Our heroes’ WATERY GRAVE
Cathy never met her brave Grandad Arthur, but now she nally knows his resting place
Running into my father’s arms, I was engulfed in a bear hug. ‘I missed you, Daddy!’ I cried.
‘I missed you too, darling,’ he said, holding me tight.
Our family lived in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, but my two older sisters, twins Roslyn and Rhonda, and I went to a boarding school in Lochinvar, NSW.
Every holiday we’d come home – a mammoth journey involving a taxi, two trains and a plane. And my dad, Colwyn, was there by the tarmac, arms outstretched to greet his girls.
Back then in PNG the power constantly went out, there was no public transport or TV, and earthquakes were common.
But it was an idyllic childhood, and I loved cycling around and playing with the other kids.
What I most loved, however, was listening to Dad’s stories. He was the best storyteller in the world. Some tales were intended to teach us kids about life, but often he told them just to be mischievous.
‘I don’t like brussels sprouts,’ I said once, when my mum Jean served them.
‘So you didn’t know that fairies live in them?’ Dad said. After that, I couldn’t eat enough – carefully inspecting each one rst! Another time he told me chewing a lead pencil made one leg grow shorter than the other. When I saw a nun at school chewing her pencil, I warned her what would happen and was sent to the principal for being insubordinate. Dad thought it was hilarious!
Not all his stories were funny however. Whenever he spoke about our grandad – his beloved father Reginald Arthur Parry, known to all as Arthur – Dad would tear up.
Arthur, an Aussie radiographer, arrived in PNG in 1925 on the SS Mataram. He was the Senior Medical Assistant at Kokopo Hospital, New Britain, while his wife Annie worked there as a nurse.
Dad was born in 1928, joining his sisters Barbara and Gwenneth, with younger brother Rodney completing the family.
When World War II broke out in 1939, Annie and the children were evacuated to Wahroonga, NSW. Just 10 years old, Dad missed his father badly.
‘Grandad chose to stay behind to take care of the hospital patients,’ he told us. He was a hero.
For three years, letters ew between them. Arthur’s letters were full of love and longing for the family he missed so much.
Dear Col, It’s your birthday again. It’s a pity I had to miss it. I still have hopes we’ll be together very soon, he wrote on October 1, 1941.
‘But we never were together again,’ Dad told us sadly. ‘In January 1942, Japanese forces invaded PNG and captured New Britain. I never saw him again.’
Grandma wrote desperate letters to the government to nd out what happened. Was he a POW in Japan? Had he, like many others, been beheaded by the Japanese?
It was a torturous three
His letters were full of love and longing
years before she nally learned the tragic truth.
On October 30, 1945, a telegram arrived saying that Grandad was one of the civilians taken prisoner in early 1942 and put aboard the Japanese ship SS Montevideo Maru – one of 1054 prisoners – mainly Aussies and Kiwis.
On July 1, 1942, it was mistakenly torpedoed by the American submarine, USS Sturgeon who, not knowing it was carrying prisoners of war, assumed it was full of enemy soldiers.
It is with deep regret that I have to inform you the Montevideo Maru was lost with all personnel, the telegram read.
The family were distraught to learn that Grandad would have been locked in the hull with no chance of escape. They also learned of the men’s bravery in the face of death. A Japanese survivor had reported hearing the Australian prisoners singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ as the ship went down. The wreck was deemed lost forever.
Grandma mourned her husband and never looked at another man.
In 1951, Dad married Mum and brought her back to his childhood home of PNG. There he joined the police force and raised us three girls, proving to be the same wonderful, loving, protective dad that his own father had been.
When I was 35, Dad proudly walked me down the aisle when I married Rod, then 40. Sadly, Mum passed away at 80, followed a few years later, in 2014, by Dad, 85.
I missed them both terribly.
On April 22, 2023, I got an email from a friend named Max, who has links to the Silentworld
Foundation. It was headed Found!
The not-for-pro t organisation supporting Australasian maritime heritage had funded an eight-year mission to nd SS Montevideo Maru’s
wreck. Its sinking had been the worst maritime disaster in Australia’s history.
Incredibly, the wreck had been located off the coast of the Philippines at a depth of over 4000 metres – deeper than that of the Titanic – 80 years after it sank. It was bittersweet. My grandfather’s nal resting place had been found, but Dad had gone to his own grave never knowing where Arthur had taken his nal breath.
In November, Rod and I attended a memorial dinner at the Australian War Memorial, ACT, with other relatives of the deceased. An emotional night, the grief of not knowing where our loved ones rested had clearly passed down the generations.
Shedding a tear, I felt the presence of both Dad and Grandad, reunited in spirit, celebrating that the resting place of so many heroes, previously known only to God, had nally been revealed. ●
The grief passed down the generations