A Town That Went to War

Private Norman Charles Flack 2/19th Battalion, 8th Division Norman Charles Flack was born in Hay, NSW on 2nd January 1920. He was a popular Death Railway, Burma and highly thought of young man, regularly attending and participating in the service On the 18th March 1943, Norman was transferred to ‘D’ Force. This was an alphabetically named group of 5000 prisoners, over half of whom were British and the rest of the Anglican Church. Norman was a keen tennis player and became a very good Australian, who were bound for the Siam end of the ‘Death Railway’ in Burma. The men were crammed into steel box cars. To lie down was out of the question and a bike rider and placed in many road races. He completed a 5 year apprenticeship as a roster had to be drawn up for each man to take a turn to sit down. For five days and nights the train rattled on to Ban Pong, the point from which the new railway track was to commence. This period of Norman’s internment was simply a desperate struggle for survival as the monsoon produced more difficult conditions and brought fresh motor mechanic with Hay Motors and remained employed with them on his return outbreaks of disease with it. When a prisoner or ‘White Coolie’ as they were known, died, parts of the body were cooked and fed to the prisoners who thought they were from the war. eating horse meat. While working on the railway, Norman recalls the time when he had to helplessly watch a mate of his being flogged mercilessly to death by a Jap guard Norman enlisted in the Australian Army on 26th June 1940 at Wagga Wagga, serving in for a petty misdemeanour. They were treated like animals. the Ordnance Corp, 2/19th Battalion, 8th Division which consisted largely of bushman Later, Norman was transferred to work in a tin mine somewhere near a small Thai town. recruits from the country, particularly the Riverina area of NSW. His unit trained in camps at Wagga Wagga, Wallgrove, Bathurst and Liverpool. Hell Ship to Japan Between April and June 1944, 10,000 prisoners were collected at Saigon for shipment to Japan. Some were transferred by rail to leave from the port at Singapore. Those Unknown Destination - WWII who were unfortunate enough to embark had the daunting experience of running the gauntlet of attacks by their own submarines and hundreds were drowned when their On the 4th February 1941, Norman’s battalion embarked from Sydney in convoy aboard the great liner, the Queen Mary (QM). For security reasons their destination was unmarked, unidentified ships went down (see the story of Cliff Farlow). unknown to them. Somewhere in the Indian Ocean the QM broke away from the main Middle East convoy, and now unrestricted by slower vessels, sailed full steam for Singapore under the protective escort of a single warship. She docked in Singapore harbour on the 18th February 1941. Norman was transported to the island of Kyushu, Japan, by the ‘hell-ship’ Bieoki Maru. They were crammed in the putrid hold of this unseaworthy rust-bucket; the atrocious conditions made worse by rough weather, seasickness, dysentery and only scraps of food to eat. Malayan Campaign He worked on the island of Kyushu for a number of years in a diamond-coal mine which ran under the sea for almost 12 kilometres. The seam was so narrow that it had to be worked by prisoners on their knees with seawater continually seeping through the ceiling. After a period of basic jungle training at Jemaluang in Malaya, Norman’s unit the 2/19th was soon upholding the traditions of the ‘Fighting Nineteenth’ of the First AIF when it faced a determined attack from seasoned Japanese troops in the Battle of Muar, Malaya, in January 1942. Though heavily pressed, they initially forced the Japanese to retreat with heavy losses, enduring only light casualties themselves. This battle remains a symbol of the 8th Division itself. Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Overpowered numerically by 15,000 or more crack Japanese troops it was now a slow, dogged fighting withdrawal of less than 1000 Australians south through Malaya Norman was down the mine when the second atomic bomb, Fat Man the plutonium bomb, was dropped on Nagasaki on 9th August 1945. The mine was sixteen kilometres towards the island of Singapore. Along the way, roadblocks manned by encircling Japanese troops were breached with fierce fighting, the Australians charging the enemy from Nagasaki and being down the mine possibly saved his life. Oblivious to what had actually occurred, Norman recalled that parts of the mine wall became unstable and with fixed bayonets and a vengeance that temporarily routed the Japanese. The enemy suffered great losses. collapsed in places. For three days after the explosion, the prisoners were not able to see the sun and it became very hot. Soon after, American planes flew over the camp and dropped ample supplies of food, clothing; and leaflets declaring that the war had ended with the detonation of the second atomic bomb and advising that they must stay On the 22nd January 1942, due to the impossibility of safely getting ambulance vehicles through the continued fighting after the Battle of Muar, 110 badly wounded together until collected. Australian and 40 Indian troops had to be reluctantly left behind to the mercy of the Japanese Imperial Guard Division. The Japanese brutally beat the wounded with rifle butts before bayonetting and machine-gunning them, burning their bodies with petrol. Somehow, two men escaped the Parit Sulong Massacre, one of which survived the Liberation and Jubilation war to be an important witness of the atrocity in the Japanese War Crimes Trials 1946. Suffering severe malnutrition after 3 years and 7 months of captivity, Norman was recovered from the Japanese at Ohama, Japan on the 15th September 1945 and transferred The Australian troops continued to defy every effort of the enemy to annihilate them with their finest shock troops, tanks, planes, artillery and mortar. During the first to a holding camp in Manila, Philippines. He embarked from there on 4th October 1945 for Sydney, Australia, aboard the British aircraft carrier HMS Speaker, her empty five days of fighting, it was estimated that the Australians had killed between 1000 and 3000 of Japan’s front-line soldiers. The rifle and the fearful bayonet had proved to aircraft hangars now fitted out for carrying home liberated prisoners of war. Ashamedly, kept secret from the returning soldiers in order to prevent hostile and possibly be the decisive weapon. Of the two Australian battalions numbering almost 2000 strong at the beginning, less than 400 came out of it, including 271 officers and men of serious repercussions on arrival, their long awaited and emotional homecoming was to be forcibly delayed by the despicable action of striking Sydney Waterside Workers. the 2/19th Battalion. After all that these fellows had been through in years of incarceration under the brutal treatment of their captors, they were to be momentarily spared in knowing the During this intense fighting, small groups of Australians were often split up and disorientated in the thick jungle. Norman’s war records show that he was missing from continuing, treacherous behaviour of so called Australians on home soil. After waiting out at sea off the Sydney Heads with the pacifying excuse of urgent paint repairs, 20.1.42 to the 28.1.42 when he re-joined his unit. He was again reported missing on the 16.2.42, then on 1.9.43 confirmed missing, believed Prisoner Of War (POW). On Captain U.H.R.James eventually entered HMS Speaker into the harbour and berthed at No.14 Pyrmont Wharf, Sydney, on the morning of the 15th October 1945. the 23.9.43 it was recorded that he was definitely a POW of the Japanese. Norman was met by a jubilant mother Isabella, a happy sister Peggy and an exuberant younger brother, Keith. After serving over 5.5 years in the AIF, Norman resumed work with Hay Motors as a motor mechanic before working with his brother-in-law, Ron Turner for five years Singapore Defence sinking artesian bores. He then worked on Tom’s Lake Station, near Booligal, as a windmill and general mechanic for almost 11 years. After returning to Orson Street in the The Australian battalions urgently withdrew south to defend the western half of Singapore against a final enemy bombardment of artillery, ground and persistent, unopposed Hay township he married Marjorie Pocock and they had three daughters, Julia, Catherine and Elizabeth. air attack. The AIF managed to form a strong perimeter against which the enemy were smashed over and over again. During the final stages, Australian numbers were so depleted that it was necessary to use non-combatant troops to occupy positions in the firing line. The Australians occupied the perimeter from which they refused to budge, Marjorie recalled that after the war, like many fellow POW’s, Norm suffered nightmares and sadly had to live with his demons. He died of cancer on 16th December 1990, and it was in this position that they stood when the decision to surrender was made. thought to have been caused by radiation fallout from the Nagasaki atomic bomb. Surrender of Singapore Singapore’s agonies ended on the 15th February 1942 to bring about the greatest disaster in British military history. Australian, British, Dutch and other prisoners of the Japanese were condemned to a captivity of such sadistic cruelty that appals civilised imagination. Unlike the Germans, the Japanese refused to sign the Geneva Convention, Lest We Forget the international agreement that determined the humane treatment of prisoners.

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