Gunner Gerald John McShane enlisted to the Australian Military Forces on 22 February 1941. He served with the Heavy Battery in Rabaul, New Britain, as part of Lark Force. When Rabaul fell to the Japanese in January 1942, Gunner McShane was captured as a prisoner of war. Gunner McShane, alongside 1053 other prisoners from Rabaul, was killed on 1 July 1942, when the Japanese transport ship 'Montevideo Maru' was sunk by an Allied submarine in the South China Sea. He is commemorated at the Rabaul Memorial, Papua New Guinea.