Australia said farewell last month to a remarkable Tasmanian man of the cloth, one who more than others experienced personal suffering as a minister of religion.

John Lovett May – who died in January, aged 96 – went to war not with a gun but with a Bible, as a young Anglican priest volunteering to serve as an army chaplain when World War Two started.

His was the misfortune to be captured by the Japanese in New Guinea from the fall of Rabaul in January, 1942. He spent the rest of the war as a prisoner of war in Japan.

A Mercury obituary last month recounted how he had been forcibly separated from his fellow Australians of the 2/22nd Battalion’s Lark Force, of which he was chaplain, and how these men died when their transport ship, the Montevideo Maru, was sunk when torpedoed off the Philippines that July 1. More than 1,000 Australian PoWs perished, this country’s greatest maritime disaster.

The obituary added: “The fate of these men, for whose spiritual welfare he had been responsible, haunted him for the rest of his life.” If there was eventual solace for him it came with the late creation, in 2004, of a national memorial to the lost PoWs of the Montevideo Maru – a memorial he had campaigned for over many years.

What Chaplain May went through underlines the generally overlooked role of these clergymen in the terrible theatre of war, some paying the ultimate sacrifice. There are 16 from the chaplains department of the army honoured at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. Three were victims of the Japanese in North Borneo.

One was a Tasmanian Anglican minister, Albert Henry Thompson, from Launceston. He was among the many who died on the infamous death marches from their prison camp at Sandakan on the east coast through rugged tropical jungle terrain to the west coast destination of Ranau.

Of the 2,400-plus Allied prisoners (Australian and British) forced on this trek, about half died en route, the rest at their destination. There were just six survivors, for they managed to escape.

Chaplain Thompson was captured in the fall of Singapore in February, 1942, and after being held in the notorious Changi Prison he was shipped out as part of B Force, 1,494 PoWs, to Sandakan that July. There the Japanese had them build an airfield with not much more than their bare hands.

In mid-1945, when the Japanese were finally in retreat from the Allied fightback, they moved their prisoners out from Sandakan, supposedly to use again as “coolie labour” on the other side of the island.

It is difficult to imagine the horrors they faced on this, coming as it did on top of the harsh treatment inflicted in the prison camp (the total death toll there was put at 1,400).

Fifteen Tasmanians died either at the camp, on the death marches or at Ranau. To understand more of what the PoWs had suffered at the hands of the Japanese, read Lynette Ramsay Silver’s 1998 book, Sandakan, A Conspiracy Of Silence.

This is what she wrote of their Sandakan treatment: “They endured frequent beatings and were subjected to other, more diabolical punishment. Sustained only by an inadequate and ever-diminishing rice ration and with little medical attention, many died of malnutrition, maltreatment and disease. In 1945, in response to an order from the Japanese High Command that no prisoners were to survive the war, those still able to walk were sent on a series of death marches into the interior. Any unable to keep up were ruthlessly murdered. Those left behind were systematically starved to death, or massacred.”

There were three such marches for destination Ranau, 250 kilometres away under the shadow of Mt Kinabalu. The route was through virgin jungle, infested with crocodiles, snakes and wild pigs. There were only sparse rations, the emaciated prisoners wore ragged loincloth, and some had no boots.

Chaplain Thompson was 42 when he died, near a place called Tampias. His death was on June 19; he was on the second of the marches (570 set out, only 118 reached Ranau). Silver wrote that at 1.30pm on that fateful day when his PoW column was at the top of a range about two kilometres east of Tampias, and thus having covered much of the distance to Ranau, Chaplain Thompson was walking with difficulty because of a large suppurating ulcer on a foot.

He was removed from the line by two Japanese officers and ordered to go no further. Whether he was killed or died from his deteriorating condition isn’t clear, but Silver wrote: “Between 16 and 20 June, when the column arrived at Paginatan, Thompson and at least 35 other Australians perished.”

His remains were later recovered and he was buried on the east coast island of Labuan, where there is a large Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery.

(Silver also wrote that there was a wrong identification for the body, that, in fact, the one in the grave where Chaplain Thompson was said to be was that of a young soldier from New South Wales and the chaplain’s body was in another nearby grave).

Of Chaplain May’s dedication to achieving recognition for his countrymen lost on the Montevideo Maru, at his memorial service in Hobart last month this was recorded: “Increasingly, as more open discussions of the events in Rabaul occurred, the tragedy that occurred nearly 68 years ago occupied John’s mind, and he was very worried by the lack of recognition and resolution for the families and friends of those lost on the ship. He spoke in interviews, on documentaries, and to families and friends. joining efforts to push for a national memorial and to have the tragedy more openly and widely recognised. In 2004, at the dedication and unveiling in Ballarat of a small memorial to those lost on the Montevideo Maru, John spoke the words of the blessing, Deep Peace, heard in the service today.”

The memorial service also heard the words Chaplain May wrote in his Ballade of Home, penned at his PoW camp at Zentsuji, Japan, on October 20, 1942:

“I mind the gums near the river-shore,
the sheen of the up-thrown hay,
the bite of the wind on the mountain-moor,
swift yachts and driven spray,
the dear, quaint streets beside the bay
and times when all was fair.
I shall go back, and, come that day, I know I shall find them there.”

He did come back, to continue a long service to his church, and to honour the memory of his lost comrades. Lest We Forget.