ORAL HISTORY RECORDING

ACCESSION NUMBER: S00682

TITLE: WARRANT OFFICER 2 NICHOLAS L CURTAIN, 3RD

LIGHT HORSE REGIMENT

INTERVIEWEE: WARRANT OFFICER 2 NICHOLAS L CURTAIN

INTERVIEWER: DOUGLAS WYATT

SUMMARY: Nicholas L Curtain as a sergeant, 3rd Light

Horse Regiment, Middle East, 1914-1918 and later a Warrant Officer 2 of the Volunteer Defence Corps, Tasmania, 1939-1945.

DATE RECORDED: JUNE 1989

RECORDING LOCATION: BRIDGEWATER, TASMANIA

TRANSCRIBER: SUSAN SOAMES

TRANSCRIPTION DATE: FEBRUARY 1990

START OF TAPE ONE - SIDE A

That's me up there in the middle.

Right.

They'd never heard of the 3rd Light Horse then. And they're my two sisters. They went on the ship before me, and two more - I had four sisters then.

Right. And they were in the nursing corps were they?

Yes. The Australian Nursing Service. When we crossed the canal - pretty bad photos - this was a tremendous mistake by the leaders. Now I don't know which one was leading, but that's the way he laid out the 3rd Light Horse, close together like that, see, in troops.

Is that when you got bombed?

Ah. Here's what it looked like about two hours after it was over. Some of those horses was found 40 miles over at Port Said.

Were they?

Yes. Broken legs; some were gathered up; some wasn't hurt. They were never caught like that again.

No. I found a photo in the War Memorial showing the first bomb.

There.

Yeah.

What do think of that. Well, they had different names, of course, then. We called the aeroplanes in those days [talls].

Ah, is that right?

Yes.

I've got a poem here which I'll give you. This was written by a trooper of the 3rd Light Horse and it was published in Kiora Cooee which was a magazine put out in 1918.

Yes.

And there's also a toast here to the 3rd Light Horse Regiment. Can you read that all right?

Yes, oh yes, with me glasses on.

This bottom one. 1

Yes, yes, I can see it. There's the good old regiment, 'To comrades it contains. Their loyalty and chivalry each troop of tossing manes. The squadrons surging through the night and rout the Turks xxx. Through Egypt desert, silenced for when the raiders were along. Here's to the brave old regiment whose colour is black and white'. We used to say, 'red and white looked a sight' - that was one of the other regiments. Something else looked a sight, but 'black and white's the colour'.

'Would rally round the motherhood to suckle her in need ... Here's the grand old regiment - ah! - to the whole brigade. From Anzac to Australia may your glory never fade. The boys were proud tonight beside a gallant first and second. To comrades now beyond control; brave hearts whose death has beckoned.' Yes, very nice.

You can keep that.

Good. Thank you very much.

And that's the one about the Taubes, you were saying - that other one.

Oh, yes, the Taubes. Now they were called Taubes and my word, through being too inquisitive the Taubes nearly got me. I was with a chap named [Allwright] on an outpost and I said, 'Hello, Taubes over there - look there's one'. And he said, 'They're fighting one of ours'. Ours had a big circle you know, the English ones, we had none at the time. And we thought our fellow was on top. They were going round in a circle and we could hear the different kinds of bullets, you know, t-t-t, d-d-d - different rifles - different guns they had in their planes. Presently one pulled out smoke and he was coming down and we thought it was the German. So we said we would be first there to see if there was any souvenirs. And we got right down and all of a sudden - he was on the ground - all the sand chopped up among us. It was our bloke that was downed and poor old Bob [Allwright] who has gone now, he was shot through the hand - crippled his hand. That's why we sent him down and he got a job towards the end of the war helping the great Australian lady that ran a canteen at, er ... on the canal - I forget the name - where we used to cross - because he had a crippled hand. That was sticking your beak in where you shouldn't. Yes, Taubes, the old Taubes.

I found some photos while I was at Canberra. You might be interested in these. They're all 3rd Light Horse. They're only photocopies - they're not very clear.

Yeah, 3rd Light Horse.

(Interjections)

You see, early every morning, or before it was just daylight, we had signallers and he was sent to well out on top of a hill to communicate back to brigade if they could hear the Taubes 2 coming and the command was, 'Stand to your horses', in our regiment. Well, then we divided like that, one troop went up there, and one troop went over there, and one troop went there with a gap of about 20 feet between us, so as if a bomb fell on us the damage would be slight. So that's where they get their, 'Stand to your horses'. Boiling the billy on the desert near [Nesbit] in Palestine after a hard day's ride xxx.

That bloke there might be Sergeant Cook.

Yes, maybe.

It looks a bit like him.

Yes. That's the old hat we ... That band he's got on is really a militia band but a lot of them were dug up and some of them wore them.

They didn't wear any plumes in their hats there I noticed.

No. The only people that wore plumes were the Queenslanders - they were the only ones.

Oh, were they.

They were the only ones, except the commander-in-chief. Old Major General Chauvel - he had great big plumes. Some of them had some other little thing. But they were plumes. Yes, there's the old black and white. Now that big man there, he looks like a man from round St Marys way named French. I don't know if he was or not.

That bloke there was Arthur Herbert Davies.

Oh yes.

That's the same photo actually. I just wrote it on there. He could have been a South Australian.

Yes, the billy was a jam tin as a rule. Yes. Yes, there's the old packs. Now, you know, it was estimated that when we packed the horse up - we had to move in the night to say 30 miles to be at a certain point the next day for some certain action - that he had 25 stone on him, because these men would all weight about 12 stone - I weighed about 11 stone myself I think then - and then that great big hard military saddle and a blanket and a ground sheet that they were always allowed to take, and a bandolier full of ammunition around the horses' neck and two round ours, like that. Get your cuppa. Yes, it's marvellous how they can, but mind you, we were never allowed to do any more than walk unless we was in action and then get out, because the horses were taken, after they'd delivered us to where we had to go to security, and No. 3 in every section of four stopped with them as horse holders. If we had to move again we had to all return as quick as we could and they called up the horse holders and away we went again.

These are all of Tasmanians or South Australians. That's 3

a machine gunner.

Yeah.

I saw that at the War Memorial as a black and white movie film.

Yeah, that's a machine gun.

It says here, 'The 3rd Light Horse Regiment'.

Yes. 'The Australian 3rd Light Horse. New men in action at somewhere in Palestine, December 31st.'

That's the same thing.

Oh yes, I can still remember all those little towns. Of course, there's hundreds of them that you couldn't remember.

Yes. That's a sniper.

On our maps - those of us that had possession of a map - at places like [Gretina] - that was a place - there was only a bunch of wild date trees. There was no house; there was a well; but it was known as [Argetina] on the map.

They were called a hod weren't they?

Yes. It would be in a place where the natives drew water and one thing and another - Old [Gretina]. [Buralab] was another place. The first place we come that had a population at all was [Elarish] - that's about the boundary between Egypt and Palestine. And then, of course, as we went on we come to the Palestinian towns. Richon was a beautiful, pretty little town where they grew all these oranges and things. Then, of course, we eventually ... Jerusalem, [Gerger]. No, [Gerger] was out on the other front, I'm on the wrong name there. And then the Turks didn't defend Jerusalem or Bethlehem.

They fell back, did they?

Yeah, they evacuated, they left it.

Was that because it was a holy city?

Well, they say the Kaiser - the German Kaiser - built a lot of what we call old Jerusalem, and then the Palestinian people built the rest called new Jerusalem. Well now, they didn't bomb it but I'll tell you what they had in there. They had a long range gun that used to fire at us for about eight to ten miles away. It had us puzzled how it could be elevated and how it could get up in such ground here, and to go like a six inch mortar, go up and down. Well, we found it when we got to Jerusalem and it was up on the hill overlooking the old and new Jerusalem and they'd dug a tunnel round in under the hill and they had it on a little train line and they pushed it round on the train line and they had concrete outlays to put it. And it would go up in the air for heaven knows how far. Of course, as 4 you know, you've got to elevate it to go - even the rifle that you shoot a rabbit. And it would fall in the mud way back at Gaza and splash the mud for miles and miles. But it didn't do a lot of damage because they couldn't get a correct aim on it.

Right. Not very accurate.

We were too scattered. We found the [home] of it, but they put it out of action before they left.

Did they?

Yes. Our gunners got to work to have a look at it to see if they could fire it, but no, they said she'd finished - they took so and so away. xxx xxx xxx.

Right. Were you with the Light Horse until Armistice? Until the end of the war? Were you in Palestine right until the end?

Yes. I tell you where. We got as far as Damascus you see.

Yes.

And that's where the Turks found that it was useless. The promise had been made from the war lords that the Arabs were to come in from Baghdad and seize Damascus. That was their payment for giving the secret information all the time to our Army.

Oh, yes.

See, we had several Australians on the secret crowd. They used to ride behind the line and all that dressed as Arabs.

Like Lawrence of Arabia?

Yes, he was the man: Lawrence of Arabia; the key man. He was the key man, Lawrence of Arabia. A fellow I went to school with was his pilot, his offsider, a fellow named Harper. I went to school with him. Well, now then, the war ended in November 1918 but then, through a disturbance in the Governments and the fight in Cairo, a big riot - serious - took place down in Cairo and they kept us all there waiting to see how things went. So from November '18 we didn't leave the Egyptian soil on Suez Canal until July 1919.

Right. A long time.

We were divided into regiments and then had all the horses that were to be destroyed, destroyed.

That'd be a sad time.

Yes, it didn't take long. Each regiment had to ... They got an order from the authorities of course, and they were branded with a thing that cut the hair off like that - A, B, C and D. Well A could be sold and go to India for remount: and B, I 5 think, the Colonel of the regiment could sell them if he wanted them: but C and D had to be destroyed through cripple and age and all that.

Did Colonel Bell buy some horses himself, rather than let them be sold and had them shot?

Colonel Bell was a CO of the 3rd Light Horse when the war ended.

That's right. Yes.

And he agreed to those good ones to go to India as little remounts and some to go somewhere else as little polo ponies, but he said, 'No-one will buy these horses. What they don't take I wouldn't have the Egyptians buy them to starve them about in camps and that. He had a lot more destroyed than some of the other regiments.

Right.

Because years after they were found in old camps in Cairo, poor as crows.

Were they?

So he destroyed them. I wondered to myself, being of course a farmer all my life and my father and that, I thought, 'Whatever will we do with the carcasses?'. Well, that was xxx: there were some more brains than mine there. There were two big pure sandhills - they went up a lot higher than this house - and when the wind used to come overnight it would turn them around. It would blow the sand. And they were taken into there - led in there where they used to ... led one over and rode one over and led one back. And the veterinary surgeons had a little thing like a pencil and they just went along and put it on the horses forehead like that, and it went 'pop' and the horse immediately fell and you pulled the head stall of him. And when you went back the next morning with another big gang you couldn't see where the others were buried: they had buried themselves.

Is that right.

So that's how Colonel Bell got rid of his horses.

Were you at Surafend when the New Zealand sergeant was shot?

Shot by the Arabs?

Yes.

Yes, I was. I can remember what the great general - the man that won the war there, of course.

Allenby?

6

Yes. He was an old bugger but I take me hat off to him. He won the war.

Did he?

He come and had a look we was doing no good. General Murray was living in Cairo and we were losing too many men and we wasn't weak enough to stop 'em - wasn't strong enough. And he come and had a look, and he dismounted amount 1,500 yeomanry and gave their horses to the camel corps, and gave the camel corps, which was Australians, put them on to take food and weapons and that. And where there was one artillery piece he put about 15 or 20 and then when he did hit ...

Hit hard.

And he hit within about four days. That's when Beersheba fell. That was the start of the ... and he kept it up. Well now, they murdered that poor man and he was very upset about it. I've got no guilt. I wasn't in the murder. They went down to find out who did it, some of them. And there was some Arab put up a resistance or something and somehow or other they killed him. He ordered a parade of all the Regiment and I remember we made a hollow square.

Yeah. I've seen a photo of that parade.

Yes. There, well now, he galloped into there on his horse - my word, a lovely big black horse - I can see him now. He was a big tall man, stout, the shape of you with a big black moustache. And, of course, we presented arms to him - that had to be done - and away he went. He said, 'Since I've been with you you've done some wonderful things. You overran the Turks in Beersheba and you did this and you took so many thousand xxx and you did that.' He said, 'That was good, but ah!. You put the blotch on yourself when you killed some innocent Arabs'. And didn't he go crook. He said they were innocent. So he ended up by saying, 'I thank you for what you've done (in the war), but I hate what you did to the Arabs'. He said, 'I thought a lot of you once, but I think it of you no more'. And he galloped off.

They'd be harsh words in those times.

Some of the squadrons counted him out, you know, one, two, three, and up to ten - out. And then the Colonel in charge - he was a New Zealander I think - he told us before the parade broke up, he said, 'He is a great man and a great soldier, but' he said, 'I want a great apology from him'. And it wasn't long before he come out in orders, signed by Allenby - it was supposed to be - that he was angry at the time and he didn't mean it, you know, doing the harm and all that. Yes, he was there. Yes, I thought of you no more. I can see him galloping away and some of us singing out, 'Out, you b ...'. Not everyone, but quite a few sang out, 'You, so and so'. So he got a bit of 'Aussie' while he was there.

Was Brigadier Cox the brigade commander, was he? 7

Yes.

Actually he was Brigadier General Cox.

Yes. General Cox was the major here somewhere.

That one.

Oh yes, that's the one. And I remember how ... That'd be him behind Sir Harry Chauvel.

Right.

He used to start his address off. 'General Cox, officers, NCO Officers of 3rd Light Horse Brigade', and then away he'd talk.

This is Chauvel.

Yes. I wrote in the back of it.

'Major General Chauvel, leader of the Australian Light Horse addressing them after their great victory of winning the battle of El Romani on the Sinai Peninsula on 4th August 1916.'

That's to my mother or one of them at home.

Yes, November 19th. So it's only a few days after.

Yeah.

'My dear mother' ... I can't read your writing. 'Am letter to' ... 'yesterday. Really glad to hear from all at home, so will this card two days after the battle of Romani.'

That's it. That's written a long time ago.

My word.

I must have posted it in 1916.

Yes. It's a good photograph, that.

It's an old one.

That was the turning point of the war though, wasn't it?

Well, that was the Turk's objective - Romani. If they had kept it ... Romani would have fallen. Well, then they had the Suez canal and cut everything off from the British. Yes, so that was the turning point. Well now, the reason why there wasn't such a big fight at that ... the year before, for 12 months, the Turkish Army was really coaxed to come down there because when we run into 'em and that we only put up on a poor fight all day and pulled out for the night. But then, of course, as we pulled out the Turks pulled out later in the night. But 8 they were invited in a way to come to there. Well now, then there we had our defence things, thousands of trenches with sand bags up to stop the sand and it was a matter of Sydney or the bush.

Right.

Now, when we went into that action I think, from memory - luckily our squadron was 120-odd - but when we got out of it a day or two after and got settled in again we'd lost 60 men. Not all killed. You see, there was none taken prisoner but quite a few were wounded and they'd gone on to the Red Cross - took them over. We were depleted and they had to get new reinforcements pretty quickly. Oh, yes, if the Turks had had won that battle I don't know where we'd be today.

No, no. That was the important one.

That was the one. From there we followed them up from there, of course, see.

That was the 1st Light Horse.

Yes, the 3rd Light Horse. Now, mind you, there wasn't only the 3rd Light Horse in that: the 1st and 2nd was in that over in ... the New Zealanders and miles around there. And the New Zealanders come up as daylight broke on the second morning and come in that way and saved us. The Turks were round here - in some cases they were behind us here - but they never got away again. They were all taken prisoner and shot and one thing and another.

That was near Mount Meredith.

Mount Meredith's the place. That's it. That's the very spot. And the hill in Mount Meredith ... General Royston was a great man and that was called the fight round Royston Hill. I had that in a book but I lent somewhere and forgot, oh I don't know, years ago, called the Fight Round Royston Hill. That's where we lost a lot of men. And of course, the poor old Turkey's gone now: they lost for every one we lost they lost perhaps seven or eight or ten, because we got something like a thousand prisoners.

You probably can't see that very well, but that's a village of Surafend - the village you were talking about, in November 1918.

There?

Yes.

Yes. November 1918. That's the time. There's the old Arabs with them xxx down them. Yes, a historic place it was, old Bethlehem and Jerusalem and that. Camp life in the desert.

Horses and horse lines. That's the 1st Light Horse Brigade at Romani. 9

There at Romani. Of course, they were ours. The 1st Light Horse Brigade, it wasn't only a regiment.

No, no. I know. You had three regiments in your brigade.

Yes. I often tell Mum about the washing and she don't believe me. I said we got a canvas bucket and about two quarts of water and we were made. Now, this photo here must have been taken up in Gaza before I read it. Yes, in the mud, after the flood. xxx xxx xxx. Well now, this is what I know about that: see, we had a few mules to drag the pioneer things and one thing and another on the thing. When we were up out on that side where Beersheba was the artillery went up to reinforce and they went through this mud that was that deep and they had to put their feet up on the top of the mule because there was only the shoulders and the mule's head sticking out of the mud.

Was there?

Yes. Dragging the artillery.

That's deep.

My word, yes. They got through. Them same places now they're fighting, you know, up in Gaza.

They haven't stopped, have they?

Yes. There's the old horse lines. Yes.

You were at Gallipoli, weren't you?

No, I wasn't at Gallipoli. Although I got issued with a Gallipoli star, but the position was this: I was there in time towards the finish, just in time as it finished. Now then I got some stars in that here. If you were in a fighting zone in 1915 you were entitled to receive what they called the 1914-15 Star.

Yes.

But I have always been against it: I always tell even my cobbers. It was interesting. Now I got there early in December. Now that's just the time that the Turks decided, on Gallipoli, to pull out. When I joined them - when we went up to what they call upper Egypt - there was some natives there called xxx xxx xxx.

END OF TAPE ONE - SIDE A

START OF TAPE ONE - SIDE B

... sitting in front and I have got the names of the other chaps, they are from the Brigade headquarters.

Well, well, well, well. 10

There was Staff Captain Thompson.

Yeah.

Lieutenant Charlie, is it?

Simpson.

And Lieutenant Simpson (of the) Signal Troop.

Yes.

And Major Nimmo.

Nimmo. I can remember the Nimmos. I didn't know them personally but I can remember them well. Yes, indeed, there's the old Sam Brown. Yeah, Sam Brown. That's old General Cox - he was an old man then.

He was in the Boer War, wasn't he?

He must have been. That's him. Of course he was snow white round here.

Here's the one about the bomb - the 1st Light Horse Brigade being bombed at the camp at Romani.

Yeah.

The explosion is that of the first bomb dropped on Australian Light Horse in the Palestine campaign. It was one of eight released from a Taubes soon after daybreak and fell in that portion occupied by B squadron of the 3rd Regiment, killing eight men and wounding 22.

That's it.

Fortunately other bombs missed the mark. In addition to the casualties amongst the men, 36 horses were killed, nine wounded, and 123 missing.

That's right. That's what I said.

That's the bomb going off. You can just sort of see it there.

There you are.

You were there, were you?

Yes, we were there. The first place I joined them was in Romani and we joined that regiment - on this one here - we joined that at what they called Hill 40. It was about forty miles east of Kantara. That's where we crossed. That's where all the crossings over the canal was. Well now, we got off at this 40 mile hill, and then we marched from there over to 11 there. Then after that tragedy there we moved to a big hollow away over there, what was called Romani, and they were never in thick formation like that any more.

Right.

Any more, yes indeed. That was what was called the Taubes.

Where was Richon in relation to Surafend? I could find Surafend on the map but I couldn't find Richon.

Oh.

Is it very close?

What was that again?

Richon. Was that very close to Surafend? The Richon camp.

The camp?

Yeah, Richon.

The white camp?

No, Richon.

Oh, no, I'm not sure. There's a lot of things I can't quite remember. I just can't quite remember quite a few. You see our job for a whole year was just ... Well now, I've seen that fellah one day in Bridgewater.

Have you?

It's yourself, isn't it?

Eh?

Isn't it yourself?

No.

My goodness, it's like you. I haven't read this yet. Oh, Fulton, Colonel Fulton. What a great man Fulton was. He was the first commanding officer of the squadron here before they went over.

Right.

Yes. What's-his-name - Bell, was only a Lieutenant when he left here.

Yes.

I didn't meet him, see, because I didn't go with the originals. Colonel Fulton, 3rd Light Horse - that's him.

12

What reinforcement were you with?

I was in the Eighth Reinforcements.

Right.

Well now, the Eighth and the Twelfth, when we got to, er ... into Egypt, anyway, out by the pyramids. [Etune] I think it was where we landed. They amalgamated together and we were just known as the 3rd Light Horse. And of course, we remained like that till there was a lull in the war and reinforcements kept coming athick and they moved us from Heliopolis near Cairo, way down the canal. Now, when the Turks were determined and left Jerusalem, they decided to build the Light Horse then up to full strength again and they did it by ... We all wondered what we were called in for. Now, great big roles of our names come out and they told us, 'Now, as I call the names such and such, fall out on that side'. Well now, they kept calling the name of one of my old mates that I'd gone with. They were mixed up with others and they formed an artillery unit to go to France. Now that went on and then eventually my name was called - 1684 was my number - 'Fall out on that side with the others'. We went then over the canal and reinforced those that were already there.

I see, right .

We reinforced all those. Yeah, there's the horses. xxx xxx Palestine, 1918. I should have a photo here, a good photo, but I couldn't find it when someone was here not so very long ago. It was a good photo of the Light Horse escorting about a mile long off the rocks at a hill up in the ... oh, on the left hand side near the Mediterranean Sea, a place called Nablus. They had to escort them down because, as they come back through where the civilians was, they were attacking, and they'd been there, see, and killed some of their people and that. Yeah. That was known as 'fall out the officers'. You see from time to time the officers had to examine the maps so that they could make sure we were going in the right place and all that. And that's an instance, see. Well now, our boys would have a smoke, those that smoked - I didn't smoke - and they'd be able to point out where we had to go. Colonel Bell and staff, 3rd Light Horse Regiment at Rafa. There was some very savage fighting at Rafa. Yes. That's where Colonel Mills - he was the Light Horse bloke - that's where he got wounded in the shoulder.

Yes.

Now the position was, when we went to a fight like that in daylight in the morning, we took it in turns who would be detailed to attend to a wounded man. We couldn't have the whole troop running down to see if you got wounded, to help them leave your post.

No.

Well now, this day, the first day we went to fight at Rafa, I 13 was named. It wasn't long before, just after daylight, Colonel Mills come down with his coat hanging like that. I put him in a hollow in an old road and I said, 'Lay down there. What's the matter? Where are xxx xxx' - run down to him. I had a nickname called Roger. 'Oh Roger', he said, 'somewhere up here'. I pulled his thing down and I said, 'Yes, you got ...' - a piece of his flesh was cut out there. And I said, 'Just keep still there and I'll wrap it up and I've got to go back. I'll hand you over then to the first aid fellas. I wrapped it up and he said - for that day that person that was aid officer was allowed two bottles of water to help the wounded man - and he said, 'Do you happen to have a drink?'. I said, 'Yes, here you are'. So I grabbed a bottle and pulled the cork. 'Psst, it's bloody water', he said. I said, 'Good God, what did you think it would be. I got no rum'. Yes, 'Bloody water', he said. We had a very lovely man from Launceston - he never come back. That day he got wounded in the back. Now, I always claim when I learnt a bit about the war, when they retreated back that night they come the wrong way. They come out like a wing like that with their back to the Turks. They were spread out that way.

This was at Rafa?.

We were told that we had casualties on the way back in the dark. And Alan Burbury - he was a sergeant and he got shot with a bullet through the spine here. Now he didn't come home. They were very rich people the Burbury's. And he went to England to hospital and his mother from here went and nursed him for two years but he passed away. Alan Burbury. I thought to myself, 'Now there's a lesson'. They come back face first - you learn that in your teachings - the way to retreat. You don't retreat with your back to them.

No.

No. You got to that way and that way. Yes.

Here's a good one of Bell. Did you know a Lieutenant Bennett?

Oh, yes - known as old Bill.

C.A. Bennett.

Come from Scottsdale.

Did he?

Yeah.

Is that him?

Well now, a very thin man he was.

It says Lieutenant C.A. Bennett, Military Cross winner.

Yes, at Richon. I'd say it would have to be old Bill. Yeah. 14

He was a real old kangaroo shooter and all that. Bill Bennett - a good man.

Right. But did you know that the Light Horse had kangaroos as their mascot?

I don't know whether they had them.

There's a photo of them there.

The mascot of the 3rd Australian Light Horse Regiment. The Egyptian natives were much interest in these, to them strange animals. Lieutenant - he was a chaplain this man that had them, see. See, the Chaplains automatically got a commission, this is a commissioned officers.

Yes.

The same as those nurses. My nurses was lieutenants. Yes. I'll tell you what I didn't know. We had a mascot at the finish. I know it's a long story but I won't read it all. Out in the desert one day, early one morning, a fella named Leppard from Bothwell, he said to me, 'Can you see anything away out by so and so?', and I said, 'Yes, there's something like an animal, a possum or something'. And when we got up it was a little boy about that high. And he had a little tattered piece of a shirt on up here and no more. And he said, 'Oh God, we'll have to take him back'. 'Well', I said, 'We'll get into trouble won't we?'. 'Bugger 'em', he said, 'I'm going to take him back'. So we took him back to our troop and they said, 'Well, we don't know what we'll do with him. You shouldn't have touched him. Take him over to Jaffa.' - where there was an after care place run by nuns or something. They couldn't take him: they were full up with little kids. And anyway he got permission to take him back to the Brigade headquarters. And he got him there, and to cut the story short they took him over and the fellows - it was a long way away from the front line - and they bathed him and they cut up old uniforms and they made him a little uniform and he ended there - he got permission, when the war was over, to bring him to Australia.

And he came out here, did he?

Yes. Well now, that little fella, he was on a train after I come home. I went down to meet some more coming back on the train and I said, 'Good God, here's the little wallad' - little boys are called little wallads. Derby was there. I said, 'How did you get him?'. 'Oh', he said, 'A lot of red tape - sign this and sign that and sign that'. But he said, 'I've got him'. So anyway, I didn't see Derby for six months after. I said, 'What about the little wallad?'. 'Nick, I've got him a job in Hobart'. I said 'A job'. He said, 'Yes'. I said, 'What's he doing?'. He said, 'He's selling broom handles in at Davis's. He left school.' Well now, he ended up saving his money and then someone come over - something to do with Davis's - and they inquired about this little boy and they told him the story. And he said, 'Well I could get him a little bit better job over in the big store in Melbourne'. And from there he had 15 brooms and little axes and that he had to sell. He ended up putting his money and putting his money, and after thirty years he is a big shareholder in the ... this little Arab.

Was he.

I don't know if he'd be alive or not. He would be about, er ... When he come home in 1918 I'd say the wallad, as we called him, would be about eight. He had been in Egypt for so much ... He had to go into some home in Egypt and then they gave permission for him to be taken to Australia.

And he stayed here?

Yes, oh yes, he went to school here. The little wallad.

There's one of Clerke.

Yes, they're good photos too. Now this is an Egypt or a Greek or someone?

Yeah.

Yeah.

They were going into ...

Lieutenant McMillan and J. Clerke of the 3rd Light Horse; Captain [Lewington]; Lieutenant Reid, Chaplain, leant by Chaplain Merington. Yes, grand old photos.

And you served on for a long time after the war didn't you? You served on in the Richmond Troop.

Well, I'll tell you what happened. I was working for the Council and old Colonel Cameron overtook me on the road. I was riding a horse along and he said, 'Oh, Nick' - he called me Nick, which I was then. He said, 'I was lookin' for you. I didn't know where you lived.' He said, 'How are you?'. I said, 'Pretty good'. And he said, 'I'll tell you what I want you (for). You are the only man I can think of that can put me on the right foot.' He said, 'Richmond wants to form a light horse troop'. He said, 'What can you do about it?'. I said, 'Oh, Colonel' - I still called him Colonel of course. (Interjection by relatives)

And he said, 'Well, look'. He said, 'I'll go into see Tom Swan'. He knew him well, personally. Now he said, 'He's got a son wants to get in the light horse somewhere'. And he said, 'He knows you well and Swan says that if you say that you'll join up he'll let his son join up'. 'Oh', I said, 'I can't promise'. Anyway, eventually we joined up and then we went in every year once a year for three weeks, I think it was, up at Mona Vale.

Yes.

And then when this war broke out they advertised for 16 instructors.

(Interjection by others)

That was really a turning point for me getting a job back in the Army and thank goodness I had a good memory and an ounce of luck and everything I tried went well. Thanks to a man that was at the war with us from Deloraine named Jim Griffin.

Yes.

Now they say if you follow a good man and what he can do, if he is a good man, it will be a great help to you. Now I copied Jim Griffin when he was training the troops right a way back and I copied him in the Army; I copied him when he was in the front line and I copied him how content he was and I copied how he used to - he was a sergeant major then - I copied how he used to see that when we had chance the proper men taught the other fellow how to use the machine gun and so on. Well now, I applied for one of the jobs - they advertised for one - and old Colonel - he was a colonel then - at Richmond, McLeod. 'I say', he said, 'You haven't put in for one of them jobs'. I said, 'Yes, I have, my word'. 'Oh, be damned', he said, 'Don't leave us'. I said, 'Now look; poverty's a very serious thing'. I said, 'That camp's only about four miles from home and I'm only a labourer. I've got very little in the saving bank and it's a job close to home'. 'I'll be buggered' he said, 'I'll see that you get a commission in here'. I said, 'No, don't talk about commissions'. Well now, I put in and called down for 'Yes, start in the morning'. So we did a fortnight's school and although I was a sergeant major at the time, as you know, you enlist as a private. So they promoted me to a sergeant major and then later on everything come to seem to come so easy to me as an instructor. They made me chief instructor at the Brighton camp.

Was this during the second war?

Yes, training for the Second World War.

Yes.

And my job was to receive a batch of recruits that had come over this morning from what we called Recruit Receiving Depot (to) see that the uniform was right, their boots were right and all that. Then I allotted them into platoons where there were vacancies. Now I created a new instructional course. I saw that that man only had a small amount and he went out into this paddock and his area was there and the other man's area was here and so on. Well now then, I had them all together for about three weeks. I told them where they were all going wrong until I went in there and how they were inquisitive. There were senior fellows out there. I said, 'I've been watching you'. They told me to have a look round for two days. And I said, 'You go out there to teach your weapon training, your rifle training, maybe map reading, maybe something else - machine gun'. But I said, 'You don't take any stores with you. You go out and you all sit down together and you're looking at 17 one another: you don't know where to start.' 'Now', I said, 'I'm going to see that you know the night before what you gotta do the next morning'. I said, 'There's the store down there: take out what you need'. Well now, it wasn't long before I had them all properly ... Now I went from one to the other and where I saw a chap a bit stuck - quite a few of them was too nervous - I used to stop work for half an hour and put them right. I did that and then I took reinforcement mobs to Melbourne and all over the place and turned them over to the authorities and where they went on. And I went on down to a bush school, you can call it, down at er, ... What was it? St Helens or whatever. I can't think of the name of it now. Well anyway, when we got there we didn't know what they were going to do. Well, it was jungle training and there was an odd one or two in the AIF training there. But there were three of us went and we went in as just ordinary pupils, see. So it come to the day we were breaking up and a message come up and said, 'You are wanted down at the Orderly Room' - a big tent. I went down and a chap who was COI, he said to me, 'You're Sergeant Curtain'. I said, 'Yes'. He said, 'Is that your rank?'. I said, 'Well, I'm a Sergeant Major really at home, but I'm here as a private'. He said, 'Look, I'm in trouble'. I looked at him, he was a Colonel, I said, 'You're in trouble, what's the matter?'. He said, 'It appears that you shouldn't have come as a pupil you should have come as an instructor'. I said, 'I wasn't told that'. 'Now', he said, 'I've got to write out a report about all your men and I don't know one from the other'. He said, 'Would you undertake it?'. I said, 'Now look, that's back to front'. I said, 'I don't like writing a report about me mate if he wasn't successful in his jungle work and that'. He said, 'Well, will you do your best?'. I said, 'Oh well, we all do our best'. So I wrote the reports out. So when I wrote them out and when we come back home I wrote the best report I could. And when we come back home I went back to my job and there was a message, 'Come down. Would you like a transfer somewhere?'. I said, 'No, I wouldn't. I'm quite happy here working.' They said, 'Well, the training out here's going to be moved up to Elphin. And they said, 'Colonel so and so, in charge of the ... What did you call them? The ...

Militia.

No, it wasn't the militia.

VDC?

Yes, the VDC. 'He wants to see you'. So they take me in; Colonel Butler; fine old fellow - he was an ex doctor; and he said, 'Look, I'm in trouble'. I said, 'What's the matter with you?'. 'Well', he said, 'They enlisted all these people, about 25 of them, and when they enlisted them they enlisted them all as sergeants, not as privates. Now', he said, 'Who wrote this out? You did, didn't you?'. I said, 'Yes, I did'. But he said, 'You say here this man; you didn't think he's fit for the Army; that he's a top grade agriculturist and you recommended that he go back to the land'. He said, 'I wanted him for an instructor'. 'Oh, well', I said, 'Look, I can't help you'. He said, 'Well, what about, if you get a commission 18 would you undertake to take them for a fortnight into a school?'. I agreed to that. So I took all me mates that I had over there into a school. I taught them a different way altogether. There were some amusing things too. I remember some of these old VDC fellas. I was showing them ... I had them on a rifle stand, you know, picking out targets. Over on the hill there was a gorse bush. I knew what it was - the sheep had eaten it all round. It was like a big bundle of black stuff - so I made that the target. They all picked out that and I went along, yes. They were all on it but one bloke, and oh, he was on something way over there. And I said, 'Look, you're not on the right one'. I said, 'You have another look what you've got it on'. So he put it on and he said, 'Yeah. You said the black bush didn't you?'. I said, 'Yes'. 'And it was direct front'. 'That means', I said, 'it's fair in front of you, and it's 200 yards away'. But I said, 'You're pointing at some ...' And I said, 'Now I'll put it on this black thing and you have a look'. So he come back. I put it on it and he come back. I said, 'Take your time'. 'Oh!' He was a fella from King Island - a dairy man. He said, 'I see it. I thought it was a big cow so and so'. I kept that and I thought, 'Well, that was funny'. I had one good man in the school: the Hobart head of the Army was come out to look through the school and these fellas for their jobs. And I told them - 'They're coming along now', I said, 'We'll be on a fairly easy job when he comes along, to give you all a hand'. One said to me, 'What about range finding?'. I said, 'Yes, that'll be all right, and finding the target'. So the chap come along, a nice fellow, I knew him when he was a major. And he said, 'How're you getting on with them?'. I said, 'Very good'. He said, 'What've you taught them?'. I said, 'They've done musketry and they've done their good shots. They know the hand grenade and they know the six inch mortar'. He said, 'Put 'em onto something'. I said, 'I will'. So I put them onto this one that this bloke asked me would I put them on - they were nervous. He was a nice fella - 100 per cent - he come from Devonport. He was a jeweller.

Mathews.

No. [Costain], or something. Anyway, he was a jeweller and he couldn't speak. So, anyway, when I wrote his report out - I had to write a report out - I said, 'Got a lot of knowledge but can't depart (impart) it, but he would be a trustworthy and a good man for a quartermaster or something like that'. He laughed after, he said, 'You fancy that - that I got on well and then when that little man come along I couldn't open me mouth'.

Thanks very much for your time.

Oh, good. One fella ... We were told by the old book, you know. The trees were all called, in the old book, the old infantry book, fir trees. And when I read it through I said to one of me cobbers, 'You wouldn't see much fir growing on the hill here now, but', he said, 'there it is we gotta describe it'. I described them as fir trees. And then when we went to shoot on the range, the bulls eye is half black and half yellow and six o'clock is fair in the centre - on the bull. So we 19 learnt all that, they were good. So we were finishing up for the last day and giving them their papers. And I said, 'Now, I am supposed to test you, but I don't want to test you. I've been big enough xxx xxx on the range and all that, but', I said - he was a little bit snappy this bloke - nice fellow tough, but he was a little xxx bloke, and imagine, like, that he wouldn't want to be taught anything. So I said, 'Well now, look, here's one of the questions. I'm going to ask this one man. We haven't got time: we've got to catch the bus'. I said, 'Why do you fire at 6 o'clock on the target?'. And he said, 'Well, six o'clock, that's the centre of the target'. I said, 'Yes, it is, but why is it called six o'clock?'. Well, now it's told so as you all know - you say to yourself, that's one, two, three, four, five, six - six o'clock on the door would be fair in the middle wouldn't it?

Yeah.

So I said, 'Six o'clock'. And I said, 'Why do you ...'. Oh, he said, 'Another thing I often wondered. There's another tree that you never told us much about - the fir tree'. And I said, 'Oh'. This was before I asked him about the six o'clock. And he said, 'You forgot one'. I said, 'Could be, could be'. I said, 'What was it I forgot?'. He said, 'You forgot the lavatory'. I said, 'Yes, points to you, very good'. 'Well, now', I said, 'Can you tell me why you always fire at six o'clock?'. He said, 'Because that's the centre'. I said, 'No, that's not the reason'. I said, 'You think again'. He said, 'No, I can't think'. I said, 'Yes, that's not the reason, it is six o'clock, you're correct there, but that's not the reason'. He said, 'Well, I don't know any more'. I said, 'No, because it's too damn dark at seven'.

Very good.

END OF TAPE ONE - SIDE B - END OF INTERVIEW

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