Orders, Decorations & Medals - Australian Groups

Lot 1139    Session 5 (2:30pm Tuesday 26th July)    Orders, Decorations & Medals - Australian Groups

Estimate $500
Bid at live.noble.com.au
SOLD $1,100

GROUP OF FOUR TO AHS CENTAUR SURVIVOR: 1939-45 Star; Defence Medal 1939-45; War Medal 1939-45; Australia Service Medal 1939-45. NX51175 A.J.Taylor. All medals impressed. Swing mounted, contact marks, fine - extremely fine.

Together with,
1. Three fibre dog tags to A.J.Taylor, one circular and two hexagonal.
2. Book titled Three Minutes of Time, The Torpedoing of the Australian Hospital Ship "Centaur" by A.E.Smith and illustrated by W.Keats, signed personally by both beside their printed names, published in 1991, 76pp, soft cover, all profits from sale of book to Centaur Memorial Fund for erection of a Memorial at Point Danger to mark 50th year of loss of Centaur off Cape Moreton.
3. Book titled Australian Hospital Ship Centaur by Christopher S.Mulligan, c1981, 150pp + 16 end pages of photos and drawings, soft cover, together with a letter of thanks from the author to Mrs Bromley. Mrs Mabel Bromley (nee Hess) is acknowledged in the book for writing down her observations of the radar activity the night Centaur was sunk. She was one of the onshore radar operators at 23RDF at Lytton on the south side of the mouth of the Brisbane River.

Albert John Taylor, dental mechanic, age 34, born at Leichhardt, NSW; Enl.14Aug1940 at Engineer's Depot, Moore Park, Sydney, NSW; previous service as Sergeant with 5th Field AAC; to AAMC; to 2/12 Field Amb 04Dec1940 and A/Cpl; to Darwin 09Apr1941; confirmed as Cpl 13Dec1941; to NSW 18Jan1943; to AHS Centaur 11May1943 for transport to New Guinea; ship torpedoed 14May1943 at 4am about 50 miles offshore from Brisbane; after being rescued admitted to 112AGH suffering from 'Exposure Shock'; Disch.09Jan1945 as Medically Unfit.

The Australian Hospital Ship Centaur, under ship's master Captain George A.Murray, was sailing to the South West Pacific Area of operations carrying 12 nurses and 190 2/2 Field Amb plus 3 attached and one Red Cross representative. In the early hours of 14 May 1943 it was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and sunk about thirty nautical miles off the southern tip of Moreton Island despite being appropriately lit and clearly marked as a hospital ship. Of the 332 people on board, both crew and passengers, only 64 survived. The dead included 45 Merchant Navy personnel including the ship's master, 212 Australian Army medical and field ambulance officers and soldiers and 11 Army nurses. This was the greatest loss of life in Australian waters from a ship of the Merchant Navy.

Only one nurse, Sister Ellen Savage, survived and although injured herself, she was awarded the George Medal for the help she gave the other survivors, some of whom were suffering from burns or were injured. Cpl A.J.Taylor was one of only 15 members of 2/12 Field Ambulance to survive. The survivors spent an agonising 35 hours on rafts or on debris floating on the water before being rescued by an American destroyer, USS Mugford, under the command of Lt-Commander Howard J.Corey USN.

The despicable act of attacking and sinking a hospital ship violated all the principles of common humanity and was declared a war crime in violation of the Geneva Convention of 1908. The commander of the Japanese submarine, Lt-Commander Hajime Nakagawa was later tried for war crimes and was sentenced at the Nagasaki war trials of 1948 to six years' hard labour after pleading guilty to machine gunning survivors of a British merchant ship he sank in the Indian Ocean. He was never tried for the sinking of AHS Centaur because investigators, although they believed he was responsible, did not have sufficient evidence to make a case. Hajime Nakagawa died in 1991 and even after the wreck of the Centaur was found in 2009, the Japanese Government refused to take responsibility for the sinking by claiming that circumstances surrounding the event remain unclear. However, a book, History of Submarine Warfare by a Japanese Navy Rear Admiral published in 1979, acknowledged that Nakawaga was responsible.

In 1950 Albert Taylor applied for the Pacific Star but his application was rejected because even though he was on board AHS Centaur and on the way to the SWPA the ship was sunk before reaching the qualifying area of operations.