Portrait of Keith Botterill, Oil on Board 61cm x 61cm
My portrait of the young NX42191 Private (Pte) Keith Botterill, of the 2/19th Infantry Battalion, honours the memory also of VX52128 Gunner (Gnr) Albert Neil Cleary (‘Aka Neil’) of the 2/15th Field Regiment, Royal Australian Artillery.
Out of 2,428 allied prisoners of war, Keith Botterill was one of only six to survive and live to tell the hidden stories of brutality and harsh conditions dished out by the Japanese soldiers and their Formosan guards both at Sandakan POW camp in North Borneo, Malaysia and the death marches to Ranau between the years of 1942 – 1945, WWII.
Amongst Keith disturbing memories he shared the important and moving story of the incredible loyalty, respect, courage and comradeship personified by the prisoners who supported and cared for each other during times of enormous suffering, torture, starvation and disease.
One such story was of his good mate, Neil Cleary, who had survived the first death march to camp Ranau and managed to escape into the jungle on the 1 Mar 1945. On the 12 Mar 1945: Neil had been found and turned in by the natives for a reward, whereupon the guards tied him up and made him kneel with a log between his legs. Over the course of eleven days, he was continuously tortured being bashed with fists and rifles, spat and urinated on. Suffering with dysentery and wearing only a ‘fundoshi’, loin cloth he was left to die in his own excrement. Keith and his mates picked his body up from the gutter where he had been dumped. They carried him to a stream, washed him and brought him back to their hut. He died in their arms, on the 20 March 1945. He was only 25 years old.
You can see Keith Botterill, in a looped video at the Australia War Memorial talking about his memories and this is what inspired me to paint this work.
1787 Total Number of Australians on Nominal Roll
641 Total Number British on Nominal Roll
6 Total Number who Survived
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