Recently, the Australian War Memorial, Canberra received a donation of one of Australia’s oldest unopened beer bottles.During their time at the Wingham Hotel, friends Stanley (Stan) Lewis and Frederick (Fred) Hume purchased this bottle of New South Wales’s famous Tooth’s Draught Ale beer bottle with the intention of sharing it upon their return from the Second World War.
According to the Facebook page of Australian War Memorial, after being imprisoned in Singapore, Fred and Stan were handed over to work on the infamous Thai-Burma railway. Twenty-three-year-old Stan was among the 3,000 allied POWs who died on August 25, 1943, as a result of this trauma. In Thailand, he is now buried at the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery.
After being held captive in Singapore until August 1945, Fred left for Australia the next month. The friends gave the bottle to Stan’s mother, Rubie Lewis, before they left for Singapore. For centuries after his death, it has stayed unopened as a memorial to a friendship that was cut short by war.
