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Keith Charles Thomas Forsyth
1922 - 2013

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• Birth	9 Apr 1922	Inverell
  Gender	Male
  Died	29 Oct 2013	Inverell NSW
  Person ID	I231	Inverell Forsyths
  Last Modified	23 Feb 2022

  
  

  Father	George Forsyth,   b. 22 Sep 1883,   d. 4 Apr 1968, Inverell NSW
  Mother	May Florence Grills,   b. 8 Aug 1894, Uralla Reg No 34042/1894 ,   d. 28 Mar 1926, Inverell Reg No 3401/1926
  Married	12 Jan 1916	St Andrews Church Inverell Reg No 3806/1916
  Family ID	F19	Group Sheet

  
  

  Family	Living
  Children	1. Living   2. Living
  Family ID	F93	Group Sheet

  
  

• Notes

  Service Record Name FORSYTH, KEITH CHARLES THOMAS Service Australian Army Service Number NX40563 Date of Birth 9 Apr 1920 Place of Birth INVERELL, NSW Date of Enlistment 26 Jun 1940 Locality on Enlistment BUKKULLA, NSW Place of Enlistment TAMWORTH, NSW Next of Kin FORSYTH, GEORGE Date of Discharge 4 Jan 1946 Rank Private Posting at Discharge 2/18 Battalion WW2 Honours and Gallantry None for display Prisoner of War Yes From Clan Forsyth Newsletter March 2012 MY STORY by Keith Forsyth For 89 -year-old Keith Forsyth, a life that has been a mixed bag of adversity, desperation, disappointment, anticipation and joy has left him with a remarkable tale to tell. His tale is not always pretty, but it is one Keith tells with a good-humoured glint in his eye that marks him out as being an extraordinary man. Keith was born in Evans Street in Inverell and lost his mother at a very young age, he was only three years old when his mother died and his father sent him off to live with his grandmother in the property called Glenorchy at Bukkalla. I was not quite eight when I started going to school, and I went all right,Keith said. My main trouble was that my father wasn't ?education minded. I used to walk half a mile to school of a morning and the half a mile home of an afternoon The teacher I had when I first started wasn't very good, but he was replaced shortly after I arrived and the next teacher was a really good one, and I went as far as the Intermediate (School Certificate) where I got four out of five passes, Keith said. After completing his education, Keith started his first job, which was on the land. I took a job that turned out to be a droving job, we were driving sheep from Collarenebri to Mogg Swamp, Keith said. It was 1937 and in those days if you saw two cars driving along the road it was a busy day! Well, things went all right there for a while, but I lost that job because I stuck up for the rights of another bloke who was working with me at the time who was being underpaid, Keith said. While representing the rights of another was a noble thing to do, the result was less satisfying. We were both sacked and turned off the property, and that wasn't all that pleasant because we had a 60 mile walk to get into Moree, Keith said with a smile. Neither of us had any food. But we were lucky, we only walked 15 or 20 miles before got a lift with a mail vehicle - and they only ran one or twice a week in those days, Keith said. With his return to Bukkulla, Keith's next job took him back to family. I worked for my uncle who had about 3000 acres and no children, and I got on very well with him and then I enlisted in the Army in 1939, Keith said. Taken prisoner by the Japanese at Singapore at the age of 19, Keith was interned at the famous Changi prisoner of war camp where he suffered from Typhus before being moved to Blakang Mati where he remained for three years until the end of hostilities in 1945. We had one of the lowest death rates but one of the highest work rates,Keith said. â??I was still recovering from Typhus when I got there and we worked for hours and hours without a break and the food we got was barely enough to sustain us. The camp was the thing that probably saved us though because it was originally built for native troops who had never used it, the huts were up off the ground and we had proper latrines, so we didn't have as much dysentery as they had in other places. But the camp was not disease free and Keith did suffer from Malaria for a long time afterwards, just as the brutality of his experience stayed with him for years. I slept next to Pat Rolff from Warialda on one side (he settled in Tamworth after the war) and Lloyd Darlington who was also from Warialda and Bob Smith slept on the veranda about 10 yards away for those three years.Keith said. There was a chap in the camp who worked as a radio engineer for British General Electric and he managed to set up a radio and was receiving news of the BBC, we heard about the A bomb and VP from that. But just because we knew didn't mean much changed until the Japanese surrendered, which our guard definitely didn't want to do.â?� The Japanese surrendered on August 15, 1945, but it was not until one tense week later, on August 22, that Keith left Blakang Mati, and as Keith looked at Singapore for the last time he told a mate, Doug Fraser, that would never eat rice again; and he didn't for 20 years. Keith returned to his uncle's farm at Bukkulla, but there were years of coming to grips with his wartime experiences as they manifested themselves in various forms - today we would call it Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. It was a good 15 years after the war before I could settle into a proper routing and there was one time I didn't think I would live to be 50. Keith said. I suffered with Malaria for years afterwards. In the early 1950s they came out with a one dose cure for malaria, it was a six months course and I had to take five ?doses of the course. Keith said. Working hard to make his uncle's farm one of the most improved in the district, Keith's luck began to change when he met the young school teacher Heather McBean in 1956. I remember we used to talk about the dark circles Keith always had beneath his eyes, Heather said. By 1959 they were an item and were married in 1961 when they set up house on Abington Station near Bundarra. I got the job of the overseer there and it was four good years. Keith said. My daughters were born while we were there and we managed to put aside enough to buy a 200 acre dairy farm. There was no livestock on it so we converted it to sheep and put in a very good crop of wheat that year too, which really helped. With his daughters, Ellen and Ann, now working away from the district, Keith and Heather enjoy that quite exceptional something offered by this area to those able to reflect upon very extraordinary lives - the quiet life. Thank you to the person who describes Heather as her favourite Kindergarten teacher and who passed this item to Elizabeth Forsyth for our newsletter. Keith is a descendant of John & Maria Forsyth. Great story Keith!