This is the story of Jack Thomas.

Jack served in the 2/3^rd Australian Machine Gun Battalion. He had been working in the family grocer’s shop in Broken Hill and would soon find himself a slave labourer on the Burma Railway and in a Japanese coalmine. His determination to survive was nurtured by a senior officer with whom he served: Lieutenant Colonel Edward Dunlop – the surgeon nicknamed ‘Weary’ who would subsequently be knighted for unfailing courage under duress.

Jack’s story was collected as part of a oral history community project called World War II in Words where South Australian World War Two veterans shared their stories in their own words.