Wal Williams cheated death throughout World War II — in combat, as a prisoner of the Japanese, even at the hands of his own side.But the main factors ensuring his survival, on an epic three-year journey from Australia’s greatest military disaster to eventual victory 75 years ago this month, were not fighting skills or basic training.“A bowl of rice and a sense of humour,” the former infantryman says, without hesitation, when asked how he kept alive following the Fall of Singapore in 1942; when Wal became one of 80,000 Allies, among them 15,000 Australians, taken into captivity after British commanders surrendered the supposedly impregnable island fortress to a numerically inferior Japanese force.Laughter was our light … as a new Anzac360 film is released on the Fall of Singapore, Wal Williams, one of the last survivors of that catastrophe, urges Australians to ask the remaining WWII veterans about their experiences while they still can. Australia’s Federation Guard are busy rehearsing for a formal ceremony marking the 75th anniversary of the end of WWII to be held at the Australian War Memorial on Saturday. © Copyright 2019 - ForeignAffairs.co.nz - Multimedia Investments Ltd, all rights reserved He thinks they will appreciate it.“Absolutely ask them,” he says. The energetic 98-year-old, a natural raconteur, punctuates his stories of incredible suffering and endurance with comedic anecdotes — beams of light cutting through a dark, dark time.Grim reality of POW life … a hospital ward at the infamous Changi, in Singapore. World War 2 was of particular significance for this state with 30,000 Tasmanians serving from from a population of just 250,000.It is also estimated that nearly 16,000 people, including 5000 women, worked in factories and on the land to support the war effort and supply the armed forces with vegetables, dairy and meat products.Over one million Australians served in World War 2 – 27,073 were killed in action or died, 23,477 were wounded and 30,560 taken prisoner of war.The Australian Government’s Department of Veterans’ Affairs is acknowledging the significance of the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, with a Commemorative Medallion and Certificate of Commemoration.The medallion and certificate are available to every living veteran of the Second World War. While Australia can never repay the debt we owe almost one million Australians who served, this medallion and certificate are a small but meaningful way we can thank living veterans of the largest global conflict of the 20th century.Applications can be made by visiting the DVA website

15 August 2020. Three World War Two veterans were the special guests at Port Macquarie's VP Day 75th anniversary service on August 15. featured, vp day, VP Day 75th, world war two, port macquarie, victory in … News Corp Australia August 1, 2020 7:04pm.

It was my honour to acknowledge Tasmania’s World War 2 veterans and commemorate VP Day when … Japanese attempts to hit the US submarine with depth charges would have killed Wal, if not for a mate floating nearby, who shouted to flip on his back, “else the pressure would have ruptured our stomachs”.Most of the last year of Wal’s war was at an engineering factory in Kawasaki, an area bombed into obliteration by the Americans. Ever.“All of my life it has bugged me to think that I went through all of that and none of my family ever quizzed me about it,” he says. Story and photo by Corporal Julia Whitwell.

Wal gets emotional as he describes coming home at the end of the war as “like walking into another world.”Incredibly, none of his family asked about his experiences. And Wal’s journey from that moment — a journey that brings him home to marry, raise a son and start a business — is the very opposite of failure.Sent to toil on the Death Railway, where 90,000 fellow forced labourers died from disease, malnutrition and brutality, he survived.Shipped to Japan itself, his vessel was torpedoed, leaving Wal in the water for 12 hours, where his skills as a NSW schoolboy swimming champ came to the fore.

“We all cheered as if Liverpool had won the finals while he shook his fist at us.”Or a squeamish Wal helping at an amputation in his Burmese prison camp’s primitive hospital, where doctors seen as heroes by the men did their best with no drugs and homemade equipment.


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