Check your grandpappy's war diary

[drwayne]

Was he one the US persons involved ?



Defense investigating claims up to 50 US prisoners died in underground bunkers on atoll on Great Barrier Reef

Peter Michael The Sunday Mail (Qld) February 10, 2013 12:30AM



DEFENSE is investigating claims up to 50 US prisoners died in underground bunkers in secret chemical warfare tests on a coral atoll on the Great Barrier Reef off north Queensland.

The latest probe comes after the discovery of a tunnel under Castle Hill in Townsville this week unearthed an Aladdin's cave of other military mysteries reportedly kept secret from the public.

These include unconfirmed tales of an intact downed Japanese Zero fighter plane on Cape York, secret air bases, buried aircraft, and an underground military hospital.

But military historians allege the biggest untold wartime secret is the unverified death toll - deemed highly classified - in mustard gas bombing tests on Brook Island, 30km off Cardwell, nearly 70 years ago.

Today the idyllic Brook Island group, fringed by coral reef, is a restricted national park and home to up to 30,000 pied imperial pigeons that migrate down from Papua New Guinea every year.

But, in three bombing tests in World War II, it was the top-secret site of a series of Japanese-style underground bunker systems and, according to witness reports, untold casualties of war.

Agent Orange was tested at nearby Innisfail at the start of the Vietnam War - heightening fears of increased cancer links - in "secret tests" revealed in hidden archives in 2008 by researcher Jean Williams, who won an Order of Australia Medal for her study.

Renowned amateur war historians Peter Dunn, of ozatwar.com, and Sid Beck, owner of Queensland's biggest private military collection in Mareeba, claim the truth is yet to be told about the WWII chemical warfare tests.

They cite the eyewitness account of Innisfail-based chemical warfare unit scientist Sylvia Stolz, who took samples of the devastating effects of mustard gas after each bombing sortie on Brook Island in 1944.

[Basstronics]

Mine didnt have a war diary that Im aware of, but he did bring back pictures. Pictures he took, pictures others took and bought/traded. My grandfather was a tank driver on Okinawa and made it out alive. The pictures or carnage speak to what they seen.

I dont know where all he was over there, I know he was on that island and shipped around a few places then off to Korea before coming home.

Never seen anything that didnt appear to be bomb/gun/or fire death pictures. The pictures are not pleasant but they give you a clear image of what these guys went through, hell.

[Richie the shipwright]

My great grandfather was killed in ww1 in the somme. somewhere near fromelles on the french/belgium border. He was a veteran from gallipoli, one of only two from his battalion to survive that hellhole. We have his personal stuff that was sent home after his death including letters, service medals and his bible which was in his breast pocket when he was shot. There is a bullet hole clean through the bible, the shot that killed him. My grandmother was his only child, he never got to see her. My brother recently discovered and visited his gravesite, and left behind a photograph of my grandmother as a child. Very Moving stuff.

I get chills up my spine wherever i see or hold the bible. Our family will never forget his sacrifice, or those of others. War is hell.
LEST WE FORGET.