Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

This is the story of my dad’s brother, John Alfred Gleadall (Uncle Jack) was born 22nd Feb 1925. He was known to all as Bluey, fair and blue eyed, but I remember him as Uncle Jack. He joined up at 15 years of age in early April 1941, to the 2/3rd Machine Gun Battalion in Claremont, Western Australia. He used his older sister Mary’s birth certificate (doctored of course), as proof of age. The beginning of this story is told by my Aunty Mary. It is first hand and I feel very blessed to have heard it many times, as I know it still breaks her heart as she adored her baby brother.
“Jacky joined up with the Tressider boys, Frank and Jack, they were cousins, you know. They went off to Northam Camp straight away. Mum and Dad were furious, and we got Rob… we were just engaged you know, and he had a car, so he drove us up to Northam, and dad kept saying he was going to tell them all, that Jack was not even 16 and he was too young, and we were taking him home! We were taken to a room and soon the major came in and said “Jack is such a nice boy, and a real good shot too. And apart from that Jack likes it here very much”. When Jack was called into the room, dad pleaded with him to come home. Jacky stood stiff and said “You did it dad, you joined at 16, so why can’t I?”. What could dad say? He had done the same, joining the Lanchshire Fusiliers at age 16. He’d fought and been seriously wounded in battle. Did you know dad, your grandad was mustard gas’d in the first war? The major said they would not let Jacky go off to war and he would just stay in training. Dad said ok, and we drove back home to Fremantle. I cried all the way home. Next thing, there were loud knocks on the door, and …?? was at the door yellin, “their at wharf, their leaving and Jack’s there, come quick or you’ll miss him”. Mum and dad ran as fast as they could, but it was too late. The ship was already out of port and on its way.” Pers. Mary Vincent, Hilton Western Australia, January 2012.
From war records I have learned; The US.10 arrived in Fremantle 16th April 1941. My uncle Jack, boarded and headed for the middle east, and I don’t know, but I hope it would feel like a great time in his life, full of adventure. In his short time in the Middle east, the troops won battles, includng the Allied victory against the Vichy French in Syria, but less than a year later my 16yr old uncle along with 600 men from the 2/3rd MG Bn boarded the SS Orcades at Port Tewfik, headed for what they thought was home. They soon were told Orcades was being diverted to an unknown desination. In haste to leave, the Orcades sailed with no kitbags, vehicles and drivers, and their machine guns, ammunition and stores. British forces surrendered Singapore on 15 February and two days later Orcades, reached Sumatra, and then Batavia and the Battle of Java. Which prooved futile,obviously, as troops, without their machine guns stood no chance.
My uncle was a POW at 16 and would spend the next 2 and a bit years of the most horrific times we could not even imagine, in prison camps along the Burma-Thailand Railway, malnutrited, and near death.
The next part of the story was a well told tale as I grew up. I can’t quite remember but think it was made known to them through a survivor, but anyway Jack was eventually interned in Changi prison (which at the time was a make-shift hospital). He had broken his leg in a soccer match, using rolled up newspaper. Apparently even Colonel 'Weary' Dunlop worked on him?
In 1944, Uncle Jack was put on a ship, the, a Japanese ship carrying POWs, back to Japan to work the nickel mines. Just before midnight on 24 June 1944, with the lights of Japan in sight, the US submarine USS Tang torpedoed the Tamahoka Maru, and it exploded and sunk to the bottom of Nagasaki Bay. Of the 773 POWs on board, 561 were killed or drowned. My Uncle Jack was one of them, dead at nineteen. Lest we forget.
J.Garvey 2018.