Australians at War Film Archive

Arthur Rodger - Transcript of interview

Date of interview: 30th January 2004

http://australiansatwarfilmarchive.unsw.edu.au/archive/1440

Tape 1

00:36 We’ll start Arthur by [asking you to tell] us your life story.

I was born in Newtown, Sydney on the 5th October 1917 and I came back to Queensland after six weeks because my mother, [she] just went down to Sydney to be with her mother while I was being born.

01:00 I started school at Goodna State School but my father worked on maintenance at the Asylum at Goodna. Being a stonemason there was no stonemasonry work at the moment, so the family, the mother and the four of us, that’s the two sisters and the brother, went back to Sydney, and stayed with our grandmother at Ashfield. I went to Croydon Park State School

01:30 there for a while. The father was going to come down but he didn’t because he got work. He started work on the Brisbane Town Hall as a stonemason in 1924. So we all came back to Brisbane and stayed at Kangaroo Point until we found a house. I went to Kangaroo Point State School for a little while and then they bought a house at Coorparoo. I finished primary school our at Coorparoo State school.

02:00 An item of note, one of my classmates was Dick Braithwaite who was one of the survivors of the Sandakan death march [while prisoner of the Japanese] and also he played with me in Australian Rules, in the first Australian Rules Schoolboy competition held in Queensland, and we got, I think it was Essendon guernseys. They

02:30 sent them up with the red collar and red cuffs on the sleeves, the long sleeves. Of course the long sleeves have gone now from Australian Rules. Anyhow, I passed scholarship in 1931 and did various things during the Depression. I eventually got apprenticed to Harry Duffle as a painting and decorating contractor. I finished up serving my

03:00 time there. Now Henry Duffle was my original boss but he died of pneumonia in 1936 and his son, Stan took over, and continued my apprenticeship, but Stan was a bit religiously inclined, and connected with the Holy Trinity church at Warragamba.

03:30 He decided to become a missionary and he transferred my indentures to James Small, which was the largest painting contractor at the time in Queensland. Stan went up to Madang as a missionary and when the Japs landed in early February

04:00 1942, he along with the others, were beheaded [by the Japanese] , and became one of the Madang Martyrs. I’ve written to the Anglican focus and I can’t understand why they put him down as “J” because nowhere throughout my life of working three years beside him every working day of the week, was he ever known as any other name but Stan. His mother and father called him Stan. His brother and sister called him Stan and at funereal recently

04:30 at Holy Trinity, I talked to two elderly ladies, and they knew Stan, and by no other name. Anyhow, I finished my apprenticeship and of course the war had started, and we had a phoney war, as you would know. It ceased to be phoney about the beginning of April 1940. My mate Jim, we’d been mates since about 1935, he said, “ I’m going up to enlist.” I said, “I’ll go up with you.”

05:00 So that’s how we enlisted on, I think it was the 5th June 1940 and we joined the anti-tank regiment at Redbank. Then we went overseas in October 1940 to Palestine. There was no Israel then and we stopped off, we went over in the Queen Mary from Sydney, first of all to Fremantle

05:30 and picked up the old Aquitania, and Mauritania. Those three ships carried the 7th Division to the Middle East but they wouldn’t take us in those big ships beyond India. So we all disembarked at Bombay and they shunted us up to Poona, which was an

06:00 English hill station. I’ve got a photo of a snake charmer playing outside the barracks up there. Anyhow they reorganised the convoy on smaller ships because they wouldn’t take those big ships up the Red Sea because the Italians still had Abyssinia, which is Ethiopia now and they wouldn’t have enough room to manoeuvre if they were bombed. 06:30 Anyhow, we went up to El Kantara and disembarked there but a few of didn’t. We went up with the baggage party as far as Port Said to make sure all the regiment equipment had been taken off. Then we went to a place called Castina in Palestine, which is up a little bit from Gaza, towards Jerusalem, had a day’s leave at Jerusalem

07:00 at one stage. It’s only an overview but anyhow, then we went over to Egypt. Seven or eight batteries stopped at Mersa Matruh, five and six went up to the front. So then they recalled us because the Germans looked like using the Vichy French to control Syria and Lebanon, and they called it the Syrian Campaign but the majority was fought in Lebanon. Anyhow we went

07:30 over there, I think it was in June, yeah June 1941. Our section of the regiment supported the attack on [Merdjayoun] , which comes into a lot in the Israeli, Arab conflict now. It was an old crusader town,

08:00 like a fort, with even with a big gate. The road leading up to it had a big gate. Anyhow, we finished up taking that and went through there, and we always acted as support to the infantry companies as they went forward. Then, when that had been finished, when the war was concluded and I was there at the conclusion, we were behind our gun, and

08:30 early in the morning, about five o’clock, down the road, came about five or six blokes. They’ve got a big white flag up on a pole, waving it back and forwards, you know, as a flag of truce. I saw them. Well we all saw them coming down to say the war was over. So we stayed there, had a trip around Syria

09:00 and even went to Damascus, to Iraq and Aleppo, and those places. Then the war started of course, by Japan entering the war by bombing Pearl Harbour and it was on for young and old. I don’t belong to any political party but I often in hindsight, often thank

09:30 [Prime Minister John] Curtin because you had to be a very strong man to resist [British Prime Minister] Churchill. Churchill wanted us, right or wrong, to go to Burma. Curtin said, “Right or wrong you’re coming home”. So we all arrived home. We left Port [Tewfik] and we went to India, Cochin, which is a port in the old Portuguese enclave of Goa, and buried there in the church

10:00 was Vasco da Gama [first circumnavigator of the world] and we saw his, just like in Westminster Abbey we saw his name, and everything was set into the floor. It wasn’t an upright grave. It was a slab set into the floor with all his names on it. Anyhow, we were on the old Empire Galleon, which was a coal burner. They started off

10:30 and we started off with them but they sent us back because we couldn’t keep up with the seven knot convoy. So we went back to Cochin for a few days. Then they said, “Oh well, you’ve got to give it a go.” So we gave it a go and one moonlight night we were in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and there was smoke on the horizon away to our left, and we being in a coal burner, there’d be smoke there, and we didn’t know if it was friend or foe but we soon

11:00 found out. He went one way and we went the other, so he must have been a friend. So anyhow, we come home through the monsoon season too and only a 6,000 tonner, and the seas, you’d be leaning on the roll on the deck, and the seas were higher than the deck but they were smooth seas. There was no danger, so it wasn’t a cyclone or a hurricane. It was just a monsoonal whatsername. [storm] As we got back to Adelaide after about twenty-one days, you could have nearly walked as fast but

11:30 Ronnie has still kept the telegram I’ve still got it, “Arrive safely. Leave uncertain.” We were in Adelaide and then we came up to Woodford through various ways. We were up there on well I think it was the de facto Brisbane line, up around Woodford and those places. It stretched through to Dickie Beach

12:00 at Caloundra and that was all criss-crossed with barbed wire. They had a notice on the noticeboard they wanted volunteers for an independent companies, so about a dozen or so of us volunteered then. We didn’t know what an independent company was. I don’t know if we would have known but anyhow, after about a year they renamed them commando squadrons and we camped down at Ascot Racecourse while they

12:30 sorted us out. Then we went by train to Townsville and I flew up to, then we flew up to Port Moresby on the 5th October 1942 on a Sunderland flying boat. I’ll always remember the day because that was my 25th birthday. So we got there and went to Wau and

13:00 we started doing a bit of patrolling. We decided that, actually the 5th Squadron and the 7th, which I was a member of, we started the Battle of Wau in a village called Mubo. We held the main track and it forced the Japs to use the old German mission track. We

13:30 walked over part of it a few weeks previous and I tell you what, they wouldn’t have been in real fighting shape when they got to Wau, and they got within 500 metres of the end of the airstrip. The airstrip rose seventy feet from the bottom to top. As a matter of fact one of the battalion blokes, reinforcements coming in, he got off the plane and got a bullet in the ankle, got back in the same plane, went back to Moresby wounded in action. That’s how close they were but we were cut off for

14:00 about three weeks. That’s not as dramatic as it sounds because if we had to go we could have gone bush. They cut us off but it was of no great import because if we couldn’t fight our way back into Wau, we could have gone bush and with no problem whatsoever. I think we were better bushmen than the Japs somehow or other.

14:30 Well it seemed to work out that way. After that was finished we were bundled up to the central highlands. You might have heard of Goroka but it was Bena Bena then, Bena Bena Plateau. We overlooked, patrolling up there, checking on the Ramu Valley prior to the 7th Division landing

15:00 there and we went down, and joined the 7th Division down in the Ramu Valley. One of the places it brings to mind is Kainantu, there was a big gold discovery up there lately. One funny thing happened, I don’t know if I’m running out of time but I’m leaning against a big tree trunk at least three feet in diameter, say a metre in diameter. You know, you

15:30 needed ten elephants to shift it and it started to shake. I’m leaning against it, trying to eat something, probably a lunch break and I’ve got to turn to the bloke next door to tell him not to be so stupid shaking the tree. So I looked and here’s one of the huts, it’s shaking the first earth tremor I’ve been in. Anyhow, we come home. I got engaged. Ronnie and I got engaged.

16:00 Then the second time we went to Aitape and went up to the Torricelli, mountains. That’s behind Aitape. That’s where the big tidal wave was not so long ago, a couple of years ago. We got attacked one night at a place called Yambu. You wouldn’t remember it but they used to have a magazine called Man Magazine and they wrote it up but

16:30 I’d just come off guard, and given over to Tony Felliccone. I hadn’t got into bed. You slept with your boots on and everything. You know, there was no hostess or anything to look after you. So I was just about to get into bed and a grenade goes off. Tony got a bit of a scratch with the shrapnel out of it but he was all right though.

17:00 I was about to say, “Don’t any of you jolly chaps” or words to that effect, “Get out” when a grenade goes off, then another one went off. So there was no need for words. Everyone rushed to where they’re supposed to rush to and I had a Bren [machine] gun at the time, and I got into the slit trench, and the lieutenant got in there with me, and the number two, old Ron Volk, we were all in there, and

17:30 we saw these couple of flares going over but I think we put them down as tracer bullets. The ground is always wet and in a jungle in a fire fight there’s a hell of a racket. Anyhow, the ground being wet I never took any more notice of it. We stayed in position until daylight and when daylight come here’s about a yard from my head, two unexploded

18:00 hand grenades. Two, not one, two. The aftermath was that the lieutenant said, “You better go down and set a booby trap.” We had no booby traps set and a booby trap was you put a hand grenade into a Nestle Condensed Milk tin, take the pin out of the tin hole, so you leave it down, put a wire across the track,

18:30 and tie it to another tree. So I went down there and next morning, I said to Vince I said, “I’ll go down.” I’ve said, “I’m the only one that knows where the booby trap is. You better come down with me.” Vince shoots ahead. I screamed at him to stop. He hits the wire, out comes the grenade and you’ve got four seconds to do what you’ve got to do, and that’s get away as fast as you could. So Vince was all right. He

19:00 was going downhill. I had to go uphill and so I tell you what, I’d like to know my time for the first twenty yards uphill. But anyhow, it exploded and no one was hurt. The second time I came home we got married. Ronnie and I got married back in August 1944,

19:30 before I went up to New Guinea in Aitape the second time, and then in 1945 our first arrived Jan, who is responsible for the flowers. Then I came home and got discharged of course. Then I went back to painting and became a director of the firm I was apprenticed to. I became then a,

20:00 I’m the past President of the Master Painters Decorators Association of Queensland. I went through until I retired in 1980. Since then I’ve been a Foundation Member of the local Bowls Club. I’ve been in the RSL [Returned and Services League] of course. I’ve been Secretary to there. We’ve been over to Japan and the Far East, like Singapore, Bangkok, Manilla and Hong

20:30 Kong. We went to New Zealand a couple of times and to New Caledonia, and I’ve been to America once. Ronnie’s been with her daughter. She went to a conference over there. That’s about it. Anyhow, New Caledonia was all right, driving on the right-hand side of the road. Over in the Middle East you drive on the right not on the left but it was

21:00 very simple. You kept to the edge of the pavement. That’s how you did it. Over in Noumea I forgot. I should have learnt and I hit a kerb, and God did I damage one wheel. Anyhow, that about sums it up. I’ve expended more than five minutes I think.

Oh no. That’s perfect. You did a really good job. That’s a

21:30 great overview. So, we’ll go right back to the beginning again. Now we can relax and go into detail.

Okay. So tell us about your family. Tell us about you Mum first.

My mother, she was a milliner. She belonged to the local church down in St Barnabas in Sydney and that’s where they got married. My father was a stonemason working on the finishing off of St Mary’s Cathedral,

22:00 the Catholic Cathedral and that’s were the unofficial forty-four hour week started in Australia. The stonemasons walked off the job on Saturday. They wouldn’t work Saturday afternoon and it wasn’t a strike, they just wouldn’t work. They went back Monday just as normal, probably lost a half a day’s pay. Then they got married and come up to Queensland, and lived at

22:30 Redbank for a while, where the old army camp was really. So then they built a house at Goodna and my father was working on maintenance on the Goodna Asylum because there was no stonemason work. I started at the Goodna State School and my mother took the four us down to Sydney because there was a bit of work down there, and my father used to tidy up and join us later but he got work on the present Brisbane

23:00 City Hall as a stonemason, and he stayed there till it was finished. Of course other work, stonework would come up. He even worked on the Colonial Mutual, which is a manner of apartments now, next to the post office. That’s Benedict stone. That’s a manufactured stone. When we went down to Sydney the second time, after leaving

23:30 Goodna State School, I went to Croydon Park State School. The grandmother lived at Ashfield. Then when we come back I think I went to Kangaroo Point until we settled at Coorparoo. As I say, Dick Braithwaite was one of my classmates and he escaped the Sandakan death march by diving into the scrub when he found the opportunity. [1945 – Japanese marched 2300 British, Australian POWs their deaths in Borneo; 6 survived]

Did you notice anything about Dick’s personality when

24:00 he was a kid?

Yes pretty well because we both played in the same Australian Rules Football Team, a real decent bloke. I think he played for Coorparoo after the war. He’s since died but I never come in contact with him because we moved then. When we went to Coorparoo after I finished. In 1934 we moved up to East Brisbane and I was a member of the local St Paul’s,

24:30 Church of England. We used to go their dances, like up at St Mary’s, even St Luke’s and at St Aden’s at Yeronga, and Heckerban. We served on the parochial council of the East Brisbane parish and

25:00 they gave us a send off when we joined. There was Jim Edwards, he was my mate since about 1935 and Jim was six foot eight. My army records say I’m six foot, no inches. That’s in the army records. Anyhow, Jim had a number twelve-sized foot

25:30 and when he joined they never had a boot to fit him, so for the first month or so, or a few weeks anyhow, he went around wearing sandals, and his uniform because he never had the boots to fit him. Jim and I stayed on the same gun team until over in Syria. We were going up one night in support of the infantry and our driver

26:00 forgot to think about, there was an embankment at the side, and head over heels we went, ammunition, guns, blokes, everything, so Jim hurt his back, and I never saw him up until after the war. He went away. John Gibbon went away. Then Mel Church took over. I was his best man at his wedding and we continued from there on. We

26:30 pinched a gramophone from a house there. One of the records had a big chunk out of it, Molly and Me, and Babe Makes Three, and My Blue Heaven. That was on the record.

Where did you pinch this from?

One of the houses in Merdjayoun. In the army, especially when you’re doing a bit of fighting,

27:00 they know how many’s there and they tell you what rations you’re going to get. You folks wouldn’t know what a kerosene case was but it held two four gallon tins of kerosene. It was timber and we had one nearly full of Bully Beef. We didn’t want it and after we’d moved through Merdjayoun a lot of the people had moved into the hills behind to escape the fighting, and when we

27:30 came in, and pacified the area, they started coming back. Jim and I were up at the gun truck with all this Bully Beef, and we thought these women, especially the women coming back, we said we’ll give them some of this damn Bully Beef away, pressed meat. So anyhow, as they coming back, I’m handing it out with Jim and as I handed it to a woman, it was a French mandate Syria

28:00 was at that time, Syria and Lebanon, she was saying, “Merci Monsieur, merci.” After about six times I got jack of this [tired] and I said, “Listen here Madam, we’re not going to hurt you.” But all she was saying in French was thank you. I thought she was asking for mercy.

We might go back to wartime kind of stories later on 28:30 but just going into more details of the childhood and upbringing, I was interested in your experiences of the Depression.

I did different jobs until I got apprenticed. Once I got apprenticed, which is five years, well you stay your five years, that’s all and I finished in 1939, and the war started in 1939.

29:00 I went to college of course. You go to college and do your clerical paperwork, and practical work. Otherwise more or less an uneventful time really. During the Depression my father, being a stonemason eventually kept going and

29:30 our family never really suffered. The eldest sister, who will be 90 on Sunday, she became a florist at Gabble’s. They were down in Stanley Street, which is now of course part of South Bank. My brother became a carpenter and the younger sister became a nurse. When she retired she was the Head Nurse at the Lady Gowrie Centre

30:00 down at St Paul’s Terrace. I think it’s Gowrie Centre? Anyhow, whatever it is, it’s maternal and child, and she’s still alive of course. So I can’t say we really, we weren’t affluent but we weren’t down to our last few dollars or pounds, or shillings. So rather uneventful after I left

30:30 school.

How did you come to be in this apprenticeship as a painter and decorator?

A chap around the road said he knew I was interested and I went along, and he was a carpenter, and he said, “I know this Harry Duffle, he’s looking for someone.” So I went along and that’s how I started. Then Stan was his son. Stan was in the firm too and

31:00 it was only Stan, I the apprentice and old Harry, and he was getting a bit incapacitated. He wasn’t very active really. He was a paperhanger too actually, the old man but he died of pneumonia in 1936. They lived right behind the Norman Hotel and I think a church has been built on where they were. Stan, who eventually took over from his father when his father

31:30 died, he was Scout Leader for the Holy Trinity Scout Troup. He was a sign writer by trade. He served his time with the firm, Jackson’s in Elizabeth Street on a full apprenticeship. Otherwise then I just finished up my apprenticeship and I met Ronnie, and she’s still here.

32:00 You mentioned your father and the 44 hour week.

Yes?

Was he active in any unions or developments?

Stonemasons were the highest paid tradesmen and they were a pretty,

32:30 they stood firmly by each other. I would say they would have been in unions but that would only be a reasonable guess because they all walked off St Mary’s Cathedral on the Saturday afternoon because they didn’t want to work a 48 hour week. Even when I started an apprenticeship back in 1934, it was a 44 hour week in Queensland and it was

33:00 about 1936 during the Depression, the unions of all the building trades said, “We’ve got to cut back to a 40 hours week to try and decrease unemployment.” They took four hours pay off us too. The actual 40 hour week didn’t come in

33:30 generally until about 1951 or ’50. We used lead paint or fifty-fifty lead zinc. I’ve lost the track.

You were just talking about the 40 hour week.

Well, that was the unofficial start. I wrote down to ask Bishop Powell, and told him about it, and said it wouldn’t hurt if they

34:00 had an All Trades Day there, and he replied. There’s a reply there from him. He’s a Cardinal now. He probably wouldn’t talk to me now.

Did your father tell you this with pride?

Oh yes. The father, my grandparents, one set of them come from Glasgow back 1883. My grandfather was a

34:30 stonemason too and if you ever go past the Indooroopilly Railway Bridge you’ll see underneath supporting the bridge a stone column, not concrete column, stone column. That was one of his first jobs when he came out to Australia in 1883, was working on the columns supporting the present day railway bridge over the river at Indooroopilly. I’ve lost the track

35:00 again. In my age group that’s not unusual. But anyway the father, he was born in Spring Hill, the father but he always reckoned that he was a Scotsman, and many of the arguments or discussions we had over the meal table were us brash Australians telling him he was an Australian because he was born here. The argument 35:30 that he always brought forward that brooked no opposition, he said, “If I was born here.” He was a Scotsman born here. He said, “If I was born in China I wouldn’t be a Chinaman.” Well we couldn’t fault that logic but he never acknowledged being an Australian. He was always a Scotsman.

Why did he want to be a Scotsman more than an Australian?

Well because I suppose, I don’t know.

36:00 Whatever it was he never communicated but his parents were Scots and he was going to be Scot, come hell or high water.

What about your brothers and sisters?

My brother, he became a carpenter and he became a carpenter, and that was it. The elder sister, who’ll be

36:30 90 on Sunday, she became a florist with Gabble’s. She got married and the younger daughter; she became with a triple certificate, a nurse. She was general and maternity. There’s three anyway. I don’t know what the three are, there’s two of them but what the third is? She had three and

37:00 she finished up in charge of the maternal and child welfare down at St Paul’s Terrace, when she retired. She got married and of course she had five children. Cathy had three. Tay had, he was Sorrel David but no one ever called him Sorrel. He was Tay and he had three boys, no girls.

37:30 Ronnie and I, we’ve got Jan, she’s a Primary School Principal. Greg, he’s a civil engineer with Stanwell Towers Station, power people. He’s stationed in Brisbane but they’re interested in wind power down in Atherton Tablelands and also down in

38:00 Mornington Peninsular, down at Forster anyhow. The younger, she’s a specialist teacher. She was at Brae Park but I think she’s getting a new posting this year.

Talking about your family, can you tell us about meeting your wife?

Meeting my wife? [laughs] I think she better tell you about that.

38:30 You there Ron?

It’s best you, we’ll stick to you.

Anyhow, I’ve got a report of bending my knee like this and my arm, sitting like this with cross legs. That’s all right is it?

Yes.

We went down to this night. They used to have old time dancing in New Vogue, as they called it, at the Hibernian Hall behind the Woolloongabba Post Office.

Tape 2

00:31 So, we were just about to hear the story of how you met Ronnie.

I met her at a dance at the Hibernian Hall at Woolloongabba. I don’t know if it’s still there but it was directly

01:00 behind the Woolloongabba Post Office, which I don’t think now functions now as a post office but it’s heritage listed, so it’s not shifted. I went down there one night looking over the local talent and I struck this beautiful looking girl sitting down. I thought, “I’ll ask her for a dance. She might be

01:30 gracious and comply,” and she did. We got on pretty well that night and I thought, “I’ll bet Ronnie to it.” I said, “You live on the south side. I’ll take you home.” ‘Cause you had to go home by tram, there was no car or anything. So she lived on the south side. When we got out, we got out at the Holland Park tram terminal, who should be there but her brother Wally. I’d met him a couple times down

02:00 at the church Young Men’s Society, down at Rainbow Bay. It’s St George’s Boarding Houses now. Old Reverend Canon Miles owned it and he bequeathed it to them when he died. So, we’ve been going there ever since and that was October 1939.

02:30 So how did it develop from just dropping Ronnie home into a romance?

Well, I suppose we were a very compatible couple and have remained so for sixty years or more. I come home from the Middle East and sent her a telegram.

03:00 I’ve still got it, from Adelaide. When I got to Adelaide I had to find out where the post office was and I’d been over in the Middle East where, other than your own mates, everyone you asked in the streets all spoke in broken English. Who should I ask about where the post office was but this one bloke who spoke, he pointed it out to me in broken English. We went up to Sandy Creek, just outside Adelaide. Port

03:30 and Sherry was eight shillings a gallon, so there was a lot of headaches there.

Just a question, before we talk about that time. Can you tell me what you remember about hearing the declaration of war?

What’s that?

Did you hear the declaration?

I certainly did. I was down at Stocks Point, down near Woody Point

04:00 at the Bay. I heard it come over the wireless at, I think, oh sometime. Anyhow and Menzies said, “We are now at war.” Then nothing happened after Poland capitulated and Russia and Germany split it up between them. Then we entered the period of the phoney war. Nothing was done. No one worried, you know?

04:30 Then of course, it was the beginning of April I think, 1940, the phoney bit went right out the door. We joined in June, Jim and I.

What was your reaction when you heard [Prime Minister Robert] Menzies?

I didn’t know. I was young, twenty-two. The reaction was that everything was so sketchy and no one knew what was going on really.

05:00 We were too young. I suppose our parents realised but we were too young to form an honest opinion of what the future held.

What were your feelings about your relationship to Britain? What did the Empire mean?

They were our mates. They were friends

05:30 and as far as I’m concerned I can’t divorce, I think the British Commonwealth of Nations is a good thing and I wouldn’t like to see it come to an end. I mean with progress and the world as it is today, it wouldn’t make any great difference I don’t think.

06:00 We couldn’t get over the fact that they were in strife, so we were in strife too but now things have changed to a degree. Britain has got to basically look after themselves in that regard because quite frankly, when you go back to the statute of Westminster in 1931, the British Parliament

06:30 rescinded all rights to interfere in the internal or external affairs of Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. So they tossed us out really but nevertheless you can’t forget your ties or well, you couldn’t then. By virtue of the world as it is today, I think

07:00 every nation now is more individual. For the record, as for war I could never understand why one civilised nation would want to, this is in hindsight I can’t understand why one civilised nation would want to invade another. I can’t envisage it because if you look back at history it becomes

07:30 a pointless exercise. You get Hitler, as far as Hitler and the Japanese were concerned, they would have taken us. If we hadn’t resisted them they would have taken us into a nexus of evil. This is in hindsight. It’s one war I think that had to be fought. We would’ve

08:00 had to, I think if they had won, slavery would have been a preferred option and that’s not said lightly. I’m talking about hindsight. I’m not talking about at the time. Survival was the main thing on your mind then. Old Pericles had it right in 430 BC when he said,

08:30 “For those who have a free choice in the matter and whose fortunes are not at stake, war is the greatest of all follies.” Mr Pericles had it right two and a half thousand years ago. When you read that, that’s right but as I said, those two, Japan, I discount Mussolini for a start. He was trying to resurrect the Roman Empire but the Roman Empire

09:00 didn’t want to be resurrected. What you see in the film about two or three Australians, that squadron, 5,000 Italian prisoners, as a matter of fact the prisoners were carrying the rifles of the guard’s. In one particular instance over in the desert two truckloads of Italian prisoners of war getting driven in by the Poms in their trucks and one of the trucks broke down, and the driver and his offsider in the broken down

09:30 truck, they got into the truck that was still mobile, and told the Italians, “Your German mates are not are behind, so you’ll be right.” So off they went. After about a couple of hours a big cloud of dust appeared behind them and they stopped, and wondered what it was. They caught up. The Italians had fixed up the fault in the truck and caught them up.

10:00 They were the prisoners of war. I was driving a truck out of the Citadel in Cairo. The prisoners of war were dressed in red and I got held up by the truck in front because it was pretty busy. When I got to the main gate I just didn’t know whether I had to turn right or left and a prisoner of war in his red uniform came dashing up, and pointed me in the right direction.

10:30 What made you decide to join up?

Jim Edwards said, I don’t know, just Jim was my mate, so I went up with him.

What were you going to be fighting for in your mind at the time?

I’m blowed if I know. I mean you’re young and you only work things out in hindsight. I suppose you were fighting for your country. That’s all.

11:00 The politics of it, you left the politics of it to the politicians. They’re a scroungy lot half the time anyway but nevertheless Menzies had no option I don’t think about declaring war. I’m thankful as it turned out, in hindsight. It wasn’t the worst thing he ever did.

When you joined up

11:30 what were your expectations of what war would be like?

I had none. I just thought, you’ve got no idea. Like if you joined up, you wouldn’t know until you’re faced with it. When you’re faced with it you start forming opinions. It’s like over when we first went to Syria and I first saw

12:00 the first dead man. In yourself you wanted them to get up and walk. They were still in their uniform killed and that was the Battle of Merdjayoun. You wished them to get up and walk, and know in your own heart they won’t. So I mean that’s when the first issues of war start to hit you.

How did that first impact of war affect you?

Well

12:30 it makes you realise that the fun has gone out. The travel has gone out. There’s a bit more to it than just being in a uniform. You’re there to do a job and sometimes you don’t make it but you become pretty philosophical about it because

13:00 if you start thinking too much, you’re too young to think too much. You mightn’t realise it but it’s the same with you two. If you were faced with, you wouldn’t know how to deal with it until you’re faced with it. It’s like when Jake and I were faced with men more or less not acquainted with, retreating from Mat Mat [Hill] in the Battle of Mubo.

13:30 We had to make our own decision, which was that we bush whacked or scrub bashed for the best part of three days on our own, to get back to our base. No one told us they were withdrawing and we looked up, and found out that, and the way they went was barred to us.

14:00 Can you tell me about the process that you went through of joining up? How did you do it? Where did you go?

Kelvin Grove Barracks, which has now been, going to be apartments and things like that. That’s where we joined up and we went there, and then we got onto, when we joined up we had to report back the following day,

14:30 back to Kelvin Grove. They put us on a tram and took us out to Stuarts Road, Ashgrove, and we had to walk down Ashgrove to Fraser’s Paddock. We were issued old World War I uniforms, a hat and all the accoutrements of a soldier and then they put us on a train up to Redbank. We

15:00 went into Redbank. It was all right. We got leave, you know, you’d get day leave or a weekend leave and Ronnie and I were going together at the time. If I wasn’t getting leave, she’d come up to Redbank, so that was it.

And what was Ronnie’s reaction to you joining?

Oh, I don’t know. She might, I don’t know. I can’t say that. I think

15:30 she accepted it though. When you’re young like that you accept things.

And what sort of things would you do together on leave?

We just went together, went to the pictures, might have went to a dance. Just being in each other’s company was enough but I mean you went out. You always went to the pictures and then probably go to a dance or whatever.

What was life

16:00 like at the Redbank Camp?

It was all right. I don’t know if it’s come up. You can erase it out if you want to but we had a few Poms and Scots, and Irish up there, and one of the Scots was Scott Carr. He still had a real broad accent and when he was referring to 16:30 our gracious Queen Victoria, he always referred to her as, “That bloody old bitch” because the great Black Watch [Scottish regiment] was the only British square [of defending infantry] even broken in the Zulu War, and old Vic had to put a yellow stripe in their tartan, so she wasn’t number one with Scotty.

What sorts of things

17:00 were you learning at Redbank? What sort of training?

I tell you what, what we learned was how to fire a Lewis [machine] gun and they were antiquated then at the time. They never went into action as far as I know in World War II. And how to avoid gas and that never went into action. As a matter of fact, I found it very boring at times and very difficult to keep awake with some of their lecturers

17:30 but if you got in the back you could nap off occasionally.

What would they teach you about how to avoid gas?

They gave us gas masks and we never used them of course. We threw them away in the finish, just like tin hats. When we went up to New Guinea we discarded our tin hats because they would hit on a branch and make a clang, so we just wore our khaki hats.

18:00 Would they tell you anything about what different gases were like?

Yes they did. There was chlorine and phosgene. They were the two. To my knowledge there was no nerve gas at that stage.

What would they teach you about these gasses?

First of all make sure that you fitted your gas mask as promptly as possible. Once you found an irritated throat or nasal passages, just whack your,

18:30 and even if it wasn’t a gas, you could make sure then while you were safe but of course it was never used.

What were your instructors like?

A bit boring because it was the same thing over and over again. You could have told them in the finish what it was all about.

How did you find being taught discipline?

19:00 It never worried me that much. You did as you were told. No it never worried you that much. We had a good lieutenant in our troop, Graham Hart. He was a barrister and he eventually became the Member for Mount Gravatt in parliament. When he retired from parliament he became a Supreme Court judge.

19:30 He died. Do you want to hear a funny thing about Graham? Well anyhow, he was a good bloke. I don’t want to [tarnish] his memory. He was a real good bloke. He’s been here after a funeral. One thing he wasn’t was a parade ground soldier and our Colonel Monigan he was a parade ground [soldier] you had to be. Old Graham,

20:00 he couldn’t swing his arms alternately all the time. He’d start off all right and he got about ten paces, and his hands would be going back and forth both together, instead of alternate. Old Monigan had him on guard duty. Anyhow, we go over to Mersa Matruh in Egypt and old Graham had gone down to the canteen on the shores at Mersa Matruh,

20:30 and he had a few more beers I think than he should have, and he had hold of a bike. Coming back to the line there was a slight, from the beach up to where the lines were was a slight incline and he had to, he’s riding the bike up, and he fell off. He got up, solemnly withdrew his revolver from its holster and shot that

21:00 bike six times. That’s how many bullets were in the revolver and every time he pulled the trigger, he just said, “Monigan you bastard.” But anyhow, he was a real good bloke. I got on well with him anyhow.

What was the social life like at Redbank?

In my case at Brisbane, see with family, Ronnie

21:30 and everything down here, so the social life didn’t alter too much, whereas a lot of the blokes from the country, they would have had a different lifestyle. Most of them would have spent it up the pub anyhow. There were two pubs at Redbank.

Was there a lot of drinking?

Basically yes, not with me because I was home.

How did they sort of divide you out into different musters?

22:00 I don’t know. They allocated you. How they did it I don’t know but they allocated you and that was it. Well tell me about your allocation?

I got into I Troop and I was a driver on the gun truck. We used to wander around driving the trucks. We went up to the firing range I think it was at Pergum, once.

22:30 I’m driving the truck towing an 18 pounder gun. We didn’t have 25 pounders. Holsworth was the Lieutenant then, looking after the convoy. Being young and probably silly, I put my foot down and I was doing flat out about 50 miles an hour towing this 18 pounder, and it was bouncing all over the road. Holsworth, he was on a motorbike

23:00 and he couldn’t catch up. He wasn’t very polite when the convoy stopped but I was just a young silly bloke and had my foot on the accelerator, and off I went.

What were the trucks like?

They were Marmon Harringtons. They were the first four-wheel drive trucks

23:30 ever put on the road and they were made by Ford but the four-wheel drive transmissions were Marmon Harringtons, and not like the present day, if you wanted to change from two-wheel drive to four-wheel drive, you had to stop. You couldn’t change on the move but they were good, just like any

24:00 other four-wheel drive.

How were they to drive?

Pretty good, a bit heavy of course. There was no power steering in those days. You nearly needed a winch to make a quick turn but nevertheless they fulfilled the job they were meant to do.

Did they have any particular tricks about changing gears?

You did, you double de-clutched. You wouldn’t know what that means but anyhow there was no automatic transmission. You know what that means?

24:30 You put your foot on the accelerator and you haven’t got to change gear, that’s automatic but in double de-clutching if you want to go up, not so much up but down. Say you’re in top gear and you want to go down, you put the clutch in, rev the motor until it’s roughly what you want, and then you put the gear lever into the gear you want, and then let

25:00 the clutch out. That’s double de-clutching, makes some awful noises while learning but you had to do it, no ifs or buts.

Where did you learn?

Oh, just up at Redbank.

Who taught you?

Basically, well I could drive, so I suppose I was told how to do it and I just practiced.

And were you

25:30 happy with the role as a gun driver?

Oh yeah, I was. I saw nothing wrong with it.

Were the trucks that you were training on the kind of trucks you were going to be using overseas?

No, they weren’t. When we went overseas, we had to put up with the Morris Bugs and they were about fifteen hundred-weight. I don’t know what it was in kilos but anyway fifteen hundred-weight utes and you couldn’t put the gun on

26:00 them. You had to tow the gun but then after about six months we got equipped with four-wheel drive trucks that mounted a gun on the back. So you had no more towing but the old Morris Bugs, whoever listens to this the blokes will know they didn’t have a coil. They had a magneto. They didn’t have a petrol pump. They had a vacuum tank feeding. You wouldn’t know about that,

26:30 that’s for sure.

Explain it to me.

A vacuum tank, the vacuum sucks the petrol up through the petrol tank and then it gravity feeds down into the carburettor. The magneto works with a spark, transmits the spark to the relevant spark plugs. Thank God all that’s gone.

27:00 As part of your role as gun driver did you have to understand the mechanics of the truck?

No, not really. We had an ordinance mob with us and I had to understand how to work on the guns because once the gun was in place everyone had to work on it. Tell me about the guns that you used.

They were two pounders and they were on a Redinal tank, 12 ton Redinal tank,

27:30 they had no trouble going through the base of the tank but the armour, the turret, one of us was hit, and when we looked at it the projectile in the shell is encased in lead, and when the shell hits the object,

28:00 the lead is so soft it more or less clings to the target. The projectile then goes through and splatters around the inside but a couple, one at least the projectile just never made it through the turret. That was two inch but then they captured the German six pounder and they shunted that over to England as fast as possible, and after about

28:30 1942 the two pounders were phased out. Then of course the Japs tried to bring tanks into New Guinea but you may as well have mortar tanks rather than army tanks.

How many men does it take to fire a two pounder?

Five crew.

Tell me about the different roles of firing the gun.

There’s the bloke doing the sighting and then there’s the bloke bringing up the ammunition. Anyway you all had a role.

29:00 Then there’s a bloke taking the empty shell when it ejected. You all had a role to play in it anyway. [technical break]

We were just talking about guns.

Yes.

Tell me what your role in firing the two-pounder was.

I just had to position,

29:30 help position the gun. When you position it then of course it swivels. You’ve got to position it and make sure that it remains reasonably rigid because when you fire the shell the recoil, it makes it too inaccurate it it’s not in position.

How do you make sure it’s positioned firmly?

30:00 You dig in the trail to start with. There’s a trail on the end of the carriage and it was splayed. You dig that in and when there’s a recoil of course, that stops it going back more than probably an inch or more.

How long does it take to set up a gun properly so it is ready to fire?

If you’re in a bit of spot of bother it’s probably about twenty minutes at the outside.

30:30 What does it sound like when it [fires] ?

It’s a real crack. It’s a real sharp crack there but that was the two-pounder. By the time they got to six pounders, well they never got down to a six pounder anti-tank. Jim was telling me after the war, when they went over to New Guinea they had three and four inch mortars. There was no tanks see?

31:00 At Redbank how much firing of the guns would you get to do?

We had a little bit, mostly small arms fire because in 1940 we actually weren’t prepared for war. We only fired the two-pounders about twice before we went overseas and they only had about four or five guns to do it with. Everyone

31:30 had to take their turn.

You said it takes five men to fire a gun. Were they the core part of your [team] ?

That was the gun team and there were four gun teams to a troop.

Tell me about the men that were in your gun team?

Well, there was Bill Church as I say. He finished up taking over and I was best man at his wedding down at Surfers Paradise in

32:00 1943, no ‘42. Then old Kibby, I think he came from out, I mean we’re looking at sixty odd years now and it’s very hard. Bart Time, never forget Bart. We were bringing up the ammo. We were having this crack at Merdjayoun and we moved the gun in a very great hurry

32:30 from one depression to another about 15 yards away to get a better look at the thing. Old Bart and I had to go back for the ammunition. I tell you what we would have certainly created a record for the fifteen- yard dash but that Bart, he was chummy. He was a Pom. Otherwise we remained 33:00 pretty constant. George Chestral, George left and started working in the orderly room. Anyhow, that’s about it.

What kind of mates were you guys?

We were good mates. We stuck together and enjoyed each other’s company. We were in the same tent. Gun troops are usually in the same tent with each other. Basically

33:30 most blokes were easy to get on with. I hope that applies to your self too.

Were there any people that weren’t easy to get along with?

There’s always a couple there but you don’t take any notice of them.

Were there any fights amongst the guys?

Yes up at the canteen. A few blokes had too much grog and they think they can beat the world but some of them couldn’t beat a cow in backside with a handful of rice

34:00 really. They get jolted ideas about their own ability. They’ve got to have a bit of grog too. I’ll tell you one in Damascus, old Bernie Griever. We went in there and we drank through six cocktails in the café, and we got out, and we saw this French officer, his was after the war was over, going into the barbershop. Bernie shot in.

34:30 He was going to have a piece of him. Now, I don’t know why he was going to have a piece of him because he never laid eyes on him. Bernie started fronting and this bloke puts his hand on his revolver, and I threw Bernie out the door, and followed him. I don’t know what the Frenchman would have done but Bernie got full of alcohol and you know, I found the littlest blokes were the ones that got inspired by grog.

35:00 I’m a man of peace myself. I never had any great trouble and even old Bill Churchy, I had to bring him into line once. He wanted to do me over the next morning, so the next morning come and I went up to Bill, and said, “You wanted to box on this morning didn’t you Bill?”

35:30 “Oh” he said, “Forget it.” Another one, old Kev Ryan, he had too much to drink when the rations were in and he got into an argument with this bloke. He said, “You come round tomorrow and tomorrow morning we’ll fix the bloke right up tomorrow morning.” I said to Ryany, “Righto.” I says, “I’m here.” He says, “Go away, you’re too confident.” These sort of silly things pop up.

How long did you spend at Redbank?

36:00 June to October and we went down to Sydney, and got on the Queen Mary.

When did you get the news that you’d be leaving?

It was about three or four weeks before we did our final march through Brisbane and the girls from Barry and Robert’s raced out, and gave me a flag.

Tell me about that.

Well, you can’t really. You’re just marching and they raced out, and they’ve got their

36:30 signatures on it. They’d all be, grandmothers now that’s for sure.

What was that feeling like?

Oh, I don’t know. You just felt, you didn’t mind parading. You weren’t overcome with patriotism or anything but you must realise we were a lot of young people. The

37:00 seriousness of the situation hadn’t sunk in. We were still playing soldiers. Eventually that stopped. Anyhow, that’s how it turned out.

What kind of flag was it that they gave you?

A British flag. The Union Jack. We had very few Australian flags at that time.

What did the British flag mean to you?

I suppose we were still a part of the Empire but the Empire didn’t want us

37:30 anyhow. As I told you, the statue of Westminster in 1931, they rescinded all rights to interfere with the internal or external affairs of the four countries, Australia being one of them.

Was it hard to say goodbye to Ronnie?

Yes. You don’t like to do it. Well, it’s not so much hard. You’re leaving and you’re not

38:00 sure of the future. You’re starting to wake up to the fact that things were a bit more fair dinkum than you thought they were. Then my mother was there too and everyone weeping and wailing, and gnashing of teeth. If they had no teeth they’d gnash their gums. Anyhow, the whole thing is that you start to realise things were not as placid as they once were.

38:30 How did you get from Brisbane to Sydney?

Train, the Kyogle. They call it the Brisbane Limited now but it used to be the Kyogle Mail then because they cut out Wollongbar. That was in about 1931 I think or ‘32, they brought the train up through Kyogle and they used to call it the Kyogle Train, the Kyogle Mail

39:00 but then they got a bit more upmarket, and started calling it the Brisbane Limited or Sydney Limited, or whatever.

Was it basically a troop train?

No, just a normal train. In 1940 there was no, I don’t think Australia ever had a troop train as such, not like India. When we went up to Poona from Bombay while they reformed the convoy,

39:30 they had proper troop trains, wooden seats. They were proper troop trains, whereas ours, they just made do with what they’ve got. Again in hindsight, I reckon every man who worked on the railways in Australia should have got a civilian service medal because how they did it on steam engines and what they had at their disposal, I don’t know.

40:00 The time I spent on the railways during the war I couldn’t fault.

Tape 3

00:46 Were there any marches? Were there any send offs in Sydney?

No, not at all in Sydney. We got down there and they drove the train right onto the pier. We

01:00 went in through a hatch. We didn’t go up on deck and then we finished up on E deck afterwards on hammocks. Everything was normal, you know, in a state of confusion, which is considered normal sometimes in the army. We were up and down and all of a sudden, and one of the officers says, “For God’s sake, sleep where you can and we’ll sort you out in the morning.” So being

01:30 hush-hush, I suppose, like the army and not to let the enemy know that we were on the way, I think half Sydney Harbour was filled with ships seeing us off, so much for secrecy. We went around the bottom of Tasmania because they didn’t, and God wasn’t it cold. They didn’t want it to go through Bass Strait because fear of submarines. We went to Fremantle and then we stopped at

02:00 Fremantle. We didn’t get off. We weren’t given leave. We picked up the Aquitania and Mauritania there. The Mauritania was First World War ship, got four funnels on it, oh incidentally the Queen Mary had three funnels, one was not a funnel of any description, never meant to be a funnel. They used to use it for a storeroom. Why they put it there I don’t know but they’ve probably got a reason for it. It was used as a storeroom. It was never used, or it was never meant to be used as a funnel.

02:30 As I said, we went of course to Bombay, 22 knot convoy, so we only had one escort, the [HMAS] Canberra. Half way across the Indian Ocean, the Firth took over and the Canberra crew lined up, their band played, and we were all on deck you know, and as they steamed past us the three of us for farewell, they were playing Roll out the Barrel. You wouldn’t know

03:00 about it but Roll out the Barrel was a pretty popular tune then and they steamed back. It was the first time I felt as if it was going somewhere, you know? I thought, “They’re going home and I’m not”. Then of course we went to Poona.

Well tell us what was the feeling like hearing this song Roll out the Barrel?

You just realised that something had gone behind you and that was it. You were going away from home.

03:30 Where were all the men watching this?

All on deck. They weren’t frightened of submarines because it was a twenty-two knot convoy and in those days the flat out rate for a submarine I believe, underwater was about four knots an hour. So they wouldn’t have had time to line us up. The Queen Mary of course, finished up at Long Beach California.

Were the men singing the songs?

I suppose a few of them were but

04:00 we were just watching the old Canberra come back.

Where did they tell you where were going back in Sydney, did you know?

No, oh we knew the Middle East but we would have a faint idea, Palestine. There was no Israel then it was Palestine. I can show you a photo of Palestine town. We didn’t know where in 04:30 Palestine we weren’t supposed to. El Qastinou, it was a few miles up from Gaza. I went of course to Bersheeba.

Before we get there, tell us a bit more about the boat ride. What kind of activities did you get up to?

They had boxing matches and that’s about all, not much really. They used to have lectures of course anything they thought would keep you busy.

05:00 They’d have the news and then they had beer four pence a pint.

Did the men get stuck into the beer?

Well, there was very limited supply. I don’t think stuck in. I think that would be an exaggeration. They would have if they could but I don’t think the opportunity was there, not unlimited supplies anyhow.

05:30 What do you remember of the boxing matches, like who was in them?

Billy Cott was one. He won, he just died. He was a member of the Indooroopilly RSL. He was a cook and Miller, he was another one, both from our unit. I don’t know if Miller got one but Bill, he got one. You know, anything to fill in time, very

06:00 difficult. See you had 7,000 on the Queen Mary and it’s very difficult. I should imagine it would be very difficult to organise anything of a relaxing nature.

What were the lectures about?

Gas. They were still sticking with the gas. Then the workings of the, mainly machine guns, the Lewis machine gun and the Vickers. The Vickers was still with us I think.

06:30 They tried to keep us up to date with what was going on. There was no anti-tank gun there of course. That was to fly to us from England when we got over to Palestine.

Tell us about stopping in Bombay. What were your first sights?

The people. You’ve actually got no idea of the people and the

07:00 beggars, and this elephantiasis. If you ever see it, it’s a shock. It really shocks you to see a full case of elephantiasis and the beggars, and then outside of Bombay they don’t have funerals. They have this, I forget the name of the place now but they throw the

07:30 corpses out onto this open, it’s done and the vultures eat them. This is fact. We went up by train then up to Poona but I had a bit of curry there. I never could, they sure make their curry hot. Otherwise we only had a walk around Bombay but the poverty

08:00 and the beggars, they were all rushing up to you, and want this, that and the other. As a matter of fact I bought a folding knife off one of them and sent it home to Ronnie’s brother when he was only a lad of course. I don’t know if he’s still got it but it was a knife and anyhow that’s all I ever bought there before we went to Poona.

08:30 They had rickshaws at Poona.

What were you thinking as a young man about this?

I was enjoying it really. Well, you have to because it’s all new. You know, I’m looking back 60 years but I had no worries. I wasn’t worried about my future or anything else because no one wants to get killed. That becomes a fact of

09:00 life after a while, that it can happen but up until then we had no problems of enemy at all. It was just a matter of going to the right place to meet them.

Well tell us about Poona?

Poona? It was an English hill station up in the mountains. We went up by train on a troop train,

09:30 wooden seats and that. Incidentally on the Bombay Station, it’s a big station, certainly something in the line of Sydney Central and there wasn’t an Englishman there. It was all run by the locals, so they did get to run a lot of their own facilities. Anyhow, we went up

10:00 there and got up there about ten or eleven o’clock at night. We got off the train and we had a sea kit, and a uniform kit tied together over our shoulders, and our rifles or whatever. We all got off the train, lined up and then started to march to the Kitchener Lines, which was the name

10:30 of the barracks where we were going. We had a band to help us along the march and in front of me was Bob Short. He’s a chummy too. As a matter of fact he finished up at Ankara in New Guinea because he was a plantation manager prior the war. Anyhow, Bob was bow legged and when the music stopped you’d see Bob’s legs and when the music 11:00 started you’d see his legs straighten out again, straight up again. One of the songs, one of the marches they played was Sons of the Brave and I’ve got it in there on a disk somewhere or other. Anyhow, we got to the Kitchener Lines. They are proper barrack rooms. You know, you could say comfortable and of an afternoon some of the local snake charmers, I’ve got a little photo of it

11:30 somewhere, come out and you’d look at them, and throw them a couple of annas. That’s not a rupee. An annas is, I forget what it is now. I’ve got an annas in there. I’ve got a rupee too. I was a bit of a Bower bird. They’d shave you in bed if you wanted them to and one of our blokes had a heavy night out,

12:00 and he woke up, and this Indian barber was shaving him. He screamed. He thought he was getting his throat cut but all the bloke was doing was shaving him.

Who was shaving him?

The Indian barber. He was shaving him in bed.

Why?

I don’t know why. He screamed like steam. He thought he was getting his throat cut I think.

12:30 Yes. It’s a strange thing to do, start shaving you?

Yes, it was a real sophisticated barracks area where the chums had. Poona was a real established hill station.

Tell us, what were you doing up there?

Nothing, only waiting for the convoy to be reformed down in Bombay. I think I said, they wouldn’t take the big ships up the Red Sea because of the Italian possession of Abyssinia,

13:00 which is Ethiopia now, because they couldn’t manoeuvre if they there getting bombed. So they just wouldn’t take them up the Red Sea and of course then if you got them in, I don’t know if they would have gone through the Suez Canal. They could have taken them up the Suez but once there you went through the Suez Canal, through the Great Lakes and El Kantara. They had a barge

13:30 to run across the canal and if ships came along they just unhooked the barges, and let the ships through. They had a basic road over with floating platforms.

In Poona were you doing any training?

The basic things, keeping busy, keep them occupied but we went into Poona

14:00 itself and we enjoyed ourselves. As young people you usually do.

What did you think of these snake charmers?

Rather them than us. We just accepted it as a part of their life. I never gave it much thought really. It didn’t appeal to me though.

Tell us about meeting up with

14:30 the new convoy.

The three ships split up into about nine, eight or nine and we got a Dutch ship, the Interpara. It was later sunk and it was a good ship, good and clean, and Dutch. As I say, we went straight through and then straight up to El Kantara before we stopped. We got off at, three of us

15:00 well, I suppose a few more than three of us but three mates, Bernie, Jock and myself stuck together at Port Said. Once we had made sure that all the regiment gear was off board, taken off, we might have spent two days at Port Said before they shunted us back. As I say, I got my photo taken again in front three of us got our photo

15:30 taken in front of the Australia New Zealand Light Horse War Memorial that was there. As I said, it got damaged during the Egyptian, British and French War over the Suez Canal in 1956. They dismantled it, the Egyptians and Australia asked for it, and it has been re-erected on top of Mount Clarence overlooking Albany.

16:00 Albany was the last lot of Australians that the first convoy saw of Australia. That’s where the first convoy to the Middle East sailed in World War I.

Did you feel part of this tradition and this history going to this area?

Well, you know looking back I would say

16:30 not really, no. You’re too young to be a traditionalist I think. I mean you look back and in hindsight you make judgements but I don’t think at that age group, it’s very hard to make judgements.

Tell us about first arriving in the Middle East. What were your sights? All new. It’s an eye opener to you. There were beggars for a

17:00 start and then we got the train up to Gaza, and then out to get trucks from Gaza onwards, and Castina. They were proper barracks, no tents. The canteen was a building but everything was tents. We were over

17:30 there at Christmas time and that’s their wet season. The Australian boots around the heel had a horseshoe, a steel horseshoe around the heel and the mud used to stick to the damn heel, and you’d finish up about an inch and a half higher in the heel than the boot maker meant it to be.

18:00 Scotty Mason, he was writing home to his girlfriend and he was writing, he was wanting to pen, “The mud is a nuisance.” He was trying to say nuisance and “Oh” he says, “How do you spell nuisance?” No one said anything, so he said, “I’ll write pest.” He couldn’t spell nuisance.

18:30 Funny things happened like that.

Tell us about the trains and the trucks, and the transport?

They were modern trucks for their time except the gun trucks that they gave us to start with were the old Morris Bugs. Morris Bugs they called them, the 1,500 weight Utes. It was just before

19:00 Syria, no it was after Syria, we had to go down and collect the three tonners with a gun mounted on the truck itself. Otherwise they were basic. The transport trucks were modern. Some of the other trucks we had to use were a bit less than modern.

Tell us what were the first things you were doing in

19:30 Palestine.

Training mainly. We got the two-pounders to train on and you’d go, and you’d tow them in, and unhitch, and then you’d set them up. It takes a little while to set them up. You had to set the up firmly otherwise the recoil,

20:00 the shell in a two-pounder was as fast as a rifle bullet. Basically faster than, well they’ve got to be to do what they had to do, and that was to penetrate armour.

How long would you train for?

Certainly if you trained in the morning and sometimes then of course you’d go on

20:30 a route march. That’s when old Monigan, he’d say, “You’ll be going on a route march and you’ll take the unexpired portion of the day’s rations with you.” I don’t know what the unexpired portion was. I never ever saw them but anyhow you might go for about five or six miles and back again.

21:00 Syria was the first time that we got anything really modern, except to practice on because the old Empire wasn’t prepared for war, not really. As a matter of fact in Syria we were in the middle of the fighting there in

21:30 June and we heard that the Germans had invaded Russia. I’m sure most of us wouldn’t have cared who was on our side then, even if it was Jack the Ripper because if you look at history, we were on our own,

22:00 the British Commonwealth was on our own. There was no one else helping us and when they invaded Russia of course we thought at least we’ve got someone else on our side. Talking about that, as I said they called it the Syrian Campaign but most of it was fought in Lebanon. I read The Pearl from a Dead Princess about the split up of the old Ottoman

22:30 Empire and after the First World War, (Attatar? UNCLEAR) came into the picture, and he shunted all these ex-royals over into the, the French went over Beirut. The French spelt it B-E-Y-R-O-U-T-H, not the way we spelt it. She said, “And then we went up in the mountains behind Beirut at a place called Bikfaya.”

23:00 Well, after the war we were camped at Bikfaya for a month or so before we went up to Tripoli.

Tell us also about hearing this news about how the Russians were in the war. How did you hear it?

Possibly word of mouth. The DonR [despatch riders] would come around or something and he would have known from headquarters. We didn’t

23:30 have any wireless but the headquarters of the battalion had wireless, so we would have found out that way.

Would you hear any news from home or elsewhere?

No, not unless you were, no you wouldn’t hear anything from home unless it was, had a few days behind us anyhow. We wouldn’t hear anything straight away because you must realise that wireless wasn’t as efficient. 24:00 It was wireless then, not radio. It wasn’t as efficient as it is now. They even used to have walkie-talkies but over in New Guinea they weren’t much use. You couldn’t climb mountains or anything. They had a restricted range. Of course all that has improved now.

In Palestine before Syria

24:30 apart from training did you get any leave, some time off?

Very little. We got to Tel Aviv for two days, got to Jerusalem one day and we went and saw the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Then we had the option of going down to Bethlehem or going down to the Dead Sea, so five of us got together and we went down to the Dead Sea. I dived in, which was the silliest

25:00 thing you could do because it’s so full of salt that it would hurt your eyes but they’ve got fresh water showers handy. Then we went up there and had lunch at Jericho, and we walked across the Jordan but being mere mortals we had to use the Allenby Bridge to do that, and I’ve drunk out of the Jordan because it starts up in Syria

25:30 anyhow. It does start in Syria. We went down through the land and later they found the Dead Sea Scrolls in that area.

What was it like down at the Dead Sea?

It’s the lowest point on the planet. It’s very still. There’s not much,

26:00 again, you weren’t uncomfortable because you’re young. You can stand a lot more of it. Anyhow, we enjoyed it and as I said, we went to Jericho for lunch. Then we come back and we only had one day but we had two days in Tel Aviv. That adjoined the old Arab town of Jaffa. They’re both like say, Brisbane and the Valley.

26:30 I was talking to a bloke when we did a bit of practice on the rifle range with the guns and talking to a bloke in the Palestine bus. He was Czechoslovakian and he had a talking vocabulary. He could talk reasonably coherently in six languages, from Czechoslovakia. We met

27:00 in the Palestine bus, where mostly refugees from Europe and they were guarding the facilities there. (Haifa well? UNCLEAR), we stopped there a few times. As a matter of fact, one time we stopped outside Haifa and were having lunch, and about three armoured cars come up crewed by Scotchmen from Aberdeen apparently we found out later, and they were from here say

27:30 to about twenty or thirty yards away. They stopped for a bit of tucker too and they started talking to each other, and there was no way in the world we could understand what they were saying. They were so broad and anyhow, we got to talking to them later, and we got them to slow down with their talking so we could decipher what they were saying. But anyhow, the armoured cars were Rolls Royce,

28:00 Rolls Royce armoured cars.

What was your interaction like with the local people?

Good. Mainly we had no problem whatsoever. We paid for what we got. I sent a few things home. Anyhow we paid for what we got and there

28:30 was no animosity there whatsoever between us and the locals. If it was it was hard to detect for the average chap like ourselves. We finished up outside Tripoli on Sunday. The normal church parade for the Protestants was on the line but the Catholics had to go into town because they’ve got a cathedral in whatsername, so I became a Catholic a few

29:00 Sunday mornings. George was one and I said, “As long as you stay where I can sight you and if you bend your knee, I’ll have to do the same.” George joined up too at the same time as me. We became mates. But anyway, I often went in with George, one of the few Sundays and became a Catholic for a few hours. I was a bit ecumenical then even.

29:30 What were the religious services like?

Boring as hell I tell you and as you grow older, and look back the Ten Commandments says “You shalt not kill”, and when a war starts the clergy are now trying to bless us hoping we kill more of the other fellas, and the other fellas on the other side are getting blessed hoping they’ll kill more of us. So I think this “Thou shalt not kill,”

30:00 they qualify it to suit themselves.

What about the sermons? What kind of sermons?

I can never remember them. I wasn’t even interested in them. I’m a Christian and I just leave it at that. I can’t be bothered getting all het up [anxious] about something that I’ve yet to experience, and the longer I put it off the better

30:30 I’ll be pleased. You mentioned the priests would encourage the war effort. Would they ever say in their sermons something about the fighting?

Usually the basis of it was the good will be,

31:00 I’m trying to think of the words. The good will replace evil and we were the good, and the other bloke was evil. He was probably good. When you come back and look at it, you’d probably think he was probably a good family man back in his own town. You don’t think of it then. He’s there to try and kill you, and you hope he doesn’t.

31:30 Tell us about what they were telling you, where you would go and what fight you would be involved in when you were in Palestine.

Basically up in the desert. Syria didn’t crop up. We went to Mersa Matruh and we were 7th Battery. 7 and 8 stayed at Mersa Matruh, which was a perimeter of defence, and if they’d broken through we would have had a bit of problems

32:00 but a proper defensive position. 5 and 6 went up to Libya and if we had of stayed there we would have replaced them eventually, and they would have come back to Mersa Matruh but then they decided that, then Greece cropped up. Some of the powers that be wanted to send the 7th Division, which was us, over to Greece and

32:30 the powers that be, to oppose them reckoned that because the 6th Division was a bit more battle confident, they’d send them over. It didn’t matter much who they sent over because it was the same result. Although at Crete, that was the last when the paratroopers dropped in on Crete. A lot of

33:00 our blokes got off and a lot got prisoners but we went down to pick up these three ton gun trucks at the Citadel, which is in the centre of Cairo, and that was taken over by the British as an arsenal. About four o’clock one morning we were there asleep at the barracks and “Chatter, chatter, chatter” out on the veranda.

33:30 Two of us got up to tell them to shut up and when we got out, we learned they’d just come back from Crete. A submarine had taken them off. In other words, they’d just escaped from Crete and they were as excited as hell being back there.

You mentioned Mersa Matruh. What was the defensive position that you would take up there?

Our anti-tank guns,

34:00 they formed a perimeter of defence. That’s the main purpose of any organised fortification now, is to stop them getting through to your bases. The gun trucks, the old utes had to go back to the vehicle lines

34:30 out of the way, so they weren’t giving the gun positions away but when we got the trucks, we dug in the truck and all in the desert, and God it can be cold. I wrote to Ronnie there once. I said, “The bloke who is going to love his girl as the sands of the desert grow cold, he’s a bit of a philanderer because God it’s cold.” We used to dig in about ten or twelve inches in the sand so the wind would go over us at nighttime.

35:00 So how did you dig in the trucks? What did you actually do?

You had to try and bring them in to a bit of a dune, and then dig them in, so that the gun is just poking over the dune.

What were the main threats at this stage?

They’d be tanks. The infantry wouldn’t, they’d be too exposed the infantry. They’d have to use

35:30 tanks to overrun the place.

Did you ever come under fire or under attack?

Not at Mersa Matruh, only bombs. They used to bomb us on a more or less regular basis. As a matter of fact, I was going back to the lines one day and they were bombing up towards the coast about 300 yards away,

36:00 so I thought, “I’m going to get off the road here.” I get off the road and all of a sudden there’s this almighty blast. I thought, “Oh God it’s a bomb.” It was an ack ack gun, [antiaircraft] a four-inch ack ack gun and she’d just set off a shell, and the muzzle blast went out about thirty feet from the muzzle, God. I was pleased it was a muzzle blast because if it was a bomb I wouldn’t have escaped, that’s for sure.

36:30 What did it feel like being bombed?

Well, you didn’t like it. That happened to us up in Syria. The French used to have a crack at us occasionally with their bombers but they were only isolated. They weren’t like the Italians or the Germans. They didn’t have about four bombers coming over at a time. They might have had two at the outside and you can see the bomb leaving the plane.

37:00 You look up and then you know whether you should get away from where you are as quick as possible or if it’s not going to hurt you anyhow. The French planes, they were flat out. At the outside they’d only have two bombs onboard. Most of them only had one. They were pre-war, even pre-Second World War planes.

So what did you do when a bomb was coming towards you?

37:30 Well, they don’t come towards you. Once they start dropping down you lay down on the ground mainly because if you know it’s not going to hit you, well you didn’t get down. Even if they’re only fifty yards away you lay down on the ground and normally nothing happens, a bit of shrapnel might go over the top of you. It’s up in the air anyhow

38:00 but don’t create problems.

When you were set up in this defensive position in Mersa Matruh, did any of the bombs come close to hitting you?

Only on the perimeter occasionally, yes. Normally they were trying for the shipping out on the harbour because they used that shipping, they used Mersa Matruh a bit to replenish

38:30 the troops in Tobruk. Tobruk was never taken by the Germans while the Australians occupied it. The Australians, when they came out, they were replaced by South Africans and the Germans took it then but the Australians were in command of Tobruk, although there was English artillery, and a few New

39:00 Zealanders, and Indian troops there, but Australians were overall in command.

Tape 4

00:38 You were talking about air-raids earlier. What was the immediate procedure to deal with an air-raid?

Just have a look up and we’ll see were they are, and if they’re in their final run you try and get away from it because once they get in their final run they don’t shoot.

01:00 What sort of defences were built?

Just slit trenches as a rule. They’re commonly referred to now as foxholes but there were no foxholes until the Americans came in, and they called them foxholes. It’s like the Kokoda Track. Somewhere along the line down in Sydney, someone, to placate the Americans they called it trail instead of a track but it was always a track because there’s the Commy Arlton Track, the Bulldog Track, and the old German Mission

01:30 track, and the Black Cat track. There were never any trails in New Guinea.

What were the slit trenches like?

Well, full with water half the time. Can we go back to Syria?

Sure.

Outside Tripoli we all had to build the slit trenches of course, in case of bombs. That was the rainy season and they all got filled with water.

02:00 At one stage, I’d show you but I’m hooked up, it snowed where we were. Being Queenslanders, we had never seen snow before. So it’s obviously cold. The top of the water in the slit trenches used to freeze and a few of the blokes coming back with too much arrack in them,

02:30 they’d step on the top of the ice, and go through, and nearly freeze to death. You’d hear a scream in the middle of the night. Someone had fallen into a slit trench that was filled with freezing water.

So what good were the slit trenches if they were filled with water?

Well no one ever tried to work that out. We weren’t bombed anyhow. They were too interested in Russia at the time to

03:00 worry too much about us where we were. Basically the local population were quite happy for us to be there. Anyhow that’s about the slit trenches.

Well talking about Syria, take me through when you first went into action in Syria?

We went across the border at a Jewish compound and we ate there.

03:30 This was before the war started and that’s where we were positioned to go over the border. They served us at the same prices as themselves. They never tried to make a profit out of us. We went over and that was it. You did as you were told. The infantry goes first and we, with the anti-tank guns following. 04:00 Then the artillery is behind us. It is more or less pre-ordained what you do when you start.

Tell me about your first action.

That was in Merdjayoun really and in front of where there were a couple of Redinal tanks. Who was the New South Wales Governor? Sir Roden Cutler. He got his

04:30 VC [Victoria Cross] at Merdjayoun. He was artillery there. [also lost his leg there]

And what did you do there?

We were just escorting the infantry against tanks and they only had two there, and they were soon put out of action. They had the Foreign Legion, the Vichy French, the Foreign Legion and the Black Troops from West Africa but their

05:00 main tanks, they only had a couple up there. Their main tanks were down on the coast and from Merdjayoun we could look down, and see the fighting on the Litani River on the coast. That’s where most of their armour was and they got about four or five tanks down there but they only had a couple up at Merdjayoun. I suppose they thought they didn’t want them. Well they didn’t really.

Where were you sort of

05:30 based in Syria?

We started off in base behind Beirut at Bikfaya and we got a fair amount of leave into Beirut. Then they shifted us up to outside Tripoli, a place called Bsama. That’s where we first saw our snow and basically all we did was training,

06:00 and go out, and fix gun sites, and everything. As a matter of fact, it was cold as hell. Well hell’s not cold I know but it was as cold as charity. That’s a bit colder. So we had to take turns out on the Mull. That’s in the harbour and the Mull was a breakwater kind of thing, which makes the waters, this is the Mediterranean, the water calm so the ships can

06:30 come in. We had to go out on the Mull with our two-pounder. The Bismarck [German battleship] would have laughed at us if they come along but I suppose it was something for us to do.

Tell me about this first place that you were based in Syria, near Beirut?

Bikfaya? It was a hill village. It was a lovely place and then Dishwaya [Dayr az Zawr] I’ve got photos of it. Dishwaya is up above that again

07:00 but the hierarchy in the medical and hospital took that. That was higher up the mountain again but they used to have a bus run from Beirut to Damascus.

Describe the little village for me.

It was a closely knit village and the main purpose of it was to

07:30 look after olive groves. There were a lot of olive trees there and it was terraced. In the village itself, there was a terrace up to it and the village was I suppose, be lucky to have forty houses. It was mainly cultivating the orange

08:00 terraces, the olives. The oranges were down in Palestine, the Jaffa orange. Going back to Palestine, driving through in the orange blossom time, you’re driving along the road and scent from the orange blossoms, even going along the road you could smell it. After trying a few I’d say our Naval oranges

08:30 would be slightly better than the Jaffa.

What was your interaction with the little village when you were based there?

As I said, we paid for everything we got. You had to do that. I think when you look at it, it got us more friends than enemies. They looked after us and

09:00 I’ve got a couple of photos of a girl up at Dishwaya. We were sitting up there in Dishwaya. We went up there and went in the café to have something, and out in the street a car backfired. We all dived to the ground, dived to the floor anyhow, all got up and laughed at each other.

How long did you spend in action in Syria?

Five weeks. They wrote a book about

09:30 it, Five Bloody Weeks. That was the title of the book.

How do you think these five weeks affected you?

It made me realise the war was on. It really brings, you stop being a youth. It’s a bit more serious than you thought it was.

Tell me about some of the things that you saw and 10:00 did.

Well, in Syria after it was all over we had two three-day trips around Syria and Damascus, Aleppo, Baalbek.

Tell me about some of the things that you saw happen or did during the action in Syria.

We saw a little bit of a problem at Merdjayoun. They didn’t give up lightly.

10:30 As I said, that’s where I first saw my dead man.

Tell me about this situation. Walk me through it.

I can’t tell you, only that you don’t want to believe what you’re seeing.

What was the situation?

The situation is such that you don’t want to believe what you see. They’re lying there in their full uniform

11:00 with no apparent, anything wrong with them and you just hope they get up, and walk away but you realise, you’re a realist enough to know that they’re not going to do that. Then again, things are coming past you at an unacceptable rate, so you’ve got to concentrate on what you’re doing. You finish up realising that

11:30 the fun part’s gone out of it.

The first time that you saw your first dead body, what had happened?

We were trying to take this Merdjayoun and there was resistance, and they were shot.

What was your role?

We were the anti-tank support and we were trying to

12:00 get up as close as possible to support the infantry. As far as I know there were only two tanks that we accounted for. The rest were down more or less on the coast. After Merdjayoun, that’s where all the major fighting took place. Anyway the book,

12:30 it opened your eyes to what war was all about and I’m very thankful that the Germans invaded Russia. Let them kill each other.

Take me through what a typical day for you was like when you were in these five weeks of action?

A typical day was guard if it was night

13:00 time. Everyone took their turn at guard. You had to and then even in the daytime you had to. The others might be around the gun but there would always be someone up on a position where they could observe what was going on. There’s always tension there because well, there’s always tension there. But that’s all you can explain it, except when

13:30 when the action was on and a bit of firing going on. Between the firing we got shelled at one stage. They never got onto us but I’m pretty sure they knew we were there. The nearest landed about fifty yards away. Anyhow, they never got us

14:00 and we were isolated with our guns, so they never got us. The nearest landed I suppose about fifty yards away but they were the old French 75 millimetre guns and I suppose they weren’t as accurate as they should have been, thank God.

What was your relationship like with the infantrymen?

The infantrymen? Oh good. Talking about the infantrymen,

14:30 one night a company of infantry would go up into a forward position, so if any attack coming at night time, they tried to attack at night time. The forward company would take the initial onslaught but would make the rest of the battalion aware there was a problem. So our position was going up with the forward infantry, go up forward with the infantry

15:00 to stop any tanks from getting amongst them because they would be helpless against them, the infantry up against tanks. Anyhow, I don’t know what happened but come dawn one morning and the light’s filtering through, and we looked around, no one. We look back and about three or four hundred yards behind us going back towards

15:30 the battalion was the company of infantrymen. We were the frontline troops. I tell you what, it didn’t take us long to saddle up and get back but you could say we were in the frontline, really in the frontline because there was no one between us, and anyone else.

What was that feeling of moving forward with the infantry intact? 16:00 You’re looking at sixty years ago and you’re looking at a different person really. Basically in hindsight you can evaluate the past but when you think of what happened when all this was happening, you can’t make up a definite decision. First of all you did it

16:30 because that was it. You had to do it. I mean there’s not much looking the other way. If you had to go up with the infantry, you went up with them. You never ever thought or queried it, or backing away.

Did any people?

Well there might have been, not in our gun crew anyhow.

Did you lose anyone close to you in this action?

No.

17:00 A couple of troops down on the whatsername. Irwin was one and Bowie was another in our regiment, in our battery. They were two but we were reasonably fortunate. We lost none in ours

17:30 except when old Bummy tipped the truck and the gun over the embankment, and there was ammunition, and guns, and blokes. As I say Jim, he suffered back injuries and I never saw him from that day until after the war.

What happened?

We were going up at night time, blacked out and old Bummy must have, couldn’t see it.

18:00 Whether he could see it or not I don’t know but one moment we were sitting in the back of the Ute. I wasn’t the driver then. I was on the guns. We were minding our own business and all of a sudden over goes the truck. God, what a hell of a mess. Kibby, two of them, Jim got sent home. He injured his back very severely and

18:30 Kibby, he went. I think he come back, no, I don’t think he did. If he did, he didn’t come back to our gun crew anyhow.

What was it like having new members in your gun crew?

It very seldom happened. Bart Todd was one but as long as they’re compatible it’s all right.

19:00 Where would you be camped when you were in five weeks action?

On the road, on the side of the road no tents, no nothing.

How would you sleep?

You sleep. If you’re tried you sleep. Once, I was very fortunate, old Barney, I woke up the next morning and Barney Seymour, I said to Barney, “You went to sleep last night on the

19:30 guard Barney.” He says, “I did not.” I said, “Well you never woke me.” He said, “I did.” He said, “I gave you the watch.” I said, “I never got a watch off you.” He said, “You better look round.” I looked round and I was asleep on the damn watch, just lucky everyone decided to be quiet for the night. I’d taken the watch, you get that tired. I took the watch off him and probably went back to sleep.

20:00 In the olden days I would have been shot but no one ever found out about it, only Barney and me.

And Barney never told?

I don’t think anyone would take notice of him anyhow. That was over and done with. He’s there in that picture with me standing in front of the Australia New Zealand Light Horse War Memorial. Barney, Doc, I don’t know what Barney’s first name was, probably

20:30 Bernard and Doc Riley, I never knew what Doc’s first name was. He was Doc Riley. That was it.

Did you have a nickname?

Well, not a really good one, only in the commando mob. They called me Brewin the Bear. I was 25 and they regarded me as a father figure because there were a lot of 18, 19 and 20 year olds. I found this out after the

21:00 war at the reunion and they used to play up, a lot of young blokes, and I’m aged 25, and going on 26, and getting a bit over the hill according to these young blokes. I used to tell them not to be so damn silly if there was any grog around or anything like that. They

21:30 said, “You always spoil things.” So I got Brewin the Bear. As a matter of fact, the bloke who coined it, he’s my best man up there. As I said, I was 25 and these were 20 or younger but I got a bit of a wrap-up in one of the reunions. Keith

22:00 Wakeling, he said, “It was the best thing that happened to our unit, you blokes coming over from the anti-tanks.” He said, “You gave us a bit of maturity we never had.”

In Syria when you were camped by the road and that sort of thing. [technical break] I was asking how you’d get thing like fresh water and

22:30 stuff like that?

If it was handy you’d go back for it, otherwise you’d do without. At night time if you were in close contact they’d bring, someone would go back for the water but you lived off your water bottle.

How sparing would you have to be?

You had to be

23:00 a bit sparing. You didn’t have cups of tea or anything. [technical break]

How sparing would you have to be with your water?

Very sparing but you’d have to be very sparing. You’d have to wait or go back. You might have to walk a couple of hundred

23:30 yards back. The water truck would be there but it would be way out of sight and certainly be two to three hundred yards back from where it could be seen but you knew where it was.

How would you do simple things like brush your teeth?

You didn’t do it. I’ve still got all of my bottom teeth and it apparently never hurt too much but oh no, for toothpaste

24:00 you used salt when you got to sufficient water. You used salt to clean your teeth.

How?

Easy. It’s good. Salt’s a good teeth cleaner.

How do you use it?

Just as salt, put a bit in the palm of your hand and dip your wet toothbrush in it, and clean your teeth.

Does it leave a funny taste in your mouth?

A bit of a saline taste but that doesn’t hurt. It’s only a salty taste. It’s not objectionable.

24:30 That’s the only thing we had up in New Guinea.

How would you have a bit of a wash or something?

That in itself was solved because you didn’t have one. You wore your wardrobe. You’re not talking now about, you’re talking about the actual conflict. Well, you did without a lot of things that you wouldn’t do without otherwise. Anyhow, it didn’t

25:00 seem to really particularly worry us.

What sort of food did you have during those five weeks?

Reasonable army tucker. Bully beef was the main stay and they’d bring up a bit of bread occasionally if possible, and otherwise the basic things. You might get eggs, boiled

25:30 eggs, Bully Beef, and camp pie. Have you ever heard of camp pie? It’s just been made in Stanley Street.

What is it?

Camp pie, you better ask Ronnie about that. It’s a bit like Bully Beef only it’s camp pie anyhow. We used to have it made in Brisbane.

And what does Bully Beef taste like?

26:00 Pressed meat. That’s what it’s supposed to be. There’s a lot of fat in it. Over in the desert if you wanted to heat it up you punched a few holes in the outside and threw it on the fire, and the fat came out, and when you opened it up it was more or less free of fat. Then they brought spuds, potatoes up and one thing and another.

What was your uniform like after wearing it for five weeks?

I don’t think anyone

26:30 worried about it. I can’t remember that but you were better having it on than having it off that’s for sure.

How would you describe the atmosphere in the regiment during those five weeks of action? Oh pretty good. I can’t ever remember dissent anyhow.

Well not necessarily dissent but was there?

Well, you were all interested

27:00 in what happened to the rest of the battery especially, not so much the regiment but the battery because the battery was one piece kind of thing. There’s 5, 6, 7 and 8 Battery, and you’re only basically interested in your own. Overall you’re interested but your personal interest is with your own battery.

How would you receive news of what was going on?

Usually if the DonR, that’s the

27:30 despatch rider. They call them DonRs. He would normally have pretty good information from headquarters because that was his job, to deliver messages from headquarters to outlying posts. If he had the information he would pass it on.

Would you ever hear anything over the radio?

No, we didn’t have radios. They weren’t radios in those days. They were

28:00 wireless.

Would you get mail?

Oh yes. It used to take the best part of a fortnight from Brisbane, which wasn’t too bad. Yes I think around about fourteen days airmail. It was nine pence, eight cents.

What sort of news did you hear from Brisbane?

Ronnie,

28:30 we wrote pretty regular and more or less it was personal. My mother and sisters would write but not so frequently as Ronnie.

How did it affect you getting mail?

Well you like it. You liked getting mail to see how things were going at home.

Would you tell other people, your mates about Ronnie?

Oh yes, they’d know. We knew basically,

29:00 especially your own gun crew. You knew basically your own members of the family all round and as for Jim, I knew Addy. That’s his wife. I’d met her before we even joined the army.

Did you have a picture of Ronnie with you?

Yes, there. See that one.

29:30 There should be one there.

Yes. You can show me that afterwards. Would you show other people?

Oh yes. It was in me wallet. I was going to say there it is there on the left of my photo.

I see, yes.

30:00 I nearly lost her photo up outside Wewak in the Damut River. We were coming in and I’ve got my pack on my back, and an Owen gun strapped across the front of me, the others were moving forward over the Damut about twenty yards down. I thought I’d be smart and cross higher up. If it was shallow down there it would probably be shallow up here

30:30 and went into a hole, and the only way I could get rid of my pack, which was pulling down, was get it off. First of all I had to get the Owen gun off because it’s strap was holding the pack down. So if you want an Owen gun, if you go up to the Damut River you can get one because it’s down there somewhere. I never got it, never charged with it

31:00 but it was the only way I could save myself from drowning. I didn’t want to do that.

When you were in Syria when did you know that it might be a successful campaign?

I was just talking to Ronnie the other day about that. Never at any stage did I envisage us losing the war. That’s not only with Syria. That’s overall.

31:30 I just never thought we would ever lose the war.

And so in Syria, how did the news you were getting, of what was going on, how did they tell you what was specifically happening in that campaign? In action yourself you’re only

32:00 interested in your section. You found out how well all the other sections were going but your own section was your immediate worry. Overall you didn’t worry unduly about it as long as you were going all right where you were.

I might have missed this explanation of it but after the tanks that they had were destroyed, what exactly was your role?

32:30 You didn’t know they were destroyed until such time as the war finished because they may have had reserves, so we just continued our role as an anti-tank defence and stayed that way until peace was declared.

How often would you fire your gun during an action?

After the initial

33:00 attack on Merdjayoun not at all because no tanks kept coming but we had to be there just in case.

When there were tanks tell me about how you’d line up a tank and fire on the tank.

Well, you’ve got a telescopic sight and in your training that’s what you do, and that’s all. You line them up and allow for speed, then pull the trigger, and hope for the

33:30 best.

Did your gun get one?

We got one hit but I don’t know if it was ours that got the tank though. You never know because all the shells are the same.

Were you able to see the tank exploding?

You could see the tank, oh yes. You couldn’t fire at them without seeing them.

And so what was that feeling like when you saw the tank explode?

Well they don’t explode. They more or less burn. The old

34:00 chums used to say, that’s where the expression comes, “We brewed up.” In other words they catch fire. Everyone jumps out and hopes for the best.

What did it feel like when you saw that a tank was on fire?

Well you knew that they wouldn’t be worrying you any more.

Were there any feelings of pride?

Just thankful that you got them rather than they got you,

34:30 very basic.

Towards the end of that campaign how did they let you know that you’d been successful?

In our section I suppose for the last week there wasn’t much action at all. The infantry had probed forward and

35:00 with very slight resistance, and of course we were waiting for headquarters to tell us to go ahead. As I said, one morning after daybreak here’s four or five blokes coming down waving a white flag on a big stick. I don’t think you’d see that much now. That’s a flag of truce of course and actually we saw

35:30 it from behind our gun, and we could see this. Anyhow, I don’t think it will happen too much in modern warfare waving a white flag.

What was it like to see the white flag?

Very good. You knew it was over.

And so what did you do?

We just come out. We didn’t meet them. The battalion commanders met them but they just came to tell us that

36:00 a truce had been called.

After the truce had been called what did you do?

That’s when we waited for orders of course and finished up behind Beirut for a while before we moved off outside Tripoli.

What were you doing outside Beirut in that village? Very little while they were just sorting things out. For the first two or three weeks after the war, after it finished

36:30 there were all the problems sorting things out. It was a bit confused. Well it appeared to us they were a bit confused, so they left us alone, which was unusual.

Were you bored?

Oh no, not in a new place. Oh God no. Going to Beirut and you sit on the Hotel St George, and look over the side, and you’re looking down the Mediterranean.

37:00 Oh God, a new place like that. No one speaks English or very few, although we had a chap, Alan Plant. His parents were from the Channel Islands and Alan could speak a bit of French, and not meant to be abusive but they call it bastard French, of the Channel Islands. He was able to converse

37:30 but most of us of course, we wouldn’t have a clue. As I said, I thought that woman was begging for mercy instead of saying thank you. But I found that the currency had a great, if you’ve got the money, understanding soon comes if you’re buying things. I sent some ivory

38:00 home, a little carving of elephants, a letter opener it is. Ronnie’s still got it.

What was Beirut like as a city?

Good. Its name is the Paris of the East, Beirut very sophisticated apparently from a French way of thinking. That’s what they called it anyhow the Paris of the East.

How much time did you get to spend there?

We had a fair amount of time

38:30 in leave. After a while you run out of money rather than run out of leave. That’s before the shift up to Tripoli, which got a bit restrictive. Anyway we did two three-day trips around Syria and got to Damascus.

What was Damascus like?

Oh you’ve got no idea.

39:00 To us it was something out of this world really. I think I said, they had a bus from Damascus to Beirut but we went in our army trucks.

How well do Australian troops behave on leave?

Well, it’s like everywhere else, basically most of our behaviour was reasonable,

39:30 very reasonable but you always get a few blokes who get a few beers and they become sillier than they were. Normally when you’re on leave you kick around with people or blokes that are more or less like yourself, there to enjoy themselves without

40:00 getting involved in any disputes. Anyhow we enjoyed ourselves, even Tripoli. We used to go in. You couldn’t get in too frequently there. It was an eye opener to us Australians.

Tape 5

00:37 After Syria where were you stationed?

Firstly we were up outside Beirut.

That’s right. You were talking about that.

Then we got shifted up outside Tripoli and all we were doing then was acting as garrison troops, that’s all, no action whatsoever after that until the Japs entered the war and

01:00 then we were called back to Australia with the 6th Division, and the 9th Division took over from us up in Syria before of course they finished up in the Battle of El Alamein. As I said, we came home.

Before we get there in too much of a hurry, tell us what exactly garrison troops meant?

That’s all you are. You’re

01:30 not fighting anyone or in other words, you might as well be home in Australia. Once it’s all over there’s no risk whatsoever and the Germans were fully occupied in Russia, so they presented no problem.

How did you receive the news that Japan had entered the war? That brought it home,

02:00 really let us know there is a war on. It become a bit more personal, just like everything else. The Yanks, they got bombed and anyhow, it became very personal.

How did you receive the news that you were going to be sent home?

Very, very well and I might have said

02:30 previously, I admire Churchill for what he did and I admire [Australian Prime Minister] Curtin for bringing us home rather than being forced or rather trying to side with Churchill to send us to India. They were both good leaders but Churchill saw the

03:00 benefit of us going to India for the Empire. Curtin saw the benefit for us to come home. I admire him for the strong stance he took against Churchill because it would have been a very great man that would’ve objected to Churchill, so Curtin deserves a lot more praise than I think he ever got.

Tell us

03:30 how exactly you were told the news that you were going.

It came over the air. We were still in Syria then of course on the 7th December and we were on our way without going through our records, we were on our way, and we got back here at the end of February I think.

Tell us about your journey back home.

04:00 Well, we left Port Tewfik in the old Empire Grant, 6,000 tonner coal burner and we raced across the Persian Gulf, across the Indian Ocean with raving sea at a fast rate of about four knots an hour. As a matter of fact, you could have beaten the damn thing if you were walking on land. Anyhow we got to Cochin, which is the west

04:30 coast of India, nearly opposite Madras and El Quasto D’Agamo was married there because Cochin was a part of the Portuguese enclave there of Goa until the British chased them out. We stayed there and they had a fort there guarding the port but old muzzle loaders. That’s how far back they went.

05:00 As I say, the plaque on the floor of El Quasto D’Agamo, it’s easy to read. We stayed there for a good week while they, it’s a fort Cochin. They formed a convoy and then they decided to set off, and they set off at seven knots, and

05:30 we could only do four, so they shunted us back to Cochin, and I suppose they wondered what to do with us, blow us up or what. They didn’t want us in the seven-knot convoy. We would have lagged behind. Anyhow, eventually they gave us the go ahead to go on our own. I think I told you that. We come across the monsoon season and a 6,000 tonner is not that big, and leaning on the rail the waves were higher than the deck but they’re not vicious

06:00 waves, not typhoon or hurricane waves. They’re just the normal monsoonal big rollers. We met on the horizon one bloke blowing coal smoke in the air and we decided he must be a friend because he went one way, and we went the other. We pulled into Fremantle for a little while, never got off and then went round to Adelaide, and disembarked at Adelaide,

06:30 Port Adelaide, and then went up to Sandy Creek, which is a bit north of Adelaide in the grape growing area. We messed around there for about a fortnight or so and they shunted us up through various stages, first of all up to Tenterfield, and then from Tenterfield we went up to Woodford, which

07:00 in my opinion was a de facto line because at Dickie Beach up at Caloundra it was criss-crossed properly with barbed wire. We stayed up there and as I said, they called for volunteers for independent companies, which later in 1943 they were renamed commando squadrons but about a dozen or so of us went across.

07:30 We got vetted at Ascot Racecourse. That was a staging camp and we went up by train to Townsville, then flew from Townsville to Port Moresby on a Sunderland flying boat, four engines, the Coriolanus. Strange as it may seem, we were out at Long Reach a while back. We went out by train and a friend hired a car when we got there, and we

08:00 went through the Qantas Exhibits out on the airfield at Long Reach, and here’s a photo of the Coriolanus in one of the photos. As I say, it was a date I won’t forget because it was on my twenty-fifth birthday when we left Townsville. We dropped down at Trinity Bay at Cairns before continuing. Anyway, we got up there in one day.

Before we go all the way there,

08:30 there are a lot of questions I have about coming back to Australia from the Middle East.

Yes?

What was it like when you first saw Australia or first came into Australian waters? We were very elated of course. We were going home. If it ever, well you were going home. I don’t think you can express it better than that, when you’re going home.

What kind of things were you thinking about?

You’re thinking

09:00 about the situation. That was the only thing because you’re under attack more or less. Well, things were not going to be the same and it was a case of how you were going to alter them. Eventually we did of course but that doesn’t strike you straight off. The first thing that strikes you is you’re going home.

What about seeing

09:30 Ronnie? Were you thinking about her?

Oh yes, as soon as I got off at Adelaide I sent her a telegram. We’ve still got the telegram, “Arrived safely. Leave uncertain.” I think I said earlier in the piece, everyone else I spoke to in the Middle East except our own blokes answered in broken English and I asked this bloke the direction to the Adelaide Post Office

10:00 so I could send the telegram, and he answered me in broken English. Then we come up through Tuckenwall, over the border at Tuckenwall, up through Narrabri and Narromine, and somehow or other we got across to the main line up through Armidale, and Tenterfield, and we camped at Tenterfield for a while, and

10:30 got a bit of leave. Then when we got back they decided to send us up to Woodford.

What kinds of things were you doing in Adelaide for the two weeks you were there?

Just messing around really. I think they were trying to sort us out.

What kind of stuff do you do when you mess around?

As little as possible but you go on parade and they might take you on a route march to get you out of the way.

11:00 You can imagine things weren’t normal.

How had your war experience affected you at this stage?

It hadn’t affected me. I’m reasonably level headed and what you can’t alter, don’t worry about. If you can alter it, well then get stuck into it.

11:30 It’s not that I’m unfeeling but if you can’t alter something it’s a waste of time trying to worry about it.

Did you have a chance to have some leave back in Australia?

Only when we come up as far as Tenterfield and then we got leave down into Brisbane but it would have been only for about at the outside

12:00 a fortnight because Singapore had already fallen, and the southwest Pacific was not a very nice place to be. The Yanks, they either had to use us or New Zealand and we were the better country for them to use but they used us to save themselves just as much as to save us. Undoubtedly their contribution to us was a help.

12:30 We couldn’t have gone much without it, although it was Australian troops that stopped the Japs at Milne Bay the first time they got defeated in the war because they had to retreat. They had to get back into their barges and motorboats, and went back as far as Buna. Then the Kokoda track, we stopped them there. Circumstances,

13:00 our resistance to their advance on Moresby was such that they couldn’t keep supplies up, so they had no option but to go back and the Battle of the Coral Sea, which tied it up. Australian ships also fought alongside American ships. In my opinion those three incidents prevented Australia being invaded.

Tell us

13:30 about [what you] thought of and saw of the Americans in Australia on this leave.

Ronnie’s cousin married one, Barney. He died early last year. As far as I’m concerned throughout the world eighty percent of the people are decent people and [it’s the] same with the Americans. The

14:00 hierarchy in America are not as wrapped up in it but the ordinary bloke, the ordinary man or woman are just like the ordinary man or woman of eighty percent of the population, whether they are black, white or brindle.

And you thought this at the time when you saw them in Brisbane?

I wasn’t real wrapped up in their financial position 14:30 regarding ours but Barney and Pat, that’s Ronnie’s cousin Barney, Barnes Bornsworth, he was in the US Navy, and Ronnie and I, we got the bus up to Central Station to go down to Shorncliffe for the afternoon, and Barney wanted to pay my fare. I wouldn’t let him. I couldn’t see a Yank paying my fare but nevertheless every time we went to America, even the electric razor I got Barney brought it back

15:00 from America last time, and we went over with Pat and Barney, and ‘87 we went over to America, and went up as far as Canada.

So tell us what was it like to see Ronnie again?

Excellent of course. It renewed everything and

15:30 you’re just very, very happy to see each other.

Describe when you first saw her when you came into Brisbane.

I couldn’t do that but I was more than happy to see her I can assure you. I was hoping that she’d be more than happy to see me.

Was two weeks long enough?

It never is really but you’re conditioned by that by then, to the army life. You knew it couldn’t go on forever,

16:00 so you take these things a bit at a time and thank the Lord that you’re here to enjoy them.

What were you noticing about wartime Australia as compared to before? What was it like, the streets and city life?

Everyone seemed a lot more keyed up than normal but when you’re facing a crisis

16:30 that you don’t know how is going to develop, I can accept that. When you’re with the family and when I was in Brisbane as families go, you’re only concerned with your own immediate family. Everyone was not normal, until such times as the end of ‘43

17:00 they weren’t as relaxed as they were after ‘43 because any invasion then was out of the way.

Apart from your family and Ronnie, what kinds of things were you enjoying about being back in Australia?

You more or less, first of all you’re home, which you can take it from me is a bonus that you don’t know you’ve

17:30 lost until you’ve lost it. I don’t know if that makes sense but anyhow then by virtue of being involved with the unit and faced a certain amount of danger together, you become involved in, I know it’s a bit

18:00 overused but mateship. If you were in Brisbane you congregate, like Ronnie was working, so if you were in town you congregate, have a few beers and have a talk. In other words you enjoy each other’s company. You’re friends are those that you immediately are concerned with. As a matter of fact, one died the other day,

18:30 George Hislop.

Did you talk about with anyone what you’d see or what you’d gone through in the Middle East at this stage?

You just talked about what you did yourselves between yourselves and you more or less knew each other’s history.

Tell us about the call for volunteers for the commando section.

Well, we read on the noticeboard they wanted these, I was trying to think of Wilson’s Promontory the other day

19:00 a while back where they trained but we didn’t go there. We came straight from the Middle East and went up to New Guinea. There was a notice on the Orderly Room Board, “Volunteers to volunteer for independent companies.” As I say, we weren’t sure what an independent company was but better than sitting on our backsides up there and they promised leave, so that got a few of us

19:30 in, and we decided to join the independent company, and finished up in more strife than Ned Kelly. Nevertheless we got through it.

Tell us what you did think it was.

We didn’t know. We didn’t know what an independent company was, only the word independent. You knew that you wouldn’t be shackled with, you’d be on your own somewhere but we didn’t know. We soon found out.

Tell us about 20:00 the process of joining up the independent company.

Well we only saw the notice on the noticeboard. We all, about a dozen or so of us, put our names down and they came and picked us up, gave us a few days leave, and told us to then report to Ascot Staging Camp, which we did. We were vetted by some blokes down from Wilson’s Promontory to see if we were fit and proper to join

20:30 their illustrious band. They gave us the go ahead and off we went by train up to Townsville, and from Flying Boat to Port Moresby, and then from Port Moresby to Wau by DC-3s [ transports] .

Tell us about Woodford. What were you doing there?

Digging gun pits and otherwise if there weren’t any gun pits, they’d send us over the

21:00 hill out of the way, so it looked like we were doing something. Army life in true terms is if you’re not doing any, or if you’re not in any danger, it’s very monotonous. I suppose that’s what induced us to join up to independent companies. That’s to finish the monotony after a while.

With the independent companies, was there any specific training that you started to receive?

21:30 We never had an ounce of training. The original members did down at Wilson’s Promontory at Tidal River but we come straight from the Middle East. Our training was on the spot and it was pretty, I think Australians had an advantage there because we were used to the bush, and it never worried us.

22:00 The physical effort, that’s what you don’t realise. There’s no motorcars, there’s no pushbikes. You’ve got to slog with a pack on your back and you feel like, you become exhausted, and you think you can’t go on but then you wake up to the fact that there’s no option but go on because you’ve got to reach somewhere,

22:30 where you’re supposed to be going. It would be like a woman telling a bloke, trying to explain labour pains to me telling them what it was like in the first eighteen months up there. After that it didn’t get too bad but as I said, we suffered from beri beri or malnutrition. That’s nothing to do with the inefficiency of the

23:00 army. They had nothing. They had no option. They did what they could and we had beards. We had no razors but we grew beards. As a matter of fact, Tokyo Rose when the Battle of Wau was on called us the Bearded Barbarians. That was over the wireless but as I say, we had no razors and no toothbrushes, or no toothpaste

23:30 that’s for sure, only salt. She can’t understand herself but try it and you wont be disappointed. It’s a saline taste in your mouth but it cleans your teeth.

What did you think of this slogan the Bearded Barbarians?

We just laughed. When we got back to where we could get razor blades, which was

24:00 when we got back to Moresby, they flew us back to Moresby after the battle was over and we got razor blades. We got clean shaven again and then they were going to fly us up to the Sepik River. They worked out that the supply situation was such that they would have been stretching too much, so they didn’t send us up there. So they sent us up to the central highlands in New Guinea. We had our patrol from Mount Hagen to

24:30 Kainantu, which overlooked the Ramu Valley and the waters of the Markham River, which flowed into Lae. We lost a couple of blokes. As a matter of fact, Don and I, Don died last August. Wally Abeldon, George Evans, they got killed and we had to set up a no-pip (grave marker?)behind where they were killed. That’s what they were. They were a no-pip when they got killed. The Japs come up and killed them.

25:00 Don and I had to set up another one about quarter of a mile behind where they were.

I might just go back to leaving Australia for New Guinea. You said you received no training but did the other men in the section, in the independent company tell you what kinds of things you needed to know?

I don’t think so, no. They were all a lot younger. As I said, they

25:30 regarded me as a father figure at twenty-five, a rough old man. The average bloke cottoned on pretty quick what was required and physical effort was the main thing required at the early stages of the war up in New Guinea.

How psychically fit were you at this stage?

Well, not as physically fit as I was after it but I finished up wracked with malaria

26:00 and not such exotic diseases as hook worm, which I had and malaria, hookworm. Otherwise there’s leeches up there but there again it doesn’t matter much about a leech. They’ll drop off when they’re full of blood or you put a cigarette in on them. We all smoked and I got some 26:30 Bull Durham. That’s American tobacco and with them it’s not like us where you rolled up. You’ve got to hold it. It’s like tea leaves. I tell you what it’s the worst way to roll a cigarette in the rain with that damn Bull Durham. We finished up throwing it away anyhow.

How do you roll it exactly?

You know what a cigarette paper is like? Well you formed a V and they were in little calico sacks.

27:00 The tobacco is like tea leaves and you just pour in to the V there and then you roll it out, and then stick it down. It was too complicated for us. I tried it once.

First of all, just before we go to New Guinea, what was Townsville like at the time?

That was a garrison town too,

27:30 soldiers, sailors, airmen everywhere. There was a big air force base at Townsville, Garbutt. It was one of the main airfields, Garbutt, that’s the Townsville airport.

How did you feel about going back to war after a short break in Australia?

You knew it was going to be rough anyhow.

28:00 Seeing you weren’t going to desert, it was inevitable and I think for your own pride, no matter how reluctant you might feel you couldn’t let yourself down.

What were you expecting in New Guinea at the time?

When we first went there we didn’t know. After about three months we did and it was all hard yakka, and doing

28:30 what damage you could to the enemy. The second time, that was the first time. The first time we went up to, after Wau we went up to the central highlands. As a matter of fact, old Slim Wells and I did the traverse out from Koroko out to Chimbu. That was about three miles out but I did it with a bismuthic compass, that’s all,

29:00 and judging distance. All I can say is that [Prime Minister Gough] Whitlam never did the New Guinea people a service by giving them independence so soon because I can’t fault the Australian administration up there. The natives really responded to it. The old saying, ignorance is bliss. They weren’t ready

29:30 for it. Basically they’re a nice people the New Guineans.

What kind of brief or instructions did you receive about what you were going to do in New Guinea when you were leaving Australia?

All we knew was we had to fight the Japs. That was the basis of it, the terrain that was left to your own common sense how to conquer that, which you did do.

30:00 It was a bit hard to start with then you accepted the inevitable. It was not much use looking the other way. It’s not much use looking at the top of the hill. You’ve got to get there. So if you’ve put one foot up, I’ve gone up from the Bitoi [river] about 2,000 feet up and you’re so tired any tree beside the track you grab hold of just to help yourself up.

30:30 Anyhow, in other words you use whatever thing comes along to give you a help.

Take us through the journey you took to get to New Guinea. Like, how did you get there, what were you flying on again? Talk us through that journey in the plane.

In the plane?

31:00 Oh it was a real novelty to us. I’d never been on a plane before and a seaplane of all things. When it’s taking off there’s spray going everywhere. Anyhow we had a nice trip up to New Guinea at least. You know, when you’re young, you’re only living for the moment. You’re not trying to capture

31:30 the moment. You’re just living it. Anyhow we got back to earth when we started doing, in other words, when we got in contact with Japs because we had to go bush, old Ted Jacobs and I, for the best part of three days to escape.

Talk us

32:00 through that whole story of arriving at Wau for the battle, what happened? What were the first things you noticed?

Well, the New Guinea rifles had burned a few buildings but we were camped in the jail. One troop was camped down at the hospital that was still intact. Pat Dunshay’s mob, Pat lives about a mile away, they were camped down at the farmhouse. 32:30 There was a lot of coffee growing up in Wau and they used to grind it with, you wouldn’t know about the old hand mincer I don’t think but they used to grind the coffee beans with that, and made their own coffee. Naomi [interviewer] , I was telling, she didn’t know about camp pie but camp pie is a concentrated meat. You cut it in slabs. You can have it in sandwiches.

33:00 Maxims Cheese used to make it I think. They were down Stanley Street where the Southbank is now. Otherwise up there, there’s corn. We basically lived off the land to start with. We had no option because things were grim. You’re talking about October,

33:30 November when Buna, Gona and [Sanananda] were on, on the way to Salamaua. As I say in hindsight, the powers that be did the best job they could with what they had. You didn’t feel so at the time, living on dehydrated stuff but by the same token when you look back, we were totally unprepared for the war

34:00 that was on our doorstep.

Well tell us what you first saw, the set up at Wau, what positions you took and what you were seeing around you.

Well, first of all, pretty clear it was a township, Wau. It had electricity in peacetime. It was a gold mining town, a very rich gold mining town. The power station was up at a place called Eddie Creek and

34:30 some of our engineer blokes got up there, and got a bit of light but it was fluctuating light. We never used it. Some of the blokes got gold especially down below Lae. Some of the gold was still in the cyanide or whatever they have.

35:00 Anyhow, a few of our blokes knew about the gold. A guy, Marks and I, we got an ingot and we thought it was just silver so we dumped it. I heard later after the war, the elevens and Don went up to New Guinea on a nostalgia trip and they said, “No, the gold up there is a lighter colour.” Anyhow, you wouldn’t have carried it, even if it was diamonds. You got rid of anything you didn’t want.

35:30 Matter of fact, we just threw it beside the airstrip before we went out.

What was the airstrip like? Describe the airstrip for us.

Well, the airstrip rose from the bottom to the top about seventy feet it was like that. The planes never switched off their motors. You got up, you threw all the cargo out, you got out yourself and then they took off because it was only an airstrip, and other planes would be circling to come in.

36:00 There might be two planes coming in at the one hit. I think I told Naomi, at one stage one of the battalion blokes, one of the reinforcements when the battle of Lae was well under way, he came over, got a bullet in the ankle and got the same plane back to Moresby, wounded in action.

Tell us, where did the Japanese attack from?

They attacked from this village of Mubo. We held the main track and it

36:30 finished up they had a go at it but they mustn’t have thought they’d risk it because they were knocked back. They used the old German Mission track in behind and previous we’d walked along a fair bit of it. It was a hell of a track. I mean even to walk along it would exhaust you let alone fight a battle at the finish of it. The Japs lost about fourteen hundred all told.

37:00 How did you manage to hold the main track?

With numbers of course and also we had a good defensive position. They would have lost too many but someone had told them about the old German Mission track. We didn’t know about it but as it turned out we had walked along a bit of it the previous month.

Tell us about the first time that you saw the Japanese coming in. What did you see?

37:30 Oh in Mubo. We went in and attacked that on Mat Mat. There was a fair few down on the village and up on Mat Mat, we would have seen around about twenty. They were all in slit trenches and everything. A couple of our blokes were killed,

38:00 a couple wounded.

What was happening? Were you firing?

Oh yeah. If you saw anything you fired but they were all camouflaged. It was very hard to, you let a burst go and same as Observation Hill where their firing comes from, you let a burst go but whether you hit anything or not is hard to say.

What was your position like

38:30 at this stage?

Just a soldier fighting the Japs.

Were you hidden behind anything? Oh no. At one stage one bloke and me, bullets were clipping the leaves six inches above our heads. We couldn’t get down any lower. We couldn’t see them. Then we went down over the side to get a bit

39:00 closer and we saw them but they were too well entrenched. Anyhow there was about three hundred of us and three thousand of them. The odds were a bit in their favour anyhow. I think the whole thing there was that the powers that be wanted to know why such a build up of troops in Mubo was taking place. They soon found out.

Tape 6

00:36 Describe for me the positions you were in, in Wau, what the defensive positions were like.

They were very primitive. It was as simple as that. We lived off the land. We went around and things were grim. They had corn up there, paw paws, sweet potatoes, even

01:00 as I say, along the road down near the farmhouse they had coffee plants growing but other than that, we lived on Bully Beef and dehydrated vegetables, and potatoes, meat, eggs.

When you were fighting what sort of fighting defences did you have set up?

You had

01:30 none because only down the main the track but when you’re fighting in the jungle unless you’ve got a village to defend, normally you’re attacking and there’s no fixed defences. The only thing we had in Yamba was a fixed defence but we

02:00 were thinking of moving, so they were going to make that a headquarters and that’s why we had a bit of fixed defence. Normally you patrolled. You were on your own and if you got into trouble, you got out of it yourself mainly.

Tell me how a patrol is conducted, how many men? How do you move?

Mat Mat, the first original attack on Mubo was

02:30 the first time our troop had acted as a whole. Otherwise mostly in patrols you use sections and there’s about twenty blokes in a section. Normally you went in to cause a bit of damage or as much as you could without endangering yourself because you were too small a mob to or too small an attachment to

03:00 start a stand up fight. But the attack on Mubo was our full squadron plus the 2/5th Commando Squadron too. After that we split up into troops. There were three troops to a squadron. After that we split up into troops and basically from the troops you’d, there’s three

03:30 sections to a troop, and basically you patrolled, and did what damage you could in sections because otherwise it’s too unwieldy in the jungle.

So how do you move in a patrol?

Well you’ve got a forward scout and you know where you’re going, basically you know where you’re going but your forward scout goes first for obvious reasons,

04:00 as the name suggests. Normally he’ll strike trouble before you do. I was behind one, about three behind when we struck trouble and saw the burst that killed him. Anyhow, you just work as a section and you try to look after each other.

Do you walk in a straight

04:30 line?

Yes, there are only tracks through the jungle. To spread out, unless you’re attacked or want to set an ambush, you keep to the track because otherwise movement would be too hard.

What is the job of the forward scout?

The forward scout is the first to contact the enemy. As the saying goes, you’ll go forward

05:00 until you contact the enemy. Well, he’s the first poor bloke to do it and if there is an ambush set, they might even let him through, and get the main body.

How do you communicate on a patrol?

As softly as possible.

Do you use hand signals?

In daylight yes. At night time in one instance up at the Aitape section 05:30 a funny thing happened. You might have seen this article about the attack on these people where no one was injured, where two were actually injured but anyhow we were going up and this was round about midnight. We’ve got a Kanaka, for want of a better word. The word Kanaka in Polynesian means man. Anyhow, he’s waving

06:00 a stick with an ember on and he keeps waving it, otherwise the ember would go out, and he’s leading up, and we’re all following. If you strike an obstacle you turn to the bloke behind you and whisper what it is. I don’t know if you know what a Wait a While is? Well, it’s a vine with very big thorns on it and if it catches in your clothes, you won’t pull it out. You’ve got to wait

06:30 and take it out bit by bit. Kevin Ryan, he was from North Queensland, we all got through and Ryan was behind us. Behind Kevin Ryan was Shortie Ray, from Sydney. I doubt if Shortie had seen a cow until he went out to his first army camp. He was born in Redfern. Anyhow, Ryan comes to the Wait a While

07:00 bush and he hands it over gingerly to Shortie, and he says, “Wait a while Shortie,” meaning the Wait a While vine. Shortie propped and it was about half an hour later that Ryan knew there was no one behind him. So we all had to stop while they went back to pick up old Shortie. Normally

07:30 you’d prefer hand signals in daytime if you were in sight of each other.

What kind of hand signals?

Well, normal ones you’d use to stop or just go forward, very basic.

The forward scout sounds like a pretty tough position.

That’s a very, there were very few volunteers for it.

How do you assign a forward scout?

08:00 They just, the lieutenant of the section says you’ll be forward scout.

Where you ever forward scout?

Oh yes, leading the second time onto Mat Mat. No one knew whether it was occupied or not and I’m going down, and the blokes start about ten to fifteen feet behind me. I look around when I about on Mat Mat and they were about twenty yards behind. As luck turned out,

08:30 the Japs had deserted it.

What does it feel like being forward scout?

Not very good. Normally as I said, we went up to Observation Hill and the forward scout, I was three behind him when I saw the bursts come out of the undergrowth that killed him.

Who came out of the undergrowth?

Machine gun fire came out of the undergrowth, Jap machine gun fire and killed the forward scout,

09:00 Snowy McMahon.

Who was he?

Snowy McMahon, he was.

What was he like?

Well he was a nice bloke. Anyhow that’s roughly what happened to forward scouts if you strike trouble.

What happened when Snowy got shot? What did you do?

Well, we couldn’t do anything you know. We were compromised and fifteen of us or sixteen of us went up to conquer Observation Hill.

09:30 When they did finally conquer it, it took a battalion to do it.

But I mean in that instant when Snowy got shot, did you drop to the ground?

Oh yeah, you dropped to the ground until you see what’s going on but then you can’t stay on the ground. You’ve got to get up. You try and fire your way out of it.

What happened? Did the Japs fire on you?

Oh yeah, they were firing in our

10:00 direction but we were hidden too.

So how did you know when you could get up and move again?

Well you’ve got to take that risk. Where were you going to move to?

Back to where we come from because we couldn’t go forward because they had us covered. The only reason we could, we couldn’t go forward anyhow they’d stopped that.

So what did you do with Snowy’s body?

Well we left it there, not much use getting two or three killed just to get it out.

10:30 Was that hard?

Of course it was hard. Anything like that’s hard. It’s always, anyhow you’re very reluctant to do it but common sense says you’ve got to.

Did you say any words for Snowy?

Oh, he was too far forward. I was too far back anyhow.

I mean after he died did you have a, I mean how did you deal with it as a group when someone died?

11:00 Well, it’s a part of war so common sense dictates that you can’t let tragedy rule you.

How do you control that?

Well, accept the fact that it could happen to you.

What’s the procedure when someone dies? Is it reported?

Oh yeah it’s reported.

Who reports it and to whom?

That would be whoever was in charge

11:30 of the section, like when we were first hit in Mubo, Ted Jacobs and I were separated from the main body. These Japs had come up between us and our departing troop, and we took to the scrub. When we got back to Wipali on the third day, they were just about to report us missing in action but they never did because we got

12:00 back. We had one, the first night we slept with our groundsheets over our head to keep the rain off. The next night we were lucky to find a hut. We slept in that hut, wet clothes of course. The third night we decided to cross the Bitoi and we came across this well defined track, and the powers that be say,

12:30 “If you came across a well worn track it leads somewhere.” So it led back to Wipali and we staggered in about half past four that night.

So tell me about this occasion when you accidentally got left behind. Tell me about the days that built up to it?

Well we were attacking Mat Mat and they were too dug in for us. A couple of our blokes got killed, couple got wounded. We went down, one of our blokes was wounded

13:00 and we went down, and he died actually. We went down with lieutenant and then we went forward of those couple of people, and the order must have come through to pull out but no one told us. Ted and I, we were too forward or they might have forgot about us, I don’t know. After about ten minutes of silence or five to ten minutes, it’s very hard to calculate time and we looked up

13:30 and there’s a bank on the side of the track plus trees, bushes and that, and here’s about a dozen Japs following them out. So this time we shot through.

Where did you go?

Into the scrub. We decided to go up this ravine and see if we could cut the track but it got too steep so we couldn’t do that. That was the next day and we camped that night.

14:00 We decided to follow this rivulet down, little stream, it flew into the Bitoi and we crossed the Bitoi, and came across this track.

Describe the terrain you were moving through.

Oh it was all mountainous.

What sort of trees, what sort of animals?

Very few animals in the jungle very few, certainly not in New Guinea’s jungle anyhow, very lifeless really.

14:30 There were a few leeches, very little anyhow. How were you feeling being left behind?

Well, I don’t know. The idea was to get out of it as quick as possible. You don’t start blaming anyone then.

15:00 You think, “God we’ve got to do something here,” and old Ted was a bushman too. I wasn’t a bushman but I knew enough about the bush to not panic too much but Ted came from Boggabilla outside Goondiwindi and he was a bushman too. So in ourselves we didn’t panic but we put ourselves on half rations because we didn’t know how long we’d be out. We knew which way to go but we didn’t know where the Japs were, so we had to

15:30 more or less take a circuitous route to get out, which we did do, thank the Lord.

Did you talk?

Oh yeah, once we were out no problem.

While you were walking and trying to find your way?

Oh, well you don’t talk. If it was necessary you’d talk but you didn’t just chatter.

What sort of things did you talk about?

Well, what the difficulties of what you were currently

16:00 encountering. Otherwise, you wouldn’t indulge in an idle chatter, that’s for sure.

How for how long would you walk each day?

Basically from sunrise to sunset. On the second day about four o’clock we saw this hut and we thought we had better stay here the night because we weren’t sure of ourselves. Then the next day we found the stream, a little rivulet that run

16:30 down and we thought, “We’ll follow this, it’s got to go somewhere.” It went down to the Bitoi River and once we got to the Bitoi, we knew roughly where we were.

That first night that you spent under a tree, how did you decide where to stop?

Well, darkness started coming down, so there’s no point stumbling on in the jungle in the dark. You just can’t see. So we just called it a day and had a bit of rations,

17:00 and decided to spend the night there until daybreak.

Was it hard to sleep?

I can’t recollect now but I would say certainly the first part of the night it wouldn’t be hard to sleep. We were exhausted.

Tell me about the hut that you found.

It was a native hut. Someone must have built it there at one stage. It was deserted.

What did it look like?

Just a native hut,

17:30 thatched and grass sides. So we presumed some of the locals had used it when they out one time hunting or something.

Did you set a watch?

Oh God no. You couldn’t find yourself, let alone anyone else finding you. When we took over from up in the Ramu, took over from Wally Hill and George Evans, I went out with Don

18:00 our signaller, to take over there for about a quarter of an hour behind them. At night time all we used to do was go off the main track about thirty yards and we all went to sleep. It was pitch black. You just can’t see. Anyhow, so keeping a guard would be,

18:30 except on the main track when we got back and settled down, we kept a guard at the main track.

While you were lost were you frightened?

Not really. No, I can’t say I was frightened, no because we had our senses about us and we roughly knew if we backed tracked, we should do some good. No, I can honestly

19:00 say neither of us were frightened.

What was the rest of the men’s reaction when you turned up?

Oh they were happy to see us or I hope they were anyway. What did they say?

Oh I don’t know at this stage probably, “Welcome home,” or something.

How old were you?

I’d be twenty-five.

How would you celebrate a birthday in a wartime situation?

19:30 In the frontline? You probably didn’t know you had one until it was over.

Did you celebrate any birthdays?

When we were out of action, yeah but when we were in action the birthdays count for nothing. You hope they come, that’s all.

We were talking about patrols just before, and you mentioned that you were forward scout once or twice. How do you sort of

20:00 look around when you’re forward scout?

Well you look around to see if you can see any movement whatsoever. It’s very touchy anyhow and your pleased when nothing happens. The second time in New Guinea at Aitape, we had it a bit different up there. The natives used drums up there to communicate. We couldn’t read

20:30 what they were saying. The natives with us could and the Japs couldn’t move anywhere without us knowing about it, even at Yampu when they attacked us. We knew they were about 300 or 400 yards away but we weren’t worried, not particularly until such time as they attacked and we started to get a bit worried then, but once we got in position they wouldn’t have a hope.

What did you think of the Japanese as soldiers?

21:00 Well, their bravery amounted a large part to stupidity because they kept coming when they couldn’t get a result. I mean that’s courage but it’s senseless courage. I mean if we couldn’t get a result we retired and we lived to fight another day but they just kept coming.

21:30 They just kept coming and the result was a foregone conclusion.

You showed us that Samurai sword earlier.

No, it’s not a Samurai. It’s an army issue sword, an officer’s army issue sword and they’ve got cord on the handle, on the

22:00 hilt, whereas a non-commissioned officer has very thin wire sweaters on, so that’s an officer’s ceremonial sword.

How did you come by it?

Did you read that article where I said there was two wounded?

Why don’t you tell me about it because the camera didn’t read the article.

No, no.

22:30 Anyhow, this was the night we went up and the Wait a While instance happened, and we got in positions at daylight or just at the beginning of daylight, and then Spatty Osmond, God only knows what Spatty’s first name was either. He waved a bit of a half tent and we all opened fire on the huts. Now

23:00 the Japs didn’t, they never kept a guard. We’d surrounded the huts and everything on the ridge overlooking them, and when we opened fire there was a hell of a racket. Well it is in the jungle. Everything is confined. Then we moved down and Spatty went first, then Burnsey, who was the one who got wounded.

23:30 Then I followed him and then the other blokes missed me, and got the police fellow in the leg. Burnsey was very lucky, the lieutenant. The bullet hit the casing of his Owen gun and splintered, and the splinters went into his stomach, which is better than a full bullet anyhow. They said there was none. There was. There were two casualties and we carried them out, hardest day’s work I’ve ever done.

24:00 I had a great respect for the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels [Papuan bearers] after that. It’s hellish carrying a stretcher on a narrow track and there are four to a stretcher.

Where did you get a stretcher from?

We made one up.

How?

With a half a tent and then we tied it up, and put it in a couple of saplings. It was only makeshift till we got him back to where we started from and God, 24:30 a helicopter would have been a mighty thing then but then the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels took over with their proper stretchers. That’s the last we saw of them until the war was finished but then we went through the hut and all the loot they brought up, like old remembrances of yester year. Everyone drew

25:00 a number and then when your number come up and I was number two, so I picked the sword. So that’s how I got the sword.

What was it like going through their stuff?

What’s that?

What was it like going through their things?

Well, I didn’t. At that stage I was too occupied. I’m behind Ted and he’s wounded, and in case anyone come

25:30 someone had to be there. You couldn’t leave him unprotected and the boys, they were wounded so you’ve got to stand guard on them otherwise if a rogue Jap came around and no ones looking, he’d finish them off. Anyhow, after that we stayed put with those two wounded blokes and they struck no trouble. Most of the Japs shot through and those that didn’t were

26:00 killed.

What would be done with bodies, with Japanese bodies?

Leave them there. We never even gave it a second thought. They were just left where they died.

What was it like seeing Japanese bodies around the place?

You’re a bit blasé

26:30 by then and you were more than happy to see them than see some of your own.

When you got the sword what other sorts of things were there?

There were Japanese bank notes made out, Australian bank notes, which if they had invaded Australia, Australians would have had to accept and also Dutch Gilders.

27:00 They had those notes made out too. In Japan they have seals with their sign on them. I gave one each to both of the girls. They’re ivory and they’ve got their Japanese signature on it, and they just press them into a seal then they seal something.

27:30 I got a Japanese water bottle and a flag, which I gave to this head of the museum down the valley, and that’s about all. Otherwise, whatever you feel you can carry, you carry and if you feel you can’t carry it, you don’t take it but that happened another time after that one. We had another crack and finished up in a sago pad, and

28:00 still no guard. We must have made a hell of a racket getting out of the sago pad because a sago pad is a bit marshy, a bit soggy. We got up and started off, and had no trouble then but they got very relaxed or underfed, or something because in these both incidents there was no guard.

You said there was no guard when?

No Jap guard, no.

When you attacked?

28:30 When we attacked, no. They put up a bit of a show if they could. As I say, Burnsy got hit with a bullet and the police boy but they had no opportunity. If they had some guards posted they could have done something. Don and his mates went down the track, which they had to escape and they picked up a couple there too.

The fact that there was

29:00 no guard and it was so sort of?

It was very lucky for us.

Did it make you wonder at all about what was going on with the Japanese?

No, I just think they thought they were safe but we had the Kanakas on our side, the locals. As I say, they had their drums and they could tell us where the Japs were.

What was the option of taking prisoners?

We didn’t.

Why not? 29:30 Well how were you going to get them back? I mean that’s being practical. That’s not being humane. That’s being practical.

Is it sometimes hard to be practical in that sense?

Well, they’d do the same to you.

Was that something that was spoken about or a decision that was made?

It was just something that was done.

30:00 When you were taking these wounded out on the stretchers, what were the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels like?

They were good, no doubt about it. These native carriers were excellent and they just did the job without any murmur or anything. Another time up at Chimbu, they were pretty good the natives. I got round to saying about

30:30 the Australian administrators, they were excellent. I did this traverse from Goroka to Chimbu and I got malaria on the way, and I’d walk a hundred yards and vomit, and drink water, and walk. We were getting close to this other village and the villagers came out, and carried me in. A gold lipped shell, which bought a pig and I paid for a pig. I told Slim we’d pay for a pig.

31:00 The last thing I saw before I passed out for the night was a native running down the village street with about ten feet of pig intestines behind him. Then we went out to Chimbu and that was ruled by an Australian administrator. They brought a couple of young blokes in, monkeys they called them and they’d be fooling around with the young girls.

31:30 They wouldn’t deal with us themselves, the natives wouldn’t. They brought them in and the Kiap had to, that was the administrator. That’s what they called a Kiap. He had to judge what their offences were and two strokes with the cane on the backside. A couple of police boys he had stationed with him and they’d get the young lad, and they’d put him up against a tree, and

32:00 take his arms around, and one of the police boys holds him into the tree, his chest onto the tree, and the other police boy whacks him across the backside a couple of times with this big lump of Wolyu vine. It brings a bit of blood but then he goes to the liklik doctor and gets that fixed up. The first bloke took it all right and the second bloke, after he got the first

32:30 whack, he lets out a yell. All the tribes were there to see this being done and you don’t know what they said but you could deduce from what they did. What they meant was, “Shut up and take what’s coming to you.”

What did you think of this sort of punishment?

I never thought much about it. I thought of

33:00 why would the natives, they must have thought a lot of the administrator to bring them in so that he could submit the punishment, where they could have carried it out themselves. I was very impressed and we had a fair bit to do with the basic administration up there on the field.

You mentioned you had malaria?

Oh yes.

When did the first attack of malaria hit you?

33:30 It would be the first time up there really. Everyone, I would say a hundred percent of frontline soldiers got malaria.

What were you taking for it?

Atebrin. They gave us quinine to start with but then Atebrin replaced quinine.

What was the Atebrin like?

Well, I’ll tell you what, have you ever tasted Epsom’s Salts? No? Well have you ever tasted Castor Oil?

34:00 Well it’s worse than that. You swallowed it whole but God help you if you started to try and suck on it. It’s a horrible taste. You swallowed it whole and it finished up turning you yellow.

How yellow?

Yellow. The Atebrin tablet itself is yellow and it finishes up turning you yellow but you’re supposed to take one a day. Well,

34:30 we weren’t in a position to at times, to take one a day.

Were there any rumours about Atebrin? Oh no. Everyone was supposed to take it. It certainly was a preventative against malaria, a good preventative too.

What does malaria feel like?

If you’ve ever had a severe dose of the flu, then you’ve had malaria. Up in Aitape when we first went there a lot of blokes were going down with what they thought was malaria.

35:00 They’d go to hospital and they’d take a blood sample, no malaria. It finished up dengue fever. So it’s hard to differentiate. A very severe cold, especially a chest cold would approximate malaria.

When you are in action how do you deal with malaria attacks?

If you got it you waited until you get back and if you’re in

35:30 your camp set up, you retire to your tent for a day or two. After that going out to Chimbu, I got up the next day and walked. You’re crook but see you’ve got no option. There’s no trams or trains, or anything. All there is, is a walking track.

36:00 What stopped you from just giving up?

I think it was a sorry pass if you decided, there was no point in giving up, not while you’re breathing anyhow.

What kinds of things inside you make you keep going? What are you trying to survive for?

That’s a funny question that. You want to survive because life’s worth living.

36:30 I never went into it but that’s the idea of survival. As someone once said, “When you breathe out, don’t forget to breathe in.”

Was there anyone you came across that lost that will to survive?

One bloke, he finished up committing suicide when he came back here but I won’t mention his name. He got very discouraged anyhow but he got back. The war

37:00 was over and that but the depression never left him and he committed suicide.

Can you understand where his depression came from?

What expression?

His depression?

I suppose the futility of it as far as he saw it but everyone views life differently.

How did you see it? Did you see a futility?

37:30 No. I wanted to live. I did everything in my power to make sure the end result was there. You just can’t let circumstances like that rule you. You’re in a position, there’s nothing much you can do about it but get out of it. If you’re in strife, you get out of it and be very

38:00 thankful when you’re successful.

How do your mates help you?

If you’re good mates they’ll help you along if you’re crook and the comradeship that develops, it’s just one of those things that comes along, and you accept one another

38:30 for what you are, and help one another if you can.

What do you think makes the comradeship grow?

I suppose close proximity and the liking of one to another, and you face a few things together, and neither of you wilted in the face of adversity, and you think he’s not a bad bloke.

39:00 I suppose mateship develops and you’re interested in their affairs, not only in the army but when they come out. If you can keep in contact, well you do.

If this mateship and comradeship had grown then, how hard is it when you lose one of them?

You’ve got to accept that, like old Ron Walkie,

39:30 he died. Two of us went down to his funeral at Ballarat a few years ago now, for the dignity of his funeral. He was a good mate, an excellent mate and we just got on a plane, and went down to Ballarat, and picked up another couple of blokes from the unit, and we drove out to his funeral. As a matter of fact, his

41:00 funeral director was the one who brought the Unknown Soldier back to Australia to put him in the war museum. That’s one. You go to these reunions and you more or less stick with the blokes you know. As far as I know there’s only four of us left of the one section. The others have died.

Tape 7

00:47 After those three days when you were in hiding, this is on your first tour of New Guinea and you returned back to your mates, where did you go from there?

01:00 How do you mean? When we rejoined the unit?

Yes.

We went back basically to what is called the Saddle, I should have got the whatsername. I’ve got it here but anyhow, the Saddle. The name suggests itself. It’s the dip between two hills. Before we get to that, the effort

01:30 required up there and the sweat, and loss of water, you became dehydrated. When it got to the Saddle, we went down filled our water bottles, drank our fill and when we got back up to the top, to the Saddle, back to our position, we were thirsty again. We were completely dehydrated. Then we went back to House Banana, House

02:00 Bamboo. House Banana, House Bamboo, a funny thing happened there. They had a crack at House Bamboo and House Banana, and I’ll tell you about that when the house had, but anyhow, things were real touchy. Frank and John Grier was coming

02:30 up the track one night between the two and they were screaming out at the top of their lungs, “Lula Lullaby,” because the Japs could not pronounce the letter L. So anyhow, old John and Frank got back all right. We got another scare one night at House Banana. Old Buffet, he was one of the Pitcairn Islanders.

03:00 He was the Lord of Norfolk Island. He was one of the Pitcairners. [Pitcairn islanders] His family got moved when they moved them to Norfolk. Noel Buffet, his son now or his grandson is the chief of the whatsername. Anyhow, we all had beards and old Sally Bamford was going around trying to find where his rifle was. He puts his hand on Buffet’s beard. He

03:30 thought it was a dog. We’re up at House Stairs and it’s a party line from Stindy Way, which was our base. When the phone rings everyone picks it up because it might be for you and it might not but anyhow, we picked it up and instead of saying, “The Japs are coming up the track,” they got “the Japs are coming up the stairs.” We’re all lying down and we shot

04:00 into the jungle, not to run away or anything but we didn’t want any targets. So they’d be the target when they came up. The House Stairs got its name because from the main track up to the club up about a dozen or so stairs to where our post was.

What was the story behind the name Banana House?

I think just code names, that’s all. Bamboo nearly suggests itself up there and banana?

04:30 There’s no bananas there but then House Stairs suggest itself because there is a dozen or so stairs leading up to it. Stindy Way was a native name and that was our main camp.

What was the environment like around the camp?

The main camp base was pretty good because if you were at base you would have a more than adequate time frame to do something.

05:00 At the forward bases you were a bit restricted in time, so you always had a guard, even where we were at House Stairs, which is behind House of Bananas you’d have a guard because you couldn’t afford not to. You’d have a sentry posted every night, two on or about six or seven off.

What would you do yourselves during the daytime?

05:30 Nothing, very little unless you went on a patrol. Out at Taroom in the central highlands, where I got those arrowheads, we were at Taroom and for a security patrol you’d have to walk out about, between half an hour or an hour, along a track to make sure there were no Japs there. I forget who my mate was then but anyhow, off we went along the track

06:00 and a couple of little young black lads come up, like looking at Leona. We were at Taroom and Leona was up on the top of the mountain. I said, “We wouldn’t mind liklik way,” which means the small way, which is a hell of a lie at times. So we’re marching on and marching on, and eventually we staggered into Leona just before they put

06:30 the booby traps out, covered with leeches, and they had a party line, so they phoned back to say we had arrived there but apparently Ron Volk said to Buffet, he said, “Are you going to do anything about finding out what happened to Arthur Rodger and his mate?” Because we went out and old Buffet said, “Bugger ‘em.” Anyhow, we were pretty right. 07:00 On these patrols what was your interaction with the native people like?

Good. That’s why I’m a bit sorry that New Guinean people have gone like they have because they were a nice people. I couldn’t fault them really and I had a lot to do with them.

07:30 As a matter of fact, I was taken out, they wanted volunteers to take out medical supplies to visit Taroom and none of the blokes at base camp were resting. I said I’d go out, so off I went. It was a pretty safe area, so all I had was a revolver and police boy with me, plus about four, it might have been six, cargos boys carrying the medical stuff out.

08:00 The first night out we camped in a local village and then the next we were going along, and we got into a bit of a conflict between two tribes. Our carriers had beads around their necks. Beads and that, that was money to them, and all of a sudden I’m marching ahead, and the carriers

08:30 are coming behind, and these blokes have got arrows like this fronting each other, and they stopped while we were going through but I heard this scream behind me. I turn around and pigeon is a proper language, and I had got a minor grasp of it but if you had a police boy and an Ankara bloke talking in pigeon, you wouldn’t know what they were saying. Anyhow, I got the gist that

09:00 one of the warriors had taken the beads off one of our carriers. So I said, “Give it back” in straight English of course but I could have been saying jump over the moon as far as they were concerned. No movement and I said, “Give it back” in a sterner voice and the third time I said, “Give it back” and I reached a hand down towards the revolver. Now a revolver,

09:30 disregarding the pictures, is about useless after about thirty feet unless you were a pretty good shot. Anyhow, thank God he gave them back. But they actually stopped their bit of a war to let us go through. That’s how good the administration was.

What other things were money to the natives?

Salt was definitely. A small shell would buy a WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK

10:00 and a large shell would buy a pig but there was no coin, no coin whatsoever. We always done the right thing. We never tried to, I mean when you come to think of it you’d be pretty lousy to worry about giving a teaspoon full of salt for a kilo of vegetables. We lived pretty well up there.

10:30 Would you trade things with the local people?

They were too primitive to trade anything. They’d only been settled since about the 1930s. They had coffee then but now of course there’s coffee and they found gold up there of course.

And what about the villages? What were they like?

Pretty good. As I say, the climate up there

11:00 was cool during the day and cold at night, and the huts were very compact for heat because they could sit outside during the daytime but at night time they’d want, it was black at night. You had to wear blankets or you had to put blankets over you. It was very, very cold.

What would you take with you in a pack on a

11:30 patrol?

You wouldn’t take gear. You’d take your ground sheet. You’d take your arms and ammunition, and take some rations. A patrol would only last a day anyhow, so as I pointed out to one bloke who said that the commando mobs provoked the enemy

12:00 and criticised out appearance, I said, “We wore our wardrobe.” You can’t move around cluttered up with gear. You just can’t. It’s impractical.

Was there something special about the commando wear?

Well, we had a beret but otherwise that

12:30 was just as good as a hat, a khaki beret. As I say, they gave tin hats away. They just threw them all out in the finish because they were a useless piece of equipment and heavy, and you’ll notice even now that tin hats are not very prevalent in the jungles, because they hit against something, and make a bit of a clang, and

13:00 you’re not supposed to.

On patrols would you do anything about camouflage?

When we come back from the Middle East we had khaki gear. Our shirts and trousers, and that were khaki. Well, when we first went to New Guinea of course, no changes took place. The second time we went we were all in green. They dyed all these khaki things green and 13:30 that’s how jungle green came into being. They just dyed the khaki stuff. It wasn’t built that way in the first place. If you washed it too much it would finish up that the green would come out.

What about camouflage on your face?

Oh no. That never come into it.

On these patrols on this

14:00 first time in New Guinea where you were around the Ramu Valley, on this first time did you come into contact with the Japanese?

Oh yes, very much so. It’s only fleeting with me because the only time I ever went into hospital while on active service, in other words overseas was in the Ramu and I got a heavy dose of malaria, so they ran me into hospital at Dumpu

14:30 but other than that, Ralphy got into trouble. We just saw them or I just saw them and anyhow illness, malaria took over, and I got dumped in for about a week, and by the time I got better they’d gone, and they sent us home because we’d been up there since October ‘42 to

15:00 November ‘43, nearly thirteen months. After I come out of hospital we went up and they sent us home, thank the Lord for a rest, and leave. We reformed then up on the Atherton Tablelands again.

Tell us about coming home for this first, for this break.

Well, we come home by ship and come

15:30 down to, I think to Townsville, and we disembarked there, and come down to Brisbane by train. We had people from all over Australia, our members and one of them George Williams, he come from Tumbarumba. You’d think he made the name up but there’s Tumbarumba down there in New South Wales. All he wanted to do was go back to

16:00 Tumbarumba. All we wanted to do was go back to Brisbane.

How long did you have for this time?

I think they gave us three weeks leave and a few Brisbane blokes used to meet reasonably frequently at the Grand Central Hotel, and have a few beers. The beer ration was on, so you never got too much but you’ve got each other’s company. Ronnie was a telephonist, so she was usually working.

Tell

16:30 us about seeing her again, seeing Ronnie.

I met her back in 1939 and we were going together until I went over to the Middle East, and we resumed that relationship when I come back, when she had been transferred to Southport, to the telephone exchange at Southport. So I was a frequent visitor down there and went to a dance, and the pictures. I hired a car one day

17:00 and we went down to Murwillumbah. Earl’s Motorcars, anyhow I hired a car one day and then the next time I come back she’d been transferred back to Brisbane, so that solved a fair few problems with transport. The first time we got engaged before I went away and before I went away the second time we were married.

17:30 When I come home after the second time we had one child and that’s the one child’s daughter, the tall one, Roberta.

Tell us about getting married while you were still,

Serving?

Serving, yes.

Well, we’d come back and we decided to get married. There’s the wedding photo up there. Jack Stanfield is my best man.

18:00 We got married at All Saint’s in town. You know where that is? It’s on the intersection of William Terrace and Anne Street, All Saint’s. We got married there and had the reception down at the hall, down in Dickson Street at the Gabba. Then we went up for a honeymoon, up to Maroochydore.

18:30 Was this while you were on your three weeks?

Yes that’s right, well I went over a bit but no one ever worried because they’d all gone back to New Guinea, to Aitape. When I got back there was no problem.

What was it like getting married to someone knowing that you had to return back to war?

I don’t think you gave it much thought. 19:00 I don’t think you, it was a natural progression from being engaged to married, so you never gave any thought to the consequences. The consequences are always there but you’re young, a big difference.

Did it give you added inspiration to survive?

Well, that’s right. When you knew the baby was coming the wish to survive was, the wish

19:30 to survive was there all the time but anyhow.

Were you married in your uniform?

Yes, it’s up there.

Was there a lot of military at your wedding?

Jack and Ronnie’s brother Jock, they were in the army. The mates of mine that were in Brisbane on leave,

20:00 they come to the wedding as guests. My mother and father, and brother and sister were there and anyone that was in Brisbane at the time that we knew well, they come there. It was a nice wedding and the Rector of St Paul’s at East Brisbane married us because I was a parishioner of St Paul’s, and a regular attendee of the Boy’s Society,

20:30 and the Young Men’s Society. Parker, he was JP Parker JP. The both JPs were right. The first JP was his real name and he was a JP. Anyhow, he married us up at All Saint’s. I think you didn’t give it much thought, only that you thought we knew each other

21:00 for so long. Anyhow, when the Atom bomb was dropped you couldn’t have wished for a happier ending as far as I was concerned. The do-gooders can say what they like but unless they were facing the chop, I’d like to know what their thoughts would be then. Of course, the Atom bomb killed

21:30 innocent women and children. There’s no doubt about that but then a lot innocent women and children got bombed in London or Berlin, or Dresden when they fire bombed. A fire bomb started, they bombed it and it got out of control. There was about half killed in Dresden as there were

22:00 half of what was killed in the Atom bomb. So war, it doesn’t solve anything really.

Tell us about how hard it was to leave and go to Aitape after going on your honeymoon.

Well, it is. I stayed a few days over but by the time I got back they’d all forgotten.

22:30 You don’t want to but in yourself you know there’s no alternative. You’ve got to be honest with yourself, so you just do what your conscience demands you do, no matter how reluctant you do it.

How different was Aitape to where you’d been before?

The Ramu Valley is pretty open. The Central Highlands in New Guinea through there.

23:00 Wau, Mubo, Salamaua, that was pretty well timbered and very rugged. Also up behind Aitape, Wewak, I was there the day Aitape was taken off the Japs. There’s a bit of a story about that too. Anyhow, that was rugged and we were out in the mountains all the time.

23:30 That’s where Yamba was and that’s where the two unexploded hand grenades, and that’s why I’m here.

Well, tell that story with the hand grenades?

We were at this village at Yamba and we knew the Japs were not far away but we thought they were along the ridge.

24:00 A Troop was there and B, and C Troop, and B Troop. We were in there and we got a hut. Everyone not on duty during the night was in the hut. I’d just come off guard at about eleven o’clock at night and handed over to Tony Fellicceoni. There’s a bit of a yard there. In those names foreign names to Australians were very hard to pronounce and the staging blokes allocating where you’re going,

24:30 he come to Tony’s name, and he finished up reading out Tony’s regimental number. He couldn’t pronounce the name. Anyhow, as I said I’d just handed over to Tony and I was about to get in the bunk or lie down, and this grenade went off. No one stirred and I was about to burst into

25:00 a little foul language and the next one come on. Before I had a chance the next one went off and everyone was out of bed. I had the Bren gun at the time and I dashed out into the gun pit. Old Ron Volky came out then and the lieutenant came out. He was there too. As the fire fight was going

25:30 on these two, I actually saw them I think. I thought they were tracers. A tracer bullet is lit. It has a bit of a flame. The ground was muddy and it was always raining, and with the damn row that kicked up with the fighting I never heard them. The next morning when daylight came,

26:00 here’s the two unexploded hand grenades about a yard away from my head. One would have done the damage, let alone two but neither of them exploded and yet the one they threw at Tony exploded. What did you do with them?

We just picked them up and threw them down in the scrub, and as far as I know they’re still there but they’d be useless. If they were useless then they’d be more useless

26:30 now. That was that. Anyhow, the incident at Wewak. HMAS Swan sailed majestically into Wewak Harbour and it had four-inch guns on it. They started shelling where the Japs were over in the foothills or where they thought they were. Strange as it may seem, the Japs had been able to

27:00 manhandle a five-inch naval gun back into the foothills and they replied to the HMAS Swan. Of course they outgunned the Swan and the HMAS Swan up-anchored, and shot through. Well, it was an uneven contest. What do they say?

Did you see this happen?

Oh yes. I saw it happen, the HMAS Swan. They fired a blast into the foothills

27:30 and the Japs come back with this five-inch gun, and they just up-anchored, and shot through. I don’t blame them because they couldn’t win.

What was your main kind of role at this stage of the war? What were you doing to combat the Japanese?

We were actively patrolling all the time and going to where they were camped, and exterminating their camps.

28:00 That was our job.

How dangerous were these jobs?

Anywhere where bullets are flying around is pretty dangerous but in a couple of instances the Japs were very relaxed by not putting sentries out because this time we went in, we got bogged down in the sago patch. God, we would have been sitting ducks.

Were there times where

28:30 you were in mortal danger?

Many a time, especially yes. There were a couple of times there that we extracted ourselves from a situation that could have been a bit nasty. Also, we set ambushes ourselves for the same reason

29:00 but the natives, a couple of times there they were a bit late in letting us know where the Japs were and we would have walked into a trap, no ifs or buts about it, but for the natives.

You mentioned before how they let you know. How did they do it exactly?

With their drums. They’re not a drum like you’d get in an orchestra. They’re a big log anything up to about three feet in diameter. They’ve been

29:30 hollowed out in a narrow strip and they hit the timber. They hit the log with a stick and it makes a noise, and they read the drums. Now that’s not my, that’s what they say, they read it. As far as they’re concerned they read. They don’t decipher it or anything. I don’t suppose they knew what the word, decipher meant. They read what

30:00 the drums are saying, so they could tell us. The Japs couldn’t move actually without us having a fair idea where they were but sometimes in a couple of instances, the information comes through very late thankfully.

So you had natives with you as you were patrolling?

No. The natives attached to the troops as a whole and if there were any there with cargo for you, and the drums went,

30:30 they were able to tell you. We couldn’t. There was no hope in the world of us knowing what they were but the local natives knew what they were and that had the Japs on the back foot at the finish, not at the start. Up until about the end of 1943 some of the natives went

31:00 over to the Japs.

What kinds of things would they say when they heard a certain drum beat?

They’d just give us an idea and they would tell us. You’d tell them where we were and they would. [technical break]

When you heard the drums what kind of messages would they tell you?

31:30 They’d give us a rough idea in their own way. They’d know where we were then and they would say, “Lick lick way along there, him a long way,” and point in the direction. If it was a “lick, lick way” it could be anything from a mile to three but you knew where to be a bit more cautious than you were otherwise. [technical break]

32:00 We were just talking about the natives helping you. Tell us about some of the fire fights that you had on a patrol with the Japanese.

You strike a, especially at night if they try to sneak up. [technical break]

Now we’re talking about it in the middle of this storm, what were the storms like in New Guinea?

Heavy ones just like

32:30 that and you were on the ground, so you were in no great danger or anything. You were as wet as a shag but then again, if you weren’t wet with rain you were wet with sweat, so it was six of one, half a dozen of the other there.

What’s it like living through these kinds of conditions?

I better say no jolly good but then again

33:00 the good Lord makes the climate and if you’re not prepared to live with it, you’ve got to take the consequences of what’s there. It rains mostly every day up in behind Aitape and up around Wau, and those places, especially in the afternoon. If you’re up in the mountains it’s pretty cold.

Talking about coming into fire fights with

33:30 the Japanese, tell us about some of the most hair-raising fights you had with the Japanese on patrol?

There was one outside Wau. There were two up outside Torricelli. Otherwise we tried to ambush rather than engage in fire fights. We did that successfully about

34:00 three or four times. That was the most convenient way to stop getting killed because if you could set an ambush and the natives were very handy in that because you knew when they were coming. You knew the tracks they were using, so you could set an ambush and by setting an ambush, you had all the advantages.

34:30 Were there any times when any of the men in your group or any mates were hit?

Oh yes, about four or five times but only one, two, three, four, four killed in action and about seven or eight wounded. The Japanese bullet was only about nine millimetres,

35:00 as against our 303, so they never inflicted as much injury as our own bullets. When we first went up there we had Thomson submachine guns, the ones you see in these gangster films. Tommy guns they were because Owen guns came later. They were an Australian invention and they themselves were

35:30 a bit dicey. They were a beautiful weapon but they had a heavy bolt and that’s the thing that comes and knocks the bullet into the barrel, and makes the bullet go out the other end. A couple of times, there’d be two or three killed inadvertently with Owen guns. One of ours Clive Marks, was standing and he dropped the butt of his Owen gun on the ground without the safety

36:00 catch on, down comes the bolt, and up comes the bullet out of the muzzle of the gun and went past his ear. It never hit him but you had to be very careful with the Owen, but it was a lot better weapon than the Tommy gun. When they first issued them to us they had the drum magazine, which held fifty bullets and it was as heavy as lead.

36:30 They were .45 bullets and they’re heavy and also the bullet wasn’t held in the drum, it wasn’t held real firmly and it used to rattle, so eventually they discarded the drum magazine, and used a straight magazine. They were Ramulus cartridges too.

So how did you deal with men dying?

You did the best you could.

37:00 Injured, as soon as you could get back to where you had any carriers, they took over from there. One night outside Wewak one of our fellas got a graze on his forehead and about a teaspoon of brain fell out. Now our Doctor Oakley, he got an MID [Mention in Despatches] out of this

37:30 but he had to operate at night time and that meant in a lighted tent. Every vantage point we posted guards, another fella and myself on a ridge overlooking the camp. Anyhow, we did everything to protect him, which we did do because he finished the operation and the bloke got back to Melbourne

38:00 but he died just the same, but they got him back to Melbourne before he died. Oakley the doctor, got a mention in the despatches for his work there but it had to be done at night time and of course we were all at defensive places around the perimeter of the camp, and here’s the old tent aglow with light. Anyhow, everything went off 38:30 all right.

How did you deal with severely wounded men?

Well you did the same there and if they died there was not much you could do about it. We had an [RAP] bloke, Alfy, he got severely wounded and he made his way back. Alf Monson, that was the [RAP] bloke,

39:00 he was a regimental aid post fella and he took a bullet out. It was only skin deep. He was very lucky to get away with it. That was down near the bottom of the Ramu Valley.

Tape 8

00:39 We were talking earlier about how you’d get wounded people out.

Yes.

Were there occasions when the terrain was just too difficult when you couldn’t get people out?

No. I never struck anything where you couldn’t

01:00 get them out. Sometimes it was difficult and a bit more than difficult but if they were wounded, and you could get to them, you never abandoned them. You wouldn’t even think of abandoning them. Mainly if it was a pretty touchy situation, as long as you get about half a mile back from where you were.

01:30 The natives, these blokes who lead us up of a night time to these camps and that, when the action started, and there was a hell of a racket, they’d go and sit with a tree behind their backs. They wouldn’t run away and they trusted us a hell of a lot. Well they must have. They wouldn’t run away but anyhow if you could get them back, say

02:00 a half a mile, you could be sure of help from the paid natives. They were paid a shilling a day or something.

So you never had to leave anyone?

We had to leave one but there was no option because it was either get killed or leave, so

02:30 he was very severely wounded. Anyhow, there was no option.

What happened on this occasion?

We found out later that the Japs killed him anyhow but he was badly wounded and I don’t think he would have lived, blood everywhere across his chest. Ted and I

03:00 had gone forward of him. He was wounded. We went forward to protect the couple of blokes with him and then someone said the order was to withdraw, and that’s when we decided to go bush. It doesn’t make life too easy but sometimes what is practical, you can’t get round it. Otherwise if you stay there you’re

03:30 dead.

Was he conscious?

Barely.

What did you say to him?

I didn’t say much to him but the other two blokes were there and one was a lieutenant, and they tried to pick him up, and he screamed with pain. In other words, if we’d stayed there we would have all been dead. So it’s the lesser of the two evils I suppose but

04:00 it happened and it would have happened more than once.

Did that decision stay with you?

You never liked it but you realised there was no option, no practical option, otherwise you’d be dead now. It’s one of the things that crops up and you deal with it as best you can. It gives you no joy but

04:30 by the same token to stay would have been a senseless gesture on your part because you would have been dead too.

Towards the end of the war were you noticing a difference in the way the Japanese were fighting?

When we went to Aitape, the Americans landed in Aitape first and that had established a perimeter

05:00 around, say about a mile in from the beach, and they went down towards Wewak to the Damut River. They wouldn’t go out into the Torricelli Mountains and they worked on the principal that if they didn’t interfere with the Japs, and the Japs didn’t interfere with them, they wouldn’t mind doing that. When we went up there to

05:30 take over from the Americans, one of the Americans said, “They wanted us” in his Americans language, he said, “They wanted us to go out into the hills. We took a Gallop Poll and said we’re not.” They’re not going out. We went out in the hills but the Americans refused to go out into the mountains.

Why?

Well I don’t know why but they refused anyhow, so they just kept their established perimeter.

06:00 They just established their perimeter and they weren’t prepared to go outside as long as the Japs left them alone. When we went up there of course we didn’t leave the Japs alone.

What did you think of the Americans as soldiers?

I never had too much contact only with Aitape there and also up in the central

06:30 highlands. They were manning a radar station there, that’s all. They seemed decent enough blokes but any frontline bloke I’m not prepared to criticise.

When did you come back from Aitape?

That would be in August, very shortly after the war finished because I was married, one child and had five years service.

Tell me about

07:00 hearing about the news that the Atom bomb had been dropped.

We were as happy as Larry, honestly we were. They couldn’t have cared if they blew up the whole of the Japan islands out of the sea but you knew that you might be going home for sure.

How did you hear the news?

I would say from headquarters with the

07:30 radio and they passed it on.

What did they tell you?

That they’d dropped an Atom bomb on Hiroshima. I know you folks now call it Hiroshima but to us it was Hirosheema.

What did that mean to you?

At that time it didn’t mean much until we found out what the consequences of it were. We didn’t know how vicious it was or anything.

08:00 There was great talk of peace then but the Japanese Warlords wouldn’t have it and they dropped the second one on Nagasaki. The Emperor stepped in then and capitulated.

What was your reaction when you heard about the power of the Atom bomb?

We couldn’t understand it. It was a bit beyond us technically. We knew that they’d

08:30 detonated the atom but as far as we were concerned out technical knowledge was such that we couldn’t relate that to what happened, the fireball. When the first news came back and everyone finished up trying to get as close to a wireless as they could to find out about them. No, our technical knowledge was very limited as far as the capacity of the atom was concerned.

09:00 When did you hear about peace?

On the 15th August after the second Atom bomb was released on Nagasaki and I was home early September.

How did you hear about peace?

Again over the wireless and of course everyone was more than happy.

How did you celebrate?

We had nothing to celebrate

09:30 with, only being joyful that we were going home. It’s a mighty place that home.

Were you involved in any of the surrender of Japanese troops?

No I was on the way home by then. Tell me about this system that got you home so quickly.

I was married with one child and had over five years service, so I was in the front echelon to go home.

How did you get from

10:00 Aitape to home?

I think we were down on the coast, not of Aitape. We were down on the coast anyhow, outside Wewak at the airstrip at Wom and they had us on a cargo boat, the River Fitzroy. We slept on the first deck down and they had wind sheets. We wouldn’t have cared though. We would have gone home in a fishing boat as long as we were going home.

10:30 We come straight to Brisbane and on the way home I had to call in to the sick bay. I got stones in my kidneys and I was hospitalised for at least three days. They were going to call in a Catalina to take me off when we got around Townsville but I cleared the stone. It recurred a couple of times.

What was it like saying goodbye to your mates?

Well, you said goodbye

11:00 anyhow and meet again but it’s just one of those things. When you were home you knew that there was a chance that you’d meet up again, which we have done in reunions, down in Deniliquin and Port Macquarie, a few of those places.

When you arrived in Townsville what was the atmosphere?

We went straight to Brisbane, from Aitape, Wewak straight

11:30 to Brisbane.

Where were you in hospital?

On the ship, in the ship’s hospital.

What was that like?

I wouldn’t know too much because they fed me on morphine because the pain was so terrific, the stone in my kidneys. Anyhow they fed me on morphine, so I wasn’t aware of too much until the stone cleared and then we come straight to Brisbane, and that was it.

12:00 What was the atmosphere like on the ship?

Everyone loved it. It was peace. You know, you were looking at the best part of six years. You’d have to be a moron not to be really thrilled with peace.

Did anything special happen when you arrived in Brisbane?

12:30 Actually Ronnie’s sister Audrey, she waved from the side there somewhere. Ronnie couldn’t come in. She had the baby, so she couldn’t come. She didn’t know I was coming anyhow. It was only by luck that Audrey was there, her sister, on the footpath. They took me over to Holland Park

13:00 Hospital, which was only a pram ride away from where we were living. Ronnie used to come over with the baby Jan, to see me before I went up and got discharged at Redbank.

What was it like the first time you saw Jan?

God I don’t know. She was very small. But she’s a lot bigger now.

What was your feeling? What was your

13:30 your reaction?

I just thought, “She’s ours.” She was too and she was a good daughter, and the others, Greg and John. We’ve had a good family.

How was it seeing Ronnie?

Oh excellent really and I think that was reciprocated. I hope so anyhow. It took a bit of a load off her because well the peace

14:00 took a load of her really because then she knew that the natural things would take their course, whereas until peace came there was no, there was a chance of not being there. When peace came you knew that you were going to be there.

Was there a parade in Brisbane?

No, no.

14:30 We just got off the boat and I was taken to the Holland Park Hospital because of the kidney stones. I finished up with hook worms plus the malaria of course. Hook worms, it nearly kills you the treatment. About four o’clock in the morning they come and give you a cup full of

15:00 castor oil, and then about an hour later they come and give you this horrible stuff that nearly kills you, and so the worms wouldn’t have a chance, and then an hour later they come and give you a big cup full of Epsom’s Salts. That nearly kills, so the worms never had a show. I tell you what, after I’d got rid of them that was the best I’d felt for many a day. I never got rid of the malaria until I think it was ‘51 or ‘52. This Palladrin, they brought it in

15:30 and it seemed to do the trick. I was only the once in the hospital while I was on active service. It was always at base or on leave that I got it. Up in the Ramu it got too much and I was in the Hospital at Dumpu, and another bloke,

16:00 a couple of us went in. One of the blokes next to me had cerebral malaria and that affects the brain.

When did they discharge you?

In October 1945, from Redbank. That was the main army camp in Queensland at the time, it and Gravesly but Redbank was the discharge centre.

What did they do to discharge

16:30 you?

You just go up and go in, and they give the discharge papers, and that’s it, and they say, “We don’t want you any more.”

How did that feel?

Very happy. Well, you’re a free man once more. At least you were free to carry out what you wanted to do without being directed but anyhow, that’s all.

Is it hard to leave army life

17:00 in some ways?

No, no, not really. Very few would find it, I don’t think so. The necessary restrictions are sometimes petty but essentially, no I doubt very much if anyone would regret leaving the army life, especially if you were

17:30 in the war years. When peace is declared you can get back to being a civilian. They give you clothes, vouchers and everything else. I got a suit and a hat and whatever, all coupons of course.

Was there anything about being back home that you found hard to settle into?

Not really.

18:00 I got back into work easily enough and I could have been, the Painter’s Union came and asked me would I go to Guam, and be the boss of the painters over there but I’d had enough of being away from home without wanting to go to Guam. So I knocked that back and as it turned

18:30 out, I became a member of the firm, and we had work from Mount Isa to Moree in New South Wales. At one stage we had a little over a hundred blokes but that was the best part of thirty up at Mount Isa when they built the Happy Valley housing

19:00 settlement and the nurses quarters at the hospital. After that we finished up around about forty.

Describe what your job was?

Quoting. Personally, I quoted successfully on about 20 million dollars worth of work. I’ve been the President of the Painters and that. I’ve been around to

19:30 Perth, that was a good one, Adelaide and Sydney, and of course Brisbane. In Perth in 1970 we went around on the Achilles Laura. Ronnie and I went around from Sydney to Perth on the Achilles Laura before the conference started. We hired a car and went down as far as Cape Lewin, and cross to Albany, where I got my photo taken with the re-erected Australian

20:00 and New Zealand Memorial for the Light Horse. We came back to Perth in time for the conference to start and they turned it on. As a matter of fact, they sent the organization broke. We had no fees, registration fees, nothing to pay for all the event but after that I’m afraid we had to fork out otherwise it nearly sent the damn place broke, the Head Office

20:30 down in Melbourne. We came back across on the trans-continental railway over the Nullarbor Plaines to Adelaide, stayed in Adelaide a couple of days and got the train from Adelaide to Melbourne on the Overlander, and stayed in whatsername a couple of days, and then a train up to, or I think we got the bus. No we got the train up to Sydney then Brisbane. We come all the way home by

21:00 train. Of course when it was in Adelaide we drove down to Adelaide from Brisbane, and Melbourne. No we didn’t go to Melbourne. Ronnie’s mother died, so we didn’t go there but we drove to Sydney.

Was there anything from you war service that stayed with you?

Well, the good fortune of surviving for a

21:30 start and in hindsight I’m pleased I went through what I did and survived. If I hadn’t survived it wouldn’t matter much anyhow but I’m pleased that I did what I did now that I’ve survived because it puts a new slant on things. This is not to decry

22:00 the other units in the army. Without these other units we couldn’t have operated. It’s as simple as that, so I’m not putting them down. All I’m saying, we were at the front end and because I survived, I’m pleased I was at the front end.

Are there any bad memories that stay with you?

I’m sorry about Dicko having to leave him but that was something we couldn’t avoid,

22:30 otherwise we would have all been dead for no purpose. Otherwise, that’s the only one we’ve ever left and we couldn’t do anything about it. It wasn’t up to me. It was up to any stretcher-bearers coming up because we couldn’t have carried him. It didn’t make it any better

23:00 by knowing we couldn’t do it.

What do you mean by the fact he stayed on your mind? How did he?

It doesn’t stay on your mind but you’re very resentful that it had to happen and you had to make a decision that you would have preferred not to make.

How does that affect you?

It doesn’t affect me at all because it was something that couldn’t be avoided, so if you start to worry

23:30 about things that can’t be altered, well then you’re wasting a lot of time. I think the bloke who committed suicide worried about that a bit, a good bloke, real nice bloke really, was at our wedding.

Do you ever have any dreams?

No, God I’m a good sleeper,

24:00 much to Ronnie’s disgust. I go to bed to sleep and I wake up. I’m up at about half past five in the morning, read the paper and object to most of the articles in there, written by letters to the editor. My family thinks I’m negative,

24:30 which I probably am anyhow. It’s not much use being positive if you can’t win, so by being negative you accept the fact that if your luck changes it’s going to be for the better.

What sort of lessons do you think your war experience taught you?

First of all it taught me that the errant stupidity of one nation, one

25:00 civilised nation invading another one. It solves no problems whatsoever. I keep bringing in hindsight because that’s the only way you can evaluate things. Now when Germany invaded Russia that was the best thing that happened to us. As I say, Jack the Ripper would have been welcome at that stage for us but he’s going for the oil fields. Now the Russians would

25:30 have sold him all the oil he wanted and why would he invade France? I don’t know and I just don’t want to know because it’s like trying to sort out Northern Ireland. The absolute stupidity of people that profess to

26:00 dying for an ideology, like these suicide bombers in Israel. We were over in Palestine and there has always been animosity between the Jews and the Arabs, and there was then too. In Jerusalem the Wailing Wall is the western wall of King Solomon’s Temple and the Wailing Wall, the Jews come there, and place their heads to a degree against the wall, and weep and wail

26:30 but to get to the Dome of the Rock, which is a mosque, they’ve got to go past there up steps. We went to the mosque too and the Arabs used to defile the Wailing Wall until they finished up putting a Palestine Policeman, who was an Englishman, guarding the wall, so that wouldn’t happen. We went up to the Dome of the Rock and that got its name because you’ve got a big rock up there, and they

27:00 said that’s the impression of Abraham’s foot where he sprung up into heaven, a beautiful building though. You’ve got to take your boots off.

What sort of personal lessons did the war teach you?

I don’t know. It taught me to look at things a bit more

27:30 in a detached manner as taking a politician’s word. I’m not trying to be facetious here or anything. Politicians are after power and if they can exploit the situation to their advantage, they’ll do that. So I’m controlled by no political party, and I vote.

28:00 I don’t think that anyone can honestly be dogmatic, support a political party dogmatically because that’s how dictatorships arise. You see it in Germany. You saw it in Spain with Franco. You saw it with Mussolini.

28:30 That’s in our time. You saw it with Stalin when Lenin died and Stalin took over. Blindly following a leader right or wrong, it never benefited any nation, so I think you should form your own opinion as events unfold. You also

29:00 want to give it a bit of thought yourself.

Do you feel a part of the Anzac tradition?

Yes. I was the Secretary of the Yeronga Park RSL and I gave the address at Anzac Day up at Gare Park. The Anzac tradition I think is more than important because I think it made

29:30 Australians think as a nation. We’re not celebrating a victory even. We were beaten. We were. We had to retreat and we did, without the loss of life too. So we’re rejoicing in defeating anyone else. They were too good for us on the stage and

30:00 we had to back pedal but with the idea of giving it a go. I think some of the units, like our mob the commandos, they don’t want descendents marching. I think that’s a bad move. I think our descendents should march and make it an Australia Day sort of thing because then it gives

30:30 them…it makes them a part of your past. It gives them a part of your existence, for want of a better explanation. Australia Day is a good day too. All this talk about invasion. A little over half the invading forces were in leg irons, so I don’t think we can

31:00 give too much credence in this invasion theory. Bennelong and those went back to London with Phillip when he went back. Bennelong, he died in London and his mate. You never hear about his mate. The two of them went back and all the original explorers took black Aboriginals with them because they were resourceful, and intelligent

31:30 people. I find that most of the trouble seems to occur with those who are part Aborigine, not the full- blooded. This mate of mine Pat Dunshay, he worked outside Mitchell and he said, “You wouldn’t get a better bloke than a full blooded Aboriginal.” As a matter of fact, King who went with Burke and Wills up to the Gulf, and back again,

32:00 he was the only survivor, and he only survived because the Aborigines took him under their care. So Pat always reckons that the full-blooded Aboriginals, there’s the talk about Nigger whatsername’s stand up in Toowoomba. Now throughout my career in the army and I’ve had blokes from the inland to the coast,

32:30 that’s a term Australians never use to describe Aborigines. They were there at the black’s camp, they might be Abos or they might be Boongs but because of the double O, I think that boong might have originated as an Aboriginal word. You look at a lot of Aboriginal words when they are put into English, that double O was very prominent. No one ever called an Aboriginal in Australia to my knowledge and I mix with hundreds.

33:00 I don’t like the term myself. I don’t like the term. It’s not fair to degrade anyone like that.

We’re just getting to the end of this tape. Is there anything that you would like to say that we’ve missed or that you’d like to put onto the record, basically some final words to sum up?

I think that it would

33:30 be better to get rid of, or try to get rid of dictators by peaceful means or sanctions, or somehow force them into accepting world opinion, such as Gaddafi over in Libya, now has succumbed to world pressure with sanctions. I think killing

34:00 because war doesn’t discriminate who gets killed. The bomb can’t tell who is friend, who is a combatant and who is a poor old civilian, a child or a woman, or an invalid, or anything. So I think there has got to be some way where we can make

34:30 vicious nations come to heel without trying to kill their population. Iraq, there is a lot of talk about Iraq. I’m against it all but I can’t see why killing is going to solve too much. The only thing I do know about Afghanistan, the USA [United States of America] couldn’t stand aside and let the Twin Towers go unpunished but

35:00 I still think we’ve got to find in the modern world because the means of destruction are so immense that we’ve got to find a different means of solving problems. Otherwise we’ll just destroy the planet because someone wants more power than they are capable of handling.

35:30 As far as I’m concerned, they’ve got to find some other way of solving problems than killing people because mostly you are killing the people who are not causing the problems.

Thank you very much.

INTERVIEW ENDS