Orders, Decorations and Medals

Five: Private T. W. Humpage, 2/3rd Australian Machine Gun Battalion, otherwise known as “The Lost Battalion”: diverted to the defence of Java at short notice in March 1942, its members were either killed, wounded or taken P.O.W.

1939-45 Star; Pacific Star; Defence and War Medals 1939-45; Australia Service Medal 1939-45, all officially inscribed, ‘WX. 4118 T. W. Humpage’, generally good very fine (5) £400-500

Thomas William Humpage, who was born in Ellesmere, England in July 1916, enlisted in the Australian Army at Northam in Western Australia in June 1940 and was posted to the 2/3rd Machine Gun Battalion as a Private. After seeing action in the Syrian camapign in 1941, the Battalion was embarked for Australia in the S.S. Ocades but was diverted en route in support of the plan to defend the Dutch East Indies. Having then landed in Java, the Battalion fought a spirited action at Leuwiliang before being ordered to surrender by the Dutch C.-in-C. of Allied Forces on 9 March 1942. As a consequence, the survivors were rounded up by the Japanese, many of of them to meet an early demise on the notorious Burma-Thailand Railway - see Rod Allanson’s The Lost Battalion for full details. Humpage was among those to be liberated at the War’s end and was discharged in March 1946.