Fulfilling a war hero widow’s wish

KOTA KINABALU: All he knows about his father is that the senior Frank Austin was a World War II hero and that his mother had an undying love for the captain she married. “I am sad not to have known my father as he died before I was born,” said the junior Austin, who carries his father’s name, when met at the World War II War Memorial at Tanjung Purun in Labuan. He was accompanied by his wife Diana.

He was there to fulfil the wish of his late mother, Helen Frank, who died in New South Wales on March 1 at the age of 93. “She wanted to be laid to rest next to my father as a sign of her undying love for him and had expressed this to me before she died,” said Austin, who brought her ashes from Australia for the purpose.

Keeping his word: Frank and Diana getting set to bury his mother’s ashes beside his father’s grave at the World War II Memorial at Tanjung Purun in Labuan.

The older Austin, from the 2/9th Australian Armoured Regiment, had married his sweetheart when he was 30. Three years later on May 10, 1945, he was killed in Tarakan, Indonesia. He was one of 3,908 Allied soldiers who were killed in a fight to release Borneo from Japanese occupation.

“He would be 96 if he were alive today,” the junior Austin said. Looking solemn but contented, Austin, 73, added: “My father has been gone for 66 years and my mother never re-married. She loved him so much.”

-thestar online.