Mr Doug
Dick Tooth (41)
Two years ago, I was flicking through the pages of Jack Pollard's book "Australian Rugby, The Game and the Players", and discovered that KM Ramsay (player #303) was born in my old home town of Quirindi, NSW.
This gave me the desire to research the history of what was "Quirindi's First Wallaby"!
Kenelm Mackenzie (Mac) Ramsay was born at Quirindi on 28th August 1914. He played for Hawkesbury Agricultural College, played 13 first grade games for Drummoyne and 66 for Randwick (including their 1938 Premiership team), and played 13 games for New South Wales. Positions played were flanker, lock, no. 8 and prop. Mac played four test matches for Australia, and scored our only try in the Bledesloe Cup match at the Sydney Cricket Ground on 13th August 1938, which New Zealand won 14-6, in front of 20,000 people.
Cpl. KM Ramsay (NX25468), AIF was amongst the 1,053 Australians, comprising 845 soldiers (mostly commandos) and 208 civilians, on board the Japanese prison ship the Montevideo Maru. They were locked in holds below decks, and were being taken from Rabaul, New Britain, off the northern coast of New Guinea, to the Japanese-occupied Hainan Island, China, to work in the coal mines.
Mac died aged 27 years and 308 days, when the Montevideo Maru was torpedoed by the American submarine USS Sturgeon, 65 miles north west of Luzon, The Philippines, on 1st July 1942 (70 years ago today)! The MM carried no markings to indicate that she was a prison ship.
Sadly, the families were not advised, and successive Australian Governments covered up the facts, not wanting to "offend one of our allies"!!........ [That's the "political" side to this thread].
The incident has been described as: "The greatest single loss of Australian life in World War 2", and "The greatest maritime disaster in Australia's history"!
Almost twice as many Australians lost their lives in one night, as died in the ten years of the Vietnam War.
Only one eyewitness account has ever emerged. After 60 years, the sole surviving Japanese sailor described the "death cries" of trapped Australians going down with the ship, whilst others sang "Auld Lang Syne"!
This story is a sad example of how WW2 impacted on so many elite sportsmen and their families. Looking through the Australian team that played in Mac's last test, the Bledisloe Cup match in Sydney in 1938, I discovered that six of those players died "young" in various theatres of the war, aged: 25, 26, 27, 29, 31 and 32!
And we complain if we lose one of our Wallabies for a few weeks or 'the rest of the season', due to injury!
The story of Mac Ramsay puts that back into its right perspective.
This gave me the desire to research the history of what was "Quirindi's First Wallaby"!
Kenelm Mackenzie (Mac) Ramsay was born at Quirindi on 28th August 1914. He played for Hawkesbury Agricultural College, played 13 first grade games for Drummoyne and 66 for Randwick (including their 1938 Premiership team), and played 13 games for New South Wales. Positions played were flanker, lock, no. 8 and prop. Mac played four test matches for Australia, and scored our only try in the Bledesloe Cup match at the Sydney Cricket Ground on 13th August 1938, which New Zealand won 14-6, in front of 20,000 people.
Cpl. KM Ramsay (NX25468), AIF was amongst the 1,053 Australians, comprising 845 soldiers (mostly commandos) and 208 civilians, on board the Japanese prison ship the Montevideo Maru. They were locked in holds below decks, and were being taken from Rabaul, New Britain, off the northern coast of New Guinea, to the Japanese-occupied Hainan Island, China, to work in the coal mines.
Mac died aged 27 years and 308 days, when the Montevideo Maru was torpedoed by the American submarine USS Sturgeon, 65 miles north west of Luzon, The Philippines, on 1st July 1942 (70 years ago today)! The MM carried no markings to indicate that she was a prison ship.
Sadly, the families were not advised, and successive Australian Governments covered up the facts, not wanting to "offend one of our allies"!!........ [That's the "political" side to this thread].
The incident has been described as: "The greatest single loss of Australian life in World War 2", and "The greatest maritime disaster in Australia's history"!
Almost twice as many Australians lost their lives in one night, as died in the ten years of the Vietnam War.
Only one eyewitness account has ever emerged. After 60 years, the sole surviving Japanese sailor described the "death cries" of trapped Australians going down with the ship, whilst others sang "Auld Lang Syne"!
This story is a sad example of how WW2 impacted on so many elite sportsmen and their families. Looking through the Australian team that played in Mac's last test, the Bledisloe Cup match in Sydney in 1938, I discovered that six of those players died "young" in various theatres of the war, aged: 25, 26, 27, 29, 31 and 32!
And we complain if we lose one of our Wallabies for a few weeks or 'the rest of the season', due to injury!
The story of Mac Ramsay puts that back into its right perspective.
