Australians at War Film Archive John Chamberlain - Transcript of interview Date of interview: 1st December 2003 http://australiansatwarfilmarchive.unsw.edu.au/archive/1011 Tape 1 00:43 Now yes so John if possible on this first tape if you could possibly take us back as far as your memory allows. Perhaps also a little bit about your family background, your parents, siblings and so on. Okay, right, well I was born on the 8th January 1945. 01:00 And that is a relevant date because my marble was called up for National Service for that date and in fact I was in the first cohort called up or National Service. So that’s a relevant date. My early memories, I think like most kids I don’t have a great memory until I started school I would say. I went to school in Koska Hall in South Road, Brighton. Started there in Grade 1 01:30 in 1950. I’ve got memories of that school of course. In Grade 2 one of my best friends told me that he remembers the day he started in Grade 1 in 1951 and I was a Grade 2 student and recalls me pushing my way to the front of the queue where we used to have school parade before 02:00 school started. Well I don’t recall that, but that just shows that everyone has different memories of different things. So at Koska Hall I don’t think, the only thing was, I lived in Moorabbin which was not far away from Koska Hall. Later on I was able to ride my bike to school. It was the fifties and it was quite a good time to be a school kid I would say. Quite a good time really. 02:30 I was one of six children, I was the eldest. My father is or was a GP [General Practitioner], a doctor in the area. His military background is – he was in the air force in the Second World War as a doctor so he was a flight lieutenant. He didn’t leave Australia. He would’ve liked to have. He was slightly unusual in that he was of a group of doctors who was 03:00 taught to fly. So he would better understand the problems of pilots. So that’s his military background. Further back fro the First World War my aunt on my mother’s side has three brothers who all went to the First World War. We have a lot of their postcards sent back but they’re not particularly illuminating because they never say exactly where they are or what they’re doing. But they certainly had an involvement in the First World 03:30 War. My other background is on my wife’s Christine’s side, her uncle was killed in the Second World War he was a pilot. I – we believe it was a training accident off the coast of England and he is now buried in Bath cemetery and we’ve been lucky enough to see his grave. So that’s the background. 04:00 My time at my first school, Koska Hall, from Grades 1 to 8, very, very happy days. Anything to do with military matters not really with just one – with just one or two exceptions. In the fifties certainly the opposing – 04:30 the forces most opposed to communism were in many ways – you know apart from the United States government and the Cold War, etc., etc., I think also the Catholic Church was very opposed to communism. And I do have a memory from Grade 4, which in 1953 where the priest decided that he wanted to illuminate us on the 05:00 Korean War. And the picture that he painted was in fact a fairly frightening one for a boy in Grade 3 who’s aged about 8 and his statement was that in the Korean that it was very difficult to defeat the Chinese because they had so many soldiers and wave after 05:30 wave of troops would come until even though our forces may have superior fire power they would eventually run out of bullets. And I think this is not an uncommon thought from the fifties that people in Australia were definitely afraid of the Chinese. And of course, we’re talking about the Chinese intervention on behalf of the North Koreans. And that is something that I haven’t forgotten. 06:00 Towards the late fifties there was particularly in Boys’ Own sort of magazines that used to emanate from England, there used to be a small amount of reference to the Malayan emergency. And in particular, General Templar and one of his methods of dealing with the communist insurgency in Malaya was 06:30 a technique or idea of winning the hearts and minds of the people. And this has relevance to what I did later in Vietnam. And what they found in Malaya was that a lot of the villagers were very dissatisfied, a lot of them had certain – had communist sympathies and so what General Templar 07:00 did was he would first of all isolate the village, build a barrier around it and defend it, so that would keep the communist insurgents out and secondly he would do things for the villagers to improve their way of life. He might build a school for them. He might give them medicines. He might help them with agriculture. And this was winning the hearts and minds and this is 07:30 relevant to what happened later in Vietnam. So they’re my only two memories from school. Otherwise we did what everyone else did in the fifties. There was no television so we had the quiet games and we had the violent games. The quiet games were monopoly, snakes and ladders, chess if you were smart enough, draughts if you were not, tiddly winks all the rest of them. 08:00 The long… forgotten the name of that one. We had to – they’re all collapsed on a little coloured stick so you had to pick them up one by one. And then there were the violent games and in those days it was cowboys and Indians. So for Christmas or your birthday you’d have your Mum or Dad give you a cap gun, a six-shooter it’d be on the cowboy style and you’d buy your packets of caps for about 08:30 threepence in those days and have a great time shooting up all your friends and your brothers and running around corners. Everyone wanted to be the cowboys and not the Indians so often the Indians were imaginary and you were on the good side. Or you’d have cops and robbers. About 1956 Davy Crockett hit the movies so everyone bought their bush tail hats and their Davy Crockett outfits but certainly 09:00 kids aged from about 8 to 13 were a bit more military minded in those days. Now they’re all banned all the guns I’m afraid, well not afraid maybe. And this was – certainly and the movies we used to see in those days were certainly cops – were the cowboys and Indians, they were very popular indeed. So that’s about it. I that takes us up as far as primary 09:30 school. So we’re up to the mid fifties now? We’re up to the late fifties now. What about obviously there was TV until… 1956 yeah. Did you get TV in your household? Yeah, we were lucky we got TV in the first month or so. In time to see the Olympic Games in late ’56. Yeah we were lucky. In terms of your neighbourhood was that like one of the few sets? Would people gather around that or…? Yes we, we would’ve had one of the few sets 10:00 so I think the kids would come around and watch if they could. Otherwise they’d go to the television store and watch through the window as we remember from history. Yes. What about you mentioned Davy Crockett, what about the films of the period. I mean how often would you go to the pictures? And also radio was that also important…? Yeah sure, yes. Many kids went to the pictures every Saturday. 10:30 I can’t remember now but I suspect we used to get there about once a month and we would watch – a typical show would be a cartoon, a newsreel, a short, interval, intermission and then the main movie which really in those days more often than not was a cowboys and Indians movie for kids. Or it was ‘Ma and Pa Kettle.” The ‘Ma and Pa Kettle’ series, “Francis 11:00 the Talking Mule’ series. The serials, they often had a serial before intermission and the particularly popular series were ‘Hopalong Cassidy’ and the ‘Lone Ranger’ and you would hear ‘Long Ranger’ episode number 37 well of course you know each had to be self-contained and I think they were only about 10 or 15 minutes long. What else did we do? If you 11:30 could afford it you’d go up in the dress circle and that way you had a vantage point and if you wanted to bomb the people down below in the stalls you could. You could drop your lolly papers, your Minties and you would roll your Jaffas down the aisle. And you would make a hideous din, hideous, before the movie started and always the owner of the picture theatre would come and appeal for quiet and he’d say, “I won’t start this movie till you all be quiet.” And everyone would 12:00 of course shut up immediately then.