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GUNNER WILLIAM LINDSAY SAVAGE QX17752 2ND AIF

Lindsay Savage was born in Beenleigh Queensland on the 1st of March 1909, the third born of five children of James and Jessie Savage.  Lindsay enlisted in the 2nd AIF on the 21st of August 1940, and as he had served in the Army Militia for three years in a Field Regiment, he was allocated to the 2/10TH Field Regiment. Lindsay was a single man and a Cattle Buyer by profession.  The 2/10Th was part of the 8th Division AIF and was raised in Queensland. Lindsay would serve with his young cousin Russell Savage, whilst his older brother James would join the RAAF. Russell described him as a big man but never strong, but always ready with a word to lift the spirits and a great storyteller.

The 2/10th travelled to war in luxury, well sort of. Their transport to Singapore was in the liner Queen Mary, hastily refitted as a troop transport.  The regiment was based in the Malacca area on Malaya’s west coast, and it was from here, after the Japanese invasion, that they fought a fighting retreat to Singapore. The battle was over all too quickly and on the 15th of February 1942 Lindsay went from being a fighting soldier to a prisoner of war.

In May 1942, Lindsay became part of “A” Force, the first group of 3000 men sent to work on the infamous Burma Railway under the command of Australian Brigadier Arthur Varley. For the next two years, Lindsay, his cousin Russel and their mates were literally worked to death, before they were released from one hell and introduced to another.  Phase two of Japanese cruelty was to send the men to Japan to work in coal mines and shipyards. Initially they were to leave from Saigon, but because of intense American submarine activity, they travelled back to Singapore, to await transport to Japan.

On the 4th of September 1944 Lindsay embarked on the Rakuyo Maru, bound for Japan, along with 1318 fellow British and Australian POWs.   Sailing into to hostile waters the Rakuyo Maru, not marked as a POW ship, became a victim of the submarine the USS Sealion on the 12th of September.  Hundreds of Australians packed in the holds were killed instantly whilst others prepared to abandon ship. The ship would take some hours to sink, however many men jumped overboard prematurely. The Japanese picked up their own survivors but abandoned the hundreds of POWs, many swimming in the water. Approximately 350 men were picked up in the ship’s lifeboats which had been abandoned by the Japanese. Ultimately of the 1318 POWs on the Rakuyo Maru, 136 were picked up by the Japanese, 92 by US submarines, the remainder were officially lost at sea.

Lindsay and his cousin Russell were lucky. They were amongst a group of four lifeboats under the charge of Petty Officer Vic Duncan, and it included a brilliant young AIF doctor Rowley Richards. At times the Varley group were clearly visible on the horizon. The remaining boats were led by Brigadier Varley and eventually the two groups drifted apart as they sailed towards the China coast. On the 14th of September heavy machine gun fire could be heard from the direction the Varley group had last been seen and soon after and Japanese warships were sighted. The 200 plus men from the Varley Group were never seen again.  It can only be assumed they were murdered by the Japanese.

For some inexplicable reason the Japanese ship spared the Duncan Group. Arthur Wright later believed that it was because when challenged as to who they were, they answered “Australians, rather than British or American. In all 136 men were picked up by the corvette which had a sympathetic captain and crew, however things would change when they were transferred to a whaling mother ship the next day. They arrived onboard the large whaling ship to find British survivors from another torpedoed transport in desperate condition. It would be two long weeks before the survivors reached Japan, where they were immediately split up between camps.  Lindsay and Russel were amongst a group bound for 22D POW Camp at Sakata on the north western shore on Honshu.

The men were allotted to various local factories and within weeks they were walking to work in the snow, many were barefoot, having lost their kit in the sinking. The men’s health continued to deteriorate, despite receiving a Red Cross parcel between every seven men at Christmas, the first they had seen in captivity.  The medical officers, including Dr Rowley Richards who had been with the men since they first left Singapore in 1942, received medical supplies for the first time. Lindsay, along with a ex-cattlemen and a butcher, was sent to work at the town abattoir run by Takahashi who was a kind hearted man. He would regularly feed his Australian assistants and give them food to smuggle to the camp for the men in the hospital.

This meagre ration was added to when the Commandant ordered that all the dogs in the neighbourhood be slaughtered at the abattoir as they were eating too much food. The skins were removed, and Takahashi gave the carcasses to his assistants who took them back to camp where they were then frozen in the snow. Each day for the next few weeks a couple were added to the pot.

Despite all this the men continued to die, and on the 1st of March, when his food was delivered to him Russell Savage received the sad news that his cousin Lindsay had passed away that morning. Lindsay was cremated and post war his ashes were interred in the CWGC Cemetery in Yokohama.

References:

Return from the River Kwai, Joan and Clay Blair, Macdonald and Janes, 1979.

A Doctor’s Wat, Rowley Richards, Harper Collins, 2005.

A Guest of the Emperor, Russell Savage, Boolalong Press, 1995.

NAA: B883, QX17752, SAVAGE WILLIAM LINDSAY : Service Number - QX17752 : Date of birth - 01 Mar 1909 : Place of birth - BEENLEIGH QLD : Place of enlistment - KELVIN GROVE QLD : Next of Kin - SAVAGE JAMES