After 18 months with the Falkland Islands garrison early in the Second World War, Murray Ormsby arranged a transfer to a battalion due to take part in the D-Day landings in Normandy. Severely wounded in the leg, he missed all except the opening day of the campaign but on recovery joined a battalion in Burma fighting the Japanese. Following their surrender he became a court member and then a prosecuting officer in the trials of Japanese war criminals.
The trials were conducted by court martial and Ormsby was promoted major to sit as the second member of a War Crimes Court under the presidency of Lieutenant-Colonel J. C. Stewart. He was involved in 27 cases between January 1946 and March 1947 and then prosecuted in