Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

2/27 Battalion

Rank - Private

on of Alfred Rickard Fisher and Jane Brown Fisher, of Littlehampton, South Australia

Richard Gordon Fisher was born June 3rd, 1918, in Littlehampton. He grew up in this town with his father Alfred Richard Fisher, his mother, and his brothers. As he got older, he began working as a labourer. Before long, WW2 had been declared, and on the 22nd of May 1940 at only the age of 21, Richard Gordon Fisher enlisted into the Australian Army.

Fisher’s involvement in the war began in Woodside, where he was placed in the 2/27th Infantry Battalion with many other young men from around the Adelaide Hills. Roughly six months after he had joined, on the 21st of October, the Battalion left Australia by boat and arrived in Egypt a month later, on the 24th of November. The group trained in Palestine until the start of 1941, when the young ANZACs were tasked with protecting the Egypt-Libyan front, where a German attack was expected. At this point, the Australians were fighting a war that wasn’t to protect their homeland, but instead to protect Europe from further German invasion. This continued, mostly uneventfully, until May 1941, when the young men returned to Palestine to prepare for the invasion of Syria and Lebanon.

Richard Fisher’s next encounter was in the Lebanese town of Miye ou Miye. This was an incredibly challenging encounter for the entirety of the 2/27th Battalion because they had almost no chance to rest since they began their campaign on June 8th. They had to cross a large amount of extremely rocky and rugged terrain on foot to reach a short resting point, and then continue through the Wadi Sataniq, a very deep ravine. The Australians began their attack at 5pm on the 14th of June, but not without problems – there was another ravine separating them from their target. They were immediately attacked with heavy fire and only one platoon made it across the ravine. This platoon had only 17 men (Richard Fisher unfortunately wasn’t a part of this group), but managed to capture a small part of the village and take 36 prisoners. This part of the attack was a success but meant that they were not able to receive back up from the rest of the battalion, and instead had to wait and hope that anyone remaining would leave. By the next morning, it was discovered that all the soldiers in the town had withdrawn, leaving the attack successful.

After these encounters, the 2/27th Battalion did little else in Lebanon, only remaining as part of an Allied Garrison. On the 30th of January 1942 the Australian soldiers left Egypt and returned home to Australia, where they had a few weeks to meet up with family again. They left Australia on the 24th of March and were now on their way to Papua New Guinea, where they arrived in August. By the 6th of September the Australians were in position on the Kokoda Trail, preparing to fight to keep the Japanese at bay. The battalion fought hard, but was only able to hold the position for 2 days because of a Japanese flanking manoeuvre. This was the hardest place the young Australians had been in up until this point – from here, they were forced to make a 2-week withdrawal through the warm, wet jungle with almost no food. Many died here, but Richard Fisher managed to keep pushing on. The Battalion made it back to the Australian camp on the 22nd of September. The rest the Battalion had was extremely short, as only a few weeks later they returned to combat in Gona. The Australians were forced into extremely poor conditions where they fought a quick moving enemy that used the jungle to their advantage. Richard Fisher, and many of his mates, died in these conditions, whether it was from tropical disease or from Japanese gunfire. Richard Gordon Fisher died, on the 8th of October 1942, from gangrene.