Malaya 1942 – 1956

One of the stories my uncle Laurence Turner wrote when he was the Melbourne Herald correspondent ‘with the Australian troops in Malaya’ 1955-56 was headlined ‘Ghost camp in Malaya’. It was published on 1 or 2 February 1956.

Laurence Turner (right) with 2RAR on patrol 1955

The story is listed in the Herald by-line file cards now at the State Library of Victoria, but not in the microfilmed copy of the paper. Luckily a battered copy of the story was found in my uncle’s papers. Perhaps the microfilmed copy was only published in an early (or late) edition of the Herald.

In January 1956, Turner ventured south to Singapore and some of the places in Malaya where Australians fought in 1942. He’d written about schools in Singapore, the Kranji war cemetery, Raffles hotel and other matters – none of which seem to have been used by the Herald, but may have been picked up by the Sun News-Pictorial Melbourne, the West Australian, Brisbane Courier-Mail, Adelaide News or the Sydney Morning Herald.

In his five months with 2RAR in Malaya, he scooped AAP-Reuters with stories on the first ambush of Australian troops, the death of Sergeant Cecil Anderson, the January 1956 peace talks at Baling, the bungling of housing for  the families of  Australian troops and the shoddy conditions of Australian troops, including the docking of the Malaya allowance of soldiers while ill or wounded in hospital. His stories were influential in improving conditions for the men and their families for the duration.

A keen student of Australian military history, Turner visited the Second World War sites in Malaya – Parit Sulong where 107 Australian wounded were massacred by the Japanese on 22 January 1942, and the site of the successful ambush at the Gemenceh River near Gemas on 12 January 1942.

In  January 1956 Turner met Michael Mathews a high school teacher at Batu Pahat, now (and then) a small coastal town between Johore Bahru and Malacca.

In late 1941 it was the main Australian base in Malaya.

The men Mr Mathews met were mostly from the 2/30^th Battalion and the 2/10^th Field Ambulance, part of the tragic 8^th Division. They had arrived in Singapore in August 1941, stayed at Birdwood Camp at Changi, and then moved some 90 kilometres to Batu Pahat in late September.

The 2/10^th supported the 2/30^th in January 1942 in the first Australian action against the Japanese – at the famous ambush on 12 January at Gemas on the Gemenceh River.

The 2/10^th Field Ambulance was formed in 1940 and comprised 292 all ranks. Only 131 men returned after the war –  they were killed in action or died as prisoners of war at Sandakan or on the Thai Burma Railway.  [And 22 were detached as part of Lark Force on Rabaul, where 15 were either murdered at the Tol Plantation massacre on 4 February 1942 or lost on the Montevideo Maru 22 June 1942.]

The 2/30th suffered 20 killed or missing believed dead and 58 wounded in Malaya in January. The Japanese casualties were thought to be about 1,000. After the surrender in Singapore, 1150 of the 2/30th were made prisoners of war. Many were sent to work on the Burma-Thailand railway, others to Borneo, or Japan. Over 300 men from the 2/30th died during captivity.

‘Mr Mathews still talks of “My friends, the Diggers.”  Then he says sadly:  “I wonder what happened to them all?”

Turner recorded nine names but couldn’t answer Mathew’s question. I have details of what happened to eight of the nine.

One name I have so far been unable to track down is NX 4377 Pte D.O.R Blair, C Coy 2/30^th Bn.

Christmas card 1956 from Michael Mathews to Laurence Turner and Bruce Reddaway, Herald photographer.

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