Snippet 12 - Alan Cox - Just another Prisoner of War

 

Snippet of Family History - "We are born with a History, and we live to tell another Story" (Warren Maloney) 

Snippet 12 - “Just another Prisoner of War”

(Remembering Alan Stowell Cox in this Snippet of January 2019 written by Warren Maloney)

 The rolling of the dice of life is often out of our control. 
Alan Stowell Cox was born in Subiaco, Perth, on ANZAC Day, 25th April, in 1917. 
He was 3 years old when his father, Henry Blomfield Cox, committed suicide.

Henry was 23 years older than Mary Ellen Cox (nee Marshall)[1]. They had lived together for over 4 years before their 2nd child, Alan, was born. With 2 children under 6 and another one on the way, Henry and Mary returned to Sydney where they decided to marry; but within a year, the pressures of life became too much for Henry and he took poison to end it.

Mary, despite her young age as a widow, just 31, and despite having now 3 children under 7 years, never re-married. She just did her best. The children were raised through the worst of the Depression years, getting jobs as they came of age with their Mum in the textile factories of Inner Sydney.



Alan fronted up for enlistment in the AIF in June 1940, barely 9 months after WWII was declared. He was a single, reasonably healthy factory worker – perfect for the War effort.

In the way of the army, he was placed in the Field Ambulance, a stretcher carrier, and shipped off to defend Singapore.


The 1940 photo of him in a uniform larger than his needs, with wide-eyed innocence, and oh so young, says so much.

We sort of know the story of Singapore’s surrender in February 1942, of the incarceration of so many Australian lads in Changi Prison, of the selection of the tens of thousands to forcibly march into the jungles of Thailand, of the inhumane, horrific ordeals of starvation and brutality that they suffered under the Japanese in building the Thai-Burma Railway line.

But it makes all that more real when it involved a family member, a Cousin, Alan Cox.

Alan was assigned in April 1943 to assist the medical work of “F Force”, one of the self-organised divisions of the Australian Prisoners of War. We have no words from him, but some of the survivors did write of the horrors – Stan Arneil wrote:

“If ever I see home again … I want nothing more … than to forget these awful days—swollen bodies, bloated from beriberi, walking skeletons from dysentery, eyesight becoming universally bad, malaria rampant. Surely this cannot last?”


 The Tanbaya Hospital camp was established in late 1943 for those considered to have a small chance of survival. 1700 were treated. Over 700 died.  Alan was one of them. He died at Tanbaya of meningitis on January 28th 1944, aged 26 years. He had survived as a Prisoner of War for almost 2 years. In 1946 Alan was re-buried by his mates at Thanbyuzayat War Cemetery, Burma. His Mum, Mary, received his Service medals 2 years later.


[1] Mary and Doris Sylvia Maloney (nee Bradley) were 1st Cousins. Alan, her son, was a therefore a 2nd Cousin of the Maloneys


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