Portrait: Private David Charles Cripps, 2/4th Machine Gun Battalion

Studio portrait of WX15783 Private David Charles Cripps, 2/4 Machine Gun Battalion. This unit was largely comprised of men from Western Australia, and had been established to provide direct fire support to infantry brigades of the 8th Division. After taking the journey to Darwin, where his battalion was undertaking garrison duties following the Japanese landings in Malaya, on the 30th of December 1941 Private Cripps embarked for overseas service. Following a Japanese attack on Rabaul, the convoy carrying Cripps and his battalion turned and sailed to Sydney, and then Fremantle, finally reaching Singapore at the end of January 1942. Here it was hastily deployed in support of the 22nd and 27th Brigades in the north-west of Singapore island. Heavily engaged and outnumbered around the landing beaches, over the course of the week it was pushed back towards the city. After days of air raids, the Japanese attacked Singapore on the 8th of February, crossing the Johore Strait and attacking along the 22nd Brigade’s front and the 27th Brigade near the Causeway. The machine-gunners suffered heavily. In early February 137 men were listed as killed or missing, 106 wounded, and 24 described as having “shell shock”. These casualties constituted almost one-third of the battalion.
Despite this, the battalion kept fighting, sending out patrols until receiving the order to surrender. Despite orders to surrender weapons and ammunition, the men destroyed the majority of their equipment before being marched to Changi gaol. Cripps was one of the 3,000 men who was part of A Force, the first Australian group to leave Singapore for Burma. After sailing in the Celebes Maru on the 15th of May, a third of A Force disembarked at Victoria Point in the far south of Burma. Another third were sent to Mergui and the remainder to Tavoy, all tasked with building air fields. In September 1942 the Australian prisoners were consolidated at Thanbyuzayat to begin work on the Burmese end of the Burma–Thailand Railway. As work went on, conditions for the prisoners became worse. Without adequate food and medical supplies many were falling ill by late 1942. Their condition worsened in 1943 as cholera, smallpox, dysentery and malaria broke out and malnutrition became endemic. Relentless labour on inadequate rations in a deadly tropical environment caused huge losses. By the time the railway was completed in October 1943, at least 2,815 Australians, over 11,000 other Allied prisoners, and perhaps 75,000 other forced labourers were dead. After the railway was finally completed in October 1943, Cripps and the other surviving prisoners were gradually returned to Singapore. On the 6th of September, David Cripps was among the 1,318 Australian and British prisoners of war assembled on the hellship Rakuyo Maru which was part of a convoy bound for Japan. On the morning of the 12th of September the convoy was attacked by American submarines in the South China Sea. Rakuyo Maru was sunk by USS Sealion II, Kachidoki Maru, carrying British prisoners of war, was hit by USS Pampanito. Prisoners able to evacuate the ships spent the following days in life rafts or clinging to wreckage in open water. About 150 Australian and British survivors were rescued by American submarines. A further 500 were picked up by Japanese destroyers and continued the journey to Japan. David Cripps was one of 1,559 Australian and British prisoners of war killed in the incident.
He was 22 years old. With no grave but the sea, today his name appears on the Labuan Memorial, which commemorates over 2,000 men who died while prisoners of war and who have no known grave.