Perthshire Advertiser, 19th December 1942:

“PERTH OFFICER A PRISONER AT SINGAPORE 

“Mr. and Mrs. James Robertson, 24 Tulloch Terrace, Perth, have been officially notified that their only son, Second Lieutenant D. R. Robertson, R.A., who was reported missing in the Far East in February this year, is a prisoner of war in Japanese hands at Singapore.

“Second Lieutenant Robertson, who is 29 years of age, was on the staff of the Commercial Bank in Edinburgh before joining up. A native of Perth, he was educated at Perth Academy and began his banking career in the Commercial Bank, Perth.”

COURTESY OF THE 600 GUNNERS PARTY ROLL OF HONOUR WEBPAGE

“The 600 Gunners Party

“After the fall of Singapore in February 1942, David Robertson was taken prisoner and spent time in the jail at Changi. In early October 1942 the Japanese decided that 600 men from the Royal Artillery units should be moved from Changi to another prison camp in Japan. The 600 were under the command of Lt. Col John Bassett.

“The party was taken to Singapore Docks where they boarded a ship believed to be the ‘Masta Maru’ and endured horrendous conditions. Many men were sick at this time, and Battery Sgt. Major Lambourne died of dysentery.

“On the journey it became clear that the ship was not heading for Japan, and on 5th November the ship docked at Rabaul, on the island of New Britain, in the Solomon Islands Group, where the men were unloaded. During this period the men were made to work in the tropical sun with many beatings.

“At the end of November the prisoners were assembled, and the fittest 517 were told that they were to be taken to build an airfield for the Japanese. 82 men were deemed not fit enough to go with this party, and only 18 of them survived to return to the U.K.

“The 517 were taken by another hell ship to the island of Ballale in New Guinea, to build an air strip. In time, probably on completion of the air strip, and because the allies were closing in, orders were given that the prisoners were to be ‘disposed of by whatever means possible’.

“Accordingly, on the 5th of March 1943, those who were still alive (the remainder having died of illness, or as a result of Allied bombing) were murdered in cold blood, and buried in a mass grave.

“One of the natives who lived on the island, and who had witnessed the events, gave an account of these events to the occupying Australian forces, and in 1946, the remains of these servicemen were recovered and re-interred in individual graves in the Commonwealth War Cemetery at Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, and marked ‘A soldier of the 1939-1945 War, Known Only to God.’

“The British Army Records had shown that the 600 Royal Artillery men died when an unknown ship was sunk somewhere in the Pacific - false information given to them by the Japanese.”