`unknown' Soldiers Who Were Never Forgotten
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday February 3, 2001
The memory of war lasts much longer than war itself, and hurts as much. Sisters Nancy Patterson and Lorna Wilson will rest a little easier now a headstone is to be erected on their brother's grave, 55 years after he was murdered.
Joyce Braithwaite feels more at peace, too, knowing exactly where her first love lies in Borneo. ``This is emotional closure for me," she said yesterday.
The sisters, from Geelong, and Mrs Braithwaite, of Canberra, lost their brother and husband respectively in the horror of Sandakan at the end of World War II.
The two men, Gunner Albert Cleary and Gunner Wally Blatch, were buried in unmarked graves at Labuan, with the epitaph ``A soldier known unto God".
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission, with the help of Sydney historian Lynette Silver, has located the exact graves of these and 16 other soldiers and will erect new headstones in the next few weeks.
The news comes in the week it was revealed the national president of the RSL, Major-General Peter Phillips, had visited Japan in an attempt to heal lingering animosities of World War II.
If any Australians find it hard to forgive the Japanese, families of the men who died at the Sandakan prisoner-of-war camp, or on the death marches from there, have better reason than most.
Of 2,434 Australian and British prisoners incarcerated in Sandakan during World War II, only six Australians came home. A total of 1,787 Australians and 641 British perished at Sandakan, on the 265-kilometre march through the jungle to Ranau, or at Ranau.
Having endured the march, Albert Cleary escaped from Ranau, was recaptured and tied by the neck to a tree without food or drink. Wearing only a loincloth, he endured the stifling heat of day and the chill of night.
Guards kicked him and urinated on him before dumping him, Lynette Silver says in her book, Sandakan, ``like garbage awaiting disposal near a gutter". He died in his mates' arms.
``He was a nice-looking young man," Mrs Patterson says. The sisters can still picture him piling the family into a canoe he had built at 15 or 16 and pushing it on wheels down to the beach. He was dead at 22.
``I still lie awake thinking of him," Mrs Wilson said. ``I feel I can't forgive."
Mrs Braithwaite had married Wal Blatch, from Yeoval, in 1940 when they were 21. ``We first went out at 15 and loved each other from 16," she said. ``We married at 21 and I was virtually widowed nine months later."
Her man had played chess in the POW camp with Dick Braithwaite, one of the six to escape.
Dick visited Joyce to tell her about Wal and she later married her husband's mate. ``He struggled with deep psychological scars from Sandakan but we raised three terrific children."
Mrs Braithwaite applauded Major-General Phillips's visit to Japan: ``I understand how others feel differently but it's time to put this to rest. It only harms the people who are already hurt, like a canker, not the Japanese."
Another grave, that of Sergeant James O'Dwyer, of a Special Operations Australia team dropped behind enemy lines, has also been located.
His son, Mike, now in Washington to talk with Pentagon officials about an electronically fired weapons system he has invented, had tried to find his father's body. ``Finding dad's grave doesn't bring closure but it does bring peace. There's something very, very special about standing before a grave which has been lost for 55 years, and which I thought I'd never know."
Ms Gloria Hinton, of Melbourne, is relieved, too, that the grave of her uncle, Gunner Wally Crease, has been found. ``What happened to him was unforgivable, but you have to move on.
``We would be better off concentrating on today's injustices, like the young women being lashed in parts of the world for the crime of having been raped."
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© 2001 Sydney Morning Herald