Lionel Colin Matthews

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Captain Lionel Colin Matthews was awarded the George Cross [1] for the courage he showed in resisting Japanese torture during the Second World War.

He entlisted with the Australian Imperial Forces and won the Military Cross while serving in Malaya. He was interned by the Japanese in the notorious Changi prison after the fall of Singapore on the 15th of February 1942. He was transferred to Borneo, with nearly fifteen hundred other Australians, and was able to set up contacts with allied agents and sympathisers. He collected information to relay to these contacts and helped organise prisoner escapes with Filipino guerrillas.

The Japanese learnt of his role and arrested Matthews and others. They were interrogated, tortured and starved before being sentenced to death. Despite his ordeal he refused to betray his colleagues or any details of their resistance planning. Matthews was shot by firing squad, along with two members of the Borneo constabulary and six other Asians on the 2nd of March 1944 at Kuchin. In 1946 his body was exhumed and laid to rest in the Labuan war cemetery. He was born on the 15th of August 1912 in Adelaide.