Historical information
The cased Memorial Stone originates from Hellfire Pass, the name of a remote railway cutting on the former Burma (“Death”) Railway, in Thailand. It was a particularly difficult section of the line, which was built without appropriate tools, using the forced labour of Australian, and other allied Prisoners of War. Many men died during the building of the railway, 69 on the Hellfire Pass alone. Archibald Fredrick Roberts, one of the original 1923 schoolboys of Mentone Grammar, was taken prisoner by Japanese forces in 1942. Though he did not work on the railway, he died through malnutrition and forced labour in Ambon, 1945 and is remembered in our Avenue of Honour (Bayview Campus)
