Robert Kerr "Jock" McLaren MC & Bar (27 April 1902 – 3 March 1956) was a decorated Australian Army officer, who rose from enlisted rank and was noted for his involvement in guerrilla operations against the Japanese during World War II.
Early life
McLaren was born on 27 April 1902 in Kirkcaldy, Scotland. His father was James Bryce McLaren, a chemist, while his mother was Annie Maxwell (née Kerr).
Military career
World War I
During World War I, McLaren served in the British Army with the 51st Highland Division. After the war he moved to Queensland, Australia where he served as a veterinary officer in Bundaberg. In 1938, he married Catherine Ahern in Childers.
World War II
Following the outbreak of World War II, he continued to serve as a veterinary officer, although he joined the Citizens Military Force in March 1941. Shortly after, he volunteered for overseas service and opted to transfer to the Australian Imperial Force. He was assigned to the 2/10th Australian Field Workshops with the 8th Australian Division in British Malaya when Singapore fell to the Japanese army. At this time, he was thirty-nine years old.
He could not endure imprisonment and immediately organized an escape party. Escaping from the POW camp with two comrades, they successfully made it almost to Kuala Lumpur, often with the aid of Malayan Chinese and Chinese communist guerrillas, before they were betrayed to the Japanese by Malays. It was during this escape that McLaren began to hate the Japanese as he passed the bodies of hundreds of Chinese men, women and children, who had been tortured, raped, and then killed by Japanese occupation forces.
Imprisoned once again, McLaren sought to escape from the Singapore prison camps. He managed to add himself to a contingent of prisoners being sent to Borneo to a labour camp. Once he arrived at Berhala Island, in Sandakan Harbour on northeastern Borneo, he began, with several other prisoners, to plan an escape. Hearing that they were to be sent to a more permanent camp at Sandakan with less opportunity for escape, they moved up their escape and, stealing a boat from a nearby leper colony, they set off to the Tawi Tawi islands where they were told other Australians were fighting as guerrillas. On their arrival, they soon made contact with Filipino guerrillas, who assisted McLaren and six others to make contact, in June 1943, with the guerrilla organization on Mindanao. Their escape from Berhala Island saved their lives as they then missed the early 1945 Sandakan Death Marches.
Eventually, McLaren and his comrades arrived on Mindanao where they made contact with American and Filipino guerrillas under the overall command of Lieutenant Colonel Wendell Fertig. Their hopes of returning to Australia to join formal army units were curtailed due to the need for experienced leaders for the guerrilla forces and lack of transportation. Eventually, some of the party were sent to Australia by submarine.
Surprisingly, McLaren wished to remain behind, as transfer to a formal unit would not only inhibit his actions and desire for revenge, but his age would preclude participation in combat. Except for a short leave in Australia toward the end of the war, he spent most of the war years serving as a coastwatcher and guerrilla leader. He participated in numerous raids on the Japanese, sometimes in command of small, heavily armed, coastal vessels. At one time, he radioed information on a ship carrying 3,000 Japanese troops to another island. Most of the troops were killed or drowned when American submarines sank the ship. The rest were killed by Filipinos as the Japanese survivors reached shore exhausted and in no condition to fight. McLaren's numerous land and sea guerrilla actions so disrupted Japanese operations that eventually the Japanese placed a reward of 70,000 pesos on McLaren's head.
During one period of his service in the Philippines, McLaren commandeered a 26-foot whaleboat that he called The Bastard. McLaren and his crew often used surprise to their advantage, entering Japanese-controlled ports in broad daylight, to fire at supply vessels and piers with machine guns and a mortar, before retreating.