Six who survived

Nelson Short went on the second death march in June 1945. He recalled the camp at Ranau:

To think that a man was going to survive. You saw these men every day when you were getting treated for ulcers. The dead were lying there, naked skeletons. They were all ready to be buried. You thought to yourself, well, how could I possibly get out of a place like this? We’re in the middle of Borneo, we’re in the jungle. How possibly could we ever survive? Sydney was a long way from there.

Nelson Short did make it back to Sydney, one of six POWs—all Australians—who went through Sandakan, the death marches, and Ranau and lived. Four of them escaped towards the end at Ranau. As well as Short from the 2/18th Battalion, the others were:

• Warrant Officer 'Bill' Sticpewich, Australian Army Service Corps;
• Private Keith Botterill, 2/19th Battalion; and
• Lance Bombardier William Moxham, 2/15th Australian Field Regiment.

Two others escaped earlier from the second death march:

• Gunner Owen Campbell, 2/10th Australian Field Regiment; and
• Bombardier Richard 'Dick' Braithwaite, 2/15th Australian Field Regiment.

Escapes from the second death march—June 1945

Gunner Owen Campbell, 2/10th Field Regiment

It was accepted by many of those who left Sandakan on the second march at the end of May 1945 that they would die.

The only chance at life was escape, and Owen Campbell and four others—Private Edward Skinner, 2/10th Field Ambulance; Private Keith Costin, Australian Army Medical Corps; Corporal Ted Emmett, 2/10th Field Ambulance; and Private Sidney Webber, Australian Army Service Corps—opted for life. They decided to break from the column at the first opportunity. Out of sight of guards during an air attack, they slid down a 61-metre bank, hid in some bracken and rubbish, and lay quietly until the column had moved on. For four days they fought their way, sometimes on hands and knees, through the jungle in what they assumed was the general direction of the coast.

Kulang, the headman of Kampong [village] Muanad, who assisted Gunner Owen Campbell, 2/10th Australian Field Regiment, during Campbell's escape from the second Sandakan-Ranau death march in June 1945. [AWM 042512]

When Ted Skinner got sick, Campbell elected to stay with him while the others pressed on. For three days Campbell, despite suffering himself from beriberi and malaria, tended the sick man. One morning, on his return from food gathering, he found Ted with his throat cut. Skinner, described as a 'brave and gentle man' who always carried his Bible with him, had taken his own life so as not to hold Campbell back any further. Campbell caught up with the others, only to find Costin incapacitated with dysentery and malaria. Webber, Emmett and Campbell decided that the only way out of their predicament was to hail a passing native canoe and hope for the best. As they were attempting this, a Japanese soldier appeared from the floor of the canoe and shot Emmett and Webber dead. Three days later Costin also died and Campbell went on alone.

For a number of days Campbell was delirious. He lurched wildly about in the jungle and eventually followed a wild pig, which had tried to attack him, towards a river. Seeing a canoe, he called out 'Abang'—Malay for older brother—and the canoe turned and headed for him. The canoeists—Lap and Galunting—took Campbell to Kampong Muanad where Kulang, a local anti-Japanese guerrilla leader, was headman. The people of Muanad hid and cared for the sick POW. Eventually, Kulang took Campbell down river to where an Australian SRD (Service Reconnaissance Department) unit was camped.

Sandakan POW survivor, Owen Campbell, 2/10th Australian Field Regiment. Campbell escaped from the second Sandakan-Ranau death march in June 1945. [AWM 041489]

From here, Campbell was taken out to sea to be picked up by a seaplane and taken to an aircraft carrier, USS Pocomoke, lying off Borneo. Campbell’s privations as a POW had seen his weight go from 76 to 44 kilos when examined by the Pocomoke’s doctor. Moreover, four of those kilos were fluid being in his system as a result of the beriberi from which he was suffering.

Bombardier Richard ‘Dick’ Braithwaite—2/15th Field RegimentSydney, Australia, May 1946: Sandakan POW survivor, Richard Braithwaite, 2/10th Australian Field Regiment. Braithwaite escaped from the second Sandakan-Ranau death march in June 1945. [AWM 041488]

During the early stages of the second march Dick Braithwaite was so ill with malaria that his mates had to hold him up at roll call. For him it was a question of escape or die. Taking advantage of a gap in the column, he slipped behind a fallen tree until everyone had gone by. At nightfall he made his way back to a river they had recently crossed, hoping to follow its course to the coast. On his way he encountered a sick Japanese guard, whom he killed. Initially, Braithwaite finished up in the middle of a jungle swamp feeling he was a beaten man:

I had nowhere to go because of the gloom, and the surrounding vegetation was all heavy jungle, thorny. I just sat down on a log there and watched those reptiles, insects, crawling past, thinking, well, this is where it happens, mate, you’re finished. After about half an hour just sitting, all of a sudden I thought, no, you’re not finished. You’re not going to die in a place like this. And I became really angry. I just put my head down like a bull and charged that jungle, and, I don’t know, it just seemed to part. Maybe someone was looking after me.

Bariga, from the Ranau district, during an interview conducted by members of the Joint Australian-British Borneo Reward Mission, 1946-1947. Bariga assist in the escape of four POWs from Ranau in July 1945. [AWM 042561]

Eventually he reached the Lubok River where an elderly local man called Abing helped him. Abing took Braithwaite in his canoe down river to his village, where he was looked after and hidden. The locals wanted to help him as they thought he might be able to get Allied planes to stop strafing their villages and canoes on the hunt for Japanese! Hidden under banana leaves, Braithwaite was paddled for 20 hours down stream to Liberan Island where it was hoped he could be handed over to Allied forces operating in the area. On 15 June 1945—his twenty-eighth birthday—Dick Braithwaite was rescued from north Borneo by an American PT boat and taken to nearby Tawi Tawi Island. A week later, after he had told his story, an Australian colonel came to see him in his hospital bed to tell him they were going in to rescue his friends:

I can remember this so vividly. I just rolled on my side in the bunk, faced the wall, and cried like a baby. And said 'You'll be too late'.

Escapes from Ranau—July 1945

By July 1945 those POWs still alive at Ranau could see that it was only a matter of time before they, too, would die of sickness, malnutrition or following the sort of beatings handed out to Cleary, Crease and Bird. Keith Botterill recalled the moment that he, Nelson Short, William Moxham and Andy Anderson decided to make a run for it:

We picked the moment when we knew that death was a sure thing. There was no option left: die in the camp or die in the jungle.

The four escaped on 7 July and for some days hid in a cave on the slopes of the great mountain—Mount Kinabalu. But they had not gone far from the camp and the ever-present danger of recapture. As they were escaping from an enemy soldier who had found them in a hut, they ran into local man Bariga. They had little option but to trust him with their story. Bariga hid them and although he promised to return the following day with rice and tobacco, the prisoners knew that the Japanese offered rewards for bringing in escapees. Throughout the remainder of July Bariga hid them and brought food. Anderson died of chronic dysentery and they buried him in the jungle.

Despite Bariga’s care, the three men remained in dreadful physical shape. Botterill had beriberi, Moxham was virtually incapable of walking and Short thought that for him it was 'bye-bye, blackbird'. At this point, Bariga learnt that there was an Australian unit operating behind the lines in the area, and after the Japanese surrender on 15 August the three POWs were told to head out of the area and meet up with this unit. The danger was still not over, however, as the local Japanese had yet to acknowledge the surrender and there were still local people who might turn them in for a reward. Eventually, in late August, they began their last trek, helped by Bariga and others, through the jungle. Still very sick, they could only move slowly and on one afternoon they collapsed for a rest. As they lay there they heard men coming through the jungle towards them. Nelson Short recalled:

We said, 'Hello, what's this? Is this Japs coming to get us? They’ve taken us to the Japs or what?' But sure enough it was our blokes. We look up and there are these big six footers. Z Force. Boy oh boy. All in greens.

Sandakan POW survivor William 'Dick' Moxham, 2/15th Australian Field Regiment. Moxham escaped from Ranau in July 1945. [AWM 041486]

They had these stretchers, and they shot them down. 'Have a cup of tea. Some biscuits.' You could see the state we were in. This is it. Boy oh boy. This is really it. I cried, they all cried. It was wonderful. I'll never forget it. We all sat down and had a cup of tea together.

The final escape from Ranau was that of Sticpewich and Reither. Towards the end of July a friendly Japanese guard warned Sticpewich that all remaining POWs at Ranau would be killed. On the 28th he and Reither managed to slip out of the camp and, moving a short way up the road, they decided to hide in the jungle until the hunt for them died down. They moved on and were eventually taken in by a local Christian, Dihil bin Ambilid. Dihil refused to betray them, and cared for the two POWs despite the presence of Japanese in the area.

Three Australian POW survivors who escaped from Ranau in July-August 1945:
from left to right; Private Nelson Short, 2/18th Battalion; Warrant Officer Hector 'Bill' Sticpewich, Australian Army Service Corps, and Private Keith Botterill, 2/19th Battalion.

[AWM OG3553]

Hearing of the presence of Allied soldiers, Dihil took a message to them from Sticpewich. Back came medicines and food but unfortunately Reither had already died from dysentery and malnutrition.

These six Australians—Braithwaite, Campbell, Short, Moxham, Botterill and Sticpewich—were the only survivors of those Allied POWs who had been alive at Sandakan Camp in January 1945. But this small band was enough to bear witness to what had happened to their Australian and British comrades. They were alive to testify in court against their tormentors and to ensure that the world received eyewitness accounts of the crimes and atrocities committed at Sandakan, on the death marches and at Ranau.