Private Charles Roland Bird, 2/4th Machine Gun Battalion
Australian War MemorialCharles Bird was born on 22 September 1916 in Fremantle, Western Australia, the son of Roland and Beatrice Bird.
Known to friends and family as “Charlie”, he went on to work as a bread carter.
Charlie Bird enlisted in the Second Australian Imperial Force on 25 October 1940. By the end of the year he had joined the 2/4th Machine Gun Battalion and begun training at Northam military camp, east of Perth.
In early January 1941 Private Bird was charged with breaking out of camp, and was confined to barracks for three days as punishment.
In July Bird had a period of pre-embarkation leave before his unit moved to Adelaide. After suffering from acute gastritis in August, by October he and his unit were in Darwin, joining the rest of the 23rd Brigade.
Told of the move just before Christmas, the battalion left Darwin on 30 December, sailing via Port Moresby. Following a Japanese attack on Rabaul, New Britain, the convey turned around and sailed to Sydney and then Fremantle. Sailing under escort, the convoy finally reached Singapore at the end of January 1942.
By this time the Japanese had captured Malaya and were preparing to attack Singapore. The British were desperately preparing their defences and the battalion's companies were sent where they were needed: B Company was sent to the British Manchester Fusiliers, constructing weapons pits around the Naval Base; C Company went to support the 44th Indian Brigade on the west and south-west coast of the island; D Company supported the 22nd Brigade on the north-west coast; and A Company was in the 8th Division's reserve, close to the centre of the island.
After days of air raids, the Japanese attacked Singapore on the 8th of February. Deployed to different units, the 2/4th's companies were quickly in action but by 10 February the Japanese had captured the island's west coast. Five days later the British forces were pushed back to a defensive line protecting the city. With battle over, on 15 February Singapore was surrendered.
The machine-gunners suffered heavily. Between 8 and 15 February, the unit had 137 men killed or missing, 106 men wounded, and 24 described as having “shell shock”. These casualties constituted almost one-third of the battalion.
Among the casualties was Private Bird, who was admitted to hospital with a shell wound to shoulder, elbow and thigh on 15 February.
Bird was initially held in Selarang Barracks, the AIF Camp at Changi. His wounds were treated in the hospital established by the Australian prisoners, and by the start of April he had recovered sufficiently to return to his unit.
His time in Changi, however, was to be short. In early July he embarked with B Force, a group of about 1500 Australians, which left Singapore aboard one of the notorious hellships, bound for Sandakan in north Borneo.
Arriving in mid-July, the prisoners marched to Sandakan No. 1 Prisoner of War Camp, where they were told they would construct an airfield.
Conditions and food supplies were initially reasonable, but deteriorated in mid-1943, partly because of the arrival of brutal Formosan guards. A small cage was built within the camp to punish prisoners for trivial offences. Some men were confined, without being able to stand up and with little food, for as long as a month.
The situation worsened in 1944, with brutal beatings, torture and shrinking food supplies. Prisoners suffered from malaria, beri beri and tropical ulcers, and the number of men who were sick grew. Because of the lack of healthy prisoners for work parties, guards pulled sick men from their beds.
“Bash gangs” attacked prisoners in numbers for the slightest misdemeanour. If one prisoner was viewed as not working properly, any number of men in his group could be beaten.
In January 1945 the Japanese began to fear an Allied invasion of Borneo and started to move prisoners away from the coast to Ranau, a small village some 250 kilometres inland in the mountains.
The first group of 470 prisoners (including 350 Australians) left in batches of fifty. All of them were already weak with beri beri and malnutrition and most lacked boots.
Only six of some 2,500 Australian and British prisoners interned at Sandakan in north-eastern Borneo would survive.
Among the dead was Charlie Bird, who died at a jungle camp about 8 kilometres south of Ranau.
Today he is remembered at the Labuan Memorial, which commemorates officers and men of the Australian Army and Air Force who died while prisoners of war in Borneo and the Philippines.
- AWM Honour roll https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/R1682608
