Gull Force

The members of the Australian battalion of Gull Force endured some of the harshest prisoner of war conditions of any Australian during the Second World War. In February 1942, on the remote island of Ambon in Indonesia, 1150 Australian soldiers were preparing for invasion by Japanese forces. Outnumbered and ill-equipped, theirs was an impossible mission. After their defeat, over 200 Australians were massacred. The survivors faced three-and-a-half years of harsh work, beatings, disease and starvat