Keeping Your Head

by Sergeant Colin Neave 8th Battalion the Royal Australian Regiment

My dad came down with beri-beri and every other imaginable disease that you can think of from that place in New Guinea. They finally shipped him out to Darwin Hospital, where they sent a telegram to his mother, who is my grandmother. I’ve still got that telegram somewhere, it says, “Your son’s not expected to live the night because of the various diseases he has”.

Anyway, he got through it and lived. He had it hard, and he told me some about other guys of World War II, one was a bloke called Dan Fysh, who was the grandson of Sir Hudson Fysh, who was one of the founders of Qantas airlines. He was caught by the Japanese in Malaya as a prisoner, and I remember he used to come over for lunch at my grandmother’s place and sit around the table, every time he swallowed, he twisted his head. So I said to my dad, I said, “Why does Dan twist his head every time he swallows food?’ He said, ‘Colin, that’s something you’re going to have to ask him”.

So I picked the right time and asked him. He sat me down and said, “I was in Malaya, I was captured by the Japanese, unfortunately we were not prisoners of war, we were to be executed. There were 22 of us,” he said. “I think it was 22,” he said. “We had to dig this trench, they tied us up, put a blindfold on us and we knelt down in front of the trench. This officer came along with his sword. I was blindfolded but the reason I know is because the bastards told us what they were going to do. They decapitated and pushed the soldiers one by one into the trench. I must’ve been about the third last. Now I don’t know what happened – whether his sword became a little blunt – but it did not cut my head completely off. They kicked me into the trench and the remaining ones fell on top of me.”

He said he lay there all that day, all that night and the next day. When he knew the Japanese had left, he managed to free his arms, get out from underneath the dead bodies and make his way through the jungle, holding his head to try and stop the bleeding. He made it back to the Australian lines, where he was fixed up, and sent home to Australia, to get more surgery.