Escape
Lansell West joined up to serve in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) during World War II. After his initial military training, Lansell became part of the 7th Infantry Battalion serving in Egypt and Libya. In 1941 he fought in Greece and Crete, before being ordered to surrender during an attack on the town of Maleme. After his capture by the Germans, Lansell was sent to an Italian prisoner-of-war camp in Skenes. There were fewer than 200 soldiers left in Lansell's battalion by this stage, but the camp was full of troops from other countries. From Skenes the Germans marched their prisoners to a camp in Salonika, Greece. The living conditions in this camp were terrible and many people died. Groups of the prisoners were, however, managing to escape through a sewer and Lansell decided he would also attempt to leave the camp. As he explains, 'Woke up one night, the Germans were going mad, there were a lot of people disappearing, overnight there'd be 10 to 15 blokes gone, and they were trying work out where the hell they were getting out. The Germans were ropeable, went mad and anyway somebody said to me, "You know, I just woke up, you know where they're going," he said. "The bloody Cypriots", he said, "they're going down through the sewer". I said, "All right, I'll be in that"'.
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Ray Wheeler was a member of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) during World War II. After the Japanese invaded Singapore in February 1942, Ray was captured and taken to a prisoner-of-war camp in Changi. Ray spent less than three months at the camp before being moved by the Japanese to Burma. When Ray arrived in Burma he formed part of a group of over 1000 other Australian prisoners who were then marched up to the port town of Tavoy. At Tavoy they worked on an old airfield that the Japanese wanted repaired. The days were hard and at first the prisoners slept in the dirt on the ground. There was little food to go around and the Japanese worked their prisoners for long hours, giving them only one day off in seven. During his time in Tavoy, Ray thought about attempting to escape. However, after a group of Australians who had escaped the Japanese were captured and killed, Ray thought twice about his decision: 'They had been dobbed in by Tamil Indians or something like that and the Japs brought them back to the camp, they had a "kangaroo court", to which only some of our senior officers were allowed to go to and from what we heard it was just a, you know, just a farce and they were sentenced to be executed and they took them out and I had the misfortune to get on the burial party'.
Hear complete interviews with veterans in the "Personal Stories" section of the Archives

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Victorians at War - Oral History Project