Australians at War Film Archive Noel Sanders (Sandy, Skipper) - Transcript of interview Date of interview: 16th June 2003 http://australiansatwarfilmarchive.unsw.edu.au/archive/526 Tape 1 00:42 Noel. We’ve got the tape running. We’re ready to start. Could you begin by telling me a bit about where you were born and brought up? I was brought up on the Macleay River, up on the North Coast on New South Wales. I was born at Kempsey, in the town there, 01:00 in Hollywood Private Hospital, the 4th of December, 1923. And my parents were farmers. I spent most of my early childhood in the lower Macleay, on the farm down there, and I attended primary school down there. And that was the extent of my formal education, primary school, I never did manage to get to high school. 01:30 But in later years that was, of course, detrimental to me joining the air force, so I had to work pretty hard to get on with that. How’s that? That’s good. Why didn’t you go to high school? Because in those days, farming, as it always has been, was a hard life and Dad couldn’t afford to have labour so I was the born labour. Being the eldest son. I was to 02:00 come in, and….I was quite happy to, at the age of fourteen, to join him on the farm and learn about the farm. What sort of work were you doing on the farm? The bulk of it was milking cows. Because we had a herd of between sixty and eighty cows. And it was twice a day, seven days a week, milking cows. So that put me off farming pretty quickly. There was other stuff 02:30 to do, as well, on the farm. We had crops, of course, and ploughing. I had to learn to plough and do all those sorts of things. But that was only a relatively short period of my life, because the war came along, you see, and I had an opportunity to get out of it. I never went back to it. Not really for any extended time. I did go back for a short time, but that was it. No, I wasn’t cut out to be a farmer. Let’s put it that 03:00 way. I just wasn’t cut out to be a farmer. I enjoyed cropping and things like that. I enjoy the crop, I’m living now, I’m growing crops and things in our gardens here, but I wasn’t cut out to be a farmer. I was always dead keen on flying, and in the early days they tell me that when any old biplane used to come across, I’d say “Up there! Up there!” And Dad would say, “Who’s that?” And I would say, “Smithie.” Kingsford Smith, you see. And then my uncle was involved 03:30 with the early airlines on the North Coast. He started Airlines of Australia, and then he changed to….well, they finished up as part of Ansett. George Robinson was well known in the aviation field, and I always thought it was a great thing if I could ever be a pilot. So that’s the situation there. When the war came along, 04:01 I thought, ‘Well, I like that. I wonder if I can get into the air force and become a pilot?’ So one day, when I was around the tender age of seventeen, a train came through the Northern rivers, recruiting people for the air force. And I said to Dad, “Can I go up and have an interview and see if they will accept me?” He said, “Oh well, you may as well. You won’t get in.” He said, “You won’t be well enough educated for them. But go 04:30 up and see them anyhow.” So I went up and saw them. They must have liked the look of me. They said, “Look Noel, your education is against you. But if you’re prepared to go and work hard at night school, what we’ll do, we’ll send you a course of lessons from Sydney, and you’ll do those by correspondence until you’re seventeen and a half, and then we’ll set a test for you and see how you are. And if at seventeen and a half, if we think you’re aircrew material, we’ll 05:01 put you on the Air Force Reserve and then you’ll have to attend night classes at Kempsey high school. How do you feel about?” I said, “I’m all for it.” So I had a very accommodating headmaster down at the Jerseyville public school, and I told him about it, and he said, “I’ll take you in hand, Noel.” So the subjects like algebra and mathematics and all the other things that I found a bit tedious and difficult, I took to as easy 05:30 under his tuition. And when I went for my tests at age seventeen and a half, they said, “Righto, you’re right. Now you’ve got to go up to high school now and continue and then we’ll put you on the Reserve and we’ll call you up when you’re eighteen.” So that’s what happened. I got a way out of the farm and got up to a job, in Kempsey, as a cycle mechanic with my uncle, and I went to night school there four nights a week 06:00 until I was eighteen. And the air force were quite happy with my progress, and I was called up. Do you remember when the war first broke out? Yes I do. Can you tell me where you were on that day? 1939. What age would I have been in 1939? 06:30 About fifteen or sixteen. I’d be on the farm then, in that case. I remember them all talking about it and that. My Dad said it would be over in no time. But it certainly wasn’t over in no time at all. But one of the things that stands out in my memory was listening to my father, who was a First World War veteran, talking to one of his old confederates, who had been a captain in the army, and they were talking 07:00 about the style of young men that were coming into the forces, in those days. And one said to the other, “Well, Bill,” he said. “You know they’re not up to our standard at all.” And I thought, ‘How dare they talk like that.’ And my father, God bless him, never excelled himself to any extent above the rank of private, or trooper as he was, in the artillery, and in later years he would find his son was 07:30 a long way further up the field than that. These are the sort of things that stick in your mind. Did your dad talk much about his war years? Not a lot to us kids. No. Anzac Day came around regularly of course. He was secretary of his local RSL [Returned and Services League], and we were expected to go into the Anzac services. It didn’t mean much to us, but it did to Dad and his family, because his brother next to him was 08:00 the first man to be killed from the Lower Macleay in World War I. He was lost at Lone Pine, at Gallipoli. They didn’t rub it into us, but they expected us to go to the Anzac services. We found it a bit tedious, but we used to go along. I suppose that’s where we got it. But if he ever had an old mate, staying overnight at the farm, they’d often 08:30 talk into the late hours of the night about their experiences. And we kids, would stick behind the doors and listen to what was going on. But he didn’t force it down our throats or anything at all. And I think it was, knowing now at my age, it must have been quite hard for him to expect that his sons would have to follow him into the war. 09:00 And they didn’t really ever think that I make the air force, because of my lack of education, but that proved to be wrong, and I got through there pretty well. What was your parents reaction when you were accepted? Resignation as much as anything. They were amazed, but resigned to it, I think they were, that I should be accepted for air crew. Air crew in those days was, of course, under the Empire Air Training Scheme. 09:30 You signed up for air crew but you were not guaranteed to become a pilot. You had to have many more tests to find out if you were suitable to become a pilot. But ambition’s a great thing you know. If you want to do a thing, you just work towards it, and I got through with flying colours, to become a pilot, so… What was the main thing behind your ambition do you think? I was just fascinated with this new business of flying, I think. 10:01 In retrospect, I probably left a good career behind in later life to go into menswear. I didn’t follow the air force after the war at all. I was just a natural flyer, I think, because I loved it.