Five members of the B Company mortar detachment, 2/21st Battalion (Gull Force), and three ...

Five members of the B Company mortar detachment, 2/21st Battalion (Gull Force), and three Ambonese youths, shortly before the soldiers were captured after the Japanese attack on Ambon. This photograph was taken at the mortar position above the village of Eri, three weeks before the Japanese attack. Standing, left to right: VX30281 Corporal Austin (Ossie) Carr, VX26780 Private (Pte) John Robertson, VX26745 Pte Alfred John (Alf) Mason, an Ambonese youth named Simon and VX31221 Pte George Trezise. Front row, left to right: two Ambonese youths, one named Janis Lopulalan and VX27427 Pte Robert Ray Williams. Cpl Carr and Pte Trezise survived three and a half years as POWs at the Japanese POW Camp on Hainan Island and of the others, only Pte Gilbert survived imprisonment on Ambon Island. This photograph was taken on Pte Gilbert's Kodak Baby Brownie camera by Pte Trezise. Pte Gilbert destroyed the camera when the Japanese attacked at the end of January 1942 but managed to conceal the undeveloped film until he was released in 1945, when he took the film to Kodak in Melbourne for processing.