In 1939, John Oakeshott was a 38-year-old doctor living in Lismore, NSW, Australia, with his wife and two children.

When war came, he decided to put his medical training to use in the army, joining the 10th Australian General Hospital and shipping out to Singapore in 1941, where he would become a prisoner of war upon its surrender.

Oakeshott was sent to Borneo a year later, reaching Sandakan in June 1943. In 1945 he was in the second group forced to march to Ranau, and was among the last 38 prisoners left alive at Ranau at the end of July.

After a guard warned one of the POWs that the intention was to kill them, this prisoner offered John the chance to join their small escape group, but he chose to stay with the sick and dying men, giving another man his boots to enable his escape.

He and 14 others were shot by Japanese guards on 27 August 1945, 12 days after Japan had surrendered. His family had heard nothing since a brief Red Cross postcard in late 1942. Two months after celebrating the end of the war in hope of John’s return, the grim telegram arrived.

Today, he is buried in CWGC Labuan War Cemetery in a grave with four of the men he chose not to leave.