Australians at War Film Archive

Yes well my early education, is that what you want, was starting at Mosman School, public school, for a short time and then

from the age of eight, Chatswood, what was then known as Superior Public School, and from there I managed to get a scholarship to Sydney Grammar School. So I completed my high school training there. And from there I managed to get an Exhibition to Sydney University, where I did medicine.

And on the way through, played a lot of hockey, got a Blue [an award for representing your university], and from there on graduation I did my hospital residency at Kogarah Hospital. St George District Hospital Kogarah. And I might,

the lady I married subsequently, went through with me and was also at St. George with me. And joined the army while I was still at St. George. She went off the end of her first year, and I was kept back to do – I think I believe, I was given an honorary captain’s rank

– and I was kept back there to do what is now termed orthopaedic registrar which I finished in July and then went into active service with the army at Concord Military Hospital which was still being built.

I opened the sixth floor, the first ward on the sixth floor, which subsequently became an area for all the operating theatres, and that ward happened to be the women’s ward. And after a short time there another young doctor came along, back from

New Guinea, he had been wounded behind the knee, and had an arterial aneurism there. Very nice young fellow, he took over from me, and I went into the orthopaedic ward and stayed there for eighteen months. He was very popular with his patients, they used to knit for him, send him messages over the wireless.

Subsequently he had his aneurism fixed up and I don’t know what happened to him subsequently. Professionally I met him after the war. Well after eighteen months in the orthopaedic wards I then was transferred still there, to

control one urology, the only urology ward, plus one surgical ward. General surgical ward. So I stayed there for another twelve months. During, sometime during my period there, I think I had been there for about eighteen months when they sent me to an officer’s training school down in, just outside

of Heidelberg, Victoria and that lasted for about 6 weeks I think during which I collected a couple of injuries. We were sent out a night to do a compass course and crossing a

golf course we should have come to a bridge. Instead of coming to a bridge we came to a big gully. Went down the gully and up the other side and a big fellow ahead of me slipped and fell on my head and I heard something go in my neck so I went across to the hospital. Next morning had it x-rayed and

standing outside the gates talking to the guards there he asked me what I was there for and so on. So he said, “You ought to, that’s worth three weeks in this place.” He didn’t know that I was used to dealing with scrimshankers [faking illness] in the army. So anyway there was no fracture, the disc suffered.

The other was a disc to the back I think, doing fireman’s lifts, practising firemen’s lifts which we had to do too. However that didn’t stop me I was, when I finished at Concord, I was sent to the 110th Casualty Clearing Station which was scheduled to go overseas to the first push into the

Pacific to get back the possessions. They were stationed at that time; they’d been two years or two and a half years in New Guinea. When they came back we were stationed just out of Brisbane and we got a new CO [Commanding Officer] and the officers I think were mainly fresh officers

including myself. And from there we spent a short time up on the Northern Tablelands, at Wandecla where the 6th Division and the 7th and the 9th Division were all stationed, resting there or breaking bones by playing football and so on. We didn’t function there shortly

after, I suppose we were up there for a couple of months and then we embarked on a liberty ship at Cairns, which took us to Morotai in the Pacific. We were there for a very brief time and then went on

an LST, which is a Landing Ship Tank, to Tarakan, Borneo. And there I spent the rest of the time there, until the end of the war, and when I was brought back after the end of the war, to Sydney,

on the British Aircraft carrier [HMS] Glory which was quite a change from what we’d been used to. Sitting down at 4:30 or 4 o’clock for an afternoon tea and then later for a dinner which would be served with a big silver platter containing salmon

or something on it. You took what you wanted and it was different from the stuff we used to get in Borneo, which wasn’t bad, but it was a welcome change. And then we stopped at Manus Island I think it was, I don’t know why

we stopped there but we stopped briefly there and then came onto Sydney. That would have been in the December I think, close to the end of the year, and we found blackouts and all sorts of trouble in Sydney. Which eventually,

on the appointment of a man called Conde, to go into that he settled whatever the troubles were. Well after that I was into civil life when I got my discharge from the army. First of all we did a three-month rehabilitation course or series of lectures and demonstrations

and things. And after that I went to a general practitioner in Lismore and spent the best part, well ten or twelve months in Lismore by which time my wife was having troubles, being pregnant and

getting ready to have a baby. Her obstetrician was in Sydney and that proved a problem and subsequently we moved to Penrith where I assisted a chap who had been in practice there before the war until, and then bought into the practice as a partner

and remained here, that would have been from 1947 until, well I’m still here. Although I retired from practice a few years ago. When I did I seemed to be fully occupied doing locums for former partners and friends who whenever they wanted a holiday they wanted me to do their locum so eventually I ran out of time.

When I had a very sick wife then, I had to stop them asking me to do locums, I had to get the medical board to deregister me so that also stopped me from looking after some of my family who still wanted me to look after them.

And that always embarrassing, so I got them to, they managed to find other doctors to look after them. So that’s where I stand, and life here – of course in those days Penrith was too far for specialists to want to come, and to live, or just to visit,

not far enough to have specialists living here. Not big enough, not far enough away from Sydney, such as Bathurst and Orange. So some of us had to do whatever work you trained to do

and since I’d, with the training, surgical training, and orthopaedic training I seemed to concentrate more on those, mixed in with the general practice. And at that time too the Warragamba Dam was being built, and so an extra three thousand residents were put in out of Warragamba, and that made the

place a bit busy too. Particularly, they were all young families and young people having families and meant there was a lot of obstetrics to be done. It was hard work but we enjoyed it. From time to time as our practice got bigger by the time we got six in the practice we’d

split up and go again. Then when that got too big we’d split up and so on. Until in the end I was, just had two others with me until I retired.

I was born at Ashfield on the 7th March 1916. But I only stayed there one week because the family lived at Mosman, so we went across to Mosman then.

My mother was an only child and my father was the youngest of a big family, and his father had a grocery store in Mosman.

The rest of the family having gone into the services, it would have been the First War, he was left there to help his father run the shop, so eventually when the old man decided to retire and sell up,

he then ran that section of the grocery store in Anthony Horden’s that serviced the country customers, until the Depression hit everybody. Then he joined the ranks of the unemployed for a while

before he worked for a cousin in his pharmacy in Lane Cove while we lived at Chatswood. Of course after I graduated and became resident at hospital and in the army at the army hospital, so I no longer lived at Chatswood then.

I can remember we used to grow our own vegetables, and my father was very good at that. What else - I remember – I don’t remember

much of the Depression. I was at school and studying, I was a good reader.

Well it did, it must have, because I remember the, the youngest - I think my

mother who had 5 children, 6 children eventually – by that time I think she was starving herself to feed all the kids. And the youngest one was born and found to be a bit ricketty because of her not eating properly. Anyway

he recovered from the treatments, and I don’t know, I don’t think it seemed to affect me at all, although a couple of my brothers left school early. I don’t know whether they did the intermediate or not, but they did, went to high school, and I

would think about the intermediate time they probably left then and got jobs. They didn’t have any difficulty getting jobs at that time.

One sister and

five boys. There must have been five boys. One of them joined the army the day war broke out – he was the one I mentioned to you before – he did the North African campaign and arresting, taking prisoners by the thousand. Italians you know

that sort of thing, they weren’t in the war to win it, they didn’t care what was going on I don’t think at that time. Although I had had ex-Italian prisoners of war back here, ex-German prisoners of war as well as our own former prisoners of war – of the Germans and of the

Italians – not of the Japanese, except passing through quickly at Tarakan from Changi when they were released from there we got the best of them. Fittest of them briefly. And that brother finished up being taken prisoner in Greece.

He and his cobber, a new recruit whose name he didn’t know except for he called him ‘Bluey’ were told to perch up on the top of a crag overlooking the port of Piraeus where the Allies were trying to embark and get across to safety. They thought.

Where he had an interesting incident – I should leave that to him, if you wanted to get it from him

Well I knew that I

had an uncle, my father’s eldest brother, he served in the Boer War where his horse had rolled on him, but he recovered. He then enlisted in the First World War. Same name – William Cammack – was killed about the first

day at Anzac [Cove], leaving a wife and 5 children in Brisbane. Another uncle also served in the First World War, but he was jolly type, and he never, we never used to discuss the war with him. I do remember him particularly because he gave the family

a wireless when more modern wirelesses were coming in. A Super Hetradarn[?] Wireless which was a floor model, and I do remember the family were very fond of having it running all day and I might say my grandmother used to live with us at Chatswood.

She had lost her husband relatively young, and as soon as I came home, I’d come home from Sydney, from the high school each day, the first thing I’d do was turn this wireless off because I could never study with this wireless blaring. I know some of these; I have a grandson who can study while the televisions blaring

and read a book, and study at the same time. Needless to say he got 100 percent on his TER [Tertiary Entrance Rank] when he was going through. He will graduate with honours in ancient Greek next month.

It didn’t so with me. As the hard times disappeared, the hard times I

must say didn’t seem to affect me, I think I might have been closeted a bit, or spoiled a bit by various people, relatives and so on. I had a great uncle in far north Queensland who was a beneficiary in a way because we

started to get collections of encyclopaedias from Angus & Robertson’s. Great Collections,Iillustrated Encyclopaedias. Plus four volumes that were brought out by Arthur Mead called I See All. They were also big volumes.

The people who sent them to us, would never disclose who ordered them, or who paid for them. Turned out eventually it was this uncle in far north Queensland, years later we found that this is where they came from. I must say he was probably thankful to us because he had a daughter at school down here,

together with two other cousins who went to the Methodist Ladies College at Burwood, and when they were on holidays they would often come across to us at Chatswood, visiting.

My word. Yeah.

General knowledge. To be honest I don’t have them now because I’ve given them to the grandchildren,

but at times I get them to look something up. Oh yes I think they were very useful, in helping me in just general knowledge, and general, and perhaps to do better at school then I would have otherwise done.

Well I seem to do well at everything at primary school. I even thought I was a bit of an artist, painting. They used to hang some of the paintings around the wall. That petered out because I didn’t have time to pursue that subsequently. At high school

I was top of the lower school as they call it, that is the first two or three years, forgotten what they would be now. Always seemed to come first in English, Latin, French, I did German but

I don’t know whether I came first in that at any time, I think I did. But the longer my education went on, I would say, the worse I got.

Well I didn’t always come first in everything. The second year I missed out on one subject I think,

so they gave me every prize that I did gain, whereas in my first year when I came first in everything they only gave me one prize of some sort – can’t remember what they were, a few books I suppose – and those who came second got the, were given the prizes.

Yeah.

Well I think it helped me to get through into medicine. It was usually classed as the best school in Sydney. I don’t know whether it still is, I think it is still regarded as one of the best, if not the best.

They had good teachers. I knew I was there to do my lessons and it had always been in the back of my mind that I was wanting to do medicine, eventually. It seemed to be a good school too; they seemed to get a lot into medicine at Sydney University.

I don’t know. I couldn’t say.

Well I think some of my relatives, a number of my relatives, had been

pharmacists, and at that time of course it was different to today. I know one of them, one of my favourites, was a First War man and a pharmacist in Queensland and became a

member of parliament, member for Townsville, had fifteen pharmacies throughout Queensland. You can’t do that today; you can only run one pharmacy. There are one or two pharmacy chains, I think, that have been in this state for years that they’ve allowed to continue, but the average pharmacist he can only, he’s got to have a registered pharmacist in every shop.

Well that puts a break on most pharmacies.

Yeah, well they seemed to think that’s what I should do, because I had been doing well at school and should be able to get to the university.

I never thought of doing anything else, I always thought law was pretty dreary, although I was always quite interested in providing legal reports, medical reports for lawyers in connection with accident cases I had been dealing with. That always interested me

until I used to get involved in too many cases. I can recall at one stage, this is after the war; I was required to be in three different courts in the city, on the same day, at the same time to give evidence. Well after I complained about it,

and at the same time I had a long list of operations to do, but eventually we managed to - the people at the head of things in the medical sphere and the legal sphere – managed to break that down and stop demanding that doctors should appear in every case and should accept medical reports and so on. That made a big

difference. That’s the way they go now.

Oh about twenty or thirty years ago, I suppose.

Yeah.

Steer clear of anything in the Arts faculty, including philosophy especially.

Look they were all queer. I don’t mean queer in the way queer is

taken today but odd, and also not leading to a practical profession.

Yeah I suppose that’s a polite term you could apply to them.

Oh no. They were subjects I wasn’t interested in,

although I suppose as far as languages go I could have become interested in carrying on with languages but I did not wish to do too much that way because I knew I was heading for medicine.

Yeah, the faculty of medicine I suppose it was called then.

I think if I remember correctly there were something like twenty-five out of one hundred and forty five in that year, that started that year in medicine came from Sydney Grammar school. One or two of them might have been repeating or coming back. They didn’t all finish for one reason or another.

I think one went off to do engineering.

In the first year we did botany, zoology, physics, chemistry, I think that was about all we did in the first year.

I’d done physics and chemistry at school, got honours in physics. I didn’t do honours in chemistry, too many honours. I’d been doing honours in mathematics see there were two honours, two lots, and various other honours and when it came to

I found out I couldn’t do twelve papers; you could only do ten papers so I cut out the honours in maths, which upset the teacher. I thought it might’ve benefited me a bit more if I finished that and sat for it, because although I sat for English honours they didn’t give me an honours. But that didn’t concern me; I got up to the university and medicine. And that of course was different from being at school.

Did that answer your question?

Oh that was wonderful. We thought that we were far better off there which was just a bit of luck that we were sent there, I don’t know how they decide who gets sent where, but

our mates who were sent to say Prince Alfred or Sydney were very low down on the pecking order, in the start. After a couple of years there they were allowed to perform one appendicectomy. They thought they were very privileged whereas we were given a lot more freedom at St. George.

Those who were able to do things were allowed to do things under supervision, and sometimes without supervision not major things but we did get a lot of experience there. And there was a lot of trauma came in there, still does in that region, because the roads going south nearby. Oh and we

used summer to specialise in what was known as the ‘Dolls Point Chin’, or something like that, which we used to have a succession of young kids coming up with cuts along the base of their chin from the baths down there nearby.

They would go down the shoot and their chins would hit the tin on the bottom, and they’d come up with these cuts. I suppose whether they ever changed the arrangement of the things to avoid those I don’t know.

Yes.

Yeah. Oh yes these kids would come up on a

and get their chins sewn up. I think we saw more practical work there than the other, bigger the two bigger hospitals. Which was good for the sort of work that I was destined to be doing.

Where was I? That would have been 1939. I would have been in the third year at university I think. Yes. Doing medicine.

I seem to remember hearing

Churchill or Menzies or one of them…

Yes well it must have been him. His speech I heard over the air. Where I was, I suppose I would have been at home then because I didn’t have any social life in those days except playing cricket, tennis. Used to play a lot of tennis and

a lot of cricket, and while at the University I used to play a lot of hockey. But yes in third year, I remember there was a very nice fellow in that year, whose name I have forgotten. I have got an account of his career somewhere. He was a good student

a good athlete, first grade footballer and all the rest. And obviously he was very affected by the war having started, and instead of, we were all supposed to remain and complete our courses instead of doing that he enlisted in the army,

left medicine and enlisted in the army and after a few months in the army he found that wasn’t to his liking he transferred to the air force. Finished up in Britain as a fighter pilot. Then when the Japs started to invade up north here transferred out, his squadron out to Darwin and went out against the Japs and was posted missing.

And it wasn’t until fifty years later that the remains of his aircraft and of him were found somewhere on the coast, somewhere around Darwin. He’d obviously been shot down.

The name I tell you I’ve forgotten. I’ll try and look that up before I finish.

Yeah.

He was a wonderful fellow. Well the rest of just stayed and finished our course. And then you had to do a year at hospital, and I think it must have been at the end of that year that you could,

I know the army decided they would take in half a dozen or a dozen women doctors, and that’s when the wife immediately, she finished her twelve months she enlisted and went in to do pathology in the army.

Well I first knew of her in first year, when she was one of the ten or twelve women in the year. Never had anything to do with her much although as we came, got to our clinical years we seemed to be in the same group

of ten or so assigned to certain things here and there and I got to know her then. It wasn’t until we were residents together at the St. George Hospital that I really got to know her.

She was redheaded, which in my book means you’ve got a short wick. She was downright. All the way going through the university I think she was the one who stood up for the women in the group and if they had any problems they seemed to go to her, she’d already done a science degree before she

came to us in second year I think it was. I didn’t know her in first year it was second year. Unlike me she was more of a, not a socialite, but she liked dancing, I never learned to dance.

Not really managed to get around with her when we had to in later life. She was accomplished, she was a pianist, a concert pianist.

Had done, what do they call that place down in the city where you learn to be true musicians?

The Conservatorium that’s right. And she played the Carillon, which was an honour, at the university. During the war in Tasmania she played the organ for the Salvation Army at that hospital. Well they didn’t have a pianist or an organist.

They would saddle up the horse, their ambulance at that hospital in Campbelltown in Tasmania was a horse and cart, and they would load the organ onto that on the Sunday and she would go with the Salvation Army fellow who was attached to the unit and do their rounds

of the hospital and wherever else they had to go, it was out in the bush there. On a property or beside a property.

Eileen, she only had one Christian name. Scott-Young hyphenated was her surname. Marjory her sister only had one

name too. She was the oldest sister.

Oh yes. She could shoot off at, she could keep the council in check when she was the mayor. When she wasn’t the mayor

she could also influence the council and the councillors and their servants.

Yes. Yeah. Of course that was very popular with the public. Cause everybody’s in the council.

I don’t know. She was very mixed up with her family, very close with

her family, and her mother and I think that was something that attracted me, very much.

Well I approved of the family unit. Close family units, no matter what your religion was, or whether you had any religion or not.

If they were close ties, even though they could have their barneys amongst themselves too, it meant something. It was the right sort of woman you would prefer to marry and bring up your own family.

It wasn’t very much going out in those days. We didn’t get much time off at the hospital, at the first hospital we were at. You worked about one hundred and ten hours per week and you got every third weekend off. Something like that, which started in the middle of Saturday if you, providing you’d

got your work done. And so there wasn’t a lot of time. She and one of her girlfriends…That’s the Meals on Wheels man.

She was a wonderful cook, perhaps that might have been an attraction too. When we were residents together she would always

produce some fried toast and cheese late at night if we needed.

Yeah. Yes. So we didn’t have much time as I say. We just worked very hard we just took that as everybody else used to do it, and then during the war she was either,

she was not based in Sydney for very long, she was sent to Tasmania. I think that was the first place she went to after she left Sydney hospital and the barracks where she used to do a lot of work for the army fellows. Then she went to various other places, including, well she came to Concord for a short time

while the pathologist there took three months leave at one stage. I don’t think I was there when she was there. And then too Goulburn, to the army hospital there. And then to Puckapunyal which was mainly an army TB [Tuberculosis] hospital. General and TB and she did some special work with the

TB specialist in Victoria at that time. And then up to the Northern Territory, Adelaide River, to the hospital there. I think it was from there that she came down and we got married. Well so that didn’t allow for, the very brief

time she had to, the leave from these various places. I might have only seen her now and again for. I can remember once when I seen her then. That was at Lane Cove. She came to stay with her mother at Lane Cove, and her brother. As I said one was in the air force and the other was in the army. She was doing out the room, the boys’ room,

helping her mother clean it, tidy it. And her brother, the pilot, had been home not too long before for some reason. I was standing at the door of the room, and she pulled a drawer open in the, in one of the cupboards and lifted out

two revolvers in their holsters. Suddenly one of them fired. Her brother had left these two revolvers there. Loaded and cocked. And if she had raised it up a little bit she would have shot through the window and hit the man next door who was

bending over in his garden. Her mother was on the telephone and the fellow she was talking to heard the shot. Just as well she hadn’t pointed it at me. That frightened her. Frightened the hell out of her. She gingerly put it back and closed the drawer. When her other brother came home, he was a surgeon,

well he was after the war he was a surgeon. He was in the army, was a doctor. He’d come back from New Guinea, he heard this he said, “What, you didn’t put them back? You didn’t clean them or anything?” So he fixed them up. Neither she nor I were educated in firearms.

No. Not even in the army. Although I was given a revolver when we went into Borneo.

Yes.

She joined in I think December.

Unknowingly I must have joined at somewhere around the same time. Because when I looked at my record of service I found here while I was still working at the Kogarah hospital they had me listed as honorary captain. I was lecturing to VADs [Voluntary Aid Detachments] at the time too.

But I didn’t actually go in and work in the army until the July I think it was. When I finished, in the middle of the year, when I finished at the Kogarah hospital, and they put me on the staff at the 113th. I think that was it, not only because I was only

class B, which I didn’t know at the time because I’d done orthopaedic training and they were expecting to get a lot of causalities. Orthopaedic causalities. So that’s where I went. She was actively in a six months before I was. But we came out about the same time.

Did our post-graduate in three months. At the same time although at different places.

I think it was automatic.

Everybody was, everybody went into the services, unless they were in a protected, what was known as a protected profession of some sort, as two of my brothers were. One was a jeweller, and so he was put to work manufacturing instruments for the services

or doing them through wherever he was working in. The other was in the neon lighting business and so, whatever they were doing, I don’t know. They would not have them; they would not take them in the services. The other brother of service age, well

he enlisted, this was the strength of feelings at the time, on the day war broke out. He left his job, which was a good job in the city, in one of the warehouses, and joined the army.

Well I had

I never ever thought of doing anything else but being in the army. I can’t even remember what I did to get signed off, to get into, to go into Concord. I don’t remember what happened there.

Well that didn’t seem to come into it.

Everybody else was going into it, and the year behind us they’d started, ours was the last year who did a full course, in subsequent years they kept shortening the course until it was back to about five years or less. Or five years it was I suppose. So that the years behind me, the years that graduated behind me, they came into the hospital at Kogarah some of them while I was still

there, and they all went straight into the army after I’d gone in too. Subsequently toward the end of that year.

To get doctors.

Yeah. I don’t know whether they were shortening any other courses. In order to

get doctors because doctors were being killed too you know. I know a couple of the fellows in my year. Three of them I think, who went into the navy and they found themselves on these little war ships going to and from Russia through the North Sea and so on. And they went down, but were rescued,

I mean their ship got sunk, they were rescued. One of the, well the man that I replaced a Concord, a hell of a nice big fellow, he’d be from the North Coast. Well he got a move to the hospital ship, which he thought, which everyone thought was a wonderful posting, plus another fellow from my year,

Steve someone, forgotten his other name. Farley. Steve Farley. And the other chap whose name I’ve forgotten for the moment they went, posted to the Centaur. Same boat that Sister Nell Savage was posted to. And of course

the Centaur was sunk off Brisbane or off the north coast there. These two, all the doctors on board were, killed, there were quite a few doctors on board. Sister Savage was the only nurse who was saved and she was posted when she was well, in to look after my urology ward. She was head sister,

and she was a wonderful woman. I’m sure she well deserved, from what I’ve read, the George Medal that she was given for rallying the fellows that were clinging to bits of timber and so on until they were eventually rescued.

No we never

discussed it. You know you are very much blinkered when you are in the medical field particularly if you were in the surgical field. With regards to, well for my experience, because that’s where had I had perhaps more experiences that other branches of medicine, and you’re thinking all the time about

your patients. In fact half the time you don’t know the names of the patient but you know their diseases. That’s always been in some ways a failing of mine, I would recognise a patient more from by the trouble, the complaint she had than her name, remembering her name. No we never discussed anything like that.

That’s hard to say from my point of view. The minister for the army at the time was Frank Ford, and he came to the hospital, at one stage I think it must have been the official handing

over to the army by the Department of the Interior, who built the hospital, and at that time the only decorated person in the place I suppose would have been Sister Savage. He came to the ward, he was brought to the ward of course, she had her medal up. Oh he said to her

“Oh is that 1935 that they’ve got a lot of trouble with is it”. He didn’t even know, of course you wouldn’t expect him to, he was only a politician. He didn’t even know. And you would’ve thought he would have got put up to what she had, that she had a George medal there, cause no-body else would have. I don’t think anybody else was given one during the war.

He also went to, the fellows down at Eileen’s place in Tasmania she was getting these patients too, back from the Middle East, the fellows there reckoned they got better fed in the Middle East then they got fed down there, and the women on the staff in the hospital they were trying to grow some vegetables to augment their things, and they were getting processed eggs and that sort of thing. The only time

they’d get anything good would be when, she was very friendly with the woman who ran a big property next door to the wife, and every now and then they’d kill a sheep and they’d give her hind-quarter of a sheep and she’d cook it up in the laboratory and some of them would have a bit of a feed. So they complained about the food and Frankie Ford

was brought down. And it was after his visit they started to get decent rations. So that the army was just dishing up what was really basic at the time. And these fellows who had already been wounded or injured or ill thought they should be getting better.

Well, joining that. Yes the commanding officer was a very benign old gentleman. First War man. Willy Wood. Who had a practice before the war, or in between the wars.

Mainly looking after private patients in posh hotels in the city it seemed to me. However he had First War experience and he was a very nice fella. Didn’t have much to do with him, although one occasion I went to see him to see if we could get some additional equipment that we didn’t have, in treating fractures, there was no problem there,

he fixed those up. I was working under the supervision of two other, two specialist orthopaedic surgeons who were, I think both of them were first war fellows, I know one definitely was. I think the second was too. Danny Glisson

who was an honorary at St. Vincent’s, and John Hoets who was an honorary at Sydney Hospital. H O E T S is how he spelled his name. They were wonderful fellows. Glisson had an Irish name of course, and he had the usual Irish temper. Never did anything to me but

it was in civvies anyway, civilian life, he was known to throw instruments around if he didn’t get what he wanted in the theatre. But he was a gentleman as far as I was concerned, and these fellows were of course used to dealing with wounds without the aid of antibiotics. Sulpha drugs had just started to come in,

the army got the first penicillin. Civilian life didn’t have it, but at the civilian hospital that I was at St. George Hospital we had M&B 693. That’s the sulpha drug that was available for pneumonias and

you knew that in the wintertime one ward would be full of pneumonias. Half of them would die and half of them would live. Well eventually after the antibiotics came into use in general practice I hardly ever saw pneumonias because you would treat them before they got to that stage and it just about wiped them out.

Yeah that’s true. Because we got penicillin given to use there. We had infected war wounds which chronically, would be difficult to treat but with. So we would give them penicillin, by injection every three hours.

And it stung like hell, the penicillin that was then being given, and these fellows who would initially have been strong and healthy and stand anything, they’d be crying when they seen the nurse coming with the needle – cause it hurt so much, and they’d be getting it every three hours. Well as time went by of course different penicillins were being brought into use,

and it might have been a few years later so that eventually we were able to give a shot once a day instead of every three hours.

Yeah well they were administered into the muscle. Which hurts a bit more.

More painful and it really did sting. In many cases of acute infection of course that didn’t have to carry on for months, but with long-bone fractures, might go on for two or three months.

Yes.

All sorts. The fellow that sticks in my mind, well two fellows, two cases that stick in my mind. Most unusual. One fellow was a 6th Division fellow an original 6th Division and in New Guinea he was shot through the shoulder, right through the

shoulder joint, which you would think well that’s the finish of the army for him. But however, fortunately, I can’t remember what other injuries he had, that was the main one and we put him up in a plaster of Paris spiker like this. The wound had been dealt with; whatever had to be done was done to it.

He would have had initial treatment before we got him too somewhere or other, probably at that CCS [Casualty Clearing Station] that I had eventually joined when they were in New Guinea. Anyway he healed up with the help of the antibiotics that we had, which was usually a combination of sulpha drugs and penicillin, and obtained a

stiffened joint, an ankylosis of that joint it stiffened up completely to the extent that with his subsequent physiotherapy and rehabilitation, he was able to sort of hang from ropes and he was able to do all sorts of things. The movement coming from his shoulder blade, his scapula getting his movement there, and he insisted on going back to his frontline unit,

whether he got there or not I don’t, I know but he was declared fit, fit again to do that. That was one that I recall. Many of them of course, once their fractures healed, or their infected

bone has been removed and was no longer causing any problems, would have been bordered out of the army. The other was one whose record is in those papers I gave you there. He came to my ward, one of my wards at one stage and another fine surgeon, Harley Turnbull,

he was normally at Prince Alfred subsequently. And who operated on my hernia, he fixed my hernia for me whilst I was there. This fellow had been injured on the coast at Aitape. He was riding as a dog man on the Hook. He describes the accident in there.

I had thought he got wedged between the side of the ship and the shore, but they say it was the shore and the wharf, it was the water and the wharf or something, and as a result the whole of his left lower limb, and pelvis was torn off him. Which was an horrendous accident.

Never occurs anywhere.

Yes, he was immediately dragged up and onto the ship, on which there was an American doctor, and he sent up a drip. The patient was taken to the military hospital at Aitape,

which was a few miles away, treated there, and eventually, I presume he would have been transfused because of the terrific haemorrhage, and was brought back to Sydney and came to one of the wards I had. He was also being looked after by Harley Turnbull who was more experienced, he’d been a surgeon in the Middle East.

And also once I left Norman Wyndham, who was also a fairly experienced senior surgeon. That chap, I don’t know how long after I left the Concord hospital, eventually did succumb to, I presume, sending infection from

the bladder or the urethra, up into kidneys so on. Complications that you would expect to come in at some stage. But it was such an unusual case that Harry Turnbull had written an account of it up. And it wasn’t until I found that typed account, thirty years or more after the war,

because I didn’t know this, but Harley had had a, late in civil life, had suffered an aortic rupture and nearly died. That put an end to his career as a surgeon. He retired to a farm away out Mulgoa here,

somewhere out near Mulgoa, and I got a message from one of his relatives – would I go out and see and check – they’d got a message that he had passed away. Then his relatives eventually gave me some of his textbooks that he had had out there and amongst them I found this account.

I knew that I couldn’t do much about it, because I would have to get permission from the army authorities, and I got onto the Canberra medical section there in the army, and they put me onto Norman Wyndham who also had been interested in that. Norman Wyndham sent this to the British Journal of Surgery in England and it was published. That’s an excerpt containing a description of that injury there.

I think that, whether they’ve ever known more one or two other cases of that were of that nature I don’t know, but it was a most unusual accident. And something that obviously was going to have a terminal effect, with complications.

Well, that plus immediate battle injuries. You know, I thought what a terrible thing war was. That young fellows, like the young fellow at Tarakan. I don’t know whether I should describe that now or later, but.

These

young coves, hadn’t had time to live. You know they’d be in the army at nineteen or eighteen or some younger than that. I think Eileen’s mother, Eileen told me her father had joined the army for South Africa when he was sixteen, because he was tall like you two. Pretty well built, passed

for that age, I suppose at that stage they were anxious to get recruits and he got in at that age. I don’t know that many got in at sixteen in this Second World War, but certainly some were very young. And it just seemed what a terrible thing that these fellows should be maimed for life or killed before they had time to live.

Oh well no because we had been used to getting, at the St. George hospital, immediate serious injuries coming in so you got accustomed to that. But they were not of the same

degree or extent as some of those who were injured in war with guns that fired multiple bullets, or bombs, shells that splintered and gave multiple injuries. I was sort of case hardened from the beginning, and

you did your best you could to deal with the situation and help these fellows. One point that one always regretted was that you never really knew, or almost never knew the ultimate, what happened, because they’d pass onto someone, another unit, or they’d leave the service and you wouldn’t always know what happened

subsequently to them. Some of them rehabilitated very well, even with serious wounds, serious injuries.

Yes. Yes at Concord we got sent back some of our own men

who had been prisoners of war of the Germans. Now they were, they had been treated so well that I doubted in some cases that we could have done as well. They were certainly looked after, and that was re-enforced by the fact that I had been told of one fellow

who had been a prisoner of the Germans, an officer prisoner, an air force officer who had had necessity to be sent to an eye specialist. Wearing his cap and his uniform he would have left the prison gone to Berlin or where ever it was – he’d be saluted all along the way They regarded Australians, the

Germans did, not so with the British – the British were the enemy, the Australians they just seemed to accept us, we were unfortunate people who were drawn into it in some way. The Italians, the prisoners who had been prisoners of the Italians

though we, we found that they, well we thought that they had been absolutely neglected. We’d get say a fractured femur, that had a dogleg like this in it, you know instead of straight bone. By the time it got back here it was, we had to re-fracture it and straighten it and so on, you know. Things like that which

when I thought about it was, well the poor Italians, they were on the run all the time. Well I don’t think they were in a position to deal with all these things. We were sinking their ships in the Mediterranean. In fact the fellow who sank the Bartolomeo Colleoni was later on

the governor of New South Wales, and he gave me a VAD award once at some function. I can’t remember his name now. Was it John Collins? That’s right he was the commander of that ship that sunk the Bartolomeo Colleoni.

Well these fellows were just neglected and we, more work needed to be done on them that was done on a few others. There were not a great number of either of those that I got. Mind you I only had, all the time when I had the orthopaedic wards, I only had two wards, that was about eighty or ninety patients. Some weekends and sometimes longer than that

I might have had four wards, while the fellow that was supposed to be looking after them was off or was away or something. So that I think there were about eight wards, orthopaedic cases there altogether. Sometimes there would be some officers who were in the officer’s wards up in the main building. Main orthopaedic wards were down on the flat.

I don’t think they were injured at that stage. At either stage. There were two stages that I was looking after the women, one was when I first went there and I was in the ward up on the sixth floor,

and the first anaesthetic I gave when I joined the army was for a hysterectomy. Now that would be the last thing I would expect to be doing in the army. But the war had been going for a while and there were various women in the services and various capacities. I don’t know, can’t remember what that woman was

doing in the army nor why she had a hysterectomy. I don’t think I can even remember who did the hysterectomy. But then there was another time, whilst I had the orthopaedic wards or when I had either the orthopaedic wards or the surgical and urology wards when that crowd,

that ward, was taken from the sixth floor sent right down the end of the veranda wards. Ward 37 I think it was right on the river, right on the water. Whenever the man was looking after them was away on weekends or nights, I seemed to get the calls to go down there. That’s a bit of a nuisance because it’s a long walk

down these wooden ramps right down to the bay and back, and they’d be calling you two or three times instead of once. They weren’t for wounds, I wasn’t looking after wounds there. They seemed to be. Excuse me I’ve got a cramp.

I think I’ll be all right. The,

they’d be an outbreak, in the ward of gastroenteritis, or they had got a psychiatric case in who was a bit of a worry. Just something out of the ordinary. See

Well they might have, I can’t remember now.

Somebody who was becoming violent, or needed controlling better than they were, or might have been somebody who’d had a fit. I don’t remember. Things like that that were just episodic for me, because I wasn’t looking after them through the week. I was only looking after them at weekends or at certain nights. You’d get all sorts of things. One woman I admitted

one night, I was called, admit through the admitting centre there. She was a WAAAF [Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force]. W-A-A-A-F you know they’re from the air force, women. Labelled ‘nephritis’, well she turned out to be nearly seven months pregnant. I think she might have had a bit of kidney trouble with it, which, whoever filled the form

probably thought well that would probably cover up her passage. It would be obvious when she arrived to whoever was looking at her that she was going to have a baby. I sent her on to the air force section of the hospital, and they dealt with whatever was there. But civilian illness came into the hospital as well as casualties.

So I don’t mean by civilians, but illnesses that occurred in civil life, whether you were in the army or not came in. The hospital, well the army had to deal with those as well as with injuries and wounds. That even happened overseas too.

We had one ward, which was, thank god I didn’t have to look after it. It was the detention ward. These were the baddies. They would have all sorts

of things but they were mainly fellows who were anxious to get out of the army. A chap called Max Naphsili [?] had the misfortune to have to look after them at one stage. I can remember that. Well I can remember him coming in at lunch; we were having lunch up in the mess, the officers’ mess. He’d be called away and come back to the table,

“Another bloody bastard’s cut his wrists”. You know they’d be swallowing razor blades; they’d be trying to drown themselves in the bath, all sorts of things. Fortunately they were not my patients and I didn’t have to deal with them. I think on only one occasion did I ever get called to that ward one evening for something or other, and I don’t remember what it was. Mustn’t have been anything serious.

Yes there were some other things that I was going to talk about and I’ve forgotten what they were.

The psychiatric ward. Well we had a new young psychiatrist sent to the hospital

to treat the patients. You know, a lot of doctors think all psychiatrists are a bit queer, a bit odd. But some of them were lovely fellows; we had a very nice bloke there called Des Arnott. He was a very nice fellow. This young chap, he used to write

poetry for the magazines at the university that sort of thing. He’d come up sometimes and he’d line up half a dozen little drinks on the bar, and he’d down the lot of them, and his hair would be a little bit more like the hairdos the young fellows have now. Hair all over the place. Well he turned up the first

time he had to go down and deal with the wards I think. It had to be it as the morning they were going to do electroconvulsive therapy, in which they put a patient on the table, tie them down as though they are having an anaesthetic, well they give them a bit of an anaesthetic. When he turned up the orderlies thought, this bloke

this isn’t one of the officer patients, they grabbed him and strapped him down on one of the tables. Took him a while to establish that he was the psychiatrist, he was going to do the job. Well that was just an amusing episode, but I wasn’t involved in any psychiatric effects of war.

I think at first we seemed to understand that there was no such thing. What psychiatric cases came would have come, if they were in civil life or not. But later on when we get to Tarakan I can tell you a bit about that aspect too.

It was on the 3rd of October 1944. Now that must have been just before I was posted overseas or went overseas, and she came down from the Northern Territory

to get married. And as far as I can remember she went back up there afterwards. Although we had a very nice honeymoon, my mother-in-law, the family had had a little house at Palm Beach on the Pittwater side. We utilised that,

it was where we spent our holiday and also we used that house after the war, when we were doing the three months post-graduate work. We’d travel from there to the city every day.

The doctor what? Who used to work there when I?

The doctor who took over the women’s ward?

Who’d had experience

Yes. He was a young fellow whose name I’ve forgotten. After the war he specialised in medicine. Took some, got some higher degree.

Eventually, well he set up in Macquarie Street, but then eventually went down, was, joined the government service and was posted down to cover the Wagga–Albury area. That area of New South Wales as a, had some function as a government specialist of some sort down there.

No. I don’t remember ever discussing it with him. He looked as though there was nothing wrong with him. He acted as though there was nothing wrong with him. But I knew he had had this wound, behind the knee and had been lucky in some ways, in that I don’t think the bones were affected. But they had smashed his vessels, the blood vessels behind the knee and set up

a condition that was very serious. But it was eventually fixed up surgically.

That’s right yeah.

Well they wouldn’t [allow] class Bs

in the AIF [Australian Imperial Force].

Because whoever examined me when I was going into the army at the time. That was when they made me an honorary captain I think. Found a, discovered a hernia down in the left side and they considered a hernia might cause, it might get strangulated at some stage and you if

you might have circumstances where you couldn’t get it treated if you were sent somewhere in the army. It wasn’t until I got Mick Turnbull to fix that up, cure it I, that I was classified as A class and which in some ways, I don’t know whether. I think when they

classified me then I had more disabilities than to start with. What with me neck and me back. And I had injured my knee, torn cartilage in the knee squatting down to examine a patient who had a testicular tumour who was sent in. And as I got up I heard the big snap. But I didn’t get that fixed up, and I got that fixed up

some years, about ten years after the war got one of me friends to remove the cartilage and the cyst on it then. In a civil hospital, the Church of England, one at the Cross. I’ve forgotten the name of that hospital there. It was one of Stennings fixed that. None of those minor injuries stopped

me, or whoever looked after me turned a blind eye to them anyway, and classified me as eligible for AIF, which allowed them to send me to the CCS. Anyway I’d had long enough at the Concord hospital I’d thought. I’d got my wonderful experience there, which was different to some other doctors, you see my brother-in-law Norman

who was a medical graduate. He graduated a year behind me, he joined the army, and been, eventually found himself in the Ramu Valley in New Guinea. Part of a Red Beret battalion or something of that nature, you know, really advanced. I might say he

was a welterweight boxing champion before he went into the army. But after the war when he was wanting to do a higher degree, the professor said to him, “What have you been doing, why haven’t you done post-graduate studies before now?” “Well”, he said, he said to Professor Dew, “I could hardly carry textbooks in the Ramu Valley”.

Dew said “Oh I hadn’t thought of that”. You see well the fellows who were in the services, I worked hard at the Concord hospital. When I wasn’t there, when I was at posted at various other places, they were like holidays when compared with the work and the intensity of the work at the Concord hospital. People might’ve thought, oh that’s a big hospital and everything’s laid on for you and that

sort of thing. They had to lay the stuff on, whatever it was. We had to get the fellows fit, and get rid of them again. Like the time we got news there would be a convoy, a train arriving I think it was. Or no, it was some coastal boats coming into the harbour,

that’s right, and the train was to bring them out to Concord. Straight from New Guinea. So they asked us all to get rid of as many patients as possible, ‘cause all the hospitals in Queensland were full, the army hospitals. So I turned around and I managed to get rid of, to send out

seventy-five patients from my wards, to various convalescence depots, to units or to homes or somewhere. And what did I get? I got seventy-five cases of malaria. Only having once before ever seen a case of malaria and that was from when I was a student, and a fellow from the British Navy who had been discharged from the navy came out here,

and he hadn’t been here long before he went down with malaria. He was the only case I’d seen. The, I think it was Colonel Node who was the physician in charge at Concord then, if it wasn’t he, it was Lorem and Dodds who, one was in charge once and then the other took charge after the other one went. Can’t remember which it was.

They worked out a routine of mixture of (UNCLEAR) for different types of cases and so on. We used the methods that they had given us. But eventually of course, when they, most of them quickly disposed of in one way back to their units or something, but they

were all very uncomfortable. Not only from their illness, they were nearly all Queenslanders, and having been sent from Queensland, in the middle of winter it was too, down to Sydney which was as cold as charity. They were shivering not only from the malaria but from being here. And very dissatisfied at having not been put off the boats up

in Queensland. But it didn’t worry us, they were just cases and we dealt with them. And the nurses looked after them very well and I was very fortunate, I always had a good team of nurses in the various wards. Some of them were card cases but.

Oh sequestrectomies. Bits of dead bone appeared deep in the wound, or somewhere deep. With sequestrating,

you would have sometimes, they would discharge themselves bit by bit, or if they were more major you would have to go after them. In the time I was there I didn’t have to do that very often, but now and again. There’d be the odd case. But of course there were other wards that had similar cases and I don’t know what percentage, I never really knew what percentage of the types of cases,

whether there was any filtering of the types of cases my two wards got, compared with other sections of two wards, who were staffed by very good doctors, and we were overseen by the visiting specialists. Quite a number of them which I had contact with, not only the ones I mentioned but others. Even with group

Captain Pote who was a honorary group captain in the air force. We used to keep him interested by putting up some of our patients to see him too, to see what he had to say about, about what his suggestions might be. He was a wonderful top class general surgeon before the war

in Sydney.

Well I think it must have been actually when I, it was posted, you didn’t get much. I don’t remember getting any notices to when, how long it would be, or when it would be. I might have anticipated

it because the deputy registrar was a very nice old chap. Not that old, but he looked a bit old, he had the arcs, and he had been the Mayor of Casino before the war. He was a doctor. He would have

told me that I would be likely to get transferred, but they wouldn’t get much notice because these directions would have come from the, what they call the lines of communication at Victoria Barracks, New South Wales LFC [Land Forces Command], and they would send, have communications to our commanding officer and so on, as to who was coming in and who was going out

and so on.

I was like the wife, prepared to go wherever they sent you. Didn’t matter to me, in fact,

I probably wasn’t aware that they wouldn’t send me overseas at any time. Subsequently I’ve learnt that they had a policy that you had to be A1 or they wouldn’t send, send you overseas. I think at certain times that policy was not always used, sometimes people

were sent when they. I’ve seen fellows who’d had half their feet amputated I saw one fellow who had all toes on both feet amputated in civil life, he’d been frostbitten somewhere or other, he’d done the Middle East, he done with the 6th Division and all their marching and so on. He certainly,

must have had a very sympathetic doctor to classify him as A1 I would think. It depended on the general moral strength of the individual as to whether they were hell bent on doing their bit, or going with the unit to where ever they went. And I think once they were

in a unit, they had a, they developed a sense that they wanted to stay with them. Most of them, there would always be some, I mean there were some notables too who went AWL [Absent Without Leave]. No names, no pack drill. Who tried to get out of service.

But most young fellows, and the mood in the community was there was a war on, and we were in the war and we had known that in the past, well we thought we had to keep the Russians out of Sydney Harbour, and keep the Germans out of New Guinea and so on, so

everybody just accepted it.

That’s right yes. Yes that was out from Brisbane, and we weren’t there for very long and we went on up to Wandecla, beyond Atherton on the tablelands

Where, by that time the authorities had brought home the whole 6th Division, the whole 7th Division and the whole 9th Division. They’d tried to bring home the 8th Division too, but as you know they got trapped on the way out and became prisoners in Malaya, and never got home.

Yes, the various divisions, well we did, really did not work. We just functioned as a very small unit up there, because we knew at any time we’d have to get on the boat to go.

Oh it would be about one hundred and ten. But the divisions had anywhere from fifteen to twenty thousand each so there were an awful lot. Some of them had been up there while I was still at Concord and I, as I said football injuries and things like that sent to us from up there. We used to do a lot of removal of cartilages in the orthopaedic ward on these fellows.

One of the wonderful fellows that I used to work with, that was one case that I should mention too. I have mentioned it before I think, whoever rang me, I may have mentioned it. This was a case of a soldier who had been sent in with a cancer of

the upper end of the femur. Near the hip. This was in the orthopaedic ward, but Dr Glisson who was a visiting specialist thought that was too near the abdomen for him. He didn’t want to undertake the operation that was indicated, was

amputation of the whole limb through the hip joint. That’s not as radical as the one I described and the accident. So they asked Alfie Thomas to do it. Alfie Thomas had come back; he’d been a general surgeon in the Hurstville area before the war

and he’d been over in the Middle East with one of the hospitals, one of the general hospitals there, and he’d come back. So he was a visiting, at this stage a visiting surgeon there. One of my surgical wards he was the visiting surgeon for. Danny Glisson asked him to do this case.

A few people whom you would never see otherwise came to watch the operation because it had never been done before. At the end of it I said to Alf, who was old enough to be my father I might say, although I thought once he took a bit of a risk, he asked me to diathermy

something on his tongue, little papilloma or something on his tongue. So I did that for him. But I said to him out in the surgeon’s room, “How many of those have you done before?” He said, “You shouldn’t have asked me that. That was the first and only one”. A disarticulation through the hip, which is a very

complicated operation. These days hip operations are becoming two a penny. They’re still very major, unless that latest improvement from America comes in where they just do two little incisions at the side of the hip and then blindly remove the hip and put in a prosthesis and send them home the same day. Now I don’t know whether that’s going to come here

or not. Heretofore it’s been a pretty major thing. The wife had to undergo one of those, nearly died with it too, few years before her death.

Well they were having a great picnic on the main, but they were also training. Doing landings by sea, you know, practising that. In fact one of the fellows who had a Victoria Cross from Sattleburg in New Guinea, he damn near drowned at Trinity Beach I think it was,

in North Queensland there when they were practising with full equipment. Landing from you know these ducks and things. He still went, he recovered from that episode. But they were doing that too you see. Practising. But in the main they just kept busy practising marching, sports,

whatever they could find to keep them busy until the next move, sent overseas. He was the, he should have got a second VC [Victoria Cross] for what he did in Tarakan too that fellow, he was killed. But that’s the side of war that you know

young fellows who are so brave. Damn sight braver than I am. Because I just, I’m too plethoric I think. These things just happen, and they don’t affect me as much as they affect some other people. Whether that’s something, the way I’ve been made, or the way my experiences made me,

I don’t know.

Well to keep me occupied the commanding officer made me the amenities officer. That was started off down at Wandecla,

down at Lone Pine. That was when I got one of the drivers to take a truck into Brisbane and we bought a piano. The men wanted a piano, and they wanted a public address system so we got those two things for ‘em. So up when we got up north,

we, I was still the amenities officer. That mainly involved seeing that they were kept occupied in some fashion of some sort of sport. Table tennis was a popular way there, and I kept having to get table tennis balls. And that meant travelling around a bit because

Wandecla was sort of way out beyond the pale virtually, way out in the country. That meant I had to do a little bit of travelling, and I’d have one of these men that could drive a jeep, and he’d take me to wherever we went to find to get more balls. They always seemed to be wanting more and more.

One of the sergeants was a keen soccer player, he was of English origin. He helped a great deal to keep the fellows busy. Rigging up matches, matches of soccer. But we weren’t up there all that long before we had to pack up and go. And so they crated up their piano, and

that all went with us. It went as far as Morotai.

Well yes. I was sent to an officer training place down near, it was a very posh

suburb just near Heidelberg and I can’t remember the suburb. It was, there we were drilled and taught the bible, which the, what’s called A M R and O [Australian Military Regulations and Orders], the book containing all the army regulations and rules and things.

Army routine, or army regulations. No, Military regulations and so on. That’s what it stands for something like that. But it’s known as A M R and O. So that you’d be able to,

as an officer what duties might fall your way at any time. One duty did fall my way. One or two duties fell my way later. But that wasn’t, we weren’t there that long before we went overseas.

We were taught somewhere. That was down there.

Wasn’t a rifle it was a revolver that we were given, and I can’t remember where we were given it. Whether it was while we were up north there, or it was after we left, probably it was up there, I can’t remember. To use a revolver. But no I was never taught to fire a rifle. My brothers when they were little they seemed to have P rifles that

they, I don’t think I ever bothered with them.

I don’t know, it didn’t mean anything because I was actually working at a civil hospital that was before I was in uniform.

But that’s what my papers tell me, and they give a date when I was commissioned as an honorary fellow. I suppose that was also to make sure I didn’t go off and sign up to do some civil job when I left the hospital. But nobody did though, it was an automatic thing. Everybody went into the, to a service of some sort.

As I say some of them went into the navy, a few of them, handful of them. ‘Bout six. And some went into the air force, I don’t know if I can recall any from that year. Oh yes there were. Billy Scales, he’s still alive he went into the air force. In fact he went to school, Grammar school with me. But most of them

just took it for granted you’d go into the army, cause they were the biggest service. They needed more doctors, the air force didn’t seem to attract that many doctors. In fact the doctors in the air force at Tarakan had very little to do. They used to come and watch us operating.

Fill in their time and to keep them occupied. And in one case who’d been a big game hunter before the war during his youth. He used to go out with the 48th Battalion and collect his snips. He had about eight notches on his gun, and a hole in his hat.

Lucky it didn’t go through his skull.

I suppose it was wireless. I suppose we had some sort of wireless. I don’t remember. What we did have,

see when we bought the broadcasting system from for the unit down in Brisbane, when we were in Brisbane that played for nearly twenty-four hours a day and night. Mostly with a favourite boogey-boogey record at that time. We got sick of it. We didn’t get much, you

didn’t know what was going on really. In Tarakan they stated to publish a little paper. But I don’t remember any official news, the only official news was when you were moved. You might have been told the day before, or two days before or something like that. Enough time to pack up.

I don’t think they had any local newspapers up there at that time. The big, mob, the various divisions they would have had more access to that than we would have because they were billeted a bit lower down

than we were billeted a bit far up. They were a bit further down closer to Cairns, Townsville. So we didn’t know what was going on.

No I don’t remember any rumours,

the only rumours well they weren’t rumours, the only things we had was when we were at Concord there, and the Nips got into the harbour and they were shelling Rose Bay. And then when the Centaur sunk. Actions like that of course brought the war a bit closer to you. Otherwise

all we got was you saw from any wounded that happened to come your way, or injured.

Well, now I can’t remember exactly

yeah that would have been after the bridge had been built. That was during the war wasn’t it? Yeah. That might have affected the wife a bit more than myself, because for a while she was living at her parent’s home and crossing the harbour from Lane Cove, every day.

Not over the bridge, but she’d have to cross the harbour to go to and from the barracks while she was stationed in Sydney. It didn’t seem to have any, make any impression on me. I can’t remember where I was at that time.

Whether I was still in Sydney, or whether I was up north. You people might remember the date that that occurred. I can’t remember that.

Well when I was sent to the CCS I knew that we’d be going abroad. But they told us

that, or somebody told me, or I heard, or I took it for granted that we would be in the next push. Subsequently we learnt that they called them objectives, or short OBOE 1, OBOE 2, OBOE 3, OBOE 4 and OBOE 5 I think. Tarakan was OBOE 1, and I think Singapore would have, or

it might have been or might have been Balikpapan or one on, of the other places in Borneo. And then Singapore, there was a whole series of them. Well I don’t know when I found out I was going to Tarakan; don’t know if I knew when I got on the boat where I was going. Probably didn’t.

No I was only hoping that I’d get back alive. But that didn’t seem to be a concern, because I was only one of hundreds of others who were on that boat, and that included should I say a hundred Indonesian soldiers, whom we’d trained back here. Plus their six or eight Dutch officers.

Had something to do with the, well the Dutch officers served us our meals, on the liberty ship, which was a surprise,

but it was also, perhaps they might have had a bit of experience I never seen people serve so many dishes up there before. And that’s about the only interaction with, with the Dutch. With the Indonesians we had some dealings with them at Tarakan in various ways.

Do you want me to talk about that?

Well that was a worry to everybody; I don’t know that it was. It was a risk that we all knew was there,

and in fact it was made all the more worrying, although I don’t remember really getting worried about it, because every now and again, although we were in a convoy, you’d think there’s, that looks like a submarine and it would turn out to be a whole coconut tree floating, you see.

But as far as I know I don’t recall the, our escorts racing up and down dropping depth charges on the way to, where was that to Morotai. Nor on the way to Tarakan, I don’t remember that either.

We knew we were going to find some trouble somewhere, more trouble likely going to Tarakan, although we didn’t know where we were going until arrived Morotai, and that’s when you knew oh that’s where we were. They didn’t tell us anything really.

Well it was, well on the Liberty ship it was very congested,

very packed out. I can’t remember how many there were down below, I don’t remember how many decks there were down below. But I think the officers were quartered up on the top deck, if I remember rightly. I don’t think we were down below decks. The men were, but they didn’t seem to complain, whatever they

were given they were quite happy with. There was no other alternative anyway. Toilets were different of course. They were sort of strung up over the side of the bow of the ship as far as I can remember, or the stern of the ship. Can’t remember which.

Well that was, whatever it was, was acceptable. I don’t remember complaining. I suppose we were pleased to get anything, whatever it was. There was a war on. We were not used to Parisian or Italian style post-war meals. Except on the

way home, on that aircraft carrier.

Well we didn’t seem to do have done anything really.

Well going from one place to the other on the way going. On the way coming back was different; I had to operate on a fellow

on the aircraft carrier. Simple thing, he had an abscess of the pulp space of his thumb, which is a very painful condition. He had to have an anaesthetic and have it opened. And what struck me there was the very small quarters available for surgical procedures. Of course if that ship had been in action

they would have had expanded areas for treating things that would have been expected. But we weren’t expecting anything. I remember too, this was on the aircraft carrier, one of the padres, big fellow, he had malaria. He wasn’t a patient of mine, but I saw him being

transported from the upper deck down these very narrow gangways, wrapped up like a mummy. So that he didn’t roll off the stretcher, it was wrapped around him like a mummy. He was being taken for some treatment somewhere. On the Liberty ship, I don’t think anybody.

I don’t remember, I didn’t hear of hearing of anybody being crook or having an accident.

Nobody thought of that. Nobody got seasick. Whether they, I don’t think if at that time they were having stabilisers on that ship. These were these you know, sort of

built en masse Liberty ships, quickly fast built and they would have had anything like stabilisers then I don’t think. Nobody seemed to get seasick, whether it was all a matter of the mind and the war was the uppermost in your mind, rather than being sick. I don’t remember anybody being seasick.

Well we was already friendly with our own officers, and I don’t think I ever met anybody else. You might’ve passed them coming and going, but you wouldn’t have known. No we didn’t develop any friendships there that

you would really say were real friendships, would last.

What did I do what?

There was no entertainment that I can remember. Entertainment was just looking over the side, or looking or see what might be around. Or what other

ships might be in the convoy. There was no entertainment. Whether the fellows themselves, the men may have played cards and things like that. I don’t know. No I think we were all, I suppose inside a bit anxious over where we were going, what we were going to strike.

But knowing that we were a casualty clearing station we would have thought oh well, that’s not right in the front line like some of the troops. Well we thought some of the Indonesians might have been given front line duties, being trained as soldiers. I don’t know how many other soldiers, troops were on that ship. I wouldn’t have known.

When we arrived at Morotai, can I tell you that now, how?

We were sent, set up or to stage in a banana plantation. We didn’t set up as a hospital. Anyway we hadn’t been there for

many hours and it transpires that every unit was supposed to send a representative to unload their gear. And one of our fellows was sent down to the ship, I don’t know, didn’t know who was sent down. After a while we got another message, “Where’s your officer? Send your officer down”.

So we sent somebody else. Again after a while we got another message, “Please send your officer down”. So this time they sent me down. I didn’t think I would have known the front end from the back end of the ship, or where our gear would be, or anything about unloading. Anyway I thought when I got down there I better

go on board and see what’s happening. So I went on board. Up to the captain’s cabin, and here they were, they were all up in the captain’s cabin, all sitting around in a circle in the captain’s cabin. He was stark naked trying to shave himself. All drinking. These ships, being American teetotal at sea, but once they hit port. The captains

cabin attendant was strumming the guitar and they were all singing away and so on. There were our fellows too. Eventually I suppose they dispersed, but anyway what happened to our gear I never knew. Somebody must have taken it, taken it up where we were supposed to be. I didn’t know what happened to that, and I don’t think the other fellows did either or cared. The piano, our commanding officer

knew that the next time we wouldn’t be able to take the piano, so whilst we were there, still there at Morotai, the 2/5th General Hospital came ashore. Don’t know how they got there, but they came ashore. So he went up and he handed the, got the fellows to take the piano up to the

2/5th hospital and gave the piano to them. Later on, many years after the war I met one of the nurses who used to play the piano there. She was the same nurse that arranged for that patient of mine, did I tell you about him? Who got married the night before

his operation?

It was while I was at Concord, I had a fellow there who had a cancer at the head of the femur.

Yes well the night before the operation she arranged for, he was engaged to a civilian nursing sister.

She arranged for the padre. They got married the night before the operation, and he had the operation, survived the operation. What eventuated eventually I would never know, because he would have been, once he was healed up he would have been sent off. He had an amputation through the hip joint. That other fellow who lost his hip and pelvis and all that was a different thing altogether.

But it was a strange thing that I met her again at one of the reunions of Concord hospital, years later. She told me she had played on that piano. Who, what happened to it eventually, I don’t think the 2/5th went any further than Morotai that time. They had been in the Middle East earlier. They would have probably brought that piano back to Sydney somewhere.

Well I thought it was a bit unusual, but the fellows wanted to do it, and they parcelled them up. Well coming home after the war, that would be from Tarakan, well we had two dentists in our unit. Don’t quite know why we should have had two dentists, but we did have two dentists.

Except that they could be used because they had a little knowledge of anaesthesia, and we put some of them to use as a anaesthetist. One of them managed to get a motorcycle somewhere. He parcelled that up, and brought it home to Australia after the war. Another fellow did something similar with a jeep I think. Not a member of our unit but some other fellow parcelled a jeep up and brought it back,

back to Australia. Well when a war’s on I suppose, rules and regulations, some get broken here and there. We weren’t supposed to take a camera away with us, well the most junior medical officer, he took a camera with him, had a little incident later with it.

This was at Tarakan; he got shot in the neck. He was only standing out in front of the hospital where we were working. And fortunately for him it was a minor wound, we didn’t send him away we fixed him up and he stayed. When the war was finished he was the first one we sent home, since he was the youngest fellow.

He got on the plane. That plane came down in the drink on the way to Morotai. His heavy, he had a heavy sort of camera, hit him on the head. Didn’t knock him out. They pulled them out of the drink, they were the rescued. So he finished up the war with a service,

you were entitled to get service stripes, that’s right service stripes, and a wound stripe, and a goldfish stripe cause he was, he’d been brought down in the drink. Anyway he eventually became the Mayor of, Leichhardt I think of it was, and died relatively young. I don’t know what from.

Jim Rutherford. He was quite a nice fellow.

The arrival that was, I described that to whoever rang me. We, in Morotai, oh in Morotai. I’ve described a bit of it.

One side to it was a, the war was still on in Morotai at that time. There was still a perimeter and when there was action close by you’d have a red alert. We had the 13th air force based, 13th American Air Force based there too. Of course they had everything. They had fashioned up an outdoor theatre,

in a hollowed area. A real proper theatre. They would bring the actresses and actors out from America; fly them in for things, for shows. And when the red alert came of course they’d all go to their station or to wherever they had to go to. And the Australians

who hadn’t been allowed in, they’d rush in and occupy their seats. When the alarm, you got the all clear and the Yanks came back they wouldn’t have any seats.

End of tape

Yes one of the patients, and I might say we used to take patients from wherever they were sent from, so long as they were allies, and this man was sent over from Noumea or one of those French islands, but he was a Spanish type. He was to be done,

we had him in the theatre. The specialist surgeon, visiting surgeon came in to do him, I was to assist. We had him under the spinal anaesthetic so he was only anaesthetised from the middle of the tummy down, and he, the specialist fellow was very fluent in foreign languages, and he started having a

talk to this cove about Spain and France and the rest. This went on, carried on, and we had made a pre-arrangement with a consultant radiotherapist to bring out some radon seeds to implant into the bases of any cancers we found in the bladder. However he hadn’t arrived

and we were getting a bit worried. Eventually, he’d had a puncture on the way out, and eventually he did arrive and handed the little packet of things to the sister who wrapped them up in some wrappings and boiled ‘em up, brought them over to us. So we undid the wrappings and there were no seeds there. They’d all gone down the drain, when they were being boiled up.

So we had to send for the engineer, and eventually he managed to get the seeds somewhere in the system, before they’d really left the theatre I think. Boiled ‘em up again so the operation proceeded, was successful as far as we knew.

And eventually when he had recovered from his operation we sent him back to the islands. Just an unusual occurrence. Which, sometimes we had to rely on, even before I was there when I was in the civilian hospital before I was in the army, we were in the middle of an operation there.

A shoulder operation when we came to, for a recurrent dislocation, when we came to drilling a hole through there to the humerus, we found out bits weren’t big enough. This fellow had a fairly thick tendon to put through, so we rang for the engineer out there and got him to bring his bits in.

Sterilised a bigger one, bored the proper hole and that operation went through too. These were somewhat earlier in the piece, these days, the amount of ironmongery in the theatre you could shame any plumber or any engineer or carpenter with what’s there.

Saws

and so on.

That’s right. At the military hospital there.

I don’t think there are any others, other than I have already related.

We did not, were not working as a hospital unit there and we weren’t there very long before I suppose the rest of the fleet had arrived and everything was ready and we set off. We embarked on a landing ship tank, an LST, together with an Indonesian battalion and their Dutch officers and that

was the one that was to finish up at Tarakan.

The only invasion force.

It was sort of OBO1 of the series.

Yeah.

Yeah that’s right.

We were due, we weren’t in the actual landing. The landing took place as soon as we got there I suppose. My first recollection or impression

was of the terrific protection we had, and the force we had, and the way they were shelling the beach where the oil buildings and containers at the base there, to make it relatively safe or as safe as they could for our fellows to go in.

And I don’t know whether they were destroyers, my impression was we had a, one ship called the Hobart. Whether that was a destroyer or a cruiser I don’t know. I thought we had about three of them, and various other ships in the convoy as well, en route there. Of course they all sort of stood out in line.

We were due to, after the fellows had actually invaded with their ducks, the soldiers. They had a beach landing medical unit, which one friend of mine who went to school with me, or just behind me he was, was a member of that, if not the only member.

He’d worked at Concord too. And then we were supposed to let ashore, not only the Indonesian soldiers, but a small portion of our own unit, and then go back out. However we got stuck on the beach and couldn’t

get off again, after we’d landed these fellows. There is another little island, a very small island, a couple of miles off Tarakan, called Sadu, and Australians had been landed there days before to clear any underwater

things that the Japanese had put down to prevent any landings. And also they had a gun that they were using when we were there too. Firing off. So when we got stuck there, the whole CCS was not supposed to go off for a about a further two or three days or something like that.

However as soon as the troops had gained enough ground to allow us to get off, well we did get off. But prior to that, we the Japs had a, a seventy-five millimetre gun somewhere on the hill up above the beach, and they shot away our mast, and they landed a shell

in the opening of the front of our ship there. We only had one, one of our fellows injured very slightly, so we were very fortunate in that at that stage.

Yes we were still stuck on the, we were still all in, most of us were still all in the boat, in the LST.

It was a sandy beach.

A muddy beach. It was sandy mud.

No. There is a photo there of several of the LSTs once they all came in. They’re all next to each other on the actual beach.

It wasn’t a beach like Collaroy, or Narrabeen or nothing like that.

But it was sandy, or mud and sand.

And then they had a few feet before it got grassy, grassy and bushy.

Well that was just part of the plan. Well firstly our troops had to get enough control of a sufficient

area to let us get ashore and also to set up somewhere.

Yes well we were supposed to be a mile offshore, waiting there. We were supposed to come in let the light section off and go back out

But we got stuck and couldn’t get back out,

so we were a sitting object for their guns.

Well I don’t know that we were worried. We thought well “This is war, we’re here and this is what you’d expect”. You could hear their shells landing in the water at the side of us, fortunately most of them did that, rather than on the ship. And we didn’t have any serious casualties.

Only the one fellow who got a minor wound of some sort. I don’t remember who it was even. Whether it was just that he was blown over and hit his head or something like that. Nothing serious anyway.

Oh yes.

These huge clouds of black smoke going up. We had some planes, also our own planes who had come across from Morotai too, I think, who were also supposed to be dropping things, but we didn’t see too many of those. Mostly it was these war ships who were our own,

from Australia, who were covering us.

Well eventually our troops they managed to silence the biggest gun that seemed to be, had a big concrete basement from which they were firing this thing, and they managed to silence that.

That gave us time, and eventually we, the whole lot of us got ashore and not far inland we found an old dilapidated timber, mostly timber cottage. And we set up there as a first site where we started to work. Or some of us

started to work. The perimeter was the front line, most of us were told to dig little trenches and cover it with a tent sort of thing. Mine was on the end of that line. We put up one twelve by fourteen tent, which was,

we had one patient with acute gastroenteritis or something, and we deemed he was infectious, and he was put in this twelve by fourteen tent, and that was just about twenty feet from where I was. During the night, or as evening came a captain

from one of the units was brought in, or came in with severe tooth trouble, toothache and so on. Well we didn’t have anywhere to put him so we put him in this twelve by fourteen tent too. Well later on that night, Nips got in under the side of the tent, I suppose they thought oh well it was a commanding officer’s thing you see. And set off a number of old Dutch shells and so on.

This captain was killed and the patient had his skull split open. But he survived and he was ok. Needless to say the next night I had shifted my, my little pop tent away from that area.

I could have been. I would

I could have been under, not in the tent, the twelve by fourteen tent. No.

I could have been in that slit trench, I don’t know. I didn’t know what time of the night. Noise was going on all over us because we had a battery of our own guns shooting over this way across us, and a battery behind us shooting over that way. That was, one night we had a drop short from one of these shooting over this way, and the missile landed, fortunately for this

particular fellow who had been sleeping somewhere there with a pillow. He’d got up to go to the toilet and the thing landed on his pillow. Nobody got injured. But for the noise that was going on you wouldn’t know what was going on anywhere. As days went by, ahead of us of course there were two, at least two if not three

other independent units. 2/12th Field Ambulance, 2/11th Field Ambulance, and I think another one too somewhere. Spread out somewhere a little bit ahead of us somewhere.

Casualty Clearing Station. We were a real hospital unit.

We were the front line.

Oh yeah.

I had no feelings about it. It didn’t seem to worry us. This was the war and we were, this was our part that we were playing and we were taking the risks that we knew every other soldier was. Fellows I had the greatest admiration for were the active fighting

soldiers, the fellows that had the guns and that to go ashore straight away and so on. You just had to do what you were supposed to, or what you were being told to by your commanding officer or your superior officers. As a bit more ground was gained we got a bit further forward then there seemed to be a freshening up

of the resistance, and two of us, Major Dorsch and myself were sent to go forward one of the field ambulances to give them some help. This was during the night that we got through the bush far enough, they were only a few hundred a couple hundred yards perhaps ahead of us really and they had a

decent sized tent set up where they were operating. I think some of there, there’s a photo of one of their officers there. One of them was a chap from Goulburn fellow called Little, quite a good surgeon. Anyway when we got there they seemed to be coping all right with what was wanting. Anyway there was quite a big tent

they’d got up for the staff who weren’t occupied in their theatre so we were told to spend the night there, sleeping head to the side of the, each tent, and there was a little alleyway down the middle. And you could hear the, we presume, we didn’t know whose they were, whether they were ours or the opposition’s trench mortars going off. And they have a

somewhat frightening sound. You don’t hear them land, but you hear them shooting. They sort of shoot up in the air and then go over this way and then explode, you never know where they’re going to explode. So, whose they were, whether they were ours or theirs I didn’t know. We hadn’t been there many hours when our commanding officer, Colonel Russell turned

up and he said to me, he came up through the middle aisle in the big tent and he said “Give us your revolver”, I said “Oh don’t be silly”, he said ‘I’m going to sleep in the middle here somewhere’. “Well”, I said “That’s all right, I want my revolver in case a Nip comes under the side here”. I think the

next day they brought us back to the main, to our own CCS. Those fellows were doing the job all right.

A CCS is a, is comprised of about one hundred and five men, there were no nursing sisters there at that time. Later on we had some

flown in when we were, when the war had settled down a bit and we were properly set up. We had half a dozen brought in. About a hundred and five men, including some of those had previous theatre experience back in Australia and in New Guinea, and I think there

was a transport section, and stretcher-bearers, and cooks and about eight medical officers, or six medical officers. Something like that, six or eight. I could give you their names if I can remember them all. But the commanding officer was a doctor, there was a pharmacist,

we also had available somewhere along the lines, I don’t think he was there when we actually invaded, but a branch of medical stores came ashore eventually and if we wanted anything particular they’d provide it if we didn’t have it. And also, I think that’s about

the best description.

Well when we were properly set up to take cases, I suppose the first lot of injuries that were treated on the beach by the beach unit, which wasn’t part of us but a separate little unit

they were gotten back to the ships of the convey somehow or other those wounded. But eventually when we were properly set up it was a case of when a hospital ship arrived, when it was safe for a hospital ship to come in I think it was the Oranje who used to come in there, we would ship out whatever. There’s a picture there of

a Japanese who had a amputation of his mid upper arm on the beach. He was one of those sent off in the Oranje. And they were all sent back when they had a full load back to Morotai. And then they’d come back again. It was sort of a shuttle service. But eventually when we were set up properly in an old Dutch hospital

that had a patio at the front, and a proper post mortem room which we used as an operating theatre, we expanded to about three hundred beds. Mostly were in hospital marquees set up around the little

Dutch hospital. So you got all sorts of injuries. Now the one that I, that impressed me most of all of course was Tom Derek.

He earned his VC at Finschhafen in New Guinea,

and I think I mentioned him somewhere when we were on the Northern Tablelands. He got into trouble in operations practice, practise of operations of landing and nearly drowned. Anyway he came away with us he was with the 48th Battalion. Anyway we, at the height of the fighting

he was very badly wounded in the belly and chest. Mainly belly I think it was. But he didn’t let onto his mates that he had been hit, he just lay doggo in a bit of a hollow, because he thought well if they were trying to rescue him, well they’d get shot too.

So it was somewhat, about eighteen hours or so before they were able to manage to get a hold of him and bring him in. By this time of course with belly wounds in the tropics, of course whatever else you’ve got apart from blood loss, well you’ve got peritonitis and so on. So they asked me to give him a transfusion to get him ready, well enough for surgery, so I gave him a, set up a transfusion.

And he was operated on, two of the fellows dealt with that. I think one of them was Bill Dorsch and the other was a chap who’d been in practice out in Bourke somewhere. Horsley, Charles Horsley. Anyway he was still alive at the end of that, and take him to a ward, but I’m not sure if it was the next day, he wasn’t in my

hands, he belonged to those two fellows. Anyway he showed signs of further trouble and they deemed that they should look inside again, or do drainage or something or other. And he had a second operation of some sort. Eventually he, I don’t know how many days he lived, but not many days, but eventually he died, I suppose mainly from general peritonitis and general infection

because we those days did not have antibiotics other than penicillin and sulpha drugs which were pretty useless in such a crook infection.

I think so. I think so.

Well yes we were. Course we were. We even had it at Concord. Yes we would have had penicillin there, but we didn’t have streptomycin and that was the answer to anything, was streptomycin. I don’t think that had come in by that stage. By the time our troops were in Korea those drugs were available

and consequently up their belly wounds were salvageable. And of course they were in snowy country didn’t get the infections racing away.

Not much different from what it has become now. I don’t think we took any, I’m not sure about that, blood with us, and I don’t know where the blood came from that we gave him.

Probably came from the air force. The members of the air force who were not very active because the airfield wasn’t in, was full of bomb holes and so on. They were willing donors for our own coves. For the Japanese wounded we used,

we bled some of the well Japanese. When I say we, I don’t know who did that. But that’s where the blood we used for them came from, from the Japs, and they seemed to be willing givers too, they weren’t forced.

No. No we used the air force blood, and eventually

when everything became established we were able to get small amounts of blood come from Morotai. I don’t think that’d come from Australia, I think some of the troops were willing givers there.

I don’t think so, whether they were shell. The Japs were using whatever they could find or had. I don’t know whether the Japs were really prepared or expected us. I think mostly the enemy both, whether they were Germans on the continent

or the Japs in any war, they seemed to know what was coming, going to come. But I think we might have surprised them a bit there and they didn’t seem to have any means for reinforcements. At one stage, I have a little cutting from the local paper that they started to publish eventually in Tarakan, and offer was made to the Japs, if they would give up then

that would no longer shoot them. Be the finish of the war. But they knocked that one back and the war just carried on.

Some of the work that I was doing was,

the acute injuries were dealt with by the field ambulances when they could. They did as much as they could, so that a lot of the casualties we got had already been dealt with. And we had so many; we had a couple of fellows who were

supposed to be experienced in surgery and operating and, and they did whatever they could get.

Yeah Tarakan. I’d had a certain amount of experience but I didn’t seem to get much in the way of our own casualties to deal with because they’d had to come through firstly the field ambulance, and then

what was left our own, our two senior fellows more senior fellows would deal with. I might assist now and again. Then when the war seemed to be settling down we started to get civilians coming along, wanting trouble. And that where I seemed to get a bit of surgery,

and one of the Indonesians, I fixed up his hernia for him, he had a hernia. So I dealt with that. Some of the ordinary surgery that you might get in civil life.

Yes ah.

At one instance

the food that we were getting was a bit scarce, there was not many ships coming reinforcing the supply of food. I can recall that one, we had, might say part of our establishment, we had four, there was a Catholic priest, an Anglican priest

and two others. One was a Baptist and another was church of some other, Church of Christ or something.

We didn’t have one. Well these four chaplains thought well, they knew there was a boat in and there was a load of potatoes on it, but they had been condemned.

Unfit to use. They decided they’d go shanghai them. They went down to the port, and fellow with a lorry. On the way back guards stopped them, and they didn’t get cashiered but they got a stern talking to from commanding officers. Well the food was not much good and the Indonesians thought well they had a good catch

of fish, and they gave their soldiers some of the fish. They cooked them up and they used what they thought was olive oil but it turned out to be what was known, what we knew as Betty lotion. Which was a lotion, mixture of poisons that would kill everything that crept and crawled on the island, that

we used to dust on the bottom of our cuffs. So a hundred of these fellows were poisoned by this stuff, and two of them lost their sight. We didn’t even know what the chemicals were, but we decided well they’d have to be in a certain class of poisons, for which we thought that some, and injection of

sodium thiosulphate would, might help. So we put an intravenous of that stuff in to the lot of them. Most of them got better, well enough to go back to their unit.

As long as we had them, we wouldn’t know whether it would be permanent or not.

Anyway I was asked to write a report, on this and to send it back to headquarters back in Morotai, and I heard from the chief physician there when he did visit us ultimately, said it was a very good report. So it was a bit of a clap on the back for me. But it was interesting, but it was one of the things that just happened to happen.

All of their officers were shot dead. They were Dutchmen. Now one’s tempted to think that the Indonesians hated the Dutch so much that they may be responsible for that themselves, but we wouldn’t know.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Yes. They were native, nationals. They were trained back here in Australia. New South Wales I think they were trained, to begin with, up north coast somewhere.

Yes, one young lad, that was part of my job that I had to do, what now may be called triage,

you know triage they call it, it’s the buzzword. Sorting out the wounded and giving them priority to be dealt with and so on. And there was young fellow there, apparently none of them were able to find a vein anywhere, I can’t remember what all his wounded were, but I gathered that both his upper limbs and lower limbs had been damaged so that

there was no veins there for them to do so. Eventually I was asked to have a look at him and I got into one of his jugular veins here to set him going. Now what happened to him eventually I don’t know, I couldn’t say. But at least it got him well enough. At the same time.

Yes it was of a soldier who was travelling in a jeep somewhere, and he went across, over a land mine, and he was brought to the, us without his legs below the knees, they were blown off at the knees.

and the immediate peculiarity was that there wasn’t a drop of blood visible. The vessels had clamped down, I suppose he had had a certain loss of blood. The, I understand that he did whatever had to be done to him. I understand that he didn’t survive.

He was, probably lost so much blood and was in a terribly shocked condition that he did not survive. One day, when we were fully established there, engineers decided they should oil the roads to cut down the dust, what roads there were. There was one main roads,

There was one main roads, nothing like our main roads, but running parallel to the beach, which came from the oil installations. And I was driving, I’d only just learned to drive I must say, driving a jeep along there one day, and suddenly I found I was going in the reverse direction. It had just turned around on itself on that greasy road. But fortunately

that was later and there were no land mines still in that vicinity. Yes land mines produce horrific things and we see it all the time.

I didn’t do anything, I just saw that he had been brought in and that he was sent into one of the operating theatres where they were working.

I don’t know what was done.

Yes that was stated that, afterwards that for the percentage of troops involved the number of casualties was greater than anywhere else that the Australians had ever been involved in. Now whether that included Anzac Cove I don’t know but a lot of

fellows survived Anzac Cove of course, it was only a

Yes at Gallipoli. But yes there were a lot of casualties but the shuttle service of the hospital ships kept taking them away. No doubt the same thing would apply from Morotai, they’d have, there’d be another shuttle back to Australia somewhere.

Well I think you would have to say it might have been a couple of months before we had cleared enough, cleared the enemy back far enough to say that where we were stationed. In fact where we finished, finally finished up and that was late

in the piece when our youngest member there, youngest doctor was standing out in front of the hospital, he was shot in the neck. Fortunately for him was not a serious wound. He got fixed up there at the CCS, we didn’t have to ship him out.

So that was, they captured that Jap, he was going across with his, carrying his theodolite. By that time too we had a ward, and it was one of my duties to look after the injured Japanese that were brought in at that stage.

Yes well. Yes, one man, one Jap had been, a number of them had been wounded. Initially when the landing took place, and then had fled into the bush. Had no, no treatment for several months, couple of months.

Well this man had, young fella, had been wounded in the face in the region of his right eye. The wound had healed, had no sight in the eye, it’d been damaged. But he was also complaining, I suppose this would have, be about three months, but he was still complaining that he was getting trouble in the

other eye. So I considered this a case of sympathetic ophthalmia, which does happen, does occur, and that the only way to stop the other eye getting, becoming defective was to remove the injured eye, which I did.

We did not have any artificial eyes to put in, to keep they eye open so I got one of the dentist to fashion an artificial eye suitable to fit into his socket, out acrylic such as they use for false teeth and so on. So this Jap was quite happy, and he knew why we’d done this,

and he said “It’s ok, when I get back to Japan the Emperor will give me a proper one”. And in fact he was so happy that he obtained a piece of timber from somewhere, dressed timber. About eight inches by twelve inches. And he carved a scene on it, a Japanese scene, coloured it in.

Put some Japanese characters on it, which meant “To my dear doctor”. Apparently the same word is for dentist as for doctor, so whether it was meant to be dentist or doctor I don’t know, but they tell me that what it was. And he gave it to me. I don’t know where that is, it’s somewhere in this house, I couldn’t find it.

No. No, I would have been more rattled sometimes playing, what would I say, the game we used to play, vigoro, no not vigoro, hockey, playing hockey.

Well sometimes it was pretty hectic, and in fact I can remember we were playing an inter-university match in Adelaide there once, and I was a fullback. That’s not a goalie but one of the two backs. So I never really got up near the other goal. I wasn’t one who scored goals.

But I think one of our keen forwards smashed the knee, the patella of one of his opponents one day. Not purposely but accidentally. That fellow became, developed into a very famous professor, whose name I can’t remember just offhand. Still alive, he gets onto

the television, he was given a job, he became a public servant and was given a job with the United Nations getting rid of malaria or smallpox, or one of these things. And he became somewhat famous, he’s recently been interviewed on television because of the fact that they think

the enemy might be throwing smallpox germs around.

In quiet times the commanding officer and the pharmacist, Charles Horsley, there

were about four of them, were very keen card players. They used to play cards when they could.

I don’t know. I never played cards, they’d play for money or for small amounts I suppose. But I do remember once when a visiting American colonel turned up

on his way somewhere from one place to another. I don’t remember if he was a doctor or not, but he turned up. And so that night they started to play cards, and at about four o’clock, half past three or four o’clock he said, “Oh my plane goes at five o’clock.” or something like that. In the morning. He said he had to be

ready to go, he said, “Oh we’ll have to stop now.” ‘Course he was winning well too. So the commanding officer said, he said, “Oh well, that’s all right.” he said. “But I can’t afford to pay you, I’ll fight you for it.” So the big fight started, and finished up out of his office and on to the entrance to the hospital.

Great noise, lots of noise. Those patients who were able to get out of bed of course came to see what was going on. Eventually the officers who were present had to pull them away from one another, they were both faring a bit badly. Having their heads bumped down on the tiles. It took our commanding officer a couple of days

to recover from that.

Yeah, well he had been serving in the army before the war, in the Darwin garrison. So anybody whose been long serving, the longer you’d been in the army the higher up you were. Well you go from captain up to major,

then up to lieutenant colonel, and then to colonel and so on. And he’d been in it for so long he was colonel by that time he was sent to us. But he was a good build of a man, and I think he held them together pretty well, but they had been spoiled by having a much

sort of less rigid commanding officer before, who had with them in New Guinea for a couple of years. Down the southeast.

It was Bill Russell. He was given an OBE [Order of the British Empire] for his work, which was sort of an automatic thing I think. And when the war settled down a bit, they sent us half a dozen nursing sisters.

In charge of, with what was her name? Millard, Barbara Millard was in charge of them, and she was given a Royal Red Cross after the events. They didn’t come with us when it was a bit dangerous.

I think they were

more or less automatic, and the OBE automatically given to officers in command in of, in action, at any, any campaign of any notice. I think that’s what it was. And, oh well she’d led them. Now they, we had a bit of trouble in the theatre, there with our original young fellow who’d been with them in New Guinea, he

cracked up. Became a psychiatric casualty. We had to ship him out. One of the sisters cracked up, she was a good theatre sister too, and we, had to send her out.

Well they couldn’t take the nature of the injuries, and the war itself.

Oh yes, oh yes. If they weren’t accustomed to, some of the surgery would be rather extensive and drastic. You can understand that. Maybe, I don’t know what the previous experience of the girls had been, whether they served any other forward areas, I don’t know.

No, no never. I think my, the engagement in various sports that I had had as a young fellow. Whether it was tennis or cricket or hockey. I didn’t play football,

or I played one game once, but I wasn’t encouraged to play that. Also had some years in the operating theatre at both, at the civilian hospital that I was at, and at the army hospital, Concord hospital.

Well no. Well yes, only they would

mostly be in the late stages of the treatment for the injuries by the time they were brought back to Australia. These people -

Well that’s what we were sent there to see and deal with. We had been seeing them as subsequent injuries.

Well I think that just toughened you up. If you watch any of these, I've never played rugby league, but if you watch any of those, they’re full

wrestling matches and boxing matches combined. And they have a lot of preparation before the matches and after the matches, and playing again the next week. Well you kept physically very fit, and if you’re physically very fit, I think you’re mentally very established. Unless you were a boxer,

and I think the boxers they knock their brains about so much that that’s a different thing.

Yeah, physically fairly fit.

I suppose just the work you were doing. There was no time for any exercise routines or anything. You got what sleep you could get when you could get it.

And as the time wore on, things became more organised. We really developed into a, quite a major hospital really. More along civilian lines. And a -

Oh few months. About two or three months, because we were in the initial building

for about a month I suppose, before they got enough hold on territory to get around the old Dutch hospital, which was a more permanent type of building. As we had expected this 5th AGH [Australian General Hospital]

was supposed to come in following, if things got serious enough to set up. But it never did get to that point. We were able to cope with things and the shuttle service worked very well of things getting the casualties away.

Well the only opinion that I sort of, might have expressed was that he didn’t boss me, and I didn’t, I respected him and he respected me. In fact he confided in me eventually. As he came out one day and he said, he was holding his tummy, holding his belly, saying “I’m filling up, I’m filling up”. I didn’t quite know what he meant.

But what he did mean we got down to, was he’d been vomiting blood and his stomach was filling up again. So I thought well, this is a very good opportunity. The best thing to do with this man is to get him across to Morotai, where we had a former member, who’d been a member of the unit in New Guinea, Ben Phillips. He was on the staff there,

we got in touch with him and suggested to him that we thought that the colonel would like to be, see the end of the war. It was getting close to the end anyway. So that what happened, I think they fixed whatever it was up, and he was very soon discharged from the army.

I don’t know, never found out, he used to drink a lot.

I’m not a drinker so he would have had my ration, as well as his own I think.

I would, since I didn’t see anything myself, but I think the young man became

psychotic, and I would think the woman would become, not so much psychotic or psych-neurotic, or depressed. But of course we managed to dispose of them very quickly, because we had no facilities, no psychiatrists.

We were able to manage without them.

I wouldn’t know that.

The units that were sent there, on the whole, had been at it before, and if they had any weak members they would have been

found out before they, before they went there. The battalions, the fighting men, were seasoned. They would have had a few additions as well, but no I didn’t have much to do with those. One of the air men, I don’t know whether I mentioned that before, one of the doctors from the air force,

he was so, had nothing much to do, and being, had experienced as a big game hunter and he got, I don’t think he asked permission, he just went out with the 2/48th battalion. In spite of the officer thinking that perhaps he shouldn’t be, and he was biting off as many Japs as he could. He brought back to me, he showed me his

hat with a bullet hole in the top of his hat that had gone through. His gun, he had nine notches on it that he had carved, and he gave me a Japanese ear, nose and throat text book that he had got from a Japanese doctor. That doctor was quite useful, he’d been taken prisoner.

And of course all I could read in it was, each chapter began quaintly with, in English, “Ladies and Gentleman” and then all the rest was Japanese. Every chapter had that, and it’s never been any use to me, and I can’t put my hands on it just now. But he, one of the patients

had had been a technician in the laboratory before the war there, and he’d been wounded when the Japanese were invading. His shoulder had been dislocated, and he’d had a chest wound. I’d x-rayed him,

and there were some peculiarities showing there. His shoulder was still dislocated, and this was a year or two after this had occurred. So I’d found out from this, from the Japanese doctor that he had actually dealt with that fellow when he was wounded, and he said being an ear, nose and throat man, he didn’t know much or anything about chest surgery and what he did see, was he

could see the liver in the bottom of the wound. So he said he got out of the wound as quickly as he could, sewed the fellow up and got out. He didn’t do anything about the shoulder anyway, I carried out an operation to reduce the dislocation and anchored it, in the same method that I described we had used in civil life. An acholia operation. Passing the biceps tendon through the head of the humerus,

which we’d drilled a hole in, joining it up again. Then we shipped him off to Morotai for some physiotherapy to get his movements back again. That was an operation which had some danger because it was very close to the main artery running into the arm. We obviously didn’t hit it at any stage, and

not many people, anybody who does these operation, usually they’re done shortly after the, it was dislocated. They’re not left so long for adhesions everywhere. So hopefully he would get some sort of function back.

No he was a local civilian. Would have been, he wasn’t Dutch, he would have been an Indonesian, or semi Dutch

and Indonesian or something like that. But he was a technician working in the laboratory there.

Yes. Something like that.

Oh no. It was just that he was able to tell me what there had been a wound through the diaphragm. That would have account for some of the fellow’s abdominal symptoms,

but it didn’t sound to me to be a serious one that required any interference by us. But his shoulder certainly did.

Yes that was late in the piece, when the locals started to come in. I think he’d come from some neighbouring island too

that one. And she had belly trouble, so I opened her up. And she had what we call a leaking ectopic pregnancy. The pregnancy was growing in the left tube, and it had grown to the stage where it was starting

to bust itself, leaking into the peritoneal cavity and into the pelvis. So I removed that, which wasn’t easy because it had been going on so long. An ectopic pregnancy is not such a difficult operation if you get it early, but this had been, there’d been some delay.

Well the operation went ahead all right, and we got some blood. We gave her some Japanese blood, and her kidneys closed down on us. So anyway we kept a drip going of some sort and eventually she came good. Obviously had some sort of a transfusion reaction.

Well in those days we didn’t even know anything about RH [Rhesus] factors, let alone all the other factors that they’ve found since then that might have had something to do with such an occurrence. She got better, and he took her off. Then weeks or months or so later, I was told there was a Chinaman looking for me down there somewhere.

So I went to see him, and it was the husband of the woman. He was so thankful for what I had done for him that he had brought along some presents. One was a silver ring with a ruby setting, a gentleman’s, a claw, uncut ruby. There was a necklace, a ladies necklace,

and an amulet, an amulet for an arm, the ladies arm. Silver. So I brought those home and gave them to well, I used to wear that ring quite a bit because it was a bit strange, a bit different from most rings. Corundum I think they call those uncut rubies. They’re smooth and like an egg.

Until we had a break-in here one day, some years back, and we disturbed the robbers because it was late in the afternoon. And they got away in a hurry. We found jewellery and stuff all down the front steps. They’d ransacked a drawer in our bedroom and amongst them

was that ring. It was missing. Wasn’t the most valuable or the most important thing, but still. They were so organised we found a two-way telephone under one of these things later on, one of these chairs, and another on the front veranda, they must have had a cocky [a cockatoo – a lookout] outside.

They slipped coming through that door. That thing’s a bit slippery there, that mat gave way, knocked that black lady to the floor. It’s South African spring stone. Did some slight damage, little bit of the timber that she’s carrying on her head; I think a little bit of that was chipped

off and I got it stuck back on.

That was a fellow who’d had a severe, long standing sacroiliac arthritis condition in the lower back.

I did a, took a bit of bone from his hip, from the crest ilium and made a little channel across the joint there. The object was to stiffen that joint, to prevent it. So we fixed the bone graft across there and set him up in a plaster spiker. How he got on subsequently I don’t know.

We would have fixed him up and let him go. I don’t know who that is, blowing the horn, but we won’t interrupt.

Well yes that would always be

a worry, although to me it wasn’t, because in civvy street the way I was doing things here, and I was one of the few who did do much surgery here, I would follow the patient up and this I got through training from Concord, from Danny Glisson, who’d been in orthopaedics for years. He was a stickler for following up cases, and making sure that they were ok.

That’s all right, don’t worry about them.

Oh yes, yes he did and sometimes that annoyed the executives of the hospital because he keep some patients in a bit longer than some others would be kept in, or would be keeping their patients in. But still

Well I did have subsequently, we had had a woman too up there. A native woman with cancer of the breast, now I can’t remember who did her, I think Bill Dorsch fixed her up,

or did something to her. Might have done a local thing, because I think she already had some signs of secondaries. There was another, there was a fellow who’d had a pyonephrosis, a big abscess on his kidney, which I had drained, and left him with a tube. And I did write back to the,

find out what had happened to these, hoping that it would get somewhere, and it did get somewhere. I got a letter back, in German. Because the only civilian doctor there before the war was a German. He had been taken into, captive whilst the war was on.

I gathered he was freed later on. He was able to tell me that the woman had died from secondaries in the brain, and the fellow had died from chronic septus. I presume he’d developed some septicaemia. He wouldn’t have had penicillin or anything else up there at that time.

No. No.

Oh yeah. I didn’t attempt anything that I didn’t have any experience in. And I wasn’t asked to do anything. I don’t suppose there were many injuries that I hadn’t had to treat before anyway.

But the more senior coves in my unit seemed to snaffle most of the surgical work, as much as they could get. I presume they were keen to do that. And the field, the ambulances, the forward ambulances well they also had competent surgeons in the

their unit, or units. So that took, see three thousand, after all three thousand over a period of time was not a great number. There is a photo in there of the Catholic priest burying Tom Derek in his initial,

in an initial grave near the first CCS that we had. Subsequently he would have been transferred to the Graves Commission area where later they had a proper graveyard.

Oh subsequently yes.

Well it was just the only thing we could do. You knew that, or hoped that they would be seeing somebody who would take care of them whoever they were sent to. In this case it would be a general hospital, the 2/5th who had already had quite some service in the Middle East. They might have had some new

chums as well with them. But they’d be looked after well. So it didn’t worry us because there was always somebody to take the place of these people that were sent out. And so many of them appeared to do all right, do well later on. As far as we could tell.

Well we knew that it just wasn’t possible. So that’s the finish, that’s it, that the end of it. We just hoped that they would be ok. No I wasn’t concerned and I don’t think the others were either.

I did write back to Tarakan to find out how some of the patients who were locals had got on. For instance one who’d had cancer of the breast. One of our fellows had done something for her, but there were signs already that she’d had secondaries, and we just wondered whether

they’d lain dormant and there was no progression. But when I heard back, I did get an answer, she had passed away, with secondaries in the brain. And another patient whom I’d, a kidney abscess I’d drained, subsequently he’d passed away also because they had no drugs to, no antibiotics to cope

with the infection that he’d had. He’d had a huge abscess on his left kidney.

Well I thought I might have, there might have been some way, I could hear what happened to them. In the army you wouldn’t hear. There was one instance, didn’t concern me, but it concerned my brother-in-law, who had a patient dealt with

up in New Guinea. Wounded up there. When he was sent back, he happened to land in the ward that his sister, my sister-in-law was looking after at Concord. And then when she’d finished whatever period was there, this fellow was a Tasmanian. And he was sent on down to Tasmania, he came under the

care of a third Dr Scott Young. That was Eileen who was my wife eventually. So that there, there was an unusual continuum of service. I can’t remember what the case was, what he had wrong with him. Must have been fairly serious if he had to be brought right back. You just had to accept that

you did what you could for the patients. If they lived, well and good, if they passed away that’s as much as you could do to help them, you couldn’t do anything more. And some of the wounded were in such a state that it was obvious that nothing would help. Subsequent wars were different because, antibiotics, as I mentioned, came in

which were capable of curing some of the septicaemias, and some of the peritonitis cases. And the wars were of course, one of them. Korea of course was in an area that was so much cooler, and the wogs didn’t grow so fast there.

Well we didn’t have an unlimited supply of blood through what were then ‘normal’

in inverted commas, channels. Which mainly I think was, we were bleeding our own air force men. We tried to get away without having to use them by either using saline or plasma, if we had plasma, can’t remember whether we did then.

I suppose it’s amazing sometimes patients do very well even if they are somewhat exsanguinated in initial instance, and recover quickly. Now my wife, during her career had three caesarean section operations, for a different cause every time.

She didn’t have a transfusion with any of them, following any of them. She might have been beefed up a bit better immediately if she had, but she managed get back and do things without it.

No. Well we didn’t take any risks because there are some things, although we’re cross matching, ordinary cross matching for O, group O and group A and AB and so on, but we were unable to carry out say visammin [?] reactions for syphilis or other, or some other wogs. Or to hunt for malaria and so on. Time factors

as much as equipment. So we just didn’t take any risks

No. I think we had no interest in venereal diseases. Everybody was too busy to be concerned

with that sort of thing. Since there was action going on all the time we were up there even towards the end, until the war ended. And even then they still got a few accidents.

They didn’t seem to,

to appear. TB of course we expected to find TB perhaps in some of the Nips that we had taken. I don’t know whether I mentioned the Nip who thought he’d swallowed a snake. Or he had swallowed a snake, he’d eaten a snake out in the bush, because he had nothing else to eat, he’d killed a

snake. And he thought he had a snake in his chest, because he had pain in his chest. Well when I x-rayed him he had a huge abscess in his chest. But not a TB one. He was cured miraculously with penicillin. Penicillin cured that abscess like magic.

No we didn’t, I suppose we wouldn’t have done anything about TB anyway if we would have found TB. ‘Cause they too were supposed to be soldiers; they would have been vetted for TB at some stage. TB in my whole army career did not have much prominence. As far as the wife was concerned,

she was the pathologist at the TB, what was really a TB hospital outside Albury. Puckapunyal. But their cases were mostly from the British sailors. The British had lots of cases of TB, and there were a lot of British sailors out here at that time. At Concord

I don’t know that it was a very major complaint there; it certainly didn’t come into my wards.

The, well I didn’t have much dealings with them, although I had a ward full of them. They just did what they were told, they were captives.

When I say did what they were told, if I said they needed an operation well they submitted to it. Not that there was much surgery done from them, but a couple of the wounded ones that we got needed some correction or some improvement. Or dealing with their wounds late in the piece. And they were so exhausted, worn out themselves

that they didn’t take much anaesthetic to knock them over and deal with things. But they were all, one of them was a captain, and educated captain. An engineer who spoke English and he used to do rounds with me for a while, but after a while he got tired of that. And I had two or three words, itai which means pain, naetai [?] and

some other word that just meant no pain, or a small amount of pain, and that was enough for me to get around and deal with them. They were just compliant I suppose they had no alternative.

Some of them were suffering from beri-beri

desmitis legs, heart failure, so on, because they’d been out in the bush for three months trying to get away from us. Had no food, or very little of anything. That, they seemed to respond to treatment. I can’t remember losing any of them while we were there.

Was that the, there was a Japanese that shot one of the doctors who was standing at the

front of the hospital. Yes I think I mentioned that.

Yes, he was shot in the neck.

He got over that fortunately, although he, when the war was over, and we were sending, starting to send our some of our, well we sent our nurses first. They went by plane. When I went to send them off I thought they’ll be lucky to get there, it looked like the plane was

made of calico rather than sheet metal or something. However they managed to get to Morotai. Then when we sent the youngest doctor out, he was the fella that’d been shot in the neck, that plane did come down before they got to Morotai, although they were all rescued. He was then qualified for all these,

had his service stripes, and his wound stripe, stripes or whatever they got for that. And then he had his goldfish stripe because he’d been rescued out of the drink, however. He became the Mayor of Leichhardt I think it was. I don’t know what doctoring he did, but

he died relatively early I suppose he would have been in his fifties, or his early fifties and then passed away.

We had everything we needed I think in regards to surgical tools. Full operating equipment that was available in those days. We didn’t have, I don’t think we had such refinement that some of the skin grafting procedures now

have, but we had enough to do anything that you needed to do. Mind you, that reminds me of the veterinary surgeon that went in to one of the campaigns behind the lines. Was dropped behind the lines. He developed acute appendicitis.

And with his own penknife he took his appendix out. Without any anaesthetic. It’s amazing what can be done if it’s got to be done. And I think the next day he had to run because the Japs were a bit close. He survived.

Oh well there are scalpels and artery forceps, retractors. There are various types of forceps. Plain forceps and artery forceps, and various

types of links of forceps and so on. Quite a number of tools. Then there’s bone cutters and chisels for certain work. Not usually put out for ordinary, simple operations.

There’s no end of, if you go into, well the local hospital here. If you go in, and you look the heart ward for instance had a showcase outside it, and there was more ironmongery there, than you would find anywhere. But

types of operations, types of instruments should I say are being refined and changed all the time, since those days. But the basics such as I have already described, and you can get along with those very well doing most operations. Sometimes you need two sets of them, depending on major things.

You’ve got to be a bit of a carpenter, and a bit of a plumber to cover all the areas. Drills, some drills, but they wouldn’t be put out for every case.

Oh yes a Casualty Clearing Station is equipped to expand to become a full hospital, and we actually did.

As I say we had about, over three hundred beds, and that was bigger than this hospital was here. In fact it was as big as hospital is here. I don’t think it has more than three hundred beds at the moment, I don’t think up here, and it’s acting as a big suburban hospital

I don’t believe so.

At one stage I thought we might have needed some that we didn’t have, but I managed to get those. They were dealing with ruptured urethras that sometimes occurs with fractured pelvis or wounds down there. The special types of catheters and so on. Well the,

the unit which job it was to get a hold of these things they were able to supply what we wanted. Or thought might want but in fact I didn’t need them. Strangely they might have required them after I left there, because when peace was declared there was a lot of hi-jinx went on in various units. I know how fellows went

across somewhere to have a party with another crowd, and there were about twelve of them all in one jeep which was on the way back and crashed somewhere, and the driver finished up with a fractured pelvis and ruptured urethra, and they may have had to use some of these sorts of things then. But I didn’t have to use, they’re called ‘filiform bougies’

which are not used very much, only in special circumstance, cases.

Well it was twenty-four hours a day, if and you snatched any sleep that you might get, when you could.

It’s amazing how long you can manage without sleep. Although I do recall when I was a resident at the Royal Hospital for women in Sydney, again playing hockey. I’d been up so many nights that week, as well as the days, delivering babies, that I couldn’t remember that much about the hockey match.

However, I can’t remember whether we won or lost that match, that game. No there were no set hours, you just slept if you could, if there was no action. Otherwise you carried on. Back in civvy street at St George Hospital,

our hours were a hundred and twelve hours a week, although we got every third weekend off, from midday Saturday. But that’s what we were used to. That’s one way, well we learnt the job, and if you were not there when some particular case came in, well you just didn’t see them. Didn’t see it. Don’t always get the rare

things come in when it was convenient to you.

I don’t remember that. At Concord hospital we had perhaps alternate nights off, or something like that, or so many nights out of the week. Not off out of the hospital,

but on call. But when you were not working, and the odd weekend off. No well I think this is one of the complaints of the profession generally at the moment. They’re trying to reduce the number of hours that resident doctors are required to work. At the same time, if they did that it’s hard to organise that they get a proper education, or they would miss out on

certain things.

No that wasn’t organised at all, but everybody knew that would take whatever rest they could when they could.

With who?

Well that was, we were married just before we went away, I went away. Oh I would have written to her,

and she, I don’t remember whether I got, any letters back from her. I remember writing to my brother; I think I wrote to my brother, one of my brothers. And I would have written to her. I would have written one or two or more letters to her from time to time.

But she would realise too that she wouldn’t expect a letter every week. No they were, I think I have a letter somewhere that I wrote to my brother, a brother. One of them who was, two brothers were in it, reserved occupation. The other

was an infantryman, and eventually prisoner of war.

It didn’t occur to me. Wasn’t important at all really. You were kept too busy doing

your work to wonder or to worry about what was going on at home. I had two parents and a grandparent at home, and I just assumed that well they’d been all right for so many years that they’d be all right still. I wouldn’t hear anything. I don’t think we got much mail from home at

all, or that the unit got much, until just before the end of the war and I think some mail came in then. Whether it got lost on the way, I don’t know.

No I think I was in a set mould by the time I was

going there. Eased in by having army experience back here. Which I must say a lot of doctors didn’t get much, because so many, immediately they’d join the army the younger ones, and they’d be shot off to some unit somewhere, away. Either to New Guinea or

over to the Middle East. Now I had another fellow who graduated with me. He was killed one day after he arrived in the Middle East. I don’t know the circumstances but must have been just time enough to join whatever part of the 6th Div that was active over there into action as a Regimental Medical Officer.

Unless it was some accidental death, I don’t know. And then they’d send somebody off to replace him. Of course another one went down on that hospital ship. Who went through with me. It was a matter of chance I think what happened to the people who studied with you, or went to school with

you. Some survived the war without any bothers at all. Some got killed in civil life, after the war. Road accidents. Two I recall. They both served with the British Navy during the war and they both got, one became the best heart surgeon in England, before he got killed on one of these crossroads on a main

highway. And the other one became a professor at some, of some sort at one of the universities over there. He was killed in a traffic accident after the war. And they’d done good service during the war.

A particular what ?

Faith.

No we had, how many did I say, four padres there. They didn’t preach to us. I don’t think there was anything of that nature, they didn’t have time for that.

No there was nothing. I wasn’t thinking of religion at all.

I was a bit friendly with the Catholic priest. Youngish fellow, forgotten his name. Who before I left he gave me his shoes. A pair of wooden with bars under them, that were unusual,

I don’t know where he got them from up there. As a trophy. I don’t know where they are now. He finished up as a missionary in India, he was a Jesuit. They used to argue amongst themselves a bit, healthily. Especially the Anglican fellow,

from Victoria. But all in good, not fighting but have linguistic fights.

But they had a lot, they had plenty to do. As I say there’s one picture there of Father Bryson I think his name was, yes that’s right Father Bryson burying

the young man that I’d given a blood transfusion to. The VC. Tom Derrick.

That never came about. I think they would have been very active,

they wouldn’t have had to be called in, they would have been in there before I was. I would say they would have been as much in the triage area that I was, doing anything that they thought they needed to do.

That never came up at any stage.

I think I had had so much experience doing bone work, before eventually I went into the army, I was kept back I think. And they did this, they used to do this sort of thing obviously to train some, so there’d be some here and some overseas. See there were other young fellows

who came out to Concord Hospital too, with me. Not that went through with me, but some were even younger than I was, who’d graduated later.

Well the little bit of

going out on patrol when I was sent up to the field ambulance, which was further out. That wasn’t very enjoyable. I don’t know, RMOs wouldn’t usually go out. They’d be back at the regiment late post. They wouldn’t be exposing themselves to, looking to be exposed to fire.

One fellow who had served in New Guinea, he got a Military Cross. I said “What happened to you?”, and he said “Oh the bullets bounced the other way”. Whatever the action was that he was in, can’t remember now, fellow called Street, was given the Military Cross for something, some episode that he was involved in

up in New Guinea. But there were a lot of fellows who should’ve got decorations, that would never get them. Even VCs, never get them. Tom Derrick was given a DCM [Distinguished Conduct Medal] for his work at Tarakan, as well as VC that he had before. That didn’t do him any good though, well it was a posthumous award anyway. And another, there was a VC awarded

posthumous, another one on Tarakan. I can’t remember that man’s name, but I had nothing to do with him. He was in another, different battalion I think. Different action.

The only injuries I sustained were damage to my knee examining a patient, when I squatted down at Concord. And when I was the officer training school

I did some disc, suffered a disc injury in my neck, and one in my lower back. They haven’t concerned me that much, I have difficulty turning my head around to see what traffic’s coming. I wouldn’t tell the medical examiner, or the examiner that because he might stop me from driving. ‘Cause these days

I have to be examined every year, or not examined. Well I have to be examined by my own doctor, and then examined in a driving lesson, or by the local driving people, roads people.

No, we were all

taking anti-malarial pills. Atebrin I think it was that we were taking. There’s a anti-malarial, but a, no I didn’t suffer that at, nor did I get any other infectious complaint of any sort.

They had a, well they started to get some movies in, and they would have those at night time

for the patients. Those who were able to get out of bed and go to the particular hospital tent that they were showing them in well. Never bothered me to worry about that, I didn’t bother, you know been that keen on movies.

Yeah well that was because I used to do a bit of midwifery. And when I retired, I retired as an honorary, what do they call it, I had been an honorary obstetrician at the hospital here. They give you a Latin term meaning retired, I’ve just forgotten what that

is now. But when you’d, and I was doing a lot of, being called out of bed seven times one night. Not only to do deliveries, but two were sick people in general practice, in civil life. So you didn’t have time to spare watching

pictures or even television when you were very busy. Either during the war or in civil life.

Well I knew that we were part of the push that the American general that said “I will return”, now what was his name?

MacArthur, yeah.

He was, we were part of that, initial part of his returning, and we were the first objective at Tarakan, and others were following up in north Borneo. Eventually I think our next objective was to have been Singapore, but well the war finished first

But we did get a planeload of prisoners who’d been freed at the end of the war. We got them back at Tarakan. Their plane dropped them off there. And they were the fittest, and the first who were discharged from Changi. Of course the ones who were not very fit were put on hospital ships and eventually sent back that way.

These fellows were all right, they were pretty good. Well good enough not to, well they never came under my wing anyway. I just saw them and that was all. They went on further in due course, when flights were available. So I thought well, when the war finished, we were so

pleased that that was the end of it. That we did not have to go on and finish up in Leyte, or anywhere up in the Philippines as well. I suppose it was a big relief that that was the end and we’d be going home.

I think he was a great man. I know he was an American and we were not used to, Australians were not used to, they’re more lackadaisical than the Yanks are, and the Yanks get the job done at whatever cost. That’s just

part of Americans, and he was just the sort of fellow that seemed to be determined to help end the war. Or do what he could towards ending the war. And of course dropping those bombs on Japan that wiped out the cities, finished, everybody,

there was no further necessity to think about any more war for a while.

I had no personal experiences with him. He visited us, well after it was; you know there wasn’t much doing. I think one of those

photos there, one of the fellows from the field ambulances showing him a case at our CCS. There wasn’t much to show him anyway by that time, because the war was pretty well over when he came on the scene. But well I suppose he had a job to do as a general, and as far as I know he had nothing to do with my career in the war.

If you’re a tall poppy in any way somebody’s going to have a go at you. Somebody, or anybody or everybody sometimes, have a go at you. Like our Governor-General at the moment. He’s in a hot spot.

No he got an OBE.

OBE. Yeah that’s right an Order of the British Empire. Well I think that was, most of the fellows who had been a charge of a CCS, or even a field ambulance, that I have known, they also were given OBEs. Well thought they deserved them I think, not only were they exposed

to risks, but they kept their units together. Some of them might have deserved even better, and some doctors did get major awards.

Well I didn’t

know anything about it at the time. I think we may have known that work was being done toward that end, such as the bombs they had used in breaking the dams on the continent. So it didn’t really surprise one

that some major bomb had been dropped like, as they were then. So it didn’t really surprise one. Subsequently when I visited Japan after the war, and saw some of the damage that they had preserved, you can, one imagined that the photos that you had seen, of pictures of these devastated cities were immense, were terrific. And the casualties would be

terrific.

Well it did and it didn’t, because any impact I suppose would have been the thought that it certainly was a dreadful occurrence anyway, when it did

happen. But if it meant the end of the war, and it was the end of our exposure personally to any further dangers, one was pleased about it. When I was up there, in Japan, after the war and we bought a couple of iron things such as

we’ve got around the swimming pool, no not the swimming pool, the fishpond out here, the thought occurred to me even then, “I do hope these are not still radioactive.” Coming from the very place where the bomb was dropped. But they’ve been out here for some time now, and we’re still ok, so I think they must be safe by now.

I don’t remember that. Just word of mouth I think. I suppose the commanding officer had been told, and he distributed it to the rest of us. At, whenever

you had a meal, and to be honest I don’t remember how we had our meals at that time. I think we got our meals when we could too. We didn’t have a proper mess, formal mess, like we did have here at Concord. Messing arrangements. We just, as far as I can remember, just line up with your tin dish, and the cook would dish out whatever

was going, and you sat down somewhere, wherever you could and just ate.

No, no formal celebrations up there. There were plenty of informal celebrations, which I had nothing to do with, and I don’t think the unit had anything to do with.

Except that jeep load who went off grossly overloaded, and suffered a severe accident to one of them. I think somebody else broke his ankle, but that would have been easily fixed.

Oh yes, yes.

Well I don’t know really what happened, but I think I, I think we, those of us that could be spared went along to observe it. I do have a photograph, several photographs of that cemetery

and the service being conducted. The padre who was not connected with our CCS, who conducted it. His name is on the tip of my tongue, he’s got an English name, and English name. But he’s still alive

and lives in Parramatta. I think he was a, would be a Uniting Church, head of it down there I would think now. He sometimes comes to Penrith too, to one of the churches out on Castlereagh Rd. The first Methodist Church that was ever built out there. Now he was, for a while he was in my Sunday school class when I was a little kid at school. Up on the North Shore.

He came from the North Shore somewhere, but I don’t remember his name. I remember he’s somewhat erratic.

Yes. A special ceremony that went on. I don’t remember what form really it took. There was more than

one speaker at it. He had something to say, and there was somebody else I think there’s a photo there, addressing the crowd. And there was proper gun salutes and all associated with, and I presume this goes on at all war cemeteries when they’re at the end of action like that.

There seemed to be hundreds

of crosses showing visible in that, the photographs that I’ve got there. I don’t know the total number.

No, I’ve got to say that I’m never moved in that fashion.

I can sit through a religious exhortation, and I will follow it, but it won’t have any visible effect really on me.

Well I don’t seem to bottle things up in that fashion. I may remember things later.

You do remember a few odd things, I do remember a little doggerel poetry that one parson put out speaking to children once somewhere or other. I can’t remember what that was now. Two or three lines or poetry that

had a little humour in it. I remembered it for years but I can’t bring it to mind just now.

Well there was a lot of sadness all the time associated with these, with acute accidents. There would have been sadness too back at base when I was at Concord there with fellows who’d been wounded overseas, some thousands of miles away. But it wouldn’t really affect me.

Happy that the war was over, one certainly was. Glad of that. Cause we were, we had never, my vintage had never had the opportunity of setting up in civilian practice. We went straight from uni, to hospital to the army, or to some service.

And we’d never been in private practice, and that was something ahead of us. The army did have arrangements for this. Even when I was at Concord they circulated all the patients there, asking them, they had to answer, “What did you do before the war? What did you do during the war? What do you want to do after the war?” And I remember one of my patients had written down that he

was a pig farmer, a spud barber during the war, and he wanted to be a brain surgeon after the war. Whether he had his tongue in his cheek or not, I don’t know.

I never heard. But after the war, I do know that after the war the army gave everybody a certain amount of opportunity to get some training,

to suit them to civilian duties as they were heading for. In our case it was a three month course of either lectures, or attending clinics, or getting your run into what you’d been trained to do before, but you hadn’t been doing, for so many fellows who’d been out in the field all the time.

Yes, that was back in Australia.

I think it was a matter of, might have been a month or something like that. A matter of weeks. Some of them were sent off fairly quickly,

and then others had to wait until there was some form of transport. In my case it happened to be that the British Aircraft Carrier Glory turned up. And they were a brand new carrier that had been taken to sea to fight the Germans. They’d just got out of the Firth of whatever it was,

when the Germans subs put a torpedo across their bow. Did enough damage to make them turn back in. And they’d gone back in to have the damage repaired, and when they came out, by the time they were ready to come out again, the war had finished. The German war had finished. And eventually they sent them out here, sent that aircraft carrier out to the Pacific to bring the various soldiers back

to Australia. That would have been a month or six weeks after the end of the war. I was brought home on that. And that was a very pleasant eye opener. I’d never been on an aircraft carrier or any other, I don’t think I’d ever been on a cruiser, or a destroyer, or any other

sea-going naval vessel. But the treatment we were given there was quite different from what we had at home. Afternoon tea was at four o’clock I think, as it usually is back in England I think. And it was a sit down meal sort of thing. And then you had a late

meal, late at night. At which and the meat would be brought around on a big silver platter, and I can remember one being a big salmon on it, and you could just carve off what you wanted off the salmon, and eat that. Pass the platter on. But the sort of food that we hadn’t been used to

before. I had to do a minor surgical case there. One of our fellows had developed an abscess on the thumb. The (UNCLEAR) remnants here. And they’re very painful, because there’s no escape, you get the pus building up there, they become very painful.

We have to open them both sides of the thumb, and drain them and leave the drain in. Not a big operation but, and I did that. My impression of the size of the operating theatre there just contained really, enough room for him to lie on the stretcher or the operating table. It was very small, but in action of course they would have

opened up a great deal on the surface to accommodate patients.

Well back here it was a bit dismal because I think we arrived late, I can remember it was dark I think, and the whole

city was dark, because there was trouble, I don’t know whether they were. There was trouble in the lighting industry, I think it was union trouble of some sort or other, and this had been going on or off a year or so, so the homecoming wasn’t all that pleasant then. It might have been late in the afternoon, but I know we had

rationing of electricity until the government appointed a man called Conde. C-O-N-D-E, who was a business man of some sort, and engineer, electrical engineer of some sort. And he did a very good job and settled all the disputes were whatever they were, and Sydney got back anyway. Sydney

got back to normal proceedings then. But as far as homecoming goes, it was just very nice to see the family again, and be back home. We were given the use of my mother-in-law’s little cottage at Palm Beach, to live in whilst we both did our post-graduate courses,

our three months. And then after that I suppose it would have been, Eileen would have then gone to live at home, at her mother’s place at Lane Cove, and I in due course went up to Lismore to assist a general practitioner up there in a

long-standing practice. And was lucky enough to obtain a new car. I’d never owned a car before, they were rationed, and doctors were given some priority. And we drove up to Lismore in this new Ford.

Staying the first night en route, can’t remember what the name of that place was, on the New England Highway. And then we’d been advised to take the New England Highway rather than the Pacific Highway, but by the time that we got towards the end of the New England Highway, and we had to cross the range to go back into Lismore

that was a bit scary, and Eileen took over there. Cause she’d had a lot of experience of driving. She’d driven since she was a little girl, and a Ford car. So she took over from there. People later whom we told we drove this highway, the Tenterfield Highway, to Lismore,

they thought that was a miraculous thing to do at night. You wouldn’t do it if you had to, well we had to there was nowhere else to stay then, we got there safely in the end.

There was

the first three months up there I stayed, I put up in a hotel. Which was next to the senior man’s surgery. After that we managed to get half a house in Molesworth Street, which is the main street in the centre. Very elderly lady and her daughter lived there.

So the wife came up to stay, and we were quite happy at that place. Until eventually she had to come down to have a baby. She actually came down by train; I drove her to Casino, which wasn’t a very good thing. However,

she finished up with one of the complications of late pregnancy and had to have a caesarean done. Had trouble with her airway during that, eventually survived. Then since our obstetrician was in Sydney, we decided well

we’d try and get settled closer at hand if we were going to have any more family. Which wasn’t an immediate thought, however it must have been, I managed to through mutual friend find that there was an opening in Penrith coming up, with a fellow he had been in the army, but he had

also practised here just before the war. So I came in as an assistant and then bought into the practice and then stayed here ever since. This place has grown, we knew that it had a future, to be a satellite city, that came about in 1956, I think, they declared it a city. Might have

been a bit earlier than that.

Two more. Mary was the first one, Reg was here this morning, he was the second one, he would have been a couple of years later, two or three years later I suppose. And that was for a different cause while we lived here. She started to haemorrhage in the middle of the night so

we got into the car. I raced down via Great Western Highway, all the way onto Parramatta Rd., to King George V, didn’t stop for any red lights. Was about three in the morning. No traffic around really, but I knew I was being followed, from somewhere along the Parramatta Rd.,

must have picked up a police car behind me. But they didn’t stop me. I had a doctor’s badge on the back of the car as well as the front of the car. The followed me up into Missenden Rd., they parked opposite the hospital, they saw me drive into the KG5, and then drove off.

So anyway George Stenning was called in, and in part the haemorrhage required another caesarean. So Reg was the second caesarean. Then about five years later the last one came along, and he

was going to be a big baby, and I think, I can’t remember whether it was the size, or the fact that it was her third pregnancy. She was going into labour, or threatening or something of that nature. George Stenning, it was a weekend, and he was down at,

staying at Bowral, playing golf that weekend. Anyway he came straight back, straight up, and he did her third caesarean. So that was the third one. And he fixed things so that we wouldn’t be having any more then. At that time in her condition generally, well she’d already had

enough. I think she would have liked a fourth one, but it wasn’t to be.

As we continued to earn our living.

That was it. The first place I got to live at up here, was a room, there was a two storey, the Harry Uren was the fellow I came to assist. Well he had a two-storey place that he had built just before the war, up in High Street. And it was next to the

Police court, next to the jail. And I stayed in that until we found a house. And we eventually found a house, a little house in Derby Street to go into. I often could hear the prisoners that were rattling the chains next door at night time. And then as the practice grew and grew,

eventually we had to move out of the place up there, and we went into a place down the middle of the town. That is the practice did. Then that got too big. Then we went into another building that my brother-in-law owned, further up the street.

That kept happening as we got bigger, by the time we got six in the practice we’d break up and start again. Then when my practice got six again, we’d break up and start again. Eventually the last time I think there were only three of us. By the time, it was time for me to retire.

I think I would have spoken, I would have told Eileen things that happened and so on. And she would have told me things that had gone on, her experiences too.

Which were all in the, this, in Australia, including Tasmania. She was very happy in Tasmania. I gathered this, our present substitute was also, is also happy in Tasmania. When you live there you are very much isolated from the rest of Australia. In fact sometimes it’s left off the map

altogether isn’t it. But yes we would have told one another things that had happened.

They never seemed to worry about. They were at school locally here until we sent them to boarding school

down at Bowral. Then Mary was then sent across to Rose Bay, boarded there. And the two boys when they were due to go to high school they went to Saint Ignatius College Riverview and they boarded there.

No, I didn’t miss service life. We were all so busy, everywhere was the same I think, not only in Penrith there, but on the periphery of the city, rather than the city itself. The inner

suburbs didn’t seem to grow much, but the outer suburbs seemed to grow. And now we’re getting suburbs of Penrith really, new ones opening up all the time. Big areas with thousands of people coming in. There’s a limit, should I put it

this way, the health facilities or the provisions for health did not keep pace with the growing population. Never has. That’s why I decided that we had to get a Private Hospital, so another fellow from Kurrajong and myself got together, and we had a meeting in this very room, with a number of other doctors that we could

get from around the district. We put in some money, got a loan from the bank and we built the private hospital over here. The other side of where the, it’s in Jameson Rd. and it’s called the Jameson Hospital. Named it the Jameson Hospital. The reason for that was because we couldn’t find, couldn’t get enough of our patients into the public hospital

to operate on. The schools did keep pace with the first of all, I don’t think there was a high school here at all when we first arrived here. Then they got half a high school, then they got a full high school. Then they got a high school in Emu Plains, and other areas, another one in Penrith. And various private high schools

such as Catholic ones, and now we got all sorts of religious high schools around the place. Different religions built high schools.

Not really, I think you’ve gone into enough. You’ve got more than, than you need really.

No I don’t think so.

The only thing I do, should say is that I did my best to get my children and my grandchildren not to do medicine, but two of them have done medicine and

a third now wants to start it. Well it’s a different job now. The practice of medicine used to be just between you and the patient, now it’s: “Who’s going to sue me first?” You thoughts are not for the patients so much as what else might happen. There’s no pleasure in practicing these days.

That’s not just my opinion, but that is the general opinion of the whole of the medical profession in Australia at the moment. You’ll read that almost every second day in the papers.