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Photo:
Frank Larkin during his time as a Japanese POW (Courtesy John Larkin)
Anzac Day is a time for remembering. But what does the family of a veteran remember if the soldier doesn't talk?
When John Larkin was growing up, he had no idea of what horrors his father, Frank, had been through in World War II.
But a former comrade of his father's, who was by Frank Larkin's side during those dark days, has changed all that.
"To see a man that had been with my father during the most challenging, difficult and miserable moments of his life, who came through it, was really, really special," Mr Larkin says.
Photo:
Former POW Charlie Edwards prepares to march on Anzac Day
He is talking about 96-year-old former POW Charles Edwards.
The events which finally brought the two men together go back more than 70 years.
Frank Larkin was a signaller in the 2/19 Battalion of the Australian Imperial Force in World War II.
Both he and Charles Edwards were captured by the Japanese in Malaya in 1942 and endured brutality, disease and shocking conditions on the infamous Burma Railway.
As Charlie recalls: "We worked 16 hours a day on this. They committed so many atrocities up there - the Imperial Japanese Army were just brutal to us."
But when John Larkin was growing up, his father spoke little about what he had been through.
"He had these moments when he needed to be quiet, he needed to be undisturbed." John Larkin says. "But he never really elaborated on what had happened."
Then one day Frank Larkin showed his son a shoebox filled with items from the war and his time in the Ohama POW camp.
Photo:
Frank Larkin in uniform (Courtesy John Larkin)
"There were all these letters and photographs and relics from the camps, including a prayer book, his signalling mirror, his number tags, which I had never seen before."
John Larkin, who teaches history, set up a website so he could share his father's story. But when Frank Larkin died in 2001, there were still significant holes in John's knowledge.
He wrote an article, putting out a call for a man he thought might be able to help.
"I said, 'There is one gentleman who possibly was with my father on a number of different occasions, if anyone can help me contact him'. And Charlie Edwards replied."
"He wrote me this four-page letter and sent me maps and photographs as well; it filled in a lot of gaps."
The two men had corresponded for years but never met. Until last week.
John Larkin travelled from his home in Wollongong, south of Sydney, to visit Charlie in Melbourne.
For Charles Edwards, it was like seeing his old mate again.
"I've been so anxious to meet him because, I will have to put it this way, his father will never be dead while John is alive, he is so like him."
It was an opportunity for the former POW to share some of his war-time experiences, along with recollections about John's father.
"He was a good mate. He was a devout Catholic, his name was Francis Xavier but we always called him FX, everybody just called him FX."
Photo:
Australian prisoners of war at the Ohama prison camp during World War II
While Charles Edwards is now comfortable speaking about most aspects of those gruelling times on the Thai-Burma railway, he says that when they first returned home, the men were told not to speak about it, and for many years they didn't.
Author Richard Flanagan understands only too well.
His father Archie Flanagan was also a POW, and ended up at the same Japanese slave labour camp as Charlie Edwards and Frank Larkin. What these men went through is at the heart of his latest novel.
"We know that they suffered unspeakable violence from the Japanese and Korean guards. What is less well understood is the psychological and spiritual wounds that they carried with them when they came back to Australia," he says.
"I think it was very difficult for these men when they came home because they didn't have a story that fitted into the conventional stories of war.
"It wasn't Dunkirk, it wasn't being in a Lancaster bomber over Berlin, it wasn't a conventional tale of courage and suffering that people had any reference points for."
John Larkin agrees.
"They were prisoners of war. I think sometimes they weren't seen as major, as significant, as men who had seen battle, you know, face-to-face battle, and survived and come back. And I think for a long time the concept of prisoners of war was kept very quiet in the general public and even in the teaching of history."
John Larkin says his father marched on Anzac Day for as long as he was able, and the family would watch on, immensely proud.
"The POW experience did shape my father greatly, but he was a resilient, strong, courageous man."
As it was for his father, John Larkin considers Anzac Day the most important day of the year.
"We need to commemorate what they did, both the volunteers and the conscripts."
"It needs to be commemorated with respect, with dignity."
Topics:
anzac-day,
world-war-2,
history,
community-and-society,
defence-forces,
australia,
burma
First posted
Source: http://www.news.myanmaronlinecentre.com/2014/04/25/one-sons-quest-to-track-down-his-fathers-pow-mate/
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