Transcript of Interview

Australians at War Film Archive Lewis Bowden (Bill) - Transcript of interview Date of interview: 16th January 2004 http://australiansatwarfilmarchive.unsw.edu.au/archive/1346 Tape 1 00:43 So Hugh, can you tell us, in five minutes, about your life to date? Well, I was born the 15th of August, 1918, in Adelaide. I went to the public school at Unley. 01:00 Then for secondary I went to St Peter’s College at Hackney. I left school when I was fifteen, and came into a job in general insurance, with the old Queensland Insurance Company Limited. That was in 1934, then I worked there until the Munich Crisis in 1938. After that, I joined the Militia, which is now called the Army Reserve. 01:31 I soldiered on in the Field Artillery Battery, they’ve got a base at the Adelaide Parade Grounds. I left them and joined the AIF [Australian Imperial Force] in 1940. The Second 14th Field Regiment. (UNCLEAR) half in Adelaide, half in Melbourne. Then we were based at Woodside. I hadn’t been there that long with them, 02:01 and four of us were sent to the School of Artillery and Gunnery at Holsworthy, New South Wales. We did the thirteen week course, and I never went back to them. I eventually finished up with the Second 15th Field Regiment in Malaya. Eighth Division Artillery, they were. And then after capitulation I went to various places, as a POW [Prisoner of War]. We were relieved on the 13th of September 02:30 or thereabouts in 1945. We had a wonderful trip home on the hospital ship Wanganella, we called at Morotai. We came back from Morotai, after spending a week in AGH, Australian General Hospital. We finished in Sydney on the Wanganella and we were sent by hospital train to Heidelberg Hospital, and then from there by hospital train to Adelaide. We were given leave, for a while, 03:00 went back for further medicals, etcetera. I was married on the 8th of December, 1945. St Columbus Church, Hawthorn, to Yvonne, a local girl. Then I went back to work in March, 1946. The same company. I stayed with them until 1959, when I resigned. In the meantime, we were transferred to Perth, worked there for several 03:30 years, then I resigned and came back to Adelaide and joined another insurance company in Adelaide, and I stayed with them until I retired in 1979. After retirement, I’ve been pretty lucky, in as much as I’ve been able to do usual things, and get involved in different little organisations. Some of them are charitable. Like the Legacy Club of Adelaide. I’m still involved there. And generally, I’ve been extremely lucky in that respect. 04:00 That just about brings me up to date, I reckon. Can you tell us about your earliest memories, your early childhood, growing up in Adelaide? What you remember? One thing that seems strange to me, but I can remember. I’ve got two brothers and a sister. I’m the 04:30 eldest. I can remember when we came down to see Basil. There’s Peter, then Basil, then my sister Yvonne. I can remember going to visit Mum at the hospital when Basil was born. I can just sort of vaguely remember that Peter was in a pusher of some description. We went down with Dad, of course. 05:00 That is about the earliest thing I can remember. Another thing I’m told, I can sort of remember, we had a car very early in the piece. A tourer. And I remember going down Curry Street. And on the corner of Curry and King William, by what was then the ANZ Bank, previously the Bank of Adelaide, there was an underground men’s toilets, and the steps. 05:30 I can remember these people, these men, going down in the footpath as we drove past, and it rather intrigued me. What were they doing? I thought they were going down into a cellar. I had been in houses, I must have only been about six, but I can remember these men going down and I enquired of Mum if they were going down to a cellar, and she explained what it was. 06:03 I can remember starting school, things at school. I was just an ordinary student. I didn’t get into an awful lot of bother, luckily. If you were quick enough, you kept out of it. I don’t think there’s much to tell. They had an infants school at Unley, up to what was grade two in those days. 06:30 Then you progressed across to the ‘big school’, as they called it. That was grades three to seven. Then, of course, you took the qualifying certificate exam, which was important in those days. In as much as it was, all the other kids, grade six downwards, had the day off as a holiday. And we had to school, a bit like your public exams, you’ve been used to in your lifetime. We’d go to exams, get our number 07:00 and everything else, do our papers for the day, get our marks about a month later, just before school finished for the year in December. All these results were published. The maximum you could get back then was seven hundred marks, then they ran right down. Everybody got his name and number. They didn’t hide the bad ones or the good ones. They were all there on display. 07:31 Having got that, I went off to St Peters. I was lucky in that as much Dad entered me for a couple of scholarships. I didn’t get several of them. But I did pick up one scholarship, a small one. It was called the Wallace Bruce Scholarship, in those days. He was a well known Adelaide businessman at the time, and that was a help to my parents, for 08:00 the fees at St Peters College. I went there for three years. As I mentioned earlier, I left at the end of 1933. I gained my intermediate certificate, which was important in those days. The intermediate was an entrée to ordinary work conditions, apart from apprenticeships and things of that nature. And then of course people could go on to what they called the ‘leaving’. The leaving 08:30 honours were for matric [matriculation] people to go to university or tertiary. But I couldn’t stay there any longer, I had to go and get a job. Which I did, as a temporary measure, I got a job in the retreading tyre works. A lot of tyre retreading in those days, as opposed to people getting new tyres every time they blew out. I worked there for a very short time. Then I found this job at the Queensland Insurance Company, in February 1934. 09:01 As I say, I went along there and I progressed, usual things, until I joined the Militia, in 1939. This was after the Munich Crisis in September ’38. Like a lot of us we joined the Militia and various arms. I joined the 48th Field Battery of the 13th Field Brigade, stationed down at the Adelaide Parade Ground, by the Torrens. 09:30 We did elementary training there, of course. Normal training as Militia people, or Army Reserve type of people. Camps, fortnight camps, and things of that nature. and weekend bivouacs, as they called them, various exercises. Then I joined the AIF in 1940. I was one of the original members of the Second 14th Field Regiment. The Second 14th was a mixture of 10:00 Victorians and South Australians. In those days, an artillery regiment was divided into two batteries. One was stationed here, that was 28th Battery, and the other battery was made up of Victorians, that was 27th Battery. Then there was Regimental Headquarters, over and above. 28th Battery was stationed at Woodside, until about May, 1941. 10:30 They joined the 27th Battery as a complete unit, at Puckapunyal. But I wasn’t with them then. As I mentioned, I was with three others sent to this school of gunnery at Holsworthy in New South Wales. Did the course there, thirteen weeks, passed that, and got my commission in the army as lieutenant. Those who passed came out as 11:00 lieutenants. Then I was posted back to Puckapunyal…. Had you had to leave school because it was the Depression? Yes. My parents strained themselves, they couldn’t afford to do any more. I couldn’t stay at school because of costs. I had to get a job. Were your brothers and sister still at school? Yes, they were younger than me. My two brothers and my 11:30 sister were all at school, when I left at fifteen, they would have been about twelve, eleven and nine, in age. And were you planning to go back one day? To do your leaving? No, because I got myself a job. I put my energies into that and focused on the qualifications that one can get, in that particular industry. It’s like the bank people, 12:00 (UNCLEAR). The insurance people had the Australian Insurance Institute, and that was an Australia- wide, national thing. And they had examinations for associateships and fellowships in that. So I concentrated on those then. They were linked with the Chartered Insurance Institute in London, 12:31 that was international, top-line stuff. And they had examinations also that people could enter for and pass and get qualifications from that.

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