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Transcript of Oral History Recording TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL HISTORY RECORDING Accession number S00941 Title (225/NX73) Finlay, Charles Hector (Major General) Interviewer Connell, Daniel Place made Deakin, ACT Date made 10 May 1990 Description Charles Hector Finlay as a major general, including service as a lieutenant colonel with the 2/24th Battalion, interviewed by Daniel Connell for The Keith Murdoch Sound Archive of Australia in the War of 1939-45. CHARLES HECTOR FINLAY 2 of 90 Disclaimer The Australian War Memorial is not responsible either for the accuracy of matters discussed or opinions expressed by speakers, which are for the reader to judge. Transcript methodology Please note that the printed word can never fully convey all the meaning of speech, and may lead to misinterpretation. Readers concerned with the expressive elements of speech should refer to the audio record. It is strongly recommended that readers listen to the sound recording whilst reading the transcript, at least in part, or for critical sections. Readers of this transcript of interview should bear in mind that it is a verbatim transcript of the spoken word and reflects the informal conversational style that is inherent in oral records. Unless indicated, the names of places and people are as spoken, regardless of whether this is formally correct or not – e.g. ‘world war two’ (as spoken) would not be changed in transcription to ‘second world war’ (the official conflict term). A few changes or additions may be made by the transcriber or proof-reader. Such changes are usually indicated by square brackets, thus: [ ] to clearly indicate a difference between the sound record and the transcript. Three dots (…) or a double dash (- -) indicate an unfinished sentence. Copyright Copyright in this transcript, and the sound recording from which it was made, is usually owned by the Australian War Memorial, often jointly with the donors. Any request to use of the transcript, outside the purposes of research and study, should be addressed to: Australian War Memorial GPO Box 345 CANBERRA ACT 2601 CHARLES HECTOR FINLAY 3 of 90 Identification: This is Side 1, Tape 1, of the interview with Major-General Charles Hector Finlay. The date is the 10th of May 1990 and I am Daniel Connell, the interviewer. If we could start out by discussing your family background, Major-General? Well, really the situation is that my grandfather came out here with his first three children - wife and first three children of course - and settled in the Grafton district in northern New South Wales, and in fact was one of the pioneers of that district; took a very large part in activities there. He was, had a law degree and was very prominent in all sorts of civic affairs, as well as sort of running his own property and everything. Where was the property? Just out at Southgate, south of Grafton, and he got himself involved in a sugar mill (laughing) at one stage and so on, but anyway my father was born in Grafton in 1866 and grew up there and then the family dispersed - as rural families do these days - and came down to the city. My father worked here in Sydney - he was a building contractor - and I was born in 1910, just between Chatswood and Roseville. A perfectly normal boyhood in Sydney. Particularly large family? Oh well, I was one of five children. Eldest? Youngest? I was the second youngest. In those days - 1910 - the time of the first world war, Chatswood was virtually up in the bush, north of Sydney. I played a lot of my boyhood roaming the bush and so on, swimming over in Middle Harbour, near where the Roseville Bridge now is and, well, that's about all there is to it. We used to take excursions over to the beaches at Collaroy and Narrabeen, and I thought Sydney was probably the ideal place for anybody to have their boyhood. Where did you go to school? Chatswood and North Sydney High. Ah, I went to North Sydney High in 1923 and then I went on ... Were you a good student? Ah, about the only prize I won at North Sydney was the language prize. (Laughing) I got the highest pass in the state in the Intermediate in 1925 I think it was, in French, and went on to Duntroon in 1928 and won the language prize there. Just before we go on to Duntroon, the first world war .... Had any of your close relatives been involved? CHARLES HECTOR FINLAY 4 of 90 Oh yes. I had a lot of cousins and uncles that went to the first world war. Ah, one of them they used to call `Lighthorse,' no, what did they call him? `Hellfire Jack'. He was Gilbert Finlay from the west. He was a cousin of mine. He was a light horseman there and then the cousin, Beverley, and there were quite a lot of them. They came back. They were sort of of my generation but they were older, because I was only about eight, or seven or eight, then. But they visited us after they came back on leave or at the end of the war. What sort of attitudes were there to the war and to the army, within your immediate family? I find it difficult to remember at age eight, you know. Everybody thought the Germans were quite frightful and had to be defeated and that it, it wasn't quite a holy war, but it was a necessary war. There was no opposition to it in my family. Those that could go all went. (5.00) What I guess I'm getting at, you might say that some families have got a distinct military tradition. Other families, even though they've perhaps been involved in enlisting, have a more civilian style of .... We had no military tradition really, to my knowledge. Ah, none of my uncles were regular soldiers or had served in South African war or anything like that. But, there was no military tradition. They had purely civilian tradition. Ah, and what made me enter the army was - or want to enter the army, perhaps I should put it that way - was that both my brothers, the elder brothers, were commissioned in the CMF - you know, the military as it was - and the new adjutant for the 18th Battalion in Sydney - in Willoughby, that's where it was - had just come back from India and he came to our place and was talking with both my brothers. I was doing my homework I think, and I heard this new adjutant talking about life in India, because he'd just come back. And I'd been reading, you know, what the devil's the name ... that author, the famous author, Indian, wrote about India thing ... Kipling? Kipling. I'd been reading Kipling and so on, and I had my ear cocked to what was being said in the next room, and these stories about India really interested me and I said, `That's for me', you see, and applied for Duntroon the next year. And I got in in 1928 and .... That must have been very early in the history of Duntroon, was it? Oh no, Duntroon was started in 1911. I'm talking about 1928. Ah .... I know. I guess I was assuming that because Parliament didn't really move to Canberra until '27, Duntroon - the activities of training officers would have taken place earlier than that. Oh well it was all part of the Kitchener plan, you see. Duntroon was .... Although Legge and others put up a proposal for a military college, the government didn't do anything about it until Kitchener came out and gave some firm recommendations on the subject, at a stage when the early indications were that there would be a war in Europe, you see. A lot of people don't realise how far ahead that war was foreseen. Duntroon was started then, but I was in the seventeenth class at Duntroon - one per year. CHARLES HECTOR FINLAY 5 of 90 It must have been one of the most established parts of Canberra in that case, if it had been going for that period of time? Well it was Canberra, until somebody decided after Duntroon had been functioning, somebody decided that it was the site for the Capital Territory. I see, right. Oh no, no. You read the history of Canberra, you'll find that that is so. Bridges selected Duntroon with the object of having it away from the distractions and temptations of a big city. And that's why he picked it half-way between - well not half-way - between Sydney and Melbourne, and then the government said, `Well, it's going to have a city alongside it, so away we go'. Duntroon was well established then. It had it vicissitudes after the first world war, when they wanted to close it down. They said the war to end all wars had happened, so we didn't need a military college. But fortunately they kept it going. What was there when you got there? It was, you know, thinking of what's there now, very established .... Oh it was quite well .... It had been established eighteen years by the time I got there - or seventeen years. But the cadets' quarters were fibro-cement, big long fibro-cement huts, individual room for a cadet and so on. And of course the classrooms were more or less the same, because Bridges wanted to build the RMC where the present ADFA is - Australian Defence Force Academy - and he sighted the temporary college - temporary for eighteen, no, temporary for thirty ...
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