A word document regarding Sandakan

1. Colonel Mark Hainge
Military and Air Advisor to the British High Commission
UK MA reflection on the Australian and British suffering in the Sandakan
prisoner of war camp in Japanese-occupied Borneo during World War II,
Sandakan Remembrance Day, Fri 27, May 2011, Australian War
Memorial.
To us in the UK, Sandakan isn’t a forgotten story – it’s just that no one came
back to tell it.
Nearly two and a half thousand Australian and British prisoners of war were
imprisoned by the Japanese at Sandakan. Of these, only six Australians
survived the infamous Sandakan Death Marches, which became a byword for
brutal cruelty.
Servicemen from our two nations suffered unimaginably during the course of
those marches. Overloaded with rice and ammunition for their captors and
forced to walk, often barefoot, the two hundred and sixty kilometres from
Sandakan to Ranau, those who fell behind on the marches were beheaded or
shot – or worse. Systematic beatings and starvation took their inevitable toll
on the remainder. Yet, despite these appalling conditions, six men escaped.
One of those who survived the Death March said afterwards, “…if the blokes
just couldn’t go on we shook hands with them and said, you know, hope
everything’s all right. But they knew what was going to happen. There was
nothing you could do.”
…There was nothing you could do…
But even knowing that the situation they found themselves in was hopeless,
these men - almost incredibly - managed to keep a faint hope alive in their
hearts. And that tenuous, fragile yet unutterably tough tendril of hope was
enough to secure their spirits so that when a fleeting chance to escape
presented itself to a lucky few, they were able to take it.
And so, as we commemorate today all those of our countrymen, Australian
and British alike, who suffered and died alongside each other on the
Sandakan Death Marches, let us also commemorate that triumph of the spirit,
of the indomitable will to survive that does not give up, that never quits – even
though there is nothing you can do. Sometimes all that is left to you is to
refuse to give up. And sometimes, that is enough.