Defence Medal : Lieutenant John Fritz Sachs, Z Special Unit

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

NX9629 John Fritz Sachs was born in Chatswood, New South Wales on 4 October 1913. He attended the Kings School, where he served in the cadet corps, and went on to become a mechanic. He was later employed by the Commonwealth Oil Refineries in Sydney. Although he was a qualified pilot, Sachs enlisted in the militia in September 1938, and was discharged to serve in the Australian Imperial Force in January 1940.

Sachs was sent overseas for service in Libya and Greece with the 2/1st Australian Field Regiment. Sergeant Sachs was wounded in the shoulder during the evacuation from Greece and was captured at Kalamata on 29 April 1941. His captors at first kept him in hospital and then transferred him to a prisoner of war camp. While being transported to Corinth he jumped from the train and escaped custody. Sachs hid in the hills until he could make arrangements to escape by sea, using a stolen 16 foot sailing boat to evade capture by travelling from island to island in the Aegean Sea until he made it to the Turkish coast. Sergeant Sachs was awarded the Military Medal for his 'great fortitude and tenacity of purpose' in this escape.

Although he volunteered to return to Greece to help other escapees get out, Sachs returned to Australia where he was commissioned a lieutenant and sent to New Guinea to serve with the 2/6 Battalion. He continued to serve with distinction, volunteering for reconnaissance duties and patrols.

In May 1944 he was seconded to Z Special Unit, a special forces unit formed to operate behind Japanese lines in the Pacific and South East Asia, and was trained in the use of submarines in sabotage and intelligence gathering missions. Lieutenant Sachs served on two missions outside Australian mandated territory in 1945. Few details of these missions have been made public even today, but they were incredibly dangerous and generally involved surveillance of Japanese troops, or even sabotaging their camps and facilities.

On Sachs’s second mission he left an Australian base by submarine with Lieutenant Clifford Peaske. They left the submarine in a small boat to conduct their mission, but failed to return. As the submarine was attempting to rendezvous with them at the pickup by wireless, they heard voices at the other end which were reported variously as Japanese voices, an Australian voice, or even Sach’s voice saying 'get out'. Shortly afterwards the submarine was attacked from the air and was lucky to escape. Whatever was heard, it was clear that Sachs and his companion had been made prisoners of the Japanese. It was later determined that Sachs and Peaske had been imprisoned at Surabaya in Java. They did not survive their imprisonment. Lieutenant John Sachs was beheaded by the Japanese on or around the 5th of April, 1945. Despite efforts of his brother Tom to find his body after the war, John Sachs has no known grave.

Tom had also served in the war as a gunner with the 2/1st Field Regiment (NX163744). His medals and photographs are held in the Memorial's collection. Another brother, Peter (NX10979), served as a gunner in the 2/15th Field Regiment and was a prisoner of the Japanese held in Thailand. His medals and photographs are also held in the collection.