E.R. (Bon) Hall

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Bon Hall was born at Fassifern, New South Wales and joined the Royal Australian Air Force in May 1937. He was commissioned in 1940 and served as a staff officer at RAAF Headquarters. In October 1941 he was posted on loan to the Royal Air Force in the Far East where he became the first RAAF officer to at Butterworth. After Japan entered the war he returned via Kuala Lumpur to Singapore where he designed and directed the construction of the mobile signals unit which sent the last Air Force message from Singapore before it fell.

On evacuation to Java, he became a signals officer at Tjililitan and at West Java Fighter Sector. Following the capitulation of Java he became a prisoner of war of the Japanese in March 1942. Six months later he went by "hell ships" to Burma for work on the Burma-Thailand railway. He was in Thailand when the war finished.

After the war he remained in the RAAF and was a staff officer in many appointments, including a tour with the Air Attache, Washington, D.C., USA. For the last four years before he retired in 1968 he was Commanding Officer of the RAAF School of Radio.