COOKE, Austin Vaughan
Service Number: | NX8410 |
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Enlisted: | 2 November 1939, Scone, New South Wales |
Last Rank: | Lance Corporal |
Last Unit: | 6th Australian Division Intelligence Section |
Born: | Scone, New South Wales, Australia, 23 January 1916 |
Home Town: | Scone, Upper Hunter Shire, New South Wales |
Schooling: | Not yet discovered |
Occupation: | AMP Insurance Agent |
Died: | Natural causes, Gundy, New South Wales, Australia, 23 February 2002, aged 86 years |
Cemetery: |
Rookwood Cemeteries & Crematorium, New South Wales Garden of Remembrance Wall: 49, Panel: C |
Memorials: | Ballarat Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial, New South Wales Garden of Remembrance (Rookwood Necropolis) |
World War 2 Service
2 Nov 1939: | Enlisted Private, NX8410, Scone, New South Wales | |
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2 Nov 1939: | Enlisted Australian Military Forces (WW2) , Lance Corporal, NX8410 | |
18 Oct 1945: | Discharged Lance Corporal, NX8410, 6th Australian Division Intelligence Section | |
18 Oct 1945: | Discharged Australian Military Forces (WW2) , Lance Corporal, NX8410 |
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Add my storyBiography contributed by John Cooke
Lance Corporal Cooke was part of Division Intelligence Section in North Africa and was captured in Crete in 1941. He spent the war years in Stalag VIIIB in Teschen, where it was so cold he crocheted himself a blanket from cast off wool scraps from other prisoners – it is now preserved in the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. He was later moved to Stalag 344 in Lamsdorf (or Lainsdorf), and was repatriated to England in May, 1945 at the wars end. He bore the scars his entire life from being manacled for 10 weeks in handcuffs while in prison, a retaliation by the Germans for Britain’s comparable treatment of captured soldiers after the Dieppe raid.