The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (NX52435) Lance Sergeant Norman Joseph Rafferty, 2/12 Field Company, Second World War.

The Last Post Ceremony is presented in the Commemorative area of the Australian War Memorial each day. The ceremony commemorates more than 102,000 Australians who have given their lives in war and other operations and whose names are recorded on the Roll of Honour. At each ceremony the story behind one of the names on the Roll of Honour is told. Hosted by Craig Berelle, the story for this day was on (NX52435) Lance Sergeant Norman Joseph Rafferty, 2/12 Field Company, Second World War.

NX52435 Lance Sergeant Norman Joseph Rafferty, 2/12 Field Company
Illness 14 October 1942

Today we remember and pay tribute to Lance Sergeant Norman Joseph Rafferty.

Norman Rafferty was born on 18 April 1919 in Springwood, a town in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. The son of John and Lilian Rafferty, he attended St Stanislaus College in Bathurst before going on to work as a sales manager.

Rafferty was also a member of the Militia, parading part-time as a corporal in the 52nd Anti-Aircraft Company of the Royal Australian Engineers.

With the start of the Second World War, Rafferty enlisted in the Second Australian Imperial Force on 2 July 1940.
Given his previous experience in the Militia, he was soon posted to the Royal Australian Engineers, first joining the 8th Division, training at Liverpool, and later being transferred to the 2/12th Field Company. The 2/12th Field Company supported the 8th Division, building and maintaining structures and machines. Their jobs included constructing lines of defence, temporary bridges, tunnels and trenches, observation posts, roads, railways, communication lines, buildings of all kinds, showers and bathing facilities, and other material and mechanical solutions to the problems associated with fighting in all theatres.

Rafferty’s experience and leadership potential soon led to promotion. In mid-September he was appointed acting corporal. After further training and attending a gas course, in April 1941 he was appointed acting lance sergeant.
Towards the end of that month, Rafferty suffered contusions to his left hand, caused by an accident in which a military lorry overturned in the Sydney suburb of Church Point.

On 28 July 1941, Rafferty’s promotion to corporal was made substantive, and the following day he embarked from Sydney, bound for Singapore.

As war broke out in the Pacific, Japanese forces invaded Malaya. Indian and British units in northern Malaya initially provided stiff resistance, but were forced to withdraw in the face of the speed, ferocity and surprise of the Japanese attack.

Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaya, was taken on 11 January 1942. Three days later, parts of the Australian 8th Division went into action south of Kuala Lumpur.
On 31 January, British and Australian forces withdrew across the causeway that separated Singapore from Malaya. Barely a week later, Japanese forces attacked across the Johor Strait.

When Singapore was surrendered on 15 February, Rafferty and his comrades in the 8th Division were initially imprisoned at Selerang Barracks at Changi. But from May onwards, the Japanese began sending groups of prisoners of war for labouring work elsewhere in Asia and the Pacific.

Rafferty became part of A Force, a group of 3,000 men who were ultimately bound to work on the Burma–Thailand Railway. On 14 May 1942 the group was led from Changi prison to Singapore harbour for transport to Burma. A third of the men were placed aboard Celebes Maru with the remainder being loaded aboard Toyohashi Maru.
The journey aboard these vessels, known as “hell-ships”, was the first taste of the gruelling life that awaited them. Those aboard the Celebes Maru were housed in overcrowded sheep pens. None of the prisoners arrived at their worksite healthier than when they left Singapore, and many finished their journey sick, exhausted and malnourished.

Heading up the west coast of Malaya, they arrived at Thanbyuzayat in Burma, the starting point for the construction of the Burma–Thailand railway.

The men were starved of food and medicine, and forced to work impossibly long hours in remote and unhealthy locations. By the time the railway was completed in October 1943, approximately 13,000 prisoners of war, including more than 2,600 Australians, and an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 civilians, had died.

Ravaged by cholera, malaria, dysentery, tropical ulcers and starvation, A Force was abandoned as a unit, and its members were dispersed to various other camps.

Norman Rafferty, however, did not live to see the completion of the railway. He was reported as dying of dysentery in Burma on 14 October 1942 – a year before the railway’s completion. He was 23 years old.

The graves of those who died during the construction and maintenance of the railway were transferred from camp burial grounds. Today Rafferty’s remains lie buried at Thanbyuzayat War Cemetery under the epitaph chosen by his grieving family: “loved by all”.

His name is listed on the Roll of Honour on my left, among almost 40,000 Australians who died while serving in the Second World War.

This is but one of the many stories of service and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Lance Sergeant Norman Joseph Rafferty, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Duncan Beard
Editor, Military History Section