Re: Survivor Has His Name Etched in History

Date: February 06, 2004

"Survivor has his name etched in history
By David Rood
February 6, 2004

Holding a cut-throat razor to the necks of his Japanese captors, prisoner of war Eric "the moonlight barber" Goon was always in two minds.

For a few coins, after slaving on the Thai-Burma railway all day, Eric would shave not only his fellow prisoners but his Japanese guards by the moonlight.

"The guards would yell out, 'Shavo, shavo' ...and the blokes would be calling out, 'Cut the bastard's throat', but you'd die a very slow death if you did," he recalled yesterday.

Walk down the stone pathway of the new Australian Ex-Prisoner of War Memorial, opening today in Ballarat, and Eric's name is among the 35,000 sand-blasted into the black granite - 166 columns along, third from the top.

The new memorial, located in the Ballarat Botanical Gardens, lists the names of those who died and survived POW camps from the Boer War to Korea.

The names, recorded without rank or serial number, stretch for 130 metres, punctuated only by six stone obelisks listing the countries where POW camps were located. A seventh obelisk lies on its side - to the fallen.

When Eric visited the memorial earlier this week, the 91-year-old Ballarat raconteur drew crowds like a busker in Bourke Street with his stories.
  
After enlisting in 1940, Eric served in Palestine with the 2nd Pioneers before being captured in Java two years later.

It was the call of a mate that sent him to the Pacific. Assigned to the baggage party, which was to return home, Eric decided to stay with his battalion. A bloke called out: "Over here Eric, come to C Company, the best company of the lot."

"He was my next-door neighbour back in Melbourne - you can't get a closer mate than that," Eric said. In Java, A Company was overrun. C Company men were captured. The baggage party got home.

Eric's 10 months of captivity in Java was followed by years of labouring, limbs like matchsticks, amid the mud and disease of the Thai-Burma railway. Almost 60 years on, Eric, an Australian of Chinese background, attributes his survival to luck and the gentle actions of his mates.

Malaria almost took him, but his mates Paddy O'Rourke and Arthur Leigh nursed him back to a semblance of health.

"Paddy would come and feed me pap - which was rice boiled up again - if I had three or four spoonsful Paddy was like a dog with two tails," Eric recalled. "If it wasn't for him I wouldn't be here now."

The memorial's designer, Ballarat sculptor Peter Blizzard, said the memorial was conceived as a site of contemplation and remembrance.

Wandering past the columns of names, walking stick in hand, Eric said the memorial pricked his memory to think of the hardship and to remember his mates - "the likes of Paddy".

The memorial will be dedicated by Defence Force chief General Peter Cosgrove.

© 2004 The Age Company Ltd"