BOURKE William VX53798 B Coy [Muar]

William Bourke was born on 16 March 1905 in Sassafras Tasmania. He enlisted on 22 April 1941 at Royal Park. William was killed in action on 27 January 1942 and is remembered on the roll of honour at Railton Tasmania.

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BRAND, Victor VX39085 HQ Coy [F Force]

Victor Brand’s Memorabilia at the Shrine

Andrew Brand

It came totally out of left field when our intrepid Secretary Joy emailed me last June to advise that she had been contacted by Neil Sharkey, a curator at the Shrine, who was seeking out family members who may be in possession of memorabilia available for display relating to doctors in captivity during the Second World War. I contacted Neil who was very anxious to examine some of my father’s war memorabilia. I was very pleased to assist as after all, Victor’s bits and pieces had resided, in the main, in cupboards for some 70 years hidden from family and public view.

The proposed display was to occupy a small section of a medical installation featuring Weary Dunlop and Albert Coates. Neil was particularly interested in a number of the smaller artefacts whichh included an aluminium trench art box made in Changi, prisoner identity tag, miniature medals with Military Cross, photos and an original typed personal account (the Diary) of the Battle of Muar. Neil asked if we had something else which was overtly medical in nature. Fortunately, this prompted me to contact my sister Melanie to check if there was anything inside an old medical canvass bag which had been hanging in the shed at our family home for as long as I could remember. To my extreme surprise and delight, we discovered shell dressing, syringes, ampoules, scalpels, chloroform and miscellaneous medicine bottles. Neil was excited by this treasure but due to space restrictions and preservation requirements (especially with ampoules filled with morphine), he considered that some of these items could be used when the display was updated at some future time. 

The items are now on display and Melanie and I and our families are very proud and honoured to have these items publicly displayed by the Shrine.

BRYANT-SMITH Stanley QX20748 HQ Coy [F Force]

From The Weekend Australian February 15th 1992

Singapore death camp spy breaks 50 year silence

It has taken Stan Bryant-Smith 50 years to decide finally to tell the largely untold story of the spies of Changi.

Throughout the 3and a half years that Japan occupied Malaya and Singapore, Australian prisoners of war organised and ran an intelligence network that supplied the allies with information about Japanese forces.

The network was based at Changi Prison camp and Changi Jail in Singapore. Through local communist Chinese guerrillas it kept up a flow of intelligence information to the Allies’ South-East Asia command headquarters in India.

Mr Bryant-Smith is the last surviving member of the four man team that operated the secret network. He has decided to speak out now so there will be some record of the work the unit, which has remained unrecognised until now.

“It has never been acknowledged and those of us involved never talked about it because if you were in intelligence you didn't talk of such things, even after the war” said Mr Bryant-Smith, in Singapore for today’s 50th anniversary the surrender of the strategic island fortress the Japanese.

“But people should know that we didn’t just sit around and do nothings as POW’s. We were still fighting the Japs every way we could. We got information out as often we could without ever knowing if it was getting through. It was only after the war we found out that in fact most of it did get through and how useful it was.” Mt Bryant-Smith, now 77 or Penrith in NSW said.

At night time the then Sergeant Bryant-Smith would slip through the barbed wire fence surrounding Changi prison and the camp outside the walls and creep past Japanese guards to reach a small nearby Malayan village.

In the village he linked with an underground unit of the communist Chinese guerrillas, based there specifically to receive information from the prisoners.

The guerrilla group would then use runners to take the information across the island to the Malayan peninsular, where other communist units had radios air-dropped to them by the British.

On one occasion late in the war, POW’s working on the Singapore wharves learned that four huge storage sheds - or godowns as they were known - were packed with Japanese ordnance.

The Australian prisoners passed the information on to Mr Bryant-Smith’s unit and that night word was sent the Chinese guerrillas. “The very next day American bombers came over and dropped dropped incendiaries on the godown numbers 8, 12, 14 and 15 where the ordnance was stored.” Mr Bryant-Smith said.

Mr Bryant-Smith now treasurer of the Eight Division Association and a member of the government liaison committee that helped plan the 50th anniversary celebrations, served with the 2/29th Battalion.

He along with other Australian units, faced the full brunt of the attack by the crack Japanese Imperial Guard on Singapore in the days leading up to the surrender.

He said that on two occasions the Australians turned back the Japanese attack after fierce fighting and he believes they could have been driven off the island. But on each occasion the British High Command ordered the Australians withdraw.

In the final days the Australians gathered at Kanji, now the site of the Allied War Cemetery on Singapore Island ready to make a final stand.

“We hadn’t had supplies or ammunition for three days but we were prepared make a stand and fight and die there.” he said “But the British surrendered.”

In early 1943, Mr Bryant-Smith was one of the 3,500 Australians sent to work on the Burma / Thailand railway with F Force, one of the slave labour gangs.

The were forced to march more than 300 kms into the rugged jungle on the Thai-Burma border where they spent the next eight months working in appealing conditions on a starvation diet.

Disease took an horrendous toll as did the beatings.

Forty-four per cent of those in F Force died on the railway.