TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL HISTORY RECORDING Accession number S00506 Title (V65593) Boland, Jack Wallis (Private) Interviewer Martin, Harry Place made Preston Date made 7 November 1988 Description Jack Wallis Boland, 39th Battalion, interviewed by Harry Martin for the Keith Murdoch Sound Archive of Australia in the War of 1939-45. Discusses prewar employment; religion; education; politics; joined militia; at age twenty one conscripted to 39th Battalion in Melbourne; transported by train to Sydney; embarkation on SS Aquitania; arrival in Port Moresby; march to Seven Mile Drome; training; officers; shortage of food; relations with natives; bromide; promoted to corporal; moving up the track; first encounter with Japanese; morale; Australian American relations; insubordination; health; food and equipment supplies; discipline; demobilisation; air raids; terrain; tactics; combat conditions; unit solidarit; casualties; Japanese Army; AIF Militia relations. Mentions Melbourne, Bacchus March, VIC; Townsville, QLD; Sydney, NSW; Port Moresby, Seven Mile, Kokoda Track, Sanananda, Uberi, Deniki, Pirivi, Eora Creek, Gona, Haddies village, Isurava, Popondetta, Huggin's Perimeter, Papua New Guinea; Damien Parer; Brigadier Selwyn Porter; General Sir Thomas Blamey. JACK BOLAND Page 2 of 57 Disclaimer The Australian War Memorial is not responsible either for the accuracy of matters discussed or opinions expressed by speakers, which are for the reader to judge. Transcript methodology Please note that the printed word can never fully convey all the meaning of speech, and may lead to misinterpretation. Readers concerned with the expressive elements of speech should refer to the audio record. It is strongly recommended that readers listen to the sound recording whilst reading the transcript, at least in part, or for critical sections. 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Any request to use of the transcript, outside the purposes of research and study, should be addressed to: Australian War Memorial GPO Box 345 CANBERRA ACT 2601 JACK BOLAND Page 3 of 57 Jack Boland if we can begin by you telling us where and when you were born and something about your childhood. I was born in Mooney Ponds in 1919, we moved to Seymour when I was one year old and my father was in the Post Office – he had moved out to move on to the travelling Post Office – as they called it in those days – between Seymour and Albury and back again, they used to sort the mail up and back. I went to school in Seymour. Small family, large family? Three brothers and myself, and we, in 1933 when we came to Melbourne, we lived in South Melbourne. Its a pity when a lot of people see those years as having been tough. What was your childhood like, was it a difficult time of life?. Not really, the move to Seymour by my father was quite a good move because while everybody else was getting laid off he was fortunate to be – he got this promoted sort of job – there was him and another fellow did the sorting of the mail alternately, they worked ten hours a day each of three days a week really, and they got good pay for it because it was ten and was paid at a penalty rate, we had work all the while, and, but it was pretty tough for a lot of people. What about education, what sort of schooling did you have? I went to the Higher Elementary School in Seymour, where I finished up from a State School. I came to Melbourne and, in those days they had what they called a Merit Certificate and I was always, you know, about the fourth or fifth from the top of the class and I was recommended for the Merit Certificate, but when I come to Melbourne I found out that the schooling was just so much advanced that the tests that I'd done were not high enough so they made me do a test and I just scraped through, which devastated you a little bit because after a school where you're doing fairly well in the grade – you finish up just struggling. What sort of things had you begun to think you might do with your life? Well, in those days I don't think you have much choice like you have today. You had to do what you could get. It wasn't people saying 'Oh I don't want to be that, I don't want to be anything else' – you were – I left school at fourteen and for twelve months I tried to get jobs, but there was no jobs about for young fellahs, and most of them were what they used to call 'dead end' jobs in those days. The job that you'd er – no future in it – you couldn't get apprenticed or anything. Well, I finally did get apprenticed after twelve months in the woodworking, and I've been in woodworking ever since – different branches of it. What about religion in those days, was that an important part of your family life? It was for many people. No, in Seymour it was a bit, my mother always used to make us go to Sunday School, but that was while we were growing up. My father was of Catholic religion and my mother wasn't, so they didn't pursue it very much, although a cousin of my father was the Catholic Bishop of Darwin. JACK BOLAND Page 4 of 57 Well, if religion wasn't an important part of family life were politics, was there much of an interest in that? Oh, not to my knowledge as a growing up boy, it did later on when I found that er, I got a job, I got used up a lot I reckon, and still couldn't get a job after five years apprenticeship for another ten months. It was the day when they just put you off after your apprenticeship and this fellow I worked for he never even gave me any papers. I used to go for jobs and they'd say 'what proof you got that you've done five years apprenticeship', and I just didn't have any papers – he didn't give 'em to me. Was that carelessness or vindictiveness, or what? I don't know, I think – he was a bit of a funny fella – and, of course my father was never in industry like that where he was up with it, and he couldn't advise me, and er, he – I found out after many little jobs – that I should have been given those on finishing the job, say like you go and show people that I had another job, but I finally got to er, the er – a job that finally lasted a while and I had to join a union, which I was quite happy to do, because you'd do anything to keep working. It was about a months job and they said ' Ah, you'd better go up and see the Trades Hall Council and after them sending me on to the Exhibition Buildings – er what did they used to call them up in top of ... (5.00) Trades Hall Council Building? ..they sent me to this other place, where the factories inspector were, and they got on to this fellow, and he said – ah they were all over him like a rash, I think he must have been a bit funny because he reckoned he had been looking for me to get me to come back, but he knew exactly where I lived because I started off opposite where he was – I lived where he worked, you know, where the factory was in the first place. He took me back on and paid me full money until I went in the army, and I never did so least work in my life. You said that you were used up a bit, what do you mean by that? That's why I reckon I was used up. If I'd a had my papers, I reckon I could have got other jobs for those ten months instead of wandering the streets. It's a period when many Australians sort of also saw themselves as British. How did your family see themselves. Were you British Australians, were you British, how did you see yourselves? Ah, just Australians I think, yeah. But my father, being a bit from the Irish he (laughter) he wasn't very keen on it. What about the first world war and you understanding of it. Did the term ANZACS, for example, have any particular meaning, were there members of family who had also served in the first world war? No, nothing on our side of the family at all. Was that to do with the Irish background? Oh, I presume it would have been, it's er, it's a thing that's always said, though a lot of Irish blokes go into the armies, and that they – they're unusual sort of characters, they, individuals I'd suppose you'd call them.