COWRA BREAKOUT – THE REAL CASUALTY
1104 Japanese POW armed with knives, baseball bats, club studded with nails and hooks and garrotting wires raided the garrison wire. 231 were killed 108 wounded, 339 made it out into the country side where a further 25 died. All POW’s were recaptured or accounted for after 9 days 5 Australians died as a result of the breakout:-
- a) Hardy and Jones on the Vickers gun 2
- b) Sgt Thomas Roy Hancock died as a result friendly fire (outside the camp)
- c) Private Charles Henry Shepard, stabbed to death at the guard’s living quarters.
- d) Lieutenant Henry Doncaster, beaten to death searching for prisoners.
When the POW’s escaped the government and people of Australia were just getting brief reports on how the Japanese treated our POW so the government decided that any search party for the escaped Japanese POW were not to be armed with firearms in case the soldiers retaliated against their POW.
Some search parties took bayonets when they searched, others armed with nothing.
Doncaster was in charge of a group of very young soldiers searching for the POW and when they came upon a group of POW hiding in rocks the young soldiers ran off leaving Doncaster to fight the group by himself. He was last seen picking up a rock off the ground and using his fists and rocks on the POWs that were attacking him. He was overpowered eventually and killed.
Unless you were on duty the firearms in the camp were under lock and key.
On the night of the breakout Shepard was not armed and had just been woken from his sleep. He would have heard the commotion and would have seen the guards, Hardy and Jones being overpowered but fought off the POW at the entrance to his guard house. He was stabbed a number of times and killed by a POW that had escaped over the wire. Shepard was a labourer when he joined. He was not from a well to do family.
The POW camp had three rings of barbed wire. Anywhere within that barbed wire zone was by military standards (and Geneva Convention) a “war Zone”. The guard houses and administration officers were outside the barbed wire enclosure so were not considered to be within the war zone.
When the enquiry was convened it justified a war pension to the family of Hardy and Jones as they classed as being killed within in a “war Zone”. Shepard on the other hand was killed outside the “war Zone” and his family were denied any military pension.
Linda Irene Shepard, his wife, eventually had to sell her possessions (and it is believed adopted her children out) to survive. It is believed she died a homeless pauper.
Makes you proud to serve your country, knowing the Canberra ‘Desk-bound suits’ have your back.
Nothing has changed.
Alistair Pope, psc, CM
