Happy birthday Frank McGovern

Once again, everyone will marvel at how Frank and Gavin survived an ordeal the rest of us can only imagine—able to thank God every day that their service means we’re never likely to experience anything remotely like it.

They survived Perth’s sinking. Frank was an able seaman from ‘Paddo’—when it was still a working man’s suburb—and Gavin one of Perth’s junior officers and secretary to its fighting commander, Captain Hec Waller.

These days, no military rank separates the two Sydneysiders. They’re just mates who meet at the Bowlers Club in York Street on the second Thursday of each month to reminisce and talk fondly of shipmates who’ve passed – three of them only in recent months.

Frank and Gavin’s experiences beat anything Hollywood script writers could conjure up in their most vivid imagining. Try having your ship torpedoed from under you, being captured by the Japanese and enduring all the horror of the infamous Burma railway as prisoners-of-war.

Gavin’s ordeal on the Burma Railway along with hundreds of other HMAS Perth men and thousands of soldiers from the gallant Eighth Division—made PoWs after the fall of Singapore – is a remarkable story of courage and survival on its own.

That Frank McGovern is still with us to celebrate his ninetieth is an absolute bloody marvel. What follows here is the briefest of outlines of Frank’s incredible war.

Having come through the Burma Railway, he’s crammed aboard a Japanese transport, the Rakuyo Maru, with hundreds of other British and Australian PoWs, destination Japan as slave labourers.

Mid-voyage, the convoy is intercepted by a pack of American submarines – Sealion, Growler and Pampanito (now a tourist attraction at Fishermans Wharf in San Francisco Bay).

The Americans fire their torpedoes unaware the Japanese transports are packed with allied prisoners. Hundreds perish. Days later, the subs return, their officers and men stunned to find oil soaked and injured prisoners floating amid the debris. A rescue mission begins.

One of the Aussies, another Perth hero named Arthur Bancroft, is hoisted on board. Once on the sub’s deck, Arthur pulls himself to his full oil soaked height, salutes and calls to an American officer in the conning tower, “Able seaman Bancroft, Royal Australian Navy, permission to come aboard sir.”

Frank McGovern and some other survivors are not so lucky. They aren’t found by the Yanks. A Japanese destroyer eventually comes along and begrudgingly plucks them out of the shark infested water. Other prisoners have already tried their luck paddling in another direction never to be seen again.

The voyage to Japan resumes, Frank’s now on course to become a slave, then a witness to the fire-bombing of Tokyo and a victim of Allied air raids on his own prison camp—attacks that kill Frank’s best mate, so agonisingly close to the end of the war, and leave Frank in the camp hospital with a broken back.

But the terror isn’t over. Frank hears that Japanese doctors are killing prisoners, draining their blood to treat their own air raid victims. Survival instinct kicks in again – somehow he crawls out of the hospital and gets back to his mates and comparative safety.

Salvation finally comes in the form of an American fighter pilot who flies over the camp and performs a copybook victory roll dropping a note to the blokes below – “Chin up, beer and steaks for everyone in a few days,” it says.

Imagine how these young Aussies felt, far from home, survivors of more than three years of cruel captivity where suffering was total, danger was ever present and living or dying was a day-to-day affair. Some years ago, I asked Frank what got him through those dark days. “Faith, hope and knowing that we would never be beaten,” he said.

Now, one last memory of Frank McGovern’s war – you’re with him in Tokyo Bay, military nurses provide tender care so at odds with the years of privation just ended. Endless rows of victorious Allied warships are there for the Japanese surrender. And, as you pass ship after ship, their crews are yelling, waving and saluting PoWs who are going home at last – free and alive!

Six years ago, I had the privilege of being “adopted” by the Perth boys. As one who has benefited from the freedom for which they sacrificed their youth, it is humbling to listen to Frank and Gavin during their monthly get-togethers at the Bowlers Club. No-one in the club knows they are in the midst of authentic but vanishing Australian heroes.

And never have these modest heroes lost their sense of humour – who knows, it might be the secret of their wartime survival. Being a friend of the Perth men means you also get to attend their Christmas parties where the guest list expands with families of mates who didn’t return.

A couple of years ago, as Frank and Gavin were enjoying a sumptuous Christmas buffet, Frank, I think it was, turned to Gavin and said: “We didn’t get this when we were PoWs eh Gav?” And then Gavin’s never-to-be-forgotten deadpan reply—“Yeah Frank, we only got this on Sunday!”

So Frank McGovern, enjoy your birthday celebration. You’ll enjoy being with your children and their families. And we’ll enjoy thinking of you and Gavin Campbell as being among Australia’s finest generation.