Portrait of NX40190 Private Walter Charles Davis, born on 18 November 1908 in Walcha, New South ...

Portrait of NX40190 Private Walter Charles Davis, born on 18 November 1908 in Walcha, New South Wales. Davis lived in Tamworth with his aunt and uncle, Joyce and Bill, and their three children Ella, Barry and Edith. Enlisting in the Army on 4 June 1940, Davis departed Sydney on the SS Queen Mary for Singapore on 2 February 1941. When departing, Davis threw overboard a message in a bottle advising his family he was sailing to Singapore on board the Queen Mary, though this message did not reach his family until 1945. Davis served in the Malayan campaign with C Company of 2/18 Battalion, and became a prisoner of the Japanese when Singapore fell on 15 February 1942. Initially interred in Changi Prison, Davis was later sent to Japan as part of J Force. Departing Singapore on 16 May 1943, Davis arrived in Japan on 7 June and was then sent to Kobe where he worked in the Toyo Steel Mill, loading scrap metal into a blast furnace. On June 5 1945 an American bombing raid destroyed their lodgings, ‘Kobe House’, and Davis, along with 27 other Australians, was transferred to a camp at Nomachi. Davis, who had been suffering from recurring bouts of dysentery, died on 4 August 1945, just eleven days before the end of the war. He was the only Australian to die at the camp in Nomachi. His body was cremated and the ashes were to be returned to Australia, however they were intercepted by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and were interred at the Labuan War Cemetery, Malaysia.