Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

The 2nd/5th Field Hygiene Section was raised in Victoria and allocated to the 8th Division of the 2nd AIF. It embarked at Sydney and arrived in Malaya to support the 8th Division in its defence of the Malayan Peninsula in early February 1941. On the 15th of February 1942 the 8th Division surrender and thus the members of the 2nd/5th Field Hygiene Section were taken as prisoners of war where they faced three and a half years in prision camps throughout the Japanese Empire. 

The 2nd/5th Field Hygiene Section was modelled off the World War One Sanitary Sections of the AIF. As such, the section was allocated to an entire division and numbered around 1 officer (usually a Major or a Captain with past medical experience) and around 25 other ranks (most with no pervious medical experience before the war.) It was responsible for the sanitation needs of the 8th Division.