Pilgrimage to Ambon by Cofields

The trio paid their respects to their father and grandfather, Cpl Arthur Thomas Cofield’s mates who didn’t make it home and to take part in an Anzac Day Dawn Ceremony which was conducted by the Military Attache stationed at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta.

Several other families made the journey. It was a very moving ceremony in this cemetery that had once been the POW camp.

Gull Force Association was formed by the returning soldiers of the 2/21st Battalion in the years after WW2 and many veterans returned regularly to assist the Ambonese people who had helped the POWs by smuggling food to them and assisting escapees, all at great risk to themselves.

Those veterans assisted many villages over several decades in obtaining reliable water supplies, providing hospitals with equipment, training nurses on scholarships in Australia. The current GFA continues this work with donations to hospitals, schools, sporting clubs and an orphanage.

Gordon, Lloyd and Wade had the opportunity to visit Seri Village where the escaping soldiers had been given a boat and to look around the area and contemplate the enormous expanse of ocean facing those men that made such a brave decision to escape.

They were also able to see AT Cofield’s name on a memorial to the survivors. Arthur Cofield was redeployed on his return to Australia and went on to serve with the 2/24th in the Middle East and New Guinea.

He was discharged in October 1945 and was very pleased to resume his family life with his wife and children. One of his fellow escapees from Ambon, Charles Robinson married Arthur’s sister-in-law.

The tragedy of the 2/21st Battalion was that of those 1131 soldiers who landed in Ambon, 52 escaped, 54 were killed in action, 229 were executed by the Japanese in the first two weeks of captivity and 300 men were repatriated back to Australia in September 1945, leaving behind almost 500 who died in horrendous conditions as POWs.

Cpl Cofield of Wahgunyah enlisted on the August 13, 1941 in the AIF. After several weeks of training Arthur was sent to Darwin to join the ill-fated 2/21st Battalion while they awaited their overseas posting.

Along with approximately 1130 other battalion members he disembarked in a Dutch East Indies colony known as Amboina (Ambon) on December, 17 1941. The Army chiefs had committed three battalions to assist the Dutch and they were designated, Gull Force 2/21st, Sparrow Force 2/40th sent to Timor and Lark Force 2/22nd sent to Rabaul.

It was considered important to assist the Dutch in these areas for several reasons not the least being these places had airfields and could be used as stepping stones by the Japanese on their way to Australia. All three battalions suffered terrible losses as the Japanese invasion forces outnumbered them enormously.

In Arthur’s battalion, the Gull Force joined the Dutch Forces on the island as well as locals who had enlisted in the Dutch Army, all up a total of about 2500 troops including the 2/21st. On January 31, 1942 the Japanese landed approximately 22,000 in various points around the island and there was fierce fighting in several areas but within a few days the Japanese had overtaken the island.

Arthur Cofield was in an area of the island that the Japanese had not yet reached but word came through to their commanding officer that the Dutch Commander had surrendered his troops and it seemed inevitable that the Australians would have to do the same.

Several soldiers sought permission from their commanding officers to escape and permission was given. Twenty-one soldiers set off about February 2 to leave the island.

Their journey was wrought with all sorts of risks but having been given a suitable craft at one of the local villages they left Ambon and after a harrowing eight weeks of island hopping, they were picked up by an Australian Naval vessel which took them to Thursday Island and then on to Australia.