Veteran recalls mateships forged in horrors of war

WORLD War II veteran Lloyd Harding is one of the last survivors of a Tasmanian war story that he hopes will never be forgotten.

Lloyd Harding, 96, of Montrose, is one of only two remaining survivors of the 2/40th Battalion, which was almost entirely Tasmanian. Picture: SAM ROSEWARNE

WORLD  War II veteran Lloyd Harding is one of the last survivors of a Tasmanian war story that he hopes will never be forgotten.

Today marks his 96th birthday, and while most of his old comrades are no longer around to recall their shared suffering, Mr Harding hopes Tasmania will keep them alive in memory.

“There’s a lot we would sooner forget than remember, but the 2/40th Battalion must never die,” he said.

The ill-fated 2/40th Battalion was raised in Tasmania and made up almost entirely of Tasmanian men. Most of them were captured by the Japanese after fighting in Timor, where they became prisoners of war for 3½ years.

The POWS endured unspeakable horror, with the bulk forced to work on the notorious Burma railway — where disease, exhaustion and malnutrition claimed thousands of lives.

Mr Harding lost many mates during the war and in the years since. Now, only Mr Harding and one other — Bill Russell — remain.

Today, Mr Harding will be surrounded by family for his birthday, but the former soldier will miss those mateships forged in war.

“I am terribly lucky to be one of those still alive,” he said.

“But it’s also hard at times, I miss them. I miss the comradeship, the mateship and the humour.”

Lloyd Harding, right, with Don McNeill in Katherine in 1941.

At 96 years, Mr Harding stands tall and broad. He has the same firm gaze he had as a fresh army recruit, but those eyes have seen so much more than his 19-year-old self could ever have imagined.

Raised in Campbell Town, Mr Harding first worked at his father’s nursery and market garden — an occupation that undermined his ambitions when he tried to enlist in the army in 1940.

“When I applied to join, I put down my occupation as market gardener. But I immediately got word back that my job was an ‘essential service’ so they wouldn’t accept me,” he recalled.

“That upset me, so I applied again and the second time I said I was a florist.”

He was accepted in June 1940 and trained for the remainder of the year at Brighton Army Camp, where the 900-strong 2/40th Battalion was formed.

“I was with the battalion from the day it was born,” said Mr Harding, who became the driver for a commanding officer.

The Tasmanian soldiers went to Victoria, where they were assigned to the 23rd Brigade, which was part of the 8th Division.

From there they went to Darwin and were rushed to Timor in December 1941 after Japan made simultaneous attacks throughout the Asia-Pacific.

A photo of Lloyd taken in 1940.

The 2/40th Battalion formed the bulk of “Sparrow Force”, which was charged with the task of defending airfields in the event of a Japanese attack. But when the Japanese did attack, the ill-equipped battalion was overwhelmed.

Japan’s assault on Timor included 800 paratroopers and 23,000 soldiers from the Japanese land army, leaving the Australians greatly outnumbered.

“It was 20 men to one,” Mr Harding said.

The result was 3½ days of heavy fighting, with the battalion facing constant attack by air and ground.

The battalion was down on food, water and ammunition.

With casualties mounting and the Japanese Army closing in, they stood little chance.

“We had no sleep and hadn’t eaten in three days,” Mr Harding said. It was an unconditional surrender to the Japanese, followed by years spent as prisoners of war.

“We had to surrender arms, leaving a big stack of bayonets and rifles, then we were marched away.”

Mr Harding was eventually sent to Burma where he was forced into labour on the Thai-Burma railway.

More than 22,000 Australians were captured by the Japanese in South-East Asia in 1942, with more than a third dying as POWs.

The captives sent to work on the Thai-Burma railway faced extreme heat, starv­ation and disease as they were forced to cut a 420km-long path through rugged jungle.

At least 2815 Australians died working on the line by the time it was completed in October 1943.

“It was something shocking,” said Mr Harding.

The 2/40th Battalion insignia. Picture: SAM ROSEWARNE

He said there was nothing to protect them from the jungle, heat and heavy rain.

“You had no clothes, just a piece of bag or rag tucked around your waist.

“The wet season lasted two to three months but we continued to work in the rain.”

With nothing but courage and hand tools, they cut through jungle and across rivers.

“All you had was a bucket and a bag to carry dirt away, old axes and saws to cut trees down.”

The captive labour force started work at 7am and finished about 9pm, with very little to eat.

Mr Harding said the staple was old rice that had been swept up from the floor of the Japanese navy fleet.

“The rice had weevils in it,” he said. “But we learnt to eat the weevils because you couldn’t spit them out all the time.”

Many captives became sick, malnourished and exhausted from overwork.

Mr Harding had been suffering from malaria when he fell unconscious, and awoke four days later in camp.

He was sent back to work after a week’s recuperation and spent a total of 17 months in Burma before being sent to work in other camps in Thailand and Singapore.

He was working on a wharf in Singapore, waiting for what he believed would be his eventual execution, when World War II finally came to an end.

“We just couldn’t believe it. We just went dumb, we couldn’t believe the war was over. We thought it was a fairytale.”

Though Mr Harding survived the war, he was a sack of sickness and bones by its end. He returned to Tasmania weighing barely 30kg, almost half his original weight.

Looking back is hard, but Mr Harding sees it as a duty.

“I still see things and talk about things I would rather not repeat,” he said.

But he said Tasmania should be proud of its battalion. “It was a Tasmanian battalion and it was a wonderful battalion,” he said.

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