World War I  veterans

  of  Rabaul  &  surrounding islands

(Bismarck Archipelago: Mandated Territory of New Guinea)

who were abandoned by their own Australian government at the outset of the war against Japan, January 1942.

Links:
Far Eastern Prisoners of War Association
Children of Far Eastern Prisoners of War Association

We would be pleased to publish photographs of other World War I veterans resident in the Mandated Territory, who disappeared following the Fall of Rabaul in 1942.

Please  e-mail Anne McCosker

Stanley Alexander Ashby

9th Infantry Battalion
Enlisted Brisbane, July 1916 aged 21  

Served Ypres region 1917
Badly wounded Sept 1917
Repatriated March 1918

with acknowledgements to Erice Pizer 
(nee Ashby)

See  Aftermath 2002 link

Robert Leeuwin Clark

Richmond  NSW
1916
Flying Corps

with acknowledgements to
John Leeuwin Clark

See the poem:    Namanula Hill 
from  Anne McCosker's
Witch Doctor

Arthur Reginald Parry

1st A.I.F. Medical Corps
X-ray Operator and Senior Orderly,
2nd Australian Casualty Clearing Station,  London

Parry was Senior Medical Assistant, Kokopo Native Hospital, at Fall of Rabaul 1942.  He chose to remain with his patients rather than try to escape.

with acknowledgements to Colwyn Parry, formerly Senior Supt., New Guinea Police

See Aftermath, 1958 link

Corporal Frank Norman Smith
of the 
Australian Light Horse

with acknowledgements to 
Rae Crichton (nee  Smith)

(See: Commonwealth War Graves Commission)

Note:  the Commission places Smith's birth in England, but George Farrow has discovered that he was born near Bega, NSW.  

See also Montevideo Maru, extracts from Masked Eden

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