Defence Medal: Staff Sergeant L B Laker, 2/2 Field Ambulance

Defence Medal. Impressed around edge with recipient's details.

Born on 1 May 1905, VX6873 Staff Sergeant Lindon Bernard Laker, Australian Army Medical Corps, enlisted on 30 November 1939 at his hometown of Deniliquin, as a dental technician. He was posted to 2/2 Australian General Hospital on 29 January 1940 and embarked aboard MHT Y4 (passenger liner RMS Strathaird, converted to a troopship), with convoy US.1, transporting Australian and New Zealand troops to the Middle East. Laker saw service in Palestine and the Libyan campaigns and was regularly detached to serve with 2/2 Field Ambulance, before a bout of measles took him out of action during January and February 1941. On 26 April 1941 he embarked for Greece and was posted as missing on 3 June in Crete. In reality Laker had been taken prisoner by German forces on 1 June and spent the next 2 ½ years in various camps. Advice from Germany, recorded on his service record, states he was in Stalag VIIA for most of 1941/2; Oflag 30 from November 1942 until April 1943, when he was transferred to Stalag 383 as Prisoner no. 91981. On 3 November 1943, he was one of a number of Allied prisoners exchanged for German POWs in Egypt and convalesced in hospital in Alexandria until he embarked for Australia aboard the 2/2 Hospital ship, HMAT Wanganella. His record shows that while a prisoner at Stalag VIIA, he suffered nephritis and contracted an infection 'while working in a dental surgery' in Germany, hospitalising him for seven weeks. The remainder of Laker’s war was served in Headquarters units in Australia, including work for the War Loan Council, and later duty as a dental technician at No 1 Internment Camp. By early 1945, medical assessments of Laker’s POW experiences state they had 'a very bad psychological effect', prematurely greying his hair and resulting in a very poor physique, and recommended his discharge from the military. He was formally discharged on 22 April 1945. Laker later reenlisted in 1952, again as a staff sergeant, with the service number 3/900428 and again served as a Dental Technician Class 1 until 1960.