Rising Sun hat badge : Staff Sergeant S E Cameron, 2/19 Battalion, AIF

Gilded brass Australian general service 'rising sun' hat badge with two lugs soldered to the reverse.

Worn during his service with the militia in the 1930s by Samuel Edward Cameron. During the Second World War he served as a staff sergeant with 2/19 Battalion, withthe service number NX52530. Cameron was born in Queanbeyan, New South Wales, on 4 May 1909 and enlisted in the AIF on 3 July 1940. He served in Malaya before becoming a prisoner of war of the Japanese, when he was sent to work on the Burma-Thailand Railway in Thailand. He was unofficially promoted to the rank of Warrant Officer while interned. Cameron returned to Australia after the war but died on 21 October 1945, from illness contracted while he was a prisoner, only days after his repatriation.