Died on Active Service with the 2nd A.I.F. (after returning from action in China). Carried the rank of Sergeant, was to have been commissioned as a Lieutenant the day after his death. Albert James Potts's name is located at panel 11 in the Commemorative Area at the Australian War Memorial POTTS ALBERT JAMES : Service Number - VX43909 : Date of birth - 06 Apr 1920 : Place of birth - HAWTHORN VIC : Place of enlistment - CAULFIELD VIC : Next of Kin - POTTS JAMES Z Special Unit (also known as Special Operations Executive (SOE), Special Operations Australia (SOA) or the Services Reconnaissance Department (SRD)) was a joint Allied special forces unit formed during the Second World War to operate behind Japanese lines in South East Asia. Predominantly Australian, Z Special Unit was a specialist reconnaissance and sabotage unit that included British, Dutch, New Zealand, Timorese and Indonesian members, predominantly operating on Borneo and the islands of the former Netherlands East Indies. The unit carried out a total of 81 covert operations in the South West Pacific theatre, with parties inserted by parachute or submarine to provide intelligence and conduct guerrilla warfare. The best known of these missions were Operation Jaywick and Operation Rimau, both of which involved raids on Japanese shipping in Singapore Harbour; the latter of which resulted in the deaths of twenty-three commandos either in action or by execution after capture. Although the unit was disbanded after the war, many of the training techniques and operational procedures employed were later used during the formation of other Australian Army special forces units and they remain a model for guerrilla operations to this day.

A small group of Australians from the 8th Australian Division was posted to the Bush Warfare School in Burma in 1941. The men were trained in demolition, ambush and engineering reconnaissance during October and November. The two officers and 43 men became part of 'Tulip Force', a top-secret mission to train Chinese guerrillas to fight the Japanese. The British provided equipment, supplies and the remainder of the men. In February 1942, the men travelled in trucks up the Burma Road towards China for 18 days, covering more than 3000 kilometres. From there they travelled another 800 kilometres by train into China before trekking into the mountainous border region to join the Chinese 5th Battalion commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Chen Ling Sun. They travelled with eight tonnes of equipment and their explosives were packed into small square coolie baskets and carried with them. The Australian Minister in Chungking, Sir Frederick Eggleston, visited the men in their camp at Kiyang at the end of May. After his visit to Kiyang, the Australian Minister sent another cable to Australia recommending that the men remain there. The Australians remained in the mountains with the Chinese guerrillas until September 1942, when the project was abandoned. The Australians did not participate in any of the Chinese guerrilla activities; they suffered from malaria, dysentery and typhus; and they had no confidence in the Chinese commander under whom they were to serve. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_204

The Fraser Commando School (FCS), Fraser Island, functioned as an important part of Australia’s Special Operations programme during World War II. Between October 1943 and August 1945 it trained over 900 personnel of the Services Reconnaissance Department (SRD), the cover name for Special Operations Australia (SOA), the Australian version of the United Kingdom’s Special Operations Executive (SOE). Skills taught, among others, included unarmed combat and physical training; jungle craft, folboats (canoes), demolitions and weapons training. The site is located on the west side of Fraser Island about 1.6km south of Kingfisher Bay Resort and Village. There is an old boiler on the beach near the FCS site, which is spread between the remnants of McKenzie’s jetty and Beerilbee Creek in the south, to a hill just north of an area cleared for leading lights in the 1880s. The main camp site, most of which is located north of Beerilbee Creek, on the hill to the east of an access road, consists of a rectangle orientated southwest-northeast, with the building sites facing the northwest. Remnants include some concrete slabs, ceramic pipes, cuttings forming platforms for buildings or tents, building stumps, box drains, and possible latrine pits or foxholes around the periphery of the camp. Four corrugated iron water tanks on the brow of hill, and some telegraph poles, still existed in 1994. Visitors should take care not to further erode the building cuttings, or remove artefacts.