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In early 1945 the 1st Australian Parachute Regiment (of which my wife's uncle, Ron Hodsdon was a member) was placed on standby to perform a rescue mission to extract the (more than) 2000 Australian & British men from Sandakan. A request had been made for the use of 30 planes for this operation. Gen Blamey personally refused this request. Ron has written a tribute to the men of Sandakan. A reading of this is heartbreaking. Such a tragedy should never have occurred and the Australian Military heirachy had it in their power to stop it. Because of crass stupidty and bloodymindedness all these men (with the exception of 6) died needlessly. The Sandakan Death marches (and there were 3) took place because the heads of the Australian Government and military allowed them to. There was ample intelligence to locate and extract these men, but no rescue was authorised. I always wondered why my father had such a disdainful hatred of Blamey, and after reading Ron's book I have a small inkling of why.

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16y ago

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