WAR stories told to the Shrine of Remembrance reveal the bravery of our Diggers.
Ern Ramsden was one of only 13 survivors of the sinking of the HMAS Yarra. Source: Herald Sun
Ern Ramsden
IT was a desperate week adrift on a raft in the middle of the Java Sea, but Ern Ramsden never succumbed to drinking sea water.
Many of his mates who had survived the sinking of the HMAS Yarra did, and they never made it off the raft.
Ern, now deceased, told his granddaughter more than 40 years later of his horror week aboard the raft.
Of the 151 crew, Chief Petty Officer Ramsden was one of only 13 survivors.
Many perished from thirst or hunger while aboard the raft after the Japanese Navy sank the ship.
"For two hours we struggled in the water. All the time, the Japanese sailed around us taking snapshots. By the end of the day, only 20 men had survived," Ern told his granddaughter.
"When the sun rose, we found the supplies allotted to the raft. One 14-pound tin of biscuits and a small barrel of water.
"After banging a hole in the biscuit tin, we were unable to reseal it.
"In a short time, the salt water managed to enter both the tin and the barrel, leaving us with no food and no fresh water."
After a week adrift, he was rescued by a Dutch submarine and taken to a hospital in Colombo.
Arthur Bancroft was taken by the Japanese as a prisoner of war after the HMAS Perth sunk in 1942. Source: Herald Sun
Arthur Bancroft
WHEN the HMAS Perth was sunk in 1942, it was as if Arthur Bancroft had lost his home.
"I wasn't scared, just a strange feeling to think you're losing your home," he said.
The young seaman spent a week floating in the Sunda Strait before the Japanese found him and took him as a prisoner of war.
Arthur was taken to the notorious Burma-Thai Railway and put to work.
Prisoners were told they would have to build a railway - even if it meant over a dead man's body.
All the while Arthur kept a diary, made of rice paper, of his experiences, knowing it would be his death if his guards discovered it.
He survived for almost three years on just one care package from the Red Cross, hoping to get home to his sweetheart Mirla (pictured above, right).
No one back home knew how many survivors there were or what had happened.
Eight months later they broadcast names over the radio and a friend heard Arthur's name. That was the first Mirla heard that her love was still alive.
The pair married after the war and were together until Mirla's death in 2011.
Arthur still lives in Perth with his family.
Letters from Roy Holloway from the trenches of France and Turkey were found in 2006, more than a decade after his death. Source: Herald Sun
Roy Holloway
ROY Holloway's full WWI Anzac story might never have been known until his family found moving letters to his sister from the trenches of France and Turkey.
His son Les said the letters and a diary revealed a range of emotions from enlistment, training at Broadmeadows, the flies and heat in Egypt and the Gallipoli landing.
Roy's letters were found in 2006 more than a decade after his death.
In the letters Roy said a mix-up at the landing at Gallipoli saved his life.
"At the landing we went ashore in navy motorboats. The fighting against the Turks took place about two miles away in the hills. The landing should have taken place at a stretch of low beach land half a mile away. This stretch of beach was full of barbed wire under the water," he said.
"No one would have escaped from that as they would have had to jump into waist-deep water from the boats carrying heavy packs. We'd have drowned."
After Gallipoli he went on with the 4th Brigade to the mud and killing fields of France and the battles at Pozieres and Bullecourt. The Germans captured Roy at the battle of Bullecourt and held him prisoner for 20 months.
He finally returned home to his family in Ballarat in 1918.
Steve Ager (right) was posted to East Timor in 2000. Source: Herald Sun
Steve Ager
IT was the many different nations working toward the goal of East Timor that really stays with Steve Ager.
Steve was posted to East Timor in 2000, and still remembers it as some of the most inspiring times of his 27-year military service.
"Each sector had a number of nationalities posted to it," he said.
"It was not uncommon for an Australian patrol to touch base with a Kenyan patrol or a Portuguese helicopter to transport Korean soldiers into an AO or travel out to the enclave in a Russian helicopter."
On arrival in Dili, the destruction from the riots was still very real. "As was the feelings of the local population to the presence of the UN in their country," he said.
Steve was involved in the investigation of an alleged rape of an East Timorese national by a UN peacekeeper.
"It was one of the hardest things I have ever done to try and reassure him and his family that the UN and CIVPOL would apprehend the individual who had allegedly done this and prosecute them to the length of the law," he said.
David Barrett (right) was a prisoner in a Japanese jail. Source: Herald Sun
David Barrett
FOR medical orderly David Barrett, his fight didn't end once he left the Thai-Burma railway.
David kept fighting for more than 55 years until he was able to get $25,000 in reparation for every man like him who endured the hell of a Japanese prison.
He left Australia in 1941 on the Queen Mary with 2/9th Field Ambulance of the 8th Division AIF.
He did what he could for the wounded in the chaos that was the Malayan campaign, but was captured in 1942.
After spending time in Changi in August 1943, David was moved to the Kanburi No.1 Coolie Hospital.
He had the job of digging graves for the dead, or nearly dead, every single day. He was then moved to Loburi camp as the only medical person for 200 POWs.
After the Japanese surrender in August 1945 he volunteered for the War Graves Commission Party, which returned to the railway to locate and log the graves of those who had died.
A book on his life, Digger's Story, was recently written by David and Brian Robertson.
14-year-old John Gordon was able to enlist to fight in World War I by using his dead brother James' name. Source: Herald Sun
John Gordon
IT was only by using his dead brother James' name that 14-year-old John Gordon was able to enlist to fight in World War I.
He left his Carlton home for war in November and never returned. He served as a part of the 29th Battalion and went to both Egypt and France.
John was just 15 when he was killed in the battle of Fromelles in France.
Initially labelled as missing, his family waited weeks before they were told he would not make it home.
John, and thousands of other Australians, were killed as they tried to rush the heavily defended Sugar Loaf position.
Evidence found from the German war and death records showed John was buried in a mass grave at Pheasant Wood, Fromelles.
His body remained there for more than 100 years until 2009 when an excavation team, with the help of an amateur historian, identified his DNA and his exact age.
Killed at just 15 years, 10 months and one day, James Gordon now holds a place in Anzac history as the youngest Australian recorded to have been killed in action.
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