Raymond Moult-Spiers arrived in Australia in the late 1930s. He worked on a farm in Avoca in New South Wales and joined the Army on 21 June 1940. He was one of the earliest members of the 2/19th Battalion, 8th Division and left Australia with the division on the Queen Mary, on 4 February 1941, arriving in Singapore on 18 February 1941. As Ron Mumford writes in Echoes of War in Avoca 'the 2/19th was to hold the unenviable record of losing more men than any other Australian battalion formed during World War II'. (90)
On the surrender of Singapore Moult-Spiers became a prisoner of war, and in April 1943 he 'was one of 3,400 Australians of F Force who were taken from Singapore to work on the railway in Thailand.' (91) While a prisoner of war Moult-Spiers kept a diary. The diary included sketches painted with brushes made of bamboo sticks and his own hair with paint made from pigments of red and yellow clay and vegetables.
Moult-Spiers returned to Australia on 10 October 1945 and after three months in hospital was discharged on 19 February 1946. After his return to Australia he worked as a storekeeper and post master at Horsley Park in New South Wales and bought a small farm. He continued to paint, exhibiting in Sydney and Auckland. He later moved to Stradbroke Island in Queensland.
Moult-Spiers wrote a poem 'The Railway', composed, according to correspondence by the author, on the Thailand-Burma Railway 'while treking with F Force from Ban Pong to Nikki No. 1 [1943]'. The poem in manuscript and correspondence from the author on the poem's composition are held in the UNSW Canberra, Academy Library's collection.
Source: Mumford, Ron. Echoes of War in Avoca (Avoca, New South Wales : Avoca Australia Remembers Committee in association with Berrima District Historical & Family History Society, c. 2011)
