Escaped POW 1942-43
DEDICATION
TO the men and women of this world, strong and courageous, who stand up to dispel tyranny, often unto imprisonment, torment and traumatic death.
In particular, John Appleby, Tommy Powell, Hanny Hilgers and Wilhelmus Bechtholt – The Java Four – executed 6th September 1943.
Lest we ever forget their names.
****
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THIS BOOK ACKNOWLEDGES that great un-sung and gallant leader of Sappers under the most trying of circumstances, Major L J ‘Robbie” Robertson, Officer Commanding the 2/6th Field Company Royal Australian Engineers from Java 1942 onwards, who was the first to follow up what happened to John Appleby.
This ‘Lost Company of Sappers’ proudly wore the Purple Diamond, the shoulder colour patch of the Australian Army Seventh Division Engineers, which became the beacon that guided the sick and dying Prisoners of War along the brutal Burma-Thailand Railway during those dreadful years of slavery, exhaustion, punishment, sickness and death. Robbie was the leader who held the beacon high, giving hope and pride to his men along that dreadful road.
source: Dawn Holden / The Australian Army Museum of Military Engineering
Robbie’s Godson Michael Hitchins from Norfolk in the UK writes:
‘ …. through his late wife Betty {my Godmother}, I know that Robbie was deeply affected on discovering post-war what John Appleby had done in Java, and the fate (execution)that had befallen him and his Resistance compatriots. She said Robbie thought about him every day; therefore, I can only imagine the gratitude and pride he would feel knowing that John Appleby was being honoured in this way (by an Australian Gallantry award and the presentation of the Dutch Resistance Memorial Cross).
I also believe that Robbie would be one hundred percent behind the proposal to have LT Appleby’s Commendation for Gallantry upgraded to the Medal for Gallantry. I can just imagine his letters to the Hon Darren Chester, typed on his portable typewriter, arguing the case with gusto….’
THIS BOOK ALSO ACKNOWLEDGES with gratitude the significant contribution of our great Dutch friends Colonel Harold Jacobs, the former Netherlands Defence Attaché to Australia and New Zealand, and Assistant Attaché Ms. Maartje Natrop, towards recognition of the gallantry of John Appleby. Met hartelijke dank!
“It is never too late to recognise the gallant actions of brave men and women who have stood up to tyranny” Colonel Harold Jacobs addressing the Australian Defence Honours Awards Appeals Tribunal, 2017.
Lieutenant John Appleby demonstrated bravery, determination, initiative, ongoing perseverance, resourcefulness, and skill in evading detection in prolonged hazardous circumstances for 19 months while engaged in resistance activity against Japanese tyranny on Java, and did not surrender.
Statements at the end of the War by Imperial Japanese Army Major Katsumura and Sergeant Major Hamada of the Kempetai secret military police at Bogor in 1945, confirmed that Appleby and his comrades shot at, then tried to kill the approaching Japanese force and themselves with grenades; they decided to go down fighting rather than be captured, but were overwhelmed.
John Appleby’s actions fit the criteria of “ACTS OF GALLANTRY IN ACTION IN HAZARDOUS CIRCUMSTANCES” for the award of the Medal for Gallantry, thus-far denied by the Australian Government.
PROLOGUE. AUSTRALIA’S MODERN-DAY RELATIONS WITH JAPAN
GEOPOLITICAL CONTEXT
‘Australia and Japan are working closely to help maintain a peaceful Indo-Pacific, as affirmed under the Australia-Japan Special Strategic Partnership.
The Australia-Japan relationship is the nation’s closest and most mature in Asia and is underpinned by the strategic, economic, political and legal interests of both countries. Both countries work closely in strategic alliance with the US, and lead in critical regional partnerships with countries such as India and the Republic of Korea.
Australia and Japan regularly participate in joint defence exercises and frequently consult on regional security issues, such as the nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches undertaken by North Korea.
The Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation (JDSC) signed in 2007 provides a foundation for wide-ranging co-operation on security issues for both countries, including law enforcement, border security, counter terrorism, disarmament and counter-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The JDSC also established the regular 2+2 talks between the respective foreign and defence ministers.’ Source: Defenceconnect.com.au
In July 2014, during a trade visit to Australia, then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gave a special address to the Australian Parliament, in English. In what ABC radio called ‘an extraordinarily frank speech’, Abe promised to never let the horrors of the past century repeat themselves.
“I can find absolutely no words to say, Abe said, I can only stay humble against the evils and horrors of history. May I most humbly speak for Japan and on behalf of the Japanese people here in sending my most sincere condolences towards the many souls who lost their lives … and for those who made it through the war, how much trauma did they feel, even years and years later from these painful memories.”
Our modern-day relationship with the Japanese people does not nor should not mean that the service and sacrifice of our gallant servicemen and servicewomen (Army nurses) grievously ill-treated and executed by the then Imperial Japanese Army during World War 2 should be erased from our conversations as an inconvenient truth in the present-day geopolitical and geostrategic landscape. We must not turn our heads away.
‘The children of the Burma-Thailand Railway’ continue to remember the soldiers, sailors, aircrew and nurses who, as Prisoners of War, endured and suffered, many unto death, to dispel tyranny in all theatres of war.
We urge all Australians to be vigilant and rise up once more, as tyranny continues in evolving and disturbing forms to rear its’ ugly head in the 21st Century, lest we lose our sovereignty and freedom. We cannot ignore the lessons of the past. We must stand up to continue to dispel tyranny.
Peter Russell Scott
Tallebudgera, Queensland
ANZAC Day 2021
With acknowledgement to the late Major Robbie Robertson and Sergeant Bert Field DCM MM
The four prisoners knelt blindfolded before their freshly-dug graves near the Chinese cemetery at Batoe Toelis, Java, in the Japanese occupied Dutch East Indies. It was 6th September 1943, and the four ‘Anti-Nippon Resistance’ comrades had been found guilty by a Japanese military Ki Kosaku ‘court’ of conspiring to harm Japanese authority, of espionage and of resisting arrest. The sentence was death by beheading.
Three of the condemned were soldiers, the escaped Australian Prisoner of War Lieutenant John Leslie Appleby, Royal Australian Engineers, 27, the colonial Dutch East Indies Army (KNIL) interpreter Lieutenant Charles Thomas Hayward ‘Tom’ Powell, also 27, who was working with the Australians, and KNIL Sergeant Wilhelmus Bechtholt, 38.
The fourth condemned person was Miss Hanna Christa ‘Hanny’ Hilgers, 25, a local Dutch woman and fiancée of Tom Powell. All were members of ‘Vereeniging Anti-Nippon’, the Dutch-led Resistance movement on Java, comprising many groups working in union against the Japanese occupation, and in anticipation of an Allied invasion to re-take the Dutch East Indies, an invasion that never came.
They had been brought by car to Batoe Toelis (now Batu Tulis), overlooking the river Ci Sadane. The Imperial Japanese Army’s Major Yoshia Katsumura, the Kempeitai secret military police chief at Bogor, had detailed Sergeant Major Sadamu Hamada to lead a party of four Non-Commissioned Officers – Okami, Nakayama, Hirashiba and Endo – to act as executioners.
At about 8am the condemned were led blindfolded to the four graves dug in a line, and made to kneel. The swordsmen stood ready and were reportedly greatly impressed by the victims’ bearing as they faced death. As customary in the Imperial Japanese Army, the sword blades were ritually washed; Hamada then gave the order and Lieutenant Appleby and Sergeant Bechtholt were beheaded first, their executioners acting simultaneously. Then it was the turn of the lovers Tom and Hanny to meet their fate, together.
Post-War war crimes tribunal records show that the executioners recalled Hanny as being “a slight girl, small for a European, about 5 feet 1 inch in height and dressed in a blouse with skirt”.
The official Japanese Army records of the ‘Anti-Nippon Conspiracy Case’ were obtained by Hanny’s sister Elizabeth (Lizzy) from the Kempeitai secret military police at Bogor at the end of the War. These Japanese records detailed that the three executed men had fled the war prisoner’s camps, had joined the Anti-Nippon conspiracy organisation led by the Dutchman named Welter, had collected Japanese Military intelligence through Hanny Hilgers, and had collected armaments in order to operate guerilla warfare.
Lizzy Hilgers poignant 1945 letter to John Appleby’s sister Mrs Beryl Pulbrook (later Nancarrow) is shown in Appendix A – the National Archives of Australia documents NAA B3856 140-11-909, and is well worth reading.
At the end of the War, Major Katsumura was interrogated by Allied forces Officers Flight Lieutenant DC Eyre RAAF, Flight Lieutenant THM McDonald RAAF, Lieutenant I. Smith British Army and James M Vero, US Army.
Katsumura confessed to having issued the order for the execution, acting, he said, on orders from his Headquarters to take ‘stringent measures’ against any local resistance to Japanese authority.
AND SO were lost four brave souls, young lives full of so much promise, their lives and careers brought to an end by their prolonged, hazardous, and gallant resistance against the tyranny of Japanese occupation, and by betrayal by collaborators including Mrs Gonda de Haan and Miss Ann Heuser – see NAA B3856.
WHO WAS JOHN APPLEBY? He was born at Randwick and lived at Mosman in Sydney in 1916 and when the War broke out in 1939, he was in the fourth year of the five-year Architecture Diploma course at Sydney Technical College.Many prominent Australian architects studied architecture at Sydney Technical College prior to there being a university course in architecture available in Sydney. These students did however attend some Architecture lectures at the Engineering Faculty of the University.
Students who completed diplomas became Associates of the Sydney Technical College, and throughout the twentieth century the ASTC designation came to be highly regarded in many professions, particularly science, architecture and engineering (Catherine Frayne, 2010).
Results for the 1938 academic year of the College, published in the Daily Telegraph of 10th January 1939, included two students in the Architecture Diploma course who would go on to join the Army and become 2/6th Sapper Officers who distinguished themselves by their gallantry.
Firstly, completing his final year was Raymond Henry Watts, who passed examinations in professional practice, specification writing, architectural design level 5, and town planning.
Ray Watts was one of the original 2/6th Field Company members who sailed for the Middle East in October 1940 and, as Captain RH Watts RAE, won the Military Cross in the bloody Syrian Campaign in 1941. He, along with Appleby, was captured POW on Java, and died on 14th July 1943 of multiple diseases on the Burma –Thai Railway, heroically shunning treatment he thought was more urgently needed by the Sappers that he led.
Secondly, completing the third year of his Architecture Diploma in 1938 was John Leslie Appleby, who passed examinations for architectural design, modeling, history of architecture, architectural drawing, building construction, building construction drawing and freehand drawing. A busy year of study but a year of acquiring skills that, unbeknown to him at the time, would stand him in good stead in such tasks as reproducing false Japanese documents on Java in 1942-43.
John Appleby’s well advanced Diploma studies were brought to an abrupt end at the end of 1939 when he too, like Ray Watts, volunteered for Army service and was commissioned as an Engineer Officer. In his attestation papers, he gave his occupation as an Architectural Draughtsman, a journeyman position with four years behind him and just one more year to go on the way to becoming a professional Architect.
Both men’s lives and careers were tragically cut short by their duty to their Country and by their gallantry. But for fate and circumstance, who knows what great architectural careers they might have gone on to.
After completing his Army Officer training, the newly minted Lieutenant Appleby volunteered immediately for overseas service and was deployed to the Middle East to join the battle-hardened group of combat engineers in the 2/6th Field Company RAE. These sappers were veterans of the North African Campaign against the Italian army of the fascist Dictator Benito Mussolini, and then the Grand Panzer Armee of the brilliant and honourable German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.
The 2/6th was then heavily involved in the bloody Syrian Campaign against the Nazi-aligned Vichy French. This was a real stoush where Australian forces bore most of the casualties, 416 killed and 1136 wounded, losses far greater than the combined British, Indian and Free French casualties.
True to their Corps motto ‘Ubique’, and just as in North Africa, the 2/6th Engineers were everywhere, attached to Infantry in the front line, building bridges and culverts to allow mobility on the battlefield, laying mines, taking up French mines on Commando-like operations, being attacked by enemy aircraft and being shelled by off-shore enemy ships. During the Syria fighting, a further ten of the 2/6th sappers were killed when called upon to carry out their secondary and parallel role as Infantry soldiers.
What was the 2/6th doing on Java? After the Allied victory in Syria, the Seventh Division was returning home by sea to defend Australia, when a number of units including the 2/6th was put ashore at Batavia (present day Jakarta) by the British General Archibald Wavell of the short-lived ADBA (American, British, Dutch and Australian) Command, to help the Netherlands East Indies forces defend aerodromes and oil supplies from the rapidly advancing Japanese Army. This was after Singapore had fallen to the Empire of Japan.
Numbering about 3,000 troops, they were under the command of Brigadier Arthur Blackburn VC, and designated ‘Blackforce”.
The Australian Prime Minister John Curtin and his War Cabinet dithered for four days over whether or not to put the Diggers ashore at Batavia and in the end the impatient Wavell took the unilateral action to disembark them, into almost certain captivity.
Wavell backloaded the troop transport Orcades with his ADBA Command Staff, and some civilians, and they sailed away into the sunset.
The Japanese forces were too strong, and within three weeks, on 9th March 1942, after some brief and fatal skirmishes in which the 2/6th Sappers lost more lives, the Australians were ordered to surrender, thus becoming Prisoners of War. As rain and gloom descended, a number of soldiers “took to the bush”, mostly to be re-captured, however John Appleby was never seen by his Unit again. His fate and gallantry as a Resistance fighter only became clear after the War.
The mystery of what happened to John Appleby was investigated and documented in the 1980s by his former Java Commanding Officer, Major Leslie ‘Robbie’ Robertson, an outstanding Officer who led his ‘Lost Company of Sappers’ for 3½ years while they were Prisoners of War on Java (with Weary Dunlop), at Robertson Barracks, Changi, and as slave labour on the construction of the brutal Burma–Thai Railway.
NOTE: Robbie constantly argued with the Imperial Japanese Army captors (who he jokingly called ‘the management’) over his men’s welfare, and took many beatings in the process.
Some of Robbie’s sappers who survived the building of the Railway were then sent by “Hell-Ships” to Japan itself in late 1944.
They were leased out by the Japanese Army then physically and mentally abused as slave labour in Japanese industries, and many including Sapper Frank Scott’s group, were used as coal miners in Baron Mitsui’s under-sea mines at Fukuoka (POW) Camp 17 near Nagasaki.
The Mitsui Company has never been held to account for its’ dreadful treatment of the Prisoners of War slaves, whose torment only ceased when the nuclear bomb was detonated over Nagasaki, less than 20 miles from Camp 17.
Lieutenant Michael ‘Mick’ Flynn was in charge of the 2/6th Field Company “Japan Party’ but on arrival in Japan he was sent to Fukuoka Camp 22, where he also took beatings for his men, being forced at one stage to kneel in the snow for 12 hours.
Back to John Appleby. In the 1980s Robbie learned that, after their capture in 1942, a small POW advance party under Lieutenant Appleby was deposited by the Japanese at the Coen Chinese School in Batavia. Appleby, together with the Anglo/Dutch KNIL Lieutenant Tom Powell, who could also speak German, developed a ploy to escape; they would masquerade as German planters, several of whom were known to be on the estates in West Java, and sail to Australia in a vessel pilfered from the local yacht club.
The Escape. With assistance from Captain Edwards from the staff of Brigadier Blackburn, Appleby and Powell carried off an audacious escape from the POW staging camp, unnoticed in the initial confusion of prisoners milling around. The resourceful Edwards convinced the Japanese the next morning that two men were not in fact missing from the tenko (counting) parade, and that he had seen a guard remove two men at the last minute at prior to boarding the train for Batavia at Tjibatoe; this spurious explanation was accepted by the Japanese who were afraid to admit any shortcomings in their counting.
Tom Powell and his mother lived at the English ‘Box Club’ in Batavia, while his fiancé, Hanny Hilgers also lived in the fashionable district of Menteng, not far from her mother and sister Elizabeth (Lizzy).
The escaping duo Appleby and Powell firstly went to the Box Club, but finding it full of Japanese troops, they headed for Hanny, and were concealed at Mrs Hilgers’ home for many months. During this time, they continued their plans to get away by boat in the guise of fishermen; they browned their skins with iodine and wore native garments. However soon realized that their plan would not work for one reason – their blue and grey eyes!
Abandoning their sea plans, they then joined the local Dutch underground resistance, secretly operating a radio receiver to gain any news to pass to Allied Forces. As an Architect, Appleby was adept at lettering and with Powell’s assistance; they produced many false documents using Japanese characters.
At the end of March 1942, the Commander of the KNIL Air Force, Major General LH van Oyen, began making radio broadcasts to the Netherlands East Indies from Melbourne, Australia. When he ended his broadcasts with the words “I hope to see you again soon,” his listeners in the Indies believed that this meant that Allied landings by the Allies in Java were imminent. Dutch language broadcasts from Radio San Francisco advised listeners to “Keep your courage up! We’ll be coming soon!” These proclamations fueled an unrealistic optimism about the future course of the war, and encouraged clandestine resistance activities that … when discovered by the Japanese, were ruthlessly crushed. (Fred L Borch, Military Trials of War Criminals in the Netherlands East Indies 1946-49, Oxford University Press, 2017). These broadcasts would have spurred Lieutenant Appleby on to carry on with his clandestine activities in preparation for an Allied landing.
The Hilgers home was raided many times by the Japanese but Appleby and Powell escaped detection for over nine months by being concealed during the raids in a Chinese cabinet. When Appleby went down with appendicitis, he was moved to a local hospital, St Carolus, run by Catholic Nuns, where he the assumed the identity of “Hansi Klein”, a “Swiss” who could speak only German.
Hanny had meanwhile obtained a secretarial post at a Japanese run office in Batavia, where some of the women workers occasionally entertained their bosses in their homes. One of these women, Gonda de Haan, came to know about Appleby and Powell and told the Japanese. When a raid was held and the Japanese tried to open the Chinese cabinet, they were side- tracked by Hanny.
The betrayal necessitated the removal of the duo from Menteng and, after contact with resistance leader Lieutenant Kriek Welter, KNIL, they were moved to Bogor. Both had false papers, Appleby disguised himself as a German planter and Powell as a Eurasian clerk. The two escaped prisoners traveled freely by train, dressed in pith helmets and local gear, and wearing copies of authentic Nippon armbands.
In Bogor they were secreted in a private mental home and cared for by Staff Nurse Roos. They continued their undercover work in a resistance unit led by a man named Backhuys, who provided them with revolvers and grenades. They maintained contact with Hanny through an undercover agent and through Hanny’s regular visits to Bogor.
In July 1943, the Kempeitai (Japanese military secret police – the equivalent of the Nazi Gestapo) became increasingly troubled at the spying activities of the Dutch Resistance, and the possibility of an Allied invasion of Java from Australia. They consequently set up special “courts” under Ki Kosaku, or Yellow Operation, where anyone suspected of espionage or obstruction of Nippon operations could be beheaded on interrogation evidence only.
Despite the capture of the resistance leader Backhuys, Appleby and Powell continued on with their activities, always in anticipation of an Allied landing. When European staff at the mental hospital were interned by the Japanese, Appleby and Powell had to hide elsewhere; Lieutenant A.F.D. ‘Bill’ Rodie of the Australian 2/2nd Pioneers (on Brigadier Blackburn’s POW staff) knew of their exploits, and even hatched a plan to bring them back to Batavia hidden in Chinese coffins rather than risk a move in the boot of a car.
Somehow, they reached the home of Mrs Hilgers and Elizabeth who were waiting for them in the dark, and who then spirited them away to the home of Mr P.M. Mulder of 11 West Street, back in Bogor. Mr Mulder took the fugitives in, hiding them in a cleverly constructed bomb shelter in his back yard which was already harbouring a Sergeant Bechtholt KNIL who was also in the resistance. From the bomb shelter the three carried on their clandestine work.
At this time things took a turn for the worse for Hanny in the Kempetai Office in Batavia where she was employed by the occupying Japanese. Some of her work colleagues knew about Appleby and Powell and of Hanny’s secret visits to them, and passed that information to their bosses.
Most of these work colleagues including Mrs Gonda De Haan and Miss Ann Heuser (see NAA file B3856) were Japanese sympathizers and reportedly more than friendly with them, especially the sinister Major Murase, the head of the local Kempeitai. 500 guilders was offered by the Japanese for every ‘British’ head ‘dead or alive’
On 8th August 1943 Hanny and Elizabeth were arrested by the Kempeitai and jailed; the elderly Mrs Hilgers would also have been taken, but was too ill to be moved. On the basis of information proffered by Hanny’s office colleagues, the Kempeitai suspicions of Hanny and the Mulder house were confirmed. The betrayal was complete.
Appleby’s re-capture. The detachment of Kempeitai at Bogor lead by Sergeant Major Hamada then went to the Mulder home, and tortured Mr Mulder to give up the location of the fugitives. He was hung by a rope, beaten by Hamada and given ‘the water cure’ (water torture). Mr Mulder’s son, fearing that his father would be murdered, gave information that traced the three fugitives to the bomb shelter in the back yard.
On 2nd October 1945, after the Japanese surrender, Flight Lieutenant McDonald RAAF, interviewed the Japanese Interpreter Tamamini who was with the Kempetai searchers at the Mulder house.
Tamamini stated that, realising that the game was up, the three fugitives emerged from the shelter and threw hand grenades at the approaching Kempeitai detachment. The grenades, however, were old and defective, and failed to detonate, and so Appleby, Powell and Bechtoldt then shot at the Japanese as they came closer. According to Tamamini, the three then tried to kill themselves and the Japanese by throwing hand grenades at their own heads but (again) the things didn’t go off and they were overpowered.
After being goaled, Hanny and the three men were brought together before a summary military Ki Kosaku ‘court’ and charged with;
- conspiring to harm the Nippon power,
- espionage, and
- resisting arrest.
Aided by the information given by Hanny’s fellow office workers, and on interrogation evidence only, the Ki Kosaku ‘court’ handed down a decree of guilty and the death sentence.
The sentence was execution by beheading.
Following the end of the War, the remains of the four Resistance comrades were recovered from Batoe Toelis and re-buried with full Military Honours in the Netherlands Field of Honour cemetery (Ereveld) at Ancol, a northern suburb of Jakarta, where they lie today in the care of the Netherlands War Graves Foundation.
Ancol is the ‘cemetery of the executed’, the resting place of more than 2,000 men and women; Christians, Muslims and Buddhists who were killed at this place because they resisted against the Japanese occupiers. Some are in mass graves.
EPILOGUE
The inscription on the Dutch Resistance Memorial Cross reads – “To dispel Tyranny”. Tyranny continues to rise up, again and again, and in the 21st Century Australians will need to adhere to this inscription once more. As stated by our Dutch friend Colonel Elmar Hermans in Canberra in July 2019, the heroic actions of the executed Lt Appleby and his three resistance friends are an example to us all.
In the words of Pericles, 495 – 429 BCE:
“Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.”
So, if you are travelling to Jakarta, take the time to visit Ereveld Ancol, and pay your respects to John Appleby and his three Resistance friends, and to all others who lie there in the ongoing care of the Netherlands War Graves Foundation.
Lest we ever forget them.
UBIQUE
POST-WAR RECOGNITION OF THE EXECUTED IN THE NETHERLANDS
The gallant secretive service and sacrifice of the four Anti-Nippon Resistance friends would not be forgotten, at least not in the Netherlands; In 1982 they were each posthumously awarded the Verzetsherdenkingscruis (VHK) – in English the Resistance Memorial Cross. The inscription on the VHK reads ‘DE TYRANNY VERDRYVEN’ (in English, to drive out or dispel tyranny).
RECOGNITION IN AUSTRALIA Until recently John Appleby has remained unrecognized in Australia and his remains lie virtually forgotten in a foreign land.
In the 1980s his former Officer Commanding, Major L.J. (Robbie) Robertson, investigated his fate and published his story in the monograph “The Gap is Bridged” (Seventh Division Engineers Association Sydney).
In 2018, following a Defence Honours and Awards Appeals Tribunal (DHAAT) Inquiry into escaped, re-captured and executed Australian Far East Prisoners of War (FEPOW), ordered by the Hon Darren Chester MP, then Minister for Defence Personnel, John Appleby was posthumously awarded the Australian Commendation for Gallantry for his resistance activity on Java during WW2, some 75 years after his death.
LT Appleby’s name was not on the list for consideration by the Inquiry, but was put forward for recognition by 2/6th Field Company researcher Peter Scott, a son of the late DX561 Sapper LF (Frank) Scott, who was a fellow Prisoner of War and combat engineer with Appleby on Java in the 2/6 Field Company RAE.
Peter Scott is an Australian Army combat engineer veteran of the Vietnam War.
The nomination was strongly supported by many people including families of the post-WW2 Seventh Division Engineers Association members, and by Colonel John Hopman RAE, retired Representative Colonel Commandant of the Special Operations Engineer Regiment and an RAE Vietnam Combat Engineer Officer.
Significant and strong support for Australian medallic recognition for John Appleby also came from Colonel Harold Jacobs, the then Netherlands Defence Attaché for Australia and New Zealand. Colonel Jacobs was able to REVEAL AND CONFIRM before the Defence Honours and Awards Appeals Tribunal hearing, that LIEUTENANT APPLEBY’S NAME WAS WELL KNOWN IN THE NETHERLANDS, AND THAT THE NETHERLANDS GOVERNMENT HAD, IN 1982, POSTHUMOUSLY AWARDED HIM THE PRESTIGIOUS DUTCH RESISTANCE MEMORIAL CROSS.
Colonel Jacobs strongly argued, especially after being challenged at the time by a civilian member of the Tribunal (the retired politician Peter Lindsay) who said that the British stopped medallic recognition in 1953 and asked why should Australia should be any different; Colonel Jacobs was forceful in his submission that it is never too late to recognise the service and sacrifice of brave men and women who have given their lives to drive out tyranny so that we may enjoy the freedom that we have to this day.
You would wonder why people are appointed to the Tribunal who expound obvious antipathy to supporting recognition of gallant Australian service men and service women who suffer violent traumatic death for their Country.
Despite Lt Appleby’s gallant actions clearly meeting the criteria for the higher award of the Medal for Gallantry (see Annexure A), it is evident that a ‘one size fits all’ award of the Commendation for Gallantry was applied to all those executed Far East Prisoners of War whose gallantry was investigated.
There is no doubt that the DHAAT recommendation was a direct result of the Defence Review Board’s clear policy, directed to the Tribunal during the Inquiry, and reported in Chapter 4 para. 17, DHAAT Report on the FEPOW Inquiry of 17 August 2017 that it (the Board) had considered “a couple of individuals for higher recognition” but in the interests of consistency of approach, no recommendation was made for any higher honours”.
EXTRACT FROM ARMY NEWS 25th July 2019
Resistance fighter honoured
Cpl Veronica O’Hara
AN ENGINEER officer executed by the Japanese in WWII was posthumously presented the Resistance Memorial Cross by the Netherlands Defence Attaché in Canberra on July 5. It was awarded to Australian Army Officer, Lieutenant John Leslie Appleby, an escaped POW and member of the Dutch Resistance on Java where he was betrayed, recaptured then executed in 1943. Head of Corps RAE Brig John Carey said Lt Appleby was a remarkable man – architect, soldier, resistance fighter and spy. “What’s so unique about him is that after he escaped, he continued to support the Allied operation despite the threat of recapture and subsequent execution,” Brig Carey said. Lt Appleby was born in Sydney in 1916 and joined the Citizen Military Forces as an engineer officer at the outbreak of war. He served in the Middle East with 2/6 Field Company, Royal Australian Engineers. After the Allied victory in Syria, Lt Appleby was returning home when a number of units, including the 2/6, went ashore at Batavia (now Jakarta) to help the Netherlands East Indies forces defend aerodromes and oil supplies from the advancing Japanese Army.
Japanese forces were too strong and within weeks, the Australian forces were ordered to surrender. Many of the soldiers “took to the bush”, but most were recaptured. However, Lt Appleby was never seen again and his fate only known when his former commanding officer, Maj Leslie Robertson, investigated in the 1980s.
The Resistance Memorial Cross was posthumously awarded to Lt Appleby by the Netherlands in the 1980s but never claimed. Brig Carey accepted the award on behalf of Lt Appleby from Netherlands’ Defence Attaché Lt-Col Elmar Hermans. The Resistance Memorial Cross will be placed in a future display on 2/6 Fd Coy in the Museum of Military Engineering at Holsworthy, Sydney.
Lt Appleby was also awarded the Australian Commendation for Gallantry in 2018. Lt-Col Hermans said the heroic actions of Lt Appleby, and his three resistance friends who were executed together, was an example to all of us.
“My predecessor, Col. Harold Jacobs, was able to make a solid case in front of the Australian Defence Honours and Awards Appeals Tribunal and stated ‘it is never too late to recognise the service and sacrifice of brave men and women’,” Lt-Col Hermans said. After the war, Lt Appleby’s remains were recovered and re-buried with full military honours in the Netherlands Field of Honour cemetery at Ancol in Jakarta.
ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE JOHN L. APPLEBY RESISTANCE MEMORIAL CROSS CITATION
Arranged by courtesy of Warrant Officer Class 1 Arend ‘Dutchy’ de Weger (Rtd), Royal Australian Engineers, 2019, through contacts in The Netherlands.
PRESENTATION OF THE INSIGNIA OF THE AUSTRALIAN COMMENDATION FOR GALLANTRY Of THE LATE LIEUTENANT JOHN LESLIE APPLEBY 2/6TH FIELD COMPANY ROYAL AUSTRALIAN ENGINEERS, AUSTRALIAN ARMY
Government House Sydney, 25th November 2020
L to R; Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beasley AC QC, Governor of New South Wales, Brigadier Matt Galton DSC, Head of Corps Royal Australian Engineers, Major David Spinks, Executive Officer School of Military Engineering, Ms Leah Herdman, Curator Australian Army Museum of Military Engineering.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter Russell Scott was born in Tamworth NSW in 1947 and was educated at Tamworth High School to the Leaving Certificate, then the Sydney Technical College as a Land and Engineering Survey Draftsman.
From 1968 to 1970 he served in the Australian Regular Army (National Service Supplement) and saw 12 months active service in South Vietnam as a Field or Combat Engineer with the 1st Field Squadron RAE, attached on operations to the 5th, 7th and 8th Battalions Royal Australian Regiment (Infantry), and with the 1st Armoured Regiment and 3rd Cavalry Regiment Royal Australian Armoured Corps.
On completion of his military service obligation, he returned to his career in the NSW Department of Lands, continuing his education at Mitchell College of Advanced Education in Town Planning, and the University of New England in Natural Resources Management.
Peter is a foundation member of the Vietnam Tunnel Rats Association and an Affiliate Member of the Special Operations Engineer Regiment Association.
His late father, Sapper Frank Scott was a proud member of the 2/6th Field Company RAE captured Prisoner of War on Java with John Appleby. Peter remains a staunch advocate for recognition of John Appleby’s gallantry under ‘prolonged hazardous circumstances’ on Java at the undeniably appropriate level of Medal for Gallantry, rather than the one-size-fits-all Commendation for Gallantry recommended by the Directorate of Honours and Awards ‘in the interests of consistency’.
© COPYRIGHT PETER RUSSELL SCOTT 2021. The Author asserts his right to the Intellectual Property contained in this publication so much as is his original work and so much as is his research and arrangement with other material. Those parts of this publication shall not be reproduced without the express written consent of the Author who may be contacted at
“Peter Scott” holdfast6970@gmail.com
FOLLOWING PAGES: NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF AUSTRALIA DOCUMENTS NAA B3856 140-11-909 containing details of Australian Defence Force interrogation of Dutch civilians and Japanese Kempetai post Imperial Japanese Army surrender on Java 1945, letter from Miss Lizzy Hilgers to Mrs Beryl Pulbrook (John Appleby’s sister), and newspaper article “Australians executed by Java Japs” December 1945.
Contact MHHV Friend about this article.
