Stanley James Croft (1920)

Born 24 Jan 1920 in Prahran, Victoria, Australia

Ancestors

Biography

Stanley James 'Stan' Croft was born on 24th January 1920 at Prahran, Victoria, Australia. He was the fourth son of Victor Croft and Martha Brown.

Stan Croft is a Military Veteran.
Served in the Second Australian Imperial Force 1938-1945
2/4th Australian Anti Tank Regiment

Stan Croft was a prisoner of war of the Japanese during the Second World War.

On 26th May 1938, Stan enlisted in the Commonwealth Military Force (Militia), transferring to the Second Australian Imperial Force (AIF) following the declaration of the Second World War (the Militia could only fight on Australian soil whereas the federal government authorised the AIF for overseas action). ^[1] Stan was allocated to the 2/4th Australian Anti Tank Regiment. With the fall of Singapore in February 1942, he became a prisoner-of-war at Changi. He later worked on the infamous Burma-Thailand railway and on the docks and coal mines of Nagasaki, Japan. He was demobilised on 20th December 1945 following his rehabiliatation to Australia. For his military service, Stan was awarded the 1939-1945 Star, Pacific Star, War Medal 1939-1945 and Australia Service Medal 1939-1945.

"My father Stan was 19 at the outbreak of WWII and he enlisted in the 4th Anti-tank Regiment in June 1941. He sailed to Singapore on the 30 July 1941. Six months later he was present at the Fall of Singapore in February 1942 and was taken prisoner by the Japanese along with 140,000 other allied soldiers. Churchill said that the Fall of Singapore was the worst disaster in British military history. The next three years can only be described as hell on earth as the prisoners were held at Changi prison and then sent to Burma and Thailand to build the infamous Burma railway and finally were shipped to Japan to work as slave labour on the docks and in the coal mines. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was not a term used in the 20th century, but my father suffered all his life from the experiences of those three terrible years. He rarely spoke of this time but during one bout of depression he told me that he could remember standing in line in Burma waiting for their meagre allowance of rice gruel when every second man in the line dropped from the effects of dysentery, malaria or exhaustion.

"In Japan, he initially worked on the docks in Nagasaki but was moved to a coal mine to the north of Nagasaki. One consolation was that his brother Victor was in the same prisoner of war camp in Japan. The conditions suffered by the prisoners have been described in movies such as “The Bridge On The River Kwai”, “Railwayman” and “Unbroken”. The fortitude shown by earlier generations of the Croft family surely helped him to survive treatment that many prisoners did not survive. At the end of the war he remembered passing Nagasaki which had been destroyed by the second atomic bomb. ​ "On his return to Australia he went to recuperate with his grandfather and grandmother in Apollo Bay, a beautiful coastal town on the Great Ocean Rd in Victoria. There his fortunes changed as he met the love of his life, Jean Ada Hamilton, and they were married in 1946. In Apollo Bay, they lived in a tiny cottage with their four children who were born during their time there. Stan got a job with the government Lands Department, helping to manage environmental pests and state-owned lands. A further two children were born when they were transferred to Warragul in 1960. My father and my mother, Jean, shared many happy and some difficult times raising a large family." ^[2]

Sources

1. ↑ Department of Veterans' Affairs nominal roll: VX57391 (319838) Gunner Stanley James Croft; accessed 30 Dec 2020
2. ↑ Croft, Barry; accessed 30 Dec 2020

• Stanley James Croft (The Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial, https://www.powmemorialballarat.com.au/ : accessed 16 Mar 2024)