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War Memorial
Australia

Abdul ‘Ab’ Fazulla (SX39716), was born in 1924 in Broken Hill, New South Wales. His father was from India (Pakistan) and his mother Indian-Irish. He worked as a drover. He was one of the office bearers of the Newmarket Sporting Club in Broken Hill and also a boxer for a local boxing club. Before the war he was married and he had three children after it. He was a caring person. He was gardener on the south mine, also a mail driver taking all mail from Broken Hill to the stations.

Abdul Fazulla enlisted on 15 April 1944 in Broken Hill also joining his brother-in-arms, Private C. Hoare, from Broken Hill – they both were riflemen in the same platoon of the same company of the same battalion. He departed to the front by train from Broken Hill that was full of soldiers. He went first to Alice Springs by train then by truck to Darwin and then by ship to New Guinea. Together with Hoare, Abdul served in the Australian Infantry Battalion and was involved in capturing Madang on the north coast of New Guinea. In the New Guinea campaigns, they as ‘soldiers in jungle green’, moved through humid tropical weather over sticky mud patches on the jungle trail while their shirts were clinging with sweat to their back and muddy water squelching out of their trousers and boots. Shortly, they came under direct enemy fire, but soon offered their intense resistance and were recorded as amongst the first Australian troops who were responsible for the fall of Madang and advancing north of Alexishafen in Papa New Guinea.
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Thousands of pounds of high explosives, which were fused, had to be rendered safe. They both wielded ‘rifles and bayonets as brave infantrymen’, in a fierce jungle combat, rushing enemy at the ‘point of the bayonet’. In Madang, the Japanese learned that the Australians were ‘difficult nuts to crack’. During the war, Abdul suffered terribly from malaria. After recovery and his brief rest near the blue lagoons, coral reefs and tall palms in New Guinea, Abdul Fazulla thought about his mother and wrote to the Broken Hill newspaper the following as a Mothers’ Day tribute, ‘While I travel these far distant shores […] my heart is at home with the one I adore […] when this war is over and we Aussies have won […] our heritage and freedom […] give the praise to mum’.

After the war, Abdul bought a truck and started his own business. His wife was a great gardener and he also liked gardening as a hobby. He was strong, tall and a straightforward man – ‘said what he thought’. He loved bush and dogs and often traversed outside of Broken Hill. Still attached with his comrades, Abdul marched along the streets in Broken Hill during the Anzac Day.

From the book:

Dzavid Haveric, ‘A History of the Muslims in the Australian Military from 1885 to 1945: Loyalty, Patriotism, Contribution’, Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 2024.