Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Posted on David's Facebook April 2024. Friday was a very special day as we toured the Kanchanaburi area (Bridge over the River Kwai/Thai-Burma death railway) and found my Grandfather's (Mum's Dad) grave. I presented him with his medals, sounded The Last Post in remembrance and left a few items/photos to show his ongoing legacy. As we visited the museum, caught a boat up the river and the train over the bridge and into the hills and jungles we got a glimpse of the truly horrific conditions he endured as a POW. I am so proud of him but so incredibly sad that he died in such a terrible way after leaving his darling wife and 2 young girls at home (Mum was 3yo when he left). I am incredibly grateful that I got to share this experience with my boys, a very special day!

What a beautiful honor to his Grandfather, while David was visiting his grandfathers grave site, I was preparing my presentation on his Grandfather (my Uncle Jack) for my talk at my hometown Anzac Day.

I am here today to speak about the Burma Railway and our Uncle Jack Easterbrook, who died in a Japanese POW camp during WW2. There are no heroics to Jack’s story; he is one of many men and women who gave their lives, defending our great country to allow us our freedom today.
Jack, at birth was given the name John, was born in Cobden, in 1908, to Robert and Rebecca Easterbrook, the third child of thirteen children. The family lived at Curdievale Road on a property acquired by an Uncle in 1884, until 1923 when they moved into a cottage in town on the corner of Warrnambool & Curdies River Road. Jack was 15 at the time and was working laboring on various farms in the district. In 1938 Jack married Ethel Jewel from Warrnambool and was employed by the Lucas family on a farm at Pomborneit North when he enlisted in 1941. Jack and Ethel had two daughters 2 years and 12 months old.
When Hitler invaded Poland, Australia entered the war along with Britain two days later, Jack would have been married one year. Four of his younger brothers enlisted, (one of them being our Dad Albert) along with the husbands of four of his sisters. Jack enlisted at Royal Park, Melbourne, into the Citizen Military Forces on 24th June 1941. He listed his profession as labourer. He was allocated to the 3rd Garrison Battalion responsible for Victorian coastal defence and based in Queenscliff; however, he was eventually discharged having served 121 days.
Jack re-enlisted 22nd October 1941 at Royal Park again, into the Second Australian Imperial Forces to allow him to serve overseas. He was allocated to ‘general reinforcements’ serving in the 2/29th Battalion. He took four days leave without pay from 25th to 29th October, likely visiting his family in anticipation of being sent abroad.
He was first despatched to Bonegilla near the border town of Wodonga for training. Ten days later, he was sent to another training camp in Darley, 5 Kms north of Bacchus Marsh.
On 16 December, he was detached for special duty, probably as a result of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, and again sent to Queenscliff. He remained there until 2nd January 1942 when he was transferred to the 4th reinforcement of the 2/29th Battalion. He boarded the HMAT Merchant Ship on 10 January, departed Sydney on 16th January and arrived in Singapore on Australia Day. Twenty-one days later he was listed as missing; one day after the fall of Singapore to the Imperial Japanese Army.
In 1941, Japan had attacked Pearl Harbour, invaded territories across the Pacific and advanced towards Malaya and the impregnable British fortress of Singapore. Thousands of British and Australian troops were sent to defend the colony. Thirty- six thousand Japanese soldiers closed in on Singapore. Facing them was almost eighty-five thousand allied troops, but the Japanese were motivated, experienced and expert at jungle warfare. The allies found themselves constantly out flanked and out fought. Despite some fierce and stubborn fighting the Japanese advance continued to close in on Singapore. February 15th 1942 the unthinkable does happen and the British Commander surrenders Singapore to the Japanese. In all one hundred and thirty thousand men are captured during this short campaign.
To add to the humiliation of defeat, they were lined up and forced to watch the victorious Japanese Generals drive by. Then the allied prisoners were marched up to the northern tip of Singapore to the military base, Changi, a distance of 18 miles.
With the fall of Singapore chaos come about, with no law in place and things within the prison began to break down, which it did very quickly and the prisoners fell ill with malaria and dysentery.
The Japanese then bought out lorry loads of barbwire and the prisoners were then told to put the wire up around a certain perimeter within the Changi Military Base, which then became a prison camp. By June 1942 the Japanese advance had continued across the Pacific and up into Burma towards India. With an urgent need to move supplies, the solution was to build a railway, 450 kilometres long to link with Rangoon, it became known as “The Death Railway”. The Japanese realised they had a vast pool of potential labour in the prisoners at Changi, 7000 Allied prisoners were selected, taken down to Singapore and loaded onto trucks, then onto a cattle train to Thailand. Emaciated bodies were crammed into cattle wagons, designed to carry livestock for the minimum five-day journey where disembarkation was limited and toileting occurred through a door while the train was in motion or at risk of severe punishment if the train stopped. Soldiers were forced to stand in shifts while others slept on the iron floors.
The journey lasted five days to the first stop at Ban Pong, an ex Japanese camp under water. From there prisoners were taken up the river to start transit camps with groups being dropped off at 20 mile intervals, soldiers were forced to march 300-kilometres to work camps along the proposed railway track and start clearing areas following the river Kwai. When marching if any prisoner fell by the wayside and nobody could help you, you were left to die or the guards made sure you died. It was called “The Death March”.

Lieutenant-Colonel Pond was sent with 700 Australians to work on roads and bridges, becoming known as Pond’s Battalion. Based on their journey and the date and location of Jack’s death, he was in this group. Pond’s Battalion endured some of the harshest conditions of all of F-force, constantly packing and moving camp through mud-bog roads.
The men were in ‘pitiful condition’, dirty and torn clothing hanging from skeletal bodies, few with socks and around 150 men without boots. If they fell out of line they were beaten including the sick and injured. There were long working hours, walking throughout the night, rudimentary equipment and working in waist-deep water which increased injury, illness and disease.
The POW’s already now weak and ill continued on to build the track for the Japanese through the mountainous jungle terrain. With three months of monsoons and no roofs for shelter, the prisoners ate, slept and worked in the rain. With monsoons the rivers flooded and supplies were not readily available. Each prisoner were allotted 250 grams of rice full of weevils so they took to eating any vegetation they could, along with cooked snakes and lizards if they could catch them. The men are now starving but still the Japanese refuse to sign the Geneva Convention, which protects the rights of prisoners of war. Cholera was rife in the prisons and at one camp alone 120 legs was amputated; maggots were also used to clean wounds. Even small cuts and scratches could turn into gaping and stinking tropical ulcers, caused by bacteria in the soil. Operating confronted doctors with a terrible choice: a bad ulcer could kill a man, but operating on weak men with inadequate or inappropriate drugs resulted in an appallingly high death rate. Prisoners who died from cholera had to be burnt, overseen by fellow prisoners.

In mid 1943 the Japanese were still fighting in the north of Burma, but short of supplies and troops, the war is no longer going their way. As anxiety to get the railway finished rose within the Japanese ranks, the death rate amongst POWs and native workers increases dramatically. One of the most difficult sections of the construction is an area called Hintok, better known as “Hell Fire Pass”.
With the formation of this “cutting” the Japanese used explosives to cut through the sheer cliffs and would set these devices without warning and the prisoners and natives workers would be showered with shattered rocks, some of them killed or badly injured.
Cholera vaccinations had been provided but because the Japanese wanted to complete the railway quickly, dosages were incomplete. The day Jack died; seventy of the sickest men had been sent downstream to a hospital. It is a miserable reality that had Jack been infected one day later, he might well have survived. Cholera bodies were cremated and this was the case with Jack. Pyres would burn throughout the day and night. Trauma of recurring images haunted surviving soldiers and more than eighty years later, the ground at some sites is still discoloured.
The final record states Jack had died of cholera on 26th July 1943 while a prisoner of war. Jack had been part of C-company, F-force and had died at the Tah Khanun camp. While the Japanese had offered assurances that the near 7000 Australian and British soldiers would not be marching or sent to work, in reality they were exposed to some of the harshest conditions of any prisoners of war in history.

The railway is finally completed in October 1943, at the cost of over, one hundred and twenty thousand lives. The POWs and local workers that died building the railway were buried where they fell, one life lost for every sleeper laid. But it’s all been for no purpose, within months the war has turned against the Japanese and the allied start to regain territories. After Hiroshima, Japan surrenders to the Allied Forces on September 2nd 1945, the POWs are at last free men again. Repatriation was by boat, from Singapore, although some of the fitter prisoners were flown back to Australia.
The sick were carried to the wharf to be taken out to the hospital ships in the bay and those who could walk made their own way.
A small band of dedicated workers assisted the Australian War Graves Commission Representatives with the enormous task to locate several thousand Allied POW remains scattered in approx 144 cemeteries along the length of the railway.
The task was made even greater as many cemeteries had been reclaimed by the jungle.
Australian POWs who died during the construction and maintenance of the Thai/Burma railway their remains once exhumed, were transferred from camp burial grounds and isolated sites along the railway into three cemeteries at either Chungkai and Kanchanaburi in Thailand or Thanbyuzayat in Myanmar (Burma).
Of the one hundred & twenty thousand lives lost, 2815 were Australian.
Our Uncle Jack was eventually buried in the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery in Thailand. His remembrance plaque reads ‘He died that we might live. Ever remembered.’ He was 35 years old. RIP Uncle Jack. Lest We Forget

Camperdown RSL is proudly honouring Pomborneit Second World War soldier Jack Easterbrook, who died as a Prisoner of War in the Pacific. Branch president Alan Fleming received original memorabilia from Private Easterbrook’s family last week, in time to display for Remembrance Day.
by Billy Higgins November 10, 2021 Colac Herald
A local Second World War soldier’s service is finally earning its due recognition, 80 years since he farewelled his family and left Australian shores for the last time.

Camperdown RSL is commemorating Pomborneit’s Jack Easterbrook after a family donation shone new light on his life and death in service to his country.

A chance phone call from Pte Easterbrook’s family last week revealed new details of his service, highlighting the vital role local RSL branches play in preserving the nation’s war history.

Merle Hedges, nee Easterbrook, was three years old when she said goodbye to her dad on his way to fight in the Pacific.

She now lives in Melbourne, aged 83, and passed on the memorabilia to Camperdown RSL last week to reconnect the district’s community to one of its serving heroes.

Her donation included a framed photo of Pte Easterbrook, a silver platter from a Pomborneit and district veteran support group, and a framed certificate from the former Shire of Heytesbury.



The local branch also has a hand-written letter from Pte Easterbrook’s 29th Infantry Battalion Lieutenant Harry Archdall, which was addressed to his wife Ethel on Lt Archdall’s return to Australia in 1945.

The letter said Pte Easterbrook died of cholera in a Japanese Prisoner of War camp, and that an Australian Army chaplain had cremated his body at a farewell service.

Camperdown’s branch sent copies of the letter to Pte Easterbrook’s descendants now in Brisbane, for them to read the first-hand account of his service for the first time.

“All of this was news to the next generation of the family, they’d never seen that letter,” Camperdown RSL president Alan Fleming said.
“We got it last Wednesday, then on Thursday we had a phone call from Brisbane about trying to find the First World War honour board from Timboon that was burnt in the fire in the ‘60s.”

“I was saying we don’t have any of that, but we often get new memorabilia in. I started telling her about what we’d got in without even giving her a name, and she said: ‘That sounds like Uncle Jack’.

“We’ve only had it for three days, and all of a sudden the news has gone interstate from a chance phone call.”

Mr Fleming said the Camperdown branch had added another medal to its collection in recent weeks that appeared at a local second-hand shop.

A local man tracked down the medal recipient and his family in England. When the family declined to accept the award, it returned to the Camperdown RSL for safekeeping.

Mr Fleming said the recent incidents emphasised the important role of local RSL branches as custodians of Australia’s war history and emphasising its importance for the Australian community.

“We’re a place where families can, if they wish, relieve their memorabilia for the benefit of everyone else,” he said.

“In this case no one in the family would have even seen that letter, and no one will have seen the rest of that stuff since 1946, unless you visited the house.

“Now you’ve got two or three generations of local people, who if they’re interested in their history, can come and share in that.”