''After capture, they were beaten with sticks, slapped in the face and kicked by some of the accused. It was then decided to execute the PW [prisoner of war].
"One prisoner whilst awaiting his execution was beaten about the feet and legs to such an extent that he could not stand. He was thereupon executed where he was then sitting by being struck a heavy blow (by a sword) on the back of the neck ...The second PW was then executed by shooting ...''
- Evidence for Japanese War Crimes regarding the deaths of Lance-corporal Spencer Walklate and Private Ron Eagleton
Spencer Walklate, according to the lone survivor of the ill-fated mission that resulted in the St George prop's torture and death, was a strapping fellow, a family man and tough enough to walk the beat as a cop around Redfern's meanest streets.
Walklate, a father of two, was also courageous enough to join the top secret Z Special Unit - now known as the SAS - despite the army's only promise to volunteers was they'd get a wooden cross when they were killed. As a member of a unit that undertook missions such as paddling into Singapore Harbour to sink Japanese ships, the odds were stacked against the footballer returning home.
In April 1945, Walklate was one of eight men selected for Operation Copper - named after Walklate's occupation - to conduct a reconnaissanceof Muschu Island off the north coast of Papua New Guinea. Military intelligence wanted to confirm whether the two Japanese long-range guns were still in position because they'd pose a deadly risk to the Australian invasion of Wewak.
Mick Dennis, 94, and a recipient of the Military Medal, recalled befriending the front-rower, who played 15 games for the Dragons in 1943, during the lead-up to the mission.
"I get asked a lot about Spencer but I didn't know him for that long," Dennis says. "For the time I knew him we were pretty close. He didn't have to join up; he was in a protected service. He was a family man but he wanted to do his bit - a decent fellow.
"I asked where he was stationed, and Spencer said 'Regent Street'. I spent time instructing the police at the barracks, and my father was in the police force, so we had that in common.
"I didn't know he was a footballer until we spoke. I grew up in Clovelly and was going to trial for Easts. I played beach football, a hard game because you're running on the bloody sand, and you'd play against blokes like [prop Jack] Arnold from Easts and at 5 foot 9 I'd get in 'n tackle 'em.
"As it turned out, we lived less than a kilometre apart but it took a war for us to meet. You could tell he was a prop; big and strong. I can picture him as if he's here now ... [the Japanese] butchered them, the bastards. If I'd known that at the time I would've gone on a proper warpath ..."
Operation Copper was seemingly doomed from the start. The commandos disembarked a navy patrol boat in pitch darkness and torrential rain at 2am and paddled ashore. The current was cruel, and while Dennis's craft became stuck on what he thought was coral, Walklate's was swamped by the surf. Equipment was swept overboard and the one radio that survived the landing was too wet to use. The group's signallers took it apart, let it dry and buried it before they continued their mission.
Some of the lost equipment was washed ashore, and when the Japanese found it the island became a hunting ground with 1000 troops in pursuit of the eight. Their situation desperate, Walklate and three others headed to sea on logs in the hope they'd be spotted by a plane or a patrol boat. Two men drowned, while Walklate and Eagleton were captured.
Dennis and the three others returned to where they'd buried the radio but were ambushed. Dennis escaped and made a blood oath as he fought on alone. "I thought, 'I'm on an island where there's no way off. My boys were killed or captured, and if they're going to kill my mates I'll kill as many of them as I can.'"
After days of hunger, killing and surviving close calls, Dennis, whose sister Clara won the gold medal for the 200 metres breastroke at the 1932 Olympics, eventually found a plank which he used to cross the shark-infested waters to PNG. He spent 10 terrifying hours in the water, circled by a shark: "I wasn't so scared of the Japs but the bloody shark terrified me."
Walklate was killed days before Dennis made his escape. The remains of Eagleton and Walklate were discovered in an old Japanese medical dump last year. While the discovery provided closure for their families and friends, the file that contained evidence - including the confession by Waichi Ogawa that he murdered Walklate with one blow from his sword - created an outrage because, despite the barbaric treatment the Australians endured, their government wilted under pressure from America to wrap the war crime trials up and didn't pursue those involved in the murders who didn't follow Ogawa's lead and commit suicide .
Lance-corporal Spencer Walklate, a one-time Dragons prop lost in the mud for 68 years, was never forgotten by Z Special Unit. This Anzac Day a much larger number will salute a special Saint when The Last Post sounds at 4pm before the Roosters-Dragons match.
