HOWARD Charles Augustine VX44305 HQ Coy [A Force]

Studio portrait of VX44305 Corporal (Cpl) Charles Augustine Howard, 2/29 Battalion, taken after he enlisted in July 1940, before embarkation for service in Malaya in 1941. Cpl Howard was awarded Mentioned in Despatches in 1946 for "Gallantry and his distingued services in Malaya in 1942". After being taken prisoner by the Japanese, he was a member of "A Force" (also known as "Ramsay Force") which was sent to work at Mergui and Tavoy in Burma on construction of the airfields there before being taken to work on the northern end of the Burma-Thai Railway. He subsequently spent 12 months in the hospital camp at Nakom Paton, Thailand, before being repatriated back to Australia in November 1945. Cpl Howard also appears in photograph AWM 118858, taken at Nakom Paton on 19 September 1945. In the later photograph, after years as a prisoner of war, Cpl Howard is in poor health and has lost approximately forty per cent of his body weight.