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:
“For in the word death
There is nothing to grasp; nothing to catch or claim;
Nothing to adapt the skill of the heart to, skill
In surviving, for death it cannot survive,
Only resign the irrecoverable keys.
The wave falters and drowns. The coulter of joy
Breaks. The harrow of death
Depends. And there are thrown up waves.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“Sin their conception, their birth weeping,
Their life a general mist of error,
Their death a hideous storm of terror.”
—John Webster (c. 1580–1638)
“A man that apprehends death no more dreadfully but as a drunken sleep, careless, reckless, and fearless of what’s past, present, or to come; insensible of mortality, and desperately mortal.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)