Tom Richardson - The Australian
FEBRUARY 23, 1942, seemed an appropriate day to die to Leslie Poidevin.
As he sat in the dirt beside his friend and comrade Major Roy Stevens, with the guns of three Japanese soldiers trained on them both, Dr Poidevin made the observation that it was on this date in 1909 that his parents were married.
Major Stevens thought for a moment, then declared it was also his wife's birthday.
Dr Poidevin, then 29, later recalled the regrets and consolations that swirled through his mind as he contemplated death that day in Timor.
"What a waste it had been to do all that growing up, and all those exams at school and university, to have done two years of post-graduate training and suffered some efforts at military training, only to reach this point," he says in his memoir Samurais and Circumcisions.
But the fledgling soldiers were not killed. And for Leslie Poidevin, that day signalled the start of his years in captivity and later a distinguished surgical career.
Dr Poidevin, now 92, remains a largely unsung hero of Australia's military and medical history.
But those were not normal times. Dr Poidevin went to Timor as a captain in Sparrow Force, "a sacrificial force of 1500" whose mission was to prevent the Japanese army invading Australia.
That mission ended when, to the chagrin of many soldiers, the commanding officers ordered a general surrender to the invading Japanese army. At the end of 1942, about 200 POWs were shifted to larger camps in Batavia.
Barely qualified as a doctor when he enlisted, Dr Poidevin went on to perform 61 major surgical operations, and hundreds of minor ones, as a prisoner of war before his liberation in April 1945.
Operating under a small ceiling light with no gowns or gloves, he achieved results a surgeon would be proud of in normal conditions. During his internment, more than 900 of the 3000 allied troops received treatment. In the 143 major surgical operations performed in Batavia's St Vincentius church, only seven men died.
Returning to civilian life, Dr Poidevin went on to forge a distinguished medical career. But even now he is self-effacing about his wartime role.
© The Australian