“At least you got three feeds and a bed.”There’s the Japanese guard on the Thai-Burma Death Railway, frustrated at his POW labourers’ sawing technique, who jumps on a massive log to show them how it’s done — and in a moment worthy of Looney Tunes, forgets he’s on the wrong end and saws his own perch off, tumbling down the rocky hillside.“He must have fallen about 20 to 30 feet,” Wal chuckles. “He was stark naked except for a hat — when he realised, he grabbed his hat off and held it in front of his privates. News Corp Australia August 1, 2020 7:04pm. Lois Anne Martin knitted a red, white and blue vest especially for VP Day and never wore it again. “All we had was the saw from the cookhouse,” Wal relates with grim relish. Guy Barnett, Minister for Veterans’ Affairs. 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. 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. 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. Anzac360: The Fall of Singapore. 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.

VP DAY 2020 – 75TH ANNIVERSARY WORLD WAR TWO Updated: Jun 7 On 15 August 2020, Australia will commemorate the 75th … (source: Yahoo!) Picture: Tim Hunter.Rice, as he took every opportunity to keep physically strong in an existence marked by starvation, squalor, disease and violent, unpredictable captors. Amid the vile jungle conditions, the young amputee looks at the doctor’s cigar and quips, “That’s not very hygienic.”Back where it all began … Wal Williams (hand on hips) and fellow POWs are reunited with their former commanding officer at Singapore after the end of the war.Little did he know. CAPTION: Members of Australia’s Federation Guard practise drill for the upcoming Victory in the Pacific Day ceremony. He thinks they will appreciate it.“Absolutely ask them,” he says. © Copyright 2019 - ForeignAffairs.co.nz - Multimedia Investments Ltd, all rights reserved Mr Lees said it is "a window" into the Anzac story and believes Prime Minister Scott Morrison would love to see it used in schools.

I felt as though we had failed.”The question of who was really to blame is addressed in the Anzac360 film. The free Anzac360 app will take you to the WWI fields of France and Belgium; to the WWII experiences of Hellfire Pass, the Sandakan Death March and now to Singapore.In the words of Darren Chester, Minister for the Department of Veteran’s Affairs which produces these videos with News Corp: “More than one million Australians served during the Second World War and Wal William’s inspirational story demonstrates the debt of gratitude we owe them. Incredible tales of brave Victorians who fought in the war and protected the home front, as well as the arrival of US troops who changed Australia forever. I couldn’t help but laugh, even in adverse conditions.”It’s an attitude that Wal reckons serves him to this day, at his retirement home in Narrabeen, Sydney — and that the world could do well to adopt in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.Life ahead of him … a young Wal Williams (centre in cap) with mates. Wal Williams went through layers of hell in World War Two. The 75 th anniversary of Victory in the Pacific Day and the end of World War 2 was marked today with a commemorative service and wreath laying ceremony at 11am at Tasmania’s Government House.. His skills as a schoolboy swimming champ would later save his life during the war.But of course this story is as tragic as it is comic. 15 August 2020. During a night raid, Wal’s prison camp went up in a bombing firestorm, with prisoners and guards fleeing together to a swamp and seeing dawn break on ruined desolation as far as the eye could see.“We would have burned. The VP Day 75th anniversary magazine.