Former Senior Curator mof Photographs, Australian War Memorial.

Comments

• Webb was a soldier in the Australian Naval and Expeditionary Force (AN&EF)and stationed in Rabaul. His service details are as follows: 1012 Staff Sergeant Alcon Benjamin Webb. He was a passenger on the SS Matunga, the Burns Philp ship that serviced the Australian garrison at Rabaul when it was captured by the German raider Wolf. The Wolf put a prize crew on the Matunga and the ships sailed together to a remote location on the nothern coast of New Guinea where the cargo was taken on board the Wolf and the crew and passengers were taken as prisoners. The Wolf eventually made her way back to Germany in an outstanding feat of seamshoip by the Wolf's captain and the prisoners were transfered to POW camps in Germany where they remained until the end of the war. There is some good detail about his time as a POW on the AWM web sit, look under People, then under WW1 red Cross wounded and missing.