And with those solemn words blaring out from the shortwave radio, the recently elected Prime Minister of Australia, Robert Menzies warned of impending war.

It was Monday evening, September 3 1939, and young George Beard and his mates were in the middle of a game of bluff poker when they heard the broadcast, but they gave the gravity of the message little concern, as they believed the war was a phoney and too remote for serious consideration.

Talk of war, enlistment, Communism, and battles fought during World War One were regular topics of conversation which they dismissed with the innocence of youth, as a joke, for they believed the war was started by capitalists on both sides and would not last more than a few months.

As George wrote sixty years later, “These views would have upset my father, as they did some older men with whom I worked.”

“Strangely, I observed that the most vocal of these outspoken men, urging our youth to enlist, had not enlisted in the First World War.”

Rather, he found it was the older men, the early miners, who had already experienced the horrors of war, who were loath to suggest that he, or indeed any young man should enlist.

But as Mount Isa was geographically positioned far enough away from the rising tide of emotional enlistment, its young men were forgiven for taking the war lightly not least as Mount Isa Mines had been classed as a ‘protected industry’ under the Man Power Law.

It took twelve months before George and his mates realised their throw away concerns of the phoney new war was no longer a joke.

“To me, the war had now become serious, and I supported conscription,” he wrote.

“Not with stars in my eyes, or any sense of adventure, but as a matter of duty.”

Proud as his father was at this change of heart, George was a little perplexed by his father’s parting words of advice – try the Air Force son, you may find the Army is a bit rough for you.

George conjectured the remark as reference to his dislike of the rough and tumble of camping out bush with his father, Nene (AP) Beard, Mount Isa Mines’ first comptroller and only administrator for several years.

However, he took on board his father’s advice and applied for enlistment with the Royal Australian Air Force.

Disappointed that he was turned down as ineligible for air crew, for lack of a secondary education, he declined their second option to sign up as a cook and instead successfully enlisted in the Australian Imperial Forces (AIF) in Kelvin Grove on June 20, 1940.

His choice of defence force proved to be a rude introduction to enlisted life.

As he later recalled his first AIF lunch was a far cry from his Mum’s hale and hearty meals.

“As I looked at the swill of food with flies on top, I could hear Dad’s advice – join the Air Force son, you might find the army a bit rough.”

But it was too late, so he picked the flies out of the stew and ate it quickly, a decision that he would repeat with most meals during his incarceration as a prisoner-of-war not at the European Front but closer to home, in Singapore’s Changi prison and later, the infamous Burma Railway.

He acknowledged the naivety of his youthful disregard for the war in both Europe and in Malaya, writing of how he and his mates in Mount Isa had been enjoying the war.

And why not?

Their wages had increased along with the abundance of overtime at the mine, there was extra money for races, dances, girls and all the pleasures of a civilised mining town but as he wrote, his short time on Singapore Island had a sobering effect on his thoughts of war.

Less than two weeks after writing, what George was not to know would be, his last familial correspondence for several years; the Japanese landed on Singapore Island on Sunday February 8, 1942.

Notwithstanding the might of the Australian and British Allied Forces, Singapore fell to the Japanese one week later, on Sunday, February 15. The next morning, George found himself a registered Prisoner of War of the Japanese Army.

“I have never felt such a failure, more than a year of army training was wasted, and I found the thought of Australia falling to the Japs too frightening to dwell on.”

“So, my thoughts turned to such concerns as – Where will they take us? – Will they kill us? – Why did we surrender? – Could we have fought better?”

He had no answers. Instead, George and his fellow prisoners-of-war quickly experienced the brutality of their Japanese captors and the insidious nightmare that was to follow their every step through the jungles of Singapore Island.

Once in Changi Prison, the Australian and British POWs were met with the stench of rotting food, raw effluent running down the roads, cockroaches crawling everywhere but more disarming to the new arrivals was the lack of food.

As a result, George soon experienced his first gut-wrenching pang of hunger which lingered deep inside his stomach and only quietened when sleep eventually arrived. Hunger pangs tore at prisoners’ guts and even the little sustenance in the watery rice gruel dished out at meal times, lead men to succumb to dysentery.

Food was scarce by the day, and what was handed out, with the odd fly, bug or cockroach trapped in the mush was eaten not wasted. After surviving the dysentery ward, George was selected to join F Force on another ‘glory march’ through the steamy jungles of the Malay Peninsula to – ‘Godknowswhere’!

(Next week Part 2 – Soul destroying conditions working on the infamous Burma Railway)

Researched and written by Kim-Maree Burton,  photographs courtesy of Australian War Museum Archives and Beard family. Information sourced from George Beard’s memoirs: The Long Long Road, Isa to the Burma Railway and Back, Australian War Museum Archives and the Cloncurry Advocate.