Interview Transcript As

Australians at War Film Archive Raymond Burnard (Ray) - Transcript of interview Date of interview: 10th May 2004 http://australiansatwarfilmarchive.unsw.edu.au/archive/1918 Tape 1 00:58 Ray, thanks very much for your time today. Could 01:00 I begin by asking for you to share an overview of your life for about ten from where you were born to where you are now? Okay, well let’s start off in the U.K. [United Kingdom] I was born in Sussex just south of London but spent most of my first eighteen years in the western part of London, West Drayton, Heston, where London airport is now basically. I went to school in Hammersmith which is one of the 01:30 inner western suburbs of London and of course lived in London throughout the war, the Battle of Britain the Blitz the V1s and V2s [rocket-powered unguided missiles] so it was a pretty interesting time for a young teenage boy. We came out to Australia as a family in 1948. We flew out to Australia which was pretty unusual in those days. Took seven days to fly out here and was quite a trip but arrived here on the 7th of 02:00 January and I found myself in Duntroon [Royal Military College] three weeks later because I had applied at Australia House in London and the fact that I was about to go to Sandhurst [Military Academy UK] got me a pretty quick entry into Duntroon. And then four years of Duntroon of course which for a young Pom [Englishman] was quite an interesting experience and graduation. A year in Australia before I went to Korea and then a year in Korea, four months of which I spent 02:30 in hospital when I got bowled over. On return from Korean my first service with CMF [Citizens Military Forces] as it was then called now the Army Reserve when I was an adjutant of a battalion. A very interesting time I enjoyed that. And then when the special air force was formed, SAS [Special Air Service] was formed in Perth, I went in as its 2IC, second in command. So that took part in the ’50’s. After SAS I became a company commander 03:00 in the 3rd Battalion Royal Australian Regiment in Brisbane and I was only there six or eight months before they sent me off to Pakistan to Staff College in Quetta, another very interesting year which my family enjoyed. Some more than others, the kids going to a Pakistani school didn’t like it very much but a good year, an interesting year. From there I returned to Canberra where I was a staff office in the Directorate of Military Operations and 03:30 Plans which was a very active little organisation. I say little compared to the huge planning organisations in Department of Defence it was a very small organisation and a lot going on. The first commitment to Vietnam and all that sort of thing and the elimination of the Dutch from West Irian that took place in that time. From there an instructor at the Royal Military College at Duntroon for a 04:00 couple of years. As I was told I got a posting across the water and I thought it was an overseas posting but it wasn’t it was across the lake, from one side of the lake to the other. So after Duntroon back to army headquarters as the military assistant to first Sir John Wilton who was CGS [Chief of the General Staff] and then Sir Thomas Daley as his MA [Military Assistant] and after that commander of the training team in Vietnam from ’68 to ’69. And 04:30 returning from that I was the senior operations staff officer in the 1st Division and the job of the 1st Division was to train battalions going to Vietnam on different rotations. So, Vietnam was very much once again in my mind at training those battalions. From there chief instructor at the infantry school and then back to 05:00 the language school for a year learning Vietnamese before they sent me back as the Defence Attaché in Saigon right at the end of the war from ’73 to ’75. Returning from Vietnam back to the CMF again as chief of staff of the 2nd Division here in Sydney. I must’ve done fairly well in that because then they made me deputy chief of Reserves at, and promoted to brigadier so that was 05:30 an interesting. But that was in Canberra and I used to commute every week between Sydney and Canberra which was pretty hard. That was followed by command of the 3 Brigade in Townsville and my final appointment was as commandant of this command and Staff College in Queenscliff in Victoria and I retired in 1982 and I’ve enjoyed retirement every since. What have you been doing since then in retirement? Well, I’m not one of those 06:00 that particularly wanted to go back to work. I enjoyed retirement and we’re comfortably off so I took up my golf and my bowls and all that sort of thing. I got involved in a few little projects around the place but basically fully retired. Excellent, and your family side could you tell me a bit about that? Yes, well the reason we came to Australia is my father was brought out here by David Jones. He set up the first food hall in 06:30 Market Street in 1948 and so he went on to become a director of David Jones and all that sort of thing. And then my two brothers they started off on the land. My father bought a property up on the north coast but my middle brother went into information technology in its very early days. He was the manager of National Cash Register, the computer organisation is South East Asia so he spent about eight years in Singapore. 07:00 And then went on to work for Wang and that sort of thing and my other brother remained on the land up on the north coast. And you were married and kids? Yes, got married just after graduation, got engaged on graduation night and six months later got married and so that was August of 1952 and yes I’ve been married fifty-two years. And children? Yes, three children, yeah 07:30 and I think the gypsy life, which it was a gypsy life moving around a lot it gets in the blood because my eldest son and my daughter both work in foreign affairs. In fact my son is on posting next week off to Washington for three years but he’s been all over the place London, Washington, Bangkok, Jakarta posting everywhere. In fact he got married in Bangkok, not to a Thai lady but to a girl from the British Embassy, that sort of thing 08:00 happens. My daughter similarly, she works in foreign affairs and she was married in Jakarta not to an Indonesian but to another Australian in the Embassy but you can see how the army life has affected them that gypsy life got into their blood. And my younger son nothing to do, he didn’t want to be a public service he’s a business man here in Sydney. Excellent, thank you so much for sharing that. Now just to come back to the very beginning for you, 08:30 what are you first memories of childhood growing up? First memories of childhood? Oh… You have some very strange memories. I have a memory of when I nearly drowned probably at the age of two or three. One of the early houses we had then in West Drayton had a little river at the back where people used to go punting along 09:00 and I remember being under water looking at my cousin who would’ve been a teenager sort of thing who got into the water to get me out but seeing her from the bottom of this water. That’s my earliest memory in life I think I must’ve been two or something like that at the time, quite strange. Otherwise, the memories are just of schooling and school friends and that sort of thing until the war started and… And so in respect of this memory of seeing your cousins through the water… I’ve never liked water. 09:30 I’ve never liked swimming particularly. I can swim and do all those things that you have to do but yeah I think that horror of, yes I can always remember that. Do you know who plucked you out? She did, yes my cousin Barbara. Yes. Do you know how you got in there in the first place? No idea at all. Your parents what can you tell me about them? Yes my mother was pure Welsh. All her father came from the Rhonda Valley, 10:00 all mainly the coal mining area and most of her family had worked in the mines. She had I think six brothers and one sister. Yes, they weren’t poor, but they weren’t well off either that they were very much a working class family. The same as my family he came from a very poor background living, he was a real Londoner, from St. Pancras, Camden Town 10:30 that sort of thing in London. So he was almost a Cockney but so he worked his way up through the food trade, the grocery trade.

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