Death
On 8 February 1942, the Japanese began their assault on Singapore, with the Battle of Sarimbun Beach; and Ball's unit was overwhelmed with the task of evacuating themany wounded to a dressing station known as "Hill 80".
Ball was working from a forward dressing station, near the aerodrome at Tengah, and his team were working tirelessly collecting and transporting the wounded.
On the afternoon of 9 February 1942, conditions were such that the medical officer in charge of the dressing station ordered all of his personnel to evacuate to "Hill 80". Ball, along with another driver, Private William Lewis, and ambulance orderly Private Alf Woodman, and the medical officer, Captain John Park, all traveling in the same vehicle, never reached "Hill 80"; and, although despatch riders were sent out to locate the men, they could not be found, and all four were reported "missing", with the hope that they were being held as prisoners of war.
On 9 May 1942, three months later, a working party of Australian prisoners of war, sent out to cut feed for the Japanese horses, found the bodies of the four men. They had all been tortured by the Japanese, before they were executed. One of the bodies had its wrists tightly bound with wire. The identity discs on the body identified the soldier as Harold Ball.
Read more about this topic: Harold Ball
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Such as the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman’s Woe!”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)
“To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?”
—Socrates (469–399 B.C.)
“In the death of my son, now more than two years ago, I seem to have lost a beautiful estate,—no more. I cannot get it nearer to me.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)