|
|
Allied Forces Index
Website and ALL Material © Copyright MMII - All Rights Reserved |
If you enjoy this siteplease consider making a donation.
Search this site:
Home
Features
Submissions
Schools
Information
World War 2 Two II WW2 WWII
Information.
The 2/2nd Pioneer Battalion was raised in Puckapunyal in Victoria in May 1940. In April 1941 the battalion sailed for the Middle East aboard the Queen Mary in April having completing its initial training at “Pucka". The battalion arrived in Port Tewfik, the port of Suez, in May and travelled by train to Palestine. It first saw action supporting the 7th Division in Syria. The companies joined various othe runits for a short time, reuniting when the Vichy French counter-attacked Merdjayoun. The pioneers suffered heavy casulaties in an attack on the Fort on the 17th of June.
In early 1942 the 6th and 7th Divisions returned to Australia with the 2/2nd setting out on the voyage home abourd the troopship Orcades. Following the surrender of Singapore, the ship was diverted to Java and the 2/2nd became part of the “Blackforce”. Following the Dutch surrender on the 8th of March, most of the battalion were captured and held as POW's for the remainder of the war, may loosing thier lives whilst in captivity.
Some troops had sail for Australia before the surrender and the 2/2nd was reformed with these men at the core. In July 43 the new battalion sailed to Port Moresby in Papua, to support the 7th Division in action. The 2/2nd returned to Australia in in February 1944. After a short period of leave, the battailon regrouped at Townsville and undertook amphibious training with the 2nd Australian Beach Group at Deadman’s Gully near Cairns.
In March 1945 the 2/2nd Pioneer battalion moved to Morotai joining the 7th and 9th Divisions in readiness for their amphibious landings on Borneo. The pioneers supported the 9th Division’s 26th Brigade, helping to defend the beachhead during the first landing took at Tarakan on 1 May.The following day the 2/2nd and the 2/3rd Pioneer Battalions relieved the two infantry battalions protecting the ANZAC Highway. In mid June the 2/2nd returned to Morotai in preparation for the 7th Division landing at Balikpapan on 1 July where once again the men helped to organise and defend the beachhead, guarded prisoners, and providing labour.
On August 1945 with the end of the war the 2/2nd's task was compelete and the unit was disbanded. 394 men had been killed in action with a further 121 being injured.
The Service Memoirs of Charlie Bover in the Australian Army.
Written by Anthony McAleer from recorded interviews made on the 26th of January 1991. Edited and revised by his son David Bover, November 1998, with some biographical notes added by his Great Niece, Jeanette Martin.
Charles Frederick Bover was born in Bicknacre, Essex, England in 1903. His parents were Eleanor Mary, (nee Carter) and Frederick Joseph Bover. In 1924, at the age of twenty-one, he immigrated to Australia. He was working as a labourer at the West Melbourne Gasworks when war was announced, on September 13th 1939.
You'd read the papers as you were going to work by train. The Germans had taken Holland and they were sweeping down through Europe. I joined up on the 14th of May, 1940. I was going to work and there were four ticket offices towards Princes Bridge and Flinders Street that were used as a recruiting office. Another fellow said, "It’s no use sitting around. We have to go." He went in and I went with him. However, because thirty-five was the age limit at that particular time, I put my age back. I was thirty-seven and I told them I was thirty-five.
The other fellow had gone in and on to work and I was the second. As I was leaving I asked the chappy, "When are we likely to hear anything?" He said, "You can go out now if you like!" and that's what I did, straight to Caulfield. The other fellow had to wait two weeks for his papers and notice to report.
A few days later, on the 20th May, two other fellows and I left Caulfield and headed to Puckapunyal. There were twenty-one of us privates there and a number of sergeants. We were the nucleus of the Battalion, the 2/2nd Pioneers. The 2/2nd Pioneer Battalion was formed originally with the idea of combining field engineers and infantry. Its members came from the northeast of Victoria and the Riverina district, with a large contingent coming from Essendon and Carlton.
By June 1940, the ranks had swelled to over one thousand men. The officers then began forming and training the unit as soldiers. We were on maneuvers out the back of Puckapunyal when a chappy fainted. I was picked to take him back to the RAP, which I did and went back to the hut and sat there. The Sergeant Cook, a fellow by the name of Fisher, came to me and said, "What are you doing?" I told him and then he asked, "How about coming to work in the kitchen for a week?" Not on your life I was doing that and I told him so. For one thing, I'd get away from my mob for a week and I'd get stuck in the 'awkward squad' and I won 't get back. He started to walk away and I said, "Tell you what, I will do it if you make it a permanent position." He said he 'd look into it. So I finished up off-sider to the cook.
He was a chappy who was always wandering everywhere. He also was on good terms with the Provost Sergeant and was getting away with everything. I soon got sick of this and got the Sergeant Cook and told him I wanted to he registered as the cook, I was doing the damn work. He mentioned he 'd look into it, but after a couple of months and nothing was done. I asked to be paraded in front of the second in command, Major Doherty. I wasn't putting the other fellow in, but at the same time I was doing the work and should he getting the two bob a day extra for a trade. The Sergeant Cook said that there was no need to worry and that he 'd fix it up. He came back and I was registered as the cook and I was the cook from then on.
Later, the 2/2nd Pioneer Battalion moved to camps in Seymour, in the centre of Victoria, and to Balcombe by the seaside, but not before spending more than seven long months training at Puckapunyal. We were that long at "Pucka" that we were called the "Pucka Caretakers." In fact, when we arrived in Gaza there were signs up saying, "WELCOME PUCKA CARETAKERS!"
After a short stay at other camps, the 2/2nd Pioneer Battalion was moved by tram to Melbourne where, at 4 o'clock on March 30th, they embarked upon their ship, the Queen Mary. The Queen Mary before the war was a luxury ocean liner, yet since 1940 she had been stripped of her peacetime fittings and accommodated with extra bunks and equipment holds.
On the first day, we had to go down to help the cooks to do the breakfast. There were that many of us I suggested some of us should go to bed, I went back to kip. That night I went down to the kitchen and there was still a big crowd there and I asked, "Who minds if I have the night off?" Nobody answered so I said I’ll go. So, I hadn't done anything so far.
The next day, I had my lunch in the dining room and was just going up the stairs when the ration officer, Tilney, shouted "Hey! I want you!" I thought, "Oh yes, someone's been talking." He said, "I've got a job for you. Come with me!" So then me and a Queenslander from the 2/25th mob who had the same thought as me, in that there was no use fighting for a job, were taken to the officers' mess.
They had the best time of the lot! I was made the potato cook and had four electric ovens for doing the potatoes. The fatigues would do all the peeling and I used to go in and pick the nicest shaped ones for baking. I had to paint them with a brush and grease and bake them. That's all I done on the Mary! I had a great time. In fact, one day I 'd seen these big ice creams going past and I said to the chappy more or less in charge that I'd like some of those. He said, "Well, go and get them!" So I went around to the pastry cook, but he told me to get, I then told him I got the boot from there and he said, "I'll fix that up!" The next we had ice-creams and everything. He'd fixed things up all right!
The convoy of five ships sailed to Ceylon where they separated. Three went to Colombo and Malaya; the others to the Middle East. When the other ships went to Singapore, I said then, "Gee, I'm glad we 're on the Mary and not with those boats". The Queen Mary crossed the Gulf of Aden and travelled quickly up the Red Sea. At the Port of Suez the men were disembarked and trans-shipped up the passage of the Suez Canal.
Before I left, the cooks had loaded me up because I had been the only army cook helping them. When we all crowded onto the boat to go up the canal, I was sitting beside two other cooks, the Shiver brothers. I turned to Arthur and asked if he 'd like some chicken.
"God!" he said, "Would I like some chicken? Don't tell me you've got some!"
"Oh yes", I said, and he couldn't believe it.
Arriving at El Kantara, the Battalion travelled by train across the Sinai Desert into Palestine. Here they made camp in the Gaza district called 'Hill 95'. There wasn't much there at the Gaza area. Sand hills were all it was. Gaza now as you see it in the papers was nothing like it. There wasn't much of Gaza then.
Time spent here in the tent city was mainly training, with the odd weekend leave to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. However, unknown to the Australians, just over the border from Palestine, in Syria, the pro-Nazi, Vichy French had become the dominant power. By June 1941, this had led to some concern to the Allied leaders. Here the Vichy French could allow German forces to attack and open up another front and also stop the Allies from getting to the large oil reserves in Persia.
Therefore, it was decided to attack the Vichy French in Syria before they became a large problem. On June 7th, the 2/2nd Pioneer Battalion moved on to Syria, along with the Australian 7th Division. In the early days of the invasion of Syria, the 2/2nd Pioneer Battalion was kept mainly in reserve, guarding towns and villages in case the push was repulsed by the Vichy French. Major-General Steele said that the Battalion had been organised so that it could be used in case of emergency as infantry. In the event, there always seemed to be an emergency.
The first fighting came on the Litani River. There was a pontoon bridge over the river and four of us spent the night caking the dynamite under the bridge. Max Priest, the other cook and I were on the job scooping mud out of the bottom of the river, to clamp the dynamite under the bridge. After we spent all night on that we wandered up to join the rest of the Battalion. But on the way we decided we'd been up all night and we lay under some olive trees and went to sleep. After a while we picked up B Company, who were making a hit of a retreat at Litani. That was our first fighting. We pushed on through and on to Merdjayoun.
Some of the worst fighting of the campaign was to come at Fort Merdjayoun. This was a large fort with high walls and deep ravines, preserved since the days of the crusades. On the night of June 15th, under the cover of darkness, the Battalion was ordered to attack. The trouble started when they tried to take the fort with rifle and bayonets when it should have been artillery. "A" Company attacked and the French just opened the gates and surrounded them. That was where Wally Summons was captured. (Wally Summons, author of "Twice their Prisoner", was captured and taken to Athens where, as a POW, he travelled by train through the centre of Europe to Marseilles. When the Vichy French surrendered, he was exchanged and joined the Battalion before it embarked again).
After fierce fighting at Merdjayoun, the fort was taken and then later the town. The fighting had all come under the direction of Lieutenant-Colonel Williams, a World War I veteran and Commander of the 2/2nd Pioneer Battalion. He was very well liked, Colonel Williams. A fine man! I'd say he was fairly strict but still a man's man.
The Battalion continued to push the enemy further into Syria and Lebanon until July, when fighting began at Damour. Damour was coastal and the French were more or less up in the surrounding hills, firing down on us. The Navy there shelled them pretty bad from the Mediterranean. Within five days the town was captured. After this the French sought an armistice and on July 12th a cease-fire was ordered.
After the Battle of Damour, we went through Beruit and straight up to Tripoli, (Tripoli in Lebanon, not Libya), to the oil refineries, or not so much refineries as oil storage, before any damage could he done to them. We were there for a good while before they brought us down to the Bekaa Valley to Rayak. Here the main railway, you could say, from Paris to Jerusalem and onto the Suez Canal, branched out towards Beruit. They put us there in September and they couldn't get us out until January because we were snowed in.
I didn't expect to see snow in Lebanon. I thought it was more of a semi-tropical place all year. There were heaps of snow outside the tents and often it was as high as the tents practically. Every day you had to rake it off. As soon as they could get the Battalion out, they were taken back to Jerusalem, to Hill 69.
When we came back from Lebanon, they put tables out and we got all new stuff packed as sea-kits and universals. All new stuff! Beautiful! We were then put on a train down to the canal and onto a boat. We all thought we were going back to Australia. We all got on the boat and as the last man was on, away we went. The universals and sea-kits were all left on the quayside.
The ship they boarded was the HMT Orcades, a British ship. This time the men all slept in hammocks as they travelled once again with a convoy. I had a good time on the Orcades. I went down to the kitchen to help them and, being a Pom on an English boat, they made quite a fuss of me. Once again the convoys separated, but this time the Orcades went to Asia. On the 15th February 1942, they pulled into the Port of Oosthaven, in Sumatra. On this day, Singapore fell to the Japanese. I remember first hearing about Japan coming into the war while in the Middle East. I said then, "By gee, I’m glad we're with this lot and not fighting them!"
The ship sat for a day while the commanders decided the best course of action. At that time they couldn't communicate with Allied Headquarters. We were given 12 rounds of ammo each and told we were going to land in Sumatra. We got onto the tenders and we had standing room only; the whole deck was just packed on.
All at once it was announced, "All cigarettes out, no talking!" and it poured rain, a tropical rain. We stood there for a long time on the boat. We never got off. Then we were taken back and, by jove, they unloaded us quickly and onto the boat! They had discovered the Japs were already there. Now, because we had left there, we thought we were a certainty to go to Australia, until next morning when we woke up and there were all the little islands we were passing. We knew then we weren't going to Australia, but we wondered where.
Then they took us around through the Sunda Straits, where a few days later the "Perth" and the "Houston" were sunk, and on to Batavia. We were four days on the boat before they knew what to do with us. Finally, they put us off with our rifles and full snow serge we 'd had since the Middle East. We never had shorts or nothing. Our equipment, machine guns, kitchen materials, even our universals and sea-kits were all on another boat. We were certainly given away to the Japs! I don 't think we were expected to do much, in as much as we were never provided with anything to do anything. But we were hoping to hold the Japs from getting to Australia, as I see it. The Australians had landed in Java, which was then a part of the Dutch East Indies. The Australian government had pr6mised to help the Dutch colonials in the event of a Japanese invasion. Here they joined the British, Dutch and native troops to form a poorly armed makeshift brigade. They went under the name of “Blackforce” and placed in command was a VC winner from World War 1, Brigadier Balckburn.
He was originally in charge of the 2/3rd Machine Gunners and he wasn’t a Brigadier at the time. He was made Brigadier because he was the senior officer. Blackforce was issued with inadequate quantities of ammunition and given the task of defending Java. The 2/2nd Pioneer Battalion was sent to Bandung and issued with the orders to "stand and fight on the position and not give ground under any circumstances".
The Dutch didn't want us there: they had capitulated. We all said, "Right!" and headed up into the interior and met the Japs at Bandung. But here the Japs more or less outnumbered us. You see, we met the Japanese and held them fighting at Bandung, but they had enough troops to come in around behind us and surround us. The Japanese overwhelmed the Battalion in sheer numbers, but the Battalion fought as best they could. Rohan Rivett later wrote, "The only effective resistance to the main Japanese landing on the western extremity of Java was put up by the Australian 2/2nd Pioneer Battalion".
I got separated from the main force of the 2/2nd Pioneer Battalion. By this time we'd all been outnumbered, so I headed into the hills to the south coast, hoping to pick a boat. We 'd heard there was a boat at Tjileapgup. Actually, I never got to Tjileapgup. It was wild country and I finished in a tea plantation up in the hills with some others.
By March 8th 1942, the Japanese had completely taken the island and there was no choice but to surrender. The 2/2nd Pioneer Battalion now entered a new phase of war, not as soldiers, but as prisoners. We had no other alternative. They more or less sent the orders and told us to leave the tea plantation and go to the market place at Llewiliang. They billeted us in there and we were pretty much free to move and trade around.
Then Lt Tranter came down to me and four other blokes and said, "You 're going on the train". It was a good train carriage. You had a seat and everything, and there were a lot of wounded English chaps on board. We finished up at the village of Bandung. At Bandung there was nobody there, only an Air Force officer who was an English chappy, and maybe 21 other English soldiers, several of them wounded.
We were jailed in the compound there while the Japs had the camp and we were treated pretty rough. The Japs would come in and you all had to lie on the ground. If you weren't down quick enough you were knocked down. To get to the lavatory you had to go out down to the guards and get permission. Well, two or three of the English chappies couldn't go on their own and needed help. I, the mug, said to one of them that I 'd take him. I took him up to the steps leading to the platform or verandah on the lawn just near where they put us, stepped out in front and bowed down to them. They threw something at me because I hadn't done it right. I had to pick it up, cart it up the stairs, put it on the table, go down the steps and do it properly. It wasn't a nice position to be in, bloody hell it wasn't! That was my first encounter with what the Jap was like. Anyway, we were there for about a week and we put our case to a Japanese Sergeant who could speak English, that we were supposed to be in hospital. The next day a truck pulled up and we were taken to the Bandung hospital where "Weary" Dunlop and the rest of his crew were.
The hospital had been set up in a girls' boarding school in the city centre. Here there were comfortable beds and reasonable food rations and the Japanese rarely interfered with hospital activities. This was due mainly to the Commanding Officer, Colonel "Weary" Dunlop, a man of outstanding ability and character. He was a gentleman, I think I can almost say. Well, when I say "Weary", there was also Major Corlette and Woods, the two other doctors, but I owe as much to them as I do anybody.
Des Jackson later wrote of Colonel Dunlop, "He was an exceptional surgeon and in the years to follow, thousands of prisoners had reason to be grateful to him, not only for his medical skills and his devotion to duty, but also because he was a senior officer who always tried to protect his men from Japanese oppression”.
I was at the hospital for only a few days when my name was called out with some more there, probably about thirty of us. We travelled along a road to a camp called Tjimahi. A fair way out, the Japanese guard said, "All rest on the side of the road". We thought this was alright, they're treating us okay, so we lay there for two or three hours by the roadside. We started to wonder what was happening when all of a sudden the Kempi Tai came along. The Japanese Military Police! Oh, they 're nasty! They stripped us and opened our packs and threw everything everywhere. They searched us to see if we had any weapons or knives or anything like that. Afterwards we quickly collected what we could find, dressed again and continued our march to the camp.
We arrived at Tjimahi, which the Dutch had originally built for the Indonesian or Javanese soldiers. Of course, as soon as the Japs landed, the Javanese army that the Dutch had trained took off their uniforms and went straight away over to the Japs. The camp at Tjimahi was spacious and comparatively comfortable. Food rations weren't too bad and no one was required to perform hard work. While we were on Java, we really had nothing to complain about. I mean we were POWs. We had to accept that. We got a certain amount of food and we weren't given work to do. They mainly kept us at work digging up the garden around the camp area. The Japanese guards weren't too bad, only really the Koreans were bad.
There were several thousand prisoners at Tjimahi and these included men from the armies, navies and air forces of Holland, Great Britain, Australia and America. I remember the Dutch were prisoners in the camp as well. Not necessarily military; the armies and men-folk were all made prisoners. The Japs weren't too friendly with the Dutch either, I can tell you!
There were a lot of "Perth" fellows with us as well. We had Ray Parkin. He had this big piece of paper on which he 'd painted the different butterflies that lived on the river there. It was marvelous! My word, yes! Harry Abbott was another sailor off the "Perth" that I knew well. Another famous inmate of Tjimahi was Lieutenant Colonel Laurens Van der Post, whose book on his experiences, "The Night of the New Moon", was made into the movie, "Merry Xmas Mr Lawrence". I remember Colonel Laurens Van der Post. I knew him very well. He was quite a gentleman, an English gentleman. In November 1942, the camp was moved by train to a smaller camp at Makasuri, only 20 miles out of Batavia. Our next move was to Makasuri camp, which had originally been built by the other 2/2nd Pioneers who had now travelled to Burma to work on the line. I was now with the guys from the 2/3rd Machine Gunners, as well as some 2/2nd Pioneers. I felt lucky though, because we 'd got in with Dunlop. Makasuri camp was more confined and the quarters were crude bamboo huts. However, the food ration was still good and the work load no great burden. At Makasuri we mainly went out with a barrow to get rations and rice and that sort of thing, gardening also. In fact, we made a lot of gardens that we ended up leaving there. I don 't know what happened to them.
The rice on Java was pretty good. I seemed to cope with the sudden change to rice diet alright. If I'd been a POW on Java for the duration, it would have been a lot different. In early January 1943, all the men at Makasuri were marched out of the camp to an unknown destination. Shortly after, they boarded a train, which took them to the Tandjong Priok docks in Batavia, and here they boarded the ship, "Usu Maru".
We all marched onto the boat and as we went on board, we were met with a spray. We all had to walk through it. It was some sort of disinfectant or something. Once below, the conditions were very, very bad. I was unfortunately right down the bottom and we were all jammed side by side in two rows. There was no making a space for yourself, as it was all measured out for you. I ended up having fellows' feet on my head. Food, which was a bit of rice, would be let down on a bit of a skilly by rope from the top.
To go up the top to relieve yourself you had to go up the ladder. You 'd be four hours on that ladder. The latrines were built over the side of the boat and there were only two planks. You 'd have to have one foot on each plank. We were on that boat for four long days. I remember the day we got off the boat. It was January 7th, my sister's birthday. The "Usu Maru' docked in at Singapore, where the prisoners were unloaded and taken to the Changi Prison, on the northeast corner of the island.
When we got to Singapore, the fellows there had all their equipment and we had nothing. As soon as it had been too damn hot on Java we were given green uniforms that the Dutch had originally given to the Javanese. Putting shorts on that were made to fit Javanese was certainly a tight affair, but at the same time that's all we had and what they could provide us with. I mean, you couldn't wear those heavy winter uniforms. You 'd melt! On Singapore, the officers said, "Now, I don 't want you dressing up like that", and we swapped the green pants for bombay bloomers, the military shorts the army supplied you with.
Changi was always considered amongst the POWs as the best prison camp in SouthEast Asia. In fact, many referred to it as "heaven" or "home". However, the camp was strictly run and organised by its commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel "Black Jack" Galleghan. My experience, as far as "Black Jack" was concerned, was mainly hearsay. I had very little to do with him. He was strict though. I suppose the idea was to be strict to keep up the morale of the soldiers. If you are a little stricter it takes your mind off other things.
Changi wasn't really bad. There was food there for us and we used to have to go out and work on some gardens they had. We were never in the actual gaol. I was outside the gaol. The women were kept in there; I remember them waving to us as we went on work parties. I remember going out on one work party and the Japs had caught this Chinese woman. They stood her up, fixed their bayonets and charged her, always just missing her. I didn't know what she 'd done to deserve that. After a short while in Changi, the men from Java were ordered to pack and be ready to move. The group that formed marched out of Singapore under the leadership of Colonel Dunlop. The group was known as "Dunlop Force" and they were travelling to Thailand to start work on the infamous railway. The journey was to take them by train to Thailand.
There were thirty of us in a carriage on a goods train. For a bloke to relieve himself, there'd be two of us and you 'd need to be standing against the open door holding him by the arms while he did his business. For food they 'd have special places where a train pulled in and they 'd give you a bucket which would feed twenty or thirty men. The train was all metal and, yes, it was fairly hot. The doors were open the whole time, otherwise it would have killed us. I remember one incident - I looked out and we were pulled up beside a water tank and all the fellows had gotten out and were having a shower under it. I said "By jove! I'm in this!" so I got down and got me a shower. Then the Japs spotted us and we were back on the train quick and lively. We were two days on the train and about six o 'clock in the morning we pulled into Bampong, in Thailand, and we got out. Here the Japs met us with these bunches of bananas for each man; in fact, we got three bunches. We thought, "This isn't bad! They 're not bad fellows!" and then we found out this was breakfast, lunch and tea for the next few days.
Dunlop Force travelled the next few days through jungle and rugged terrain, up the line past Tamarkan, Wampo and Tarso. When we got as far as Tarso, we camped just lying on the ground with the Japs guarding us there. From Tarso we travelled to Konyu. When we got to Konyu there were English soldiers up from Java before us on the line and they were in a pretty poor condition. We thought at the time that they 'd given it away. We couldn't see how they could get in that position they were, but we soon found out.
The Burma-Thailand railway began as a link between the existing railway at Bangkok to the existing railway at Rangoon. This way the Japanese could rush forward their supplies to the troops fighting on the Burma front rather than ship them around the Gulf of Siam, laying them open to Allied submarines. However, by 1942, the Japanese had such a vast pool of labour at their disposal, so POWs as well as natives were used to construct the railway at all cost. Expense was immaterial. We had to travel to Hintok, which was the start of the hill country. We had to cross this river here and that was a rope bridge, a steel one was build later. Everything we had, we had to carry. Here the Japs gave us permission to leave it, but we knew very well if we left it, it would be the last we saw of it, so we carried it everywhere. Hintok was mainly cuttings. Our main job was on the hammer and tack. All day, hammer and tack. You 'd have a fellow there with a drill and you'd keep changing it each time it was hit, just twisting it a little and the other fellow with the hammer would continue to hit it. Of course, you'd take it in turns with the hammer. The Japs did all the dynamiting. We'd do all the holes and then knock off for lunch and they 'd do all the blowing. Then the gang would go in and take the rock away and you'd be hammer and tack again. But it was often the way they placed us to work in, terrible positions, that made hammer and tack dangerous. Although the work on the line was tough and physically exhausting, most of the deaths on the Burma-Thailand railway were due to malnutrition and disease.
The rations were ludicrous; they just weren't there. The rice was terrible! I don 't think we got the whole grain rice the whole time on the line. Sometimes we got a dried root vegetable that they tread up, we called it seaweed". You could boil it, then chew it and it was still there. I remember one incident. The rice came in these weaved rush bags and had been left at the bank of the river by the barge. While it sat there, rats had all got through it and the Japs simply shovelled it up and took a ration load of two bags into the camp. The officer in charge called the Japs and said it wasn't fit to eat. So the Japs said "All right" and we loaded it into the hand truck and pushed it all back to where it was unloaded. A Jap there said to take it back, but we unloaded one bag. He said, "When you finish that, come back and get this! These are the only rations you're getting!" So that week we had to sift and wash it and try to do something with it. It was terrible stuff.
Camps on the railway were often very primitive conditions. Simply bamboo huts with atap roofing and the odd tenting available. Hygiene was left to be controlled by the POWs and this issue was extremely important in trying to control disease. The hygiene conditions were as you made them, really, and absolutely up to us. We had trenches dug. The Dutch and others were good at keeping everything hygienic, but we had trouble when the Tamals were brought up. Pellagra was the first thing that hit us. You 'd get sore mouth, feet and testicles. That was the three places it struck you. I had a number of bouts of malaria, even after I got home, but it wasn't as serious as I saw some of the poor fellows get. I managed to dodge the tropical ulcers and dysentery, but I got beri-beri. Practically everybody had beri-beri. You just all swelled up. My legs were straight down; I had no ankles. The worst case of it I saw was a Tasmanian soldier out of the 2/40th. Earlier he had received a terrible beating for allowing a sick fellow to go back to camp without Jap permission. Boy, he copped a hell of a hiding! He didn't recover and beri-beri got him terribly in the end.
Then cholera struck us. I don't think anybody knows what caused cholera, but it was one thing that put the wind up me! Cholera got pretty bad at one stage. A mate of mine, Sid Manning, who'd slept beside me the night before, went down sick and reported to Major Corlette. He said, "Sid, you've got cholera". He died within twenty-four hours and there was nothing left of him. The doctors did the best they could.
As far as I was concerned, we were very fortunate we had three officers who looked after us well: Major Corlette, Major Woods and Colonel Dunlop. Nobody could have stood up and worked for the men as Colonel Dunlop did. I saw Colonel Dunlop one morning, when we were paraded for work during the wet season, with two of the men who had sore feet. The Japs said they had to go to work; Colonel Dunlop said they weren't fit enough and picked up each man under one arm and carried them off. The Jap just stood there and looked at him. Another time, they made him kneel down to slap him and then later, the Jap got a box to stand on to slap him. One of the sad facts of the Burma-Thailand railway story was that many men were to die at the hands of the guards. Bashings and beatings were common place, often for trivial or trumped up charges.
The Japanese weren't as bad as the Koreans on the line. The Koreans were the ones who knocked us about more than any of them. At the same time, however, they were being knocked about by the Japs. As far as the Japs were concerned, the Koreans were nobodies and they took it out on us. They were our main guards on the line and, boy, some of them were brutes!
The only real bashing I got was from a Jap Engineering Sergeant. We 'd done several cuttings, but where we were then we'd brought the line around practically level to the ground around this embankment and had come to a jutted knot. We were making a cutting through there and we were carting the rock out. I was bringing a rock out and stopped to relieve myself. He came and gave me two serves straight across the head. Then, as I bent over, obligingly I suppose, I doubled up and he got me two in the back of the head. I didn't remember any more. The other fellows told me later he went berserk after that and laid into me. They didn't expect to find me alive. Anyway, they picked me up after it and carried me to the side. When I came around I was lying along the embankment and I thought, "I'm not moving from here", so I lay there. Then someone touched my foot. I didn't know if it was one of our fellows or not, but it turned out to be a Jap. He looked at me and said "Camp!" I didn't take any notice, so he screamed "Camp!" So I got up.
The camp was a long way into the jungle and I kept collapsing all the way back. I finally made it back to the camp at ten o 'clock at night. Major Woods had found me on the track, he'd been out looking for me. The others had gone back and told him about me and he went out searching. He got me back and gave me a wash and a feed and, boy what a feed it was! I don't know where he got it from but it was one good feed. I certainly took a beating that day. That was the last day I worked on the line.
Charlie was so severely injured on that day that for the next year or so he spent recovering in sick camps and performing light duties. I was sick on the line at Hintok road camp and when the others moved to Hintok river camp, I stopped here for a while and was then taken to Tarso. I was at Tarso for quite a long time. I was still sick for quite a while, but when I recovered for a bit I got in with some English blokes from the Suffix and Norfolk regiments from Singapore. They were working on the line and I got in their kitchen and helped the cook, putting in a bit of time there. We were eventually taken down from Tarso to Nakon Paton. At Nakon Paton, all the mob I moved down with were taken further down the peninsula to build a canal and do some clearing. I got taken down with yellow jaundice and was very sick and had to be left at Nakon Paton while they went on. Most of them that traveled on died of typhus when it developed in their camp. One day I was watching a Jap parade by the big earth wall that had been built for the dyke there, when a Japanese Sergeant cut into one of his guards. The guard challenged the Sergeant and, before my eyes, he was beaten to death. The next day they had a big funeral march for him, with flowers and everything. That was their attitude: they treated us no worse than the way they treated their own men.
Even today it is hard for Australians to comprehend the attitude and treatment the Japanese gave their prisoners. Sometimes it was bashings for reasons to get a job completed and other times it bordered on senseless cruelty. My mate, Durkin was his name, was very bad with malaria and wandered outside the camp, out of his head. The Japs found him, got him and tied him to a tree. He was there for two days without food and water and they would butt their cigarettes on his bare skin. After two days they put a rope around his neck and took him into the jungle. We never saw him again. I'll never forget that, we had been mates the whole way through. That happened on the 14th August. The next day, the war ended.
On August 6th, 1945, the Americans had dropped the world's first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Four days later, another was dropped on Nagasaki. The complete devastation these explosions caused forced the Japanese Government to back down and on August 15th, 1945, a cease-fire was called and World War II ended.
There were rumours in the camp that things were going our way, but I had no idea we 'd beaten Germany. One day we were making a road around the camp at Nakon Paton. We'd been working on that, just clearing it a bit, and this Jap came up to us about four in the afternoon and said, "Finish!" I said, "Righto fellows! Wash your tools", because I was the Corporal in charge of the work party. Mind you, if you were in charge of the work party and anything went wrong, you copped the slaps. Anyway, the fellows went to start washing their tools and the Jap said, "No! No work finish, boom-boom finish!"
I said, "If boom-boom finish, work finish too!" and we never washed the tools. We left them where they were. That night was a night I will never forget as long as I live! Nobody went to sleep that night; it was just one mad, "HOORAY!" Not that there was drinking, because there was nothing to drink. It was the relief that it was all over. We really had no doubt that we would win, but whether we would survive or not was another question.
One group who were as happy as we were, that the Japs were beaten, were the Korean guards. Now they were free as well, in fact, the next day we played a football match with them. In 1942, 22,000 Australian service personnel became prisoners of war of the Japanese. At the end of the war only 14,000 had survived. Eight thousand, including 258 members of the 2/2nd Pioneer Battalion, died at the hands of their captors.
We were all taken down to Bangkok. There I was with a group of chappies who had to form a guard to look after the guys who had gone a bit silly in town. They were going about Bangkok drunk, with no clothes. They were selling their clothes that were dropped in bales from planes for them, to buy drink. We then picked them up and brought them into camp, where we looked after them until they got them down to Singapore. I was doing that for about a month and then they said, "Any of you fellows want to go to Singapore?" I said, "Yes" straight away and went to Singapore.
There a doctor examined me and said, "You're going to hospital!" I said, "But there’s a boat going tomorrow, isn't there?" So I went to a high school that was being used as a hospital and ended up coming home on a hospital boat. For most of the ex-POWs, their traumas of the past few years were not to end once they arrived home. Some still suffered physically from the beatings they had received and the diseases they had contracted, while others suffered mentally, having nightmares and readjusting after three years of Japanese imprisonment.
I was discharged and went back to work, but I wasn’t well. I kept going and going, and finally I went and saw the local doctor. This doctor sat behind his desk and never got up while I told him what was wrong.
He said, "What do you want me to do about it?"
I said, "Well, for a start, I have to have a certificate for work".
He just looked at me and said, "I think you'd be just as well at work!" I got up and walked out, because if I'd opened my mouth I'd more than likely end up in jail. Anyway, that was late October and I continued with the shift work until January, when I went home to bed and stayed there for five days. In the end, I went and saw a doctor on St Kilda Road, who examined me. Next, a uniformed chauffeur came and got me and took me straight to Heidelberg Hospital (in Melbourne). I had tuberculosis and I didn't work again for the next two years.
Charlie Bover died in Melbourne in 2000, 11 days short of his 98th birthday.
Photographs
If you have any Photographs you would like to share please get in touch.
List of those who served with the 2/2nd Australian Pioneer Battalion during the Second World War.
- Edward Fawcett Aitken. CO
- Charles Bover Read his Story
- Clayton Edington Davis. CO
- Joe Tilson Lang. CO
- Raymond Frederic Monaghan. CO
- Nelson Frederick Wellington. CO
- John Munslow Williams. CO
- Read his Story
If you have any names to add to this list, or any recollections or photos of those listed, please get in touch.
If you have a story which you would like to share, or a website dedicated to an airfield or aircrew, please get in touch.
Send an E-mail to The Wartime Memories Project
Links
Allied Forces Index
The Wartime Memories Project is a non profit organisation.
This website is run out of our own pockets and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources.
If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running.
Or by cheque to:
PO Box 325, Stockton on Tees, TS20 1XL.
Website and ALL Material © Copyright MMII
- All Rights Reserved