MEMOIR
Memoir Changi 1
From my memoir chapter- AT NEWHAM 1944
I had seven uncles who were all farmers at some time. Three joined my father in enlistment in the army during WW2. Before we moved to Newham we lived at Gisborne and we lived on a farm owned by one of those three, my Uncle Stan. Stanley Frederick Newnham was captured by the Japanese at the Fall Of Singapore. He was imprisoned for a time in Changi Prison before being taken...
Memoir Changi 2
By Phyl Lobl
This was written because my uncle, Stanley Frederick Newnham died at sea as a prisoner of war on the Japanese Prison ship Rakuyo Maru. In the last few years my family learnt of the final days of my Uncle Stan. A cousin had contact with a soldier who was also on that ship and was in the lifeboat with Stan. As there were too many in the lifeboat they took shifts in hanging on to the side...
Hanging Rock
By Phyl Lobl
My father Roy Thomas Vinnicombe joined the 1st AIF when he was 18 and served on the Somme. He was injured three times but returned home to live near Romsey in Victoria.
He met my mother who lived nearby at Monument Creek. They married and had six surviving children. The family was living in Ballarat when Roy re-joined 2nd AIF circa 1940...
Facing Fear
By Phyl Lobl
I was almost 10 when I was living in a rented farmhouse with my war-widowed mother and one sister who was three years older than me. Another sister and three brothers were all working away from home. My father had enlisted in the second AIF in WW2 and this meant they had to leave school and find work...