Major Harold Hillis Page DSO, MC (8 August 1888 – 1 July 1942) was an Australian Army officer and public servant.
He subsequently joined the Commonwealth Public Service and was posted to the Territory of New Guinea, serving as government secretary from 1923 and as acting administrator on a number of occasions.
[1] He was subsequently awarded the Military Cross for "conspicuous gallantry during a raid on the enemy's trenches" showing "great coolness and courage".
Page was wounded in the abdomen at the Battle of Mont Saint-Quentin in September 1918, and spent the remaining months of the war in England.
He rejoined the public service and was posted to the Territory of New Guinea, recently acquired by Australia as a League of Nations mandate.
[7] Nelson Tokiel of the New Guinea Police Force recalled hearing that Page and 20 others had been imprisoned in a tunnel and "only occasionally, under heavy guard, allowed out to wash themselves".
[8] Page is listed among those who were aboard the unmarked prisoner of war ship Montevideo Maru when it was torpedoed and sunk by an American submarine on 1 July 1942.
[9] After his death, Page's widow donated a large decorative wooden cross to the Rabaul Methodist Church in his memory.
The couple had two sons and three daughters together,[1] including Robert Page who, as a member of Z Special Unit, was executed by the Japanese for espionage in 1945.