Colonel Mark HaingeMilitary 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.