Australians at War Film Archive

Roland Kinnear (Roly) - Transcript of interview

Date of interview: 18th March 2004

http://australiansatwarfilmarchive.unsw.edu.au/archive/1621

Tape 1

00:35 Thanks for joining us today, Mr Kinnear, can I ask you to give us a summary of your life?

I’ll try to the best of my ability. As you already know, I was born in February 1930. Lived at Potter Street at Russell Lea which is on the top end of Iron Cove near Iron Point. Grew up there. Mischievous as all boys were

01:00 at that stage. Fond memories of the closed pot man coming round and the knife sharpeners in those days. And the various times when the bands used to come around and play on the corner and us kids’d get up there and suck lemons in front of them and play up. Went to school at Drummoyne Public School and then to first year at Drummoyne High School. Then was taken away because my parents became manager and matron of the old Aborigines’ Welfare Board and

01:30 they were posted to Brewarrina for their first trip. From Brewarrina I was sent back to Sydney to go to school and had to repeat again. My third year in a row repeating first year, which was getting very boring. Then they were transferred to another settlement at Moonacullah in the south west Riverina and I went back to school there and finished my school while we were there. Then I was farmed off

02:00 to an aunt at Epping and finished my schooling at Hornsby Tech [Technical] High where I became very involved with the army cadets and had a posting to go to Duntroon, but my parents said no. Refused to sign the papers because I had to have a trade, not an army career. So I did my apprenticeship at Cockatoo Docks and Engineering Company. The day that I came out of my time and finished my week as a journeyman, I joined

02:30 the K [Korea] Force. I’d already been in the Citizens’ Military Forces. Posted out to Ingleburn. Talked into joining the regular army. So signed from the two year contract to K Force to a 6 year stint with the regular army then served in Korea. Since coming home from Korea, I had various jobs, didn’t settle well, up in the mountains. Then came to Forster in 1960 and haven’t looked back. And there we are up to

03:00 date.

Perfect. Can I ask you Mr Kinnear, what was Russell Lea like as a neighbourhood when you were growing up?

It was a great little neighbourhood. You didn’t have very far to go for a swim. About two blocks away. The kids in the street were great kids. Very fond memories of the McLachlan family and the Moores. We used to play of an afternoon after school – rounders

03:30 and the usual things, countries and those sort of things that I don’t think kids have ever heard of nowadays.

Can you explain what those games are?

Countries was everybody took a country’s name and you stood in a circle. You had a tennis ball. The tennis ball was pelted up in the air by somebody to start the game off and when they pelted the ball up in the air they would call a country’s name. Everybody would disperse.

04:00 When the person whose country had been called grabbed the ball they had to try and brand somebody of another country and then they’d become the centre and up went the ball again. We used to play Brandings, stand across the street from one another and pelt a tennis ball at one another. Statues was another fun game we used to play. You’d all line up and you’d start to run and someone would scream out “Statue!” and you had to

04:30 freeze in that position and you had to hold that position till everybody was checked. Just little games. Naturally, we used to have war games against kids in other streets. Nobody ever got injured or anything, it was just a lot of fun. And we used to raid the Chinese garden. It was only a short distance away from our home at the time. As kids, we used to follow the iceman around. Because in those days refrigeration wasn’t

05:00 in, in the early thirties. It was great to get little chips of ice off the iceman to suck on. They were like sweets to us. When the baker came in we always followed him round in the hope that we might get a bread roll to share between a few of us. Always ran after the horse and cart with the clothes prop man. As I say, kids of today don’t know. See them come round, these blokes during the Depression

05:30 that couldn’t get work so they’d go out into the bush, cut clothes props, cause in those days there was no rotary lines, it was just a line strung between two poles and they had to have a prop to hold up and stop them sagging the clothes on the ground. They used to come round, “Clothes props! Anybody for clothes props?” As kids we used to yell out in between, “What’s your wife’s legs like?” “Clothes props!” as they’d go on

06:00 we’d call in between them. But as kids it was just general muck up, good fun. My mother was a very good cook and she used to round up all the kids in blackberry season and we’d go down the Iron Cove round Rodd Point area, and all the kids with their little buckets or billies would pick blackberries and back to our place and mother would cook up heaps of blackberry jams, blackberry pies, and it was distributed amongst all the kids. They were the

06:30 good parts. Had some sad parts. Young Alan McLachlan, the bloke that I grew up with, his uncle brought a brand new motor bike and everyone was just waiting a turn to have a ride in this brand new motor bike in the sidecar. And Alan, being his nephew, got the first ride. They drove up around the corner onto the Lyons Road, the main road, and we heard this terrific bang and of course we all ran up there and they’d been hit by a truck.

07:00 That devastated our little street. Alan’s never been forgotten, nor his family, though they’ve spread quite a ways around the country. But you overcome those things with kids and gradually grew up old enough to be coming interested in watching the rowing crews around Iron Cove. Went down to

07:30 Drummoyne Rowing Club as a 15 year old and said I wanted to be a rower and they looked at me and said, “We’ll put you in a boat as a coxswain but you’ll never be a rower. You’re not big enough.” I used to carry a half a bag of sand to make up – I was 7 stone 7 weight at 15. Even when I was 17. I used to cox in the senior eights for Drummoyne Rowing Club and also cox the New South Wales lightweight four in the Australian championships.

08:00 Can I just take you back? What did your parents do for work?

My mother was strictly a housewife. In those days, women didn’t work. Single women, yes. But married women, that was a definite no-no in those days. She did all the housework and the house duties. Tended the kids’ needs. Washing, the ironing, the cooking, you name it. In those days too you had a gas stove,

08:30 washing machines was not heard of. It was a copper. Also some people who were lucky enough had gas heaters to heat their bath water. We had a chip heater in our place. Being not much trees about the area to get little bits of timber to go in them we used to feed it with

09:00 paper. My father worked, he was a painter and sign writer, at the Botanic Gardens in Sydney. All the names of the plants plus their native names, he used to sign write all those till he became involved with the Aborigines’ Welfare Board and they took on their job as manager and matron of aboriginal stations under the old Aborigines’ Welfare Board that’s now defunct.

Can I ask

09:30 what memories do you have of the Second World War as a boy?

Being involved in it with school cadets, was following it very closely. I actually was in Sydney at school when the Japanese attacked Sydney Harbour. My mother immediately panicked and had me brought back to Brewarrina.

10:00 That’s another reason why I had to repeat another year at school. Schooling was interrupted terrifically. I was a volunteer when I came back from Brewarrina the following year in the Volunteer Air Observers Corps. I was staying or boarding with an aunt at Epping. We used to do our shifts. I was in the Boys’ Brigade and we used to do our shifts in an observation

10:30 post on top of a three storey shopping complex at Epping right by the railway station. We used to trundle up there every Saturday and Sunday and sometimes of a night time. What we used to do, we had charts up there and big heavy duty binoculars. Any aircraft we sighted we had to ring through to somewhere in the Domain where they plotted all aircraft movement.

11:00 Report where it was sighted because we had a diagram and we could work out roughly how many miles away it was, which direction it was travelling and roughly the height it was travelling in and what type – whether it had one two or three or four engines and so forth. John Stone and I were on duty the evening that the Japanese float plane flew in over Port Pirie Docks and we watched the plane and reported it as an unidentified float plane, single float plane.

11:30 They said there was no such plane in the air. But we know there was. And so does everybody else nowadays.

Can you describe for me spotting that plane and what it looked like and what you said to each other?

John actually picked it up first. It was flying naturally with no lights. He said, “There’s a float plane approaching from the north and it’s coming in straight over Ryde and heading down towards the Harbour.”

12:00 I said, “Oh you’re joking.” “Nuh.” We had a look through the binoculars and everything. I said, “Yeah it’s a single float plane all right, but it’s not one of ours. We haven’t got any single float planes.” He said, “I think we better report it.” So he rang through and reported it and they just said, “No. There’s no such aircraft in that vicinity in the air.” When it flew over Mascot, what did Mascot do? Turned on the landing lights. And that was in the pilot’s own diary.

12:30 Read that many years later.

What does a float plane look like?

It’s just a normal single wing aircraft with the normal one radial engine up the front and just had a single float on the underneath and two small ones out on the outside of the wing.

What did the building look like that you were working in when you were doing the plane spotting.

Don’t know if it was fibro or timber now. Can’t remember.

13:00 We used to only go up the back way up some stairs that had been built up outside the building. Then it was like a box about the size roughly of that bar over there and it was glassed all the way around. We just sat in there and we had binoculars that you could traverse right round 360 degrees view. The idea – we went up as volunteers because as members of the Boys’ Brigade after you’ve served a hundred hours

13:30 you got a service badge – another badge to go on your sleeve, because that’s what everybody was after. The more badges, the more popular you were. That was how we come to serve. I was still in the army cadets at the time and following the war closely.

Can I ask what sort of instructions were you given in regard to what to look for?

The whole set up had charts of all the type of our aircraft, allied aircraft, and Japanese

14:00 aircraft. No German, just Japanese. And this one definitely fitted one of the Japanese aircraft when we looked at the charts later. We rang back and still reported it. Even in his diary the pilot of the Japanese plane said he could see the welders at work at Cockatoo Dock. They were working 24/7 while the war was on. But I missed that part because I was still at school

14:30 when war ended but a few of us didn’t make school the next day because when the VJ Day [Victory over Japan] was on we all headed for town. We thought we were heroes because we were volunteer air observers and we were school cadets and we thought we were great so we went into town to celebrate too. That was just about it. We were just happy that the war was over.

Where were you living when war broke out?

15:00 1939, at Russell Lea in Potter Street.

What do you remember about the day war broke out?

I remember my father coming home from work saying, “Things are going to be tough and they’re going to carry on with a lot of silly hoo ha with blackouts and brownouts and we’re going to get some of the people in this street that are going to go made with authority

15:30 because they’ll become air raid wardens.” That’s exactly what happened. No, it’s a – we just said, “Oh well.” At that time when war was declared it was in Europe. Sort of, it’s over there like World War I. It was just something that was over there. Nobody took any notice until Japan came into the war. Then they used to have all these

16:00 air raid wardens. I can’t think of what their lines were called. You had to attend these compulsory Saturday morning and Sunday morning things where if an incendiary bomb came they had these special shovels which drew the fuse or put it out. It was so much garbage that honestly if anybody had seen an incendiary bomb, they’ve got no way of putting it out with a shovel

16:30 and a rake.

What sort of preparations were made in your neighbourhood for the war in terms of air raid shelters?

Lots of fun and games there. Air raid shelters were dug at the little primary school around the corner. Russell Lea Infants’ School it was called. Not primary. They dug huge shelters that were virtually underground swimming pools for most of the year. 17:00 The whole time. Because every time it rained there was no drainage. There were just holes, tunnels in the ground. Nobody had thought about preparing them to prevent rainwater getting into them so they became soggy messes. The people across – my father said, no they weren’t digging one in our yard, but we ended up having to dig one because it became compulsory. But the best one in our street was the people opposite. He was an engineer. Mr

17:30 Alec Booth. He was a great man actually. He built one and did it so that there were sumps and pumps and things like that. It was a absolute whiz to think it was great to be invited when the air raid warnings went and we all had to go. Because we were directly opposite, Mum and Mrs Booth were very friendly – we always used to get invited to share their shelter. It was like luxury compared to our hole in ground in the backyard.

18:00 Nearly everyone had air raid shelters. They also had like the ones at the school. You were supposed to assemble there if you didn’t have one. You had the traffic wardens and air raid wardens guiding you, directing you to those spots. Whether you wanted to go into them or not you had to go in and sit there till the all clear was entered. They had compulsory brownouts. You had to have dark curtains across your

18:30 windows and things like that at all times in the night time. You’d have these guys wandering the streets and they’d come and rap on your door and say, “There’s a chink of light coming out of your place. It can be seen by an aircraft.” and blah, blah, all this garbage. Then you had the total blackouts and if anyone disobeyed that you had those guys come rapping on your doors again and telling you you had to turn your lights out.

How did the blackouts work?

I think they were

19:00 a joke to be honest. From what I – we thought they were great fun because we used to be able to sneak out and muck around outside in the street. All the kids’d get outside and play around in the street. If it was light enough with a bit of moonlight or starlight you could still muck around and play. We’d play ‘catchies’. I think as the young ones we just treated what was going on as a joke. Nobody even panicked or anything – only my parents –

19:30 when the Japanese subs [submarines] hit Sydney. What did frighten them at one time – I think at that time – was the fact that I was supposed to be going and spend some time with an aunt that lived at Bronte, right on the beachfront at Bronte. Whether that was the catalyst that did it or not…In those days when your parents said you do, you did. You didn’t dare argue

20:00 or put up a…parents were law.

Can you explain to me then what the atmosphere was like in your home the day the submarines entered Sydney Harbour?

Where I was? This is exciting, you know. The first thing I thought. “Oh, they’ve landed some shells up around Bronte and up round Tamarama. I wonder if Auntie Rene’s house got hit. Hope it didn’t cause I’m going there shortly.” But I didn’t. I ended up being dragged back to Brewarrina.

20:30 For us it was exciting. “Oh the war’s come to here. We’re here. We’re in the war.”

You said that your parents panicked, can you describe what you remember about that?

They were at Brewarrina and I was in Sydney to continue schooling because Brewarrina was a two teacher school went from kindergarten to what used to be in

21:00 our times was third years which was the Intermediate Certificate and it was, although you had two teachers, all done correspondence. If you were smart enough you took your work at home and you did it at home and you had all your week’s work done by Tuesday afternoon and then you had the rest of the week to muck about at school. But the results were never really good. So that’s why I was packed off back to Sydney and then dragged back to Bre [Brewarrina].

21:30 And then when it all calmed down and mother realised she’d panicked for nothing I was sent back to stay with my aunt at Epping. Continue my schooling. So I was shunted back to Epping. Then went to Hornsby Tech College or Technical High School as it was called in those days,

22:00 where my aunt persuaded the headmaster to make me repeat first year again. I said, “No. I wasn’t going to repeat first year again,” and he said, “Well we’ll start you off and see how you go.” So after a couple of weeks I was banged up into second year and I had very happy days at Hornsby Junior Tech.

Can you explain to me how the change in your father’s career happened and when it happened?

22:30 My mother and father were very strict Brethren and they used to have or support their church used to support missionaries in various places around the country, especially the work with Aboriginal people. We used to have missionaries always staying at our place or we’d have different Aboriginal pastors staying at our place. 23:00 It was always somebody staying at our place from them. I think that was the catalyst of them deciding to become – they didn’t want to become missionaries although my father was a – I suppose you would class him as a pastor in the church. He was one of the elders of the Brethren and did a lot of fire and brimstone preaching from the pulpit.

23:30 They thought they could do more for them if they worked as manager and matron. They’d have more power than just being missionaries. So that’s how they come to be involved in the Aborigines’ Welfare Board.

What were the fundamental religious principles of the church?

Women had no

24:00 voice. Women always had to wear hats. That was a thing in the church. Women couldn’t speak. All they could do was join in the singing. Women couldn’t pray, they couldn’t sing. They could at their own women’s meetings when they just had the women, but if ever there was any of the men present women had to remain silent. They didn’t believe in music at their morning church services.

24:30 It was sung without music and sung in a very drab and dreary pace. Believe you me, Sunday morning was hell on earth to me. Sunday night’d be gospel services. My mother and my eldest sister used to either play the piano or the organ. My sister got reprimanded once because she used to put in too many trilly bits.

25:00 Not just stick to as it was written. So she said, “That’s it. I play it the way I see it or I don’t play it.” They’d lost their pianist and our organist. I was the black sheep of the family. Sunday morning you were dragged to a morning meeting. Home for lunch. Sunday afternoon you had to go to Sunday school at three o’clock. You had to go to youth meetings

25:30 at half past four and you had to go to the gospel service on Sunday night, Tuesday night was prayer or bible meeting. You had to go whether you liked it or lumped it. Wednesday night was bible study. Thursday night was youth group. I became involved with the rowing club so I just used to go – wouldn’t go, refused to go.

How did it impact life at home in terms of what you were allowed to do?

26:00 I’ll give you an idea of how strict my father was. When I refused to go of a Sunday morning and also my – not my eldest sister, my little sister – I had two sisters – June used to feign sickness to get out of going on a Sunday morning, so father would take – in those days we had a radio, but father would take the valves out of the radio so we couldn’t listen to the radio

26:30 on a Sunday. He used to hide them. We searched for them time and time again, couldn’t find them. But that’s how strict he was that if we were staying home well then we couldn’t entertain ourselves or do anything like that.

What did the family listen to on the radio?

Mainly in those days it was just music of the time which was classed as

27:00 by our parents, rubbish, garbage, shouldn’t be listening to it. They would mainly try to listen to the – my father would always listen to the ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation]. With all due respect I do a bit of it myself too, but they’ve at least woken up and become a bit modern. And of course he used to have quite a few records of

27:30 pipes and drums, being a Scotsman and being a member of the Scottish Rifles and being a pipe man in one of the bands at that time. They listened to them whether you liked it or lumped it. You either listened or went out back to your room. You went to your room you had to have a good excuse to go to your room. They were very strict. You couldn’t go anywhere unless you –

28:00 they knew exactly where you were going and what you were up to. On Sundays I used to take my rowing gear and put it in the bag and hide it in the hedge near the gate. When they’d gone to church I’d be dressed ready to go and as soon as they went I’d race out, jump on my pushbike, grab my little bundle of gear, straight down to the rowing club, change, do my jobs, the training with the rowing club.

28:30 Then back home again. Had to front the elders a couple of times about being a wayward child. At this stage I was nearly 17. Give you an idea how strict their set up was.

How were they introduced to the church?

I don’t know really the full story. I know at one stage my father I’ve heard him say

29:00 it at times in readings that he was lost and running around the backboards in Flanders. He was a quartermaster and he had the food packs or whatever it was he had to deliver to the trenches and he got lost. He said although he was a heavy smoker and drinker at the time

29:30 he said he looked up and he said, “God if you get me out of this mess and let me find my way through here I’ll become a servant to you.” One of those things like that. They weren’t his exact words. Whether that was the start of it or not, I don’t know. But he was wounded and shipped home and I think the people who helped Mum and Dad through the loss of their first couple of children were Brethren. I think

30:00 their close knit relationship with them introduced them to that section of the church.

How did they lose their first two children?

First one was through diphtheria. Doreen was something my mother even to the day she died never ever got over because she had some pills and they were pretty coloured or something

30:30 and she’d left them and Doreen thought they were lollies and ate them and she died. As I say, right to the day my mother died and she was 89 when she died – in Cape Hawk Hospital actually – she mourned her kids and especially Doreen because she blamed herself her whole life for that. So it only left the three of us. She actually had six children. There were six

31:00 in the family originally. Two of them died from diphtheria because in those days medical assistance wasn’t good. I know when I was about five or six I had a mastoid. Nobody knew what it was at the time. It was an infection behind – I’ve still go the hole in my ear where they had to go in after it to get it out. And if it hadn’t been

31:30 for the gentleman across the road, the only man that owned a car in the whole of the street, rushing me up to Drummoyne Hospital where they couldn’t handle it and he drove me and my father over to the western suburbs hospital which is now just a big hole in the ground – the new medical centre being built there. That’s on corner of Croydon Avenue and Liverpool Avenue there. Where they operated

32:00 and then I was transferred to Sydney Hospital. My father every day at lunchtime used to walk across from the gardens and I used to be up on about the sixth floor and watch for him every lunchtime to come over cause he always used to bring me a goodie. I remember that vividly. Apart from that as I say I

32:30 don’t know exactly how they got involved, but that was my own assumption as to how they did because I know the people that gathered round them when they lost the two children, which was in pretty close proximity I believe.

Can you explain what your father’s wartime experience was?

Never spoke about war. Wouldn’t even become a member of the RSL [Returned and Services League]. Didn’t believe in it. He said, “What’s done is done. I don’t intend to

33:00 glorify it.” I used to say, “Well you’re not glorifying it. All you’re doing is cutting your nose off to spite your face.” He never talked about it. Just said, ‘We had good times, we had bad times.” The only thing I’ve heard him talk about is when he was lost that time and trying to find the trenches to deliver the meals to the troops that were in the trenches. Never talked, never spoke about it.

33:30 It wasn’t till after he died – I lived at Katoomba at the time. I contacted the welfare officer at the RSL at Katoomba and told him about it, the story and everything. He checked out all his files and everything and they made mother a Legatee [support for armed services widows]. They looked after her while she was here and when we brought her up here to live with us they used to

34:00 look after her here as well as Legatee. But as his experiences, he talked about before he went, when he was in Scottish Rifles and all the fun and games and things they used to get up to. He was a member of Freshwater Surf Lifesaving Club. He and Michael Charles and Reg Grundy I think the other guy’s name was – yeah, it was too. They used to get dressed up in

34:30 some fearsome outfits and they all played musical instruments and they used to do a lot of entertaining at football games and things like concerts and that the unit that they belonged to at that time, the Scottish Rifles, used to put on. I’ve seen some of the photos, and mate you wouldn’t want to meet them on a dark night, you wouldn’t even want to meet them in daylight in the gear they used to get up in.

What did the outfits look like?

Kiss has got nothing on them.

35:00 They used to have these horrible masks and horrible faces and false teeth that stuck out like fangs and feathers stuck all through their hair. They used to get dressed up and paint themselves. They were absolutely disgusting. But they were all excellent musicians. They were all multi skilled on many instruments. My father at one time in the youth group at Russell Lea had a forty

35:30 piece string if you could call it orchestra or band, whatever you like to call it, that used to entertain at various church functions. They went from ukulele right through all the various banjos, the different types of – ones with the bowls, the lutes, you name them, all the different types. But everything different to get the various melodies and

36:00 blend in the harmony. They were good to listen to. Good to play in them too. As I say there were good times growing up, but they were very strict times.

What musical instruments did your father play? He was an expert bugler, trumpeter, banjo player, played pipes – what else did he play? Piano, piano accordion. You name an instrument, give it to him and if he never

36:30 handled it before give him five minutes and he’d play it. He was brilliant musician.

You mentioned his Scottish background. Can you explain what that was and where his family came from?

Family came from – oh dear – the Granite City [Aberdeen], not Emrock. On the coast. Isn’t it terrible? Memory. Worst thing

37:00 when you’re old and grey haired. You get forgetful.

I’ll ask you this, was your father born in Scotland or Australia?

No. He was born in Australia. Parents actually his father was Scottish and his mother was Irish. She lived in – I know it’s

37:30 called the Granite City. He was just like with his parents. His father was a member of the Scottish Rifles out here. When he was old enough he played in the pipe band. Where he picked up all the other musical instruments from I don’t know. And where he got his hand to be a sign writer, that I’ll never know

38:00 because his trade was part and parcel of the family tradition was saddle and harness maker. He worked for his father and grandfather in Waterloo as a saddle and harness maker. One of his brothers and uncles formed that Kinnear Ropes – I think it’s Kinnear Ropes and Emu Tyres – something like that. They’re Melbourne based.

38:30 Part of that family are now living in Taree. My cousin’s a chemist in Taree. Graham Kinnear. The others are mainly around South Australia. There’s a thousand Kinnears in the phone book but I don’t ring them up just in case. Don’t know much about his youth. Never talked much

39:00 about it. He was very – not actually secretive about it. I suppose if you’d asked him. I don’t think I was interested to know what he did. But I knew he was a surf lifesaver at Freshwater Beach. They lived at Freshwater. My grandmother had a boarding house at Freshwater and later had a boarding house up in the mountains at Lawson. It’s where she

39:30 finished her days. That’s how we got the connection with the mountains. My mother and father went back to the mountains in later years. Had a little cabin at Lawson. Then they moved from there and bought a place at Leura and then the hill got too uptight for them so then they moved up into Katoomba into the top part of town. That’s when I’d come back, was out of the services and was working for my first job up the mountains with

40:00 British Calendar Cables in the electrification of the main western line up as far as Bowenfels. When we got there everybody was just, there was about 150 blokes turned up for work and they said, “When you finish today, that’s it.” We’d come to the end of the line. So there was all these people looking for jobs and there was no jobs around. There was a job came up

40:30 for a head waiter at the Carrington Hotel. The Carrington was the jewel in the crown at Katoomba in those days so I went up and applied for it. The manager said, “What experience have you had in hotel?” I said, “None whatsoever.” “I’m looking for a head waiter.”

41:00 “Well in the services,” and I told a little white lie, “I looked after the officers’ and sergeants’ mess whenever there was a function on. I detailed them men to their various jobs and then I supervised to see that everyone did the head waitering and the catering and the drinking.” I’d done it once. He said, “Oh well it’s worth a try. I’ll give you a trial.”

41:30 Two years there as the head waiter at the Carrington Hotel. All I had to do was do rosters and supervise. It was great.

Tape 2

00:31 Mr Kinnear, could you tell me what role your parents played at Brewarrina?

It was a large mission station, or Aboriginal station, approximately twelve mile out of town as most Aboriginal stations were in those days, they were well out of the township. They were there as assistant manager and matron of the station. The Hamiltons were the senior manager and matron.

01:00 They were there for 12 months to learn the ropes. Brewarrina was a bad station. They were mad gamblers and mad drinkers. They trained them. It was pretty hard. There was an infirmary there with a fully staffed, there was a nursing sister and two nurses.

01:30 The biggest problem there with the people themselves and the children in particular was the health and specially their eye sight. Because unless you wore a hat with netting around it quite firm around your throat you had these little minute flies in your eyes all the time. See the kids, maybe 30, 40, their eyes’d be just bunged up and flies everywhere in their eyes.

02:00 It was to try and better their health, look after their rationing, their clothing, their school, also had to be a teacher. Brewarrina had a teacher that was there to instruct my father and mother on teaching methods and what was to be done. After they were there 12 months, they’d been inspected and passed and so

02:30 then they were given their own station to run. Which was at Moonacullah which was 25 miles out of Deniliquin on the road to Moulamein. It was a great station. Mother and Father won respect very early of the locals there. And became involved in running an annual fete because they were very gifted

03:00 down there. The women with their needlework, making rush baskets, weaving, basket ware, hats and they also used to decorate them with feather flowers made from feathers from various birds in the area. They were very adept. The men were all workers on that station.

03:30 There was never a drinking problem. Occasional when they’d come back from – most of the men worked out of town either working on stations or in the fruit picking industry around the Riverina. Sometimes when they returned there might have been a bit of grog goes on. Apart from that it was a very happy station. As I say they got involved and Mum and Dad organised with the people from the Deniliquin Hospital

04:00 to run a fete. It was amazing, the first time anything had happened like that in the area. People of the town were invited to come out and look at the arts and crafts of the people, and of course Mother had been teaching the women to do a lot of cooking, plus they used a lot of their own natural stuff that they eat themselves and that on display. We thought we might get some of the –

04:30 Mum and Dad thought they might have got some of the hospital staff there and maybe a few people out. They came in their droves to see what – nobody had sent he station before. Outsiders. They couldn’t believe what they saw. It become an annual thing. Then it become twice a year as well as the boomerang throwing and the spear throwing and all that and the corroborree they put on for them.

05:00 Over the years – they were at Moonacullah for 11 years and they were both made life governors of the Deniliquin Hospital for their money they raised year after year by the Aboriginal people. They were transferred from Moonacullah to

05:30 south coast – Green Point down outside of Nowra which was another very bad drinking station. It was handy to Nowra and Green Point had a bottle shop and it was very handy for them. They didn’t have much luck there. They got a lot with the drinking problem, but they were able to knock the gambling problem on the head.

06:00 Their duties there apart from being teachers at the school during the school days – they had the same holidays as any other school. They had to manage the affairs of the people, look after their welfare. Mother was trained as a nurse. Any cuts, things like that. Sometimes there was children had to be taken

06:30 to Melbourne for treatment or – this is when they were at Moonacullah, because the nearest railhead was to Melbourne. But in those days she quite often had to sleep on the station overnight with the children in Melbourne because in those days nobody would allow an Aboriginal to come into a hotel to sleep or into hotels or boarding houses or anything like that. They were outcasts.

07:00 I think my mother spent many an uncomfortable night with kids. But they loved the Aboriginal people.

What are your memories of Brewarrina yourself? How long were you there for?

On and off about 12 months. Had a lot of fun with kids there. The Hamiltons had three children. Two of them were very spoilt and thought themselves –

07:30 I was only the assistant manager’s son so I was bottom of the ladder. But the youngest son, Ian, he was great. He and I clicked together and used to do a lot of things on our own but we were always in strife because when anything went wrong it was always us two that got the blame and the other two got out of it. But Bre was good. The school at Brewarrina was great. Although it was correspondence, as I say, everybody’s work like mad to

08:00 try and get all their weeks work done by Tuesday afternoon so you had Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for sport. Used to go home on the weekends and be picked up in the mission truck. When they come in to get provisions. At one time we were flooded out up there. The two Hamilton boys and myself walked to town and picked up stores. We left at

08:30 dawn and we got back at about half past nine that night. Just walked to town and brought back rucksacks of bread and flour and stuff, whatever we could carry. Then we decided we’d have a look at the river and decided we could get the boat into town. So they said, it’s up to you guys. So one of the handy man that were there, he said he’d go with us. The Aboriginal. We made it

09:00 into town. Took us about three and a half hours to get there by river. Loaded it up and got it back. As I say, Brewarrina was good. School was good. People were nice. Where did you live in town?

In town I boarded with the local butcher. He had a son that was the same age as I. I used to

09:30 come into school on Monday and stay there till Friday. Although we were finished our work we still had to be at school each morning for roll call. And we checked off and you daren’t leave the school ground. They were very strict on that. We used to do gardening, then pop around and try and brighten the place up. One of us started to form a band. We found an old kettle drum and the bass drum and we got a

10:00 few things up so we could march into school and fiddle around and play. Just involved as kids do.

Could you tell me about that school, like who actually ran it and how it worked?

Don’t ask me the teachers’ names now. I can’t remember. There was a lady teacher that looked after from kindergarten up to fourth class in primary. Then there was a male teacher. I think from memory his name was Woodward.

10:30 Mr Woodward. I’m sure that’s him. He looked after fifth and sixth class primary, then first, second and third year high school. That was to what was intermediate standard in those days. How I ever got my Intermediate, I don’t know, with all the school changes. But I got it.

How did it work by correspondence? What did that actually mean?

You had all your subjects

11:00 handed to you on Monday morning. It was up to you to how you did them. It was all like, you got a précis. It was like in a book, A4 size. It would detail everything. Say, your maths, it would detail what were coming up and explain how to do things. He was there and he’d say, “You’ve read that.” Then he would explain what’s happening. Then he’d do some of them on the board for you.

11:30 Algebra was the worst one of the lot because he wasn’t real brilliant with algebra himself. But we used to struggle through it. When you’d finished that section of it then you went through and it was all questions. You had to not only come up with the answers but you had to show how you got the answer. Then that would be packed up and sent away. I think it was sent to Burke.

12:00 It was marked and returned the next Monday with your new stuff. You knew how you went. And there’d be all the explanatory notes in it. X, Y does not mean this and that and the other. Same with your English although he used to check all our English. Geography, history, he just used to check them. Sometimes he’d say, “Think about that what you’ve got there. Just have a good look, think about it and maybe you might need to change

12:30 it.” He wouldn’t tell you what you had to change, you had to think of it yourself and come up with the answers. As I say everything was packed up and sent to Burke on a Friday. You had to have everything had to be completed by Thursday afternoon. We used to help one another which I don’t suppose was right, but we used to. And on Monday morning

13:00 you get your results from the previous week and your next week’s work.

How many students were in the school?

All up I think it was about 140 from memory. Our class, we had first, second and third year all in the one room. There would have only been about 40 all up. And all white children. In those days Aboriginals weren’t allowed to attend

13:30 the white schools.

Were there Aboriginal people living in town or were they all out at the station?

All out of town. Only time they came in town was when they were brought in by the mission truck, normally. This was at Brewarrina. Once a fortnight. They had coupons issued to them by the manager. That would allow them to buy food

14:00 and to a certain value or clothes to a certain value. Course at that time, during the war years, they had to have their coupon books as well. They were handed out to them or mostly – they were supervised because they would try to flog their coupons to the shopkeepers or people in the town to get money for grog. So they had to be supervised so when they went in to get clothing or rations they were under supervision.

14:30 “That was so many coupons for Mrs Jones.” Dad or Mum would have to take those coupons out of her book and give it to the shopkeepers and so forth. It was no assimilation whatsoever. I can always remember the big store in Brewarrina. It was a hard packed dirt floor. Big store. Huge. And the name was Ah Chi. He was a

15:00 Chinaman that owned it. He sold everything from a needle to an anchor. And believe you me his prices weren’t cheap. Also we used to get the hawkers that used to come around the stations. They used to have to get permission. They never were allowed actually on the station. They had to camp just outside the boundaries. They used to come out in big horse drawn wagons like double the size of those covered wagons you see on the

15:30 cowboy and Indian shows in the wild west. They would have everything there. Different types of foods, sweets, tea, coffee – I don’t think anybody drank coffee in those days. They only drank tea, I think. Then every type of item of cloth and clothing. Stuff of all sizes. Mainly all either Sikhs or Indian hawkers.

16:00 That was all throughout the state. We found when we were at Moonacullah, the same bloke that used to be at Brewarrina would eventually turn up down the south of the state at Moonacullah. He was allowed on a certain part of the reserve down there because he never attempted to – like some of them used to bring in grog and this bloke never did and he was allowed to come in and set up near the pump shed

16:30 down there on the riverbank.

What was the prevailing attitude of Brewarrina, the township, towards the station?

Didn’t mind it at all. It was revenue for them. Everything was paid for, all their supplies and stores. There would be close enough to 1000 people on the station, plus all the manager and the matron and their families. And the

17:00 assistant manager and matron and the nursing staff and the school teacher and they even had – that’s right they had Stretchy and his wife and family were there too. He was in charge of organising them to grow their own vegetables. Remember as kids we used to go out and raid his turnip patch. I wouldn’t look at a turnip nowadays, but we used to think it was lovely

17:30 to get out there and raid and eat these raw turnips. Think of the suffering we used to cause people in the classrooms. Mm. At school.

You mentioned earlier that your mother had often had to sleep on stations because hotels wouldn’t take Aboriginal people in. What were some of the examples of the level of segregation?

They were just treated as outcasts in those days.

18:00 In the 30s and even in the 40s just weren’t even – most cafes and places wouldn’t even serve them. And they couldn’t go into a hotel. They weren’t allowed to drink. The only thing they could do was the government would allow them to join the armed forces and go away and fight. That was about the only thing they were allowed to do. They could go out and go fruit picking,

18:30 or get jobs on the stations, but even then when they worked on the stations or did fruit picking they were segregated from the others. Like if the white people were picking here, they’d be picking there. They were never allowed to mingle. They definitely kept them separated the whole time.

As a kid at Brewarrina were you allowed to mix with the Aboriginal kids?

Not a great deal.

19:00 Apart from the fact of the young ones when we were first up before we got organised to go to school in Brewarrina we were the only white kids in the class but we had to sit separate from them. It was quite a big school. I don’t think we learnt a thing while we were there to be honest. I think that was the

19:30 reason being why we ended up being shoved into town.

Why didn’t you learn a thing?

Who’s going to take notice of you, father won’t end up, not interested in worrying about you, the whole interest was in the Aboriginal children. So we just didn’t. And the same with Ian’s father. His direction was towards the Aboriginal children. We were over there. If you listened, you listened. If you didn’t, you didn’t. If you did your homework, you did it. If you didn’t,

20:00 you didn’t. That’s why were all shoved off to where we would end up with some supervision. That was my way of thinking of it anyway. I used to have to listen to my father enough at home without having to listen to him all day at school.

The second station that you went to, did you actually live on that station as well?

Yeah for quite some time.

20:30 Although most of my schooling was done in Sydney, at one stage they tried to – I went to Deniliquin High School. I must have been a terrible child. I really must have been. We created quite a few problems. I used to ride my pushbike in to town which was 25 miles away either later on a Sunday afternoon or very early on a Monday morning –

21:00 I used to stay at Dan Seymour’s place. Dan was a livestock and general carrier. Had the largest fleet of trucks in town. Used to enjoy trips with him. But one of his sons that was my age, that was Lance Seymour, Lance and I were –

21:30 a few of the other boys in our class – very disruptive. We had to be. We’re were always appearing at the principal’s office for disruption in class – talking, carrying on. And that’s how I ended up being shunted back to Sydney to my aunt’s place. Actually the report came to our parents that we

22:00 should be separated. So what happened, one was sent to school in Ballarat, one was sent to school in Melbourne and one of the boys was left there and I was shunted back to Sydney. We used to give our teachers hell because they were lady teachers. You know what kids are like, 14 year olds. Listening to women prattle or try and tell you to do things.

22:30 We were always in strife. Never nasty things, just – we had one teacher, Miss Luddard, they reckon we caused her to have a nervous breakdown because we just wouldn’t listen to her in this class. She was our geography teacher and we used to question everything she said because it never sounded right to us. That was the culminate. We were continually at the principal’s officer. Got quite a few fours and sixes

23:00 in our time.

What did that mean?

That was caned. Teaching in those days could give you two.

23:30 I think she could give you three cuts of the cane, and if he thought you warranted more you were sent to the principal’s office. You had to sit outside the principal’s office while the teacher made his report and he’d go back to class and one by one you go into the principal’s office and hear the swish of the cane on the hands. You had to hold your hand out like so forth and being smarties as we used to we’d put them up as high

24:00 as we could so he’d purposely miss you and catch you on the way back up underneath your knuckles. So we learnt the easiest way was to put them down as low as you could. He’d give you four or if a bad case he thought you needed more he’d give you six cuts, three on each hand. Hand used to swell up where the cane used to – hurt you for a bit, tingle for a bit, but you never let on it hurt. Easy way was to sit on your hands

24:30 straight after when you got out and got back in your class and sit on your hands and they’d be all right.

How old were you when you left school?

15? 1945. Yeah, 15 when I left school.

And what did you do then?

Went straight into the apprenticeship that I didn’t want to do at Cockatoo Docks.

What was that?

That was boiler making and ship welding. Steel ship welding. I enjoyed the years I was there.

25:00 Met some good mates as apprentices. Learnt my trade, finished up I learnt my trade, learnt it well. Turned my hand to it on a few occasions over the latter years. But I never wanted to be a boiler maker and I never wanted to be a ship builder.

What had you wanted to do instead?

I wanted a career in the services. I was rapt in

25:30 the school cadets and I did an undergraduate course to be accepted into Duntroon and passed that in my final year at school and in those days they used to take people from intermediate stage. If you got good qualifications in Intermediate you were accepted. I had good qualifications for my Intermediate, did the undergraduate course out at

26:00 Holsworthy and was accepted and my parents refused to sign the release for me to go because I had to do a trade. I said I didn’t want to do a trade. They said, “You’re going to do a trade whether you like it or lump it. But we’re not signing a release.” I thought very seriously of forgery. I asked a gentleman who was in the services and he said, “Don’t do it. Because if they find out you have

26:30 they’ll kick you out and that’ll be the end of you.” So I thought, well, can’t do it. I tried to get advice. Even had one of the instructors come and talk to my parents and they said no. So I did my apprenticeship. As soon as I turned 17, I was able to join the civilian military forces and I was stationed out at

27:00 13/10th Regiment at Belmore which used to do two nights a week and some Saturdays. Every year we used to do a two week camp. As I said I was still in the civilian military forces when I joined K Force when I came out of my time. It was while I was in Ingleburn I got fronted and read me out a list, “You have not returned

27:30 the 13/10th Regiment one great coat, one pair of boots, and listing these things that I still had that had to go back to them. So then I was given half a day off to go from Ingleburn to 3 Anti Tank Regiment to return the items so I could be cleared from them and reissued with the stuff at Ingleburn. Through that the adjutant knew that 28:00 I’d had service in cadets and that, so I was used as a temporary instructor for small arms and rifle drill in the charming company of what was then known as just K Force. Then they called it, turned us into 1[st] Battalion Royal Australian Regiment.

Could I just go back to the Citizens’

28:30 Military Force first of all and ask you – it was 1945 and the Second World War just ended, was there a lot of interest at that time of people going into the armed forces because of the Second World War?

No. I don’t really think so. A lot of us younger ones had been through a lot of school cadet training like at the course we did at Holsworthy. There would be 300

29:00 cadets throughout the state that had been selected to do the course and had applied for undergraduate to go to Duntroon. Out of that I think there was only about 120 or something actually selected. As I say I was one that was selected but refused, so that some other bloke that missed out got my spot after all.

Why were you so interested in joining the army?

I just enjoyed the

29:30 comradeship of the guys in cadets. We became a very tight little unit and we used to compete against other schools in various drills and marching and weapon training and things like that. It was great. Whether or not it was the uniform, you thought you were better off being somebody and than the kids that weren’t in it I don’t know. But I enjoyed the competitiveness. Was very

30:00 into – I had the drill squad in cadets and we used to compete regularly against other schools and we got top of the wozzer at one stage. It was just a driving influence. Then as I say when I was old enough to join the Citizens’ Military Forces, a couple of my friends were already in it that were a bit older. So I went out, joined there and really enjoyed it there.

30:30 Again it became – like you had troops with two guns each and it become competitiveness against each troop and it was just that real camaraderie amongst everyone. Although you were competing against one another it was a real close knit group and it just grabbed you. As I say, when they were calling for people to go to Korea in the Special K Force

31:00 for two years, I thought, oh well, two years is seeing what it’s all about and after two years I’ll know whether I do want to be in the army or not. While I was at Ingleburn and what we were doing there, we were training. All the blokes were coming in and they were training. Did six weeks after they did their initial training which I didn’t have to do at Puckapunyal.

31:30 We trained them as reos – that’s reinforcements – to go and reinforce 3[rd] Battalion that were blokes after they’d been there 12 months or so were recycled back in dribs and drabs. You might have 20 coming home so they’d replace them with 20. That 20 would arrive there and the other 20 would come home. That’s why 3 Battalion never actually left Korea. They stayed there as a name. But they rotated every 12 months. Where 1 Battalion and 2[nd] Battalion,

32:00 we ended up going as a battalion, doing a bit over the 12 months and then coming back. Because you weren’t allowed to stay and do two winters in Korea.

Can I ask what you knew of Communism at this time?

That it was a threat to democracy and a threat to our way of life. At that time there was lots of talk, if you’re a communist – well even in the shipyard where I

32:30 worked doing my apprenticeship, Communist Party, the iron workers who were the ship builders and tradesmen’s labourers, the Iron Workers’ Union was run by a tight fisted Laurie Short who was an absolute avid Communist. He was my iron worker in my last year as an apprentice and I was lucky if I saw him one day a week. He was always at union meetings or rabble-rousing or protesting

33:00 or he was in court. Anybody asked me about Laurie Short I always say, “Laurie who?” Because he was a nobody really to me. He was just a rabblerouser and that’s the type of people that the Communist Party seemed to want. People with loud mouths who get out and spruik. They definitely were a threat to our way of life, the Communist people. I think that’s one of the

33:30 main things everyone thought of when they struck up K Force. That it was a Communist nation had invaded a democratic nation. Actually I didn’t have a clue. All I knew, Korea was somewhere near Japan. We looked it up on a map one night in the barracks and said, “Oh that’s where it is.” The fact of, it was an adventure. I think that’s why most of them joined K Force. They looked at it –

34:00 two years, maximum, you’re in the force. You’re only going to be over there about 12 months or maybe a little bit more. You’re going on an adventure, you’re going overseas, you’re going to Korea, you’re going to a war, you’re going to Japan. It was just one of those things.

Could you talk about your work in the shipyards and especially any political discussions that were going on at the time with the unions? 34:30 There was always conflict with things that were done. If there was a naval ship came in or something to do with the defence forces, like the navy ships come in or sometimes we get army landing barges come in for repair and for work there was always a go slow by the Painters and Dockers who were another Communist run union. They would put a go slow or take a strike or they’d find some reason because

35:00 the ship was too old or too dirty or too something that they wouldn’t work on it for safety reasons. They’d hold it up whatever way they could. I can remember one instant the HMAS Warramunga came in for a quick repair and we were told we’d be doing the job on the A frames – that’s a piece of material that holds the shaft in the propeller. We were told that we’d have to get stuck into it as soon as it started to appear out of water

35:30 we’d be on pontoons and we had to follow the work down because by the time they pumped the water out we had to be finished so they could pump the water straight back in because it had to get in the sea that night. We did this and we were called heckling the whole time we were working by the painters and dockers and the iron workers. Laurie Short decided he was too crook to work so we had to round up

36:00 another apprentice to take his place to give me a hand to the job I had to do. That was I think the catalyst behind a lot of people’s ambitions because quite a few of the boys that worked at Cockatoo ended up going to Korea. I’d say 70 percent of them in the navy, the other 30 percent in the army. I think the naval side of it attracted them because they were involved with naval. It was like

36:30 virtually a naval base at times and we often went down to help out at Garden Island when there was a shortage or big jobs to be done.

Was there a lot of naval activity at that time while you were doing your apprenticeship?

I think mainly with the – they were using the navy ships at that time that hadn’t been serviced properly during the latter part of the war years, there was a lot of emergency work

37:00 being done on them. Whether or not they could see what was going to happen or not, I don’t know, but the first people who arrived in Korea were the navy. The navy were there before anyone else. The air force operated on a routine. They were based in Japan – 77 Squadron – and they just used to – we used to call them the office boys

37:30 because they’d fly out of Japan after morning tea, drop their bombs and napalm and fly back in time for lunch. That’s all we used to see of them until they got transferred and flew over to Kimpo. But as I say, Communism was rife on Cockatoo Docks and it was rife on the wharf. The instant that I mentioned in the telephone interview when they refused to load the troop ship that were going to Korea on or

38:00 to Japan and then to Korea. The Wharf Labourers’ Union refused to load it. So the government brought the navy in to load it and we were sent down to the wharf where it was being loaded as protection for the navy blokes and to keep the wharfies away and it’s the first time that I’ve ever known of we were given live ammunition.

What were your instructions?

38:30 To miss. If we had to. But we were also for the first time I think too we were given side arms to wear. And when our guards did their job on the gates and things like that they patrolled with fixed bayonets. They knew we had a lot of ammunition. They were warned that we were issued with live ammunition but nobody put out – there was no – we were very strictly told not to

39:00 load any ammunition in the chamber. You had it in your basic pouch. It was there. But we were issued with it

What was the scene that day with the unions?

They tried to block the navy people from – well they did stop them at first. They blockaded the wharf and prevented them from coming in and bringing their equipment in to do it. That’s when – I don’t know who made the decision that our platoon

39:30 was grabbed and we were told we were going down. We were issued with the ammunition, told to wear side arms, battle vests, and we would be there till we would be relieved. We were there for two days before we were relieved and then one of the other platoons come down and relieved us. While the navy carried on and loaded the ship. Because their argument was that it was going to fight a war against their own people.

Was there

40:00 a picket line?

Yep. Even wharfies protesting the day we sailed. I think my two sisters were there and my mother, just from my side, but everybody had people were there at the wharf to farewell them off and farewell us off on this great adventure and they were there protesting and placard waving and carrying on.

Do you remember what

40:30 the placards said? That we were scum, killers of women and children. All that sort of garbage was on them. And freedom for all. Communists to rule. All this sort of thing. We were –

41:00 one of the blokes wanted to take them on, but you can’t. They marched us through Sydney actually on that day to the troop ship. It was amazing the people that were lining the streets. Whether or not it was the fact that it was a parade and it wasn’t that long after the war, I suppose, the four years.

41:30 Then of course we landed into a hostile environment there and so did our loved ones that were there to farewell the ship. They ran into them as well. We were heckled as we marched through onto the wharf and up the gangplank and so forth.

What were they yelling?

Just same things as on the placards. Scabs.

Tape 3

00:32 Can I just go back to the time that you were in the CMF [Citizens’ Military Force], Mr Kinnear, where were you living at the time in Sydney.

Was back at the old home. Mum and Dad were still away with the AWB [Aborigines’ Welfare Board]. Friends of theirs from the church were living at the place and I was allowed to have my own room again. That was at Russell Lea.

01:00 Used to catch the bus just up at the corner to go to Belmore – went virtually right past the depot where we used to do our training at Belmore. So it was only about a 20 minute ride in the bus. There was three of us from the same street used to all go together. In those days young blokes didn’t have cars. There were very few cars on the road actually. Most people relied on

01:30 public transport. If you had a car, you were thought to be a very rich person.

What was your social life like at the time?

Apart from the rowing, that’s when I was at the rowing club, I used to play tennis on a Saturday afternoon down at Five Dock and that was about it really. Did no prowling of a night time like kids of today do. Usually

02:00 after either cricket or tennis on your Saturday you were quite open to come home and have a meal and a bath and into bed. Or maybe listen to a little bit of music. But mostly parties if someone was having a 21st. That’d be about it. Didn’t have parties for every birthday. A party for your 21st and that would be a big occasion usually, always held either in a church hall or a

02:30 school of arts or somewhere like that and they were always under supervision.

What was your 21st like?

I spent my 21st on my own. Mum and Dad were away and the people that were out – I even rang one of the radio stations from the public phone down the road to ask them to play a request and the request was Glen Miller’s In The Mood.

03:00 I thought that might brighten my day up. Raced back home in case they played it straight away and they said, “I just had a guy ring me about he’s alone on his 21st birthday, and wants me to play Glen Miller’s In The Mood. I don’t think that’s the way to go. All I can do is say, Rollie, happy 21st and enjoy this Glen Miller number.”

03:30 He played me a completely different number.

What sort of music did you like at the time?

Mostly big band music. When I was old enough to get into the Troc, we used to go to the Trocodero and listen to the bands there because they used to have two orchestras playing all night. Used to be non stop. Wasn’t a good dancer but used to go and loved to listen to the music. Now and then we’d be game enough to walk across to the other side of the room where the girls all sat and ask for one or two of them for a dance.

04:00 Most times you were accepted. They had a revolving stage. The band would play for about a half an hour and then the stage would just slowly turn round and as one band played out the other played in. It was just absolute non stop music. They had a bar there, but there was no way you could get a drink unless you could prove you were well and truly 21 years of age. In those days 18 year olds weren’t allowed to drink. Or under

04:30 20. But we used to go there, a couple of mates from work on a Saturday night if we could afford to get in. I think used to cost about eight and six to get into the Troc in those days. At that time on my apprenticeship wage, I think I was only getting about seventeen six in my third year and I was old enough to go into the Troc. By the time you had haircuts and bought your

05:00 ticket and your weekly ticket for the ferry to get to work you didn’t have too much spending money, believe you me. I actually bought my pushbike which at the time was bought at Norton Kirby’s in Sydney and Haymarket and I can’t remember the exact full amount but I used to have to be in there every Friday after work and pay six pence a week

05:30 off my bike. If I had more I could pay it, but it took me about 12 months to pay my bike off.

What did your bike look like?

It was classed as a British Empire Road Racing. It was a Speedwell. At that time it had five speed gears and it was supposed to be the top of the wozzer. It was quite good because I used to ride it to tech. Used to

06:00 do tech two nights a week and one Saturday morning every month into Ultimo from Russell Lea which is out between Drummoyne and Five Dock. So it used to take me about roughly about 20 minutes, 25 minutes depending on traffic. And used to use it. It was my mode of transport for a lot of years. To go to tennis, to go to cricket. Then used to ride it over to a mate’s place when I was playing for Petersham.

06:30 In cricket. Used to ride on the back of his motor bike from his place at Lewisham to wherever we were playing.

What did the inside of the Trocadero look like then?

It was glitzy. It was semi lit with all colour lights everywhere. The stage area was really brightly lit. The centre had one of those

07:00 swirling lights, I don’t know what it’s called, that reflect all the different colours in the lights. That was centred over the dance floor. The bar was at the side at the back. There was another one over on the right hand side that just sold soft drink, milkshakes, lollies and chocolate, things like that. But you walked in to a big foyer and it was like going into – they had a ticket office at the front and you had to purchase your ticket to get in and but once you left to go outside

07:30 you wanted to come back in you had to pay another eight and six. There was no stamps or anything like that, that goes on today. So you weren’t in there early and stayed till as long as you could. Just to listen mainly to the music. Maybe have one or two dances all night.

What sort of dancing would you do?

In those days it was virtually, the only ones I used to get up to were foxtrot and jazz waltz.

08:00 Everybody used to get up for barn dance, the progressive barn dance because you’re continually changing partners in circles. Gypsy taps and a few things like that.

How proficient a dancer were you?

About average, in my estimation anyway.

What did you wear to these dances?

You wore a suit. Collar and tie. Otherwise

08:30 you didn’t get in. If it was very hot they had plenty of fans, but if it was hot, they would announce, “Gentlemen, you may remove your jackets.” You either wore a suit, collar and tie, or latter years you were allowed to go in there a pair of slacks, a sports coat as they were called in those days, and you could wear an open neck shirt. Only on certain nights though. I think it was Friday nights you could do that.

09:00 But Saturday nights you always had to wear the suit.

What was your level of interest in girls at that time?

Same as any 17 year old, 18 year old. Didn’t actually have any real girlfriends. Had one girlfriend – no, she wasn’t actually a girlfriend, Norma Weskey. She was crazy. She used to break into our house looking for you. She was, yeah,

09:30 crazy girl. Turned out to be a lovely woman in the finish. But as a teenager she was an absolute crazy. No, I did have one love in those days or I thought I was in love. Actually still even have contact with her to this day. No it was just normal interest. Tennis. In those days when you went out you went out

10:00 in youth groups or you went out in groups. Even what when I was 19, you still didn’t go out with a girl on your own. If you went to the movies, yeah, you’d go on your own. But mostly you went out in fours or in groups.

And where did your social group come from? How was it formed? 10:30 Apart from the church group which I still had a bit of contact with – we used to like a days outing with them would be a Saturday and a trip to Gunamatta Bay. Catch the train down to Cronulla, then they’d all walk down to Gunnamatta Bay which was a huge park with swimming area and hire

11:00 boats and things like that. Crazy things. Get out in the middle of the river. Sometimes Lane Cove National Park. Water fights, tip the boats over so the girls got wet, that sort of thing. Just stupid crazy things. Most of our groups were formed as I say mine were mainly through church groups. Because when we were at Epping, I was in the Boys’ Brigade there and to be in the Boys’ Brigade you had to

11:30 be a member of the church or attend church and that was at Epping Baptists which was a very progressive outfit. Had some great times there. Even joined the choir there. I was in the choir at Epping Baptists for quite a few years. The only real love I had was at Epping. I still keep in contact with her now. She’s now the musical director of Epping Baptist

12:00 Church. I have very fond memories. Lovely lady. Her parents were Scot, that’s why I was permitted to take their daughter out because her father and my father knew one another. They both served in the same unit. Still a lovely lady.

How large was the Baptist church community in Sydney?

12:30 In Sydney it was huge, but at Epping it was one of the progressive churches I think – youth groups particularly. They catered for the youth at Epping. They had Boys’ Brigade, Girls’ Brigade. The youth club, it was absolutely fantastic. There’d be about 200 in the youth club. We did so many things. There was cricket teams formed, the girls played netball.

13:00 I think the first time ever we had a mixed netball team. Or a couple of teams within the community ‘cause none of the others had them that played against one another. Tennis. You name it, it covered just about every sport. Outings, always outings like out to Berowra Waters and things like that for the day. But it was all centred mainly round the church group themselves.

What experience did you have

13:30 with cinema pictures shows when you were a young man?

My first picture show was at Epping and it cost me – I had nine pence out of my – in those days when I was living with my aunt I used to get two and six a week allowance. That had to get me a haircut and whatever I needed for school unless it was an outing and that was paid for by the parents.

14:00 It used to cost sixpence to get in and that gave you threepence to buy jaffas to roll down the aisle. Or if you wanted to be hobnobs, you had a bit more, you could pay nine pence and go upstairs. That was better because if you had nine pence you usually had enough money to buy a packet of jaffas so that you could pelt them from up the top. We used to try all different tricks, blokes going in with their ticket and then

14:30 coming to the door and standing looking as though they’re waiting for someone and try and slip you their ticket to get in if you didn’t have enough money. You saw it sometimes. You went in and seen pictures for nowt [nothing]. But not very often.

What sort of pictures would you watch?

Whatever was on. It was just a matter of – mainly to see the serial. There was the Tarzan sequence was on in those days.

15:00 It was only on for about ten minutes or so but it was always left in the cliff hanger position. So you had to be back there the next Saturday to see the next episode. You tried everything to save that sixpenny piece to get in so you could see the serials and the cartoons. Always got cartoons. And in those days you always got two movies, whatever the movies were. I remember one Saturday we went and saw one.

15:30 Frank Van Hamerinck and I – lived just around the corner from my aunt’s place. And it was dark when we got out of the movies on the Saturday night because we went in the late one. It was about half past eight and it was winter time and dark. How stupid you can be at times. We’d seen this movie and it was a real horror movies. We were walking down the main street of Epping and

16:00 we’re arms like and we’re walking back to back so no-one could grab us, we could see both ways. Took us about an hour to walk home for a fifteen minute walk. ‘Cause the street was that poorly lit. I’ll never forget that. Frank and I taking turns in walking forwards and walking backwards.

Did you watch news reels?

Loved news reels. Used to love even

16:30 before and even when I came home from serving. If I found myself with an hour to spare or 90 minutes to spare I used to duck into a newsreel when there was about half a dozen of those around the city in those days. I think it cost about something like about five bob or five shillings or something for 90 minutes of newsreel. It was just like café news, like the news you get now on TV, but interspersed

17:00 with short films or three or four cartoons or something. If you had hours to while away people used to go in there and spend most of it – lot of them probably homeless people as I think of them now, at that time I didn’t realise. They’d go in when they opened at ten o’clock and probably leave there when they closed about eleven o’clock at night. Sleep through it. You could walk out into the foyer and buy food and

17:30 stuff like that as well. But they’re all gone now. There used to be one at Wynyard and next to the State Theatre and a couple more up in George Street up near where the Regent and the Plaza and those are in Sydney now. But they’ve all gone.

What did they look like inside?

Just like – they were all sloping floors and you walked into them, they were dark. Naturally whatever was showing

18:00 was showing at the time, whatever newsreel or cartoon or whatever. You walked in with your ticket, you were met by an usherette, torch down or you might just say, “I’m all right,” and you just wander down and find a seat yourself. Every now and then if there was a bit of noise going on, the usherettes would come down flashing the torch in the general direction if there was anyone doing anything maybe they shouldn’t be.

Can you recall what you found so interesting

18:30 about watching newsreels?

You got more benefit out of them than radio news was scant and it was the fact that you saw something that was there in front of you. It might be a week old, but it was there. You saw it. I think that was the actual thing, the visual aspect of it like TV today. It’s the fact that you can see things. And nowadays

19:00 you see them as they’re happening. That was like the war in Vietnam. It was on your TV screens every night on the news. I think that’s why the guys who went to Vietnam suffered so badly when they came home. There’s the adverse effects of it and the fact that the bad parts of it were thrown up on the screen all the time. You never saw any of the good parts. It was always the bad parts

19:30 that you saw on Vietnam. I’m just thinking, there wasn’t any live telecast of us guys when we were in Korea. I don’t think the cameraman would have handled it too well anyway. The conditions I mean in the wintertime, their hands would have frozen on the cameras. Used to get 48 below zero and the wind chill factor when the winds really blew it could go up to 80 below.

20:00 80, 90 below. I walked away with a dixie [mess tin] full of boiling water and gone about 50 metres and it’s iced on top. Still just warm underneath, but it’s iced on top. Tell you how cold it used to get.

Might get you to describe some of those conditions a little later, but you mentioned that there were good and bad parts of army service. What were the good parts?

Good parts were the mateship, on leave together,

20:30 just the general camaraderie and mucking around blokes do and the sense of humour of some. There was always something that you could laugh at no matter how serious at times it was you’d always get a little bit of a laugh. Somewhere along the line someone would always find a funny side to something no matter how bad. But then you had the really bad times and they were bad at the time, but you look back on them now and think, maybe it wasn’t so bad

21:00 after all.

Mr Kinnear you’ve described yourself as a pretty naughty boy. What was it then about the army that attracted you?

I think it all stemmed from my integration with the cadets and the CMF and the defiance possibly in the background and the fact that my parents wanted me to have nothing to do with army

21:30 that maybe that was the egg-along, I don’t know. Could have been. Although military always did appeal to me. I could sit and watch military displays, precision marching, I can sit and watch them all day. As a matter of fact I’ve got – much to my wife’s disgust, I not only watch them, but I tape them. All the Edinburgh Tattoos.

22:00 I’ve been in a couple of tattoos. Whether or not that is always as I say the underlying. Might have been deep down resentment that I was deprived of what I wanted to do that made me go that way. I don’t know.

You mention that you had been interested in newsreels. What did you know of Communism before you went to

22:30 work at Cockatoo Island?

Not a solitary thing. Learned it as just watching the progress and seeing these guys at work and their unions. What they’d go on strike for was ridiculous. I remember we had a six weeks strike at one stage of all the tradesmen on the island over what was supposedly a 23:00 safety issue. The safety issue was, they had three ambulances on the island and they had a fully staffed medical centre and because one of the ambulances was a converted jeep, it was a safety issue. So they all went on strike, or the Communists got the unions involved and once the unions said, you’re out – one out all out – that was the case of

23:30 the way it used to be and you didn’t have a job if you weren’t in the union. The only people that in those days weren’t in unions was apprentices. You couldn’t join a union. Because you were indentured to the firm. So what happened then was – it was a great six weeks for us apprentices – we still did work under the supervision of our bosses but because of their limited knowledge

24:00 and times and some of them like administration had clerics coming down and trying to give you work and you could say, that’s an impossibility, you can’t do that. Oh well, we’ll think of something for you tomorrow. So we’d go spear fishing around the side or go fishing and wander round. Go and annoy blokes around the other side of the island. Go around to Boystown as we used to call it and stir the possum there. That was all

24:30 a thing that was invoked in the first year when you became a first year apprentice. They used to call it Boystown. They went in and they all started off under supervision and they learnt to do all this that and the other aspects of their trade and then as they got progressed during their first year they were farmed out to tradesmen around the island. We used to get a great kick out of going down and stir Boystown.

25:00 When you finished your apprenticeship were you required to join a union?

Yep. Soon as you come out of your apprenticeship you were told. Actually a tradesman said to you, “Today you finish your apprenticeship. You’ll come with us to the First and Last.” That was the First and Last Hotel at the Quay. And your tradesman always bought you a pint the day you came out of your apprenticeship. I think a pint in those days

25:30 was about a shilling. Ten cents. I lost track of where we were talking about drinking.

What was your local?

My local? I didn’t drink. I would have one middy in those days and that was enough for me. I didn’t really enjoy it. Didn’t

26:00 really drink at any pubs when I was… I was in the regular army and we used to have a few beers at the Royal at Liverpool when we were on leave. And if it was still open when we got back before we got the last bus back to camp we’d have another couple. No, I never had a real local. The only local I’ve had here

26:30 in 44 years here would be the Golf Club.

At Cockatoo Island can you remember how did people advocate the benefits of joining the Communist Party?

I don’t know. I never used to listen to them a great deal. The fact was, on the last day of my apprenticeship my

27:00 tradesman that I’d spent my last 12 months with said, “You will now become a journeyman.” And you had to serve 3 months as a journeyman just to prove that you were capable of holding a job as a boiler maker ship builder. “You will have to join the union.” “I don’t want to join the union.” “You have to join the union or you won’t have a job. Now here’s your

27:30 card. I want a pound.” That was it. You joined or you didn’t have a job. So I said, “I’ll give you the pound Monday and you can give me the card Monday when I come to work.” When I came to work on Monday I gave my notice because I’d joined the army. I said, “You know what you can do with your union, you know what you can do with your job.” And he was absolutely astounded.

28:00 Couldn’t believe it.

How did K Force go about recruiting?

Just banners around the town and recruiting centres, oh and the newsreels again and at picture theatres. It come up and it just said, “The United Nations and the Australian Defence Force is forming a unit called K Force

28:30 to aid the united nations in their fight against the Communist force invasion against the democracy of South Korea.” That was that. They told you where there was recruiting stations, where to go and what not. We were this particular night we walked out of the movies and we said, there’s a recruitment post in Martin Place, let’s go and make a few enquiries. So we went up there, made the enquiries,

29:00 gave us some forms to fill in.

Where was the recruitment station in Martin Place?

Up the top end and the right hand side. Near Macquarie Street. What did it look like from the outside?

It was just like a small hut built on the edge of the footpath. In there was army, navy and air force and two of the boys I was with – there was four of us went up there – two of them went to navy and

29:30 two of us went in to see the army people. We got these forms to fill in and go and have a medical at Marrickville. Away we went. I had the medical at Marrickville on the Monday. Sworn in, to King and Country. And then in February was re-sworn in for Queen and Country into the regular army.

30:00 It was just a matter of, said, we’re interested, want to join. The only question that we were asked at the recruitment station, “Are you 21 years of age or older?” Said, “Yes.” That was the only question asked. Beg your pardon – no at Marrickville, wasn’t there.

30:30 At Marrickville the first question we were asked, “You realise you are volunteering your service for two years?” “Yes.” “Have you any criminal record?” “No.” It doesn’t really matter for the two years service. And it turned out – amazing when you know it – how many people that were dodging police or dodging maintenance payments,

31:00 rape allegations, things like that, joined K Force to get away from it. Two years in action, but out of their environment back here. It was amazing. Every day there was a parade. Every day without fail there’d be a parade and you’d have police car along or perhaps a woman pointing the finger at this one and the police go along

31:30 and quite often you would go back to your barracks and the bed there that there was a bloke in this morning – empty now. Foot locker gone, everything gone. You never got told what they were picked up for or what. You always knew it was something to do with sexual assault if a woman appeared. And in those days, that’s what the woman used to do –

32:00 with the police officers and the army military police, they’d walk along the line. She come to him – it was face to face. Bang. That was immediate there and then they were gone.

When you first joined K Force, in what way was it apparent to you that there were certain dodgy types?

I’d say in the first week, guy that was alongside the bed to me, he said, “You grab so and so

32:30 for me,” he had his hands full, said, “It’s in the top of my foot locker.” I opened the top of the foot locker and lifted out the pack he wanted and there was a handgun. I said to him, “What’s that for? You won’t need that when we get there.” He said, “You didn’t see nothing, mate.” And about three weeks later came in one day and he was gone. Foot locker empty and open. Bed made.

33:00 Not bed made. Bed stripped and new gear on the bed. Folded. So I knew he’d been picked up for something or other. Some reason or other. The police were every day of the week. Saturday and Sundays as well. K Force.

What were your overall impressions of the men who joined K Force?

Majority of them were good. The majority of them were like myself, thought it’s an adventure, going overseas,

33:30 going to fight the Commos [Communists], good, get back at them. I don’t think we really realised just how what the real difference was between Communism and democracy until we got there.

You mentioned get back at the Communists. What did you mean by that?

We all had the option I think of –

34:00 the factors of what they called us before we went. Quite often you’d see different things. You used to see this Laurie Short on newsreels at time getting up just sprouting the United Nations or the defence services for recruiting good young Australians to go over and be cannon fodder

34:30 to fight Communism when Communism was the way the world should be going. They rubbished everyone that joined in it. It was a case of get back the Commies. One way of doing it was go over there and fight them.

What other sort of backlash did you personally experience from joining K Force?

I went and saw a few of my mates and bosses on final leave over

35:00 at Cockatoo. I wanted to particularly speak to the old guy that had guided me through most of my time there and a couple of the others and a couple of my old bosses that were good to me just to say thanks for everything and farewell. Copped a bit of abuse there from Laurie Short and a few of his mates. Soon as they spotted the uniform they were up there like mad,

35:30 dropped what they were doing.

What did they say? Just said, “You’re scum. You were never any good. You don’t know what you’re doing. You wouldn’t join the union.” In general, just having a shot at the fact that you’d turned your back on the Communist Party. As far as they were concerned that was the only way the world should live. If you didn’t go by their rules you were just scum, dirt.

36:00 They just kept at you all the time.

How closely linked was the trade union movement and the Communist Party of Australia at that time?

Very close. Specially in the Painters and Dockers and the Iron Workers’ union and Wharf Labourers’ union. They were communist run unions. Painters and dockers I know for a positive fact that on different

36:30 ships that came in during the war, in the life rafts were survival kits with compounded chocolate and even cigarettes and things like that. And they used to thieve them and leave them empty. So if anything did happen, the survival kit’s gone. That was a known fact. The island painters and dockers used to rip them off.

When

37:00 you joined K Force, what sort of pay did you receive?

Bloody pay in those days. What were we getting? Trying to think in pounds what we used to get. Used to be only about six or seven pound a week at the time as a single man. And so much was put away for deferred pay. It was like superannuation style, but it was called deferred pay. So much was put away. I think we used to get

37:30 round about six or seven pounder. Back in those days that was quite a bit of money. Course then you could put the equivalent of a dollar which in those days was a ten shilling not on the bar, buy a round of drinks for four of you and a pork pie each and get change. Now a dollar won’t even buy you a beer.

38:00 So what did you spend your pay on?

Just the usual run of the mill. If we went out, a few drinks. Maybe a movie, whatever. Used to go to the odd dance when I was in the services. That’s actually how I met my wife. Went with a mate to a dance out at Bosley Park. I was introduced to my wife

38:30 by a friend of his. She at that time, her and her girlfriend were toying with the idea of joining the Australian Women’s Army Corps. They were tired of doing mundane jobs. She was a milliner. They both were. At the same place in Sydney. They’d seen all the recruitment ads and things for the women’s services so they were toying with the idea.

39:00 I said to them, “You’d be mad if you don’t because it’s a good life.” We had a couple of outings. Our first date was to the zoo on a Sunday of all places. Don’t know why. I didn’t pick it, but don’t ask me why we went to the zoo. Then we

39:30 kept contact with one another and she joined the services. She was in the services when we left and we continued to correspond with one another. And her Mum was great. All the blokes in my section thought her Mum was wonderful because about once a month I’d get a parcel and there’d be a beautiful home made fruit cake

40:00 done up in a tin with canvas and all well packed. You’d open the package and there’d be a stale loaf of bread. Open up the parcel and open up the bread and there’d be a bottle of rum. In the wintertime that was the most valued thing of all times over there, believe you me. There were cases we used to get a nip passed round to us of

40:30 treacle. It’s a storm. Almost sounds like artillery. Yeah. We used to get this treacle and they put it just in the top of your water bottle cover, tip it into your water bottle, shake it up, and mate, it was the best drink of all time, the best water you’ve ever drank in your life. It was brilliant. They day we did the

41:00 daylight attack on 227 was the day they gave it to us straight before we went up the hill. Mate, it would have made sparrows fight emus. It did that day I think.

Tape 4

00:33 Mr Kinnear, can I ask you what the political climate in Australia was like at the time in terms of the debate on Communism?

Didn’t take much really notice, but at the time a lot of Communists I’m pretty sure were being jailed for some of the activities they were being done. And the government was trying

01:00 to pass a legislation which I think eventually did happen – was the banning of the Communist Party as a political party. At the time I think the Prime Minister was Sir Robert Menzies, and we were always invoked when it was coming to election time as service personnel you vote Liberal. They’re the people that keep you in work.

01:30 There was a lot of political hoo hah, but we didn’t really get involved in it. The only time I really got involved was a couple of times being heckled and when they refused to load the Devonshire that we were going away on. But I know they did eventually – the Communist Party was banned as a political party. But they

02:00 still had their little underground movements and I still think they are today in a lot of unions are still being controlled in their policies and politics by Communist Party members.

What did you know about the United Nations?

At that time we saw the United Nations as maybe a tiger that had some teeth whereas the League of Nations prior to it was

02:30 regarded as a toothless tiger. I’m afraid today my opinion of the United Nations is exactly the same. I think it’s a toothless tiger. It doesn’t use enough clout. Maybe because of the way it’s made up of all nations. Which I think is natural – it’s United Nations. But their policies of the walkouts and the vetoes by the Communist block nations

03:00 takes all the clout out of it and it comes back to the old saying, for years or for decades, England was the world’s policeman and now that role’s been taken over by the United States. Someone has got to stand up and make a decision.

03:30 I think – that is to call the golfers in. There’s lightning. No, it’s politically I think they’ve done the greatest thing ever, in banning the Communist Party as a political party. I know you’re supposed to have freedom of speech and voice but there’s no way in a democratic

04:00 country like ours should we have to put up with the rabble-rousing that they go on with.

Can you remember when you first heard about the war developing in Korea?

We heard about that – there was rumours of it we heard before I even joined. 1950 when it did actually happen

04:30 jogged the memory and of course it was common talk – I was still with the CMF – it was common talk. We were asked at some stage to sign a paper to say that if we were called we would go. About 99 percent of our unit signed and said they would go so we were reservists from then on actually, the CMF

05:00 were on standby and a couple of times we thought we were going to go. Special parades were called and special training went on and we thought we were going to go. Just never eventuated. In the meantime I joined K Force and did go.

So when you joined K Force, what were you told about

05:30 Australia’s role in the war?

It was to go over to assist the United Nations forces that were already there in freeing South Korea from the North Korean influence of Communist organisation. We asked a couple of times, why is there a North Korea and a South Korea, why aren’t they

06:00 unified and they said after the Second World War Korea was split in two because part of it wanted to be a democratic nation and the other part wanted to be a communist nation. So after lots of meetings they evidently decided they would draw a line across the 38th Parallel which was roughly half and North Korea would be run by Communism which adjoins Manchuria and China.

06:30 And South Korea would remain as a democratic nation and the US [United States] troops were kept there for quite some time. They were still there when war broke out. Something like 300,000 American troops were there all the time after the Second World War. Korea was under oppression from Japan for about 35, 40 years prior to World War II. I think that was the reason why they wanted to

07:00 become democratic and not under the oppression of another ruler. I think as a country South Korea has proved themselves, industrially, economically. Whereas North Korea have spent all their income goes on military weapons, military strength. That’s

07:30 why they’re relying on handouts from other nations to keep them going.

What training did you do for K Force after you’d done your medical at Marrickville, what happened next?

Sent out to Ingleburn. Then we went to what was called the Reinforcement Company. We then did normal military training. Bayonet practice, attacking, use of hand grenades.

08:00 use of weapons at the rifle range to learn to handle .303s properly and use them. Night training exercises. Getting fit. Plenty of PT [physical training], plenty of forced marches with full packs. As I say they would morning parade read out 20 or 30 names, you blokes report to headquarters within an hour.

08:30 Put you on your way. They used to fly them over with Qantas to Japan. Then they’d be shipped over to Korea mainly by I think it was about 86 Transport wheeling with RAF [Royal Air Force] indicators. They’d land them at Tambu just south of Seoul and then they’d be trucked to wherever they had to go. On the return flight, they’d be the blokes they’d be relieving who’d done more than 12 months in Korea.

09:00 Our training was basically so that you became super fit and knew how to handle your weapon night time, daytime, and that was about the basic training that went on before you went.

Did you have contact with the CMF during this time at all?

Only the time I went back to hand in the gear that I hadn’t handed in when I left.

09:30 Did you do training exercises with them?

Yes. At one time we used to go down and act as enemy for CMF units when they did their fortnightly, but that was after we came home. We didn’t have much contact with them at all until after we came home.

So how did it come about that you then moved out of K Force?

Guy that I’d

10:00 palled up with – because I’d been made a temporary instructor, an acting blank file as they used to call them, and was helping with the training because of being involved with the CMF and having the knowledge. He was a regular. He said to me, “Why don’t you join the regular army?” I said, “Two years to do, I’ll be right.” He said, “No, benefits mate, join the regular army.” Yap yap yap.

10:30 The next thing he spoke to the commanding officer of A Company who was Major Flo Thompson and I got a visit from him. He said, “I believe you want to become a regular.” I said, “No. Mac wants me to become a regular.” He convinced me that I’d be doing the right thing if I became a regular. So I agreed that I’d become a regular, so I was shunted off back to Marrickville where I went through the medical all over again.

11:00 Then was sworn in with the Queen. Back to the unit. When I got back to the unit they said, pack up your gear and report to A Company now. So I pack up my gear and I said, “Transport?” And they said, there’s A Company across the valley. So down the track and up the hill, reported to A Company.

11:30 They said, “You been promoted to lance corporal, you’re Section 20301, Section 1 Platoon A Company.” Said, “Yeah.” “There’s your hut there.” Took me down, introduced me to the section leader, Corporal John McNulty who I already knew. The bloke who’d pressured me all the time. And that’s how I become a regular.

What were the benefits that people

12:00 were telling you about becoming a regular army?

Your service. Instead of two years deferred pay, you got six years. When you come out after six years you got heaps more money. And being a regular, people look up to rather than being the K Force. A lot of people refer to K Force as ‘Chocos’ [‘chocolate’ soldiers, militia]. Same as the reservists were in World War II. It was just a distinctive thing. I thought,

12:30 oh well, I wanted to make the army my career. I’ve been given the opportunity to become a regular. Do it. Of course there was always the thought of promotion. Didn’t get far up the rank.

Did you notice much difference between the K Force training?

Yeah. The regulars, there was much more a close knit buddy. There was a lot more pride in their uniform.

13:00 The majority of K Force blokes, I won’t say they didn’t have pride, but it was a two year thing. But as it turned out some of those guys that joined K Force – I’d say 99 percent of K Force blokes were the backbone of 3 Battalion. And 1 Battalion

13:30 more than proved themselves as great fighters and great soldiers. There’s no two ways about that. But the regulars had that little bit more spit and polish. K Force was the old Aussie with the knockabout, didn’t care so much for the spit and polish. Their idea was, we’ve got a job to do,

14:00 let’s do the job and that’s it. Whereas the regulars as I say took pride in their unit, their uniform. There was always the spit and polish part of it which was looked on as a drudge with K Force guys, spit and polish with the regular army was an accepted policy and you tried to out do everybody with your gear. It was just one of those

14:30 things. There was no difference in pay. Not that I can recall anyway. And there was no difference in the uniform. There was no difference in the insignia you wore on your sleeves. It was all the same. I just think it was the esprit de corps with the regular army blokes. That’s all. And if you didn’t fit you always ended up – any misfits in the regulars

15:00 always ended up getting some rear echelon job somewhere well out of the way. Whether it was – regular army was a real team job.

What were the uniforms that you were issued for Korea?

We had the standard battle dress and when we left here we left in khaki drill, summertime uniform and when we lobbed in Japan we were in the middle of winter, weren’t we?

15:30 So there was haste to get greatcoats and comforters for us. We were billeted out at Katachi about 15 miles out of Kure, and just about five miles from Hiroshima. And I remember our first nights there sitting wrapped in a greatcoat

16:00 twice the size I would normally wear wrapped around, thankful it was double the size because it acted like a blanket. Clutched the comforter jammed down over my ears sitting around a big potbellied stove and drinking Kirin beer. They were our first nights and big Qantas huts they were, but we were billeted in tents and it was freezing cold, believe you me. But it didn’t take them very long before they got

16:30 us into a uniform that was used universally by the British and Australian troops in Korea. The early blokes that were there from 3 Battalion from the start, they still only had the old World War II uniforms. We were fortunate enough that we did get a uniform that was a lot better. Then later as we approached

17:00 the second winter, we got a lot more sophisticated cold weather gear.

What signs were there on the uniform that you were part of the United Nations support?

We had a blue shield on the shoulder badge, still had the rising sun on our side chaps and it was just a blue shield with a crown on it and the Commonwealth and that showed you were part of the Commonwealth Division and the blue represented

17:30 the United Nations colour.

So how long were you in training for in the regular army before you left for Korea?

About a month.

And you mentioned there was a march through Sydney. Could you explain that in as much detail as you can?

Brought in by train from Ingleburn – from Liverpool. We trained at

18:00 Liverpool and they took us in a back way through a goods train unit used. I don’t know what the idea of it was. But we were taken in throughout the backskirts of … and then appeared at a siding near a park. Trying to think of the name of the park.

18:30 Just near Central Railway, behind, the western side. There we were given a sandwich and a cup of coffee or a cup of tea and then we were formed up and marched down through Elizabeth Street into

19:00 Eddy Avenue down into George Street and we marched down George Street into the Quay [Circular Quay]. Had a couple of bands. Our own band led the parade and being A Company we were right behind them and then there was headquarters company and one of the bands from one of the other units and so on. We marched six deep in Sydney. Fixed bayonets.

19:30 Don’t know what – I think there’s a usual command for bayonets to be fixed when you’re marching in the city. That was evidently granted. We marched with fixed bayonets down to the Quay. Everyone was amazed with the turnout and the well-wishers we got when we marched. A lot of places we marched through

20:00 blokes were coming out of the pubs and handing blokes glasses of beer and everything. A mouthful was taken and passed on and things like that. It was a good march.

Were people in the streets, were they waving flags, what was the atmosphere?

No. There was one or two flags I remember seeing. But mostly it was just – don’t think there was a great deal of men.

20:30 I think there was only maybe a sprinkling of men in the crowd. Mainly women and children. Whether it not it was the fact that there was a parade on or not I don’t know. But when we got to the wharf it was jam-packed with troops’ loved ones to see them off. When we got there we were dispersed and we were allowed to mingle for 15 minutes and then everyone was called aboard and we were first aboard

21:00 and they went by companies so those blokes got a little bit longer than we did. Marched up, taken to our mess deck. That was where we were supposed to spend most of the time. You ate slept and trained and did all your work there. On your mess deck. Night time when everything was ready and it was lights out you rolled out your hammock and hung your hammocks. We used to sneak, put ours out and soon as lights went out we’d roll ours 21:30 up, half a dozen of the soldiers, and straight up top deck. Couldn’t breathe down there. The smells and the roll and the swell. We used to sneak upstairs and lay on the deck and laskers would wake us up in the morning coming round and hosing the decks down.

Who did you say goodbye to?

My two sisters and my Mum. My Dad wouldn’t come.

22:00 My mother and two sisters came.

Why wouldn’t your dad come?

Don’t know. I never asked him and he never offered. He never even came when we came home either. My sisters again came and so did my now wife. She came to meet us when we came home.

22:30 Were you going out with her at that time when you were leaving?

We’d been out on one date to the zoo on the Sunday before we left. But I’d been out to her cousin’s place that introduced us and had a meal out there and took her back to her home in Fairfield where she lived. Then as I say when we left she was on her way to Melbourne or was in Melbourne for the start of her training for the Women’s Royal Australian Army

23:00 Corps. We were married 50 odd years ago, 1954, 7th August. Not long after that some lousy blighter dobbed her in that she was married, and so she was discharged. In those days you weren’t allowed to be married and be in the services.

23:30 Nowadays it doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter whether you’re married and got a family or what. Anyway she was discharged in 1955.

So seeing that scene on the wharf as you pulled out, what was your feeling at that time?

We are actually on our way. That’s the feeling you have.

24:00 You could see all these faces, all upturned, all looking up at the decks, everyone was up outside the ship. All the guys, it’s a wonder it didn’t turn turtle because I think everyone was on the one side of it. But it was strange really. In one way it was a feeling of relief, hey we’re pulling away from the wharf, we are going. Blokes were looking at one another,

24:30 not wanted to admit, but you’re looking and you’re starting to feel excited, that was the feeling you had. Then you looked and thought, my God, what are we going into. And then you looked and seen the places being small and you can’t actually distinguish the faces and you’re trying to get into your mind what you were looking at. All of a sudden it’s gone. It’s not there any more. And what made matters worse,

25:00 we started to steam down the harbour, then we stopped and dropped anchor. You wondered what the heck – no-one, we still to this day, have got no idea what happened. But we do know that two police launches came aboard and some military police came aboard. Nobody could see anybody. By the time they departed it was dark.

25:30 We were off Bradleys Head and we were there for about two and half hours, three hours, and no movement, no nothing, not knowing what’s going on and somebody started and said, “There’s Russian subs up the coast. They’re not letting us go.” And all this going on. Somebody said, “No. They’ve arrested somebody.” So we still to this day have got no idea what happened. I’d say about half past seven or something

26:00 away we went again. Everything was happy. We had one guy in our group, Alan Morbison, he kept saying, “Are we at sea yet?” And we’d say, “No we’re not even moving, mate. We’re anchored. We’re not going. They’ve stopped us.” “Are we at sea yet?” And even once the engines started up again and the props started turning

26:30 you could feel the vibration of the ship and you could feel the ship moving., he kept saying, “Are we there yet? Are we moving?” Like that ad – ‘Are we there yet?’. He just kept asking and asking. We said, “No. What’s the matter?.” He said, “Once I get to sea I’ll be sick.” “Don’t be stupid, you’ll be right.” We kept saying, “No we’re not even there, not even at the edge yet.” Anyway some bright spark stuck their head in at one stage and said, “Oh come and have a look at this.”

27:00 “What?” “The lights of Newcastle look terrific.” “Newcastle! We’re at sea?” “Yeah.” And bang. And the next 17 days he was violently ill the whole time. Just mind over matter. He was determined as soon as we got to sea he was going to be sick and that’s how he travelled for 17 days. Violently ill after we’d gone past Newcastle. But that’s fact.

What were the conditions like on the ship?

27:30 I don’t know how to put it with you two ladies here.

Speak freely.

The place was clean. The mess decks were clean and the tables were scrubbed by the laskers every day. But you slept there, you ate there, your ablutions were there, you shaved there, everything you did and all our lectures were held there. And

28:00 then you might get a couple of hours up on deck to do some training. Mainly cleaning weapons, going through Bren gun drill so everyone can familiarise themselves with it, blindfolded training. They they’d throw around questions. They’d just say, “Right you’ve got two minutes,”

28:30 and they’d hand you a cigarette lighter. Lecture on cigarette lighter. Hand somebody a match. Somebody a piece of paper. Just, blokes’d say, “It’s a piece of paper, originated as a tall tree in a forest,” blah blah, just whatever comes into your mind, just to keep your minds alert and keep you going. Training was – couldn’t do much as regards PE [physical education], but they tried to cram in as much movement as they could.

29:00 Spent a lot of days down on the mess deck. You queued up and got your food. Mess deck at a time. Came back and fought your way into to find a space to sit down at a table somewhere to eat and then you’re back up on deck to where they had a big set up you could wash your dixies and everything.

29:30 Back to more lectures or up on to deck for a bit more training. Things we were told as we were going over there. We were told we were going over there to fight a mob of Chinese farmers that had very poor weaponry, had no artillery, no air support, they’re using antique old guns and they

30:00 attack in waves because they haven’t got enough weapons to hand round. Mate, they were the most courageous soldiers I’ve ever seen in my life – apart from us guys of course. But they were. They were just – maybe not courageous, but just fanatical. But their artillery support was absolutely magnificent. We were told they couldn’t hit a haystack at 200 yards.

30:30 They would fire a shot in from their mortars and land one say 50 meters in front of you to get a sighting and they’d put one about 50 metres behind you and if you were standing still long enough and held your hip pocket open they’d put the third round in your pocket. They were brilliant. So we very soon learnt that all the stories we’d been told on the way over were just a heap of garbage.

Why do you think

31:00 you were told those stories? Was it because they just didn’t know or was there another reason?

I think it was just to allay any worries that anybody might have had that we were going in to fight a great fighting unit or something – I don’t know. But the numbers, there was no doubt about it they came in mass. But you always knew when they were coming. They let you know. They were very good that way. They’d bang drums and

31:30 cymbals and blow bugles. For hours before they attacked. As soon as that stopped you knew it was on. I just think it was probably to make you feel good that it’s going to be a piece of cake. Or perhaps take away the fear that some blokes might have had that they were going in and they wouldn’t come back. Those sort of things. Unfortunately there was 339 blokes that didn’t come back.

32:00 It wasn’t good on the ship. We were glad to get off it. We had 17 days and nights on the damn thing. I think we saw one ship at a great distance one night. We ran into some rain storms, a few rough passages on the way over. The blokes were pretty crook. As I say to sleep down in the mess deck

32:30 it was just not on. Blokes had been sick plus the food plus all the gear that’s down there and everything. In an enclosed space. You can’t open portholes because our mess deck was just on waterline so you can’t. The only fresh air you got was what came down from the hatches up top. That’s why we used to escape up to the deck. As I say, you knew when it was time to get up because the laskers come

33:00 round hosing the decks down.

How many troops were on board?

Was our full battalion which was about 1032 men. Plus there were some reserves going over and some other troops going to military police and transport operators like drivers and things like that that were going over to relieve other blokes, quite a few on board. There’d be close enough to 2000

33:30 troops on board.

Could you describe your first sighting of Japan?

Yep. Somebody hollered out, just after daylight, “We can see land.” So everybody’s up to have a look. In the distance you could just make out there’s dark land. We’re all up there in KDs [army issue trousers], freezing cold,

34:00 starting to head up the inland sea to Kure where we disembarked. Everyone was amazed at the landscape and how every bit of land seemed to be under cultivation from the ocean floor to the tops of the hills. Everywhere you looked it seemed to be all – meticulous, Japan, their cultivation. They cultivate the water from – after 34:30 watching it and seeing how they do it, it’s phenomenal. They run water uphill to feed their crops, their rice paddies and things. And when you looked up in the distance too up in the hills you could see the snow and we knew why we were cold. We got to Kure about mid morning, very smartly off loaded, straight into trucks, no time for anything, no greetings or anything. Just bang,

35:00 A Company first in, bang, out on the trucks out to Katachi. The only view you got of Japan was what we saw on the ship and out the back of the truck as the trucks were zooming past in convoy fashion. When we got to Katachi it was a bit of an eye opener. It was a formal Japanese naval base and it was huge and

35:30 their hut system and hangars where they had their plane for the navy, it was unbelievable. Just couldn’t imagine. You could have fitted the whole of our battalion in one of the hangars they were that huge. Concrete floor, domes huts, very high, freezing cold. But they had all these potbelly stoves going flat chat.

What month was this?

February.

36:00 Nice and warm out here. Freezing cold over there. But we thought that Japan was cold. But in Japan we found that we could come back in after a day out training before we went to Korea in freezing cold conditions, but you came back into a nice warm hut. Korea was a little bit different. You crawled into a little hole in the ground.

36:30 Or a hootchie [two-person tent], as they were called. Just enough room for you to move in, a couple of you sometimes. Some of them held four.

37:00 You mentioned that on the truck they only thing you could see was from the back of the truck, what do you actually remember seeing?

Villages, little huts – houses they turned out to be.

37:30 And little shop types of things. We couldn’t make out what they actually were first off because most of their walls are made out of rice paper and their roofing’s all different. And when you come to the houses, most of the houses most of the houses were behind walls. Each house seems to be built in behind walls. They had their own little private garden so you couldn’t see much. Saw the odd

38:00 tree, some trucks going the other way, and some buses which belonged to the services of course. Very little till we actually got to Katachi where we got out of the trucks and found out this is where we’re going to live for the next week or two.

When you got to Katachi,

38:30 what were you told about how long you’d be staying there for?

We weren’t told how long, all we were told, we were just going to be doing some extensive training, kitted out with the idea that we’d be taken by two – the battalion would be taken by two troop ships they were called. Which was a joke rather. To Korea. And that would happen in the

39:00 very near future.

Tape 5

00:32 Before we go onto talk about Korea and Japan, there are just a couple of questions I wanted to ask you about training. You mentioned that in K Force there’d be a parade each morning and then certain men would be selected for duty for Korea. What was the criteria for that selection?

Mainly just everybody was basically training at the same time but they worked on the

01:00 set up of ‘first in, best dressed’. So the guys that had been out there at Ingleburn training longer – like if I arrived only a week ago and there’s guys there that had been waiting for three weeks to go, they would go before me. That was the set up as they were there.

And when you were training in the regular army, what sort of conditions were you training for?

In the short time we trained, not much any different to what

01:30 we had been with K Force. Was to be super fit. Know your weapons, know how to assemble, disassemble, change barrels and things like that so that you could do it rapidly, efficiently and do it – like we used to have to do it blindfolded. So that if you were actually caught in night manoeuvres and you had to change the barrel of a Bren or clear a Vickers or whatever you could do it without light. By feel you knew what to do. 02:00 And in what sort of terrain, what sort of campaigns?

They tried to train us in hilly areas, because Korea being such a mountainous country in most parts. We used to train round outside of Ingleburn and back of Holsworthy and out round in the hills and they have heavily wooded parts there. Little did we know that when we got to Korea we wouldn’t know what a tree was because

02:30 they’ve all been cleaned out. It was mainly to be fit and be able to use – we still did night training because we knew we would be doing night patrols. So you would do mock patrols against – they’d have blokes out to act as enemies and so forth using blank ammunition and flare guns to light up when you were spotted. It was mainly intensive training up to that stage for as near as possible to a actual

03:00 conditions and in the regular army we did – I can’t recall us ever doing it in K Force – we did some training where you had to move from point A to point B via some valleys, through fences and everything and they had live ammunition being fired over your heads. When you were crawling you could hear the bullets whizzing over the top of you. They were only about 18 inches above. It was

03:30 to make sure that you kept your head down when you were moving. It was quite exciting at the time. As I say, it became to the stage of having artillery and they had – didn’t actually have mortar shells, but they had explosives planted in the ground so they would go off near you and everything. All that happened would be you’d be showered with some dirt and smoke and things like that would rain down on you but there would be no shrapnel for danger or anything like that..

04:00 It was to get you used to the sound of battle and listening for commands during the sound of battle. That was the whole idea of the training. It was amazing how it worked too.

So how do they get you accustomed to the sound of battle?

Yep.

Just by firing?

Yep. Live ammunition and machine guns and Bren guns and so forth being fired over the top of your head. Artillery shells being fired

04:30 from way back, so that you hear the noise of the shell going in. They’d be using it at Holsworthy and probably landing the shells up to two kilometres away from you, but it was the sound. You could hear the shells coming in and you got to learn what was ours and if the noise was reversed, you knew it was incoming.

And did that include mortar attack?

Yep. Mortars were fired.

05:00 But as I say they were fired at a safe distance behind or at a safe distance in front of you all the time.

When you arrived in Katachi, what impressions did you have of how Japan was recovering from the Second World War?

When we got our first leave in Japan – up till that stage we hadn’t seen anything other than those that were employed on the base where we were. They were very subservient.

05:30 Naturally, none of us spoke Japanese and they didn’t speak English. So at times trying to get them to do jobs was a bit difficult unless you found – we were fortunate, we had our company sergeant major, Mattie McLachlan, had served in B Comp after World War II and he spoke Japanese quite fluently. He was able to get us out of a lot of jams that we had with some of them.

06:00 That was just amazing to think what we did see on our first leave – we were taken by Sar [Sergeant] Major McLachlan to a group of us, he took us up to celebrate our confirmed promotion to the esteemed rank of lance corporal up to the Hirubetsu [?] at Hiroshima.

06:30 We were rather shocked, most of us, when we saw the devastation that the atomic bomb had caused at Hiroshima even five years after.

How did you travel to Hiroshima?

We went up by what they call – it’s a motor bike taxi – three wheeler like you see over in Indonesia and places like that. Just walk up to the front gate,

07:00 they’re all sitting there waiting hoping and they fight like mad to get a customer when you walk out. It was two to a cab and away we went.

Can you describe then what it looked like approaching Hiroshima?

Approaching Hiroshima it just looked like an absolute shambles from the outside. You could still see the dome from way back that was standing. That was the centre where the bomb went above it, it was detonated well above it. That was the aiming mark evidently. It was exploded 07:30 a couple of hundred feet above that. It was exploded in the air. But the devastation that rained down. And to see still, not sears, but how can you put it, the shadow of a person on a piece of timber or a hand where the radiation from that bomb has just seared that person’s body so it looks like it’s been painted on the wall. Just

08:00 a dark shadow. Was absolutely eerie. But as we got in to the town to where they’d started to rebuild there was all the usual things out. Hotels and thousands of brothels, they’re everywhere in Japan. People that had rebuilt their little homes that were devastated and what they call their nightclubs, are what we actually they’re like a hotel. More

08:30 like a club actually. They don’t have hotels, they have the hotels nowadays where you can go and stay. They’re what they call their bars were like a restaurant type. Sort of like a club. You could have your meal there, get a drink there and there was always the girls there to entertain, but very few –

09:00 you couldn’t take one of the girls, the hostesses from in there and take them if you wanted to go out with them or anything like that.

How did the hostess system work?

It was just that they’d come and join you at your table, like if four of us sat down, four girls would come and sit down and talk to you. Naturally they wanted you to buy drinks, because they were on commission to get drinks. Their drinks were always watered down.

09:30 You paid top dollar for those. If you had Aussie money – actually it was British Armed Forces badges that we had that was commonly called BAF, but if you had Yankee [American] dollars the girls’d fight to get to your table. As soon as they saw the Yankee dollar. I’d say, that’s what a lot of blokes used to do, they’d change their money from our currency to the dollars which they’d lose a bit on,

10:00 just to attract the girls to the tables very smartly. The hostess system, they were there and if you wanted a meal you could order your meal with them. They would go and get it and bring it back to you. Then at times they would be called away to sing and perform and their dances were mainly traditional dances. Some of them were done with the flavour of modern time

10:30 at that time in that no matter what place you went into in Japan the background song was always one of those Americanese, Come On To My House, I don’t know whether you’ve ever heard it or not.

Can you sing any of it for me?

Just try and think of the words. Something that would start off, “Come on to my house, come on, come on, come on, come on to my house, I have pomegranate,”

11:00 and then it goes on with some other details. It was very popular evidently out here at the time too. But every bar you walked into it was always blaring. Then they just chopped that off and they used to do their little songs like Can Can or Sumaya and a little dance and they’d try to get blokes up to dance with them.

Did it strike you as a highly sexualised

11:30 scenario?

They were there to get what they could out of you and if it meant having sex, yeah. That’s for sure. Brothels were absolute – my first introduction to a brothel was some blokes that had been in BCOF [British Commonwealth Occupational Force] before – Second World War blokes, Billy Tyler and Slim Evans, took me to this place and they say, “Just calling in to see this old friend of ours and have a drink.”

12:00 So I went in and the old mama-san, she greeted them like they were prodigal sons. She hugged them and kissed them, then was introduced to me. Then we all sat round on the floor at a little low table and she yelled out something in Japanese and these two girls appeared with some beer and we were having a drink there. I just thought it was a home. Then the next thing,

12:30 Lofty says, “Which one do you want, mate?” “Which one what?” “Which one will you want to go to bed with?” “I don’t want to go to bed with either of them, thanks.” He said, “Mate, that’s what we’re here for.” I said, “Well, best of luck to you then go for it.” Because we had been told and been given heaps of lectures on venereal disease in Japan and to be very, very careful. Not being a real

13:00 worldly bloke at that time it set me back on my backside so I eventually excused myself and got out of there when they went. That was my first introduction to a brothel. First time I’d ever seen one or been in one. You soon learn what they were all about because they’re out everywhere. The Japanese have a system. It’s rather strange. You’ll be talking with someone and – they grade

13:30 everything and everyone from one to ten. They don’t call their girls prostitutes. They call them business girls. They’re rated, business girls – don’t take her, she’s number eight or she’s number ten. They always have the other saying for anyone that’s really bad and possibly is, either had the venereal disease or has it and no no, they’re “Number have a no.”

14:00 Everything. Even if it’s like a car or food or restaurant, it’s a number one or it’s – everything gets graded from one to ten. It took a bit of getting used to for a while.

So what made someone a number ten business girl?

That I don’t know. I can honestly look you in the eye and say I would only say that she was either not good at her profession or had been caught

14:30 trying to rob the blokes or not doing their job properly in the fact that they’re supposed to entertain them first and ply them with grog and things like that. Cause that’s where they make them – the money is made for the madam. I never saw anything but you read about it and see it on TV about all these prostitutes that have pimps.

15:00 If they had them, they were well hidden. It was always anything you went – at one stage I got attached to – I was waiting to go back to Korea after I’d come out of hospital. I was in a unit where they build you up gradually before they send you back. I got attached for two weeks, the last two weeks I was there, and used to travel with the

15:30 military police and blokes with venereal disease. They were interrogated by the military police and the Japanese police would then be brought in and they’d ask them to describe the woman, where they picked her up, where she took them and then they would go and try and pick up the person. Some of the women that they picked up from descriptions that were given by blokes and taken away

16:00 by the Japanese police. You’d think you were in a haunted house if you woke up next to them. So they’d be the types that would be classed I would imagine as “Number have a no.” But just frightening to look at in daylight. Let alone waking up hungover and find them in bed alongside you. Saw some shocking things in that two weeks. Saw some shocking – blokes that you wouldn’t dream of,

16:30 that you thought butter wouldn’t melt in their mouth. Specially some of the younger kids. With VD [venereal disease]. Not good.

What would happen to a serviceman once they contracted venereal disease?

They were taken to or sent to a place out of Katachi, Teno. Was a military hospital.

17:00 There they were treated. They tell me the treatment that people got there wasn’t nice. They were troops that had passed the number ten stage as far as the medical stuff were concerned and most of them once they were cured, it was on their medical record

17:30 and that was as cured. Quite often they weren’t sent back to their unit. They were sent home. Quite often when they were sent home, it wasn’t long before they were discharged. I don’t know. I just think a lot of them were treated badly and a lot of them just didn’t listen to what they were told.

So when you were receiving

18:00 these lectures about sexual conduct what was the overall reaction from the men?

Overall reaction from the majority I’d say was, “Oh yeah,” that ear and out that. We can look after ourselves, no problem. Every soldier that was going on leave they had the option of picking out condoms and

18:30 there was a kit that contained a condies crystals [potassium permagnate, antiseptic/antifungal agent] mix and something else and something else so that if you did have sex even if you used a condom you were supposed to use it to wash and clean yourself all round just as a precautionary measure. But not too many people bothered to ever take it. And it was so easy.

19:00 When you went back on leave to Tokyo after you’d been in Korea for a certain amount of time – at least six months they’d send you back for 21 days R&R [rest and recuperation]. You’d end up back in Tokyo in a billet there and the first thing you did when you got to your room, each room had a room boy or a house boy that looked after your clothing

19:30 and everything. Come in, you’d take your shirt off. We had a house girl in our room, the four of us being junior NCOs [non commissioned officers]. And you take off a shirt to have a shower that you’d only put on that morning, and this is before you go to lunch. You come back out and there’d be a complete new kit laid out for you. The other’d be already in the wash. They were just that way. But as soon as you moved in and put your gear on to start unpacking

20:00 because you’ve got the gear you arrived from Korea in, you had to strip off in a delousing room, that was taken away off you. You went through a delousing process where you were sprayed with a type of DDT [pesticide] stuff and antiseptic soap and that was sprayed all over you and then you had a shower and then you went through and had another shower with normal soap and that and dried yourself. By the time you came through the production line,

20:30 they would have had your kit out that you came from Korea with which was in storage. Then you got dressed in part of that. Then you went upstairs to whatever your room allocation was and put your gear away. Soon as you got in the room either the house girl or the house boy would ask you for your AB83 [record book] because you hadn’t even got your pay. You wouldn’t get your pay till the following day. So they ask you for you AB8’. “What do you want your AB8’?” You go to so and so

21:00 and there’ll be on of these combined hotel brothels. The idea was they’d take your AB83 there because that was security then. They would try and take your AB83 from you, which was a record book and the idea of it was then they had you by the ‘short and curlies’. If you went and stayed there, even if you stayed there for the whole of your leave with the and took up one of the women or changed your women every night, you’ve got to pay them

21:30 at the price they ask for to get your AB83 back. If you say no and start to haggle with them like a few blokes did and ended up being in deep trouble and ended up being sent home because they then produced the AB83 to the military police and that’s a document that you cannot under any circumstances give to anybody else. That’s how cunning they are and that’s how they worked it. They would making exorbitant prices on

22:00 just a – who was it? Billy Chester. He stayed the first night and the second night and didn’t like the place, didn’t like the way it was run and didn’t like the food and everything. They wanted about eight times the amount of what it should have cost him before they’d give him back his AB83. He ended up having to borrow money for the rest of his leave and spend most of his time just bumming around the area of the camp. If it wasn’t for the

22:30 WVA [Women’s Voluntary Association] girls that used to make coffee, sit and talk and listen to all your problems and your troubles – they were Australian, Canadian, British, that was just the Women’s Voluntary Service, they had rooms, a billiard table, table tennis, darts, you name it, just all the indoor games. But they were always just there if you wanted to have a yarn or sit and have a talk to someone.

23:00 They were lovely women to sit and talk to.

Was there contact with Japanese women outside prostitution?

Not really. Unless you struck them on the street or in bars or like food – sometimes we used to go to the markets. We were always warned not to eat fruit or veggies from Japan because they use human excrement to fertilise all their veggies, but temptation when you see beautiful apples and what we

23:30 call now the nashi pear, they haven’t got the taste they’ve got in Japan. When you eat them there, they’re beautiful, magnificent. A few of the guys have had experience of being up to there in their excrement pits. Because they only cover them with little tatami mats and when you do a night exercises in the fields you don’t know a tatami mat from solid ground. You put your foot on it and you’re gone. And you’re up to there.

24:00 You don’t get excused. You’re dragged out and you continue on with the rest of the night’s training.

In Hiroshima, what was your impression of the reaction of the Japanese to the occupation forces?

Up to the day the occupation – we were there when that ceased. When the occupation force

24:30 no longer became the occupation force. We were all warned not to leave barracks and if we did have to leave the barracks you would leave in no less than ten people at a time. You must go in groups of ten and not stray far from either a police station or whatever. And there were some I believe in Tokyo some very nasty incidents. Also in Nagasaki, but Hiroshima, never heard of anything happening there.

25:00 But the treatment of the Japs did cop from a lot of BCOF blokes that were in World War II did leave a lot to be desired. I saw myself a Japanese woman and I think it was her husband, what they used to do is if you were walking down the street they would step off the footpath

25:30 onto the road and they would turn and bow and stay bowed till you walked past. These two Canadians just absolutely flattened her and before her husband could do a thing the same was done to him and then the boot was put in and then they walked away, great, we’ve just knocked another two Japs over – that was the attitude of a lot of them because of the things that the Japanese had done. But then

26:00 they took it out on innocent civilians and that doesn’t go down well with a lot of blokes. Canadians weren’t terribly liked by the Australians. Both in Japan and Korea.

What was peculiar about the Canadians?

Rather vicious types. They might be probably only in a minority because I did have a couple of very good Canadian friends that were in the Princess Patricia’s Iron

26:30 Infantry. I met up with them in Tokyo on leave. They were two great guys. But we saw a lot of callous things happen and there was always fights between the Canadians and Australians.

Where would those fights take place?

Beer halls mainly. Even out in the street.

27:00 One incident on leave in Tokyo we had a loudmouthed Canadian – each in this particular place I think it was Canadians used to be on the first floor, that was their domain, Yanks were on the next floor, we were on the third floor, Australians. We did allow some of the Kiwis. Kiwis used to come in at times.

27:30 We used to play test matches football in the bar. In a room this size. Tables and chairs. Didn’t matter. But a Canadian loudmouth come up there one night carrying on about the Australians and Kiwis [New Zealanders]. They just asked, “Can you fly?” and he said, “All Canadians are good flyers.” Wished he hadn’t have said it. Three floors down and he learnt to fly. Straight through the window he went.

28:00 He was just picked up and tossed by a group that were near him. Straight out the window. Not liked at all, Canadians.

What did you assume at the time was the reason for this to happen?

I don’t know. They were there in the early parts and I do believe that the Canadians weren’t as good a soldier as they were cracked up to be at times. I think they might have

28:30 bugged out on 3R [3RAR, 3rd Royal Australian Regiment] on a couple of occasions. I don’t know. Although one of the units, Royal Canadian Regiment did fight alongside and with 3 Battalion when they won a presidential citation and so did they. I just think it was individuals and at the time – I don’t know.

Can you explain what the beer halls were?

There weren’t

29:00 actually much bigger than what we’ve got here. They were just a bar with an area for a dance floor and just tables and chairs. Mainly grog shops and entertainment. That was about all.

What was the currency?

The currency was your own. You could use Japanese money, but it was useless. It was a pound sterling which

29:30 you paid in this BAF money, British Armed Forces voucher. A pound sterling was 25 shillings. We used to lose on the BAF money because in those days a pound was worth 25 shillings to us. So every time we got a pound issued to it we lost five shilling which didn’t go down well. That was usable anywhere and so was the dollar and the Japanese yen. But the Japanese yen

30:00 was at that time 1,028 yen to the pound. And all their money was paper money. From one yen upwards. There was one yen, two, three, four, five, right up. You could have a wad like that and have about six bob. It was useless.

And what nationalities frequented the beer halls?

30:30 All of them. I think every country that was there. No I won’t say – medical mobs from those sort of places – they were in Korea, they didn’t see Japan unless they got back down there, but I never struck any of the South Africans or the Indian, Norwegians, Swedes, any of those.

31:00 At all. In Japan. They all supplied logistics, like medical teams and mashers which were, they were unreal those guys and girls in the MASHers [mobile army surgical hospital]. No idea. What you see on TV about 107 MASH is not far off the mark at all.

In what respect?

31:30 The way they act and the way they carry on. They’ve got to. Otherwise they’d be right round the twist, some of the cases they would see. Like the day I got hit I ended up in a Norwegian MASH and a guy was dragged in not long after me – Canadian. Was with the Lord Strathcona’s Horse which is an armoured

32:00 regiment. He was just in the act of getting out of the turret of his tank, so from here and the right leg where he was putting it up over phosphorous mortar shell landed right in the tank. That’s the only part of him that wasn’t covered in phosphorous. It was just absolutely – phosphorous you can’t put out. You’ve just got to let it burn. He was –

32:30 the way they treated him, those nurses, you wouldn’t have seen a baby handled with so much care as what they did with him. He was on the flight before me out to Britcom Hospital. When I arrived at Britcom Hospital in Kure he was in the bed opposite me. All he had was two slits there, a slit for his mouth and that was it. The rest of his body apart from that leg

33:00 was completely phosphorous burnt and a mess. But the nurses treated him – just got complete admiration for they way they handled it and treated that guy. The Pommy [British] nurses, I wouldn’t throw a bucket of water on them if they were on fire in a gutter. They were all male nurses, the Poms, except the matron.

33:30 She expected an inspection every morning. She used to come round and she inspected and demanded and if you were a bed patient and you couldn’t get up you had to lay to attention while she was in the ward. If you were a sitting patient you had to sit to attention. If you could get out of bed and them go out to the toilets with you, you had to stand to attention. We had the Canadian who couldn’t do anything, so he 34:00 was completely out of the question. But there were some Poms in the ward, it being the Pommy ward, Kiwis and Australian. We said one day, tomorrow when she comes in you just ignore her. Which we did. We just all got round the ones that could walk we all come and sat round the one bed that couldn’t get out of bed. In she

34:30 pranced, and the two male nurses called for attention. We just kept talking. Here’s the two Pommies laying in their beds stiff to attention. She carried on something. We just ignored everything she said. The next thing we had the RMO [Regimental Medical Officer] down. That was the medical director of the regimental medical officers. He was down wanting to know what was going on. We told him, these blokes are in here because they’ve been wounded. And they’re here to be treated

35:00 so they can get back to their units or be discharged and go home. They’re not here to be subjected to playground rules and sit to attention and stand to attention while madam comes round here flaunting her floppy breast around. He said, “So you’re Australian.” “Yeah.” “You’re New Zealanders.” They were a lower case then. You wouldn’t credit it, that afternoon I ended up in the Canadian ward.

35:30 Our boys all ended up scattered. One of them went to an Australian ward, one went to another Canadian ward and another went to the other Australian ward. They only ones what was left behind was the two Poms – in our ward there was eight beds – and the poor old Canadian that couldn’t move anyway.

What sort of allegiance do you think there was to the Empire amongst the forces?

I think everyone hated the Poms.

36:00 Mainly because their forces were back in the dim dark ages. Their officers, senior officers and some of their senior NCOs were regulars. All the rest were national servicemen. The national servicemen would have got paid about five bob a day and when they got back for their 21 days leave

36:30 they had nothing to spend, very little at all. So a case of two brothers. One was a lance corporal. That’s that much of a step above being a private. Because they were brothers they couldn’t be seen together on leave. Couldn’t be seen together outside of the barracks because one was a junior NCO, the other was a private. So these things used to get

37:00 right up our nose. We used to love to see Pommy officers and you’d see everybody else snapping the salutes except the Aussies and the Kiwis. We’d just walk past and say, “G’day mate, how you going?” because we knew it got right up their nose. But we wouldn’t salute them.

How would they respond generally?

Used to carry on like pork pies, yelling, yahoo, Australian rabble, New Zealand sheep carry on.

37:30 We’d just ignore them and keep walking. But they expected to be saluted on the street. Different kettle of fish if you’re in an official capacity in a parade ground you’ve got to do it. But when you’re out and about you only salute and respect what’s on there, not what’s wearing.

Would you ever see any of these British officer types in the clubs or the brothels?

Funny thing, officers never contracted venereal disease.

38:00 They had another name for it. It was just a strain. They were shipped off out of sight out of mind. Only strained in action. Not in action strained. Never ever. We know one particularly that did get it, an Australian officer. He boasted about the fact that he was still in serving because he never contracted venereal

38:30 disease.

Take you back to those first barracks that you went to at Katachi and you mentioned that there were Japanese people working in the barracks. Where did they come from and what was their role?

They were assistants, there were some clerical assistants were in the headquarters area but mainly labouring jobs around, gardeners,

39:00 cleaners, which saved us a lot of emu parades because they were pretty diligent on their job. Collection of the garbage. Outside the tents you had bins at a respectable distance, they were all looked after by the Japs. And then of course you had the people that used to come and take away the excrement away from the latrines. And in the wintertime in Japan you always knew when someone was taking the bucket away from underneath you

39:30 because you would be sitting there – the ablutions were built up high because everything went in underneath. You’d be sitting there peaceful and the big potbelly stoves would be going and it was a haven to be in there, doing your business, and then the next thing they would open the door and stand below to extract the drum and you would get an ice cold blast of freezing air up your backside and you knew.

40:00 They were menial tasks mainly. But some of the clerks – I only saw a few women working behind desks. Mostly male clerks. And in the stores when stuff had to be handled down and that it was the Japanese also that did the disinfection for us when we came back from Korea for leave. I think they might have had great joy in delousing us

40:30 somehow.

Who employed these Japanese staff?

It’d be the Department of Defence, I would imagine. Or the United Nations. Somebody would have to, but where the actual pay comes from, it’d come down a long chain I suppose. I would imagine they’d be allocated so many to each unit and that unit would then be responsible probably for their wages.

What sort of training were you having while you were in Katachi?

Just more advanced training than what we were doing when we left Australia.

41:00 Pretty repetitious, but a lot more night patrol type of work and getting out in the night time, familiarise yourself with movement as a group and then they would also send us out some nights on what we called ambush patrol and it was just to get you used to laying in the same position for hours on end without noise or movement. Cause when you

41:30 went out for a lay up or an ambush patrol that was the idea. They would observe that Chinese or North Koreans used a certain track approximately at a certain time of day or night and they’d send out a patrol. We might go out a couple of hours prior to them and then you can lay out as an ambush so that when they come wandering down that track to get their water or get whatever they’re doing you can hopefully

Tape 6

00:32 How long were you in Japan before you actually went to Korea?

About eight weeks.

And could you explain …

Might not have been that long. Just can’t remember the dates exactly.

Could you explain the journey from Japan to Korea?

We were trucked out of Katachi back to Kure, where we boarded

01:00 these supposed troop ships. I think they were two coastal trading vessels. They were old, they were clapped out, they were rust buckets. My platoon had drawn the crow. We were security for the night watch. And it bucketed down he whole way. So we were on deck with ponchos on, roaming the decks. Why we were on security

01:30 I do not know because I don’t think the North Koreans had anything around to worry us. I think it was just somebody had to draw the crow and be up on deck. The rest, I don’t know how they slept. The vessels absolutely stunk. They were shocking. Thankfully it was only an overnight trip. We steamed in to harbour, Pusan,

02:00 next morning. It was a fantastic sight actually because half of the fleet was in, anchored, and we had to steam up. And as we steamed up past the HMS Glory, the marine band was out on the poop deck and as we steamed up past them they were playing Waltzing Matilda and Advance Australia Fair – which wasn’t our anthem at that time, but they played both those, the marine band on the poop deck.

02:30 It lifted everybody. There was a little bit of mist about and as the mist rose we came into the dock. On the dock there was an American band with I’d say at least 100 musicians all dressed up in their usual gear with all their paraphernalia looking like a typical American marching band. Only they all had – their battle helmets were all the innards painted white.

03:00 A glistening white at that. They were playing all the upbeat tunes of the time on the wharf. President Syngman Ree was there. A lot of dignitaries. There was must have been a thousand or more Korean women in their traditional dress. They all had a little posy of flowers

03:30 and as we disembarked A Company again we got off first and we all shook the president’s hand and he thanked everyone to coming to help fight for the freedom of his people as we walked past. Then we were all given a little posy as we got past by the different girls with a little bow. Completely different features to the Japanese. The Koreans

04:00 are more moonfaced while the Japanese are slightly their own type of features but with the very slant eyes and the slight nose, shorter nose. But the Koreans are very moonfaced. In the traditional gear I suppose was jut an eye-opener for us. And then we formed up 04:30 and were marched through to a railway yard. Where we’d embarked on a train journey of 36 hours. Would normally probably take about ten hours if it had been out here. All the carriages were all wooden seats and they were all wooden slat seats. They had a gap between each slat all the way back, up

05:00 the side no matter which way you sat. Also being A Company again, being up the front, we had to supply spotters on the roof and myself and another sergeant were placed up on the footplate on the engine and we were there for six hours before we got relieved. The idea of being on the footplate so that the driver and the fireman couldn’t get away.

05:30 Otherwise at the first stop that we’d come to, to refuel and water they would have disappeared. Because the trains come under attack from guerrilla warfare because the North Koreans and Chinese had infiltrated during the early years and they were known for sniping and shooting up the train supplies. We never struck anyone. The only thing we did strike is every time we slowed

06:00 down to go through a bridge or pulled up at the water towers to take on water and fuel – it wasn’t coal like we expected. It was all wood. Mainly because the Japanese had extracted just about every tree and bit of coal out of Korea in their 35 years. But soon as the train come to a slow there might only be a water tower and a

06:30 stockpile, one or two huts, hundreds of kids would appear. Just begging for food. You’d see blokes – we only had the old tins of bully beef and biscuits and that. You’d throw it. You’d see these kids fight like animals to try and get hold of a biscuit. It was an eye opener to us. Kids.

07:00 Never saw adults. Used to wonder, do the adults hide while the kids come and forage and then they take it or what. You didn’t know. After the 36 hours we arrived at a place called Chorwon. It was a junction in the railway. The railway didn’t go any further than that because it wasn’t too far up before you come to the 38th Parallel.

07:30 Offloaded there in trucks and taken up to Samichon, which was Samichon Valley it was actually called. In that valley it was beautiful. We actually had bushes growing to about that height. Terrific. Lovely little valley, peaceful, lovely little free flowing creek running down through it. There was a place

08:00 we all pitched tents and after we pitched tents fires were lit to boil the drums of water for making tea and for our ablutions for a shaving and washing – which were kept going the whole time with diesel. One by one these children started to appear. There was about 40 of them all up that we could actually try to count. They’d been living in the valley

08:30 since just after the war had started. From what we could gather with our bits of pidgin English and the few odd words of Korean that we had picked up it appeared that they were all orphans or they didn’t know where their parents were. Some of them were North Koreans that came down to South Korea to escape the head of the

09:00 army, because they wanted to get away from it, the Communist rule and a lot of them saw it as a way to get out, to get to South Korea. So we ended up we adopted the kids and we fed them. They were terrific. Whatever happened to them would interest me. We never got back to Samichon ever again. I’ve often wondered. I spoke to a woman when I took a junior golf team to Newcastle

09:30 few years back about five years ago. While they were out playing their competition this mini bus of Korean people arrived to play golf. Men and women. I didn’t realise at the time, but I had on my – this mob’s cap. It’s got the same emblem on it and it’s just got the word, Korea, under it. One of these women come rushing over and she put her arms around me

10:00 and for a minute I didn’t know what was going on. She said, “Thank you. I come from Samichon Valley.” I said, “I don’t believe it.” She said, “I came from Samichon Valley. You Australian people saved our life.” Whether she – I tried to get it but I couldn’t work out, the age didn’t seem right.

10:30 It could have been, cause she was in her fifties, so it could have. I said, “No. Samichon Valley was where we were.” She said, “Yes. In the little creek. We lived there for months after the war started. We all lost our parents or we couldn’t find our parents. I was one of the ones that escaped with my parents from North Korea.” I said,

11:00 “Are you sure it was Samichon Valley? We had a mountain there that we used to have to run up fully packed if we did something wrong.” She said, “What did you call that mountain?” “It was called Camitsan.” She showed me where she lives now. She lives in a house in Samichon Valley at the foot of Camitsan. She’s a married woman with four children. So whether or not that’s

11:30 really – we were the group that were there at the time or others that followed us because that was a staging point before you moved up to that out pole at the end of the line.

How long were you in the valley for?

About eight weeks there. Each day what we had to do was go up to what was called the Kansas Line. They didn’t call our

12:00 withdrawal or retreat from Manchuria when they sacked MacArthur when the troops had crossed the Yellow River and gone into Manchuria and China, that’s when China come into the action. They didn’t like the word retreat so they called it a strategic withdrawal to previously prepared conditions. Now the previously prepared conditions were dug by

12:30 our guys and it was called the Kansas Line. Lot of them referred to it further over west as the James Line. I think that was where the Yanks mainly were. But it was called the Kansas Line where we were. We had to dig in and dig trenches and hootches into it up in the mountain. That was just behind the 38th Parallel. It turned out the Kansas Line was being prepared in case there was another big push

13:00 that they could fall back from where they were at the 38th Parallel back to these previously prepared conditions and take up defence and hold it. But at the time they had nothing there. So from there we went to …

So that work that you were doing at the time, was that preparing that?

Yeah. The Kansas Line was what it was called there. But it’s not only one battalion. Each company had its own section so it was spread quite a number of miles

13:30 wide. Then there was the Royal 22nd Regiment on our left. That was the French Canadian unit. We had the Aramine Infantry it was.

14:00 They were on our right and then there was an American unit. That stretched right across the neck of the peninsula. We dug through rock and got everything ready. Then we were told we would be moving into the line within the next 48 hours. Everyone’s starting to get a little bit toey, because you could

14:30 hear shellfire and you watched the planes come over daily on their bombing runs and the fighter planes dropping their napalm and stuff like that.

When they dropped napalm, what happened then?

That’s rather a nasty thing that should never have been allowed to be ever used by anybody. It’s like a liquefied jelly. They used to carry it in big belly tanks

15:00 under the wings of the planes and just release it and then it skipped and when it hit it would burst. Soon as the tank burst it would automatically just ignite and it was just this great wall gushing forward. It would be the width of this room and just rolling forward, this whole great – it would be 10, 15 feet high. It’s just an absolute wall of flame.

15:30 But in that flame it’s all this jelly so if you’re there it’s not just a heat wave going through you the jelly sticks and it’s still burning. A disastrous thing actually similar to the flame throwers that we used to use on the tunnel. Which was a very nice thing either. The Chinese and North Koreans always said if ever they captured anyone that had a flame thrower

16:00 on their back that they would burn them alive. It was a shocking thing. And the blokes who could carry the flame throwers I think at times wish they never had of or never saw them. I mean, to think that there could be a human down in that tunnel and then you just hit him with a wall of fire. Not very nice. But that’s war, I suppose.

So when you had been given the orders that you were

16:30 going to move forward, how were you feeling at this stage? What was the mood?

Everyone was a bit tense. What’s going to happen? Are we going to see action at last? Are we really going to see some action? That was all the talk. They told us the position we were going into would be directly opposite Chung [Hill] 227 which was a high point in the ground and the area.

17:00 It was occupied by the North Koreans and or Chinese. They weren’t sure. They knew it was definitely occupied by them. And their tunnel system was pretty good. They also said all NCOs were to meet at 4 o’clock that afternoon at company headquarters and we would be taken up

17:30 to be shown where we were to take our section. So what happened was, then we were trucked up to about five kilometres from where we were to go. Then just in dribs and drabs, using whatever cover could be given, we went to our various sections that we were going to take over. So we were only in about half a dozen at a time but we were well spaced apart from one another.

18:00 Like a mob of cattle wandering around the countryside. Just hitting towards dusk. I was met by the section commander of the section that I was to take over from. Shook hands, introduced ourselves, they were from the Northumberland Fusiliers. He then showed me the system of how to get to our section. He said, “You’ll be coming in here after dark

18:30 so get used to it.” So I had to work my way and remember when I got to hear so many steps then got to work that out. Got all that. In the distance you could see all the lights up to the sky. “What the hell’s that?” “That’s Panmunjong, that’s where all the peace talks are going on. The search lights are turned on every night and it’s a no fly zone and no fighting zone. That’s where the peace talks are being held.”

19:00 Familiarised ourselves with the whole area and what we could see. Pointed out various things, showed me all the different weapon kits that we’d be taking. We moved back. It was under complete cover of darkness we walked back the five k.

What’s the landscape like and the conditions?

Korea to look at looked like landing on the moon if it had mountains.

19:30 that was our first impression. No trees. Just bare rock. Red and black soil. Some of the high mountains in the distance still were snow-capped. There was scrubby bush and little stuff, things like this, nothing much in cover at all. Paddy fields in most of the valleys which were there

20:00 from pre-war which were now pretty well minefields. Everywhere you went you had to watch where minefields were, ‘cause there were certain gaps and in the Geneva Convention – not everyone believed in doing it, but they used to leave certain tracks. And they would be – every minefield’s supposed to have a barbed wire three strand fence around it with a sign on it showing mines.

20:30 That’s a law passed by the Geneva Convention, and everyone’s supposed to do it. A lot of uncivilised countries don’t do it. The idea was that you have a track through it and that’s fenced. You only got it that wide. That’s where you must travel. At times the fences get blown down and you’re not sure – specially at night time – whether you’re in the minefield or whether you’re not. So you got to slow down and prod and

21:00 look for them. That’s when you always come away losing limbs, specially legs from stepping off the track and getting the minefield. Anyway we went back to our unit, loaded up all the next day, prepared, everybody got ready, telling them exactly what was going to happen – when we get to so and so we will get there after dark and to stay in close section formation – that’s 10 guys.

21:30 One platoon will lead off, one section, gap of 20 metres two section, gap of 20 metres three section. Then comes 2 Platoon and so forth all down the line. That was A Company, our area. There will be guides there to greet you when you get there to push you off in the right direction of where you’re going. So away we went, dropped off, ten kilometres short of the line.

22:00 Not five as we were the day before – ten – for secrecy. After dark away we go. Got there about half past eleven that night. Met. “You know where you’re going?” “Yep.” So and so and so and so. He said, “You got it right. Best of luck mate. See you round.” He led his section out.

22:30 Took my section round and as we got to the first fighting pit put my two blokes in there and two blokes went round till we’d done my section. Every other section was doing the same right along the line. Then the stand to. A fifty percent stand to. Half an hour before dawn it was a full stand to. Everybody up. Everybody in their fighting pit. Because that’s the time when if there’s going to be an

23:00 attack that’s when it comes – first light. Or just on last light. You’ve always got a full stand to at half an hour before dawn and half and hour before dusk. And then you break it down to say 75 and 50 percent. Then down to 25 percent during the night.

What were the pits like?

Just a trench dug into the side of the hill. Ravine, you had a trench about that wide so you could travel at six foot.

23:30 Most of them we tried to keep six foot so that you could stand upright in them and not be seen when you moved. A lot of fire used to wear the front ends down and you used to have to bag them up or put more dirt there. Otherwise you were crouching the whole time when you moved from point A to point B. But in that track where that track came along and that sand in that position there you would dig a trench into there, standing room. Sandbag it, so that you could place your rifle or Bren gun, whatever you were going to use over that.

24:00 Then you also had mortar pits set up behind your area so that you could fire over the top of the heads for support. Usually behind each fighting pit you had your hootchie dug into the side of the hill. Where you at and slept. That was the set up in the morning half an hour before dawn full stand to and you go and wake up

24:30 your mates. Up, everybody out in the fighting pits. Peering in the dark, looking, it starts to get light. As soon as it gets full light from Hill 227 came the sound of Waltzing Matilda being played over loudspeakers by a military band then a like a female voice, “Welcome 1st Battalion Royal Australian Regiment, Welcome to Korea. For you should not

25:00 be here. You should be at home with your loved ones. Not here fighting the truth of Communism,” blah on it goes. So that’s how good our secret move was. We could have marched up there in full strength with bands playing in the middle of the day because they knew exactly who we were when we got there. That’s how we were greeted the very first morning we hit the front line. Shows how good their intelligence is to ours.

25:30 As I say, we were told they were just ignorant peasants thrown a rifle and says, “Go down and fight.” So they knew exactly who was there, what was there and they even told us who we relieved. A whole heap of propaganda went on. Said that the Americans were back there on leave the same as they were in World War II. Back there and

26:00 they’re taking your women from you and they’re doing this and they’re doing that. You shouldn’t be here, you should be at home and all this. That went on most of the day just to drive us up the wall. Few blokes lost their cool and fired shots. We only got, they only laughed about that. Thought it was quite funny.

That first day was this constant speaking on their part?

Yeah. Every so often,

26:30 out she’d come. “Oh you’re still here. You should have gone home. You boys should be home with your loved ones. The Americans are looking after them for you.”

Can you remember some other examples of what they were saying propaganda wise?

No. Basically that. We were fighting for a lost cause. We were oppressed. That they were the –

27:00 Communist way of living was the only way to go, it was the people’s governed by the – all this garbage that they go on with about the people’s republic. Then just the usual bit and from then on in we never got many – only the leaflet drops. You get leaflet drops

27:30 appear from nowhere. Bombs of leaflets. Just telling us the same sort of thing. Should be at home. The Americans are at home with your women. Just on paper. Actually there used to be one in Taree RSL. One of the blokes in the 3 Battalion did a painting on the wall of different things and it included in the painting one of these leaflets that we got dropped. But I don’t know whether

28:00 they put it up in the new club or not. I was trying to get hold of it for out here.

That first day you were in the pits and this was going on, what happened after that?

They just went back to normal routine. One guy at a time at stand to for two hours at a time in the pits. Improving the hootchies inside, getting used to what they were because up till that stage we’d been living in pup tents. Acclimatising ourselves with how the

28:30 as well called them the choofers worked. It was like a bucket arrangement about so round, so big, full of sand. You had it set up so that it dripped diesel or kerosene or whatever you could get hold of onto the sand so you kept the flame going so you had warmth in the place. You could put a plate over the top of them

29:00 so that you could heat stuff up on them. But fortunately we weren’t there that long before we got introduced to the American C Ration [food ration] which had their own heat tablet and everything in them which was quite good. Instead of bully beef and biscuits like all the blokes from 3rd Battalion had been copping for just on two years. We ended up after about six months of bully beef and Spam and dog biscuits, getting treats like

29:30 ham and lima beans and a block of chocolate and a packet of cigarettes a day. I think that’s where an awful lot of young blokes learnt to smoke was in Korea, because you got a packet of either Chesterfield or Lucky Strike or Philip Morris and you got Camel in your pack every day with your meal. You got a packet of cigarettes. Some blokes traded them like for chocolate and so forth. The Australians used to issue you

30:00 a packet of red Capstan. I think it was two packs a week you got of those. You couldn’t even give them away to the Noddies [Koreans]. They used to call them bushfires. Cause on the label when you opened the packet used to say “Cigarettes can cause bushfires,” and they used to say, “No bushfire.” You could get your washing done or anything by the Noddies. For one American cigarette. You offer him a packet of Aussie

30:30 cigarettes, “Nup. No bushfire.” So you pull out a packet of American cigarettes and offer him one. “Yep,” and they go and wash your shirt and everything.

And what was the first fighting that you were involved in?

Just normal patrol. The first night there we were the listening post which was a new sensation first time. Where we were on our hill there was a spur that went down

31:00 to the bottom of the valley and in the last part of that spur there was a little hootchie had been dug out by whom I don’t know, but it was there. There was a telephone line laid to it. We used to take down a field phone and it was two men and the junior NCO, three of us’d go down just after dark and hook up the phone,

31:30 report in that your listening post was there. Then you sat all night listening. Any enemy movement that you heard within the area you would try and plot it, which way the noise was moving, ascertain it could be a one group, a small group, large group, whatever it was. Then you would ring. You had silent ring on the handle of it. 32:00 Would just ring back and report that x amount of movement’s happening at such and such 250 metres to the north east of us. It’s movement that appears to be a working party of about 10 or 15 people, not known what nationally but the noise originated from the 227 side so it would appear it’s one of their working parties. So then they would

32:30 fire a star shell and we’d be told that we’d be firing a star shell, observe. So all three’d be there looking and then they’d fire a star shell from back at the unit. It goes high up in the air. Just sounds like a mortar shot being fired. Then it just lights up like a big fluorescent light on a parachute and drifts slowly down and lights up the area. Naturally most

33:00 seasoned troops and troops that have been trained soon as they hear the first pop of it going up they go to ground because they know it’s either one of two things – they’ve been spotted and there’s a mortar on its way to them or it’s a star shell. They know if you’re upstanding you’re a sitting target so they everyone hits the ground. It’s a bit hard to decipher what’s there, so we couldn’t make it out. So we said, “We can’t make out

33:30 what’s there, could be bodies, but it might not be, but it definitely sounded like pickets being hammered into the ground.” So they fire another couple of star shells and no movement, no report, no more noise was heard that night. We sat there all night and no noise. Then just before dawn you disconnect your phone and take it back with you back up to

34:00 your positions while the others are on stand to and they cover you because you’ve got passwords and you’ve got to remember that otherwise you’re liable to get shot up crawling back up to the spur of the mountain. You get challenged for the password, you get the password to come back in, make your report to the commander and he passes it on and so forth and so it goes.

The equipment you were using, the phone,

34:30 what did that look like?

It was a little box about so long and a strap handle so you could sling it over your shoulder. A little fold up crank handle on the side and a normal hand piece phone. That’s all it was. Naturally it was a batteries job. I had two screws plugged the line in, hook down, screw it round,

35:00 same at the other end, screw it down and bring it back, “Test.” “Yep.” You were there. If they need to ring you to tell you to get out of there you hear it. Believe you me, it’s only a soft bell, but you hear it. I think you’re mentally tuned to hear it. That’s what happens if they think there’s movement against the listening post they’ll pull the listening post out.

35:30 It’s quite an experience sitting down there and you know there’s only two other blokes and you and the rest of them are 500 metres up the hill. But you know that if you do have to clear out you are going to get cover and fire and hope that they can do the job till you get back which when it does happen – it has happened, I don’t think we’ve ever had any big problems with listening post. Had some funny experience with listening post.

36:00 What were they?

One on 355, patrol returning and it was a steep little track up to the pit, the area they were to come back in. When you go out on a patrol you go out through point A and you return through point B and it’s stipulated that patrol that’s going out should arrive at point B to be challenged

36:30 at approximately say 0300 hours in the morning. So around about quarter to three, half past two, everybody’s on alert listening for the patrol to come back. And this was quite a steep little track up this western side of the forward position at 355, so the boys decided that – they got a sugar bag from somewhere with about 30 hand grenades in it –

37:00 the idea was if it was enemy coming up the track all they had to do was sit there, pull the pin and roll the hand grenades down the steep track. Corporal’s got it out there and he’s pulled the pin. They’re waiting and waiting and they can hear this noise coming up, coming up. It certainly didn’t sound like patrol, and it was about half an hour after the allotted time. They were getting a little bit testy. They said, “Should

37:30 have been here at 0300, it’s nearly 45 minutes late and they threw out a challenge for the password and there was no answer. They threw it out again and there was no answer. He was just about to let the grenade go and the answer came back. So they said, “Advance one,” and we recognised the lead bloke that come up to be recognised and they charged him again before he come up on password and he said,

38:00 “We couldn’t answer the first couple of bloody times, couldn’t remember the bloody thing.” Swearing. He said, “Thank God for that,” and he’s put the hand grenade back in the bag, full grenades, in the pit. And as he’s let it go he’s realised he’s got the pin in his hand, so everyone’s out over the pit because they’re expecting this bag of things to go off. What happened? The grenade was a dud. Didn’t go off. We sat there and waited

38:30 and waited. Daylight come, one of them decided he better have a look so he got back in and saw the grenade lying there. So he picked it up, found the pin on the floor, squeezed it, put it together. So when they pulled it apart and examined it later it had a faulty fuse. So how lucky were those guys? They’re the sort of things that happen – could have been a catastrophe. Everyone in that pit there could have been killed on that patrol and yet not a soul was injured.

39:00 After you’d done the listening posts and the preparation, was there an advance? How did it actually work in Korea in terms of the …?

In the static part of the warfare was almost they say reminiscent of what World War I was like. You were there in trenches, they were there in trenches and sometimes you’re only direct across the valley it may be only about 300

39:30 metres apart.

So is there firing going on all the time?

On and off, yeah. It’s spasmodic, specially during the daytime it’s just spasmodic fire. Charlie [the enemy] will get up there and he might fire a few or pop a few mortars over. When that sort of thing happens you call for a bit of artillery support. Or our own mortar fire to shut them up, let them know that we’re wide awake and we’ll give back as good as what they

40:00 give. But the main thing was, whoever controlled no man’s land controlled the area. That was the whole idea of patrolling and ambush patrols, the layout patrols, was that – when we took over from the Royal Canadian Regiment at 355 in November 52, when we got up there they’d been overrun by the North Korean and the Chinese and the simple reason

40:30 they didn’t do patrols. So naturally – they didn’t send patrols out, they didn’t have listening posts out, they just listened from their weapon pits. So what the Chinese did was under cover of darkness they moved right up underneath them, within yards of them. When they stood down and were resting and having their meals

41:00 they just came up out of the ground so as to speak and caught most of them virtually with their pants down – the fact that they were in their hootchies eating. A lot of hand to hand fighting went on in that instant but the Royal Canadian Regiment copped heaps and heaps of casualties. Counter attack came and pushed them back, but there was that much damage done to the fighting pit from the forward slopes

41:30 when we got there that was the first priority we had to do. Start to repair the wire around the areas. That’s where we couldn’t – a good soldier was killed by one of our own blokes. It was just sheer accident. What happened when you had your working parties out working on the wire they were being covered by people in the trenches and fighting pit, but

42:00 you also had three or four …

Tape 7

00:32 Can I just ask you to start that story just from where we left off?

Actually when we took over from the Royal Canadian Regiment, they had been over run and there had been a successful counter attack. We went in to relieve them and there’d been that much damage done because of their lack of patrolling that we spent the first weeks or so rebuilding the fighting

01:00 pits and the trench system and also all the wiring. On one particular night there was myself in the centre and I had a guy either side of me about 40 metres away. We were down on the forward slope to observe any patrol movement that may be coming up the slope to possibly attack the working party. We’d been out there

01:30 laying up I suppose for about 2 and a half hours. Working party was repairing the fighting pits and also there was a group out replacing wire that had been all damaged and blown down in the attack. One of our guys had a panic or thought he saw something move and he had an Owen gun

02:00 and he fired a full burst. Immediately what was to happen if anyone fired from behind us we were then to move straight back while we were covered. We moved back, the working party moved back, we all reached the trenches. Working party called, everybody in working party was there. I called my two. Only one answered. Call for Rocky. No answer.

02:30 Who fired the shots? Kiwi senior said, “I did. I saw movement on the right slope and I thought it was enemy about to fire on the working party. So I opened fire.” I asked him where and he pointed out in the general direction of where Rocky would have been. So myself and the platoon sergeant then moved

03:00 back down the hill of the forward slope where we found his body. Whether or not he’d moved or just attempted to move to make himself more comfortable because we’d been there for about two and a half hours no-one knows but when we got him up to the pits and he was examined it appeared that the burst of Owen gun which would have been about 28 rounds – only one had struck him. 03:30 That was right in the back of his shoulder here. Hit the shoulder bone, ricocheted up the shoulder bone and cut the jugular vein. So he would have been dead just like that, but out of the whole 28 rounds he fired in one burst from an automatic weapon only one hit him and one was fatal. There the sort of things that can happen. I know that poor old Kiwi, Sheeney was a good soldier and a top bloke. But that was the finish

04:00 of him. He was last contact I ever had with him he had gone back to live with his parents and he was an absolute, just a case. Never recovered from the fact that he’d shot one of his own guys. It was just something that was a complete accident. There was

04:30 naturally the inquest into it. He was absolved of all blame, anything like that. But he could never forgive himself and that’s just they’re the added tragedies of war in my book. Because it’s something that was a complete accident and probably if I was in the same thing and saw the same movement as he did and I was in his place I probably would have done exactly the same thing. You don’t shout out and say, “Are you a goodie or a baddie?” You

05:00 virtually assume. But it appears that when we did find the body he had moved from where he had originally been placed. As I say, accident both ways. Cost him his life, but also wrecked another man’s life too.

What impact does that have on the man who fired in terms of his ability in the battle?

He was gone right from the word go when he realised that it was him that had killed him.

05:30 He just lost it there and then. He just become an absolute like a piece of jelly. He just couldn’t control himself. We couldn’t control him. We had to call the medic. The medic sedated him and they vac’d [evacuated] him back the next morning to Battalion RAP [regimental aid post] station. They tried to do things with him and Kiwi just eventually went from hospital to hospital and

06:00 back home. That was the last we knew of Kiwi. Devastated a damn good soldier too. And a character he was too believe it or not. Used to keep our hopes up, used to get tired and bored and everyone’d get jittery he always was one that could come up with a joke to crack or some smart remark that’d crack everyone up and break the tension.

06:30 He was definitely missed. Never forget the day a young reinforcement come up and he was looking for Corporal McNulty and he met Kiwi Sheeney at the round the reserve area around the back of the hill. He said, “I’m looking for Corporal McNulty.” Kiwi said, “What the bloody hell would you want to see Corporal McNulty for? He’s a bloody blown away Pom.”

07:00 “I’ve been told I’ve got to report to him. He’s my new thingy. I’m a reinforcement.” “You have to go round the front,” and so and so. “But before I got can you tell me where I can find the toilet, I’m busting to go to the toilet.” “Depends. Which way you want to go?” “I need to use the thunderbox.” That’s what we used to call the actual sit down toilet. You wouldn’t credit it, he’d no sooner sat on the toilet and we got hit by a mortar

07:30 barrage. And one piece of shrapnel from somewhere came whistling past everybody straight through the back of the thunderbox and into this kids backside. So he was wounded in action – in action – without ever seeing a shot fired. Poor bugger was cut pretty bad. Lost about half his cheek in his backside. He eventually came back about six months later.

08:00 Joined the unit. He said, “I never tell anyone how I got wounded.” Then we had other kids. We had one there that was under age. He used to send a letter home to his sister every week. He was always writing letters. We all thought he was a bit young, but had put his age up. We didn’t know for sure.

08:30 We said, “You must love this sister of yours, you’re always writing to her.” He said, “I’m writing to my Mum and Dad but I address it to my sister. She puts it in an envelope,” because he was supposed to be living up with her in Queensland and they lived in South Australia. She used to post it. She was the only one in the family that knew where he was and she was covering for him.

09:00 Anyway he got wounded, didn’t he? Of course, knock on the door. Army officer. “We regret to inform you that your son has been wounded in action in Korea. It’s only superficial, but he’s been … it’s not a serious wound, he’s in Britcom hospital where he’s being operated on. He’ll be Ay-OK and he’ll be returning to a unit very shortly.”

09:30 “He’ll be returning to his unit very shortly? He’ll be returning home here to Australia very shortly, he’s only 16 years of age.” “I beg your pardon? I’ll have to investigate that.” She said, “Don’t mind investigating it.” She got straight on the phone. Evidently she knew the local member. Spoke to him. He was discharged out of hospital about a week later and the following day he was on a plane back to Australia.

10:00 We ran into him. After we come home I was posted out to 4 Battalion at Ingleburn. While I was doing corporal of the guard and I was posting the guard and 13th National Service was directly opposite us and we used to change guards together with the one band. I thought, “God I know you.” “Do you? You ought to.” Now he’s in national service uniform 10:30 with the Korean United Nations ribbons on his uniform. I said, “God.” He was the only national serviceman got called up for his national service after he was called home and discharged. He was the only national serviceman that was entitled to wear medals while he was serving as a national serviceman. Called up as a 19 year old. He was also the only national serviceman

11:00 that was granted when he went on leave to be able to wear civilian clothes. Because he wore them one night and of course on the sleeve had 13th National Service Training Battalion and here he is in a pub drinking with his mates in at Liverpool. There were some of the regulars there, some of the old 3 Battalion blokes spotted him and he’s got those ribbons on and they stuck him in and gave him a hiding for being a national serviceman

11:30 wearing medals. So he appealed to his CO about it and the CO said, “Fair enough.” I can understand the case. He was an ex-Korean man himself. So he allowed him to wear civilian clothes whenever he went on leave.

Did he get in trouble from his mum?

Quite some trouble from his Mum, so he told us. But she forgave him

12:00 and loved him because he was her son.

During this time – I don’t know if you call it a stalemate in the trenches – how far away were the enemy and what could you see of them?

When we were off 227 I suppose it would be 500 metres from the top of where they had a gun emplacement and where we were. They were slightly higher than us.

12:30 We used to call him ‘five o’clock Charlie’ because at five o’clock every night he used to poke the muzzle of his machine gun through the firing slit and just pepper our line above us, below us, always it was just a thing of five o’clock he used to let us know, “I’m here and you’re there.”

How were the Chinese and North Korean forces organised?

13:00 Well and truly organised. Their officers were good, they were good tacticians. I do believe the fact that they were short in a lot of weapons and that’s why they used to attack in waves. To see them attack was just a line of troops and behind them another line, behind them another and they just came in line.

13:30 And you would see when one dropped the ones behind would step over and pick up the rifle or the whatever it might have been. So evidently some of them didn’t have weapons and they relied on someone in front getting hit. But their waves, their strength, the just came like waves. Blokes that were in some of the early really rough fighting I’ve spoken to over the years

14:00 and they’ve just said the barrels of their Bren guns have run red hot. They couldn’t even touch them with a glove on or anything to change the barrels. They just absolutely red hot from constant firing and they just still coming as they drop. Just the strength of human wave after wave after wave.

Were these companies mixed – were the companies and platoons mixed with Chinese and North Koreans or were they separate?

No. Separate.

14:30 They worked as separate units. Quite often they worked together. You’d have a unit of Chinese attacking on one flank, North Koreans down the front and maybe Chinese or Manchurians coming from the other. But they all worked together. But you always knew when an attack was on or there was going to be movement or something because for hours before there would be the blaring of bulges and banging of drums, clashing of cymbals. All the noise they could possibly make. And you always knew, get ready, it’s

15:00 going to come. But sometimes it didn’t because quite often you could get the position from the noise. You could pick up the position and you knew that’s where they were amassing in that area and so if it was still a bit daylight you could call in for airdrop and they would come in and use their rockets, bombs and naturally napalm they used to use.

15:30 Quite often that would silence everything. Everything would go quiet and no more. Or you could get heavy monsoonal rain could come in out of nowhere. You’d have clear blue sky, then next thing, bang. Like that storm that came through today. Can halt things. The snow in the winter, that slowed things down a hell of a lot. And it wasn’t fun to go out on patrol decked out in white gear and lay up in snow for a couple of hours

16:00 at a time either. Reckon that’s where a lot of blokes have got aches and pains from a lot of that because your protective clothing, no matter how good it was, it wasn’t that good.

What sort of snow was it?

Same snow I suppose we get anywhere but over there you could get a six foot dump overnight. Absolute unbelievable the snow, but

16:30 the worst part of it was, just say you could get the wind chill factor that could bring you down to minus 80 degrees. It was absolutely unreal when the wind blew in the wintertime. Absolutely amazing. You’ve got no idea. As I said, we used to have these big 44 gallon drums with the diesel burner underneath them and the water continually boiling. Get your dixie in it – this is back in the reserve

17:00 position, not up in the line, but when you’re back in the reserve. Dip your dixie in it and by the time you go back to that wall to go to your hootchie to have a shave and a bit of a wash you look at it and it’s icy on the top and just lukewarm underneath. They’re in aluminium dixies. Aluminium holds its heat pretty well.

What were the uniforms like of the enemy? How were they different to yours?

They wore padded uniforms. Quilted

17:30 in wintertime. Their uniforms in the summertime were much like our own stuff. Drab khaki, olivy green. But in the winter time all their clothing was quilted or padded. We were issued with long johns with the firemen’s strap at the back. The pants we had were waterproof and windproof.

18:00 The jackets we had were also waterproof and windproof, but we had very thick shirts issued to us, thick like a flannelette shirt. But we would laugh when we were issued with singlets for the cold weather, because they looked like fishing nets. They were knotted and the idea was the knots kept the clothing away from your skin so your skin could breathe and if you did sweat the sweat wouldn’t cling to the clothes and the clothes wouldn’t cling to you

18:30 and freeze on your body. We had reasonably tight fitting leather gloves. The woollen glove was first, then you had a leather glove went over there and then you had on the right hand was a mitt. But you had a trigger finger for it. The blokes that shot left-handed always used to go crooked and they’d learn to shoot right-handed in the wintertime.

19:00 That’s why they were also lousy shots. So we used to give them an Owen gun. They could fire it from the left hand.

What was the status of Hill 227 when you first started these patrols?

It was controlled completely by the Chinese.

When you say controlled, can you explain to me how you can be in control of a hill and how that system works?

19:30 They had their weapon pits on that hill. And we had ours on this hill that was lower. To get them off that they had to be attacked and taken and driven off it for us to maintain it and hold it. The Black Watch [Royal Highlanders] did a formal battalion attack on it, night-time and got carved up. The Canadians had a go at it. Princess Pats had a go at it.

20:00 All at battalion strength which is over 1000 men in the attack and all done at night time. Our company commander persuaded the Commonwealth Division commander that his company could take 227 in a daylight attack.

20:30 So we left – gathered down through, were guided through the minefields at first light. They had bullet breaks in from Baker Company and used them as guides to guide through the minefield.

Can I just ask you before we talk about that what military advantages were there in taking that hill? What did it present beyond that?

Beyond that it was one of the high points

21:00 in the area so whoever controlled that controlled the area, so if we controlled that hill we controlled the valley behind, and controlled what was in there and had the view and knew what going on behind. They were higher than us, so we didn’t know what was happening behind in the next valley.

And during all these attempts on the hill were there different methodologies in terms of taking it?

Yeah. And there was heavy artillery attacks. There was air strikes. There was continued pummelling.

21:30 There was everything done. And as I say attacks by bodies and up to 1030 odd bodies in an attack at night fully supported by artillery and they never ever gained anything. Because of the damn tunnel systems. When we got up there in the daylight we didn’t strike much opposition going

22:00 up the hill for the simple reason we had air strikes and artillery strikes on top of the hill the whole time we were going up. It was moving up with us. When we got almost to the top of the hill, that’s when we ran into real heavy fire because they were just so well entrenched with their tunnel system. While the artillery fired I think they just pulled the shutters, go back into their tunnel system and when that lifts

22:30 out they come again and they were heavily fortified. They just started to carve us up. That was all there was to it. So after a matter of a couple of hours of holding the hill, they decided they would go back down from what I can gather. Because in the meantime I’d been hit and I was taken out. But we lost a 2 Platoon sergeant, Maurie Smith, he was 23:00 he come over to see if I was all right. I said, “Yeah I’m all right.” He lit a cigarette, shoved it in my mouth, turned round, he only took about four paces and he went down on his knee and was firing somebody and next thing I’d seen him get up and run and go down again. But I didn’t know at the time that the second time he went down, he’d been shot. He was killed.

What instructions did you receive that morning before you attempted to take the hill?

We were told we were going up to kick them off

23:30 and take control of 227. Evidently when they got up there they couldn’t. Casualties were bad enough and they evidently couldn’t hold it with what was there because as I say, their tunnel system – they had railway tracks for railcars and huge heavy artillery mounted on rail tracks that they used to just

24:00 take in and close great steel doors when they were attacked by the air or heavy artillery bombardment. As soon as it was over they’d just trundle them back out again and away they’d go again.

What was the reason for attempting a daylight attack?

Well he just – I don’t know whether he wanted to give himself a military medal or not – military cross which he did get from it from the action. No, that’s being sarcastic. No

24:30 I think he thought the element of surprise and the fact that during the day there was only spasmodic fighting that went on. That it was mainly night time functions that happened that we would take them completely by surprise and be able to take control.

Can you tell me step by step from when you left what happened on the hill?

From my –

25:00 Not when you left, I mean from when you started the attack.

We went through, guided through the minefield to the bottom of the hill. Formed up in our sections in the way we wished to be. Because we were the first section, 1 section of 1 platoon, we were on the right hand flank. So I was 2IC [second in command] for the

25:30 Bren gunner, which is our light machine gunner. So I was his number 2 with him and carried the spare ammunition for that – another six pouches of spare ammunition. His number 2 also had another six pouches plus his own six pouches. Then a reserve bag that I carried that had another 12 pouches in it on the hip. Then the section was strung out in

26:00 fighting file. Then 2 Section, Bren gunner was then placed so that he covered – we had a sweeping arc of fire – down to 3 Section again with a sweeping arc of fire, then to 4 Section, his Bren gunner was on the other end of the section so he had a complete control of sweeping fire with our machine guns. The rest were – corporals had Owen guns and the rest of the sections had .303 rifles.

26:30 No bayonets fixed. Carried bayonets, but not the fixed bayonets unless we came into hand to hand combat. Everybody was told that they must have their sights set on 200 metres on their rifles, cause if they’re set on zero if you fire at a bloke 150 metres away and the bullet’d land at his feet.

27:00 Everybody had to set 200 metres and gradually lower it the closer we got up to the top of the hill. So everything was set. We were all ready to go. We were to get an air strike. They waited for the air strike. The air strike didn’t come. Waited another – there was a frantic wireless messages going backwards and forwards. The air strike so they

27:30 called in the artillery support, which was to be secondary. So they called that in early. That started pounding away and while that was pounding away at the hill we had our own mortar platoon flying their four inch mortars as well as a backup. Lot of smoke, lot of dust. Then they started to put in smoke to cover our initial advance up the hill. But before we went,

28:00 the platoon sergeants came round and gave us all a swig of this black treacle just to warm the cockles of your heart and take the numbness out of your toes and away we went. We were given the command to move forward. We went about three parts of the way up the hill before mortars started to land in front of us. We went to ground. So did the other sections.

28:30 It was no good returning fire from where we were because all we could see was sky above because we were still going up the sight. Then the order came through to advance again. We advanced. Mortars started to fall not only in front, but behind. We got to where we could observe their line of fire where it was coming fire. We went to ground, Bren gunner and I and his number 2 went to ground. We started to return fire at the firing

29:00 pit that we were looking at and I just felt as though someone had hit me in the shoulder cause we were laying there firing and I thought, “Oh what’s that? No not there. Must have been a clod of dirt,” which is what it felt like. Could still move my arm. It hurt but I could still move it. Anyway we kept firing. I started to pass ammunition over him.

29:30 Reached back in this backpack and as I reached over I could see blood running all down my arm. I just rolled over on my side and I said to the number 2, “Am I bleeding in the back?” “I don’t know where you’re bleeding, but you’re covered in blood all round the back and your shoulder.” That’s when Smithy arrived and he said, “Are you all right?” I said, “Yeah, I think so, but I’ve got blood everywhere. Don’t know where it’s coming from..” He just ripped my shirt open and shoved

30:00 a field dressing on it. He said, “You better get to the RAP.” “No I’m all right.” “You better get to the RAP.” He put the field dressing on, tried to tie it round my soldier. I left the ammo there and I was about to get up and I sort of couldn’t get up. Legs wouldn’t get me mobile. I thought,

30:30 “What the hell?” I managed to get up on my knees from one hand. This hand just folded under me. And I was there like that and one of the medics arrived and looked at me and the next thing he did something to my shoulder and hit me with a needle and next thing I know I’m wandering back down the hill in a bit of a daze and I’m

31:00 dragging my rifle and realised I still had some ammunition that belonged to the Bren gunner and I said to him “I’ve got to go back.” He said, “What for? I’ll take it back. You stay here.” So he took the pouch off me and took the ammo back and we wandered down till we ran into another two guys, they threw me in a stretcher and they put me on a jeep on the stretcher and I vaguely remember

31:30 them putting another bloke alongside me and I don’t know whether I passed out or what. Then I came to and this lovely voice in broken English was saying to me, “Don’t you worry, honey. We will look after you.” I looked up and I thought, “Where am I?” It was this big Norwegian nursing sister. She was big.

32:00 She was huge. She was beautiful. And she just put her arm around me like that and lifted me and put me across her knee and then put the other arm around me and carried me in like a baby. Took me round, cut my shirt off and she said, “Nothing for you to worry about. There’s more mess than what there is anything, I think.” So she cleaned it all up.

32:30 Then she said, “We’re going to have to get you ready to operate. There’s shrapnel still in there.” So this little South Korean house boy or whatever he was came in and she said, “Tom,” – that was his name there – “will show you ready for theatre.” I looked and I thought, I said, “No way. He’s got a

33:00 bowl of hot water, some antiseptic soap, a shaving brush, a blue Gillette razor, now I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen them or not, but they’re just a little double edged razor blade and he held it between two chopsticks. That’s how he shaved me. All around under the arm and around the back and all round the wound with that and never even nicked me once. He held this little thing, blue Gillette razor blade between a pair

33:30 of chopsticks.

In what way did that reflect the medical facilities that were available?

It was antiseptic soap they were using and the razor blade went straight into a bin when you finished. So did the chopsticks. But it was just absolutely – I couldn’t get over the fact that he was – I was saying, “No way,” when he picked up the razor blade with this and she laughed. She said, “He’s shaved in funnier places that where yours is.” I thought, “Yeah, blokes have probably been hit in the groin

34:00 and places.”

Can I just take you back to the hill? When did you first start to experience severe casualties?

I didn’t know whether they’d finished taking the hill or whether they’d been kicked off it or whether they’d just pulled back or whether they were still up there or being relieved or what.

I guess what I’m asking is,

34:30 when you first made that advance on the hill, when did things first start to go wrong?

When we got to the top, nearly to the top. When we came in view of their – once we came over that crest. It was – when I say the hill, it wasn’t just a sharp peak like that. It came up in a gradual slope and then levelled off and then went back down to the other mountain. So as we come across that ridge that’s when they started to hammer us with mortars in front, behind, in amongst

35:00 and plus there was a lot of angry bullets flying. A lot of angry bullets going both ways. But there seemed to be more coming our way than what was going out. And yet there couldn’t have been.

When you were at that point how high was that from the bottom of the hill?

227 stood for 227 metres high. I’d say we would have been

35:30 at least up to there about 20 metres to go from where we started to come in sight. From the level of that. It didn’t just flatten dead straight out. It just sort of levelled out and went back to where their pits were. You could see that if we’d have been able to get that and take it from them, we would have been in immense control because the valley beyond, they wouldn’t have been able to move. It would have been ours.

36:00 But as far as I know, till the truce was signed, there was never an armistice signed so they’re still technically at war, North and South Korea. There’s still soldiers being shot and killed over there to this very day. They’re finding tunnels under the 38th Parallel that the North Koreans have dug. Some of them go back miles and miles from the

36:30 southern side of the 38th Parallel. They’re not just tunnels that men can crawl or walk through. They can drive trucks and tanks and everything through. They are reinforced and they are well done and they are still finding them today.

When did you first become aware of this tunnel system?

Didn’t really become aware of a tunnel system that large till after we come home and we heard about it what they were finding

37:00 after the truce had been signed. The troops that were still there from the United Nations from 53 to 57 before they came home, they were up on the 38th Parallel, at the demarcation zone. It’s one of those zones that’s very heavily barbed wire both sides and there’s a no man’s land strip in between, and there’s checkpoints at every

37:30 roadway through it and railway now that the railway has been reopened. There’s checkpoints all through it and what they have been doing – somewhere along the line their intelligence must have got word of these tunnel systems, so they started to probe. They started boring holes in various areas where they thought they possibly would be. And from their intelligence reports,

38:00 and they started to find these tunnels. Then they started a systematic fill in job on them. How far that’s gone I don’t know. That happened long after we left before that was found. You’d have to ask some of the blokes that are still there.

So what happened once you went into surgery?

Don’t remember much about the op at all. Came out and the day after

38:30 I’d been operated on – they don’t stitch you, they clip your wounds. I was then transported by chopper down to Seoul when a group of us were taken down there to a hospital and we were put into the Australian section run by the Australian sisters where they re-cleanse the wounds and re-clip them again.

Can you describe exactly what the wounds were?

39:00 Shrapnel wounds to the back and the shoulders from where we were lying. It was a mortar. Presume it was a mortar or artillery shell of some description that landed not very far behind us. Actually my boots and boots of both the number two and the Bren gunner were pitted with shrapnel. We had boots that had soles on them about that thick, solid rubber. They were cold wet boots we were issued with for the colder weather over there to

39:30 protect our feet from frostbite.

So what sort of injury does shrapnel cause to a human?

More of a tearing wound than a – like if a knife or a cut like that just leaves a – looking for one now – actually that’s a piece of shrapnel in there. Just enough that it could draw blood. But it’s not – normally it’s a piece of

40:00 how would you say – ragged metal from a shell casing when it explodes. So it’s not a neat piece. It’s usually jagged and when it hits it usually leaves a bit a tear and a scar. I was lucky enough that mine went in longways, not sideways or flat ways and lodged up in the shoulder bone. Every now and then I can still when I go to move even playing golf at times the blokes say to me, “Cracking again.” It’ll catch

40:30 and this shoulder catches and when it comes free it clicks back down again. But as I say when I was actually hit I didn’t know I’d been wounded. I just thought a clot of dirt had hit me in the back and the shoulder there where it was.

Tape 8

00:33 Mr Kinnear, I just wanted to ask you to explain what lay out patrols you were doing before the attempt was made to take the hill?

Layout patrols were designed to capture prisoners for information. I think one in my recollection of my tour in Korea was successful. Was one of the hardest things, to capture a prisoner

01:00 alive on a layout patrol. A layout patrols were – I’m crossing my lines with ambush patrols – behind the lines to observe what was going on behind like for argument’s sake to find out what movement was going on behind 227 they would select an officer –

01:30 usually a junior NCO and a private, sometimes two privates, sometimes two junior NCOs, but always an officer. The idea was to move by night, secure yourself in a position to lay out and make sure that you could not be observed during the daytime. You were equipped with compass and maps. And you observed all movement during the daytime and hopefully weren’t

02:00 found or discovered. So to do it you had to lay up in – look for areas before you went out that you knew you’d be able to get some sort of cover but in a position that you could observe what went on and be able to get back to your own lines and report. Some lay out patrols were hugely successful. Others learnt nothing. Some learnt a lot and became

02:30 disasters almost. There was one lay out patrol in particular from 3 Battalion in the early stages. They crossed a creek, found their position, laid up during the day, got the information they required, then when they went to move back they had to move further up the hill than what they really wanted to go.

03:00 The river had risen that much with the torrential rains, the monsoonal rains that came from nowhere. They were discovered. A patrol was sent out to try and capture them. They took off. They went back to where they were meant to meet their patrol to get them to safety. What was a knee deep walk across a creek now turned into about a 200 metre swim in a raging torrent.

03:30 One of the blokes from the trail put a rope around evidently being a lifesaver so he decided he’d take the plunge. So he swum across with the rope. They’d just got the rope nicely done and it broke loose at the other end. He swum back to try and secure it and nearly lost his life. They couldn’t get back so then they took off followed the river around and I think it took them another two days to get back to their unit. Dodging patrols and units on the way.

04:00 But the information evidently they got was quite valuable so it turned out to be okay in the finish.

For your – before the attempt on 227, what patrols were you doing personally?

We were doing apart from listening posts, normal night patrol. That was to go out there and patrol and hopefully you ran into enemy and be able to destroy. It was like search and

04:30 destroy type of patrols. We did one lay up patrol and did quite a few ambush patrols. The ambush patrols were designed specifically to try and capture prisoners, and they always ended up in a fight and most of the prisoners you got were either that badly wounded, they died, or got taken away maybe to medical centres and you don’t know what happened from there on. But

05:00 mostly they fought to the death and it was pretty hard to capture them.

What experience did you personally have of that?

Yep. Out on a couple ambush patrols. Couple we went out there we were so certain we were going to get them because we’d actually observed this particular working party coming for water every evening just after dark. We had observed them work, knew their track, knew their time, knew that they

05:30 sauntered down, they knew they were not being observed, or they thought they weren’t. We went, we laid up, waited for them. Heard them coming. Somehow the buggers knew we were there. Because when they came to where we should have been starting to grab them they started opening. They knew exactly where our deployment was. They started opening fire on us. Luckily

06:00 they were either bad shots or our men were concerned it was good enough, but it was a fight. None of our blokes were injured. We found trails of blood from there so they must have had some injured, but they retreated, nothing much eventuated. I’ve been out on other ambush patrols and certain of getting some sort of luck

06:30 but just been out there and laid up and wait and wait and nothing came. So whether we’d been observed you just don’t know. There are those sort of things that happen. At times you can be out on a patrol thinking you’re going to have a piece of a cake walk because nothing’s happening and all of sudden you’re confronted with another enemy patrol coming your way. It’s a case of who sees who first has the advantage.

07:00 How far away would you be from the enemy when you’re on these patrols?

At times no more than about 20 metres.

How did that feel?

I don’t think you really have time to think. You know you’re there. The only thing is when somebody fires the first shot. That’s it. It just becomes a battle and you look for cover. You’re trying to shoot at an object and you’re trying to make sure that you don’t get caught in the line of fire and you’re looking for somewhere

07:30 for cover at the same time. I haven’t seen any gung-ho action of blokes fixing bayonets and charging madly. Haven’t seen the hand to hand fighting like 3 Battalion had, and the Canadian regiment when they were over run on 355 – fortunately never had to encounter that, but I’ve heard some very graphic stories of the hand to hand fighting

08:00 that 3 Battalion and the Canadians went through. That really was hand to hand fighting. When you were preparing to try and take the hill, what kind of support was there amongst the group? I understand that there was some music that was played. Could you explain what the atmosphere was like?

It was just morale boosting gung-ho sort of stuff.

08:30 Everyone trying to buck everyone else up. This is going to be a cake walk. We’ll knock Charlie off the top of the hill. Everyone was optimistic. I admired our company commander, Flo Thomson, and I certainly admired Jock Robinson, our company piper. He marched alongside

09:00 and to the front of the whole of the action playing the pipes. We were the only company actually that had a piper in 1 battalion. And Jock, he was fantastic. He never stopped playing the pipes. I could still hear the pipes as I was being carted off down the hill. He came through unscathed.

09:30 So did the company commander. The company commander led from the front, like back in the days of the Trojan warriors and so forth where the kings led their troops into battle instead of sitting miles behind directing. He led us all the way up that hill. I think he thoroughly deserved that MC [military cross] that he got. He honestly thought and I think a lot of us did that we were just going to go up there and knock Charlie off that hill and that was going to be ours.

10:00 But he just proved too good a soldier, and too well entrenched.

What was the piper playing?

All the normal Scottish tunes. Our own tune that we marched to when we marched as a company with Jock [Scotsmen] in front was Up Brown Maiden. That was our company march tune. He played that at the start. Then he played Blue Bonnets

10:30 Over The Border, Scotland The Brave. You name it, he just went through the repertoire one tune after another on the pipe. And it’s a stirring sound, the pipes. I know a lot of people don’t like pipers, specially a lone piper. A lot of people enjoy the pipe bands when they’re marching, but they don’t like the lone piper. But there’s something about a lone

11:00 piper that gets to you. Does to me at every tattoo. ‘Specially when they play Sleep Dearie Sleep. Brings me an awful lot of memories that does.

Take you forward again to

11:30 the hospital. So you woke up from the operation, what happened then?

As I say I went down, was recovered there that day. Next morning we were transported down to Seoul to an old building that had been taken over by the Australian army nurses and there they cleaned the wound again, re-clipped it and made arrangements for us to be taken out to the airport to be flown back by

12:00 86 transport wing back to Japan. We were supposed to be flown direct to Kure but because of the weather they flew us into Iwakuni. Then we travelled by hospital train for about 12 hours from Iwakuni up to Kure to where the 29trh Britcom Hospital was and I was allocated to Ward 2, and Ward 2 was

12:30 English, run by the English sisters and I’ve told you the story of my deep friends the English. Course being of Scottish descent and Irish descent you know what I think of the Poms. I hope neither of you girls are English. But no, it’s from there hospital treatment was – they got back at me actually

13:00 at the hospital because when you got there the next day you went to theatre where they re-did the wound, checked it all out through again, then they stitched. But the Poms got their revenge. They misnoted the day my stitches were to come out. So my stitches had grown in. In those days they didn’t have dissolvable stitches. So every stitch they took out I felt every one

13:30 of them believe you me. But the nurses were fantastic in the Canadian ward and the Australian ward. They would even when they were going downtown to have a drink themselves at the end of their shift they’d say, “Would you like a pineapple?” or, “Would you like a paw paw? Or, “Would you like a rockmelon [cantaloupe]?” You’d say, whatever suits. They’d bring you one back.

14:00 It’s be all hollowed out and it’d be a flask of rum or a flask of whisky inside for you. And they wouldn’t take any money or anything. So when we got out and we were posted – all the blokes did the same thing, not just me – to the rehabilitation centre you could go naturally to the canteens so I used to go to the canteen when we were allowed. And in the last weeks before we went back to our unit to be able to go out in the afternoon –

14:30 zip up to hospital, buy a box of chocolates or something for the girls at the hospital, leave them at the desk for them. But they were great. The rehabilitation centre was a Pommy run organisation, but I ended up getting on famously down there. Had a ball. Stage one when you first go into hospital, they give you daily exercises to do.

15:00 Very light exercises. You have a muster call, morning at breakfast, and a muster call at lunch and I think another muster call in the evening. You can’t leave the place. And of an afternoon I’m wandering round and I found these blokes down practising cricket. So I got talking to some of them and one of them was one of the instructors at the

15:30 level 3 stage. Warrant officer. He was a Welshman. Not a Pom. He had the best moustache I’ve seen on a lot of blokes. He had a bushy moustache and he had two inches either side down, four inches up and two inches out. And he had them waxed all the time. He was a classic. Some of our guys grew moustaches. I had one. But when I come home,

16:00 Aileen said to me – after we’re courting and that and she said, “If we’re ever getting married, I’m not getting married till you get rid of the moustache.” So I haven’t had one since. But I had four inch ends on mine we used to wax, curl them up. We used to think that was the in thing. There were lots of silly things we did, but then at this rehabilitation centre I ended up when I was at stage three which was after about five

16:30 weeks umpiring one of their matches. From that I ended up bowling at the nets. Course, being done on the left side it wasn’t so bad. It was hurled pretty well. I ended up getting a game with them. Then I played a second game. Then I was supposed to go into stage four which is the final stage, and they had a couple of

17:00 matches coming up and the English teams, they played all the various teams in the competition. New Zealanders, the Australians and so forth. And they called them a test series. So I ended up playing for this Pommy unit against Australia in the final in the test series. They kept me back in grade three and wouldn’t promote me to grade four so I could go back to my unit until after the series was over. My mother had the photo of us with the cup, holding it up.

17:30 When they had the team photo taken, what they had on it, “22nd Rehabilitation Centre Great Britain, plus one,” and the cup and everything on the front of it. Don’t know what ever happened to it but they had this huge photo of it and it was sent home to my Mum.

18:00 As soon as that was over I immediately made grade four and I was only two weeks in grade four, you were supposed to be three. Two weeks at grade four, then they said, “Right you can go.” It was when I was in grade four I got mixed up with the going out on the patrols looking for these ‘number have no business’ girls. After with them two weeks – I was supposed to go another week – they told me I was off. I was off to Hiro to be reposted back to the

18:30 unit. Out to Hiro. We were supposed to be trained, but they said we were fit enough. All we did was guard duty. I was up escorted by the guard by the main gate at Hiro. You did it for four days. Two hours on, two hours off. It was just a case of my job – had the guards on the gate, my job was to check vehicles in and out. And all the workers at Hiro, the Japanese workers,

19:00 they had a lot of them working in the office there, they had ID [identification] cards and they had to present their ID card. Just check the number and check them off. Monotonous job. And I was told I would be rejoining my unit the following day. I said, “Beauty,” and down we goes out to Tokyo airport. And bang, away we come back to K16

19:30 at Kimpo, where’s the transport back to 1 Battalion, where are they? “Who?” says this Yank. “1 Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment.” “Who are they?” “How long you been here?” “Two days.” He’s in charge of transport to get people back. So I bummed a lift with a Kiwi guy. Up to Chorwon, and then found a

20:00 3 battalion truck. I said, “Are you going anywhere near 1 Battalion?” and he said, “Yeah. What do you want to go back to 1 Battalion for?” “Why?” “They’re just about to go up to 355 to relieve the Canuks [Canadians]. We’re going into reserve. I’ll drop you off at the bottom of the hill.” So he took me off and dropped me at the bottom of the hill. Wandered up to the HQ [headquarters], reported in, they

20:30 said, “Right away you go. Find your section.” “Where are they?” “Up there somewhere.” So I wandered round till I found McNulty and co. Settled back in with the troops and next thing we’re off to 355. About two days after. Then on 28th December just after our Christmas card exchange, 3 Battalion came up and relieved us and we went back to reserves.

Might talk to you about that experience on 355.

21:00 The Canadians has as you said been a lot of them killed. What scene greeted you when you got there?

Almost like a dozer had gone through most of the trenches and the hootchies. Lots of personal belongings when we were cleaned out and digging out were found. Parts of uniforms, parts of equipment, even weapons.

21:30 Letters. Things like anything that looked like it was personal was all gathered and sent back to BHQ [battalion headquarters] to be forwarded on to any rellies or any people that were still alive. But there were just bits and pieces – uneaten food still on plates buried in the dirt where places had been caved in.

22:00 Just a general mess. I mean, a general mess, it was. So it was almost a complete rebuilding schedule. As I say it looked like tanks had run over the top of it but they hadn’t. It was just all human and bombardment. Course, the bombardment came to with the taking back of – they had to actually shell and mortar the front positions to get rid of the enemy out of it. Get rid of them before they could actually

22:30 manhandle them out. And then came to rebuild it.

Had they managed to come in – the Canadians – and bury the bodies?

The bodies were all removed from the – we only got the bits and pieces.

How long were you on that hill for?

We were there from early November till the 28th of December. That was 1952. And 3 Battalion

23:00 came up and took over from us. Very pleased to see them too.

What was that work like for you to do, that rebuilding work?

Whiled away the days, helped fill in the time. Virtually it was just shovel work, a bit of pick work, crowbar at times, worked in pairs.

23:30 You took your fighting pit for a start, which was to be our fighting pit, so it was half full of dirt and sandbags and that. So you sort your sandbags out and get them organised. The first thing to do was to get the weapon pit sustainable. So that was first priority. Shovel all the dirt from inside the pit back out onto the wall so it builds up. Sandbag it and if you can find any of the old timbers, to timber it for more protection.

24:00 But sandbags are amazing things for bullets and shrapnel. They absorb them greatly. I’d rather have a sandbag full of sand or dirt in front of me than a protective jacket that they issued us with at one stage that weren’t worth two bob. But it’s a bit hard to carry a sandbag full of dirt around and hope that’s the only place they’re going to shoot you. It was just manual labour actually.

24:30 Just shovel clean up. Shovel. Shovel. Various times you’d find a weapon or you’d find bits and pieces of equipment. It was all set aside. When that was done, as soon as you got that done you worked on getting the hootchie up to standard so you could at least sleep in it. It was eerie sleeping. I never had the feeling, but some of the guys said it was eerie that they felt that they were sleeping in somewhere somebody had been killed. They could

25:00 always feel the presence of the person there. Me, I’m pretty good when I put my head down. I usually sleep for the first four hours, then I wake at the drop of a hat the rest of the night. Whether it was the fact that most of the time you’re in the army all your duties of a night time were two hours on, four hours off – when I go to bed I sleep four hours without batting an eyelid. If I go to bed,

25:30 say ten o’clock, you can bet your life by two o’clock I’m awake. I’ll see the clock again at one o’clock, two o’clock, half past two, three o’clock, half past three, four o’clock. Even if I take a ten milligram of Normison which I take at night to try and get more sleep, but no matter what time I go to bed four hours after I’ve put my head on the pillow I’m out like that, four hours after eyes are wide awake.

26:00 Seeing that the Canadians had been over-run, how was it that the hill was not in enemy hands?

There was a counter attack on the hill after the Canadians had been taken over by their reserve – when you’re in the line you always had one company in reserve. You had three companies up and one company in reserve. The way we worked it with the Australian contingent you had one battalion up and one

26:30 battalion in reserve. What happened was that 3R and the company in reserve did the counter attack and kicked Charlie off the hill and held the hill until we were put in there. They supplied some of the patrols the first few days while we started to restore things. Then we restored them enough to our satisfaction that they were okay we started our own patrol

27:00 and do the work, as I was telling you before, when we were doing the wire when Rocky Salter got shot by one of our own guys.

Was there a fear at that time that there would be another attack?

It’s always in the back of your mind. They’ve had it once. They want it because it’s 355, it’s a very prominent feature. They fought hard for it before earlier. They fought hard for it that time. They fought hard to hold it. That, the Hook and Maryang San were three of the

27:30 highest positions along that 38th Parallel area and they wanted them because the battle for Maryang San, the last couple of days prior to the peace treaty being signed was one of the bloodiest battles of all time. That was 2 Battalion. We were back home safe and sound, thank God. That was one of the bloodiest battles of the lot that one. They wanted that hill prior to the signing and the truce

28:00 and they went all out to get it. That’s when 2 Battalion had the most casualties in the whole 12 months it was there. They’d only been there, what six months? Not even that. Because they relieved us in March 53. The peace treaty was signed 27th July 53. How much news were you getting at this time

28:30 about what was going on overall in the war?

Very little. All we knew that there was peace talks going on up at Panmunjong. We were always hopeful that we might draw the lucky straw and get a month up there as security. One of the platoons – I think it was 8 Platoon Charlie Company, they got it. They got a month’s holiday up there. They came back

29:00 with some wild old stories, believe you me. It was a Buckland’s holiday camp as far as they were concerned. There was the Russians there, there was Chinese and there was North Koreans and there was the American troops, British, Australian and Turk cause the Turks were there as well fighting,

29:30 only a small unit, but they were there. Some of the stories they told we didn’t know whether they were having a go at us or not. But they said even some of the Russians are that thick, they’ve got watches up both arms. When one stops and it doesn’t go, they just throw it away because they’ve got another one to keep going. They just keep acquiring watches. We thought, yeah that’s, yeah it could be, possibly. But they said some of them

30:00 couldn’t believe that when they turned a tap on that water came out of it. They reckoned taps used to go missing. “Come on.” “No, believe they honestly believe that if they pinch them when they go home they can put them in the wall and they’ll get water. Mate, you’ve never met such ignorant people.” “Yeah. Next you’ll be telling us about light globes too.” “I never even noticed any of them missing but I know

30:30 that for a fact with the water taps. They couldn’t believe it.” They used to wash in the toilets – flushing toilets. “You’re joking.” “No. There are peasants and there are peasants, mate, believe you me.” So whether that’s just another one of the furphies that go round and they like to spread – but they said it was interesting to watch

31:00 the expressions on the Chinese and the Russians in particular when the changing of the guards was going on. They said our blokes and the Poms and everything and the Yanks, they did it so meticulously. They made sure their drill was spot on and everything was crash hot. The Chinese and the Russians, it wasn’t.

31:30 It was slovenly. They said the used to watch the expressions of the faces on the officers. Real, couldn’t stand the fact that our blokes were better than theirs in their drill movements and stuff. Which was I don’t supposed helped things, but it prolonged them. For years they talked. The lights were there in what 51 I think they first started their peace talks and they were still talking by July 53.

32:00 What they used to talk about, lord only knows. But he said they used to go in of a morning at about nine o’clock. They’d come out and adjourn at 12. They’d got back in about two and he said sometimes they wouldn’t come out till about ten o’clock at night. That was Monday to Friday. Every weekend was off. He said for that month up there it was heaven. ‘Cause they had first class meals, they sat down.

32:30 They were allowed to go on leave in Panmunjong when they weren’t on duty. So we were never that lucky to get to Panmunjong. Maybe one day.

I wanted to talk to you about the relationship of the different nationalities involved in the United Nations force. How co-ordinated do you believe it was?

33:00 Not brilliant with the Yanks. Not brilliant at all with the Yanks. I don’t think their right hand knew what their left hand was doing at any time. Brits were slow but sure. Communications with our mob were good. We knew exactly what every other company in our battalion was doing, where they were, if they had any casualties, what they were

33:30 up to. We knew what patrols were going out of a night. We knew where they were going out, from where they were coming into. Even if they weren’t coming into our territory at all. But sometimes things happened where they had to change. So we were always notified what the password of the patrols would be that night. And quite often the passwords would be changed within minutes of the patrol leaving just in case of security because even in

34:00 the front line, we did have Korean porters. We didn’t see much of the ROC [Republic of China] Army at all, but we had a lot of Korean porters that did a lot of manual work for us. We often wonder if it was the leakage of the porters that were with us and were in hearing us when we

34:30 had the mud map when we were preparing our daylight attack that we were all gathered round that and were pointing it all out, they were around us and within earshot. Whether they knew that we were coming that day or not, we don’t know. The same as it could have been them that tipped off when we first came into the line and were greeted so well. You didn’t know whether they – like, there’s no difference between

35:00 a North Korean and a South Korean. It’s like a Queenslander and myself, unless you tell us he’s a Queenslander, he’s another Aussie. The North Koreans used that method very successfully in driving infiltration. They’d drive refugees south but in amongst the refugees would be x amount of troops or hardened core stuff. 35:30 They used to transport lots of people. You didn’t know. We did one stint for a week on the Imjin River bridge where they had security. Anything that went north of the bridge had to be checked and anything that came back had to be checked. We had South Korean military police there with us and American military police. All we were there for was

36:00 to look for anything floating down the river at the time. We had lights on under the bridge of a night time because they were worried that they might float explosives down to blow the bridge because it was our only link we had at that time across the Imjin. We’ve seen them pull people up coming from the north and much heated arm waving and talking in Korean and the next thing

36:30 they just led them to the edge of the bridge and the 45 goes straight against their head, bang, and over goes the body straight into the river. Life to those people’s a nothing.

Who was doing the shooting then?

The South Korean military police. They weren’t satisfied with the answers that they were getting from the people that were coming from the north, so they’d stick a .45 inside their head, blow half their head away and straight over into the river. And you daren’t say boo, cause you’re

37:00 liable to get one yourself.

What was the relationship like between the United Nation forces and the South Koreans?

Aussies and Kiwis and Poms seemed to get on pretty well. The Yanks, it was hard to say. If you could get something out of them you were good. We used to like to try and get to their PXs [American field canteen] when you’re in reserve if you could get to one of their PXs, it was good cause they had everything.

37:30 I did a junior NCOs course at Wee John Wu under the Canadian guidance. It was the Commonwealth Infantry Brigade Junior NCO School. It was a six week school. It was in advance tactics and things like that we might need to learn for promotions. Right alongside us was the American I [Infantry] Corps. They went on strike.

38:00 They were sick and tired of strawberry ice-cream for dessert of a night time. They wanted a variation and all they could get was strawberry so they just refused to work till they got some chocolate ice- cream. Guess what? They got their chocolate ice-cream and went back to work. That’s fact. We were there in the perks when it was going on. “Don’t these blokes do anything? Just sit around and drink beer?” “They’re all on strike, boy.”

38:30 I said, “On strike? How can you be on strike in the army?” “They refuse to do any work. Not until they can get some chocolate ice-cream. For two months now we’ve had nothing but strawberry ice-cream and we’re all sick of it.” “You are joking.” “No.”

What was the feeling about the overall co-ordination of the United Nations military?

Actually we didn’t come under them that way.

39:00 We were the 28th Commonwealth Brigade and we were under our own leadership. Naturally, we worked with the Americans and the other allied nations. But the English, the Canadians, the French Canadians, the New Zealanders and us,

39:30 we all formed part of the 28th Commonwealth Division. That was the face we wore on our shoulders.

And the co-ordination between that division and … did you have an idea of that or too difficult to tell?

I think it was pretty well done. I think they used to have minor hitches like we had – the Yanks had a different complete policy to

40:00 warfare to our people. They will send a division up to take a hill. It’ll take a division to take that hill. But then they withdraw from that hill and leave a platoon up there. And they wonder why the Battle of Bloody Ridge or the Battle of Pork Chop Hill – the Chinese counter attacked and kicked us off the hill so we counter attacked the next night and kicked them off, so they counter – but when they counter attack

40:30 the Americans counter attacked with a division – maybe 3000 guys plus tanks and whatever else they had. Then they would leave one company up there, a couple of hundred people, to hold it. Once the Chows [Chinese] worked out what their strategies were – it took you three thousand blokes to get us off that and you’ve left a hundred up there to hold it. No way. Bang. Up they’d come again. That’s why those – I believe the same thing happened in a lot of places in

41:00 World War II, the same thing. Their battle strategies were completely different to ours. How it worked with the hierarchy I don’t know. But we were fortunate. Only once did we have the Yanks alongside us. But I know at one time in the 7th Cavalry alongside the French Canadians and when night fell the

41:30 7th Cav were there, the French Canadians were on their hill, during the early hours of the morning the French Canadians were being fired on by machine gun and rifle fire and they couldn’t work out why. So he called up the 7th Cav to ask what they hell were they doing shooting at them and they said, “It ain’t us boy, we’re way back behind you. That’s the Chinese.” They’d bugged out as they call it. Shot through without letting anyone know either side of them they were going.

Tape 9

00:30 Can I ask you to explain the ceasefire that happened on Christmas Day?

It was strange. Actually the Chinese and North Koreans started it. Not us. We did the normal stand to half an hour before dawn. First light came and someone said, “What the hell’s that hanging off the wire?”

01:00 Someone said, “That looks like rolls and rolls and rolls of toilet paper been shoved all over the wires.” So as the light increased – couldn’t work out what it was so they decided to send a couple of blokes down to have a look. When they got down there they started waving, “Come down.” So we everybody just did, automatically. Didn’t even think of being clobbered or anything. So we went down.

01:30 When we started to go down and got almost to the bottom where the wire was you could see they were all these cards and there was like, ‘Peace On Earth’. All this mainly around the Christmas theme. We thought, this is unbelievable. They’re supposedly heathens and not have any Christianity as the way we look at things. Where they’d

02:00 got them from we don’t know. Got no idea. Would love to find out one day. But there was cards and little tiny – we knew they didn’t get very good rations – little tiny sachets they’d made up of rice. So the boys started talking about bringing rations, so some of them started using some of the paper and stuff that was there and used it up and put them on the wire and put cigarettes on the wire and things. We’re all

02:30 standing like galahs waving up towards them. And bowing. Then someone started to sing Jingle Bells. We all joined in. Everybody started singing Jingle Bells down at the wire. I suppose it sounded pretty rough and ready I can tell you with some of the voices. Just from that we all gradually slowly meandered back and

03:00 the next thing you knew that they were virtually doing the same. Came down and received. Nobody fired. There wasn’t a shot fired that day. All day. It was so eerie silent. And again at night the old artillery and mortar fire all started up again about midnight. But for that whole Christmas Day there was not a shot fired after midnight.

03:30 Eerie. Makes you wonder. Made you realise that the people over there were people. They were human beings. Up till then I don’t think any of us saw them as human beings. I really don’t. I could be wrong, but I didn’t feel as though they were. They were just a thing. A thing that was there to be exterminated, got rid of.

04:00 But that. I thought, those people that we’re trying to kill and they’re trying to kill us, they’re no different to us. We’re exactly the same. We’re human beings. What are we doing? Why? Then realism sets in and you say, “Well, because their beliefs are so far different to ours.” That’s fair enough. You’ve only got to look at the difference between

04:30 North Korea and South Korea now. Or any of these other Communist states. Or any place or any country that’s ruled by – I would class him as a dictator, their leader. That’s what he says goes. They have a government, but the government has no say. It’s the same as in Russia. What the president says, that happens. He can sack his whole government. Which he just did.

05:00 What are your thoughts on North Korea’s current military strength?

I’d like to see it absolutely shut down. Period. I think that they’re the biggest danger we’ve got in the world. I think they’re a bigger danger to us at the moment than Al Qaeda. I think Al Qaeda will strike and strike more often. But I think the biggest threat to us at the moment is North Korea. If

05:30 North Korea breaks, China will back her. I really believe that. That’s why I would definitely like to see North Korea disarmed and their nuclear program stopped. Because that is frightening. After seeing Hiroshima I would hate to see anybody else ever suffer what they must have gone through. And the people that lived through it, what they went through.

06:00 To think that one bomb can wipe out not just a thousand, but hundreds of thousands in one hit. We’re all shocked by these number of bombs that kill 200 people in Spain. It’s sickening. It rocks you. But when you think that one bomb can wipe out a hundred thousand people just like that – got to be stopped. Got to be disarmed. And if North Korea

06:30 declared war again and I was young enough I’d volunteer again to fight them. This time I’m afraid if they do, I’d like to be in B Company. Be here when they go and be here when they come back hopefully.

Can I ask you what sort of contact during the war did you have with South Korean civilians? Not a great deal. What we did when we were in

07:00 reserve or you did your times when you were able to in reserve if you get leave you might wander back to some of the little villages. You need to always pick up a bit of fresh fruit or something like that. We couldn’t get it. And you could always barter for it or buy. They were very friendly blokes. Very humble race. With all their backwards ways where they used to

07:30 do their ploughing with an ox and a shovel and a piece of rope or they’d have two men on a rope, one on a shovel digging a trench. Where we’d look at a tractor or a horse and plough they’d have three men doing it. Two of them on the rope pulling and one guiding the shovel in the right direction. Their central heating system in their little mud brick homes was absolutely fantastic. They used to have charcoal.

08:00 The floors were raised I suppose about that high. They just used to stack charcoal underneath. And in the winter time if you walked into their houses, and they were solid mud floors, and you could eat off them. No dust or anything ever was in the house. And they’re mud brick walls. And the whole of the house was as warm as toast. It was beautiful to walk into their homes.

08:30 They made you welcome in their homes. If you went into the cities it was the 12 year old boys that were trying to sell their 10 year old sisters and get you to come to their home. Because in the cities that’s where they had nothing. But out in the little villages they were just normal down to earth people. Hard working.

How do you think their day to

09:00 day lives were impacted by the war and these shifting front lines?

Devastating, because their paddy fields and things were ruined by tanks, bombs, you name it. They had to rebuild. I’ve only seen films and photos of the rebuilding of Seoul. That is absolutely outstanding what they’ve done in that country in South Korea. It’s just hard to believe.

09:30 I can remember the particular junction and have seen the photo in a big foldout where they’ve built a roundabout that has a temple in the centre of the roundabout and it’s eight lanes each way. There’s five main roads come into this roundabout with eight lanes in each way and to get to the temple you go underground. There’s an underground station under the roundabout as well.

How is it

10:00 different then to what it was like during the war?

There was hardly a building standing. What were standing were pretty shambly. Even the place in Seoul where the Australian girls set up the nursing. It had been an old warehouse building. It had been shelled and knocked down and parts of it missing. They put up temporary walls on it. Some of them were pretty gruesome but

10:30 In that stage of 253, you’d say Pusan was still knocked around. That was right down the south. That was where the little perimeter was in the early days when they came straight through in 1950. They nearly pushed the Americans back into the sea. That’s how close it was. It was only about a five kilometres radius around the bottom that they had. They managed with the

11:00 Australians and New Zealanders to fight their way out, and the British. That’s when they made that bold plan to make the seaborne invasion in China and create a pincer movement that worked magic. But that was long before my time there. But Seoul when I first saw it I looked at that and I thought, “This is the capital. Shoo!” Because the Chinese had bombarded it and taken it. And the

11:30 Allies had gone back and bombarded it and retaken it. It was retaken again by the Chinese and it was retaken again by us. Four times it was in different hands, Seoul. There was street to street fighting in Seoul. The devastation there was something terrible. That’s why I think in Seoul if you happened to have a vehicle or were the driver of a vehicle. When you parked your vehicle you had to take the rotor button out. And quite often

12:00 when you came out you might only be 20 minutes at the building to do whatever you had to do and you would come out and if the vehicle was still there, it was a miracle. If it had four wheels on, it was still a miracle. But rotor button or no rotor button they used to be able to produce one or they’d steal one from somewhere else. If you had a jeep or a truck it was gone. You had to leave someone standing guard at that vehicle in Seoul.

12:30 It wasn’t stolen by troops. It was stolen by the Koreans. They used to flog them back to different people. Black market was rife. ‘Specially the Americans with their candy bars and chocolates. In the early days it was the same in Japan in the early days of the occupation that a cake of soap or a pound of sugar or a chocolate bar

13:00 would procure you a woman for the night, sometimes for the week. In those times, like in Japan just after the war and in Korea during and just after it in the cities that’s where the same thing – there was just nothing for them. But when you got out into the villages they were able to regrow their vegetables, repair their paddy fields, get rice, start to do things. Where in the city they depended on 13:30 imports of everything. If they couldn’t get it, they had to steal it.

Having visited Hiroshima and Seoul, what thoughts do you have about the impact of war on civilians?

That’s the tragedy of war. If it was just a field where it was one side against the other – different kettle of fish. But modern warfare involves

14:00 men, women and children. Innocents that have no part in war. They become involved and they become the heaviest casualties in war. Like as I say, those kids that we met in the Samichon Valley. What life do they have left to lead or to look forward to? No parents. No home. And they’re kids. And some of those kids would only be lucky if they were eight years old. They’re got a life ahead of them.

14:30 What happened? Life in a lot of places means nothing. We found that in Japan. Kids that had been fathered by say Americans or Australians or whatever troops in BCOF days were there. A lot of blokes partnered Japanese women and promised to marry them, bring them back to Australia or wherever or to America. Some did. But there’s an awful lot of kids

15:00 roaming around Japan that were half American, Australian and Japanese. Because their fathers had gone back and deserted the mothers, both the mothers and the kids they were just completely ostracised. They couldn’t go to school. They couldn’t get jobs. The women couldn’t work. The only way they could work was as prostitutes to try and keep themselves alive and their kids alive.

15:30 You could pick the kids straight away. When you see a fair skinned, red headed kid, running around or a black Japanese kid with a flat nose and big thick – it’s like some of the Negroes – they stand out a mile. All they’ve got to try and exist on is hopefully the Jew will let them shine their shoes and give them a couple of bucks. And every time

16:00 one of those kids came to any of us – I know our group that were in Japan we used to get our boots shined sometimes ten, fifteen times a day for a couple of dollars. Each one of us knew that kid was going to get a feed that night, or they had money to live on. It’s the innocents that suffer in warfare and it’ll be I’m afraid the way things are going.

16:30 With these terrorism attacks, who do they attack? It’s only the innocents. You only got to look at Spain. Look at September 11. Any of those things. It’s a type of warfare against innocent people. We felt when we were in Korea we were fighting for a cause for their freedom, so that they wouldn’t be under oppression.

17:00 We felt we were doing the right thing. And I still believe today that I’d go back if I was capable of going back to fight again for the South Korean. For their freedom I would. But again it’s the innocents that suffer in warfare. Modern warfare doesn’t draw the line against civilians. Only got to go back to

17:30 the Second World War. The bombing blitzes of not only London and Birmingham and places in England. What about the so-called blitz bombing of Berlin and the other like from both sides. Who wins?

So when you are a person who’s trained in combat, prepared for the battlefield, how do you cope with that human cost of war?

I think when you’re actually

18:00 trained for it and when you’re at that age, you know, I don’t think you actually realise that civilians are at risk. You see civilians at work and play when you go back to the various areas. But you don’t see them up around you in the battlefield areas. So I think you feel they’re safe.

18:30 But when you get back and see what Seoul looks like, then you realise that people actually lived there once. What happened to them? They’ve got nowhere to live now because the place was just flattened. Same with Hiroshima. Who suffered there? The military surrendered through the dropping of the two atomic bombs. But who did it hurt most? The civilians and the people that were left behind to pick up the bits and pieces.

19:00 It makes you think. But as I say I would still against Communism or any country that was being threatened to be over run and oppressed, I’d still put my hand up to volunteer. Because I think every country’s got its right. If it wants to be run by Communism and votes that way, let it be. But I don’t think any country’s got the right to say,

19:30 “We’re going to run you the same as us,” like North Korea did try to do to South Korea. Under the pretence of making it a unified nation. They only wanted it unified because they wanted the income that South Korea had. And it’s all boiled down to economics. I think that is what a lot of warfare is about.

Given your experiences of fighting communism, what thoughts did you have

20:00 during the Vietnam War?

We were still sending guys to Vietnam before I got out. I didn’t know what to make of the Vietnam War because the French had been kicked out of Vietnam. They’d tried to colonise Vietnam. Then all of a sudden the Americans came in and they were getting their backsides 20:30 smacked and I couldn’t understand at the time why we were getting involved in colonisation. Why would we be over there fighting to colonise a place for the U S of A. It didn’t quite gel, but I supported the guys that went. They needed the support. We gave them our support. I thought they were fighting a losing battle from day one.

21:00 It was like I couldn’t understand it properly because British colonies were diminishing and going by the book. Colonies were going. All right, the French have tried to colonise Indonesia and Vietnam. Why would American then step in and say, right we’re going to colonise you? Why would our prime minister and our government turn round and say, “All right. We’ll back you

21:30 and send you troops.” It wasn’t a United Nations effort. Actually in Korea, we were the first ever to fight under the umbrella of the United Nations. That’s why in our Vietnam Veterans’ Association on Anzac Day or any official parade we all have to wear the blue beret. The same as the other peace keepers. We were the first to fight.

22:00 It always gets up a lot of blokes noses when they say, oh it wasn’t a war. Like when we first came back a lot of us went to join the RSL. They said, we don’t want you blokes. Youse only went for a picnic. You weren’t for a war. You were only a peace action. On that peace action, 339 of our blokes are still over there. Thousands come back wounded or a lot of them minus limbs, a lot of

22:30 them mentally gone. These blokes that are now going to the Gulf War and things like that, they do three months or over in Timor, they do three months. They come home. They’re given medals. Fair enough. They get counselling. We never got boo – it took us 50 odd years and a donation by the South Korean people to get us a memorial in Canberra.

23:00 50 years after the war.

How do you think those myths about the Korean War were perpetrated?

I do honestly think it was a lot of people didn’t even know there was a war in Korea. I really don’t. Newspaper media coverage was nil. Very little in newsreels that were ever reported

23:30 on newsreels. You never saw war correspondents over there. We never did. In 18 months I was there I never ever heard of one Australian entertainment party coming through. They went to various places in World War II, they went to various places in Vietnam. Nobody came to Korea.

24:00 The only ones who came to Korea was Bob Hope and a couple of his mob, but they went to the Yanks. The only ones from outside the Americans that were entertained was the senior brass from all the United Nations. They got VIP [very important person] seats at all their concerts. We saw nothing. Never saw a soul in the time we were there. The only people we saw at times was the Salvation Army.

24:30 And various chaplains. That was that.

In terms of that ignorance, how was that reflected when you came home?

We used to be asked by the Second World War blokes about our ribbons. “What the hell are they? Candy bars?” Because they were yellow and blue striped and blue and white striped.

25:00 “Korea? What was Korea? Never heard of it, mate.” It was just a general – that’s why all our banners and things always said ‘The Forgotten War’. Nobody knew apart from the people that were involved and their families there wasn’t too many outside. And when you even came back in army circles, nobody was ever counselled. I did have a lot of trouble settling down when we came back.

25:30 Our unit was posted to Enoggera. It was garrison duties. I couldn’t handle it. It drove me up the wall. I tried for postings. Couldn’t get one. I got a posting into Brisbane into the barracks in Brisbane to be a clerk. I think I lasted a day and half there and I said, “I’m out.” They said, “You can’t go. You’re on our…” I said, “I’m gone.

26:00 Do what you like.” So I got a – they said you have to put in for a reciprocal posting. So you have to find someone in Sydney that wants to come up here and we’ll send you down there. So I got sent to 4 Battalion. There was a Queenslander that wanted to come back to Brisbane so I got sent to 4 Battalion. The bloke’s position that I took was a clerk in battalion headquarters.

26:30 That’s what I just threatened to walk out on in Brisbane. I tried to handle that. Sitting behind a desk. I was up the wall. I just couldn’t concentrate on the job I had to do. I told the adjutant. Told everyone. They just said, “You’ll be all right mate. You’ll settle down. You’ll get used to it.” I ended up asking a commanding officer of support company, I said, “I believe you’re looking

27:00 for a corporal for the anti tank platoon.” He said, “Yes. How did you know?” “I’ve seen the paperwork. I’m at BH

” He said, “Clerk’s no good to me. I want a gunnery.” “I was in the CMF for years at 3rd Anti Tank Battalion, 17 pounders. Exactly what you got.” So he pulled strings, got me into support company anti tank platoon instructing and training for Malaya and for Vietnam.

27:30 We did lots of demonstrations, lots of gun shoots. He was a gung-ho bloke who was trying to show the world and the national servicemen how well a 17 pounder anti tank gun could be used as an artillery weapon as well firing high explosives as well as anti tank shells. He was able to do it too. He proved them all wrong.

28:00 We had some great experiences being in demonstrations.

Can I just take you back, Mr Kinnear? Can I ask you what you recall about when the peace treaty was signed?

As I said, we were home. We just said, “Thank God for that. They’ll be all coming home.” 3 Battalion came home

28:30 as a battalion. And we thought, “How great. After all these years of rotation battalion the name has stayed, been synonymous with Korea.” When they came home they came home by ship same as we did on the New Australia. What a difference that was, coming home to going over. When we went over we went on the Devonshire which was a converted First World War liner

29:00 into a troop ship. When we come home the New Australia – we were on A Deck. Weren’t allowed to wear our boots, weren’t allowed to do any drill. We were up on A Deck. The lounge bar used to open at four o’clock every afternoon. Had movies, had bingo. Was like being on a cruise for 14 days coming home. But it was just one of those things that went off. We heard, we knew they were coming home, we knew when they were coming home and with a bit of push and shove

29:30 from a few officers that were in Korea, they rounded up all the blokes from 1 Battalion that had served in Korea and we were fitted out in the new walking out uniform. I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen it. It’s navy blue or black – black I suppose it would be – uniform. With the black polished boots.

30:00 Red stripe about that wide down the side of the pants. Black jacket with the gold buttons, white shirt, the black tie, your insignia and your everything’s done in gold on it and a peak cap with a red band round it with the insignia in front and the white gloves and the highly polished rifle and they rounded us all up, medals on. All got given medals to wear and we became the official guard of honour at Town Hall for

30:30 the march past of 3 Battalion on their return home. They gave them a march through Sydney and it was an absolutely fantastic march. I was proud to be part of the guard of honour. We were inspected by the Governor General, the Prime Minister. He talked to every one of us, the Governor General and the Prime Minister. Talked to everyone of us in the guard of honour. You’d hear the faint strains of the band coming up George Street.

31:00 We knew they were on their way. Everyone was starting to get a bit excited. So were the crowd. Still didn’t make any difference. He still talked to every member of that guard of honour which was 40 odd. Our guard commander that day was Lieutenant Tom Rowlandson who lost his left arm in Korea. He looked resplendent. Thank goodness the sword drill was done on the right hand. It was a magic moment

31:30 for him. And actually when 3 Battalion sprung into view, I don’t think there was a dry eye amongst any of the guard. We felt like our family had come home. Sorry about this. It just felt like they’d all come home and it was over. But they ended up back in Korea for a while as peacekeepers in the 2 Battalion. 1 Battalion went back again and was reformed and

32:00 went back. I was asked did I want to, and I said, “No. I’d rather stay right where I am.” 1 Battalion reformed, it went back, then it came back from there, reformed and went to Malaya. I stayed with 4 Battalion which was training reos and sent them. My army career decided it and I should

32:30 finish when my six years was up.

You mentioned that during that parade you felt like your family was coming home. Can you describe for me what sort of a community the Korean Veterans’ Association is?

Very close knit although we’re spread all over the place. They have monthly meetings in most major cities. We have one every two months here, just a few

33:00 members and there wives meet here. If there’s something on at Coffs we went to the dedication at Grafton. They had a dedication last year. Taree RSL are fantastic. They’ve got about 20 odd Korean guys in the Manning area, plus what we’ve got here in the Great Lakes area. And on the 27th July every year they hold a special service at the RSL

33:30 at Taree. We were always invited. It’s on the day of the signing of the peace treaty. Have a lovely afternoon with a service and I was fortunate one year to be asked to be one of the guest speakers. They have guest speakers every year on different aspects of what happened and what careers – only it’s pushed into a five minute bang. There’s a wreath laying ceremony

34:00 with the Last Post and Reveille playing. Then they have afternoon tea and then they have a dinner that night. Most of us all stay and book in at – there’s a motel in Taree, not the one you’re staying at – but that puts us up for the night. All those that wish to book, they put us up for the night. They charge us five dollars and they have a barbecue breakfast for us at ten o’clock for everyone that’s 34:30 heading off. They come from Sydney, Central Coast, some of them from out west, Armidale, Tamworth, come from up north for that service every year. There would be roughly about 150, 200 people at that service every year, without fail.

Given that you commemorate the signing of the peace treaty, how did you feel about that signing in relation to what your original objectives were, or your original reason for

35:00 joining up?

Felt like at long last something had been achieved. South Korea was free. They’d been pushed back. North Korea was North Korea, South Korea was South Korea. And South Korea was becoming a prosperous nation. And is still with all its difficulties a very economically prosperous nation. It amazes me to think out of the destruction and the defeat of both Japan

35:30 and Korea to a certain extent originally – they were over run originally, but those two nations have become two of the most economic nations in the world. South Korea and Japan.

What do you put that down to?

Diligence and hard work. Neither country is frightened. Their people are not frightened to get their hands dirty, they’re not frightened to work, they’re

36:00 not frightened to put in the hours that’s required to get a job done. They don’t look the average Joe – there’s always the ones that do, but the average Joe doesn’t look for monetary rewards. They look for satisfaction. They see satisfaction, their country prospering and developing. Even back to the little farmers on the village. If their little village is successful and its products during the year, they are over the moon.

36:30 If their crops are in and good. And they don’t just – a village is a village over there. Everybody is part of that village. This guy might do this, but in fact what he’s doing, he is helping these people here. That’s the way they work. Completely different to us. I think there’s a few other nations too, that work similarly. I’ve seen little communities in various places

37:00 and I think they all work together and I think that’s how they survive. They really survive successfully till you get people that see how successful they are, how good they are, and they want to take them over. Like the Spaniards did to the Aztecs. That’s getting back to your area.

Can I ask you then,

37:30 given your experiences in Korea and afterwards, when you watch men and women say marching off to the recent war in Iraq, what goes through your head?

Safe trip. Do your job well. Do it proudly and come back safe and sound. That’s the only wish I have for any person. Doesn’t matter whether it’s our people or English,

38:00 Americans, whatever. You know they’re not all going to. But you hope and pray that’s what will happen. That’s all we can ever hope for and pray for. That everyone that does go can do their job proudly, do it well, and come home safe and sound.

How do you feel about the necessity of war in our current climate?

38:30 I’d rather see that there was never a necessity for it ever again. But while ever there is greed there’ll always be some sort of war. Because little places develop, become successful, people want to take them over. Only got to look at Norfolk Island. It’s a wonderful place, it’s been self reliant.

39:00 It runs under its own legislative council. It’s now starting to make money. Who wants to take it over properly and claim it and put taxes on it? Our dear federal government of Australia. Oh look, they’re coming along, their tourism is good, they’re actually making money and we don’t tax them.

Can I ask you finally how the lack of recognition

39:30 of the Korean War impacted your ability to readjust to civilian life?

I know a lot of blokes went bad. But majority all ended up coming good. I went through a very bad patch. I got involved bad, I got mixed up with a bad crowd. I think at one stage I could have been almost classed as a top con man. I was getting that

40:00 way, getting that good at things. Luckily I never hurt anybody doing it. But I was running with the wrong crowd. I could have possibly seen myself in real deep trouble. How in those first few years after we were married my wife ever stayed and stuck I do not know. I think

40:30 I must have just about driven her completely not only up the wall but right across the ceiling and down the other side and how she didn’t go out the door, I’ll never know. But she stuck fast. We celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary last August on the 7th, right here in this club house. She was the only one that didn’t know it was going on. It rocked her completely.

41:00 She said, “I didn’t realise that we had so many friends in this town.” It was – a family did one earlier on the actual night and this one was set up for the Thursday night because it was the raffles and that was the excuse that got her out here.

41:30 They had the whole area set up and the table and I’d say there was over 100 people and they were only just people that wanted to come. They all paid for their own meals and everything. When she came in, she looked and the first thing she saw was that Keith Hart. She said, “My God, Keith Hart’s here tonight. God, he’s brought Joan out. That’s a change.” And as she looked again and she saw

42:00 a couple of the others sitting at …

INTERVIEW ENDS