Australians at War Film Archive

My father and mother.

I imagine, but I was the ninth. so.

Ninth.

No, one look at me and they said enough I think.

State School, Tyler Street, Preston, you know Tyler Street do you?

Yes, down there, Tyler Street State School, Preston Technical School, then work, army, back to work, retired.

Quick life, seventy years is gone before you know it.

Oh yeah, my father died in 1932 when I was two years old, obviously my mother with nine kids took it pretty hard. So we didn’t have much.

When I was born, sixteen.

Oh well yeah I suppose looking look back they did yeah. Being the youngest I don’t remember my father, can’t remember him, but I just grew up as life as it was.

Oh yeah, he worked in the railways went to the First [World] War, worked on the railways until he died

1932.

He was an electrician.

From what I’ve been told he worked in the, those tunnels that between Richmond and West Richmond is it? Oh no, between on this side of Jolimont.

Northcote, because we used to get the train at (UNCLEAR) station and go into the city, if you went in by train. And the tram used to finish at Tyler Street, and when the tram went down it went down to Dundas Street and then turned over what they call the hump and down through Ridges Road. And they had cable trams in High Street, Northcote. After cable trams went in 1941, they

brought double-decker buses in.

Yes, double-decker buses used to come out of Bourke Street and up through Clifton Hill and into Northcote.

Oh, ’41 to give or take a bit…….not sure.

I don’t know where they come from.

They used to go under the subway at Clifton Hill, and there wasn’t much room, you’d sit up the top there and, get up the top, but it obviously fitted under.

No. There was a lot of rubber and oil on the road at High Street, Plenty Road intersection till you had

V intersection and Dundas Street, where they used to do a U-turn and go back down, back to the terminus. And there was a lot of rubber and oil and all that there then. Pretty dirty sort of a corner, I suppose when you think of it.

My father died from gas inhalation from the First World

War, I’m told.

No, he was on a ship called the Ballarat, when he was going to the First War in 1916. He was on a ship called the Ballarat. Previous to the First War he was in the navy, and when the Ballarat got torpedoed in the English Channel,

being an old navy guy they shut him down into the, keep the engines going you know stoker, and nobody was lost off the Ballarat. They kept it afloat long enough to get all the troops off. But he was on the Ballarat when it got torpedoed. But I don’t know whether he actually did in the First War.

His medals?

I’ve got them there in the back.

Two medals from the First World War, I don’t know what they’re called, I should know but I don’t. I’ve got my grandfather’s Sudan medals down the back. I’ll get them after and show you. I’ve just got them darned together, there just on the one bar now, what do they call it, croupe manner do you know what croupe manner is? Yeah I’ve got them both, done just got them done this year. I only got them last year.

Yeah, often I wonder what it would be like to have had a father, but I didn’t. I just as I say I never knew him so I just grew up without him.

Oh, my elder brothers used to take me here there, football and see the Tigers.

Oh yes, unfortunately sometimes.

Yeah when? It was just from my point of view it was a fact of life and I didn’t have a father and I just grew up without one. My mother was always there, always.

Yeah I was only talking to one of my sisters

the other day and she just said the same thing, how did she manage.

I don’t think so. I don’t know. I’m not being disrespectful, women in those days did, had to make things.

She was a tailoress before, apparently before she got married. So you got, being the youngest of five boys I got hand me down pants and things, with what they called bull’s eyes in them days, patches now. My Mum didn’t care about patches as long as it wasn’t a hole. And food was rabbits and pigeons

and she was a good cook. We never went hungry, got to admit that even in those years we never went hungry. So she was an excellent provider.

We used to come up here and get them yeah. Not far.

Oh this was, you know where Target is? Just there. Target was a dairy

farm. On the other side where Reservoir High School, that was a diary farm. There was farms out here.

Oh it was, traffic wise it was Plenty Road was a two little lane highway or a road. And when I was, before I was a teenager,

if we had a bike we could ride, the other kids we’d ride up High Street to Settlement Road, across Settlement Road to Plenty Road and back home again, and then we’d go home and tell Mum about the country. Cause it was country then, WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK farms and diary farms. Thomastown many years ago was called German Town and there was a hanging grain store there in

High Street called Gibbs Brothers and they used to deliver wheat, chaff, pole bran, wood and you’d go for a ride in their cart. They’d let you go for a ride with them pulled by Clydesdale horses, it was great fun, nothing else to do, it was good.

Well it was a big old place in Preston and boys in one room, girls in another room, and Mum in the front room. Pretty big rooms.

Pardon?

No, no strangely enough we didn’t. My brother that’s just older than me he and I just slept in a double bed for a while.

I think I was about six years old when my oldest brother, and my oldest sister got married. They got married in the same year I think, 36 or 37. So that made probably a bit more room.

Bit of both yeah, probably a

bit of both. Boys had to do, oh we had WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s and pigeons and things like that. And when the war came, my three older brothers were in the air force and my brother, older than me, he wouldn’t go in the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK pen, so it was left to me to go and do, clean the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK pen out and get the eggs and feed them, and water them or whatever.

It just sort of came naturally you had to do those things.

Every Sunday, every Monday morning everybody lined up on the asphalt, courtyard of the school and saluted the flag and sang God Save the King

in the 30’s. Salute the flag and sang God Save the King. And Anzac or the prevalence of Anzac Day, cause the previous day I’d wear my grandfather’s medals to school, and the kids that could wear medals wore medals.

No not really, just that they were my grandfather’s medals.

Yeah who wanted to wear which medal yeah. Well at that stage the others were probably working, but my older brother and I, it was a bit of a fight to see who wore which medal.

Well I used to like my grandfather’s medals cause the Great War was for the Great War, you know Germany and that, but Sudan, and still does to this day, seems a fascinating place for some Australian to go and fight a war. And that was before Federation and they were a state corps, New South Wales State Corps I suppose.

So it was before Federation, before the AIF [Australian Imperial Force]. So I used to like my grandfather’s medals, preferred them, strangely enough.

Not that I can remember.

Armistice Day yeah. They had, it wasn’t a big service from memory just

a minute’s silence. More like what they do today, most people stop at 11.00 a.m. providing you’re not driving on the road. But yeah, schools, 11 o’clock they stopped for a minute’s silence and then got on with what they were doing.

No I think most in that area where I lived, most well didn’t have much, but I don’t think kids went hungry really from my memory anyway. I was probably in the later year of the Depression, I started school in 1935 so we’d have reached the end of it. And before that you don’t remember much anyway do you?

No, I didn’t no.

In 1939?

Yeah 1939, September the 1st. Robert Menzies [Prime Minister], no TV, wireless, everybody listened to the radio of a night,

like watching Days of Our Lives. I think every Sunday night there was an hour play.

No wasn’t Blue Hill I think it was Lux’s Radio House, but they interrupted that, Menzies cultured voice came on, “We have joined England and declared war on Germany.” And I was only 9, not my older brother, one older than me but the three others obviously were of age,

the World War, and not knowing the Japanese were going to come in 18 months later.

World War II.

Well as far as I can remember.

Well the war didn’t really get down here in that respect till the Japanese came in a bombed the country was involved obviously. Men and women joined the services, but they all went overseas to do their fighting. But if you’ve ever been,

I hope you never do, but if you’ve ever been to a country that’s been through a war they often say it’s better there than here, it is.

Devastation, bodies, mainly devastation,

you wouldn’t want to see it.

I hope you don’t have to. But it would be better there than here let me tell you that much, wherever it is.

Well my mother, I now my mother was there and I can’t remember how many of the family were present. My oldest brother and oldest sister were married and gone so that would have been 7, three of my sisters I’d imagine, I don’t know about the…..

oh it would have been my three sisters and my brother and I, one of my brothers and I. And I know my mother was devastated, I can clearly remember that. A World War obviously didn’t impress her, it was just another war when they said it to me, but she wasn’t very impressed, I can remember that.

Yeah well you know my father had been through the First War and in ’43, my oldest sister, not my oldest sister she was married, but another sister joined the Women’s Army, so during the Second [World] War I had three brothers in the air force and a sister in the army. And when Korea came around I was already in the army,

I went to Korea and by that time my mother was in her late 60s. And I never thought about it then, but I suppose she did it pretty hard.

Hmm.

In the RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] they went up to the islands. I think they were what they call armourers, loading, they weren’t pilots they were armourers, fitting out planes with ammunition. They never spoke about it when they came home to me.

But they were in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands and those places.

Asking them?

Oh, they didn’t speak about the actual war part of it, they just spoke about the natives and obviously the different lifestyle between New Guinea and Asia and our lifestyle.

Then which is a bit different to what it is now.

I think they were obviously not in fighting, they were more strafed, Japanese planes strafed and things,

they didn’t get into the actual trench warfare part of it if that’s the way you’re looking for it.

They just said that they got into the trenches when the Japanese would bomb them.

Oh that’s about basically what it was, they weren’t

in trench warfare, like I was in Korea. But their part in the war was to keep the planes ammunition line going and if the Japanese came to bomb them then they just had to get in trenches and ride it out there.

She was a signaller, in the signals.

I don’t know whether she, I honestly don’t know whether she ever left Melbourne. But she was in the signal part of the army, ladies’ army. Signals usually.

Oh she looked all right, redhead like I was, I was going to say me, like I was.

Yeah.

No I didn’t, I could have looked that. It didn’t hit me for years for a long time.

No, you just do you’re, what you’ve got to do. You got out and do the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s and feed the pigeons

and kill them when she wanted them killed. I just didn’t enter my head that she was doing it as hard as she did, took a long long time to figure out. When you get your own kids and you’re battling to feed them and send them to school and make sure they’re hopefully there on the right path. Then you realise what my Mum went through.

Yeah.

Well we dig a trench in the back yard which we filled with water, so it wasn’t any good anyway. Not knowing how to dig trenches and

roof them so that the water wouldn’t get in. You’d dig a trench up in the backyard just in case we ever needed it, I think most houses did. Went to school everyday, right through to the end of the war in 1945 when I was at Preston Tech, when the war finished.

So it was, it didn’t, even though you’d get the papers and I didn’t get the papers in them days, I used to get a couple of shillings a week. Even though the war was on and going life, school life went on for me.

I think everybody was told to dig a

trench.

No I can’t. I just know I can remember my mother clearly saying to my brother and I, you’ve got to go up, and my brother is only a couple of years older than me, one of them. You got up the back yard and dig a trench, but the trench was just a big hole, never thought about a roof or how to stop the water getting in or anything like that.

Blackouts, they asked you to line the, cause a lot of people in those days had holland blinds.

Holland, not venetian, holland blinds are,

had to cover the board around between the blind and the actually end of the windows. So my mother used to make drapes like you’ve got there and just cover the blind of it to keep it dark.

Just went up and down with a roller, straight up and down.

No not that I know of. In old pictures, in old English pictures especially you see what they call local (UNCLEAR) they call them, they walk around, I didn’t see any of that.

Yep. Butter and I suppose bacon, chicken was a once a year job, apart from our own WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s.

Ours? Oh just family use, ours yes,

just family use the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s we had, that was just for family use. And Mum obviously used the eggs, apart from having eggs for breakfast you used the eggs for cooking. yeah just for family use, our WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s.

Pigeons, one of my brothers older brother that was in the RAAF, he kept pigeons before the war. I used to

look after them when he was away and every now and again for a change we would have pigeon pie. Cause you could breed pigeons and WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s.

Oh yes, I think the biggest was, fantail pigeon in there was a squab, squab with a big, had a bit of meat on it.

So you could breed those and get a bite to eat of them.

That was the worst part of it, even WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s didn’t like doing that, didn’t mind killing them.

Yeah, hold the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK by the two legs and the two wings, and put it on the block and cut its head off and let it go and it will take off.

Yeah, I had a big black rooster, I brought it down the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK farm, brought the brown egg down to the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK farm and I had some bantams, and I put the big brown egg under the bantams and it came out as black, turned out to be a big black rooster. And he was mean, he was mean, ever seen a WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK go off? And you couldn’t turn your back on him. When my mother, one day she said he’s got to go, so lopped his head off and

let him go and he chased my brother down the yard, I’ll never forget it, it was hilarious, he couldn’t do it.

A bit of?

No, not that I know of.

Mainly what was in the daily newspaper and the wireless, everybody listened to the new obviously. When the new sessions came on the wireless and the daily newspapers.

If there was a big battle such as Tobruk, what was it, eleven I think. You’d hope that they didn’t get overrun and they didn’t

obviously get killed and that they would win that battle. Because obviously you know two sides to war and you were on one side unless you’re in Switzerland and they were just waiting there to make money. So just hoping that we would win that whatever battle was going on at that time. And when the Japanese came in it was the same thing,

could they keep them from coming into Australia. The Americans came and there was a bit of trade in the American cigarettes.

I didn’t, I was living at home.

You know I liked Japan, when I was away for two years I virtually had twelve months in Japan and nice place. But an old Japanese bloke told me just probably a day or two before I came home, “We didn’t win the one, we mightn’t win the next won, but a hundred years we’ll win one,” and I always remember that. Whether their thinking changed

since cause obviously there’s generations gone by, hopefully.

No we used to play footy, cricket, no we didn’t play war. More into sports, now you’ve mentioned that I’ve just thought about it,

probably they, they the teachers thought that sport was a better outlet than war. So at school yeah we didn’t play war, it was more sport. Wasn’t many footballers around.

Oh the Tigers,

well Jack Tyler was playing and they always had a team. I think there was only one team dropped out, Geelong.

I think it was Geelong, Geelong dropped out. Maybe because of the travel in those days, obviously the road wasn’t as good as it is now. And with the twelve teams in Victoria, the old VFL [Victorian Football League], so there was eleven in there for a while.

But everybody sort of had a football team to follow, or they still do don’t they.

I think I went to……. probably ’44 when we lost.

Won ’43, no

didn’t go to ’43 they were away, ’44, I think my eldest brother was home and took me to the final. And I think yeah we lost that one.

Oh you just used to go in and pay, no tickets. Corporate bodies have stuffed the whole thing up, I know they’ve got to get money and all this but yeah.

No in those days, even right up to 1950 you could just go to the MCG [Melbourne Cricket Ground] and pay at the gate and walk in the gate.

My parents lived in Richmond before they went to Preston, and my older brothers and sisters, went to school in Richmond. And by the time

I came along it was just Richmond.

What other?

Oh no I had to go to Sunday school. My mother was a Methodist, strict Methodist.

No drink no smoke, no girls.

For a little while. I stuck to the path for a little while I should say. Yeah, we had to go to Sunday school and she give us a penny to put in the plate which we’d spend on a lolly or. Anyway up until bloody

early teens.

Yes I did. Yep. I obviously didn’t want it to keep going and people to get killed and all that, but I was

wondering not hoping, whether I’d get to the age where I could join up and go to the war. I was fifteen when it finished, the Second World War.

Didn’t have cadets then, not at Preston Tech anyway.

No when I was fifteen I went down to join the navy and they gave me a foot in the bum and sent me home. I wouldn’t have got in anyway.

Just turned me round and give me a kick in the bum and tell me to go home.

Yep.

Yep, out the door.

Well it would be yeah, the coppers would give you a belt over the ear if you were down in Preston on a Friday night or a Saturday to go to the pictures. And if the copper didn’t like the look

of you, he’d give you a kick in the bum. And they’d do it to, they’d physically do it, twist your ear and them kick you up the bum, “Get home young Dey!” “Yes sir!”

Was learning. Learning life.

Within reason? Well, there was movies and dances, there was the local movies and dances.

There was sport, football and cricket in the summer, nothing much else I don’t think from memory.

Oh well before the war there was Captain Blake, and I thought Jack Dye was Captain Blake, well he was in the finish. But he just atomised Errol Flynn.

What other movies was there… oh a lot of Errol Flynn movies wasn’t they, Robin Hood died with their boots on. And then during the war there was politically motivated movies Out of Burma or something, Errol Flynn again. Most

people either went to a dance or a movie on a Saturday night, and you just put a collar and tie on, no blue jeans.

Oh, you think America was the ultimate, because their movies a lot of those

Fred Astaire type movies and Ginger Rogers and Clark Gable. They’d be dressed up to the nines, tuxedos and all those things, and you didn’t see here. So as a young person you would think was it the normal thing over there, obviously it wasn’t, but they just seemed up

market. And I’ve been to America and it’s not.

The Yanks that were in town, obviously a lot of them were young fellows, not much older than I. They were camped at MCG and Moore Park, and we used to sneak over there and get cigarettes and then we’d sell them, packets of

cigarettes.

Over to the American camp.

Yeah, buy them off the Yanks, or ask them for a packet as a sort of a thirteen, fourteen year old teenager, ask them for a packet of cigarettes, and we would take it to school and sell it to the teachers.

Yeah.

Oh well it was rather silly I suppose as soon as you got it you’d spend it on something else, but they were pretty good that way with kids.

Oh I’d go to the pictures, I bought a bike, push bike.

Yeah, well I had a paper round,

and to buy a pushbike was only about five or eight quid or something, but I had to pay it off, fifty cents a week or whatever it was. So you sell a packet or two of cigarettes and sometimes you’d have to buy a carton of cigarettes if you had enough money, I think it was $1.80 and you could sell it for about $3.00 if you smart

enough.

Well in the movies they’re sort of glamorised aren’t they? But when you meet them, they’re just like you and I.

Not that I know of.

She mightn’t have told me yeah. She finished up

when she got out of the army she went and did nursing, and she got married when I was in Korea actually, went to Perth to live and never saw her for years and years.

I don’t think older people liked it but we didn’t care, as young kids. We thought it was fantastic doing the

deals. But we thought it was great. And they in my mind they were here to save us, save our country, so I just sort of accepted it. I didn’t see it as derogatory.

What did she do for the war effort?

No I think she just kept us going.

No that’s fine, you’ll ask and I’ll answer.

No that’s right. No the woman that lived across the road, or after the war actually, she got involved with them. She was at the hospital, heavily into that for donkey’s years. Probably turn over in her grave if she knew they’d sold it. But I know what you’re saying, but no she just had a family to run and she run her family.

I don’t think we were scared, we just hoped they didn’t get here. I don’t think we’re ever scared of them, just hoped that they didn’t get, and as I say you read the paper or listen to the news and there was a battle on, whether it was Wau or Wewak or wherever it happen to be and just hope the next news service that

we won it. That’s the way I looked at it.

Oh Kokoda Trail yeah. That’s another you’d hope you know, there again be it the news, no TV, had to be the wireless or the newspaper, and you’d just hope we would finish up in front, we’d win.

I thought they were really yellow, red, black and white at Sunday school. And I thought they were yellow, and the red Indian was red and the black man was black which he probably is, some are different coloured blacks than others, with due respect. But the Red Indians when you see them in America and Japanese and the Chinese and the Koreans and the Taiwanese

or whoever ain’t yellow are they’re not yellow, I should say.

Yeah dose of malaria yeah. But I’ve had hepatitis and yellow jaundice and went yellower than they are. So I don’t know who made them yellow but.

I had a cousin, my mother’s sister’s

boy, who was about ten years older than I was. He got killed in Africa somewhere, that’s about as close to me personally. But got killed in the Second War. My three brothers came home and my sister.

Peace, in Europe or Pacific?

Europe, oh Europe was 1944, I was at Preston Tech. I don’t clearly remember the exact place I was, I don’t think there was

as much excitement, obviously everybody was pleased and jumped up and down that the war was over. But the Pacific War was still going, and closer to home. So there wasn’t the physical rejoicing that went on. By the time that the Japanese War finished and I was fifteen

and when word came through everybody was mad then. I went to the city and they were riding on the tops of trams they just went mad, people went mad everywhere, and you just couldn’t move in the city. Talk about MCG crowds, phoof, they just went mad.

What did I see, crowds of people and everybody was singing and dancing, trying to dance, and just jumping around they, it was just a feeling of elation, that the war had finished, yeah the war had finished.

No, I didn’t drink then, at fifteen I didn’t have a beer no, no I didn’t.

There was still a lot of shortage, commodity wise, of many things. I finished school in 1945 and got a job as a apprentice plasterer.

We started working on commission homes over in Heidelberg. Each home they classed A, B C, D and F or something so that they’d just reverse the angle and in the end when you walked into a home you knew which size sheet of plaster went on each wall. They just reversed the shape and

so you could walk in, what I’m saying is you could walk into a room and you knew exactly the size, that was six by six, I think.

The place started to build up and if you couldn’t get plaster they’d used Canite. But only from the picture rail, which they don’t have these days. Houses in those days you used to have picture rails round, and

from the picture rail to the ceiling was called a freeze sheet and if they didn’t have plaster they’d put a, make it out of Canite, and the shelling could be made out of plaster or Canite.

The machines were men.

Cause I made plaster for years, and till they did bring machines in to do it, and that would be

in the ’50s.

I think they put picture rail in then, now you hang the picture where you want it, at the height you want it, in those days they put a picture rail around about eighteen inches to whatever it was from the….. again the rooms in the older houses, you know, were different heights to the rooms in these houses.

Even could be a bit smaller than ours these days…… when I was born in the house I think they had twelve foot ceilings, and they were lath and plaster, you know what they are? Lath and plaster is different to fibro or solid plaster, lath and plaster was they put strips of timber between, on the walls, on the

timber across the walls like about an inch wide leave a space and then another stick of wood about an 1/8th of a inch thick. And inch wide and 1/8th of an inch thick and they put it right across the walls and leave a gap about a ¼ of a inch between each piece of wood. And then they’d float cement and plaster into that.

Well, it’s an old place.

Yeah, well, when you want to get that off it’s a mongrel job, I’ve done a few, not for years renovations. You can plaster over them, cheaper ways, but if you want to take that off well it just chokes you, you’ve got to wear a mask and yeah, it’s a mongrel of a job that.

Yeah it is, well there’s concrete in it, cement at the back of it and they apply the plaster over it.

Yeah.

Oh no, I was working for WH Cochrane and Sons, the plasters, and they worked with AV Jennings, who were building commission homes. As I say, I was never out of work. We

did a lot of houses, the original places in Beattie Street I think was the first one, in Heidelberg, did a lot of commission homes there before they moved out. Later on we finished up doing the [Royal] Children’s Hospital, quite a few big places.

Yeah there was a lot of shortages that’s what I say if you couldn’t get enough plaster they would use Canite, but they wouldn’t use Canite on walls. And the wall

sheet was a little bit thicker than a frieze sheet, you know for the picture rail to the ceiling or the ceiling sheet, just a fraction.

Yeah.

Asbestos, that was mainly on roofs, if they couldn’t get tiles they could put in asbestos roofing. Didn’t know about asbestos in them days, didn’t know what it meant, didn’t know what it

could do. Crawl over asbestos roofs, yeah, underneath them.

Yeah, it was like fibro sheets.

AV Jennings and I don’t know there used to be a regulation that joists had to be eighteen inches apart and I think if you go back through the files somewhere you will find that AV Jennings was one of the first companies to make it twenty-one inches. So

if you multiply, it’s only three inches, but over the whole, one house its saves so many feet of timber, and over an estate they save a lot of timber. So that’s just one example.

Well not to supply homes, we just

being the plasterer, the actually framework and the roof would be on before the plasterer went in so if it did rain the plaster board wouldn’t get wet, the plaster sheet wouldn’t get wet, before plaster board. So we just did what was available, whether it was available, quick enough is somebody else’s responsibility, not ours.

Yeah I knew that they, a lot of ex servicemen went into business like a fruit shop and he’d have on his own, a lot of shops in those days would have verandahs

out over the footpath, and they would paint either on the window or on the fascia board EX AIF or EX RAAF to advertise the fact that he was an ex serviceman. But whatever business that those ex servicemen run they would advertise that they were ex servicemen.

Well they were all married and gone at that stage, and obviously not at home. I think the oldest brother married before the war, the other one I think he married……..I was about eleven I think. I think he got married just before

Japan came in the war. Both of them, so the three of them that were in the RAAF were married before Japan came into the war.

One of them was a, became a cook and he worked as a, he was a chef at (UNCLEAR)

for quite a number of years. My eldest brother he got like a TB [tuberculosis], picked up in the islands, he died at thirty-six and the other, the third one, he became a builder. He built up around Ferntree Gully for many years and then he sold up his business up

there and moved to Tyers, up out of Sale, not Sale, Traralgon and he bought a dairy farm, and he run the dairy farm till he died.

You had to be in the, as an apprentice I didn’t have to be in the union, but when I came back I had to join the union yeah. I don’t know whether it was Communists, I don’t believe it was, Plasterer’s Union or something,

whatever it was. But there was a fear of Communism, that’s why a lot went to Korea. It was sort of indoctrinated, that our way of life wasn’t what Communists wanted or we didn’t want their way of life, or whatever way you want to put it.

That’s one of the reasons I did go to Korea

At school, they’d, what was it, Social Studies. Ours was Free Enterprise, Communists we were told that if you had a farm, a twenty acre farm,

fifteen went to the Government and five to you. So if you had a twenty acre farm out here you run the twenty acres and sold what you could. So that was the way I took it anyway.

It wasn’t so much what they looked like, it was just the fact that the relevant Government, said that’s what’s going to happen. But our way of life our free democratic way of life as we know it now was in jeopardy of Communism took hold here. There was a few good

blues went on to let me tell you.

On the Yarra [River] bank, go down there and have a bit of fun.

Oh yeah, just to see what happened.

Oh yeah they’d get up on the soap boxes and speak and people go past and either cheer or jeer depending

which angle you were from.

Oh yeah you start to heckle and tell them they didn’t know what they were talking about and depending on, it wasn’t so much the speaker as the supporter base I suppose. Whether there was any supporter base there or if they took exception to what you said

or they said. You could fight quite easy.

It was the funny part because that impression everybody thought that you knew each other, well we knew nearly everybody knew each other in that place, then because it was getting towards the end of the line,

suburban wise, after that was all farms. No I don’t think, you would if you’d been there before down on the Yarra bank, you would know who to look for yeah. Does that answer your question?

Probably,

they had their opinions, we had ours.

Oh there’d be four or five of us from Preston, we’d go in there just to see what happened.

Oh no, you didn’t go out in gangs looking for trouble, you’d go down there just to listen to a minister

talking and then a few yards further up the road there’d be another, different things.

Yep.

A lot of it went on a Sunday and subject…. there might be ten there, and they’d all be on different subjects.

Yeah, and then you could,

if you wanted to you could object, you’d go to where the commoner was, give him a bit of a stir.

I don’t think they had a great supporter base, Communism, I really don’t. I know there was a few obviously. Probably still a few around, but they didn’t have a great

supporter base. I would say number wise we objectors to Communism would have a stronger base to work from.

I didn’t join the Masons, my father was a Freemason and my uncle was a Freemason, my brothers were Freemasons and I never joined for years. I knew

all about it obviously, when I was a child, and my father died and my father’s work used have a Christmas party every year and my mother would take my older brother and maybe a sister or two and me, to their Christmas break-up, and Father Christmas would give you a present which is great. So I knew about Freemasons, but I never occurred to me, I never

ever asked my brothers about it, or my brother-in-law. But when I got to my forties, one of my son-in-laws was here in this house, he was born in Scotland, and

him and my daughter were going to get married and they had a rehearsal in the church and we came back here with his best man and groomsman and my brother was here and next thing the best man and the groomsman and my brother up one end of the kitchen and my son-in-law and I down the other, and he said, “What are they talking about?”

Yes, so my son-in law and I are down one end, my future son-in-law, and my brother and the

best man and groom up the other end. And my son-in-law said, “What are they talking about?” I said, “They’re Freemasons.” He said, “How do you know?” I said, “Well you and I aren’t, and they are and I know my brother is so obviously they are,” and not long after that, he my son came to me and said that he was going to join, and said that if something happen to him the Freemasons looked after one another and that sort of thing, so I started to think about it a bit and I

did. And also because it’s a charitable organisation and even though my wife’s Catholic and I go to mass with her, I’m not a Catholic as in that part of the religion. But I take her to church, cause she doesn’t drive. She goes to meetings with me and puts on the supper with other ladies, so we have a good arrangement yeah.

My brother went twenty-five years or more ago he went to America and into Mexico, and he went into a big Catholic Church and he met one of the cardinals with the red robe is it? And being a typical Australian he walked up and said, “Gday,” not a church service it was just a walk in off the street, he walked in and said, “G’day,” and shook hands and he was a Freemason.

The cardinal, yeah.

By shaking his hand.

Just a handshake.

Well you’ve got a handshake that you can tell who is and who isn’t, and he was. So he said that

he used Freemason to better his mind, clear his mind, and I found that since I’ve been in it, and I’ve been in it thirty-odd years now. Keeps the mind active.

Probably, but then there’s

words, words that you and I both know but the way you phrase them. You won’t get me any further. Look as I said to you before we started that it’s all in the Bible and it is but it’s the way you, whoever’s a Freemason can say a phrase that’s quite common and you pick it up and you will throw one back,

it’s just phrases.

Ah that’s a good question. That’s a very good question, why does it have to have secrecy? I suppose to keep it as… to keep it a club like it is, or organisation like it is.

Yeah but not now, well there’s not many round now.

No, they wouldn’t, with due respect.

Oh, you know, you were asked by somebody that is a Freemason can you join. I think people you know, if they don’t know anybody that’s a Freemason

but they want to join they can go to the Dallas Brooks Hall in Melbourne, if they’re in Melbourne and they can go and just ask there. And they put them through a interview, but the first things they ask you is, “Do you believe in a supreme being?” You can be a Catholic, you can be a Protestant, you can be a Buddhist, you can be an Afghan, whatever they

believe in. But as long as you believe in something, and charity is the main thing, but they’re very similar.

No

I left that and joined the army, basically for more money, in 1948 I joined the army. I turned 18 in April and I joined the army in June. Pay was better.

I signed on for six years. So I was in the army from 1948 to

1954.

Security, just security cause it was between the Second War and Korea, so there was no thought of actual war then, didn’t even know where Korea was, I don’t think.

Keep me on the straight and narrow.

Probably.

Looking for something. I don’t regret it, I think it was good. I think the discipline was good. People wouldn’t take it now, but I think it was good.

It got a bit mundane, you know. As I said before you could walk into a home and

you came to a street and you knew whether it was A, B, C…… and the next was A, B…… it was just rotation it was just bang bang bang, like a assembly line and it just got a bit sort of mundane putting plaster in houses.

Oh it was’ people were

still getting over it, trying to re-establish their lives. There wasn’t a great deal of cars, no TVs, so there was picture shows and dances. And trying to re-build life.

Well ex people yeah walk around nowadays, you very rarely see it. I think a serviceman on the street, right up until after Korea you could see service personnel, army navy and air force walk around the streets, and it was just the normal thing in uniform, it was just the normal thing.

I don’t know what it was like during the Second World War, but when I joined the army we went out to a place called Greta in New South Wales, to do what they call rookie training and they teach you the basics of

self defence, how to fire a rifle, Owen gun and Bren gun and some mortar, and you do the bull ring and get fit

The bull ring is PT [physical training],

round and round like footballers train, but with a rifle.

My Mum?

I don’t think she was too happy, but the war, wasn’t one before Korea, a couple of years before Korea so, and she probably thought that it would straighten me out.

A little on the wild side, started to drink.

I’m not Catholic, I don’t know.

Yeah, well my mother wouldn’t allow alcohol in the house, she was very very strict about that. So when I started to drink a bit, my sisters would tell her, I don’t think she knew so much but my sisters used to dob me in. I suppose she thought I surmise she thought

the army might you know. With no father and my brother’s gone apart from my brother older than me and he’s only two years older than me. She most probably thought it would do the right thing.

Yeah, where was I, we came back from Ingleburn in Sydney, Ingleburn Camp

and I came down with yellow jaundice, there was three of us we finished up in a isolation ward at Ingleburn Army Hospital. Cup Day [Melbourne Cup Day], 1948.

Good question, anyway. I think the kid was a 16 year old jockey, I can remember that. Came down with yellow jaundice

as it turned out, and I ended up in hospital until about Christmas. No butter, no dairy food, no red meat and all that sort of stuff until we got better. And then they sent us home on leave and when we came back off leave, all the guys we were trained with and been together with had gone to Japan. So we put

in for a transfer to go to Japan and we finished up going to Duntroon, cutting lawns and washing dishes. And by that time it was early 1949 so we weren’t too happy. But the rest of them had gone to Japan and we got shot down there.

Pretty basic, tents

no barracks, it was tent accommodation. They had wood on the floor but…. a canvas stretcher and palliasses with straw and stuff in it, pretty basic. And about twenty to a tent.

When I joined up it was still the original Second World War type uniform. I think it was 1949 before they bought in battle dress of shirt and tie. I’d been in the army probably 18 months before that happened.

Pay….

I think I was getting 9 bob a day, seven days a week, you got paid for seven days a week.

Gone up a bit, yeah.

At that time

1950 I was at Puckapunyal in what they call the service corps, the Royal Australian Army Service Corps, which is supply and transport. And when it was announced that the Korean War had started and the United Nations were asking for support, and we obviously, the guys I was with, were hoping to be able to go to

Korea. But the Australians’ involvement in Korea was army, infantry and then they had navy and air force and obviously nurses, some air force and army nurses. So we waited and we waited, and being in the service corps and not the infantry we didn’t ask to go.

And I put in for a transfer to the infantry and I got knocked back, four or five times. Until I went to the CO [Commanding Officer] of our unit and told him I wanted to go to Korea, I wanted a transfer and I wanted to go to Korea, otherwise back to the days of playing up.

So I got a transfer. And I left Australia in March 52, and by that time the war was static in Korea. I’ll rephrase that, I didn’t go to Korea, I went to Japan. And with other people we went on a Qantas flight, civilian Qantas flight, twenty-two Australian soldiers on a Qantas. We flew from Sydney to Darwin overnight, the next day we flew from Darwin to a place called Labio

in Borneo, and we stayed in Borneo the night. And they put us up in a big dormitory there. And the next day we flew from Labio to Hong Kong and we stayed in Hong Kong a night, then we flew from Hong Kong to a place called Iwakuni, where the 77 Squadron were based. Iwakuni we got a launch across to Kure

and put into a RHU [Reinforcement Holding Unit] unit, holding unit in Hiro, where they trained us until I went to Korea in the 6th June 1952. And they trained us at old Japanese training camps, battle schools.

No, they didn’t give me a reason, all that CO would say was we might go, we might go. But as it turned out all they wanted was infantry. And the Kiwis were our artillery, supply and transport actually.

Oh no wasn’t personal.

Before or when I went there?

Oh he was Second World War bloke, Jack Williams, he was a nice fellow but it took a long long time, nearly two years before I got my transfer. Or before he would transfer me, I don’t know if he was holding it up, or higher up was holding it up, I don’t know.

Yeah I felt,

just personally I felt that I wasn’t doing what I should be doing. As I said before being bought up at school, Monday morning, salute the flag and sing God Save the King, patriotic. I felt that I had been in the army for two years at that time, when the Korean War started, I should have been there. That’s the way I felt.

Didn’t work out that way.

You mean acting up?

You just go AWL [Absent Without Leave] for a few days, come back and they’d fine you, fine you money and fine you confined to barracks.

Oh no.

Pardon?

Oh yeah, I signed on for six years. But no by playing up, you go AWL and two or three days whatever you wanted to do. And then you go back and they’d march you in and they’d say what did you do and you’d tell him and he’d fine you a pound and confined to barracks for seven days, you weren’t allowed out.

For?

I spent a lot of time in Seymour, and Seymour was full of soldiers, five pubs and a plonk shop.

Beer wasn’t readily available even right up until I went away, I think from memory, pubs would open from 10 o’clock to 6 o’clock in those days. 6 o’clock closing, pubs would open at 10, the wine and spirits would be on all day, beer would come on at midday until 2 o’clock and the beer would go off until4

and then the beer would come on again until4 to6 because of beer rationing, and bottles were pretty hard to get unlike now. No stubbies or cans I think, big bottles. So if we were going to have a day out we’d go to the pub from 12 till 2, on a Saturday, if we weren’t working. Then we’d go round the plonk shop and we’d sit of the cases of

peaches or whatever and he had the biggest barrel you had ever seen, it wouldn’t fit in that door there. And we’d drink a bit of plonk until 4 o’clock and then somebody would say the pub’s back, beer’s back at the pub and we might as well stop here seeing we’re here, so we did.

I don’t ever remember being approached by ex servicemen from the Second War. After I came home I did. Before I went away I never had any medals or ribbons, they used to wear ribbons on uniforms, not so much medals.

So I never had any medals, ribbons on the uniform. But after I came home and I was home for a few months before I got out of the army, then they would ask you, where you’d been, or they knew where you’d been, but what it was like.

The King died in….

I think she took over in 1952.

Yes well it went from the King, well it’s still HRH isn’t it, ‘His Royal Highness’. So it just went from him to her.

A toast, it’s the same principal as with her now, toast to the King, toast to the Queen.

I don’t know, I can’t honestly answer that, because I think they, I was going to say waste money but they don’t waste money, they gifted.

Yeah, well I’m trying to think of what to say. They’re gifted, well they get their fair whack from the Treasury. But after all they’re only human like you and I, but in the other respect the Yanks haven’t got a King and Queen.

A lot of other countries haven’t either, so I suppose it’s a bit of each way.

Yeah, ‘King and Country’.

Yeah, we were a Commonwealth country. Actually when,

well when I went into Korea there was a Commonwealth division, which was made up of UK, which is England, Scotland, Welsh, and Welsh had a battalion in. Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians, South Africans had a wing of an air force, so it was a Commonwealth division.

And they had Empire Games then, what do they call them, Commonwealth Games now, they called it Empire Games then I think. And so there was a feeling of British you know, not dominated, Commonwealth, we were all part of the British Commonwealth. India

had a MASH [Mobile Army Surgical Hospital] unit, and we were all part of that.

One of achievement, wonder, what’s it going to be like, found out. Duty,

because I’d signed on for the army and I loved my country and I thought it was my duty to do what I did. And excitement, never been overseas at that stage, what would it be like. Would I live up to expectations personally.

Yeah she never showed it emotionally, my Mum was fairly static. Never showed it

emotionally, but she just told me to look after meself.

No, not really, just look after yourself, behave yourself probably more politically correct.

Yeah, “Behave yourself, Victor.”

Yep.

Yeah it was four propellers. In July this year I flew to Korea as a guest of what they call the Federation Career Industries. A group of Korean companies, they paid for six hundred and forty veterans from around the world, twenty-one countries involved in the Korean War, apart from South Korea. And they took veterans from every country,

ten Australians and I was one of the lucky ten Australians to be, paid to go, not paid to go.

Yeah, gifted to go, didn’t cost me. Edna went and we paid her airfare but her accommodation as a companion and in the same room as me was paid for. And her meals were paid for and her transport everywhere we went,

so it just costs us one airfare. And we left on Wednesday, and we were away a week, which was great. Big celebrations, fifty years ceasefire, was wonderful. But it cost them two million American dollars. So that General La Portia who was in command of the UN [United Nations] Forces in Korea, said at that meeting of the Federation cost him

two million American dollars. But we flew from Sydney to Inch’on, which is in New England, national airport, in Korea, last twelve months two years. Went flew direct, but as I said to you before in that old, in 1952 went up Sydney to Darwin, Darwin to Labio, Labio to Hong Kong, Hong Kong to Iwakuni.

Yep.

Long and slow.

With the other civilians?

I think they were mainly, I know there was men and women but I think they were from memory

going on a work commitment, I don’t think they were tourists, as in tourism. I think they were going on for their work.

That was……a jolt to the system, culture wise.

First of all Japanese, and we obviously knew what the Japanese had done in the Second War. So a little bit of, going to say hatred, a little bit of wariness which never needed to be there as it turned out. Because the Japanese were pretty good by them, remember this was 1952,

seven years after the war. And they were still re-building and personally I reckon Japanese and Germany to a certain extent, were lucky to definitive countries occupied and with the troops that were stationed there, spending money like it’s going out of fashion, especially Japan with the Korea War. And their

economy just went, but yeah it was a culture shock.

They rebuilt pretty quickly, in some of the places, they had some of the beer halls. They would have

petitions and it would be like a bolster, they used to make little toy planes out of. They’d have a sort of a bolster with a petition in between rooms and then white paper, glue paste that onto the wall. So you’d just poke your finger through and look through.

Yeah that was the scene. If you were in a beer hall, something happened, an incident would occur and you got asked to leave, you just strike a match and they didn’t like it at all, very

frightened of fire, don’t blame them in those places.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Well I’d already done my rookie training, obviously a few years before. But when I got to Japan, I did refresher

courses. I met up with a lot of the guys I was on the plane with, that I went up with, who were trained at Puckapunyal. And we re-trained again in Japan and that was a refresher course for me, because it had been 1948 since I’d done any infantry work, and I found it a bit hard for a while. But it sort of comes back to you, you know, the wearing and the bayonet in the dummy and

up and down hills with gun fire over your head. It all came back.

They teach you self defence, they teach you whether to use the bayonet first, or the butt of the rifle, depending on how many’s coming at you.

The situation if he had a rifle the position of his rifle, whether you used the bayonet or the butt of the rifle and then the bayonet, which way you went first.

Never got to that stage,

when I got to Korea I was given an Owen gun, which was it’s a…….I didn’t do an, I just used an Owen gun.

They used, the first rifle I ever had was a First World War rifle and I took it to Korea. I trained with it in Japan and I took it to Korea but when I got there, not long after I got there there was sort of a rotation system, remember that the 3 Battalion, and I got posted to 3 Battalion, there was a rotation system,

each soldier signed on for twelve months in Korea. With some being killed and some being wounded and some being done twelve months, the reinforcements kept coming through. So I was pretty lucky that I wasn’t there all that long, before instead of carrying a rifle, I got an Owen gun which is a sub machine gun and a lot better to defend yourself with than a rifle.

They stored them.

No, they put them in the hull. And we got out of the plane at each stop we had to get them out and there was a local army truck there, as in Borneo and Hong Kong and they put them,

they locked them away, and we didn’t have them with us when we slept over night there. And we’d have to get them out and take them back.

Oh yeah, yeah.

They make you take your shoes off now.

Japanese, I didn’t go down the harbour much. We’d go into Kobe which was the harbour city, but the

Japanese, the civilians were pretty good too, when we trained we trained through their countryside. And we would go to a place called Haramura where there was a Watsanaga jungle training camp. And we’d do a two week what they call a dry course there, which is no live ammunition and the three weeks was a wet run, which was live ammunition. And you’d

crawl so far and they’d fire over your head, and then you had to get up and run up the mountain. Japan’s a bit like Korea, mountains. So we trained there and did route marches over the hills. But the Japanese population by 1952, after seven years occupation they were all right.

Oh yeah, from what I’m led to believe they were.

Yeah, cake of soap and a block of chocolate would buy you anything. But not while we were there, not when I was there. They had a lifestyle going.

Oh no, their farming ways were a lot different. Paddy fields, you heard of paddy fields, you know what

they use for fertiliser?

They stored human excretions, and they stored them in wells, and when they came to sew their rice, they got a big yoke across their shoulder, and a bucket on either end, wooden bucket and they dip it in and they get it out and then they take their shoes and socks off and jump

in and trample it in. And it doesn’t’ smell too crash hot, let me tell you when you’re walking past and they’re doing that, oh, it’s a bit rough. But effective apparently.

We went on a manoeuvre one night and, up and down these hills and one bloke he disappeared and he’s gone down the

well, and he’s singing out, “Help! Help!” “Help your bloody self. You stink.” He wouldn’t talk to us for a long time, get himself out. No, they really ponged. It was what they called honey cart, a little oxen with a little wooden cart and they’d, little barrels and they’d cart them in. One bloke ran out and he’d go to the next door and borrow some from they’d take it past in the honey cart and go geez.

So it was a pretty different culture.

Basic army food we got in the camp, basic army food, this is in Japan?

Yeah just basic army food.

The first time I went out

on leave in Kure, we went into Kure and some of the guys that had been there a month or two before us waiting to go, that was on a draft, we were a bit more streetwise, and they’d help the new guys and we did the same. Anyway, there was some places off limits, and

being an Aussie digger you went into those places because they said you couldn’t, so we did. And we went into this place, like a mini café I suppose and we’re drinking beer and the women behind the counter, she had a serving ware bowl in front of her. I must have been there an hour looking at what she was doing, and all of a sudden realised, have you ever seen

little octopus? And she was plucking the eyes out into this bowl. And when I realised what she was doing, I lost the beer I’d drank. Oh yeah.

Inside yeah, just went, oh. That was one of my first initiations into Japan.

Not so much then, we didn’t go into those places very often for food but for beer, food was a different yeah.

Oh yeah it was great stuff, we got it in Korea quite a bit, when I say quite a bit what beer we did get was mostly Japanese.

No we got Kirin, Asaka.

Asaka was all right, it was a lager, and there was another one to, Nippon lager, Kirin was a bitter.

I think most of the guys I was with were like me, my age, a year or two older or a year or two younger. And they just took it as it come, and the Japanese were quite pleasant to us, yeah. Obviously knowing that eventually we were going to go to Korea to fight a war, they were quite good. The Japanese, we had work, Japanese workers in the

camp, cooks and whatever all in the camp doing different jobs. In the office and everything, and they just……

No. If they had, they never said anything to me.

Wasn’t much apart from the local R & R before you went to Korea.

No there wasn’t much around, we did get over to Hiroshima have a look around, quick look around there. But we didn’t get, apart from going out the gate and going down the street and drinking beer and coming back,

there wasn’t much time before you went across.

I got to Japan sometime in March ’52 and I went to Korea on the 6th June.

It was still in the rebuilding stage and the dome

was the main feature, you been there? yeah the dome, it’s in a museum, part of a museum pretty graphic, my wife and I were there in 76, and they’ve got the steps of the old post office, I think it is as just an image of a, a tarata type of step, and a dark image in the step of the women that were sitting there when it went off.

Didn’t see that then, but saw that in 1976. But yeah the dome of the building which they’ve left as it is it just was the main thing I can remember about the place.

Yeah, it’s a shell but yeah it’s still a structure and it’s still there now.

Yeah, round like Flinders Street station, yeah

well that’s still there. We went there in ’76.

Oh what did I make of it?

Yeah personally I’m not sorry they did it because I thought the Japanese were (UNCLEAR) and something had to give.

But obviously impressed that they’d got on with life, and were making a go of it.

There was probably a smell round the joint. When I went back,

or when we went back in ’76 the tour guide was a Japanese guy who had been in Hawaii and been for a while, and he didn’t see the war, but he said when they dropped the bomb over Hiroshima it went down and then it went up and the people in the next valley only got a bit of fall out. It was all in that one valley from the ocean right up the…and the next two valleys were

virtually free of it all. Those people still suffer, I’m led to believe, from that. We stayed a few nights in Hiroshima in the city. Apart from that one building you probably wouldn’t know anything was there.

Second World War or Korea?

Second World War, okay. The reason I had a higher opinion a high opinion of America was because I thought that they were here, their troops came here to keep the Japanese out of Australia, that’s basically the reason I think. England

was the mother country, ‘God save the King’ and bought up to all that sort of tradition. I thought that they, how would you say it, under duress the Germans have had a second go at them. The French are no bloody good anyway, I don’t think they’ve won a

war since Adam was a boy. And that’s proved now in Iraq, isn’t it, the French and the Germans can’t count of them.

Oh America. yeah England were tied up, didn’t want to send our troops home from what I’m led to believe,

when Japan entered the war. And our government wanted our troops back, obviously, to defend our country and I’ve been told that they said, you wait, let’s finish this one first. But it didn’t work out, thank God, so yeah American came to our aid then, thank goodness. Cause you don’t ever want to see to a war in Australia, you just don’t want to go through it.

Yep, you could write as many letter as you could find time to do. And you just put OAS [On Active Service] up in the corner where the stamp goes, so it didn’t cost to send a letter and it didn’t cost you anything to receive a letter. Mail would come through

pretty regularly, my time in Korea. And my mother and sisters, brothers and sisters, they’d just put OAS in the corner where the stamp would go, On Active Service, and it would be delivered eventually. And newspaper, you remember the old Sporting Globe, get the old Sporting Globe and the footy scores and all that it was great. My brothers would send me that and

something out of over and above, the Sporting Globe, guys would fight over that.

Well they’d write to my mother, not so much to me, cause they were all married by then. They’d write to my mother and my mother would read them out you know, we could read the letter if we wanted to, but she’d read most of the letters out to my sisters,

and my brother that’s just older than me and me as the youngest. From memory, their letters were mainly that they were all right, they were, in a reasonable safe place apart from getting bombed and strafed, but they weren’t in actual combat as such, being in the air force.

Oh it was just I suppose,

relief to know they were still alive to write them yeah.

I think everybody my age admired them, admired ex servicemen and women to, for the job they’d done and

the fact that they come home. As I said before they, a lot of them put signs up over on their verandas or on their windows of their shop if they started a business to advertise the fact they were ex servicemen or women, and hopefully people would patronise them more than if they hadn’t have gone, I suppose.

I don’t know, I suppose new business was starting up, so I suppose like in my case I finished school at the end of 1945, the end of the war. And started an apprenticeship as a plaster, and there were ex servicemen working there then, some of them were plasterers before the war, but some of them were, rehabilitation course,

whatever they called it. My brother went into carpentry, as a builder, one of them. Some of the blokes there were doing a plastering course, they didn’t have to go to school like I did. I don’t think it interfered with anybody, I can’t remember it ever interfering with anyone. Nobody begrudged them, if that’s what you’re looking for.

I think they were admired before they were begrudged if anything.

Not particularly, no. No I can’t, no.

Yes.

No, 1945 to 48 and I worked with these, that particular group of guys I don’t think they, especially at work anyway, and I didn’t drink up until 1947. They may have spoke about it in the pub when they had a few beers, but I didn’t go up there then, I didn’t go to a pub then. But they didn’t speak about it at work, just

that they were ex servicemen and they spoke amongst each other. They didn’t speak about anything about their war service to me, where they’d been what they’d done, not to me.

I know my father was in the army in the First War of course. My brothers were in the air force, I had a brother in law in the army,

who was at Cowra when the break out was on. Not in that particular camp, but in the next camp they could hear all the commotion, but the war finished before he, that unit, got sent away. All he told me was then when I joined it would smarten me up. What he meant by that I don’t know.

I didn’t think so at the time, I thought I was perfect, obviously I wasn’t. I didn’t get into big trouble to front courts and all that sort of stuff. But the local coppers in those days would grab you by the ear and kick you up the bum and

send you home, and that was punishment enough, for them I suppose. And it hurt enough for us, or me anyway.

Well you know, it’s just a phase of growing up I suppose, as a 16, 17 year old, I think.

Oh I think my mother was obviously happy. They had a pin, she had a pin, a brooch, from memory it was a semi circle, it had a bar across the centre and it had three stars in it. three or four, three stars anyway, for the represented, how many children she had

overseas, don’t see them these days of course, and she was always proud to wear that. But my brothers were married well before they got out, while they were overseas they were married. When they came home they didn’t come to where I lived, they went back to their own homes.

Oh yeah, we had a pretty big dining room in that old house, and my Mum would make some big pasties, an excellent cook. She’d make big pasties and we’d have family get-togethers. I don’t think we were all there at the one time from memory, but they’d come in on odd occasions. One family would come in and then maybe the other one, or maybe two together. But I don’t think, I can remember

them all together. Cause by that time they had children too.

Yeah.

I didn’t particularly,

or personally have any inkling at all until it actually broke out. In retrospect I think that the allies had let their armies go down hill under strength, under equipped. Where the Communists had built up,

and that’s been proved too of course. Until the North [Korea] did attack the South.

We wondered whether we could go, and when the UN asked for support, other countries, UN countries to support it and Australia said they would. I think the first Australian

servicemen went with the army, about two days after then the air force the next day, then it was a while, I think it was three months before the army got into Korea, before they were committed and got there. And as I’ve told the young lady before, it took a long time for me to get transferred from the

service corps to the infantry, because the service corps weren’t going over there.

Oh yes I thought I wanted to go, I wanted to go to find out what it was like. I suppose that’s a stupid thing to say but it was just the way I felt at the time. It was there

and I was there and I wanted to go.

No I don’t think that entered into, just to get overseas, it was just the fact that it was a war, we were involved and I was part of the army and I wanted to go. The fact that it was overseas as I said I preferred,

always would prefer that if we get involved to fight overseas than to fight here. I wouldn’t want the Australian, normal Australian public to undergo a war. It’s devastating.

I think basically it was the old thing of ‘King and Country’ and against Communism. Communism

was sort of instilled as the opposite to what our native life meant, our way of life of freedom, to jump in the car and drive from here to Darwin and back if you wanted to, and can still do, a lot of those Communist countries can’t move from block to block, suburb to suburb. Or so we were told.

And I’m led to believe that happens in Korea now, they can’t move from one part of Korea, North Korea to another part, unless they got to the government and get a stamped approval. So I suppose in that sense it was a sense of freedom, freedom to do what we want to do.

I think it was

more that if we were sort of informed that if the Communist took South Korea then they were going to Japan and then they’d work their way down, down like the Japanese were trying to do in the Second World War. Down towards us, whether that’s true or not, I don’t know, but that seemed to be the general idea, that they would

take South Korea and then they’d take Japan and then they would come down through the Philippines and Borneo and into Australia. So it was better to go there and do it than wait until they came here.

From peers. I think we were told a little bit at school in Social Studies

that our way of life was better than Communism and then in the army we were told that Communism and Communists was against all we were bought up to believe to what we should do, the way we should lead our life.

Yeah, lectures.

Yeah, an education program. Especially when the Korean War started and the reason that the Australians went into Korea was as I say better to do it there than here.

I was one of twenty-two, on that particular

draft. They gave us a boarding card, which I was stupid and never kept, but I’ve seen a couple of other guys have kept theirs of who was on their draft. Apart from about there were three or four other fellows, two of them got killed, I couldn’t tell you who the rest were. But

when I went back to Korea in July this year one of the guys on the other, ten of us went back as guests of the Federation of Korea Industries, one of the other ten was on the same plane that I went up in 1952, strangely enough.

That went back this year?

No, no coming out of the service corps, and being transferred to the

infantry, I was virtually one out. They’d all trained together, the guys, the other guys on that particular draft had all trained together at Puckapunyal and I joined them in Sydney and then I started to mix with them to retrain before we went to Korea, so I didn’t know any of them no.

No we trained, we got into

Japan in March 1952, about the same time as the 1 Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment, went up by ship. And they went in Japan and before they went in Korea, and the reinforcements in Japan, when they were posted, they could be posted to either 3 or 1. And the same when 1 went home

and 2 came up, the reinforcements could be posted to 3, 3 stayed there all the time on a rotation basis. And the troops virtually flew up were on a system in Japan where they trained and then they were waiting to be, to go to Korea, they could be posted to either of the two battalions that were in Korea at that time.

I didn’t find it any problem. I shifted a couple of times in pre Korea between 48 and 52, I shifted, I’d been to Korea, Ingleburn, Duntroon and Marrickville in Sydney and Puckapunyal. So no, it was

just another army base so it was great.

No, the guys I actually mixed with they accepted me. I mean you get to a stage, it wasn’t so much in Japan but especially in Korea, and you get into

action or into the front line and you’re under the pump a bit, and that’s where unity comes into it and mateship, that’s where it comes into there, more so than training, that’s what I found anyway.

The training in Japan before we went to Korea, most of it was done by Second World War diggers or guys that had been into Korea and done their twelve months and come out, and were stationed in Japan, and they wanted to be instructors or made instructors. So that they were

basically all experienced combat soldiers. And they were teaching us in my case, what we learnt at basic training when we first joined the army. And then for the time I was in Korea, about two or three times a week we’d

do 25 miles of route marches, we’d do weapon training, we’d do assault training, most of that was all with rifles and not, the bull ring was mainly with rifles. And then down to Haramura for a three week battle school,

2 week dry run, no live ammunition and third week was wet, on live ammunition, keep your head down or lose it.

Not while I was there, but they’d raise, you’d attack a hill, they’d teach you from battalion to company to section how to attack a hill.

The English would do it first, and then the Canadians and then the Australians and we were like brown cows, they wasn’t too happy the way the Australians did it, but we always got the job done.

I was private then. Training in Japan.

They

said that the Chinese were coming in, they told you there what to expect as far as attacks go. What to expect as far as the weather goes, how to try keep warm in the winter. Don’t drink the water out of the creek, the water came up into jerry cans into 44-gallon drums,

so Christ knows what was in it by the time we got it. And they gave us tablets to put in our water bottle to shake and they’re still talking about that, what’s it done to Korean vets.

Well the tablets and the water, laying in those paddy fields that I told you about what goes into them, and we laid in them in the summer, with the mosquitoes and the rats.

In the winter we were in the snow, two feet of snow. So water wasn’t real good.

I felt a bit lost at first because I’d been out of infantry for a few years, but it took me a while, it took the body a while, the mind was willing, but the body was oh, I think

I ached and huffed and panted until I got reasonably fit. Cause the other guys had just finished that training session at Puckapunyal and I hadn’t. And I’d been doing it pretty soft in the service corps. So it took me a while to catch up physically with what they were doing yes.

Normally they’ll have a truck at the back, depending the sergeant major, the sergeant or an officer could find out firstly, what’s wrong, why’s he dragging the chain, you know why is he back, whether it’s physical, he’s not up to the task. If he can’t

keep up with it continually, then they drop him off and won’t take him in, didn’t take him across. I think it only, from my memory only ever happened once, one particular guy just couldn’t, I don’t know the reason, but just couldn’t keep up with the 25 milers. If it was cause he had a hangover or something, you, they could fine

you.

Oh you’d help each other, talk to each other, help each other.

Yeah I had a bit of a catch in that period at that particular time when I was in Japan. It took me a few weeks,

luckily the first few weeks was just in local areas before the big 25 milers came up. By that time I was reasonably fit and kept up, but the first few weeks there I wondered what I got myself in to I’ve got to admit, yeah.

Wondering what was it like,

would I stand up to it. Don’t let your mates down, seem to be the big go between guys, don’t let your mates down, seemed to be the main thing.

Didn’t worry me. Never

bothered me then, doesn’t bother me now, that’s what I was there for I suppose. No it didn’t worry me no.

There was a couple of places I said before that were off limits, for what reason I don’t know. And being an Australian we always went into them.

The MPs [military police] would come round, the MPs around the place in those days were four M’s to a jeep, an English, and Australian, a New Zealander and a Canadian, keep away from the Yanks cause they were dynamite, they’d belt you over the head before they asked you a question. The Pommy Red Cap, the Pommies’ MPs had a red band round their cap, the Pommy Red Cap, and the Canadians would be a bit vicious, but

the Aussie MP and the New Zealand MP are a bit like the local copper, pull you ear, give you a foot in the bum and tell you to get back to camp and behave yourself. So depending what you were doing, what sort of trouble you were getting into, if they thought it was trouble, the Pommy and the Canadian would want to run you in, but the Aussie and the Kiwi would just behave yourself and get back to camp.

Well, yeah, funny enough we were all suppose to be on the one side. But we’d get into a lot of trouble with the Canadians, especially the French Canadians, just couldn’t see eye to eye with the French Canadians. If you went into a beer hall and there was French Canadians

there, they would say they were there first and they wanted it and being Australian we said well were going to keep it, so things would happen. Nine times out of ten we kept it, we’d win, quite good fun.

No too many girls to fight over, with due respect.

Oh they told you not to fraternise with the local ladies because they were, all the local ladies had VD [venereal disease] and they gave us a big lecture when we first got to Japan on the vehicles of VD, then they issued us with condoms and sent us out on leave.

Slides, films and

the doctor I suppose or whoever was giving the lecture, said that every girl had VD, well obviously they didn’t, cause everybody couldn’t have it, but that was their story.

Didn’t stop them. I think the reason it didn’t stop people

because obviously there going to go to war. And the stories coming out before they ever went, the sorties coming out of Korea was the odds of coming out, so make hay while the sun shines, while you’re trade-able, in other words?

Pardon?

Well that’s right yeah, will I or won’t I make

it. But again the gamble, not gamble, well the gamble of going in, you sign on to do it, your mates were doing it so you went in and did it and hope to Christ you come out the other end, which I was luckily enough to do.

No I don’t think so.

You’d go into a beer hall and beer halls are like mushrooms, they were everywhere. You’d go into a beer hall and the music was just blaring. So local, they’d be in the window, Paddy Page is singing and all those type of people, they were all the local

songs of the day and they’d just be played, they weren’t brothels as in brothels, they were more beer halls. But the girls were there to pour the beer and dance depending on how far you wanted to go.

Whoever employed them, we paid for the beer.

Beer in camp was probably half as cheap, but not as much fun. If I can put it that way.

Pardon?

I used to like dancing, yeah.

No, no you just buy a beer and there was hostesses

and you just asked a girl to dance. And most of the time you danced to records but some of the bigger beer halls had bands, a bit more exclusive, they’d have a band. Mainly of a night, the band. It was in a beer hall in a place called Shinjuku, which is a suburb of Tokyo, it was

probably at the top end of Collins Street [upmarket] now, so they tell me. We were in this beer hall, a double storey place, and downstairs was drinking during they day and upstairs was dancing whatever at night. And I’m in the men’s toilet with a big Maori, and we were both a bit inebriated, anyway this American came in, and he had a grey uniform on and he had all the

ribbons, what they call fruit salad, and they got more ribbons than a girls hair. And I knew before he even done it what was going to happen, and I looked across at him and I saw the Yank and I thought, oh Christ. Anyway the Maori, Tye Warratini, said to him, “What are you in?” “American air force.” “Can you fly?” “Yes.” So he grabs his neck and threw him out the window. I thought, “One of those days

where you’ve got to get out before the MPs come,” which we did.

Yeah. So we took off.

No we didn’t wait, get him out of there, cause he was drunker than I was, or we were both drunk. We got out of there and didn’t go back for a while.

Yeah, can you fly? Look strangely enough I knew he was going to do something, I though he’d just hit him. Cause they’re pretty mean

characters, those Maoris when they get on the grog, lovely bloke, wouldn’t meet a finer fellow, but on the Yank, God.

Probably the only ones with us were the French Canadians, they just didn’t want to mix.

Oh no they had denominations,

if you had to go to church parade they’d formed up Catholics to the right, Prodos [Protestants] to the left. When I was doing the Canadian NCOs [non commissioned officer] school and they formed up, and again the French Canadians were over there and didn’t mix with us, and they lined us up on the first Sunday and said compulsory church parade, got to go to church. Catholics over there and Prodos over there. And there was this one bloke was standing in the centre, Canadian,

and we said “What are you?’ and he said “I’m a Lutheran,” so they made him go with the Prodos. It was real hilarious, but the French Canadians were a law unto themselves, they just would not mix.

There were some Aboriginals, and Maoris, well all New Zealand Army were our artillery, we used to call them

drop shorts. Sometimes instead of firing them over our heads they’d drop them on us, but it was just a joke we were great mates, excellent camaraderie between New Zealanders and Australians, excellent.

Oh yeah it was great they were just fantastic blokes.

Oh they’d go down

to the Indian hospital and get a needle in the bum and come back. Told not to drink beer.

Oh there was always somebody going down to the hospital to get a needle.

What was the?

As far as I’m aware, they didn’t get fined, I don’t know for sure,

but they didn’t get fined. They just had to lay off the grog for so long, not allowed to drink. Cause I suppose the alcohol or whatever in your system.

Before or after Korea?

Didn’t have much to do with them at all.

It was basically train, train, train. And if you got leave you went out and had a few beers, there wasn’t much time

to fraternise with, or sightsee before. After Korea was different, when I came out of Korea I got posted to Tokyo for ten, eleven months, it was a bit different then.

Excited,

wondering always in the back of the mind was wondering what was going to happen. Were we, was I up to it. Yeah, expectation, and when you get there it all comes to fruition.

From?

No we just got, I got to Japan in March and I left in 6th June to went to Korea. They just came, they line you up on parade and tell you the next draft to Korea is and if your name comes up, you fall out and they put you in a compound, enclosed compound, or they did

to the draft I was on. They put us in an enclosed compound, we weren’t allowed out anywhere that night and then the next morning shoved in a truck, shot down to Kure onto a boat and away we went. And on the boat Toosan,

so there was no virtual send off it was just your turn away you go.

No, they just send, depending on how many bodies they wanted, how many personnel they wanted. I can’t remember how many went over the same draft I did, but they just read, they read a list of names

out and you get put into that compound and the next morning, poof, down onto the boat, no fan fare, just off.

It was great, we went down through part of the Inland Sea. And across to Pusan, the Japanese part of it was great, like a

picture postcard of a night when dusk fell, it was really really nice. And overnight trip to Pusan, which was devastated when I….yeah that was the first information of what had happened and what was likely to happen.

People, civilian people, Korean civilian

people living in cardboard huts. The Americans had a wax type cardboard boxes they used to bring food and ammunition I suppose and stuff in. But more specifically food, and the wax type of cardboard boxes they have, when they discarded

them, the Koreans would get them and make little houses out of them, they had nothing else obviously. And when we got on the train to go up through, up to the battalion, these type of little cardboard houses went for miles, and that’s what that population lived in. And that was a really big eye opener to a

young guy going into that particular place for the first time, to see things like that. How they were living, I mean you can imagine things and what it will be like, but when you actually see it, it’s something else.

No, no, we got off the boat,

trucked up to the railway station, onto the train and off.

Yes its not, it’s a different, well they used in their rice paddy fields, I suppose they used. We didn’t virtually mix much with the Korean population. Yeah, well we didn’t mix with them at all we just went straight up. But

I’d image they used the same method of fertilisation as the Japanese use, that that’s not a very good smell yeah. But remember there was all those people there, all those refugees in those type of huts, houses, that they built, shelters, and it’s just, I don’t know whether you’re getting the message, but it was a real eye opener

let me tell you, it was. Something you’d never seen before and hopefully never see again, people living like that.

Probably a bit of both, I don’t know about duty, but it sort of started, I started to realise then what

those people had been through or what they’d been deprived of. And hopefully if we could hold the line, which eventually happened, they would be able to eventually re-build, like Japan had re-built from the war. What we’d seen in Japan and the way they’d re-built, if Korea could do the same, but yeah, the situation they were living in was just

devastating, it was. Got to feel sorry for them, but they’ve come out of that, the Republic of South Korea is the thirteenth biggest trading country in the world. Forty six million people, held the Olympic Games, the World Cup, the Soccer World Cup, proud of their freedom

and so I classify, it was always said Korea was never won, but if you look at in that light, we won. They tried to get it, they, the Communists, were stopped at the 38th Parallel, demilitarised zone now, so in that context I reckon we had a win.

Don’t know,

I don’t know. The war was stabilised when I got there, across where the demilitarised zone is now. So the job we had to do then was to hold it, I don’t think they were every going to attack again, as in trying to take more ground, but they pumped the shit out of each other for two years.

Shells, artillery shells, mortars, probing attacks, no so much as to break ahead, in the end they tried to force a thing through at a place called the Hook, I’d already gone out of Korea then. But I don’t think they really tried to move further south and we didn’t try to move further north, it was just the

front line there, and that was it.

We joined a battalion that was out of the line, was in reserve when I joined the battalion. I got sent to A Company 3 Battalion and I think it was about

under two weeks and then we moved up into the line, and we replaced a French Canadian battalion on a hill called 187. And when we moved up in the night time, overnight in the dark, it was summer time, so it was sort of summer dress, and when we got there we got placed into position, where we were in the trench and it just absolutely stunk. It was worse than

those rice paddy fields, they reckon the French Canadians used it as toilets, and you just could not go into the bunker or the slit trenches. So we slept on top that night and then the next day we got in and cleaned it out. I’m not too rapt in French Canadians as you can imagine after that.

No well you had to do it. We were there for about,

four months in that front line in one hit, in one stretch I mean. So we had to, I didn’t know how long we were going to stay there at that stage, but we knew we were going to be there for a few weeks anyway, and it turned out to be four months. So we got in and cleaned it out, made it

liveable as possible.

Oh the bunker I was in, they called the hootchies, was like a trench, an oversized trench, with, I don’t know where they got the timber from, timber across with sandbags on top and hopefully waterproof. And you cleaned it out, but rats were pretty

prevalent but apart from them, it was a reasonably clean hole in the ground.

Usually two.

No, tried to but it doesn’t always work that way. On a rotation basis somebody get hurt and they send you over there. I served six months in A Company,

and just before Christmas ’52 I got promoted to a platoon sergeant, and I went up to Don Company, D Company, as 10 Platoon, D Company platoon sergeant, so I did six months in A virtually and six months in D. A different group of blokes, again you’re proud of your

section, your sections is part of a platoon, is part of a company, is part of a battalion. But when you get changed and you get ordered to go, you go and so you start to make new friends.

Mainly there was about three sort of patrols, apart from

stand to in your own company area, in your own section platoon company area, stand to every night at dusk, just in case. I don’t know why that was always done, but it was always done. And then there was patrols, there was eight man ambush patrols out in no-mans’ land, an eight man ambush patrol could be lead by a corporal or sergeant, and you go out into the

valley in what they call the Samajog Valley, and you’d lay in a paddy field, and usually in a ‘V’ formation facing the Chinese lines. And you’d lay up in a paddy field and try not to make a noise, couldn’t smoke, which broke the heart in them days. Try to be as quite as possible, so if they came along,

you laid there and ambushed, that was an ambush patrol. A fighting patrol was usually fifteen, normally led by a sergeant or a lieutenant and to a certain degree kept moving around, obviously making a little bit of noise, looking for a fight, bit different from the ambush,

double the men, but a bit different to the ambush.

Single file out, yep. Had to go down through a minefield, mine wire gaps, each remembering this was a stabilised line, and had been what six, eight months by the time I got there.

So they put a minefield, they put barb wire out the front and minefield out and they had them on a little path going down through the minefield. You had to be a little careful because you didn’t, which happen a few times people took a wrong turn and went into the minefield and blew themselves up. And you’ve got to go and get them out. Once you got out of the

minefield into the valley then it was, you didn’t have to be quite as careful, obviously, but when we took over once from the Americans, one position, we go on patrol with a walkie-talkie, which didn’t always work because of the mountains, walkie-talkie for communication. The Americans would go out, and we’d go out on eight man ambush, fifteen man fighting,

the Yanks would go out about sixty, eighty men, and they would have one guy would have a reel strapped to his back with a phone line, so he’d have a phone, and they run a, from where they’d left their position down through the mine wire gaps, out through the valley all round where they went and back again if they didn’t strike any trouble.

No,

no and then they just cut it, and they kept doing this. So you can imagine what was out there when we got to this particular part of that valley and you go out there trying to be quiet and you’re falling arse over head, falling over their bloody wire. It’s ridiculous, no wonder they get into trouble what they do.

Yeah, wire everywhere, bloody stupid. Anyway,

that’s the way they do it.

You didn’t, I didn’t or we didn’t. One of these eight man patrols coming in one night and it was a new lieutenant whose name I can’t think of, but a couple of our guys, Jacky Butterworth got killed, there was eight of them, three killed, five wounded of the eight.

And they were right there in front of our position, and we had to go and bring them in. And when we got to where they were, then the thought came in how do we get in to get them out. And blokes, the wounded ones are, some of them were groaning and moaning a little bit, obliviously because they were wounded. So I thought oh, and this bloody lieutenant said

something about I’ve forgotten his name lieutenant what ever it is, I honestly can’t remember. “Get me out first,” and somebody said, “You can get stuffed, you can wait.” So, Francisco, that photo I showed you before him and I went in and fingers crossed pick a dead body up and bought him out. And he was a big fellow too, he was bloody heavy and bought him back. It’s a bit of a hairy experience,

yeah.

No they hadn’t been wounded in action they just walked into a minefield by stupidity. Classified killed in action the three that died, are classified killed in action if you pick up the books down as KIAs [Killed In Action], but actually, well they were killed in action I suppose, depending which way you look at it. They weren’t killed by the enemy, they walked into a minefield.

I believe it would be his fault, he was in charge. I did a patrol with a, later on that was early, that was probably in late June early July, might have been July. Anyway I did a patrol with, he was a New Zealander

and he was on loan to the Australian Army, and we went out on patrol this night and he was obviously in charge, and there was a Second World War digger and there was fifteen of us, and he set the patrol up in a, virtually a circle out in the middle of no man’s land. And then he said to this other guy and I, well do a recce [reconnaissance],

a recce was about 100 yards out and do a circle round and check out the area and then come back. And to this day I don’t know whether he, I was last of the three of us, the lieutenant, and Archie Lord, who was the Second World War digger, and me at the back. And I’m walking backward to cover our back, it’s a bit hard walking backwards as you can imagine. And I don’t know whether he

did, I’m relying on him where to go right, so I don’t know whether he came in, we went out the front and whether he did a half or a one and a half, but he came in the back of the patrol, and the kid on the back of the patrol, on a bit of a hill, the kid on the back of the patrol heard the noise, so he just opened up with an Owen gun, and an Owen gun’s got 28 bullets in it. And when they dug the bullets out of the lieutenant and the bloke in front of me,

there was twenty-seven bullets in them and I’d been a bit lower missed out, again they were killed in action, not by the enemy. And the kid on the back, I don’t know who he was, they took him out and never saw him again, cause he obviously went over mentally. So those things happen yeah, unfortunately.

Not so much see them, most of the patrols were night patrols. So you didn’t actually, unless you run into them, see them, you could hear them, they’d play music,

play bugles, but you didn’t actually, unless you run into a patrol you didn’t actually see them.

Oh yeah.

The first time I was every actually under fire, I’ll rephrase that, because we’d been under mortar fire and shell fire. But the first

time I’d ever been close to and personal, we, an officer and twenty-five went out to get, I was one of the twenty-five, to get a prisoner, that was our designated mission. And we got across and up onto the enemy hill and at a

designated time were up and in. Three Australians killed, fifteen wounded and eight without a scratch, and we got, we that didn’t get hit, got them all out and we didn’t get a prisoner. That was my first up close and personal.

Couldn’t see much night time again, about 11 o’clock, midnight, whatever. And they said, okay we go, in we kill what’s there and get the prisoner, somebody’s got to get a prisoner, which we didn’t get.

Well that was the, that’s obviously the intention

when you go in but, what is oblivious and what happens is two different things, it didn’t happen anyway we never got a prisoner, and we were lucky to get out when we got out. With what we got out with two.

Yeah.

Yeah twenty-five, we had, what’d we have, nine, eighteen and the rest in

reserve. And we just went in.

Up front and personal. Yeah, sends shivers down the spine a bit even now. One of the guys in the pictures, I’ll show you after, he was up on the right hand side, actually the two on that end I never saw from that day to this. So even though

they were killed in action they were not really classified, well they’re classified there not proven. The lieutenant in charge, he was wounded and somebody put him in a shovel hole and we tried to clean the area up a bit and make it a bit safer if that was possible. And when we came back for him he was gone, and remember this was all at midnight, 11 o’clock to

1 o’clock in the morning, it was all done. So we were sure that we’d gone back to where we put him, where he was put, but he wasn’t there and we knew he’d been hit and bad, he wasn’t there and the guys, the two guys on that far end, I never sighted from that day to this. And we had to get the others out as well, those that were wounded.

They had, from what I saw of it, they had a slit trench, go down about shoulder height, and they had a ledge that they stood on, and then they went down again. They dug mate, they taught us diggers they could dig, and they’d go down twice, three times as far as we’d go and then they’d go

under. So the only way was what we did apart from chucking grenades down, we threw a few phosphorate grenades in, you know what they are?

Yeh the phosphorus burns, an evil thing. So you chuck a few phosphorate in and see if you could get them out.

Oh yeah, didn’t like doing it but, they didn’t like phosphorate. Its like napalm, napalm you know, napalm would go down and run in and phosphorate would get and burn.

Yeah. Yeah, cleaned them out a bit.

Oh

yeah there was quite a few. It’s impossible to count them, but there was a lot of dead bodies there when we came out.

At that time, right at that moment, you’ve got more things to worry about than

that. You’ve got yourself and you’ve got your mates and can we get them all. And obviously, we didn’t get then all, the two on the end, or the lieutenant and the other two we didn’t get them out, but we got the rest out, those of us that weren’t wounded. After that’s when, when you get back and we got back to our lines, that’s when you think, “Gee

did I do that and how did I survive it?” Why did I survive it and why did he get hit, yeah it all goes through your mind yeah. Is God real, and if he is, thanks. Yeah, a lot of things go through your mind.

Well I was, apart from being shaken up a bit, I was more than happy with the way I preformed. I didn’t let anybody down, I don’t think I did, and I was happy with the way I performed, yeah.

A very sobering experience, and a cigarette, it never tasted better when I got back let me tell you it was wonderful, I can still feel it going down to this day, that first cigarette when we got in, it was great. Wouldn’t smoke one now if you paid me, but needed one then.

They used to give us cigarettes, you know.

Who issued the order?

Good question, I don’t know how they were going to work that one out. I think it was just a matter of trying to clean them up first and the less resistance we got that would be the time. If there was a hundred there, I don’t know how many were there, but if there was a hundred there, and there was always heaps of Chinese, if there was a hundred there

and you cleaned up seventy, eighty, ninety, then the others would start trying to bug out, that would be the time you try and get him, get one, but it didn’t happen anyway.

Oh yeah, yeah, well that was my intention anyway. Better them than me.

No, never had time.

Yeah. By that time we were under mortar fire. And heavy mortar fire, yeah we were still under fire.

Some walked out, some we had to help.

And we got them all down the valley, we got them off the Chinese hill down into the valley across that, about three quarters of the way back over towards our line. And then some of our guys came out and helped us then you know, which is pretty hairy in itself, although we knew they were coming from our side, but they didn’t know who we were coming. So I suppose they were thinking, is it

us or is it the Chinese.

No. The funny part was that that particular night they mortared us, the area we were in, their own area, and then they dropped it down, but they didn’t come after us, which I thought was a bit strange.

I did,

and I was out of ammo too. yeah wasn’t fun was it.

Hmm, so I’m glad they didn’t.

Oh debrief, what did you do, how far did you go in, did you look like

getting prisoners? No. And then how’d you get out, who’d you help out and…. all that, just trying to place the whole thing together.

Estimated, what you estimated,

what I did, it was hard to tell because the guy next to me was probably where that chair is and the other guy was where that window is so, who hit what, was it his or mine? Like the old gun fighter.

Yeh how many you’d, did I kill, how many he killed, how many, well I didn’t ask him, they asked me and I said, “Look who knows,

it was just that thick and fast,” we only estimate anyway. You could see basically see what you were doing in that half light, you just don’t know, not conclusively.

A thank you, no, it was a job,

there was no thank you’s. There was no psychiatrists there to tell you trauma and all that sort of thing, have a cigarette have a sleep, get up and go out the next night and do another patrol. And I’d only been there five weeks, I think, and I thought, shit I’ve got a long time to go yet.

I slept all right. The only thing I was sorry the two fellows on the end, oh and the lieutenant, he was a nice fellow, but the two guys on the end were one of them was a real good mate. I went to see his family when I came home, cause we made a pact and said that if one of us got hit or killed he’d go and see, he’d come to Fitzroy and we’d go and see the other’s

family. So I went down when I got home and saw his mother and father, he was a nice Catholic boy and I said that the priest had come in and did what the priest had to do before we went out, and us Prodos were over there and the chaplain came over and spoke to us. So I think that made them a bit happy, I hope it did. But I must admit I never went back again to his mother and father’s place I never went, I went there and spoke to them and never went back. I did what I had to do, so I did.

Wanted to know how he died, I don’t know he was up that end and I was down that end, and he just, they just disappeared, they weren’t there when we were told to pull back and get out guys out, couldn’t find them. And the mortars were coming in thick and fast and we were told to get out and we did. So I can’t answer that,

I couldn’t answer it to them because I didn’t know, they just weren’t there.

What did I know of them?

We knew that some of our guys had been prisoners of war and some were taken later on, but these two guys and that

lieutenant were never been, were never classified as prisoners of war, those two were classified as missing in action and the lieutenant was classified wounded in action, missing, it’s written down there somewhere, but they were neve classified as prisoners of war. And nobody knows from that day to this what happened to them.

Which is a shame, although his family’s gone now. But its, if you’ve got a soul I suppose they wonder where it is, who knows if you believe in those sort of things, I’m a bit cynical.

Am I right or wrong, who knows?

Yep.

Being a reinforcement? In a way I was, sorry, I hadn’t gone up in 1949 when, end of ’48 start of ’49

when the guys that I’d trained with had gone up. Because they were the first original ones in there, that I did my rookie training with. And that didn’t eventuate and by the time I got there, they’d obviously gone. So I just was a reinforcement and I can’t change that. Could have gone to 1 or 3, got posted to 3 quite happy, good old battalion. Everybody’s happy with,

They’re proud of where they’ve gone their unit, yeah, so I’m yeah.

Back here you mean?

No the guys, it was a rotation system, and depending on casualties and leave and the end of your tour of duty, how many got rotated. So 3 Battalion, or the others did get rotated but not as much as 3 was on a

bigger rotation system because they were there for the whole war. Some signed on for a second term, there was no animosity as such.

Yeah I think the Aussies

as far as I’m aware got on with each other. We were, we the time my time in Korea were proud to be 3 Battalion. And when we went on leave and we met 1 Battalion guys, we’d have a bit of a dig at each other, you know, we’re better than you. But in saying that we were still Australians first. And then the Kiwis were great, and then maybe the others.

Yeah we mixed in together, I believe in the Second War they had Victorian units and New South Wales units, but in Korea we were intermixed. There was no segregation as far as states go.

No they’d all

gone.

No, I mix with them now at our association, but by the time I got there, they’d gone.

It wasn’t boredom, you were, apart from the job you were there to do, there was re-sandbagging, there was always cleaning of the weapons, there was latrines to be dug. Wasn’t boredom, in fact you tried to

sleep during the day if you could, and patrol, whichever patrol you were designated for that night. Summer patrols were all night jobs, night time till daylight. Winter was different, probably two or three hours because of the intense cold. No, it wasn’t boring,

can’t say it was boring.

Every night, you didn’t go out on patrol every night, it would either be outside or stand too. You might get a night’s sleep, in the day time you had to do something else then, re-sandbag, scrape out the trenches and straighten them up. When the shells would come in, they’d

crumble them a bit so you’d have to re-bag them, always something to do it wasn’t boring. Never found it boring, too much activity going on.

Favoured tasks.

The only favoured task that I volunteered,

actually volunteered to do was go back about 600 yards and bring in the case of beer. And I volunteered to do that, I thought we’d have a beer. They just came and you, orders came in and you did them.

Yeah.

No, you ate on the trench, on the line. At that stage when we went in there, we were on American C Rations [field rations], American C Rations came down to those port, did I tell you about the porters, the noggie porters?

Okay, well the noggie porters were middle aged Koreans, apparently too old for combat, they’d carry in supplied,

mainly of a night and C Rations were like a shoe box, cardboard shoe box. Each digger got a box of rations every day, three tins of pork and beans with no pork, baked beans in other words. Sometimes you’d get spaghetti, ham and lima beans, chicken stew, corn beef hash, all those were unusual, 90% of the stuff was

baked beans. Another tin was prunes fruit, apple stewed apple or something, and the other tin was American crackers, which is dry biscuits, a little thing of cocoa, if you had the water, and they had what we called a little, what we called a tin stove, a three pronged in each can with the cocoa there was a little tin and a

tablet, like a oversized headache tablet. And you’d put it in and heat your meal up.

You had to light it.

No, it you could light it with a match, we had plenty of matches because we had cigarettes then.

Yeah it was like an oversized, a Panadol, probably about an inch round,

well, nearly as big as a penny.

From memory it was a little white round, not quite as big as a penny, a bit thicker.

No no it didn’t smell. But you could heat up food or water and make your cocoa, if there was cocoa there. And cigarettes,

a packet of cigarettes in every ration.

The beans when I first started, talking personally, when we first started to eating, you’d eat the three tins, no problem and look for more. But after a

period of time, it sort of wears a bit thin and so we started stacking spare tins of beans, blokes instead of eating three a day they’d got to two a day or something. Or when you got corn beef hash, you could mix the beans with corn beef hash and then share it, the two of them and make it a little bit more appetising. But the

cans of beans would stack up and stack up and when we got to quite a few of them, and if we got a crate of beer, twenty-four bottles of beer in a crate, Japanese beer. The, we’d stack the beans in the crate and send the beans back with the noggie porters to take it down to the orphanage. So we’d send, rather than throw it away or just leave it there, or that’s where we hoped it would finish up,

at an orphanage or with kids anyway. That’s where we’d hope it would finish up.

Most of them had a pocket knife, you had a pocket knife I would be a can opener, it would be a bottle opener,

you could buy all those things in Japan before you left.

Army issue was a knife, fork and spoon and a dixie, what we call dixies. But the pocket knife type of thing you could buy in Japan quite easy, multi purpose thing.

One time we got a box of, yeah there was a cake, there was a balaclava, a bottle of beer and biscuits. I think mine came

from somebody down in Gippsland, and I’m sorry I never ever kept the address I should have wrote and thanked them but I didn’t, I admit that. But yeah we did get, one time I can clearly remember, whether we got any more I can’t remember, but we did get one once, a block of cake and biscuits and a bottle of beer and all that stuff, each guy got one, we thought it was Christmas, yeah, it wasn’t, but we thought it was.

No, I think they were all basically the same stuff. I think what happened was people were asked to donate and then whoever made the packages up, made all the packages, as far as I can remember, all the packages were the same thing.

A little?

Yeah, we all got the same.

No, with the same group unless somebody was killed, as they were, wounded or when out on leave or their time was up and then somebody new came in. We got new guys over that period of time because of that action

we were in 12th July I think it was. We got new guys in before we went out on the line, that platoon had changed over half, obviously because of what happened.

What did I do?

Thought about where I was heading, obviously you felt sorry for whatever happened to them and hoped it didn’t happen to me. You just got on with the job, you were there, you couldn’t get up and walk out of the place, so it was just a matter of doing what you had to do,

doing what you were told to do or had to do to back each other up.

No.

No, we didn’t do that.

No, it was just

have a good time, and have a beer for me and all that sort of thing, and look forward for your turn to go. We got leave, I’m talking about the army guys of course, we got leave supposedly got five days leave to Tokyo after four months in Korea and after eight months we got three week leave. They take you out of the line, send you down

to Kimpo Airport which was just in Seoul, and then you could fly over in and old DC3 or a big American Globe Master, and then they’d fly you back after your five days or your 21 days. Didn’t always work out on time, instead of going October, I went November because I’d been away on an NCOs school

and I went in the March for a three week one.

Yeah towards, right near the finish were up on a hill called 355, they called Little Gibraltar, and we were sitting up on top of that, and I think I had,

gee, I don’t know, two weeks to go, and the officer was a bloke called John Quinlan who got killed later, and he put, he sent me down, they had a flying fox, you ever talk about the flying fox up the back, used to bring up water and rations in, up on the top of that one. And had to be loaded on and

off, of course both ways. So he put me down the bottom of there when I had a couple of weeks to go and I didn’t do a patrol for the last two weeks. All I had to do was suffer the shells, but I felt reasonably safe down there and then the day came when they said, you’re times up, get in the truck and I’m out of here, you beauty. So I was a bit lucky the last two weeks John Quinlan

put me down the bottom of the flying fox and I was happy there.

I don’t know about superstitions, they were all, they didn’t seem to worry so much when they were in the line until as I say they got near the end of their time and their twelve months was up.

And then they thought they didn’t want to do the patrols if they only had a couple of weeks to go or something, and they may even ask, or could have asked to be put back and some of the new ones keep going, do it. He came to me so I was quite happy to do it, yeah.

Summer when I went, the opposite seasons to what we’ve got here. So went in June and June, July, August into September before it started to change a bit, was hot and dusty and the rats and the mosquitoes were shocking. Then it started to turn a bit cold, and by Christmas it was snow

and in January and February, were unbelievably, unbelievably cold. And you start with a string singlet, like a fish net, you know a fisherman’s net, which supposedly lets the blood flow, then you’d have a thick woollen vest and two pair of long underwear, a flannel shirt, a jumper and then you’d have windcheater pants and jackets, and a parka

with a big hood. And when you had to go out on patrols, you’d put a white snow ski suit over all the top of that. The boots had asbestos inner soles, to let the blood flow and it was pretty cumbersome. You had gloves with no fingers, so you could use your weapons all right and a balaclava,

most guys grew a moustache and when you breath you’d get icicles on your moustache. The cold was unbelievable.

It did, they gave us anti freeze oil, and it would probably half an hour, three quarters of an hour you’d have to take the magazine off the weapon, and ease the bolt back and forward so it wouldn’t

freeze, then put the magazine back on. If you didn’t take the magazine off of course it would fire. Yeah, you had to be careful. One of the most frightening things was an old DC3 at Kimpo Airport when I was going out on leave and they sprayed it with anti freeze oil before we took off, I wasn’t very happy with that. No seats, you had to sit in the plane, oh it was cold.

Well, they had the old uniforms when they first went over, our guys. But by the time I got there they had these English type, shower proof stuff, layers and layers, you’d tear them up… and they give you a needle and cotton to sew it all up again. But they were

reasonable when I got there, but the weather was, I’ve never been so cold.

There’s always a corner you can sort of

get out of the wind. See we faced north and up above Korea on the western end, no…anyway, that’s on the Manchuria in Russia, so the winds coming down, the Siberian winds blowing in your face and it’s not funny.

Yeah over that side, and you always try and get a position, to

get out of that wind. Not always possible, but that’s what you try to do.

The main thing that made them collapse was artillery shells, was hard in winter, cause the ground was that frozen to try and re-sandbag.

That was really back breaking stuff to try and re-sandbag, and again like those cardboard, wax cardboard boxes I was talking about before, the Yanks had a semi water proof, rot proof sandbag. Where the ordinary sandbag would fall apart pretty quickly, these ones unless they got hit, would last

2 or three times as long. But getting something to put in them during the winter was extremely hard and difficult because the ground was frozen.

No, we could see the light, the P’anmunjom light, you could see it from Little Gibraltar, 355, you could see it from 187. Right along that part of the front where we were we could see that light, the big search light every night, you could see where it was. But they never, nobody ever came to us or to me anyway, and said what

state the peace talks were in, they just said, we knew that talks were going on and that’s about it. Didn’t know what state they were in.

Just went on and on yeah. And I’d gone, I left Korea on the 6th June 53 ,and it finished 27th July so six, seven weeks after I left, before it actually ceased fire.

Oh yeah, but we didn’t get any information back at all, of what situation

the talks were in, all we knew was that they were talking.

Oh the Yanks put out I think Stars and Stripes a bit of a banner but, even in that there was no indication of how far the talks were. We, the allies wanted something, and they’d say no, and they’d want something and we’d say no.

No. The only brass I saw was when I did this Canadian NCO school and when we passed out, I think it was West Malanda… or Van Fleet one of the, came and inspected the parade before we marched out. We all went back to our units. Commonwealth, Canadians, New Zealanders, Australians and the

Scots, Welsh and English, we all mixed, they integrated us down there, didn’t put us separate.

Bit further back. Uijongbu and he came to passing out, one of them I think it was Van Fleet or West Malanda, one of them came to the passing out parade and we all marched pass and we all went back to our units.

Probably that with the……can’t think of the word. People finishing their time and going and looking for somebody to move up, and I’d

been there four months I think when I went, June, July, August, three months and somebody in their wisdom said well send him down to the NCO school, which they did.

Where was?

A place called Uijongbu, just north of Seoul.

Oh it would take about an hour and a half to drive now, take longer then. 70 or 80 miles I suppose.

Yeah then again you could hear guns,

but no we never got. I, what did I do there, six weeks I think and yeah no shot fired or anything like that, it was nice, it was a breeze.

Oh we did everything down there. Military law included, lectures, virtually basic training again but on a higher degree because, obviously, you were going to be promoted.

And when I came out they made me corporal and, when did I got back September, end of October I think, and two months later I got promoted to a sergeant so you got a relatively harder job as a platoon sergeant to look after thirty-odd guys. Liaise between the officers and the men and make sure

they keep their weapons clean and they’re ready and they had to shave, you could grow a moustache but you couldn’t grow a beard. Had to make sure that they had shaved and they didn’t relax right off, so yeah make sure all the ammunition was all up and all that sort of thing. It was a bit more important.

Well, some comes naturally, they can tell you what to do, whether you carry it out or not’s another thing. They can explain lots of things to you, they can make you go, not make you go, they can have lectures and tell you the best way to attack a situation, but when the next

situation, such as he’s talking about arises, the terrain could be different so you’ve got to go a different way again. How can I explain it? They can tell you if the Chinese are coming straight across you get up and you get ready and you wait, but if they’re coming round that way they tell you which way to expect, but depends on the terrain of the mountains that way, if they come up the gully or they come up the rim. It’s – each situations different.

Probably because of that first night that I ever was up close and personal, and went in and got the guys out, what was left with a couple of others. We lost the

lieutenant that night as I told you, he was wounded and we never found his body. The new leader that took over, he came round and his first night and introduced himself and he said, “You’re one of the experienced guys here?” and I said, “I’ve only been here a couple of months,” and he said, with the instruction and all that obviously was, so everything just fell into place. And I suppose they saw more,

or he saw more in me that I saw, I don’t know. But anyway through him, he came to me and told me I was going so I did.

Going back to that first night, what is it, luck,

a belief?

Yeah, we formed up in a line and they said go and we went and they just disappeared. Is that fate, that they were the two on that end and not the two up that end, I was in the middle, I don’t know.

Oh well, I don’t know

we just sort of formed up, formed two lines. There and I think there was five or six at the back, and that’s how we went in. From memory there was no specific ‘you’re there, you’re there’…we just formed up in a line and that’s how we went.

You have a choice of

where you form up?

Yeah well we just, we went in up the hill and they said form up along there, so we formed up along there and its just the way it was, who went there was who went there. I don’t know whether it’s luck of the draw or fate or what it is, but that’s the way it went.

Some who weren’t as clever as others, or you find that anywhere I think in any fact of life. I don’t think that they were intentionally, wouldn’t say backward, would you, intentionally….

I never felt in all the guys I served with in both companies that there was, I never felt that there was one there that wouldn’t pull his weight. Some I backed more than others, some were over the top.

And by that I mean there were a couple of guy there that liked to live for it. I wasn’t that bad, when I say lived for it, they just loved it.

Oh yep, and I did what I had to do and when my time came, I’m out. These two blokes were on their second term and the Second World War

blokes, they just loved it, not this little black duck, I just did my time and I’m out.

I don’t know but they were good, and they just sort of had a charmed life.

No they were mates, yeah.

Yeah.

You try to stick with the guys in your section for a start, you’re section’s about ten men, twelve men.

And they’re the guys you see the most of. Then there’s three sections to a platoon, so then you’re looking up to thirty-three men with a platoon head quarter you might say. And then you go into your company and then your battalion. So you try to stick with the guys in your section for a start, they’re the closest one to you. But again rotation, killed, wounded,

leave, end of term. Your section changes and the bloke you’ve been a mate with for four or five, six months, he’s gone and somebody else comes down. And it all gets back to being Australian again, doesn’t it.

I was going to say I was a bit lucky, I had good mates in A Company and when I

got sent up to, we were on Little Gibraltar, and A Company were down the front company, and he said, “Pack your gear, you’re going up to Don Company right up the top of it, you’re going up to Don.” This is December, no but the bloody snow was everywhere, and we were up the top, “Take your stuff up there, you’re going to become 10 Platoon sergeant,” and I said, “I don’t want to go

I don’t want to leave the mob.” You know, “We’re together.” And the lieutenant said, “Don’t knock it back.” He said, “It’s a promotion. Use it.” So I went, but the guys up there were good when I got in, they were okay, still see, we were there yesterday, two or three of us, that were in 10 Platoon while I got there. But coming up the trench

there was a place in the middle, 355 metres high right, and the zigzag trench goes up and there’s one place in the middle they call four second alley, and what happened there, the Chinese have a machine gun on a fixed fire, fixed fire was they zero in on that particular space and they’d any time of the day or night, might be an hour, might be three hours, might be ten minutes. Somebody would walk past and just pull the trigger and

shoot at that particular spot, it was zeroed in, locked in, we did the same to them. And this four second alley it got wider and wider and you couldn’t re-sandbag it, cause you didn’t know when they were coming in. And as I come up to this four second alley and the guys up the top, and I didn’t know them then, they’re looking down and said, “Who’s this silly bugger coming up?” And when I got to there and I’m waiting and I’m thinking to myself will I or won’t I, cause I’ve got my bed roll, I’m clobbered

up in all me winter gear and everything and I’m going up through the snow and it’s slippery stuff. And I think will I or won’t I and they’re laying bets, will he go or won’t he go, will he make it or won’t he, and my mate I was with yesterday never told me from that day to this what day he bet, he just laughed his head off.

It did seem stupid, we’re here, they’re there, different parts of the line, demilitarised zone now, some are up close and personal, some parts of the line, others could be Plenty Road.

Oh no, they just….

If they’re going to have a bit of a barrel at you, they play music and play bugles, so you just set yourself up, especially when I became a sergeant make sure everybody had their weapons ready, clean, plenty of ammunition. And my boss would go and see his boss

to make sure there was backup coming up. I think they were a bit stupid that way the Chinese, that they advertise it, the fact that they were going to have a bit of a dag. They were probably come to get a prisoner like we did. But we did it silent, we tried to do it silently and didn’t succeed. They tried to do it by the man power and didn’t do it.

Yeah well

they had the man power, they had the man power, they really did.

Bloody awful, yeah, Asian music doesn’t get me greatly, I suppose, ‘ei, ei oh.’

No. Christmas Eve, we were out at Christmas, New Years Eve, we were in at Christmas ’52,

no we were out at Christmas ’52, we had Christmas, and then between Christmas and New Year we went in and 1 Battalion came out, on 355 Little Gibraltar. Anyway I dropped leaflets in the valley when we went out on patrol, in the snow, and I dropped some leaflets round and pick and bring in, it had written ‘New Year’s Eve we will put presents on your barbed wire, we will put

presents on your barbed wire’, so they doubled the patrols and New Year’s morning there was present on the barbed wire and nobody saw a Chinese. Unreal.

A pencil or something, a pen. There was little booklets and things, yeah, nobody saw a Chinese New Year’s Eve. And it was moonlight

and the snow was thick, that makes you sort of, how’d they do it but they did.

How do you mean?

Oh, not that I know of, we were never involved in anything like that.

Yeh, but that’s a fact, but I was never involved in anything like that up, reciprocal.

I’d been, the last

couple of months in A Company I was a corporal, and what they call a section leader in charge of a section. So I was gaining a bit of confidence in my own ability, and when I got told to go up there I thought, I don’t know if I can handle that. I think it’s a inner belief if you feel you can do the job but the

officer, the attendant in charge of 1 Platoon, who sent me up there, he sat me down and we spoke and he said that I could do it. Told me, reinforced a belief in me that I could do the job. So I went up there with a bit of confidence and I don’t know whether it’s a inner belief or not, but the people, they accepted me up

there, even though they didn’t know me at that stage. And when we did come out of the line, we went to a army camp, Camp Casey, an American camp, and then you got weapon cleaning and all the things to do with it. And it sort of worked out all right and the guys were great.

Well you try, or in my case I tried not to, being one of the boys for so long, tried not to be overbearing. And I thought of the two sergeants that I had before in charge of me, that they wouldn’t tell me to do something that they wouldn’t do. And one of them, the bloke I was talking about before who loved it. So

I intimated to these fellows that we get along fine, and I wouldn’t ask them to do anything I wouldn’t do myself. I know that sounds a bit funny, but you’re not going to tell one particular guy to keep going out on patrol night after night and not do it yourself, that’s just not the go. So I’ll do my whack.

No well you’ve got to do, you’re got to take your part,

I’m not going to share my part and not do my bit.

And a Vietnam vet.

Yeah.

Yes he was, yep, he was my platoon sergeant for a while.

Before I got promoted, he was still back there. Hard man.

Actually they both finished up sergeants and decorated and lived through it.

Don’t think so, used to get drunk. When we first came back nobody wanted to know us, including the RSL [returned and Services League]. Went down to Preston, born and bred in Preston,

everybody in Preston knew each other, little country town, sort of a country town and everybody knew each other. So I went down unlicensed club in those days didn’t have, they had a bar but unlicensed. Knocked on the door, and the guy opened the door and he knew who I was and I knew who he was, and I said, “Just come back from Korea and I’ve come in for a drink,” “That wasn’t a war,” and shut the door in me face. Didn’t make me very impressed with the RSL. So we used to all meet, all the Korean blokes at a

place called the Port Phillip, behind Young and Jacksons, not there now, it was a pub, and you could walk through into Flinders Lane. You could walk through the pub, it had a bar either side, straight across. And we used to meet in there a lot and get stuck into the beer, six o’clock closing of course. Try and keep out of trouble with the coppers, so they played

it pretty hard for a while a lot of the blokes, and the guy I was telling you about before was a Commonwealth driver and he drank himself to death, he wasn’t the only one. And I did it for a while, until me brother got hold of me and said, “You’re married with kids. Where are you going?” And I thought about it, thought, “Well, he’s right and I’m wrong,” so I eased back.

I think one time, one of them said we were trying to drink it faster than they were making it, which is pretty right.

Probably, nobody, see there was no counselling. I came back and I went to Royal Park, Royal Park was….got a discharge, what do you want to do,

what do you want to be when you get out. And I said, “I want to be a motor mechanic,” or motor cars, I liked motor cars, and they said, “Oh no, you can be an electroplater or a carpenter,” and I said, “Well I don’t know what an electroplater is and I’m bloody not Jesus Christ so I’m not going to be a carpenter, so stick your job up your…” and I walked out. And that was, that was me goodbye to the army.

Probably the reception when I got back. I wasn’t upset about what happened, I could re-phrase that a bit, I was upset at losing people that I knew and that sort of thing, but that was sort of a fact of life, we knew what we were going to get into,

or we think we knew what we were going to get into. And so I sort of expected some of those things that happened there, but coming back and not being recognised for doing the job that the government of the day asked us to do, remember that all Australians were volunteers in Korea, so I thought that maybe

we would be a little bit more appreciated than, the RSL and the government showed us and didn’t.

Yeah, I went to town the night well we were in the city, magic.

Oh yeah I was in,

where was I, I did see a march through the city there, yeah diggers, but we didn’t get anything like that.

I thought that, I don’t know about decorated hero, but I came back thinking that the government would put on something,

put on a parade, put on something to say thank you, to the men and the women, there was nurses involved, army and air force nurses involved in that particular war and nothing eventuated. So I was a bit disappointed in that, still disappointed in it.

Yeah.

They said, they seemed to think that people didn’t worry much about Korea, didn’t speak much about Korea. I can understand in a way because what they went through, what the bulk of people

in Australia at that time went through the Second World War. And then re-building the country, so I suppose, and there was no television unlike Vietnam, I suppose in one way you can see it realistically, it didn’t get much publicity and we didn’t get much publicity I think.

The, towards the end of my time in Korea, they, the powers to be put some ROKs, Republic of Korean soldiers, into each section

and tried to integrate, tried to integrate the ROKs in with us, you know, but with due respect to the ROKs I think personally I’d rather have an Aussie beside me than a ROK there. His country, sure, but I don’t know whether, I suppose in a way it worked, at

least you had another man there, but I think the feeling from my point of view was I’d rather have another Aussie there.

The ones that I was involved with didn’t seem to want to do much. But I saw, when I was at battle school and they took us out to a

range, rifle range type of thing, and they I reckon were 600 yards away, the ROKs were firing at a hole in the ground which wasn’t much bigger than that light up there, and the other… walked up the side it and put his hand around through it and threw a grenade in it. So I mean they’re got to be good…shit, there’s no way I’d

do that, I don’t trust them that much, even my blokes, but they did they just walked up the side. So you’re relying on that bloke back there to be, over 600 odd yards to be accurate. So I mean they must have been good, but the guys we got in our section and platoon, they didn’t inspire you.

No that’s another problem, communication was another problem. And that’s maybe one of the reasons why we couldn’t get through to them.

No I don’t know Korean, hidiwah kameian, that’s all I can remember.

Yeah oh yeah.

How many?

No they just placed a section in a area, a platoon, and you had three sections to a platoon that cover one area. nine times out of ten it was two forward, one back.

Oh yeah, your two forward sections

and one section back here, then two platoons and another third platoon and then companies are the same.

Communication was hard and especially when you were out on a standing patrol, if you took a four man standing patrol out down the bottom of the

mine wire gap, through the minefield gap at the start of no man’s land. And you stood there to make sure that that mine wire gap was clear for when the patrols came back. And if you had a four man patrol standing there, two either side, one of them had to be with a Korean, and especially when I became a sergeant, I felt it was inappropriate to put one of the other guys with him, he’d say you won’t go with him.

So a lot of the times if I had a Korean, I had to stay with the Korean and I felt a bit uncomfortable because I couldn’t speak, not that you could speak much out there cause you had to be quite. If something happened, lucky it never while they were there, but what, how would I get the message across you know.

No, not while I had a Korean with me no.

I preferred somebody I trusted obviously, shouldn’t say trusted, yeah, trusted I suppose cause I had to trust them because he was a Korean in the army and on our side. But just that feeling that something was lacking.

Yeah it was, I used to worry, I only did it four or five times luckily. I didn’t like it, but I had to do it.

Normal procedure is the end of the mine gap, where the minefield finished. You go down, and those normally on the forward slope facing the enemy, facing the Chinese, so you would from the top, we were basically on the tops of the hills, so

from the tops of the hills down would be barb wire and then down where the hills slope into the valley it would be minefield, and the mine wire gap would be that wide, go down. So from the end of the minefield gap out in to the valley was no man’s land. And depending on how wide the valley in front of you was to where there lines, could be few hundred yards to a mile.

I don’t know so much about a patrol, but if they went out like we did that night. That’s happened, January ’53 they came back a couple of days later, they had to come back through a different battalion, yeah 1 Battalion I think they came back through, yeah.

Lost about fifteen or more that night.

Well that was another, that thing there was another fruitless endeavour to get a prisoner, they lost God knows how many, fifteen, eighteen.

Wouldn’t think so, but that was what the orders were that came down they were obsessed with getting a prisoner. Lost a lot of good blokes and failed attempts to get prisoners.

Oh they tried a couple of times, yeah.

We pulled back one time, the senior service cigarettes, they’re in a – fifty cigarettes in a tin, round tin, alfoil [aluminium foil] top airtight, saving them I was going to bring them all the way home and put them in the rations boxes, sea rations boxes, and I must have had six boxes, and when I get out of here I’m going to post them home. Anyway, they paid us a visit one night and a little bit

of to-ing and fro-ing and we pulled back, when we got back, when I finished up and got back where we were and all me cigarettes had gone, I wasn’t very happy with them.

Yeah, they were happy they got all them cigarettes.

Used to have a Chinese couple, lived next door, they were lovely couple.

No.

That’s one of the things when they put the ROKs in our section, I used to think,

is he or isn’t he. Because you couldn’t converse like we are conversing and I wasn’t, wasn’t so bad inside our lines because we were all backing each other. But when we got out the front there and we took these ROKs with us, we always made sure that we were looking at them, didn’t tell them that, but we made sure we were looking at them yeah.

The only time I had anything to do with the ROKs as was in that situation I’ve just spoken about, the rest of the time was all Australians.

By the time the stalemate came, the line was static, they were well behind the line, we didn’t see anything up there.

Luck of the draw. In my case, as I say, it was supposed to be after four months and eight months, but it didn’t always work that way. Depends on the availability of how many bodies are there and that as to when they can let you go. And when I went they took us back…. they put us in a truck and took us down to Seoul, and there you

met up with English and Canadians, New Zealanders, the other Commonwealth Troops, to go to Japan. You didn’t always go with somebody you knew but again, the Aussies and the Kiwis stuck together so.

Oh that was great, I went with a bloke, I was in 1 Platoon the first time I went

and a guy from 3 Platoon went so him and I stuck together. We were in the same company so we, but we met others there, it was fine.

Probably a beer for a start. Two beers, three beers. There was, we got of a plane in

Tokyo and the buses are there to take you to the army camp, and the army camp is a place called Ebisu. Ebisu was a leave and transit depot run by Australians, it was an old naval officers’ club I suppose, and they had four big concrete tanks, probably 80 feet long, 40 foot wide, 20 foot wide, 40 foot deep or something.

And they used to test, or they told us they used to test subs in these tanks before they took them down to Yokohama to the mother ships. It was a real good camp, but the street, from the main street, which had trams in it strangely enough, from the main street up to the camp, was about 300 yards long and that bus, when it turned out of the main street to go down to the camp,

he had to stop and put it in first gear and crawl through, there was that many girls in that street to get to the camp. And when we got in the camp, we’d go in one end of this building and you’d strip right off, and you take your hat and your boots and gaiters and you’re web belt, of course, and your pay book and any personal things you wanted. But you’d throw all your clothes away, have a shower go out the other end and get re-kited out and they’d give you a leave

pass and pay and you could do what you wanted.

Oh, the one time back in Korea we came out of the line into reserve, and this American camp, Camp Casey, anyway they came round and we’d only had for quite a few weeks, all we had was a pint of water a day, and that was for shaving and drinking, and

winter time they didn’t strip off to much. Anyway we got to Camp Casey and they said were going up to American – another American camp where they had hot showers, so we marched up the road about five miles, and we come to this 2044 common bat shower unit, whatever that meant. And the

Yanks did the same, they’d strip off and get re-kitted, but the Australians being different uniform, we had to take all these clothes off, we’d had on for a couple of months, have a shower and put them all back on again, and then march back. Yeah, but in Tokyo we got new clobber from skin out, new uniform, mightn’t have been new, but all cleaned.

Oh, just all young girls.

I don’t know whether they were under age or not. I don’t know whether they were under age, they were all teenagers and young women. I don’t think, they didn’t look like really young kids.

No I don’t think so, I think the guys came over there on the idea of having a good time, spending their money, and especially on your first trip over there, cause you know, am I going to make it or aren’t I going to make it. So you go there,

the first thing we did we went up to the Kookaburra Club in this camp and had the biggest steak they could find, and drank Aussie beer. But I don’t think the guys, they just went there for a good time, spend their money drink it, dance it and whatever.

I don’t think it’d got that far.

Not that I’m racist, but I couldn’t see, and some guys did marry Japanese girls, some of the BCOF blokes, a couple of them are still married to them. One bloke over, the bloke that bought the first Japanese girl out here, Gordon Parker, Cherry Parker, they’ve been married over fifty years, fifty-five years or something.

So anything’s possible, but never entered my head, no.

I don’t think any of the guys that I served with were that anti Japanese, I mean we knew what the Japanese had done and all that, but seven years later and in

Japan, 20, 21, it’s just go with the flow.

We, this other guy and I we jumped on a, I don't know how we found out about it, but we got on a train and we went up about 100 mile

North of Tokyo to a place called Nikko, where it’s full of shrines and things, it’s a pleasure resort now I believe. And we got up there and it was just coming onto winter there was snow around, and we got off the train and we found a little Japanese pub and it looked like, with the mountains in the background with the snow, just like a picture postcard, Christmas card, looked fantastic, yeah. So we did get around and have a look at a few places.

Yes sort of like hell to heaven. All the fighting stopped and it’s gone from firing to shooting, firing to shooting, firing to music.

Yeah, you think about, “Gee whiz, I’ve got to go back to that.” Even thought the first time I went over I had five days and five days, so you try and forget about going back until your five days is up. But and then you, when you get on the bus to go back to the airport to get on the plane back to there, oh Christ you’ve got to go through all that again. And then your mates are back there, the ones that have been on leave and the ones that haven’t been on leave,

so it was a vicious circle.

It wasn’t all that crash hot I’ve got to admit.

I think the only one I can remember was a New Zealand bloke, all the boys were giving him money cause we was AWL. And he was living in this camp and the provos [Provosts – Military Police] couldn’t catch him.

And they wondered why, they reckon he should have run out of money, but all the blokes every one that came in, they’d say that’s him over there, so you’d go over and give him a couple of quid. I don’t know whatever happened to him.

I don’t know about their army, I wouldn’t have a clue. But I don’t think any of our blokes did it.

Not real good. As I say they used to have a red cap, English red cap, Australian, a New Zealander, and a Canadian. And when they paid, whatever if you were in a club or one of those bars or whatever and you

and they came in, you’d always try and get close to the Aussie and the Kiwi if trouble started because you knew they weren’t going to belt you. But the Pommy Red Cap and the Canadian, they’d and the Yanks were the worst, they’d just belt you over the head and then ask the question.

I don’t know, they were always pretty aggressive though, aren’t they? Seem to be anyway. Even in movies nowadays,

they seem to have an aggressive attitude.

Never ever saw a MASH but…..

No, I saw MASH on television, I never saw MASH in live.

No I’ve seen MASH obviously and MASH the movie, with

Alan Alda and who was, Donald Sutherland was in the movie I think yeah. No, I’ve seen that but never ever saw a MASH in real life over there, but…

I thought it was hilarious, yeah.

No, I never saw, the only time I went back and I got crook with some virus or some bloody thing and they sent me back to an Indian

MASH [Mobile Army Surgical Hospital] I suppose or an Indian thing, bloody big bloke with a turban, bend over and shoved a needle in me bum and told me to walk five mile back and I wouldn’t feel it and I didn’t. But…

He said, “How’d you get here?” I said, “By jeep.” He said, “Send the jeep back and you walk.” I said, “Why?” and he said, “Cause if you go back in a jeep you won’t be able to move for a couple of days, but if you walk back you’ll be all right.” And I was. Never felt it.

I became president of the Korean Veterans’ Association of Australia we incorporated ourselves in 1980, I became president in 1994 and normally previous to me the guys were doing it in three years

as president, and when my three years was up, there was a little bit of internal trouble and the bulk of the guys asked me to stay on and I did, and I’m still there. We’ve improved and upgraded and pretty well recognised now and somewhere along the line somebody must have thought I’d done a good job and put me in for a OAM yeah, which I received in January last year. And it was

out of the moon, out of the blue, never had a clue until I got the letter.

Oh, it’s not only a personal thing and I tried to explain it to the meeting, I don’t have it now but when I first got it. It’s more for them or as much for them as it is for me personally, it’s my OAM, I know that and understand it, it’s only because of them,

it wouldn’t have happened if I’d been on my own, I’d have never got it and I understand that and respect it. But because of them and the work we’ve done trying to improve our image, can’t do that alone either, so it’s a team thing, even thought in one way it’s a personal thing, but it’s a team effort that got there,

and I’m proud of it too, don’t worry about that, sort of opens a few eyes. How can somebody like me get something like that you know, just proves it can happen. I’m proud of it.

We were shelled quite a lot there.

You didn’t get any warning as far as if there was going to be a half dozen or whatever, I think it was the 11th of September,

cause my mate was going to be twenty-two on the 12th and he didn’t think he was going to make it. And they hit us all day, and they hit us and it just went on for hours. And we were digging a new position and I dug into, I found some, cause when I dug down I found some like tree trunk things, branches of trees. So I dug in there, the corner, and it was an old Chinese bunker and just as I dug in

the corner of it they started shelling, so I cleaned it out and got in there, I never thought it might be a booby trap or anything at that time, because it could have been, but it wasn’t, luckily, and then I got in there a little bit and saw where I reckon would be the original entrance, so I dug that out. So I’ve got a hole there and a hole here where I’ve come in from that corner, and it’s only about two foot six deep, you couldn’t stand up in it.

So I’m in this dug out and I’m laying on my belly with my head half way out the entrance that I’d dug out and the bloody thing collapsed and I couldn’t get out, couldn’t get in and couldn’t get out. So I laid there for a couple of hours until the barrage stopped and then he came in a dug me out. But a bloke called Ray Simpson who later went on and became a VC [Victoria Cross] winner in

Vietnam, and Simmo was a corporal in Korea, at that time. And about nearly the last shell of the day, just behind us there was a Centurion tank which I reckon the Chinese were having a go at, and where they dug into the top of the hill, they had wooden cases around it, ammunition cases and boxes and things. And some how or rather it caught fire and one of the tank

crew, I think there’s four to a tank I’m not quite sure, one of the English tank crew got out to put the fire out, but he lifted the turret up, and practically the last shell of the day went down the hole. Well, he was outside and fixed the three guys up in there of course, and when he realised what had happened, he went a bit mental I suppose,

troppo. And so Simmo, Ray Simpson, had a bottle of rum and poured a bit of rum into him and made him non compos, while they took him out, while they came to take him out. It was one hectic day that one.

Oh he just, when you look at a person that’s not with it,

you know be it in a hospital or a mental ward, and they’ve got a different look about their eyes, an attitude, but mainly the eyes, there not with it, there not there, and he wasn’t there. Simmo just poured half a bottle of rum into him and, whether that did the

trick till they came, they came and got him and took him out anyway.

Rum issue was, come up in beer bottles and normally given to the platoon sergeant and he would dish it out round the platoon.

Pardon?

Oh, pretty heavy stuff, but

it was, as I say it was given to the platoon sergeant and he would issue it out, a shot of rum each, some guys couldn’t drink it, some guys wanted two. So it all went anyway, every time we got a issue.

You put it in your pannikin, didn’t have glasses, put it in your tin pannikin and drink it, give them a bit each. Make sure that everybody in your platoon that

wanted one got one, got a shot, then you’d go round with what was left, and as I say some blokes didn’t want it some might want two, so you’d go back and give them another shot, it always all went.

Always went.

Probably from the waist down, my legs.

Oh I still, my back’s a bit crook from that, [Department of] Veterans’ Affairs, they pay me a part pension for it now, wouldn’t accept it for years, but they do now.

Yeah. Yeah, that was the longest and heaviest barrage that I’d ever been through that one. Don’t know why they started, I mean we had been there for, went in in June and this was three months later, so it wasn’t as if they didn’t

know who was there. We had a big green flag with a yellow kangaroo, no we had a big yellow flag with a green kangaroo, slouch hat and red boxing gloves and we used to fly. So they knew the Australians were there, I’m pretty sure it was the 11th of September and they just give us buggery that day, they just poured it in. Must have been crook on

something.

No, cause the others were there in little slit trenches and they were there, so I just smoked me head off, lay there smoking, couldn’t move.

Yeah they were in here, luckily.

I couldn’t do anything about it,

it seemed a lot longer, I think it was about two hours I was there, according to them, two hours is a long time when you’re laying there doing nothing but smoke, but that helps, or it did help.

The funny part about it, it never killed anybody, I’ll rephrase that, it never killed any Australians.

Killed three, how many is in a Centurion crew? Four I think, so it killed three and one bloke went of his head, the English. Didn’t kill any Australians, but it made a bloody hell of a mess of our trench system and a few bunkers but nobody got killed in that particular day.

Yeah we had to re-build, yeah. Didn’t go back in that Chinese bunker thought let me tell you.

Don’t know, well never thought about it till later, while I got in there, when I found it as they started to shell I never thought of a booby trap until I went in there, or is it or isn’t it. And till you start, it was only about six foot square and about that deep,

but luckily it wasn’t a booby trap. I never had any problems with booby traps, and I’m glad there wasn’t any in there, but I thought about it later how stupid it was to get in, then again, if I hadn’t I might have gone the wrong one. So as it turned out I was lucky in that respect.

No, never found any of those. Unlike Vietnam where they did it,

I didn’t strike any there.

Yeah, but I never struck any in Korea. Never struck any.

Oh they were, that was heavy artillery shelling that day it was just (UNCLEAR). But

they’d shell you on occasions, just, might be anywhere between twelve and thirty but that day they just kept it up for hours. They’d mortar, long range mortars, and they had, must have been a heavy machine gun, cause they could send in tracers, and they looked like fire fighters of a night

until you hear the swoosh. It was just a bombardment after bombardment, mortar after mortar. Then you’d go for a couple of days and then get into it again, we did the same to them, our Kiwis were doing it that end.

No that I know of, I don’t understand artillery properly,

but that was, that day was one of the box it was just a real few hours of boom boom boom. And you lay there, is it going to end, when it’s going to end. But yeah longer than usual.

Sometimes, depending on how far it’s going and what position you are, there was a platoon further out than us and they probably heard the first shell a few seconds before we did. But we were up, nearly where they were landing, so it was going over their head coming up to us, so the first information I had was when the first boom went off. Not knowing there’d be so many,

not particularly worried, worried enough, not particularly worried, because we didn’t know it was going to be so heavy at that stage. The more they come, I thought, “Jesus, better do something about this,” and that’s when I found that thing. No pattern as far as I know.

No you hear, if there going over your head you can hear the swoosh, but I didn’t hear that because

we were up the end where they were landing, that’s when you get the boom.

That’s right, that’s why we used to call the Kiwi’s drop shorts. They’d, when they fired them, they’d fire them over our heads and we’d hear the swoosh, but now and again whether it was a defective one, sometimes they’d land near us.

There was always patrols out ever night. 187 was in front of a reasonably wide valley, Samichon Valley, so obviously the patrols were

thicker and constant. 355 was up, pretty up close to the enemy, and you do patrols there again every night, but you wouldn’t have to go out as far, cause they were a lot closer. The situation the enemy was a lot

closer there than they were at 187. And they used to, I think I said before about this four second alley, they’d fire intermittently into that day or night and we did the same on their fence positions into one of their trenches in their lines. And if you’re going to the toilet or going round to get more ammunition, if you walked past you’d just pull the trigger, you or me or the next bloke. Might be ten minutes, might be an

hour, nobody knew.

I mean sure you never knew when it was going to happen, in our case it was on a forward slope which made it harder to, coming up, going down didn’t seem too bad you could slide down round the corner. Coming up hill, especially in the winter with the snow, made it awful hard,

even though it was only about ten or twelve feet, remerging the walls would crumble, after all the firing. Trying to get up that10 or twelve feet up that hill, not knowing if it’s going to come or not, a pretty hairy experience, I’ve got to admit.

Oh no, not there you didn’t, never got blasé there,

always thought about. It didn’t, I didn’t use it much, a couple of time I had to go down but, the times I did go through it, I thought about it.

Not that I can remember strangely enough, not that I can remember. It was always a sticking point with the guys that had to use it, that particular part.

No I can’t remember any casualties there. We got more casualties from mortars and artillery than that.

More shells?

Well you,

yeah, somebody’s got to get to them obviously. More so a medic when, although we all carried an aid kit with a big bandage and a small bandage and a big bandage. That’s another thing they tried to teach you which bandage to use of how big the wound was

and all that sort of thing. But you tried to get somebody there with more experience than I had as far as wounds go, as quick as possible.

Staff?

We had a company RAP [Regimental Aid Post], they had stretcher bearers, the company RAP then they had a battalion RAP, who I suppose the further back you went

the more experience they got. Couldn’t obviously bring the top guy up the front there, could they, they had to get them back there as quick as possible. They lined them up first and then send them back.

Only a couple, just one bloke got hit across the hand and the fingers, so we bandaged as best we could

and then put in a sling, got him back, and then sent him off.

Pardon?

As far as I’m aware, he was Scottish, but he was in the Australian Army. We had a few English and Scotsmen who came out to Australia and joined the Australian Army. But apparently it was advertised in England, that the Australian Government would accept

anybody over there that was of a certain age, that volunteered in the Australian Army to go to Korea and some of them got accepted.

They came out to Australia on, I think it was a $10 ticket, few of them still here. Sign on the Australian Army, get better

pay then the English, signed on for their two years term in Korea, two year term in the Army, one year in Korea.

Oh they were all right. If he had an Aussie uniform he was an Aussie, even though he had an accent. No they were all right.

Oh they were good guys, quite a few of the, some got killed too, no, they were good guys.

Usually.

Usually.

The period I was in Korea it was eight man ambush, fifteen man patrol. You didn’t have to go as far as I said before, 355 was a reasonably in close proximity to the Chinese so, valley wasn’t obviously as wide so there was less room for movement. There was a hill, a little, wouldn’t call it a hill, knoll out the front

of 355 called Munendi, and Munendih had two slit trenches in it and the Chinese would try to get it before dark and we’d try to get it before dark, and first in best dressed. Which in retrospect was a bit stupid but I mean you played for high stakes. There was quite a few fights over Munendih yeah.

Well there were only four man patrols there, but yeah they were hectic at times. Cause if we got there first we want it and obviously keep it for the night, didn’t stay there during the day, and if they got there first then they didn’t want you to take it. yeah we had a few fights over Munendih.

No you had the same two, they knew where they were and we knew where they were, so I suppose it was a ridiculous situation, wasn’t it. It was just, hard to say, a situation that best, first in wanted to keep it.

They’d let you know. Boom. Boom

and we did the same to them if we got in first, as soon as you saw them open up.

No. Got a big Mongolian gentleman paid us a visit there one. Anyway

he departed this life, and I think he laid there about six weeks, and normally they take them back. But he laid there for about six weeks so I got told to take a bag of lime out and pour over him, which I did. And after that they came and took him away. Don’t know whether that

had anything to do with it or not, but.

Well the depth of winter, sub zero so wasn’t too bad.

Munendih

No never thought of that, if we got there first we just jump into it. So they could have booby trapped it if they had it and we could have but, that never eventuated. No, didn’t eventuate. I don’t think we’d booby trap it because we wanted to get in there first every night and I don’t think they would, cause they wanted to do the same thing, unless they did it and then didn’t go in. But it was like an

outpost, it gave you, when I say it gave you, it gave the battalion extra warning in case a big force came, you’d always have time to relay back the message. That if a big attack was going to come, I think that’s one reason why we’d try and get it every night.

Yeah, even

though it was only four there it was like an outpost, well it was an outpost, but a good listening outpost.

Not that good. The walkie-talkies didn’t work in some areas, you always had a password, a word for one blom tresses. One was for in position, blom was go back and

tresses was casualties, things like that.

One blom tresses, blom was coming back and tresses was if you got into a fight and got casualties, cause it was just one big….yeah it’s a strange situation, isn’t it, but got to try and find some

sanity out of it, where does it all end. Never thought of it then, but now all these years later you often wonder why, or I often wonder why.

No, I knew why I was there, I don’t regret going there, it’s the pity of it, the real reason behind it all. Even now these days, why does it happen, why does it have to happen.

It’s probably beyond my control, it is beyond my control.

Wasn’t, we weren’t told a great deal overall, all we knew that peace talks were going on and we could see the light every night,

the search light a P’anmunjom. We were in a position there and we had to hold it that’s basically what it was, we weren’t. We had rocks one side of us and (UNCLEAR) the other, make sure you hold your position that’s about probably the strength of it.

Me for a start. My country, the idea that we were right and they were wrong. I think that’s been proved,

hopefully. The way that the two Koreas are now, or I’d like to believe that we were right. Think we are.

Just walk past them, make sure they were dead.

No, one thing was to try and stabilise the situation. Knowing that they had the quantities in numbers to get out as quick as

possible, cause they would be reinforced pretty quick. So rather than just walk around checking bodies and picking up there weapons and that, the idea is to get away pretty quick, because they would reinforce it. Most of the time it was night time anyway, day time it was very rarely patrolled in the day light, cause you’d get mortared

and shelled. So most of them were night-time and if you got tangled up with, do what you had to do and get out. Head off.

Well, we knew they were coming, you could hear them coming, so we’d just make sure that we were all right, altogether, and it would be eight or fifteen and hopefully then take off.

They had what we call burp guns, Russian made, had a drum magazine. And when our guns fired they’d go pahh, when their guns fired, they went burp and it was

a, drum magazine, not as good as ours I don’t reckon anyway, and ours was, our Owen gun was absolutely fantastic. And the Bren gun was good, bit heavy but good fire power, excellent and greater distance. The Owen gun was up close and the Bren was, good long range stuff, powerful, the burp guns were a bit iffy,

not as good as ours. Russians reckon they were never in Korea and yet our pilots have been stated, that our pilots reckon they flew against Caucasians. Didn’t see any in the field, but the pilots reckon they flew against white Caucasians, so they had to be Russian.

Russia? Wonder whether they’d come in or not. Then the Chinese bought into it the odds went up a fair bit. We used to wonder whether the Russians would buy into it to, thank God they didn’t. I’ll tell you a funny story, you remember that, did you ever hear of a bloke called Burchett, Wilfrid Burchett?

Wilfrid Burchett was a correspondent, Communist and he was in North Korea when I was there. And the word came down to us that Burchett wanted to come over and talk to us and tell us to lead the front, and go home and that. And so word went back that if he came over, he wouldn’t walk back. He

wouldn’t walk back so he never came to visit us, he wouldn’t have got back either, I’m positive of that.

He was a war correspondent and as I say a Communist, and he came through the Communist side, he came through Russia or China.

Yeah they sent down word that he wanted to come over and talk to us and try to tell us to get out, to walk out of the front and leave, go home. So we sent word back, I suppose I’m surmising that all that battalion, platoons did the same, but our platoon said if he comes to see us, if he come over, comes to this platoon he ain’t going to walk out. And we made a pact that he wouldn’t, so he

wouldn’t have, if he had have come in he wouldn’t have walked out, that was a fact.

That came down the line, we all knew Burchett was there, and on their side and we were pretty savage and we were Australian we didn’t like the idea of an Australian being over there. So yeah, that was a fact that he wasn’t going to walk back, no way,

had he come. But he didn’t, he thought better of it.

I’m lead to believe, that MacArthur when he was in charge, he,

Truman was the President, MacArthur was in charge of all forces in Korea. And they (UNCLEAR) at Okinawa and MacArthur wanted to go through over the Yalu into Manchuria. The planes were, the Communist planes were flying over the Yalu, strafing and dog fighting

our guys and then when they fired back they go back over to the Yalu and our guys couldn’t go after them, weren’t allowed across. That was the stop line, they could go both ways but we couldn’t. MacArthur said that that was no good that he was going to go over, you know, and that’s when Truman sacked him. And I sort of think that had he have gone over it could have been World War III, who knows,

with MacArthur, anything could happen. But it was a sort of a no win situation for him, they could come over, but our guys couldn’t you know.

Oh, we often wondered whether they’d do it or not. Yeah, we often wondered whether they would, but was there to drop it on,

there wasn’t, I mean there was bugger all in South Korea then. I don’t image there was much in North Korea, to drop a nuclear bomb, you always have to go and drop it on a big city, there was nothing there. So you know, I suppose when you look at it logically, where could they drop it? Don’t know.

I don’t know what they’re grenades were, they obviously had grenades. They had those burp guns and then they had bigger sub machine guns and they had mortars.

They were pretty well armed and they had a decent artillery they give us, you know. But they, I still think they had more men than they had weapons. They had men coming out of their ears.

Well a few times that they paid us a visit,

it was more men than weapons. So they would send in twenty and then the next twenty were waiting for that twenty to go down, and then the next twenty were waiting for that twenty to go down. They had man power, and I don’t know whether I’m right or wrong, but I don’t think they were ideally trained. Some of them probably were good troops,

but I think a lot of them were roped in and just sent in, I think.

I think the thing is, when shooting starts it’s

got to be quick, quick as possible. Where here, they’re there, just get it over with. Don’t, you’re not going to run up there and ask whether you’ve got a gun or not, you just do what you’ve got to do,

and then worry about it.

Yeah.

Didn’t worry me. They were there, they’d probably been told to go there, otherwise they wouldn’t have been there, no it didn’t worry me and still doesn’t worry me. I don’t lose any sleep over it

put it that way. I might be hard hearted but it doesn’t worry me no.

Well I did, we did yeah. But I don’t worry about it.

Oh it was always a prisoner, they always wanted a prisoner, always.

No, the times that I was in a situation like that, we would get out as quick as possible, cause we knew the reinforcements were coming so we just took off.

Probably, not going to carry one back.

Carry your own but not one of them, I’m not anyway.

Yeah got into a ‘we versus them’. I think it was pretty important sort of a little place to have an advantage from, if a bigger attack came, not just a skirmish but a big…its like an outlying listening post. The only problem of course was that they knew it was

there, and we knew it was there.

Yep. Whether they were there or not first, yeah. Especially in the winter, because you couldn’t move too fast, in the snow.

It wasn’t a great

straight forward posting. Obviously south for us and north for them, it didn’t leave you a great deal of scope to approach it, they could cover the whole, you know this half where we were from and we could cover that half from where they were from. So it didn’t leave you much scope, but we thought it was, or apparently they, our people thought it was important enough to put a patrol

on it every night if possible, so that’s what we tried to do.

Normally a platoon sergeant will take a patrol out on his own. Actually the corporal didn’t take us, an ambush patrol, but a fighting patrol was either a lieutenant nine times out of ten, or in

some cases a platoon sergeant. If the platoon, whichever was in charge, sometimes the sergeant would be there sometimes he wouldn’t, if he went as well he may be at the back, but the lieutenant will be in the front row and the sergeant at the back of the patrol. But keep it all compact.

They used to have two forward scouts, two half semi circles, have the officer in the middle and then a couple at the back.

Probably forward, yeah.

The

whole of the patrol.

No, oh it didn’t change but it, I don’t remember it ever changing on the patrols that I went on. Summer time was all nighter, winter time two or three hours and then another one went out. So they wouldn't change the patrol, you’d just do your patrol and come back in. So two forward scouts would be there

virtually for the time of the patrol.

Hopefully, I was capable of doing a job, hoping I wouldn’t lose anybody, that was my biggest fear, that I would lose someone under my command,

in that respect. Always in the back of your mind that you’re trying to take the right path and the right way and do the right thing and get them back all unharmed. That was the general thoughts behind when I took a patrol out.

Particular rules, well one thing is obviously keep the noise down as much as possible, especially on an ambush. No smoking, cause to light a match obviously sends out a message, the end of a cigarette can glow for God knows how long, even in the

snow and the smoke itself can send out a message, in that respect. If you got a group of fifteen blokes and twelve of them smoke and twelve of them wanted a cigarette at once, it’s a lot of smoke, so it never happened. So there was a couple of rules there, you tried to keep the voice down especially, the

noise down as much as possible, and no smoking. They were three of the biggest things. And keep the formation as close as possible. We did a semi circle, we’d go up three paddy banks, three paddy banks, across, six down three and then

back and that’s where we started. And you could keep count that way, make sure that you’re back where you started so that you knew your way back into, through our minefields back into our own line. You had to be aware of where you were all the time. Cause if something happened and you needed help to tell them where you were, so there’s lots of things went through your mind.

Briefing.

Yeah they’d tell you briefing. Ambush patrols were, I was going to say real easy, okay there easy to set up, easy to maintain and if nothing happened, easy to get back. Fighting patrols were a little different because you…. an ambush patrol went to a certain area, they would

pin point it and say when you get out 400, 500 yards drop and that’s it, lie up against the paddy fields and wait, and then come back in. And nine times out of ten they went off without a hitch. Fighting patrols were different they moved around so it was pretty hard to keep the noise down, talking wasn’t too bad, smoking was definitely out, but the movement of fifteen guys walking

with equipment, was a bit hard to keep noise down then. So the scouts had to be aware that people could, if they were laying further up to…. but mainly the path was hitched out for you, how far to go that way, and that and then back. Just be aware of where you were all the time if something happened.

No, luckily.

The air force used to strafe positions opposite us, when we did those stupid prisoner of war grabs. They’d bomb

and napalm and generally strafe the place in front of you, which give away the sign that’s something’s going to happen. Then the Kiwis would shell buggery out of it for a couple of hours, then we’d go in and they’d be waiting, that was stupid. But that's the way they did it. The air force was very strong, our air force was very very strong, when I say our force,

the RAAF, the Yanks and I think there was……South Africans, didn’t ever see any but they were there. So yeah our air force was reasonable strong air cover, yeah. They had Bed Check Charlie [well-known North Korean plane] that could… Old biplane, bit like a canvas, and he’d fly over and

do spotting, he’d fly over. He must have been game, that bloke.

No, we didn’t.

I was due out on the 6th June 1953, my twelve months was up. We were up on Little Gibraltar,

355 and the officer at the time a bloke called John Quinlan and Quinlan come up to me and he said, “You’re time’s nearly up, another couple of weeks.” I said, “Yeah.” So he sent me down the back of this old flying fox thing that used to take water and ammunition up and stuff up and bring wounded back if necessary, to load and unload it. So I was

more than happy to be there, the only thing you put up with was the odd shell and mortar. But my patrolling days were over probably two weeks before, so I was more than happy with that.

Oh, for a lot it was yeah. They’d send them back to, they might not come back out of the line, and I didn’t, but they mightn’t send them out on a patrol.

They could just stay in company and do whatever, get the guys that have still got months to go to start doing a few more.

When I came out, I’d done five.

Yeah I had twelve months to go yet.

I don’t know about wind down, I was always conscious of the fact that anything can happen. They mortared us one day, I was down the back there, and they mortared the buggery out of us, and this little Scotsman that came out to Australia, a bloke called Wright was his surname, and his body came

down and I’d been his platoon sergeant for six months and it was, I still had, just on two weeks to go and I thought to meself, geez, I know he had longer but I realised then that anything could happen you know, so I didn’t get elated until I really got down to the back of the battalion onto a truck and I’m out of here. And that’s when I thought I’ve made this, I’m out.

Oh, it was a great feeling

let me tell you, it was great, good feeling. I wasn’t sorry to leave the guys in that respect, I’d done my time, I’d done what I’d signed on to do, sorry to go but see you later, I’m out of here and no regrets that way.

Yeah I went back, I still had twelve months to serve, twelve months and three days, and I got to, back to Hiro where guys used to train before they went to Korea and I got re-posted, and when I got re-posted I got sent to, back to Tokyo, this place called Ebisu, where we used to go on

leave. And Tokyo with all the big shining lights and being re-built, pretty modern city at that stage. When I got up there I was in charge of the officers in sergeant’s messes, Japanese bar staff and they had, nine Japanese blokes

and seventeen girls as waitresses, and all had to keep up, was make sure the bar was well stocked, both bars and the staff were rostered. So all I virtually did till the next April in April 54 was sign my name, physically, that’s all I virtually had to do.

I’d ring up the transport company and they’d send up a jeep and trailer and I’d get the interpreter and the guy in the jeep and go to the American camp and buy the stuff and pay for it, bring it back and they’d unload it and I’d sign for it. The bar staff would look after the bar and the waitresses would look after the tables, and I learnt to drink a little bit of stuff there, free.

I used to like rum and coke, and I got drunk on the 11th of the 11th ’53, and I woke up on the pool table with the biggest head I’ve ever had, never going to drink rum again, boy I was sick. And the last Saturday every month they used to have a half price night, and grog was cheap, you know you buy a bottle of scotch for fifteen bob I think, sell it down the black market.

Yeah. I’ll tell you that. Grog was cheap and the last Saturday in the month was half price night, and the guys were crazy, instead of drinking gin and tonic and rum and coke they’d swap them round, and did they get a gut, or did we get a gut. But yeah that was, all I did was drink.

Doing nothing. And I was watching, while I was there till the end of the war, the two months it took for the war to finish and in the months afterwards when the guys were still there, right up until I left, they were coming in and out of leave, and I’m thinking, “I’m here, and they’ve got to go back.” And the blokes,

in that camp that I was at, in April ’54, in March actually we came home in April. They came round and said everybody’s going home, back to Australia, except the skeleton crew. And they took us down to Kure which is like Melbourne to Sydney, took us down by train and put us on this migrant ship, used to bring English migrants,

New Australia, migrant ship bought migrants out to Australia. And it took a battalion up and back a couple of times to Korea. And they made it into a troop ship and put us all on board, then they took us to Korea and we didn’t get off the boat, and we picked up 2 Battalion, at Pusan and then we came home. The first stop Brisbane, then Sydney and then here, out of Sydney, came home by train.

And that’s the first and only time that I’ve ever seen homosexuality and it wasn’t in the army it was the crew of the ship. And I’ve never ever seen it before, so that was an eye opener.

Well it was in the bar in Kure, the night before we got on the boat, and walking through and

somebody sang out, “Hey, Blue.” I said, “Yeah.” And they said, “Come over here.” And there’s three English, what would you call them, merchant seamen sitting on a thing. “This is Gwendolyn.” “Oh yeah, hello Gwen.” Well he’s gone right off, “My name’s Gwendolyn, true, my name’s Gwendolyn.” Called him Gwen and he’s went right off and I thought, “Gee, what have I got myself into here?” But that was my

first experience in, anyway, not my style.

My feeling?

No, no, I was quite happy.

I know in my own heart that I’d been there done it, for the time I had signed on for and I wasn’t upset or anything like that, because they had to go back and I didn’t. I was quite happy.

Better not say anything.

Yeah.

It was pretty underground, all I’ll say is anything was available for a price and I mean anything.

Anything you wanted, doesn’t matter, TVs had just started to come in, so if you wanted a TV for a price you’d get a TV, I mean under cost price you know. And I know that some people, ex servicemen, or some servicemen in those days they could, you could buy a bottle of whisky for say what was it

thirteen bob or something and you could sell it for three quid on the black market.

So you could make a profit yeah, if you got into all that stuff.

I think towards the finish, my time there, they bought in like a stamp,

you know those rubber stamps, and they bought in those and they started stamping all the bottles with British Commonwealth Forces or something on them. Trying to trace back where they all come from, so I would imagine they would have to be pretty careful how they went about it. But it did happen.

Not that I know of. One bloke

who was a pay master there, he got caught, robbing the payroll, took a, married a Japanese and she took off with the money, and he finished up in jail.

I don’t know about weapons, TVs, they had grog,

all that sort of stuff. I wouldn’t go into the heavy stuff, I’ll rephrase that I didn’t go into it, I didn’t go into that. I don’t think anybody would go into that real heavy stuff but food and alcohol and then TVs towards the finish when that came in. It was up there before it was here.

No, nothing like that, I was more food and grog and things.

What?

I don’t know you’d just go to a, the black market, how would you say this, the Japanese that worked in the

camp would ask you if you wanted to buy a TV. TVs, I forget what they cost, but a quarter of the price, no questions asked.

No never bought one so I don’t know. I didn’t either, I can look in there and say truth I never bought one. Didn’t understand TVs in those days, never seen one.

As far as I know, some of the guys that I knew, the sort of living beyond their means. But that was par for the course up there, some guys had Japanese partners, and they

might not have been married in the strict sense of the word but they, one guy had been up there since, Morarty, from Morarty to Japan in 1954 he’d been away nine years from Australia. And he broke down and cried when they said we were going home, he said, “This is home,” and I thought, “Jesus, hang on, we’re going home.”

Hmm.

I don’t know, but he’d had, just had

nine years in Japan, didn’t go to Korea, he had nine years in Japan and he just broke down when they said his going back to Australia. And to this day I can still see his face, and why would he say ‘this is home’, obviously because he liked it.

Yeah,

I think it was between, strictly Japanese, but yeah, Japanese contacts, I’d reckon, yeah I’d reckon.

They could be doing it themselves, who knows.

Pretty strange. After being in Japan for eleven months doing nothing but drink and smoke.

I came home, I got home in April, and I was on leave, on went on leave and I was due out on the 9th June and the end of May somewhere I got drunk and fell over and broke me ankle so they couldn’t discharge me until September. Till I could walk, and that gave me a couple more months to acclimatise. So I went back

plastering for a while, about six or seven years and then I went courier driving, then I stopped work because of health, and in the meantime I worked part time at the pub, I thought I’d get a few bob here and drink free beer. A lot of guys did, just work part time in pub and get

a few bob and drink free beer.

Yeah, a bit of a dangerous occupation. I did that for twenty-two years, which didn’t improve me health much, but satisfied the inner mind.

Nobody seemed to understand, or weren’t to understand.

Nowadays, and I say this with due respect, if a bank teller, and I wouldn’t like to see it happen to anyone, but if they get, a robbery occurs at a McDonald’s or something, you know the first thing they do is shoot them into a trauma situation, and I reckon that’s good but it didn’t happen to us. And probably that’s one reason why we all got on the grog.

Oh I think they just felt, going from my point of view, wasn’t war, try telling that to the ones that didn’t come home. It’s estimated between four and five million people died in Korea in three years and three months,

okay. And after all the devastation and things you see obviously they remain with you, so when somebody says it wasn’t a war, it sort of hits your heart. And then we wasn’t wanted by the RSL for a long time, now they welcome anybody, don’t they.

Oh yeah, it’s different now, but it wasn’t then.

Police actions. I was never a policeman, far from it. I, no that’s what they said it wasn’t a war, but

I can tell you that’s bullshit, it was a war in every sense of the word, and a lot of people paid the price, not only Australians, a lot of countries paid the price. But again most of them volunteered, the Poms had conscripts and the Yanks had conscripts,

but most of them were volunteers, we were.

No it was just an impromptu thing. We sort of met and said well you know, I came from Preston and Preston didn’t want to know them and a mate that I was telling you about before that smoked eighty cigarettes a day and fifty

beers he came from Northcote, and they didn’t want to know him. And somebody else had come from Collingwood, and they didn’t want to know him, so we just picked up at Port Phillip and used to go there, cause that was central in town and from any part of Melbourne it was the one walking pole we’d all go to.

Yeah, well Friday nights or Saturday, mainly Saturday.

Korea, yeah, about the, not so much the general population, but we were crock on the government at the time, because the government had asked people to join and go to Korea and do a job for that, for our country to represent our country,

and when we came back didn’t want to know us. Well that was our opinion anyway. And so we were a little bit pissed off at that government for what we thought was letting us down. I’ve got to admit the last few years they’ve turned around, the whole DVA [Department of Veterans’ Affairs] things turned around. I think, Shaker, Colin Shaker I think he started

it and when he went out, Labour went out and Scott, Bruce Scott went in he picked it up and run with it. And by that time I was president of this association and I said to Scott, “You know Shaker kicked it off Bruce,” I said, “Don’t drop it,” and to his credit I don’t think he did, I think he’s done an excellent job. And with due respect to the lady that’s in now, hopeless.

But that’s only an opinion.

Probably made me, I try not to be, probably made me cynical. I don’t care attitude, been there done that,

if you can’t hack it don’t go into the kitchen, you know. She said I’m hard hearted but maybe I am, but I can look at lots of things and not turn a hair. Cause I’ve seen worse so, some people and I really believe and I really do, and you probably

interviewed people, a lot of different people, some people can hack it better than others. I’m happy the way I’m going.

Ahh, stubbornness. Don’t want to lose.

I’m not regretful, there’s a few things I could have changed and probably should of but I haven’t, can’t go back and do it, just get on with it. Like, when I got cancer and they said, “You’ve got cancer,” I said, “Oh yeah,” came home and sulked for a while and then thought, “Bugger that I’ll get on top of this,” and I did, I have, well up to now I have. So it’s just up here,

I think a lots got to do with it up here, how you handle it. Some can do it and some can’t and I hope I have.

Oh yeah the bloke I was telling you about before he just, he couldn’t stop. I said to him when he come in the drive one day and we were going to a funeral, another one of our blokes died and he picked me up in this big Commonwealth car, went over to Fawkner [Cemetery].

And he smoked seven cigarettes between here and Sydney Road. And I said, “Keith, you’re killing yourself.” “Got to do something.” And he wouldn’t change. At least I had the…. mentality to give up smoking, cause I think that’s a terror. I don’t drink like I used to. I like a drink, but I don’t but I don’t go and get drunk every day like I did,

and I think that’s helped me, hopefully. But he couldn’t do it and he’s just one, there’s a lot of guys like that around, they just, you’ve got to help yourself and he couldn’t do it unfortunately.

Probably, and even now sometimes,

not as much as I used to I don’t think.

Oh, you know in the trench, boom boom boom coming down, is this one going to hit there or there? Laying there smoking, immovable, just all those things run through your mind and flashes. I don’t break – she

said I used to break out in cold sweats – but I don’t do that now, well I don’t think I do, I think I passed all that, hopefully anyway.

Yep.

I think the last, probably I don’t know ten years have been fantastic. Again from DVA, could probably do better but that’s just a personal thing, but I think they’ve not only DVA, local government and the AFL even, with their Anzac Day

match. It’s all gear, even thought its other things, its all gear towards Anzac Day to it makes, if it’s geared towards Anzac Day it makes it, it emphasises the ex servicemen doesn’t it? So I think it’s good, being an ex serviceman, obviously I do.

Yeah well, we put a lot of work in the last few years, emphasising that, Bruce Scott [former Minister for DVA]

used to get up and he’d say, “The Boer War was the first war and the second war Vietnam,” so wrote him a letter, what about us? And after a period of time, he put it into his vocabulary and he’d bring Korea and Vietnam.

How missing?

Oh this is going back eight or nine years ago, when he was

Minister of Veterans’ Affairs and we’d be at functions and I’d say to him before he walked up, “Don’t forget Korea.” And so it got to the stage where he would just automatically say Korea. Some time you can go to functions at the Austin Repat [Repatriation] Hospital and some smart arse will get up there and start talking and

they’ll say, “Our diggers went to the First War, the Second War, then Vietnam and out in peacekeeping,” and I get bloody ropeable. So you’ve just got to try and educate them and that’s what we’ve been trying to do. We’ve decided we’re winning. I think we’ll win.