06 June 2006

Another WW2 veteran dies

Today's Australian has an obituary of yet another WW2 veteran, Penrod Dean, who was a Japanese POW and therefore probably suffered more than many if not most of his fellow veterans, especially because the Japanese sentenced him to two years in solitary confinement for an escape.

His army service record summary is available here. It would be good to see this fleshed out. Perhaps he kept diaries or wrote his memoirs (the obituary says that he was writing a novel at the time of his death) . Penrod Dean, like my father and many others, lived through many changes but made a significant contribution to Australia, an Australia which has changed almost beyond recognition since WW2 but which has still, in ways that I find difficult to pinpoint, in some respects shaped the Australia in which we live.

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