Rabaul 1942: the sacrifice of John Eshott Carr (1922-1942).

Anzac Day may mark Australia's birth as a nation, but the sacrifice of young Australians on islands like Ambon, New Britain and Timor forged our sense of identity with the Southeast Asian region. In the Dardanelles in 1915, Australians had established an international identity, which was reinforced at Pozieres and then a quarter of a century later in the Western Desert. But in 1941-42, young Australians stood firm in the path of Japanese expansionism, resolute and steadfast in their role of blunting, if not actually stopping, the Japanese advance on Australia itself. Entire groups of defenders were massacred, whole battalions were taken into captivity-and War Cemeteries on neighbouring islands remain as mute testimony to their sacrifice.

Perhaps the most poignant of these memorials are the shrines and large bronze plaques bearing the names of Australian Service personnel with no known grave--erected to honour those who could not be accorded the dignity of an honourable burial and an individual marked grave. The newest of these shrines is a small monument in Ballarat Botanical Gardens, unveiled in February 2004. One of those young Australians denied a formal, identified resting place was John Eshott Carr from Tasmania, whose name is listed both at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra and in the Rabaul War Cemetery. Interestingly, his sacrifice is also recalled by a 1939-45 Memorial Plaque in Holy Trinity Church at Cressy in Tasmania, with which his foster-father Lieutenant Colonel Robert Thirkell MBE VD had a significant association.

Genealogy

John Carr was born in Singapore in the Malay States on 21 June 1922, the son of Cedric Errol Carr and his wife Nellie (nee Twiff). The family moved to Tasmania but soon after, when John was aged 4 years, Cedric Carr divorced his wife and was awarded custody of his son. Nellie Twiff returned to Mt Pleasant in Singapore, and John Carr lived with his father in East Melbourne, Victoria. In 1930, John Cart was sent back to Tasmania to live with his aunt Stella (his mother's sister) and her husband Captain R W M Thirkell and, at Cedric Carr's request, Robert Thirkell became the legal Trustee and Guardian of young John. Cedric Cart died in New Guinea in 1937 and John Carr, then aged 15, was legally adopted by Robert and Stella Thirkell.

Robert Mowbray Winston Thirkell OBE VD (1890-1954) was the descendent of a north Tasmania pioneer family from Woodstock near Longford. In 1850, Thirkell's predecessors had built the original St James' Chapel on the family property--a private chapel established for the family's own use and for the people connected with them (whenever a clergyman was available) and for conducting family services at other times. Following the establishment of the Anglican Parish of Cressy in Northern Tasmania in 1858, the Thirkell family transferred St James' Chapel and its land to the Diocese of Cressy on 14 May 1866. This chapel, together with the family burial ground, was consecrated on 30 October 1867.

Born in Richmond, Tasmania on 13 February 1890, Robert Thirkell saw active service in the Great War at Gallipoli and in France as an officer with the 3rd Australian Field Company Engineers, and then with the 12th Battalion AIF. For his war service with the 12th Battalion, Captain Thirkell was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in the Military Division (MBE) in 1919 (2). He was also awarded the Colonial Auxiliary Forces Officers' Decoration for 20 years' commissioned service in the Militia (with war service counting double); this decoration had superseded the Volunteer Decoration in 1908, but the unfortunate postnominals 'VD' were retained.

War service

At Fort Direction in Tasmania on 25 June 1940, John Carr volunteered for service with the Australian Military Forces--"for the duration of the war and one year thereafter". He was aged 18, and he gave his occupation as Clerk. Interestingly, he stated his next-of-kin to be his mother Nellie Gilmore (nee Twiff) of 168 Mt Pleasant, Singapore. He was allotted to the Royal Regiment of Australian Artillery with the rank of Gunner, and with the Service number TP10735 (3). The 'T' prefix to his Service number represents the State of enlistment (Tasmania), and the 'P' prefix indicates that he was a member of the Permanent Force--not the Australian Imperial Force (AIF), which had an 'X' prefix. Gunner Cart was allocated to the 7th Heavy Battery RAA, commanded by Captain Mark Sydney Pritchard.

The following year, Carr enlisted in East Melbourne, Victoria on 22 February for war service within Australia or abroad. He was allocated to the 'Special Force Tropical Services', which was later designated as 'Tropical Coastal Defence Unit'. Meanwhile, at the Singapore Conference of February 1941, the Australian War Cabinet promised to send an AIF battalion to Rabaul on the island of New Britain to assist in its defence if the Japanese entered the war. Accordingly, the Coastal Defence Unit became 'L' Heavy Battery, commanded by Major James Rowland Purcell Clark, a Clerk from New Town in Tasmania.

This battery was among several auxiliary troops dedicated to support the 2/22nd Battalion AIF of the 23rd Infantry Brigade (under the command of Brigadier Edward Lind CBE), of the 8th Australian Division. The 2/22nd Battalion Group AIF, known operationally as 'Lark Force', was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Howard Hammond Can" ED--no relation to Gunner John Carr of 'L' Heavy Battery.

Coastal Defence

In March 1941 the 2/22nd Battalion Group, with 'L' Heavy Battery, deployed to Rabaul. The force also possessed a medical company from the 2/10th Field Ambulance, and an anti-aircraft battery and the 17th Anti-Tank Battery which joined it later in the year, and on Rabaul was supplemented by the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles. John Carr qualified as a Signaller (Trade Group II) on 14 August 1941.

Lark Force was one of three such forces deployed to the north of Australia to confront and stall the Japanese: 'Gull Force' (the 2/21st Battalion Group AIF) deployed to Ambon, and 'Sparrow Force' (the 2/40th Battalion Group AIF) went to the island of Timor. The names of these forces carried a particular irony--one officer captured on Ambon later suggested that the operational name of the brigade as a whole should have been 'the Shags' for the way the individual battalion groups were stuck out on 'rocks' outside the secure perimeter without support.

Major John Turner MBE later wrote:

   This was the best Australia could do to try and defend the
   'stepping stones' from Asia, and thereby our northern coasts.
   But, of course, islands, defended only by small numbers of
   troops in fixed defences, with virtually no air support, and
   the loss of the sealanes--are doomed when invested by a
   determined and powerful enemy. (4)

The veterans of these forces, those who survived three and a half years' brutal captivity, recognise that in each case an inadequate force was sent to a remote outpost, with no provision for reinforcement or evacuation. One former member of Gull Force recalled, "We called ourselves 'The Lost Battalion'. And they sure lost us, didn't they?" (5). Others see the episode as one of political ineptitude and poor strategic planning. Others felt betrayed by the politicians of the time, feeling that their deployments were based on political decisions, not military appreciations. In their more bitter moments however, some came to recognise that there was no ineptitude--seeing the deployment of Gull, Lark and Sparrow Forces as a deliberate and calculated strategy of sacrifice, to purchase a delay with human lives.

'L' Heavy Battery was established at Praed Point at Rabaul, its coastal defence guns overlooking the entrance from St George's Channel to the various harbours (Blanche Bay, Matupi Harbour, Keravia Bay and Simpson Harbour). It became known as 'Rabaul Heavy Battery' or 'Praed Point Heavy Battery', and was equipped with two 6-inch BL (breech-loading) Mark VII guns. These were not naval guns however, as described in the Department of Information handbook Pacific Victory published soon after the war. They were 6-inch coastal guns which had originally been installed at Fort Wallace at Stockton in Newcastle when the fort was built in 1913, and were removed in April 1939 when Fort Wallace had more modern 9.2-inch guns installed.

Fort Wallace had its origins in the 'Russian scare' of the late 19th century, when the threat of Russian naval attack prompted the construction of a series of fortifications along the coast of New South Wales. In Newcastle, Fort Scratchley opened in 1882 with two mounted 6-inch guns on Flagstaff Hill on the mainland, overlooking the city and the mouth of the Hunter River. Fort Wallace was established across the harbour, also with two 6-inch coastal guns, to cover the harbour and beaches in the Newcastle area. The Fort Wallace guns were dated 1901 and bore the 'VR' cipher of Queen Victoria. One had the markings "Empl Fort Wallace 2nd Mil District, Newcastle Defences No. 1420", and the other "Empl Stockton Aust No. 1420".

During World War 2, Fort Wallace (with its new 9.2-inch guns) was linked to a series of beach defences around Stockton, comprising machine-gun emplacements, barbed wire entanglements, searchlights and cement anti-tank traps. There were also two anti-aircraft batteries: 'Link' Battery (near the current golf course) and 'Wave' Battery (behind the wave trap). In addition, 'Dune' Battery (beside Corroba Oval) defended Fort Wallace with its two 3-pounder guns. Fort Scratchley was one of the few gun installations in eastern Australia that had an opportunity to fire against an adversary--at about 2.15 am on 8 June 1942, when Japanese submarine 1-21 (Captain Kanji Matsumura) shelled the Newcastle shipyards. The submarine crossed Stockton Bight and, from a position about 9 kilometres northeast of Newcastle, fired 34 shells at the Newcastle shipyards at Carrington, the BHP Works at Kooragang Island and the coal ship Iron Knight moored at the steelworks docks. The Fort Scratchley guns returned fire with 4 rounds (6).

Today, Fort Scratchley is a museum and its 9.2-inch guns are fired by volunteers on commemorative occasions such as Australia Day. Across the harbour, a plaque in Norm Bassan MBE Lions Park at Stockton (opened on 11 January 1975) recalls the early presence of Fort Wallace and the transfer of its guns to Rabaul. The plaque is overlooked by a pair of stone lions which came from Singleton Army base, which apparently had been located at an Army barracks in Malaya from the end of the war until the 1960s.

The transfer of the Fort Wallace 6-inch guns to Rabaul was approved by the Australian War Cabinet, and they were installed at Rabaul in July 1941. Then in December, just days after Japan entered the war, the Chiefs of Staff in Australia considered the prospects for New Britain and conceded that a Japanese attack would be beyond the capacity of the garrison to resist. However, it was decided that Lark Force would not be reinforced and would not be withdrawn--but there was a compulsory evacuation of all European women and children. On 1 January 1942, Colonel J J Scanlon DSO, Commander Headquarters New Guinea Area, directed that there would be no withdrawal.

Invasion

The island of New Britain, the largest and most important in the Bismarck Archipelago, was formerly a German possession. Rabaul had been the scene of the first fighting by Australian troops in the 1914-18 War, when they seized the German wireless station--on the site of which now stands a War Cemetery. In 1941, Rabaul was the capital of the Australian Mandated Territory of New Guinea, the Australian Army's 8th Military District. Lark Force's mission on New Britain was to garrison the outpost and to protect the seaplane anchorages and airfields at Vunakanau and Lakunai on Gazelle Peninsula at the northern end of the island.

Rabaul was attacked by 22 Japanese bomber aircraft on 4 January 1942--the first enemy bombs to fall on Australian territory in the war. There were further bombing and reconnaissance flights preceding the invasion of New Britain by the Japanese South Seas Force (Nankai Shitai, drawn from the 55th Division) on 20 January 1942. There was an intense bombing raid by 120 aircraft just after midnight, followed by landings by the 144th Infantry Regiment at Keravia Bay and Simpson Harbour. Some 17,000 men landed, opposed by a defending force of 76 officers, 6 nurses and 1,314 Other Ranks. The defenders were pushed out of Rabaul by daylight; many fled inland and many surrendered.

On 22 January, Praed Point Heavy Battery suffered an intense bombing raid by 45 aircraft. It was then overrun by I Battalion of the 144th Infantry Regiment, and by 23 January Rabaul was in Japanese hands. Some 400 of the defending force managed to escape to Australia. The remaining survivors were taken into captivity, and at Tol Plantation about 160 Australian soldiers were massacred by the Japanese after surrendering.

On 18 April 1942, John Cart was officially listed as Missing (with effect 25 January 1942). In May 1943, his foster-father, Lieutenant Colonel Thirkell of Land Headquarters in Melbourne wrote to District Base Records seeking clarification of John Carr's status. In response, Tasmanian Lines of Communication Records Office (Tasmania Force) formally advised Thirkell that Gunner Carr had nominated his mother as his next-of-kin on his attestation papers, and details could only be released to her. Carr's mother was noted as being resident in Singapore however, and owing to the occupation of that city by the Japanese it had not possible to advise her that her son had been posted as "missing". Accordingly, Thirkell was advised, Carr's name had not yet been released in a Press Casualty List (7).

Captivity

Those captured at Rabaul were put to forced labour in the Blanche Bay area, living in unsanitary conditions and subject to brutal treatment by their the Imperial Japanese Army guards. After John Cart was officially posted as missing, in 1943 Colonel Thirkell alluded to the hope that his foster-son might still be alive: "We have had no news regarding his fate, except from unofficial sources with effect that he got away from Rabaul and was last seen at a village in New Britain, near Rabaul, on 1 February 1942" (8). This hope was futile however. John Carr was a prisoner of the Japanese for just six months--he died at sea on 1 July 1942, locked in the hold of a cargo ship which sank off the Philippines coast, torpedoed by an American submarine. The Rabaul Prisoner-of-War Camp was handed over to the Imperial Japanese Navy in May 1942. On 22 June, the prisoners were taken aboard a Japanese cargo ship for transfer to another Prisoner-of-War Camp on Hainan Island, off the South China Coast. Their transport was the 7,267 ton SS Montevideo Maru, formerly a passenger cargo freighter, which had been chartered as a naval auxiliary. As well as members of Lark Force, the Montevideo Maru carried 133 Australian soldiers of the 1st Independent Company (captured whilst trying to escape by sea from Kavieng on the day of the invasion) and 30 Scandinavian seamen from the MV Herstein (the last vessel to enter Rabaul before the invasion). Between 1942 and 1945, over 120,000 Allied prisoners were transported in 'hellships' such as the Montevideo Maru--there were a total of 156 voyages undertaken by 134 ships, with a total of 21,039 fatalities.

On 1 July 1942, as the Montevideo Maru made passage for the Chinese coast, she was struck by two torpedoes on her starboard quarter, fired by the American submarine USS Sturgeon (SS187) operating out of Fremantle, Western Australia. Of the 1,053 prisoners on board, which included 208 civilians and missionaries, there were no survivors. The incident was recorded in the Log Book of USS Sturgeon, although the fact that she was carrying Allied prisoners was apparently not known at that time. The Japanese Navy Department reported the sinking to the Prisoner of War Information Bureau in Japan on 6 January 1943 and provided a complete nominal roll of those onboard--but this roll received no attention until it was discovered by Australian officer in the files of the Bureau in September 1945.

Gunner John Carr, aged 20, was one of the 845 military prisoners who perished. For the duration of the war however, John Carr was officially listed as 'Missing-in-Action, presumed dead'. After the Montevideo Maru nominal roll was discovered in Japan, its existence was officially reported on 6 October and telegrams notifying families were sent immediately after. On 19 October, John Carr was formally recorded as 'Became missing 1 July 1942, for official purposes presumed dead'. Tasmania Echelon and Records issued his Certificate of Death (Presumption) in January 1946.

As a final bureaucratic action, those who had been members of the Permanent Forces at the time of their deployment to Rabaul (which was at that time Australian territory) were retrospectively granted AIF status. In 1947, Colonel Thirkell was advised by 2nd Echelon Army Headquarters that John Carr had been granted AIF status with effect from 22 February 1941, with the Service number TX4362 (the 'X' denoting AIF):

Action has been taken by the Department of the Army to grant AIF status retrospectively to members of the Permanent Military Forces and Citizen Military Forces who were serving with the Garrison at Rabaul at the time of the Japanese landing and who were captured or died in the subsequent operations. (9)

Commemoration

John Carr was posthumously awarded the 1939-45 Star, Pacific Star and War Medal, 1939-45 (all with impressed naming). He was entitled to the Australian Service Medal, 1939-45 but this was not claimed. John Carr's service is honoured by the Rabaul 1942-45 Memorial on the shores of Simpson Harbour at Rabaul, which was unveiled on 16 September 1993 to commemorate all Australian forces who served in East New Britain. The memorial was buried in the 1994 volcanic eruptions, but in late 2002 was excavated and placed on top of an elevated plinth. Carr's tragic death on 1 July 1942 is commemorated by an adjacent monument, honouring those members of Lark Force who embarked on the Naval auxiliary Montevideo Maru and were lost at sea. Six decades after this tragic event, a Montevideo Maru Monument was unveiled in Ballarat Botanical Gardens on 7 February 2004, within the precinct of the Australian ex-POWs Memorial (listing over 35,000 names) which was unveiled the previous day.

More specifically, John Carr is listed by name on Panel 21 of the Australian War Memorial Commemorative Wall in Canberra, and Panel 6 of the Rabaul Memorial in the Rabaul (Bita Paka) War Cemetery in Papua-New Guinea. The Rabaul Memorial commemorates 1,224 members of the RAAF and the Australian Army (including personnel of the New Guinea and Papuan local forces and constabulary) who lost their lives in New Britain and New Ireland in January and February 1942, and in New Britain from November 1944 to August 1945, and who have no known grave. This is the largest single list of its kind from any battle area in which Australians fought in Papua New Guinea between 1942 and 1945.

At home, a memorial plaque in granite in Holy Trinity Church at Cressy, Tasmania honours the memory of those who gave their lives in the 1939-1945 War. John Carr's foster-father Robert Thirkell had a significant connection with Holy Trinity Church, his family having donated St James' Chapel in 1866. Further, Thirkell was the son of George Frederick Thirkell and Lucilla Kate--the daughter of the first Rector of Cressy's Holy Trinity Church (10), the Reverend James Marsh Norman (1828-1904) and his wife Tessie. Reverend Norman was Curate from 1851 to 1862, and Rector from 1862 to 1900, and a stained glass window of Saint Simeon in Holy Trinity Church today honours the memory of James and Tessie Norman.

Robert Thirkell served during World War 2 as a Lieutenant Colonel (Citizens' Military Forces), on full-time duty from 27 October 1941. He was attached to Movements Branch, Land Headquarters (General List, Special Duties), and from August 1942 until October 1945 he operated independently in support of the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit (ANGAU). Specifically, he was responsible for lugger operations (provision and movement) and shell currency fishing operations in the Far North Queensland and Torres Strait Area (including Townsville, Cairns, Horn Island and Thursday Island) and in New Guinea (Merauke).

Following the war, the Thirkells resided at 'Leverington' via Cressy in Tasmania (across the river from 'Darlington'). Based on his recollections from his own military service and the loss of his foster-son in Rabaul, and the almost four years of uncertainty about John Carr's fate, Robert Thirkell personally carried out major renovations to St James' Chapel, after it had sat vacant and unused for thirty years since closing in 1919. Thirkell's labours bore fruit in 1949, when the old chapel re-opened as the Church of St James in Darlington Park (Parish of Cressy).

Thirkell's mother Lucilla died in 1950, and his father George in 1951, and Robert Thirkell himself died in 1954. Major renovations to Cressy Holy Trinity Church were carried out in 1956, largely funded by bequests from Robert Thirkell and his father. In a commemoration service held on 3 June 1956, a new pulpit was dedicated in memory of George and Lucilla Thirkell, and a Hymn Board was dedicated in memory of Robert Thirkell MBE VD.

Cressy Holy Trinity Church now houses a significant family memorial--a stained glass window honouring Rector James Norman and his wife Tessie, a pulpit in memory of their daughter Lucilla and her husband George Thirkell, a Hymn Board in memory of Robert Thirkell, and a 1939-1945 War Memorial Plaque in tribute to John Carr and those other Tasmanians who gave their lives in the war. Meanwhile, John Carr's name is honoured in the War Cemetery in Rabaul, one of Kipling's 'Silent Cities'. The 'inhabitants' of this city, originally gathered in the imperial tradition within 'a hollow square' after battle to be counted and acquitted against the nominal roll, are all acknowledged by individual headstones. Those whose bodies could not be recovered, trapped within the wreck of the Montevideo Maru, are honoured by commemorative plaques and now, a specific memorial in Australia.

Collectively such memorials, our 'obligation to past sacrifices', serve three purposes. Firstly, they pay public tribute to the individuals who lost their lives. Secondly, the Cross of Sacrifice which dominates the War Cemetery is their insurance for the future, reflecting Christendom's belief in resurrection. And thirdly, they remind us today that these men and women of an earlier generation bought for us a freedom and security that they themselves were denied.

(2) London Gazette, 3 June 1919, p.7005; Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, 6 October 1919, p. 1464.

(3) Carr was not originally recorded as a Tasmanian Gunner (http://www.vision.net.au/-pwood/1939.htm, 'Tasmanian Gunner's Honour Roll'), but this was remedied in a special edition of the Artillery News (1 January 2004): "Whilst we are unable to alter the information in previously published works we can amend our Internet history and draw the attention of our gunner fraternity to the fact that we have found another of our 'lost' comrades-in-arms".

(4) Major J M Turner MBE, retd (ex-2/21st Battalion Group AIF), Mufti, 30 April 1968.

(5) Mr L J Penny (ex-2/21st Battalion Group AIF), pers comm, 25 July 1996.

(6) I-21 was later sunk by an American vessel, in February 1944 near the Gilbert Islands in the Pacific.

(7) Tasmanian Lines of Communication Records Office (Tasmania Force), letter to Lieutenant Colonel R W M Thirkell dated 21 May 1943.

(8) Lieutenant Colonel R W M Thirkell, letter to District Base Records in Melbourne dated 4 May 1943.

(9) 2nd Echelon Army Headquarters, letter to Lieutenant Colonel R W M Thirkell dated 15 August 1947.

(10) Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Cressy was built between April 1857 and March 1858 (consecrated 19 May 1858), replacing an earlier building of 1838-44. A lengthy chancel, porch with boarded gable, and shingled fleche were added in 1894. It is an attractive building in richly coloured red brick, set in an attractive churchyard.

References

Imperial War Graves Commission (1959) The Rabaul Memorial 1939-1945, Memorial Register 29, London.

Michno, G F (2001) Death on the Hellships. Prisoners at sea in the Pacific War. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis.

Reeson, M (2000) A Very Long War: The Families Who Waited. Melbourne University Press, Carlton South, Victoria.

Rosenzweig, P A (2000) Ziarah. The Gull Force Association Pilgrimages to Ambon. Thesis, Master of Arts in South East Asian Studies, Northern Territory University.

Stone, P (2000) Hostages to Freedom, The Fall of Rabaul. Oceans Enterprises, Yarram, Victoria.

Whitelaw, J (1993) 'A Newcastle Connection: Praed Point Battery, Rabaul'. Sabretache, XXXIV (January/March 1993): 23-26.

Wigmore, L (1957) Australia in the War of 1939-1945, Series 1 (Army), Volume IV: The Japanese Thrust. Australian War Memorial, Canberra.

http://www.angelfire.com/biz2/cressy/_Toc441373609 (Holy Trinity Church, Cressy).

http://www.angelfire.com/biz2/cressy/sjdp.html (Holy Trinity Church, Cressy).

http://www.archives.tas.gov.au/genealogies/wills/c+.htm (C E Carr, Will no. 21692, Tasmania Archives Office AD960/61, p.243).

http://www.archives.tas.gov.au/genealogies/wills/c+.htm (J E Carr, Will no. 28037, Tasmania Archives Office AD960/71 p.813).

http://www.archives.tas.gov.au/genealogies/wills/c+.htm (R W M Thirkell, Will no. 21692, Tasmania Archives Office AD960/61).

http://www.awm.gov.au/atwar/remembering1942/montevideo/index.htm (the Montevideo Maru).

http://www.ije.info/lostlives/exhib/rabaulmemorial/index.html ('The Kabaul Memorial 19391945').

http://www.jje.info/lostlives/people/carrje.html ('The Rabaul Memorial 1939-1945', J E Cart).

http://naa12.naa.gov.au/scripts/ItemDetail.asp?M=0&B=6382912 (National Australian Archives: NAA 6382912, Series B883, accession number 2002/05085970; TX4362, Service Record, J E Carr).

http://www.vision.net.au/~pwood/1939.htm ('Tasmanian Gunner's Honour Roll').

http://naa12.naa.gov.au/scripts/ItemDetail.asp?M=0&B=6276215 (National Australian Archives: NAA 6276215, Series B884, accession number 2002/05074483; V143239, Service Record, R W M Thirkell).

(1) Major Paul Rosenzweig, MA AIMM is a member of the Military Society of Australia, the Naval Historical Society of Australia, and the Historical Society of the Northern Territory. He has contributed to the Northern Territory Dictionary of Biography and the Australian Dictionary of Biography, and has produced (on a voluntary basis) three published books on history and biography.