Branch of Service

Army

Conflict

World War II (1939-1945)

Date of Enlistment

03/03/1941

Place of Enlistment

Paddington NSW

Gender

Male

Other Name(s)

Enlisted as John Baird

Date of Birth

28/02/1898

Place of Birth

Glasgow, Scotland

Address (at enlistment)

Thudungra NSW [sic, DVA WW2 Nominal roll], Fyshwick on ACT electoral rolls

Occupation

Dairy farmer

Next of Kin

Son of John and Margaret Barrie; husband of Marguerite Emily Barrie, of Fyshwick (to 1943), and later of Euree Street, Reid, Canberra ACT. Father of Margaret Wright (deceased), Mary, Jean, Nancy, June and John Barrie. Next of kin on DVA database listed as his cousin, Robert Barrie (in fact, his brother).

Service Number

NX68426

Final Rank

Private

Final Unit

2/3 Motor Ambulance Company, Australian Army Service Corps AIF

Died, as a prisoner of war, 15 June 1945 aged 56 years, Borneo.

AWM Roll of Honour Memorial Panel 79, Canberra ACT
Labuan Memorial, Malaysia: Panel 22.
St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Forrest, Canberra. Screen in Warriors' Chapel.

In 1929 Barrie took up the lease for a dairy farm at Fyshwick on the north side of the Molonglo River. He was one of eight dairymen who formed the Canberra Dairy Society in the 1930s. He described his operation in 1938 as having 62 dairy cattle with milking machines, two employees and his daughter was helping to run the operation. Besides being a dairy farmer, Barrie also delivered his milk. One Ainslie resident remembered "the milkman, Mr. Barrie, delivered our milk into a billy-can and often left a free pat of dairy butter or a jar of cream". In 1937 he toured dairying operations in Canada, the United States, Great Britain and Germany. Barrie was a foundation member and one of the first elders of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Forrest, Canberra ACT. He was also active in the church's Men's League.

Barrie was born in Scotland in 1889. He spent five years with the 19th Hussars and worked as a steelworker at the Parkhead Forge in Glasgow before migrating to Australia in about 1914 with his family. He began what he described as a 'pioneer farm' in Western Australia before moving to Dorrigo in New South Wales to become a dairy farmer. Barrie spent five years at Dorrigo before applying for the lease to Dairy Block No.5 (Fyshwick) in 1928, which he eventually incorporated as Duntroon Dairy Pty Ltd.

According to his son, Barrie tried to enlist in Queanbeyan as an ambulance driver but the recruiters knew that he was older than 45 years of age - the maximum age for drivers. Instead, Barrie enlisted in March 1941 under the pseudonym of John Baird. He described himself as being single, lowered his age by nine years and gave a cousin (actually his brother) in Thuddungra NSW as his next of kin instead of his wife and children.

He joined the 2/3rd Motor Ambulance Company, Australian Army Service Corps as a driver and arrived in Singapore in April 1941. Shortly afterwards he signed a Statutory Declaration in Kuala Lumpur admitting to his real identity. He became a prisoner of war in February 1942 with the fall of Singapore and imprisoned in Changi. In July 1942 Barrie was included in 'B' Force and sent to Borneo along with 1400 other POWs. After a horrendous nine day journey with little water they landed at Sandakan, Borneo where the prisoners were used as slave labour to build an airfield. By early 1945 the Japanese began to send POWs on a series of forced marches inland to Ranau - the Sandakan death marches. Barrie left Sandakan on the second march on 29 May 1945. He died during the march on 15 June 1945 of malaria (according to the Japanese).

Barrie is commemorated on the Labuan Memorial in Borneo. The Labuan Memorial was primarily intended to commemorate the officers and men of the Australian Army and Air Force who died while prisoners of war in Borneo and the Philippines from 1942 to 1945, and during the 1945 operations for the recovery of Borneo, and who have no known grave.

Australia. Department of Veterans' Affairs. World War 2 nominal roll. <http://www.ww2roll.gov.au/>
Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Debt of Honour Register. <http://www.cwgc.org/cwgcinternet/search/>
AWM Roll of Honour and Roll of Honour Circulars http://www.awm.gov.au/database/roh.asp
AWM Prisoners of War and Missing in the Far East and South West Pacific Islands
AWM Collections Record : P02467.843
Presbyterian Church of Australia. Church of St Andrew, Canberra. Form and order for the dedication of the memorial window and memorials in the Warriors' Chapel, Sunday, 14th November, 1948. Canberra, 1948.
The Echo [quarterly newsletter of the Presbyterian Canberra Parish of St Andrew]: no. 12, December 1945 (p.4)
Barbara Petersen, 'Acts of Faith: The Story of the Church of St. Andrew, Canberra', Brolga Press, 2001 (p.51, 60)
Ross F. Rowe, 'The Building and Furnishing of the Presbyterian Church of St. Andrew's', 1992
Lynette Ramsay Silver, 'Sandakan: A Conspiracy of Silence', 1998
Louise Lyon (ed.), 'Voices of Old Ainslie', 1995 (p.8)
Stories from the ACT Memorial, 'The Dairyman of Sandakan', ACT Heritage Library www.library.act.gov.au/find/history/stories_from_the_act_memorial
ACT Electoral Rolls 1916 to 1967 http://canberraheritageportal.org/default.php
The Canberra Times - 4 May 1938, 15 August 1942, 29 March 1943, 2 November 1945
Archives ACT - TL7184 (Parts 1,2,3)
Information and images provided by John Barrie (junior)
NAA RecordSearch - Series B883 (Second Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1939-1947)