Studio portrait of (left) TX4383 Gunner (Gnr) Gerald John McShane, Royal Australian Artillery ...

Studio portrait of (left) TX4383 Gunner (Gnr) Gerald John McShane, Royal Australian Artillery (RAA), of Hobart, Tasmania; and TX4362 Gnr John Eshott Carr, RAA, of East Melbourne, Victoria. Born a week apart, the men were 19 years old when they enlisted together in Hobart. They served together with the Heavy Battery at Rabaul as part of Lark Force, where they were taken prisoner of war (POW) following the Japanese invasion of January 1942. On 22 June 1942 they were two of an estimated 845 POWs and 209 civilians who embarked from Rabaul aboard the Japanese transport ship MV Montevideo Maru. The POWs were members of the No. 1 Independent Company, 2/22 Battalion and other units of Lark Force. Civilians included officials of the New Guinea Administration and missionaries. The ship sailed unescorted for Hainan Island, China. On 1 July 1942 all the prisoners died when the Montevideo Maru was torpedoed by a US Navy submarine, USS Sturgeon, off the coast of Luzon Island in the Philippines.