Australians at War Film Archive Desmond Pigram (Des) - Transcript of interview Date of interview: 29th May 2003 http://australiansatwarfilmarchive.unsw.edu.au/archive/241 Tape 1 00:42 Good morning, Des. How are you? I’m fine, thank you. I’d like to start off our interview today by asking where you were born and when? Yes, I was born in Sydney. Actually in Crown St Women’s Hospital of all places, which was the great maternity hospital of the time, 01:00 on the 20th November 1926. I was the second of five children. My older brother Matt, he preceded me by one year exactly, almost. He was born on the 4th November 1925. In succession of me there came two sisters and eventually a younger brother, so there were five of us. My father was 01:30 a baker. He was the son of a baker, and the grandson of a baker. It seemed to be the family trade, right up until (UNCLEAR). He was one of the people who did suffer quite a period of unemployment during the Depression years, which did 02:00 affect him very badly. I remember many years ago, when I was about eight or nine, seeing my father come home and cry because he had five children and couldn’t get a job. Those were the Depression years and they were the years in which my generation grew up. They shaped us a lot. But I look at the world today and I think 02:30 the welfare state, which seems to be being dismantled today, I think, is one of the greatest social advances of the twentieth century because everybody was provided for in circumstances. If there had been a welfare state when my father was rearing his family, he probably would have received child endowment, probably housing, all those things, which did not exist then. When I see all 03:00 those things being cut down and dismantled today I think, “Well it’s going to be bad, if ever there’s a Depression again, for the people who aren’t working today.” And with that statement, I’ll ask you for the next question please. Were any of your family members involved in the First World War? 03:30 No. My grandfather on the paternal side, people never hear of them now but there was once a thing called International Workers of the World and they had a theme song called, “Hallelujah, I’m A Bum”. And he used to sing that to us, “Hallelujah I’m a bum. Hallelujah, bum again, Hallelujah I’m a bum, Hallelujah bum bum, the baker is dead.” But that was the theme song of the International Workers of the World. Of course it died away 04:00 now and they were precursors to a lot of the socialist parties that exist today. And he was not a great believer in armies or wars or things like that. Although my father, when he was growing up I think in the early [1920s] there was a National Service System, and he was in the navy for a couple of years as 04:30 a form of National Service. Everybody did it in those days. He was on a sloop called the [HMS] Marguerite and he said “Every time they left Sydney Harbour he got terribly seasick”. So his career in the navy wasn’t a very happy one but other than that nobody, excepting myself, and an uncle. My father’s brother, he joined the army during the war, he was up in Darwin and places like 05:00 that. But other than that, I’m the only one. It was unique because everybody I know seems to have had two or three people or a father, particularly among the veterans I know a father in the First World War. My father was born in 1906. Mum and Dad were married when they were 05:30 eighteen. In those days that was not unusual. People married young and had large families. Life was different, that’s all I can say about that. And where did you go to school? I went to so many primary schools when I was growing up. I 06:00 went to, it all depended on where we were living. Of course during the Depression years when they got behind with their rent, they just moved somewhere else. I started school at Maroubra Junction Public School. I went from there to Maroubra Junction Catholic School. And of course my mother was a 06:30 Catholic and my father was Church of England. But anyhow and from there, we went to Maroubra Bay Public School then to Maroubra Bay Catholic School. Then we moved from there into Redfern. Then I went to De La Salle Brothers, Redfern. Then I ran away from there, went down 07:00 to Bourke Street Public School. From there, we moved and I went to Arncliffe Catholic School. And then I went from there to Arncliffe Public School until they came and chased me back. Then from there I went to Rockdale Catholic School. Then I went a little while to [St Aloysius] or [Marist] Brothers at Kogarah. And then for a short while I went back 07:30 to De La Salle Brothers in Surry Hills. When I turned 14, I gladly left. But, in all, I went to about ten or more primary schools. That was a fairly common thing in those days, for people. But it was very disruptive as far as education goes, you know. So years later, 08:00 I happened to be in Canberra and I was just browsing through the National Library there and I saw in the Macquarie University Yearbook that they had a special provisional matriculation for people who sat for their high school certificate and they passed in a couple of selected compulsory subjects, which I did. So then I enrolled at Macquarie University. And from there I just, I enjoyed 08:30 it so much. When I did the Bachelor of Arts degree there, I looked around and then I decided to try New England. I did a batch of letters there externally. Then I went back to Macquarie and did the Masters there. And so that rounded off my education. But 09:00 it’s a, compared to today where people I know like my nephew, they go to the one school all their lives. So it’s a very different background. You just mentioned you left school finally when you were 14. What did you do then? Well, in those days you only had to look in the paper unlike today, and you’d 09:30 see page after page, wanted, “Junior Messenger Boy, Junior Process Workers. Junior this.” Well, I worked different places. I worked at McSimmons in the city, down Haymarket there, sort of a messenger boy, delivering of all things, globes. Sixty watt, hundred watt globes in packets of six to little businesses all over Sydney. 10:00 And I worked as a factory hand at a place called Amco in their radio manufacturing section. And I worked as a plastic moulder in a plastic moulding factory in Redfern then, near Redfern Station. When it was there, when I was working there, I was talking to a 10:30 fellow who was in the army under age. I found out that if you filled in the form to be called up for army service, as long as the last two digit numbers on what - everybody had an [identity] card in those days. And the last two numbers on the number of the identity card were the year you were born. 11:00 So that was the only thing they looked at when you went to join the army. So I thought, well I can get into the army a year or so early by just putting my date of birth back from November to January, which I did, January 5th and filled in the form and sent it in. And when I went to Newtown Drill Hall to report, I just showed them the identity card. They looked at the last two numbers 26, which was the year I 11:30 born and I was in. When I was in there for a little while, in what they called the citizens military forces for a little while, I persuaded my parents to sign the form for me to join the AIF [Australian Imperial Force]. Which they did, they said, “Well, he’s there now, we can’t stop him.” So I was there, I was off - off to the army. 12:02 But that was the beginning of, I’ve thought about it and I don’t think my army service was the defining thing in my life, far from it. It was just a part of my life. The most interesting part and I met so many people who I’ve 12:30 always valued their friendship, I’ve always cherished ever since. I don’t know how to carry on from there. What sort of thing are you looking for? Why were you so keen to join the CMF? [Citizens Military Force] 13:02 I wasn’t particularly, the CMF and the [AIF] were the one army. That was the easy way into the army because they thought they were grabbing you and dragging you in, whereas if I went down and volunteered I would be trying to get in. It was an easier way. A way that other 13:30 people got in to, the only trap of it was when we first went in and they gave us those series of injections, a lot of people got sick.