Gull Force Australian POWs on Ambon and Hainan, 1941-45

The members of the Australian battalion of Gull Force endured some of the harshest prisoner of war conditions of any Australian during the Second World War. In February 1942, on the remote island of Ambon in Indonesia, 1150 Australian soldiers were preparing for invasion by Japanese forces. Outnumbered and ill-equipped, theirs was an impossible mission. After their defeat, over 200 Australians were massacred. The survivors faced three-and-a-half years of harsh work, beatings, disease and starvation on Ambon and the Chinese island of Hainan. Along with the brutal conditions came a crisis of leadership, with Australian officers accused of devising their own systems of punishment. The prisoners of Ambon were tormented by two catastrophic raids by ‘ friendly’ Allied air forces. Over 800 men were captured; only 302 returned home. Acclaimed historian Joan Beaumont tells the full story of this tragedy and its aftermath. An account of suffering, death, endurance and memory, the story of Gull Force is one that must not be forgotten.

Joan Beaumont is Professor Emerita at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University. She is one of Australia’ s pre-eminent scholars on Australian prisoners of war and is the author of Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War, the critically acclaimed account of Australia’ s experience of the First World War, which was joint winner of the Prime Minister’ s Literary Award for Australian History and winner of the NSW Premier’ s Prize for Australian History. She is also the author of Australia’ s Great Depression: How a Nation Shattered by the Great War Survived the Worst

1. An attempt to understand (4549) 2. Waiting to fight, 1940-41 (8540) 3. Crisis of command, 1941-42 (8392) 4. Battle and defeat, February 1942 (7062) 5. Escape from Ambon, 1942 (6364) 6. First months, to October 1942 (6705) 7. Surviving, 1943-44 (12,275) 8. Catastrophe, 1944-45 (10,274) 9. Crisis on Hainan, 1942-43 (7936) 10. Violence, ambush and division, 1944 (6705) 11. Surviving to the end, 1945 (8264) 12. Justice and burials (6779) 13. Living with the memory (9223) 14. Gull Force in national memory (1768) Notes (16,148) Appendix I: Gull Force statistics (124 words – table) Appendix II: Oral sources (398 – table) Appendix III: Inquiry investigating the Australian administration of Tan Tui camp (908) Appendix IV: The profile of Gull Force (565 – tables) Appendix V: Personnel in underground drug organisation on Hainan Island (129 words) Appendix VI: Lloyd Swanton’ s Ambon (547)