returning to Ireland, the dissidents created a state of constant unrest in the new community. Cropping their hair in the style of the French revolutionaries, they formed secret leagues and held clandestine meetings to plan their escape from exile. In desperation, they laid siege to the colony and demanded to be taken home to Ireland.

Lynette Ramsay Silver’s work is the first thorough account of the battle and its causes. Illustrated with portraits, maps and landscape art of the period The Battle of Vinegar Hill is an important book for every reader interested in colonial history and the development of the Australian character.

IN JANUARY 1942, AS THE JAPANESE PUSHED THE MAIN ALLIED ARMY DOWN THE MALAY PENINSULA, TWO UNDER-STRENGTH AUSTRALIAN INFANTRY BATTALIONS, A HANDFUL OF GUNNERS AND A DEPLETED INDIAN CONTINGENT HELD BACK A VASTLY SUPERIOR ENEMY FORCE. THE BATTLE WAS ONE OF THE MOST DESPERATE FIGHTING RETREATS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR FOR WHICH THE AUSTRALIAN COMMANDER, LIEUTENANT-COLONEL CHARLES ANDERSON, WAS AWARDED A VICTORIA CROSS.

After four days of relentless combat, they reached the bridge at the village of Parit Sulong only to find it in Japanese hands. Unable to break though and unwilling to surrender, Anderson gave the order ‘every man for himself. Left behind at the bridge were the badly wounded, over 100 Australian and 35 Indian soldiers, expecting Red Cross protection. This was not to be and what followed was one of the most infamous massacres of World War II.

The Bridge at Parit Sulong tells, for the first time, the full story of this epic battle, and its appalling aftermath. Through dogged research, including an examination of the battle site, Lynette Silver has pieced together a story of heroism, mass murder and barbarism.

For sixty years, the names of the Australians murdered at Parit Sulong, the location of their remains, and even the killing field itself, were unknown. In this gripping account, the author unravels these mysteries and reveals the fate of many other Australians who, up until now, have just been listed ‘missing in action’.

This book traces, in detail, the story of all these events and how, through an intricate legal chase, the Japanese responsible for the massacre were finally brought to justice.

THE BRIDGE AT PARIT SULONG IS HISTORICAL DETECTION AT ITS VERY BEST.

In February 1942, when Australian Bill Reynolds escaped from Singapore in a battered Japanese fishing boat, he had no idea that his nondescript vessel would be the catalyst for Operation Jaywick, one of the most daring missions undertaken behind enemy lines in World War II. Using Reynolds’ boat, now renamed Krait, a small band of men attacked enemy shipping in Singapore Harbour – an action that would have far reaching and tragic repercussions for the people of Singapore. The following year, members of the same team embarked upon a second and far more ambitious raid, Operation Rimau. Although this mission was partially successful, every member of the party was killed.

In telling the story of both these raids, Lynette Silver reveals a number of deadly secrets, and gives an insight into the world of covert operations, partly through the eyes of Denis Emerson-Elliott, a British secret service agent closely associated with both missions. Aided by a vital eyewitness, she also sheds light on action which took place on a remote Indonesian island, and lays to rest a number of myths which have arisen in the sixty-five years since the Singapore raids took place. Deadly Secrets is a gripping tale, told by a consummate story teller, who fearlessly handles the often unpalatable truth.

In January 1942,the peace and tranquillity enjoyed by British North Borneo (Sabah) for sixty years was shattered by the invasion of Japanese forces. Vastly outnumbered,and compelled to lay down their arms without a shot being fired, the people of Sabah may have lost the battle, but they did not give up the fight. On the west coast, freedom fighters formed the Kinabalu Guerrillas, taking many enemy lives before their rebellion was put down in a series of bloody reprisals. On the east coast, determined to help overthrow the occupying forces, Sandakan’s civilian population established an underground movement,taking enormous risks to assist European internees and hundreds of Australian prisoners of war, transported from Singapore to build an airstrip.

The story of these courageous and resilient people, which has been ignored for well over sixty years,has now been documented in great detail. These unsung heroes,who risked and sacrificed their lives to extend the hand of friendship to total strangers in their hour of need, laid the foundations for a lasting and very special friendship between the people of Sabah and Australia.

Blood brothers is not only a moving and absorbing tale. It is a wonderful tribute to those who demonstrated courage of the highest and rarest order, inspired not by the prospect of victory, but by the reality of defeat and oppression.

Blood Brothers, which was published in Sabah,  was launched at Sandakan in August 2010 by the Governor General of Australia, Her Excellency Quentin Bryce.

This book is available in Australia from Lynette,  Warbooks in Sydney (mail order) at warbookshop@bigpond.com or the bookshop at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. For orders outside Australia contact Borneo Books in Sabah, which has an on-line shops selling many titles that deal with Borneo, at borneobooks.com