The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (NX92651) Private Ronald Edward Eagleton, Z Special Unit, Second World War.

The Last Post Ceremony is presented in the Commemorative area of the Australian War Memorial each day. The ceremony commemorates more than 102,000 Australians who have given their lives in war and other operations and whose names are recorded on the Roll of Honour. At each ceremony the story behind one of the names on the Roll of Honour is told. Hosted by , the story for this day was on (NX92651) Private Ronald Edward Eagleton, Z Special Unit, Second World War.

NX92651 Private Ronald Edward Eagleton, Z Special Unit
Presumed dead 13 April 1945

Today we remember and pay tribute to Private Ronald Edward Eagleton.

Ronald Eagleton, known to friends and family as “Ronnie”, was born in the Sydney suburb of Glebe on 29 June 1924, the younger of two children of Edward and Gladys Eagleton.

He attended Hurstville South Primary School, and then Hurstville Technical College. A keen cyclist, carpenter craftsman, and small-bore target rifle shooter, Ronald was intelligent and academically inclined, and wanted to attend university. As this was beyond the means of his family, he instead worked briefly as a clerk in a wool handling store, and paraded part-time with the 45th Battalion, which was then a volunteer Militia force.

Eagleton was determined to join the army as soon as he could. This he did in March 1942, claiming to be 22 years old when he was actually 17. After training at Holsworthy and Ingleburn, he was allotted to reinforcements to the 2/16th Battalion, which was in action on the Kokoda Trail.
When Private Eagleton landed in Port Moresby in early December 1942, the 2/16th Battalion had been forced to fight a series of desperate actions back along the Trail. It suffered particularly heavily at Mission Ridge in early September, when it had to fight its way out of a Japanese encirclement. It joined operations at Gona in November with only two companies, and left on 7 January 1943, just 56 men strong.

The 2/16th returned to Australian in mid-January, during which time Eagleton had treatment for a fractured bone in his foot. He was back in Papua by early August. The 2/16th spent a month training near Port Moresby before moving to New Guinea to play a minor role in the Lae operations in mid-September. It then moved by air to the Ramu Valley and advanced to Dumpu. In the following months the battalion was involved in patrol actions in the upper reaches of the Ramu Valley and into the Finisterre Range. Its greatest achievement was the capture of Shaggy Ridge in late December.

During a period of illness, which was eventually diagnosed as malarial fever, on 18 November 1943 Eagleton was transferred to Z Special Unit and returned to Australia for training in Queensland and Western Australia.
Z Special Unit was a joint Allied special forces unit formed to operate behind Japanese lines in south-east Asia. Specialising in reconnaissance and sabotage, members of the unit were chiefly Australian, but included British, Dutch, New Zealand, Timorese and Indonesian members. While the covert operations of Z Special Unit would take place mostly in Borneo, Eagleton and seven other commandos were tasked with investigating the Japanese defences on Muschu Island in Papua New Guinea. This they would achieve by capturing a Japanese officer for interrogation and discovering the location of two naval guns on the island that covered the approaches to Wewak Harbour.

On the night of 11 April 1945, the group was dropped off near Muschu Island with four military folboats. The four collapsible canoes were pushed south by currents and came ashore amid a surf break, swamped and having lost some equipment. At daybreak they began reconnaissance of the island and encountered Japanese who had found their equipment that had washed ashore. The island became a hunting ground.

The team tried to escape the island on a makeshift raft that soon came apart. They then left the island on logs hoping to be seen the next day by reconnaissance planes. The bodies of officers were washed up on nearby Kairiru Island and were buried by locals. Eagleton and another commando drifted onto Kairiru Island at different locations. There they hid until they were discovered and captured by the Japanese on 20 April. They were beaten, executed, and their bodies hidden. Without knowledge of their fate, it was assumed that the pair had drowned.

It wasn’t until almost 70 years later that a lengthy investigation by the Army’s Unrecovered War Casualties unit discovered new evidence. On 1 May 2013 the bodies of Lance Corporal Spencer Walklate and Private Ronald Eagleton were located.

The two were buried with military honours in front of their families and a guard of Special Forces soldiers at Port Moresby War Cemetery. The sole survivor of the operation, former Sapper Edgar Dennis, attended, and soldiers from 1st Commando Regiment, 2nd Commando Regiment, and the Special Air Service Regiment – units that descended from Z Special Unit – formed the funeral party.

Ronald Eagleton’s name is listed on the Roll of Honour on my left, among almost 40,000 Australians who died while serving in the Second World War.

This is but one of the many stories of service and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Private Ronald Edward Eagleton, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Duncan Beard
Editor, Military History Section