Australians at War Film Archive

Okay I was born in Grenfell. My father had a property and it was during the Depression and in fact there was

a Depression and a drought. And unfortunately he lost that property and when I was about two and a half we moved to Cowra and he rented a farm there and had really good quality stock and had a dairy farm and during this time. That was five mile out of Cowra. And we lived there for about three years. During

that time I went to Noonbinna School. That was a small school that I think I enjoyed it looking back on it. And my teacher’s name was Mr. Lipscombe and I can remember him saying “Betty, one day you’ll do great things.” I seem to have not made that goal but anyway he impressed me immensely. And then we moved to another farm place closer to Cowra

and my dad continued with the dairy. He showed his cattle, he had good quality cattle and he was very proud of them. He had good quality poultry of which he was very proud too. I went to Cowra Primary School and I think I must have been fairly good at sport because I ended up in the school teams. And

I captained the team to against the high school when I was twelve. But I think in my early days at school, the thing that I loved was Anzac Day. I loved to have the men come with their medals and talk to us about the Great War. I was very impressed by those men and I thought “One day I’m going to have some of those medals,

I don’t how I’m going to arrange it but one of these days I was going to.” And so then I went on to high school and in 1939 the war started and I still played and enjoyed sport and represented my school. Then my dad decided because

the Depression was still there and he was unable to get paid for the money he was owed from people he supplied milk to, unless he had contracts for which he was being paid quite regularly. The people in the town often couldn’t pay and he used to actually give them milk and not be paid for it. And then he decided that he would

join up and because they were offering, Cowra had an army camp by this stage and so he knew that he’d be able to stay in Cowra and my brother who was older than I, and myself and my mother would carry on the farm and he’d be home on the weekends or so he thought. And we did that for a while and then

I left school and I joined up. I tried to join up when I was seventeen and I altered my ID [Identification] card, we had to have ID cards then. I altered my ID card but unfortunately it didn’t get through. So I had to wait til I was eighteen to join up. I was quite convinced that I was going to contribute to the war a great deal and I’m quite convinced that actually I didn’t contribute nearly as much as I thought

I was going to. So then I came to Sydney and it was there I guess, oh there I met these people who I’d learned about and they were the Smeaton family. And in 19, I think it must have been 1943, I’d have to check up, but dad said Nelly’s boy, Nelly’s boy who turned out to be Len Smeaton,

and Nelly’s boy had been wounded on the Kokoda Track. And somehow or other that man had a fascination for me from that day forward. And I, when I came to Sydney of course I stopped with that family. And I became very close to them and then Len came home on leave, it would have been 1944. He’d came home

hospitalised actually. And he certainly was not a handsome man but he was a fascinating creature. And he had the most fascinating eyes I’ve ever known of anybody in my life and he really was someone I was, I adored. And in 1946 I married him, that doesn’t count for the fact that I joined up in the mean time

did it? And I did join up and I trained at, pardon me, I trained at Penrith for one month. I loved every minute of it. Then I went to, during that time we had vocational guidance tests and depending on our ability at what we did. Not like we joined the army you were just in the infantry or whatever. Whereas the air force was a little classier than that, don’t quote

that. And you could actually, you know you had a choice. Fortunately I was able to do something I wanted to do which was work on the aircraft. And so I trained as a fitter. I did six months course, that course in Ascotvale in Melbourne was in fact equivalent to a three year course if we were outside. It was quite intensive. And during that

time we did theory and practical work and that was a full six months. And those butter knives I showed you, those were the type of things they were called foreigners, you did those in your, made those in your spare time. We learned to file to a one thou’ [thousandth] of an inch. We made spanners, you know what they are, and tools and that was part of

our exam. Pardon me, then I was posted to 5 AD [Aircraft Depot] Wagga. We were split up. Oh, no down in Ascotvale I hated, I hated the accommodation we had. It was the first time I’d come into contact with a lot of people at the same time. I really was a country kid. And I hated the fact that we were living in dormitories, the beds were close together. You had to shower

in doors, in large ablutions blocks. That wasn’t really my scene. And fortunately some, and I cried myself to sleep I can assure you, I hated it. But then some other girls who were much senior to me were doing courses. They were doing 2A courses. 2A courses, they were fitters and they come back to do a higher grade

course. And they apparently saw how unhappy I was and took me to their bay. They were called bays and I was fine then. I didn’t like the smoke and I didn’t like the girls that drank. And a lot of them did. But they were older than I was and had much more experience. But the work I loved it, I loved the routine, I loved the drill and the marching,

all those sort of things. Then I went to 5 AD Wagga and I had the opportunity to work on Beauforts. I forgot to tell you that during that training, part of our training was to learn to swing a prop on a Tiger Moth. That was really exciting. I mean they were big aircraft in those days. Because we didn’t have big aircraft like we had then. And unfortunately I can’t find my fitter’s book which I still own and

is somewhere stored away. And that, you know that was the training we did. But I did, I enjoyed working on the aircraft. The boys treated us fairly equally except they used to think we came down in the last shower and they’d send us for a left handed screwdriver or a skyhook which was non existent. And but one quickly overcame that. And

that’s all I did. That’s all; I didn’t do very much in the war. Where do you want me to go now?

Well then Len came home from the war and we were married in January 1946 and we

lived in, it’s interesting actually to look back on that, there was his mother, who was a war widow. Her husband had died in 1933 as a result of World War I. And she had three daughters and a son who were children as well as Len. And altogether we lived in a three bedroom house because you couldn’t get accommodation anywhere.

But it worked out fairly well because we had, we worked out, we’d all been service, well Len and Norm my brother-in-law had been service people and we worked out a program and you had to shower at a certain time, you had the bathroom a certain time and everyone got along really well. It was a good time. We bought a block of land at Earlwood and it cost us a hundred and twenty-five pound. That was out

of his deferred pay. And some years later in fact we had to sell it because we decided we couldn’t, there was a great shortage of materials to build a house and you could only build a house of ten squares which wasn’t very big. And so we decided we’d sell it and buy a house and in fact we sold the block of land and we had to sell it for the

same price as we bought it after paying rates on it for two years I think. That was great distress. And we bought a little house. In the meantime he’d worked, he was a very artistic young man and he trained as a window dresser and oh some other category. He was doing that when the war started. And he expected to go back to that,

Kitchens, where he worked. But in fact when he went back to apply for his job and I can recall that day very clearly because he’d, when they were discharged, when we were discharged we had two, we were given clothes. He had two suits. They went into, I think it was Lowes, it was somewhere near the Town Hall had the contract to supply the men with their suits and clothes.

And he dressed, I can remember this day as clearly as if it was yesterday, off to Kitchens he went and he expected to get his job and take up his training just the same as he had done before. And they said “No we can start you, we can give you a job.” that was the obligation, “But it’ll be as a cleaner.” And

I recall that day with great regret because he came home, he was just devastated. He picked up a cigarette, “Gotta have a cig, gotta have a fag, gotta have a smoke, gotta soothe the shattered”. That was the phrase the guys used. And after having had some months

in hospital when he came home, I looked at his records recently as a matter of fact and found that although he came home in December he was discharged til January 1946. During that time he’d had a lot of time in hospital as a result of problems that he had in the islands. He had, he’d also picked up hookworm, round worm, thread worm,

any sort of worm that people could have, they picked up in the islands. He had a couple of attacks of Malaria and being told that he could only be a cleaner was just devastating for him, absolutely devastating. And he used to say, “We learned to fight, we fought for five bloody years and what are we offered, cigarettes, a ration and

a suit and no job”. And that really was devastating. Anyway he finally did have to take a job as a cleaner. But that was at Woolworths at Town Hall. And I might tell you he went to work as a cleaner wearing a collar and tie and that lasted about, I don't know a very short time anyway. And he applied for a Commonwealth Service job. Which he did get

and which he was certainly very capable of doing. In the next four years he’d become a registration mail officer and did have a permanent position. And but he never really settled down. After the war I don’t think he settled down at all. He joined the Citizen Military Force and but that didn’t have any reward for him.

Once, one night a week I don’t think gave him what he wanted and looking back on it if he’d have stopped in the army I think that he’d have been better off but I don’t think he’d have been, he wasn’t well enough I don’t think the army, of course he’d had quite serious injuries to his kidneys from shrapnel in Shaggy Ridge and I don’t know

that they’d have wanted him anyway. But came the Korean war and I knew the day he, it was announced that an Australian contingent were going to Korea I knew he would come home and say he was going to enlist. And in fact that is exactly what he did. And no amount of begging or pleading in my case would change his mind.

This time, by this time we were living in a house my dad owned. And we had bought another house but we couldn’t gain possession of that because it was occupied by a returned soldier from World War I. And he couldn’t be put out. In those days if you were a returned man, you were a protected tenant. And you as such, you couldn’t be put

out. He owned a house that he couldn’t get because he had a returned soldier, his name was Mr Leake. And he couldn’t get his house because it had a returned soldier in it. But, pardon me, but we weren’t all that worried about him because we knew he was TPI [Totally and Permanently Incapacitated] and we knew that the TPI, Veterans’ Affairs, would arrange a house for him if he got put out. And we did try to get him put

out and get possession of our own little two bedroom brick house and but we failed. And so, I’m diversing a lot aren’t I, and so anyway after he was killed I went to court again and I got possession of the house and we moved in to that. Where am I going wrong? Okay

back to when he was, he went away. He went away, they joined up in August 1950 and in September I think about four weeks later, they were gone. There was a veil of secrecy; they weren’t allowed to tell us that they were going. It was quite ridiculous and they left at nine thirty

at night about five weeks after they enlisted. They, at that time Mr Fadden I think was the person who made the announcements, it was Menzies that was Prime Minister but he was overseas I think. And they only wanted experienced

infantrymen. And by a strange co-incidence, he joined up the same day as Max Eberle joined up. And Len’s number was 121 and Max Eberle’s was 124. And the young man who lived across the road with whom we still associate, his number was, his name was Sydney Lincoln and he

was 123. And as a matter of fact he has just a few months to live, that’s very sad to us. And we keep in touch with those people still. Anyway they went to Korea, they went to Japan. And before they went to, they were supposed to stay together but Len was sent to A Company

and at the last minute, they were supposed to be both machine gunners and they, Max went to D Company. Then they went to Pusan, to, not to Pusan, to Korea. And they were only in action for six weeks and

General MacArthur, pardon me, took them to what he considered was the Manchurian border. Even though he’d been advised not to take them to the Manchurian border because they knew that they would bring in the Chinese and the Russians. But he, it is very well documented that he did that.

And took our troops up to the Manchurian border and of course the Chinese came over. And we had, had casualties before that, we’d had casualties at on the way up at Chongju, we’d had casualties at the Apple Orchard and they went up to Pyongyang and they went over the river, Broken Bridge. And we’d lost casualties

that night and on the 30th of October 1950 we lost our CO [Commanding Officer], who was Lieutenant Colonel Green who was in fact a very well recognised man. And as a matter of fact, getting, diversing again, I can remember Len saying “Well, I’ll go if we get a front line man but I won’t go if we get a staff CO.” And

Colonel Green of course was that CO. And on the night that Colonel Green was died, was killed, or no he was wounded and died just a little later. He was, they’d had a really heavy battle and his tent was made up, pardon me, his tent was made up and a shell came over and hit a tree. And it fractured and shattered and came down

and Colonel Green was wounded. And that was to cause a devastating effect on the battalion because Colonel Walsh took over, and this is very well documented, and on the night of the fourth, fifth of November, our Australian troops were surrounded. And Colonel Walsh

ordered A Company to withdraw. I think he ordered all of them to withdraw. But A Company was under the control of Lieutenant L.G. Clarke who was a twenty-three year old Duntroon graduate and who had in fact knew that he should obey commanding officers. And so he started to withdraw I understand.

All the others didn’t because they were experienced World War II guys. And so they chose not to hear what Colonel Walsh said. And A Company were surrounded. And that night they lost a lot of good men. And

Laurie Clarke told me that he was in a pit with Len on one side and John Simpson on the other side and he survived. Len was, had gunshot wounds in the stomach. But he’d actually been wounded three or four days before in the right arm. But they weren’t able to, and he’d also had an accident where his hand was cut with a tin but there

was no medical help, no medical treatment for him at that time so and they were in battle so that they just kept going. Anyway he was wounded that night. Max saw him the next morning as well as other people I know who told me that they thought he was alright.

But he had apparently, was bleeding internally and was evacuated to a field hospital. And one young officer, whose name was Chic Charlesworth who later became Brigadier Charlesworth he was, he was wounded that night too. And he told me that Len was

just one end of this field hospital and that he knew he’d died. I’ll diversify for a bit moment, when a man, okay you get a telegram to say, “We regret to inform you, your husband has been first of all wounded in action”, I received that telegram on the eleventh of November

at 1:15 a.m. in the morning. And that was quite disgraceful. Because I was in the house by myself with a little girl two and half years of age. There were no telephones and there was no one to talk to. And I think that was the most unfeeling happening that

I’ve ever, one of the most unfeeling happenings I’ve ever experienced. I was awake because we knew that A Company was devastated. And Len was in A Company because it was in the papers. And so we were fearful that this could have happened. And I was awake and I heard someone walk down the street.

I saw this telegram man; well a man and he had something, a pack. And he walked past my house; there was only about eight houses from the corner. I saw him go down; he was shining the torch on the numbers. And he came back and he stopped at my place and I can see him to this minute, stepping down the two steps from the street to the front path. And

I said “Do you, can I help you?” He said “Yes, I have a telegram for Mrs Smeaton.” And I went to the door, I took the telegram and he left very, very quickly. I guess he was probably; he didn’t want to stop around and see what was happening. So I took it inside and I read the telegram. And it says, “We regret to inform you, your husband’s been wounded in action.” “That was okay, that was

great.” I thought “That was wonderful.” because I knew that if he was alive when the baby was born he’d come home and so he was only wounded. And that was really great. Because I knew he’d be coming home, I thought okay he’s got a broken, arm or a leg or something wrong but he’ll be coming home. And it wasn’t very long when I told you that Sydney Lincoln who was number 123

lived, his mother lived across the road. And she was also awake and she came across and she stopped with me until it got daylight. We cried, worried and I can’t think of how it must have upset Sandra, this two and a half year old child and myself who was expecting a baby in two days. Anyway

the next morning, I was so upset about the way I’d been treated that I was complaining to Victoria Barracks that this was inhumane, absolutely inhumane that at one thirty in the morning a man can knock at the door and tell you “Your husband’s been wounded or killed.” And so at least I got them to promise that they wouldn’t do that anymore. And it was all

very well documented at the time because I was so upset about it all. But well okay, I contacted the Red Cross; I didn’t have a telephone because we didn’t have phones in those days. The only people who had phones were in fact if you were in the public service like a railway worker or a post office worker, which Mrs. Cleary’s husband was, so she had a phone. And that morning I was, the next morning I was asking the Red

Cross to please try and contact my husband and to tell him that I was alright. Because prior to this Sandra had been sick and I’d told him that Sandra was fretting. And the doctor had said that he couldn’t treat a fretting child and to write to the army and say that this was a fact and which I’d actually hadn’t done but I’d written and

told Len that Sandra was fretting and the doctor advised that there was nothing he could do to treat her. And my opinion was that he should have been home anyway. The war against communism wasn’t as important as all that I didn’t think. But that was, he hated communism and that’s why he went. Anyway that was the eleventh of November. And

two days went by and we didn’t get very much rest and Sandra was very unhappy and so was I. And in the afternoon I’d lay down with her about two thirty, I’d lay down with her so she’d get to sleep. And a knock came on the front door and it was my aunt. Actually it was his aunt

because see we were actually related through my father and she was his aunt but she was yeah, but she was a very close friend to me. And she put out her arms and I looked around and coming in the back door was my father. Nobody had to tell me what had happened.

Oh it was just dreadful. What had happened actually was that the Red Cross has intercepted the telegram; the telegram was coming to me. And I’d left my aunt’s phone number for them to contact her so they’d phoned her, the telegram to her. And the Red Cross had intercepted the telegram to go to her. And the telegram said “Please to convey to me the details of this

telegram when her doctor considers it safe to do so.” And so that is what happened. The doctor came and of course they were telling me to be you know, think of the baby, think of the baby. All I could think of was the baby and my child that’d have no father, how could you be thinking of anything else. Anyway I was taken to hospital and I was sedated. And

nobody was allowed to see me which was just dreadful except a couple of Len’s friends who’d known him in World War 11, they came. And I don’t remember anyone else. Anyway they sedated me and took the baby before I, they said if shock set in it would kill her. And so then we came, after we came home

the day we came home, Len’s mother came and bought Sandra to pick me up and we got a taxi. And I asked them could they take me to the Cenotaph because I knew that the post office guys had placed a wreath there at the Cenotaph and they’d had a service there. And I wanted to see the wreath that they’d put there for him. And

we stopped there and came home, this was in Canterbury I lived. And the taxi driver pulled up out the front, he took our bags out and we were getting the money out to pay him and he just drove off. He never took any money. And I’ve never ever thanked him and I always felt guilty that I don’t know

who he was. And even to this day I think of it often. And think how kind he was. Anyway then I guess I went pretty much downhill. And oh my little girl was sick, she was projectile vomiting. And I had to take her to hospital. And she was in Randwick hospital. In the meantime I was busy protesting about how unfair it was the way I’d been

treated. And the papers were hounding me for stories and I didn’t really appreciate that very much. That was pretty difficult. But Leneice was in hospital for three weeks I think. When she came home she had to be reared on special food. A pre-digested food because things had gone wrong.

And then I suppose for the next couple of months, three months I suppose, I guess I was going down hill pretty rapidly. And my doctor said “Betty.” he was an old World War I veteran and he said, “If you don’t pick up, pick yourself up you’re going to be in an institution and your children’ll be in an orphanage”. That was all it needed to pick me up. I stopped being sorry for myself and I had to get on with my life.

And that’s what I did. So I went to court, I got my house. And there was many times when I was painting the ceilings and the walls that I prayed to God and said “Please God let me fall down and break my legs so someone else’ll have to do it for me.” But that didn’t happen. And it was a nice little house. But I couldn’t live on my money and

on my war widows pension. And although I had superannuation as well it wasn’t very much. And so I was fortunate enough to get a job as a director of a pre-school. And I worked there for the next twenty-five years. And enjoyed every minute of it. When Max and I got married, which was five years later

I actually, he’d been, he came home in January ‘51. His mother wrote to me and said, she was, his father was a Station Master at Coffs Harbour. And they were coming down to Sydney on holidays and she wrote to me and said that she’d just had a letter from her son saying his best friend had been killed and would she come and see us, which she did. Max’s mother and father came to

see us. And then she later wrote to me and said he was coming home and he was in hospital at Concord and I did go to see him over there. But then I didn’t see him for some years until later. He came to see us and we became good friends. And I figured that if ever I was going to get married again, I was, there was certain things in my life that were never going to change.

I’d adored this man who was killed and I couldn’t ever forget him and I wasn’t prepared to put him out of my life, I wasn’t prepared to change my children’s name because that was their birthright. And I guess there probably wouldn’t have been too many men who’d want me under those conditions. Anyway, Max was one of those people. And getting back to after Len was killed, you get a telegram

it’s a piece of paper, it tells you nothing, absolutely nothing. You want to stop. Absolutely nothing. It just says “We regret to inform you”. Well there’s no funeral, there’s nothing except a piece of paper. And papers to be signed. And fortunately my dad was very good, he fixed up my, he went to Veterans’ Affairs, wonderful man that he was.

And was then known as the Repatriation Department. And he had that, my pension fixed up. And my pension was, as a matter of fact my number was MKM0001, four noughts actually and one. I was the first war widow processed from the Korean War. And that’s no honour, believe me. Back to 1951,

January 1951 I was trying desperately to find somebody who could tell me that Len had been killed because you don’t know. You just don’t know. And so I used to go the hospital, I’d take these two little kids, I’d catch a bus from Canterbury to Ashfield and another bus from Ashfield to Concord. And I’d go to the wards and I’d say

to these guys in bed “Did you know Len Smeaton?” “No”. “Did you know Len Smeaton?” “No”. “Were you there on the fifth of November?” “No”. And one day I met a man and he said “Yes I did”. And his name was Chic Charlesworth. And later on...

That’s alright.

Where was I up to? Oh this day I was,

I spoke to this young man and I said “Did you know Len Smeaton?” He said “Yes, I did”. And he told me that he was in the same field hospital. Well the field hospital is really a tent. An American field hospital is really a tent.

And yes Len was down one end of the ward with a screen round him because he was obviously very ill and being Americans they probably knew he was going to die and didn’t treat him except from, with morphia. And I don’t say that sceptically, I say it because I believe it. And yes and there probably wasn’t any hope of saving him anyway. Gun shot wounds in the stomach are very, very serious especially when, I mean that happened to

Colonel Green. And you just can’t, if you can’t save the Colonel, you can’t save any other ranks either. And God only knows they would have tried to save Colonel Green. And anyway Noel Charlesworth or Chic Charlesworth said “Yes, he did know him”. So then I was satisfied. I knew and I accepted that he’d died. Because up until then there could have been a mistake. How did I know

because there was nothing to tell me apart from that rotten piece of paper and nothing else. And anyway years later I met Chic, Chic Charlesworth at a function in, oh well I became very friendly with his fiancée after that. And he later married her.

And years later there was a function in Queensland for the Korean Veterans. They erected a memorial up there and Chic was there. And he was introducing me to somebody, he said “Oh Betty and I go a long, back a long way”. And I said “Do you, er do we?”, I said, “Yes, yes that’s right we do”. It would have been 1951. And he actually knew the date, which was more

than I did. And he, I said “Do you remember that?” And he said “Betty how can you ever forget a young woman with two little kids standing at the foot of your bed saying did you know my husband?” And he said, “And in my search for information it never occurred to me once that it affected other people too”. I never thought those soldiers, I didn’t realise

that I was putting them through stress. Wouldn’t have occurred to me that I was. And anyway he said “Yes how can I ever forget a woman with two little kids standing at the foot of my bed saying did you know my husband?” So it had an effect on his life also. He was later to become the President of Sydney Legacy and it was he who, I’m talking about just recent years now. And it was he who

in fact encouraged my two daughters to become foundation legatees. And a foundation legatee is a person who was a junior legatee. And a junior legatee is someone whose father was killed in the war or died of war related disabilities. And he encouraged them to be legatees. Foundation legatees, pardon me, and in fact Sandra and Leneece are

legatees at Hersford Legacy. And Sandra’s, they’re both involved in education and they’re both very qualified and school teachers. And they are involved with the education program at St George Legacy. And they’re one of the few foundation legatees that have put back into Legacy something

they got out of it. I mean we didn’t have any financial assistance I didn’t need it, but they did go there. They did belong. And getting way back to 1940, ‘44, ‘45. Len’s sisters were junior legatees and they were, they didn’t play any sport. They belonged to Legacy, they did physical culture, they did voice production and training at Legacy. And they had these

lovely white uniforms with the torch on their pocket. Now I didn’t know anything about Legacy at all. And I thought without knowing the implications, it sounded such a wonderful club to belong to I thought if I ever have children I’m going to see they belong to that club. I didn’t know it was only for children whose father’s were killed in the war who died when I made that decision.

But that’s what happened. There you are. That’s how fate comes into your life. What else do you want me to say?

After Max and I were married he started to have problems. He’d been in a building that was bombed in World War II and it’d affected his kidneys. It’d crushed his kidneys. And so he had a kidney problem and why they passed him fit to go to

Korea, same as they passed Len fit to go to Korea I would not know. Because they’d both had problems in World War Two. And the intense cold in Korea had affected his kidneys. And so he had, he worked at Bowral County Council and oh he’d also broken an ankle in Korea. And that made him,

oddly enough in November 1950 and so he was in hospital for some time and came home I think about April. Then he had a number of operations on his kidneys and he thought he was fit. Little did he know that it was going to come against him again. And so he decided, oh okay, we decided to get married and

in late 1955 and so he transferred from Bowral Council to Sydney. And he went to work for the Repatriation Department on probation. And because he had a war disability he couldn’t pass a medical exam. And he couldn’t get promotion. And during that time he was in there, working in pensions, he

devised a whole new system. And if he’d been permanent that would have given him I think at that time a thousand dollars, or it might have been pounds a year increase in his salary. But he didn’t get that because he wasn’t permanent. Because he couldn’t pass the medical. And his superannuation, he’d been superannuated before he went to Korea, but you couldn’t in those days, you couldn’t transfer

your superannuation from one government position to another. And so I started to protest about that. Because I didn’t think it was fair that a man who couldn’t gain permanent employment and receive a salary for which he was capable on the ground of his war disabilities should be deprived of it. So I

went to a member of parliament, his name was Stewart. And he actually fought my case for me. Max got into trouble at the Repatriation because you’re not allowed to go over your super, your superior. You’re supposed to go to your superior and if he doesn’t recommend what your complaint, he doesn’t do anything about it. But my idea was not to go that way. And so I can

remember very clearly the night that Mr Stewart rang and said “I got that passed as a private members bill”. And from now on anyone will not be deprived of their superannuation on the grounds of their war disabilities. But it was too late for him, that took years. And, and apart from that I probably wasn’t very bright and I didn’t go about it fast enough. And so in 1964 he was made TPI.

And he spent months and months, well he was spending three months in hospital and three months out of hospital. And yes I could understand that they didn’t want to give him permanent employment because they couldn’t guarantee he would live for more than seven years. But that wasn’t to be the case. Medical technology has improved and here he is seventy-seven and still working two days a week for the Veterans.

Two days a week in the office and days at home fighting for the cause of Veterans. In the meantime in 1990, in the 1990’s I heard that war widows who remarried were still receiving their war widow’s pensions as compensation. And I thought “Oh well so what, I remarried and I lost mine”.

That was fair enough I remarried and I was somebody else’s responsibility and anyway I could take care of myself. Then I started to think about it and I thought “That’s not really fair”. Why should someone who, and it had gone back to 1984 and the government, Senator Geetsle I think it was, had decided that all widows who remarried after that date would keep their pensions as compensation. It would no longer be pension, it would

be compensation. And then I heard, oh God I probably shouldn’t say this, but then I heard it’s true there was an industry where young girls were marrying our Veterans for the purpose of becoming war widows. And that is fairly well documented. And that made me feel that I wasn’t as good as they were. And I really wasn’t very happy about that. And so I started a campaign to have

all widows reinstated who remarried, to be reinstated the same as those who remarried after 1984. And it, I worked very hard and consistently on that for quite a while. Well for years getting nowhere. And then I heard of a lady in Victoria who was working on it and I contacted

her. In the meantime I’d contacted Alan Jones who, I call Alan Jones of 2UE who is now at 2GB who is the Veterans’ friend. And he took up our case and every time he spoke to the Prime Minister he spoke about the inequality for the war widows and the reinstatement and that came through in January 2002. And all those widows

were reinstated. And that was something that should have happened a long time ago. It wasn’t a matter of money, it was a matter of principle. I didn’t need to, I could look after myself and I certainly wasn’t going to get two pensions because Max is TPI and he is on a pension. And so they’re not going to pay me two pensions so it wasn’t a matter of gaining money. But it was of gaining equality. And I was pretty satisfied

with that. That’s what I did. Time’s up. You’ve just got a pat on the back.

I took my RSL [Returned and Services League] to the discrimination board.

Cause they wouldn’t let women in on Anzac Day. They said “I had to understand it was for men only”. I didn’t understand that either. And I told them “If they didn’t take, let me in on

Anzac Day because I was an ex service person and I was a full member of the sub branch and a full member of the club I would take them to the anti discrimination board”. So they were going to have an Extraordinary General Meeting to keep the women out. Can you believe this?

This is only ten years ago. And nobody talked to me, nobody spoke to me. And

they couldn’t understand that I would want to be there with those ruffians on Anzac Day. And I couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t lift the standard of the people in the club to where women would be, feel comfortable to go. They said “They wouldn’t want their wives to be there” and I said “Well if that’s the type of people you have there I suggest you lift the standard of the people you’ve got there to the point where women can be

accepted”. Anyway the discrimination board told them that “They would fine them one thousand dollars per head for each person who voted against me if they had an Extraordinary General Meeting”. Oh God. And so they quickly decided that they’d let us in on Anzac Day.

And then at some stage they said “Would I go on the committee?” and

I thought “Oh still nobody speaks to me”. But I am actually an elected member on our committee now.

And I do a damn good job too.

Oh God the things I’ve done. I, actually, I, the sign up on the road where it says to “Kareela”, on the road, on the highway

it used to say “Como and Jannali”. And so I said “We need a sign for Kareela”. And they said “But Betty you can’t have three signs on one sign board”. And I said “Well okay I went around” and I said “Well look Barry Collier”, he was our State Member, I said “Well look Barry there’s three on that one, there’s three on that one”. One day he rang me up and he said

“Betty, what are you doing at ten o’clock in the morning?” I said “I’m working”. He “Oh I just thought you might like to have your photo taken because I’ve got Kareela on that sign up there for you”. I said “No thanks very much”. And I tell you what else I’ve got going, I’ve got a pedestrian crossing due by the, down at Jannali Station. That’s mine because there’s no pedestrian crossing down there. Don’t put this in there please.

Jannali Station where people cross. And one day I was aware, I don’t use the station very often, I said “This is ridiculous not having a crossing here”. But of course I can’t do anything by myself. So I have to represent, ask my Minister to represent, Ian he represents me and we got the pedestrian crossing. In by the end of May, so that’s mine.

Well there’s one that way but there’s not one that way and there’s not one this way and I just, this, and I counted the cars. There were a hundred and twenty cars went one after the other. And all these people trying to get across. But unless somebody brings it to their attention they don’t do it do they?

Protesting life.

Oh God, they’re funny things though.

That’s right, they don’t. And I mean it was ridiculous, how long’s Kareela been here? Thirty years and we never had a sign. And you’ve got Kareela shopping centre, Kareela Golf Course. And why it wasn’t done and why nobody protested was just beyond me. And then the fact they gave me this crappy reply that there’s already

Como and Jannali on that sign, turn that thing off... on that, on that...

Okay.

Yes, we were.

Well the main thing was I think that the money wasn’t coming in for the work involved, yes and it was an early morning. My parents were very fine people and dad worked terribly hard,

so did my mother. And they, I think milking time started early in the morning, about five, oh it’d be more than that. Earlier than that because he’d be off to town with the milk I think it would still be dark. Because he had to, you had to have the milk there for breakfast. Milk was sold in

pints, quarter pints, half pints, pints and quarts. And it was measured out into their containers, the householders’ containers and it had to be there for breakfast. And because my dad, he’d be finished the run by the time I was going to school. Cause sometimes I’d see him on the way to school. That was always a great treat. What else do you want to know, I can’t tell you?

Yes, yeah we were, well my elder brother and I were fairly close and then there were two, then mum had four children fairly close together. And Margaret was born not til about 1939. And I left soon after that. I mean during,

after the war yeah we were close. Yeah we were, yeah I adored my younger brothers and sisters. Keith and I got along well. And he worked on the railway. And actually he wasn’t allowed to go on when he was, he wasn’t allowed to join up. And he’s never got over that, he tried several times. But he couldn’t get a release and

to this day he regrets the fact that he didn’t serve his country.

No,

It was a protected industry, yeah.

No, you did not have a choice. And if you went to work in a munitions factory you had no choice, you couldn’t be released from that either.

No railways, farmers,

a lot of farmers didn’t, couldn’t go because they were in protected industries. My, one of my uncles, none of my cousins went because they were all on properties. And well Keith would’ve still been on, my brother Keith would’ve still been, we still had the farm when he was eighteen. And then he, no he, he’d joined the railway before that. Because when he was eighteen he tried to join the air force.

And he couldn’t be released. No way.

I know. You weren’t free, you carried an ID card with you and you know it was absolutely compulsory that you carried an ID card.

My brother would, didn’t think that way.

No. You accepted it, it’s not like today. You accepted what happened. You were in a protected industry and you accepted. There were many people who did. They joined up under assumed names or they just left their jobs. But well Keith would never have done that. He’s not that type of person. He’d take what was dished out. I probably wouldn’t have. But he

did.

I don't know, yeah I probably do know. My dad was a straight man. He was an honest man, he was

a non smoker, he was a non drinker. And I will use a phrase of his, “When you go out with anyone Betty, anything below the belt is underhand”. Oh please don’t put that in there. His father was a magistrate. And his, and to me my father wore rose coloured glasses as far as his father was concerned. He told nothing his father

ever did was anything less than a hundred percent. Although he died when my dad was only young and my dad in fact was at the Agricultural College at Richmond when his father died. And so he didn’t have probably finish that education because his father died. And I think he was only about nineteen or something. But

I learned as I got older that my grandfather was in fact, and I probably think I’m a bit like him, mmm no that’s blowing my trumpet. I think he was a remarkable man because he, I learned when I did family history that he was an agitator for the rights of people. He was, he had a school built on his property.

He was an agitator for education. He was, he wanted a bridge built so he agitated to get the bridge built. He was mixed with parliamentarians and he was obviously a very well known identity. His name appeared regularly in the paper like every day in the paper, every week in the paper his name was

mentioned as being doing something. And so I think that the way my dad talked about his father, probably had some sort of influence on my life. I don't know I’ve really only thought about that just recently. But my dad, there was no shades of grey in my father’s life. They were black or white. He was a non smoker and a non drinker and he was honest as the day is long. And I loved him dearly,

very dearly.

Okay you have to fill me in.

Yes there was. That was called Orambi Mission Station. The contract, well I think not all the time but he had the contract to supply

mission station, take the milk to the mission station. And those little black kids, they were absolutely gorgeous. And I would have loved to adopted one but I wasn’t allowed. And there was, that was about three mile out of Cowra I suppose. And next to that was the sale yards. And the sale yards seemed to be a lot higher than

the ground that went down hill towards the golf course. And on, built on the end of the sale yards was in fact, mmm, a place called Bagtown. Bagtown was where the aboriginals who mixed with the white people weren’t allowed to go and live at Orambi Mission Station, they had to be black. They weren’t allowed to take white people, if they had white

wives or the aboriginal girls married or became involved with and they ever married. But if they became involved with the other sex, they, and had children, they weren’t allowed to go to the station. That was just black people. And those huts they lived in were in fact made from hammered out kerosene tins, you know the four gallon tins

or they made out of brand bags. Brand bags are much thicker than chaff bags. And they were painted over with white, some sort of white paint. And I suppose I don’t want to sound as though I’m feeling any different than anybody else but they were what was considered the lower class of the townspeople mixed with

the aboriginals. They were, it wasn’t accepted that you mixed with the aboriginal people. You were considered down lower than the average person if you did in fact do that. And that’s where they lived. They weren’t allowed to go to the mission. That was a very poor area. I suppose in away, a lot of them probably were people who drank a fair

bit. They didn’t fit into society the way the other townspeople did or the way the people on the mission did.

Oh yes, they had nice houses. And they kept them nicely. They had nice gardens, they were regular type,

I suppose there’d have only been as wide as this room and I’m not sure whether they were corrugated iron or whether they were, but I can see them quite clearly. They had little verandas across the front. And most of the people there, and I used to go there with my father, they seemed to be clean and they kept the gardens clean. There were some of them that didn’t but they seemed to be

good quality people. And there had to be a reason that these other people weren’t allowed to, well they weren’t, half caste weren’t allowed to go there. And they weren’t accepted by the white people in the town.

They had nowhere else to go. That’s right, yeah. Or they lived down in the river. See the Lachlan River runs through there. Some of them built humpies down near the river.

Well that was near the river actually. And, yeah, sorry.

Oh they were just gorgeous. Their beautiful black skin, and their white teeth and their curly hair. God I would have loved to have one. Mum wouldn’t let me though. They didn’t grow up that way though. Oh I didn’t say that either.

They were beautiful children, they were just beautiful.

Oh yes I used to talk to them. Yeah, oh yes there was not in them. No we didn’t, we weren’t like that. My dad was, they were just equal with us. No, but I just wasn’t allowed to have one.

No, no, no, not at all. No

they were in families.

There was mothers and, dad used to supply the milk to them. And no they weren’t up for adoption, it was just that I wanted one of them, as a toy.

Well can’t you see all my toys around?

Got a hundred and fifty downstairs.

And a black one.

Oh well I was a deprived child you see, never had any dolls when I was a child. Yes I did but my sisters got them. When did I, I make them actually. I don’t just collect them, I make them.

No my brother was older than I. But when I left home that’s right I mean you didn’t take anything with you.

I left home the only piece of paper, the thing I’ve got from my childhood is in fact, why mum kept it I don’t know, is the School Magazine called The Lachlander. And it said these students made first grade teams this year. It’s the only thing I’ve got of my childhood. Oh my, oh no I’ve got my christening certificate and my birth certificate but nothing was ever kept you see. See dad never went back to Cowra

after the war. And so they moved to Sydney. And yes I did have some nice dolls and I loved them and I had a pram. There was a nice old German man who lived on the top of the hill across the road from us. And he was a hermit. And he made me a pram one year. And gee I can remember walking round the farm with that pram, I’d have been seven or eight years old I suppose. But I think he was interred, interned

during the war. Don’t know how he come to be there but he was a nice old man. And lived in a house on the opposite side of the road about two mile away. Getting back to childhood, when the war came, the people of German origin were interned, and there were people named Grundilins. And they had

a poultry farm. And they were just taken away. It was just disgraceful. They wouldn’t have hurt anybody. And I know it’s not my life I’m talking about now but Max’s father, Max’s grandfather was German. His name was Cormacker. And actually this should be told. And his first son died

in World War I. At Gallipoli and we have his Gallipoli Medal, Max has inherited his Gallipoli Medal. His youngest son was killed in the fall of Singapore and that man was naturalised in 1885 but in 19, when the war came, he was declared an enemy alien. He’d lost a son in World War I,

he’d lost a son in Singapore and he was still an enemy alien. When he died and we have his Will, when he died his Will was granted subject to enemy alien conditions. And when Max found that out I don’t think he spoke for a week. He was so upset. To think that his grandfather had been persecuted even though he’d lost two

sons. He’d gone as far as Lake Cajiliko, he was a builder. He’d gone as far as Lake Cajiliko and he had to report to the police daily. As an enemy alien even though he was a naturalised Australian.

And his father, Max’s father, went to World War I he had two other brothers who tried to enlist. One of them was, they were German origin

too. And one of them was refused on the ground of that his father was German. And the next one didn’t bother to enlist because he thought “What’s the point? I’ll only be knocked back”. And he was prosecuted for not enlisting. And Max’s father went overseas in World War I. Three brothers, their father came here in

1840’s and had a shop down where Grace Bros. is now, he was a boot maker. And he was naturalised, he became a very, made some very fine wines down at Albury. And yet that was three, that was the way three brothers were treated.

Max’s grandfather...

Mr Cormacker...

He was naturalised in 1880’s

Well he had to report to the police station every day.

As an enemy alien. But he was naturalised.

No,

we didn’t even know, we have written a lot of family history. We didn’t know until we started researching the family and we found out those details that in the Will, that his Will was granted subject to him being an enemy alien. And he’d been a natural Australian for four, sixty years.

It is incredible.

Oh well just that they were my heroes I suppose. And I had a wonderful teacher in sixth class. Who was the one, he was a great history teacher and he used to talk about, oh the decisive victories. I thought World War was just something

I needed to know about. He used to talk about the decisive victories. I don’t even know where they were. But my un, one of my uncles, my dad’s sisters husband was a World War I Veteran. And every Anzac Day of course we had the, pardon me, we had the little tin hats, we had the poppies for remembrance on Remembrance Day.

And I think our teachers must have been World War I orientated, I don't know. But we seemed to have a better idea of patriotism than they do now. I mean as you know every day we stood up and we said “I honour my God, I honour my God,

I salute my, I salute the flag, I honour my God and I serve the King”. Cause we had King George V then. And we were far more patriotic than we are today. Far more patriotic than we were. And we respected our soldiers. And my unc, I think because my uncle had very bad health after World War I, I was conscious of it, he’d been

gassed. And I was very conscious of the fact that war was something that caused suffering. Mmmm.

What do you want to talk about?

Well we knew that there was going to be a POW [prisoner of war] camp there, we first of all had Italian POWs there. And they didn’t ever seem to be any problem with any of the community.

We really didn’t like the fact that they were going to be, and I was only a kid, didn’t like the fact that they were going to bring Japanese there because we’d been hearing all these terrible stories, pardon me, about our soldiers who were being killed by the Japanese. And we had one girl Jenny Kerr who was a nurse. And she was one of those nurses who was marched into the ocean and shot in the back. And

that was done by the Japanese. That was positively devastating news. She lived out of Cowra but I mean everybody, my parents, my mother knew her very well. And it was absolutely devastating news when Jenny Kerr was shot. I mean we didn’t believe it anyway. But that was Banka Island and there was only one survivor and they marched these girls out into the ocean and shot them in the water. And I’m sure you’ve heard of

the Banka Island story. And only one sister survived. Sister, can’t thing of her name now. Will though. And so we had the Japanese come there and none of us, nobody liked that idea. And but on Sunday the camp was open and we could take a bus out, a tour round the Japanese POWs. They all seemed to be very, very

athletic type people and they were playing baseball in the grounds that they were kept in. They weren’t someone we approved of. And then one night I can remember it quite clearly they broke out. And I think that they thought that they were closer to civilisation than, Japanese people, than

they were. That was August 1944 from memory. And see we’d had the attacks in Sydney Harbour by that stage and we’d had the bombing in Darwin. So I really think that they might have been under the misapprehension that they had allies closer than they were. But that was a pretty scary time when they broke out. I left there shortly after

that actually. But some of them killed themselves on the railway line. A lot of Australians were killed but they weren’t, the Australian servicemen who were killed, they were guards, they were POW guards [actually was one Australian Officer along with three of other ranks]. They weren’t, they were older or people who weren’t as fit as weren’t able to go overseas. Although their drivers that

used to take the Italians out to work on the farms, they were AIF [Australian Imperial Force] guys. Well as far as I know they were AIF guys, they came from the army camp and they were seconded over there to drive these POW’s to, out to the farms. I don’t know which farms they worked on. But they used to put them on army trucks and they’d all sit in the back of army trucks and the driver and his

offsider who was in fact carrying a firearm, and these Italians wouldn’t have gone anywhere, and they went to work on the farms. But I went to the, have a look at the Japan, prison camp I can remember on two occasions but it wasn’t something that particularly attracted me to go and

go back again. It was just something I suppose everyone did. We wanted to see these Japanese prisoners rather than fighting our men. It was psychological I suppose that it was open to us. I don’t really know why. But it wasn’t, it was pretty scary that after they broke out until they were all captured.

No, no. Not that I know of. And we had a big army camp there. They had about six thousand troops there I think in the, on the other side of the road. Well it was a bit away. No, no not at all. Not that I know of. Although I would be quite sure that some of those guys in the army camp who were there would have been, have had very mixed feelings about the Japanese POW’s. But we weren’t like that in those days. I mean,

we were different, we weren’t as aggressive as people are now I don’t think.

I think that they were, well they certainly didn’t like the Japanese and I don’t know that they liked them being there very much. But I was only a, remember I was only a teenager.

I wasn’t mixing with the Mayor or the Postmaster or the people who, or the police, the people who made the decisions. I was only just one insignificant teenager.

Well I suppose we’d lost most of our teenage boys who’d gone away.

The boys that I was in school with and the next year on, they’d all gone. I think the Country Women’s Association, they set up, and what would they have been called, canteens. The boys could go in there for YMCA [Young Men’s Christian Association]

type. They had more people, nothing really I don’t suppose. They had dances, well they did because we wouldn’t have had any Saturday night dances because all our young men had gone away. And yes they did cater for those, they came into the picture

theatres and they came into the dances but, and they had regular marches to show us their strength I suppose when the show was on. They had, the Cowra show was on, they had parades to show us once again what the army was like. I don't know that, I can’t put a finger to anything very much.

We hosted them in our homes. A lot of the people who were influential had them as their guests, the same as we did when the boys from Vietnam were here. We had them in our homes, the American guys came here. We invited them to our homes and had them as our guests, or we did anyway. That’s getting away from

thing, isn’t it. Oh no it’s interesting looking after these young kids. Still hear from one of them.

During the Vietnam War? Well oh a Cowra girl whose name was Peggy Peterson, she belonged to the American, Australian Americas Association and I met her one day.

And she asked me “Would we take some young kids, country kids, here?” They came here on six days leave. And some of them didn’t really want to spend their time down at the Cross with the girls and they didn’t want to spend their time drinking, they just wanted to be with families. And even though I was working Max used to look after them. And he’d take them out and they’d spend two or three days with us.

And I think they really appreciated it but once again we saw some very troubled boys. Particularly those in the Marines. Max would take them out in the car, take them out, they were happy with that. That was good, they were only kids.

Yes got away from that...

No, no, no because they had Military Police and the Military Police used to patrol the area. Fairly regularly. And no there was never any problem that I know of. No, not at all. There may have been but I didn’t know anything about it. And they had their entertainment within the camp. The camp was actually

a few mile out of Cowra. But they were training, they were troops training to go overseas. They didn’t have, no they were not any problem. I met a few nice guys there some of them, some I remember their name, some of them I don’t. But they were nice young men. And I wasn’t a drinker or a smoker so I guess that people that I met were much the same type of people. And I didn’t

and I didn’t hear anything bad about anyone. That was not negative as far as I’m concerned.

I suppose they talked about the war but I can’t specifically remember.

I think it was the fact to me they were heroes. They’d been to war, they were the type of men that I respected. I mean I was a child, I can’t remember what they talked about. But I suppose they talked about the same things as when I go to give an address at school. I talk about, well depending which school I am and how old the kids are.

I suppose they talked about their experiences, well they used to talk about Gallipoli because we didn’t have anything, they didn’t have anything else to talk about did they, and the battle of the Somme. I can remember them talking about the battle of the Somme. Didn’t know what it was, but and that other one, Breren, Brerenairres or Brerrenen [probably Villers Bretonneux] I didn’t, thought that was a funny name. No they were just my heroes. Strange kid.

Would I have? My word I would have been. That’s why I really didn’t do anything did I?

Time’s getting up.

Yes, well it was something that I would have done much earlier if I’d have been much older. But you had to be eighteen. And I, when we enlisted, we were given a rail ticket to come to Sydney. Now where I stopped on that night I enlisted I’ve got no idea. Probably with my uncle at Rydalmere.

My dad’s brother lived at Rydalmere so it was probably there. And it was Bradfield Air Force base. And I would’ve liked to be a driver actually. That seemed very glamorous to me. But and actually I passed my driver’s test. And that was on one of those great trucks. And then the instructor

pulled up the bonnet and he said “If you broke down twenty mile out of somewhere, how would you fix it?” And I didn’t have a clue, I never knew that I was going to have to know mechanics did I. So I thought “I’m not going to pass this so I think I’d like to work on aircraft please”. And so they thought that was a good idea too. Because I didn’t pass the mechanical bit.

And I know more about engines now than I knew then. So then I did a vocational guidance test. And the vocational guidance test told us. Like there were quite a few musterings. Right there was the lowest of the low, paid three and twopence a day, that was cook’s assistants, no I think that was two and eight pence a day, cook’s assistants. Cooks got three dollars a day, then clerks who were stenographers

sometimes, someone, they didn’t get very much either and they were fully trained, I didn’t like that idea very much. Because I thought that wasn’t fair to them seeing they were trained. And then there was the electricians, flight engineers and flight riggers. And I didn’t know very much about engines and I really didn’t want to know. And I didn’t, and there were fabric makers and I didn’t want to know that. There were instrument makers

and instrument repairers. I thought the aircraft were big, I’d be able to handle that. So I asked “If I could be a flight rigger?” I had a vocational guidance test and they said “I could”. That was all there was about it.

Well we did a six months intensive training. That was at Ascotvale. And

that was theory of aircraft and practical work. And during this time of our practical work we learned to make tools. God only knows what for but we did. And we had to, we had to make a spanner, we had to learn, I mean we were people who’d never held a file in our

life. Or a pair of pliers. Or stood at a vice or worked with men or worked within, in a hangar. And yes it was a wonderful experience. But it was theory of the work we were going to do and the practical work we were going to do. And that six months course

that we did at Ascotvale, oh the first three months they decided, if we wanted to change, we could be electricians. Well that didn’t appeal to me, or we could be engineers. Which engines, that didn’t appeal to me either so I thought I’d stick to the rigging. I thought that was my field. And so I just enjoyed it and that’s what I did. And loved it.

But really did, it was a great experience. Great experience. But I didn’t win the war by myself. Nor did I contribute very much I guess.

Just Tiger Moths and Beauforts and Beaufighters. They were at 5 AD at Wagga, They and then I, when I wasn’t busy I worked as the squadron

leader who was Squadron Leader Lee and I worked as his typist. Great training for a typist. Six months technical training.

My word I could. Yeah that was interesting because I remember typing out a court martial. Don’t know what this guy was court martialled for but I remember he got into trouble for something. But it was interesting,

if you had if you worked on an aircraft you had to be prepared to an engine 2E, fitter 2E which fitter engines, or fitter aircraft. You had to go up, be prepared to go in the aircraft. Because and then you did, that made sure that you did your job properly. That was repairing, you might have to repair a damaged fuselage

or a damaged main plane. And you riveted and you had to do that job properly because if you didn’t, not only were you putting the pilots and the air crews lives in danger, well it would never occur to me not to do the job properly anyway, but it made sure that everybody did their job conscientiously because you had to, you could have to go up with it the first time it flew after it,

after you worked on it. So it was good. There were, I was the only, oh here we go again, I was the only female fitter in my, in the aircraft repair squadron.

No, not at all. The boys used to take a practical joke you know. Go for a skyhook.

You know there’s no such thing. But they’d send you over to the stores to get a skyhook. How ridiculous. You had to be mad to believe that. But some people did I suppose. Or a left-handed screwdriver. But no otherwise, no I don’t think they thought we were equal, really, but they never said anything.

They wouldn’t have, they wouldn’t have said anything. But I don’t think men never treated women as equal. Not in those days. I mean it was a new field wasn’t it? And I enjoyed it alright. Only time I ever got into trouble was having my hair touch my collar. Cause you weren’t allowed to have your hair

touch your collar. Fortunately it never got into my pay book thank you God for not doing that. Cause I would have hated that. But I was on leave and these SP’s like MP’s, Military Police, Air Force Police. Oh my hair was touching my collar, about an inch below my collar. And she sent me back to camp for the weekend. It was a terrible disgrace.

Never get over that. That was the only time I ever got into trouble though. Really wasn’t a terrible crime was it? I mean a lot of people used to get drunk. Oh not the boys, not the girls. Oh no down at Ascotvale God the girls used to drink down there. They were all much older than I was and they smoked and they drank. They’d been around a fair time,

I mean I was only eighteen. They were girls older and they’d been around longer than I had. And yeah they used to go out on Wednesday nights. We had leave two nights and the weekends and Wednesday nights. And I used to go to the movies, they’d go to the pub. But that was just the different way life was I guess. Anyway, no, I didn’t win the

war by myself. My war experiences really revolve around other people. More so than myself. Don’t they?

Do you? Funny, never thought of that. I suppose a lot of them did. The stenographers, the girls who kept the

clerical work going. I suppose I don't know I suppose at the time I thought I was pretty good. It was good to get in a men’s world I suppose. But there would have only been a few of us, whoever entered the technical section. But we were as good as the men were.

That’s all.

Heavens no. No, no, no, never. God, that wasn’t a lifestyle at that stage. When in my life, young life, you went to school and

about eighteen or twenty you got married and had children. They never even considered that a formal education was necessary. Not like it is, it’s a totally different life nowadays. I mean a generation later, when my children were growing up, there is no way that my children wouldn’t have had a very high standard of education because I was by then time, that time, mixing with women, widows who had no standard of

education and who in fact couldn’t get jobs and they couldn’t look after themself. And I was never going to see my children, ever having to look after themselves like I had without an education. And that it was only in one generation really that things changed. So would I have ever done what I did? No. I’d have stopped on the farm, I’d have got married and oh God I’d have still been there.

Heaven forbid. Yeah, changed my life. The war changed my life. Very much so. Very much so, not only the war, not only World War II, but then Korea and then Vietnam, even Malaya. I was aware of that, because my, Len’s young brother

went to Malaya. He then went to Vietnam and he died very young. That was he and Len and their father, the three of them lost their lives young. Their father died when he was thirty-three, Len died, he’d just turned twenty-eight and Sydney died in his thirties. And he’d seen Malaya and Vietnam.

He wasn’t old enough to go to Korea but he joined up as soon as Len joined up, he went to Korea. Now the younger generations they’ve all gone to Duntroon haven’t they? Different. You see these kids went off, didn’t have the Leaving Certificate and you couldn’t go to Duntroon unless you’ve finished high school. And whereas

the next generation, my children’s age you see, I have nephews who’ve gone through Duntroon. And that’s got nothing to do with me thought, turn that thing off.

No more than a normal social life.

I guess they all had lives out of the camp. I had just one friend there. Looking back he was probably homosexual but he was a nice friend. And we used to go to town to the pictures or look at the shops, how interesting. And

then I’d work in the kitchen the second weekend so I could come to Sydney on leave. And I used to stop at the Smeaton’s in my oh, on leave, oh you got leave every weekend. But you could have work over, volunteer to work over the weekend then have two weekends, the equivalent of two weekends off. And by this time remember the war was over.

And the aircraft weren’t being serviced. There was nowhere to go. And we were practically superfluous. Just keeping going until our discharges came through. Because the war had finished in August 1946 [1945]. And that’s the period I’m talking about now so.

I was just too young to contribute the way I should have. Still that wasn’t anything to do with me. I couldn’t help when I was born could I?

My word I do. Very much so. I was in Melbourne when war was declared in Europe and that’s when I had my first drink of beer. Cause everybody did.

We went down and danced in the city and we danced in the streets. And all our crew, all the people that I was training with. And they danced in the streets just the same as that picture you see of that guy here in Sydney and they all went to the pub. And they were, none of them got drunk though, they just had a few beers, then we went back to camp. VE, VJ Day [Victory in Europe and Victory over Japan Days] that was just

such a relief that the boys would be coming home. All the prisoners would be coming home. Not that I knew anyone. Oh I did know one actually but not of any great value. To me but yes I certainly do. I was in Wagga then. Yes, it had mixed feelings for everybody because where were we going to go? After we were discharged, what where we going to do? And as you

heard me say earlier, that proved very negative for a lot of men who were discharged. They did not get their jobs back that they were promised. They were promised employment but it didn’t mean they got their jobs back. And it devastated a lot of them. They were retrained, we were offered retraining. And most people,

no, some people took it, some people didn’t. And particularly if they couldn’t retrain, see they mainly were after bricklayers. And carpenters because there was a shortage of houses. And so anyone who didn’t want to be a bricklayer or a carpenter, well a lot of them didn’t retrain to do that. There was a great demand for that. But VE Day yes, I remember,

VP Day, yes I remember it very clearly. Didn’t get drunk or anything though. Yeah, in Wagga, it was, the accommodation was very good. The WAAAF had their own rooms, we didn’t even have to share with anybody. And totally different than Ascotvale. Which was just

like the army, like the Hall of Industries, it was divided into bays. And that was awful. But at Wagga we had a nice bed, we still had to make our, and a dressing table. We still had to make, have daily inspections though. In the morning when you, after you got up at Reveille, and they the WOD which was Warrant Officer Disciplinary came round and inspected

your room. But they weren’t as severe as those were in Ascotvale. In Ascotvale you stood behind, in the end of your bed or beside your bed and some of those WOD’s would open your cupboard, I never had to happen to me, but they’d open your cupboard and if your cupboard wasn’t tidy they’d throw everything out on the floor. And if your bed wasn’t made properly they’d rip the sheets off it, rip the blankets off it and you’d have to make it again. That never happened to me.

How humiliating. But that was really good, hard training. And I think yeah that was good for the rest of our lives. It did help. But in Ascot, in Wagga it wasn’t hard like that. Yes we did have to keep our rooms tidy, yes we did have daily inspections and yes we did march off every morning. We had breakfast and we marched off every morning to our hangars and we worked

in the hangar, we had lunch break and then we worked there. I don’t know what the hours were but it wasn’t hard work and it was enjoyable. I really enjoyed it. No, I didn’t find any intimidation with the guys. I think they treated us fairly well. But as I said I was the only female in our hangar anyway. So and I didn’t

get to know any of them terribly well. I wasn’t a person who had a great deal of confidence in myself. I probably felt a little insignificant because I was a female in the male world which you could understand. I mean you still do. Still the only female in a male world. Well where I work I am.

The only female on the RSL [Returned and Services League] committee. Probably only one that ever will be.

Yes we did, we were treated equally. That’s if we were working in the hangars. Yes we had to do exactly the same. It was just, there was, you weren’t a sex,

you were just a fitter. Didn’t matter whether you were male or female. No, no, no. No, didn’t make any difference at all. Didn’t matter where we were, we did the same work. Same work in training, same work. And we were treated exactly the same. Told you it wasn’t very interesting.

No I don’t think so. It was exciting to learn about aircraft. And I mean still to this day I, it appals me when people talk about wings of aircraft, they were main planes and under carriages and fuselages. And you never get over, you never forget that. And but probably the most exciting thing

I think was learning to swing a prop on a Tiger Moth.

No, it was a technique. But unless you’ve got a Tiger, a prop there and I certainly can’t remember now but that was exciting and being feeling equal with the men. That they could do it and so could we. There were only in the course that I went

through, there were only four fitters. Eileen Orrey, Eileen Gorrey and myself, yeah there were only four that went through. So once again it was sort of a minority. Very much a minority.

When you think, when I think, look back on it, it really was. It was supposed to be glamorous but it was just work. Sorry I can’t make it more glamorous and I can’t make it more interesting, because it just wasn’t.

January 1946.

I’d just done a little over twelve months. That’s why it’s not of great importance. Because of the time frame.

Because of my age and because the war ended and I didn’t have a great service history. I only got two medals, most people have a lot more than that.

I got married and you know the rest of the story. I got

married and two years later I had, two and a half years later I had I told, oh no I went to work for a while. I went to work at Enmore Box Factory in an office. I didn’t like that particularly because they put me in one day and expected me to manage the office the next which I wasn’t capable of doing.

Oh no, first of all we lined up like everybody else at the, gee what were they called, it was Manpower to get a job. And you joined up at the Man Power in great long queues. And in my particular case yes they had a job for me and it was at Darrel Lea’s,

Darrel Lea’s Chocolate Shop. And okay that’d be fine. I’d have that. And we wore a big frilly bow and I worked at 309 George Street, Sydney. I worked there for a year or so, a couple of years. Yeah I did. I went to the Box Factory but that was managing an office and I certainly didn’t know how to manage an office. God I couldn’t manage

my life let alone a box, a factory, an office. Yeah that was it. And I had Sandra, I had a child. Come on keep asking me questions, I don’t know what you expect of me.

Good, cause I’m...

Well actually we were a separate community. And my only experience with the Jap, with the Italians, well I certainly never knew any of them except at the end of the war yes I think they used to get leave passes. And they’d go into Cowra on,

to the movies, because they weren’t considered dangerous. They had their burgundy uniforms on. The prisoners used burgundy uniforms. And they just used to the little bit that I knew about them, was that they were loaded on to the back of ute trucks, and our Australian drivers used to and an offsider who was always armed, and they used to take them to the

farms to work but I don't know you know a lot about them apart from that. But they were quite harmless. They were better off here than they were in Italy anyway. Weren’t they?

Oh yes, very much so. Yeah very much so.

And in

Sydney. You see some children were in fact evacuated, people who had relatives in Sydney, in the country from Sydney were evacuated from Sydney to Cowra. We knew some people who sent their children up there. Anyone who...

Well we were bombed weren’t we, well the submarines came. Yes and we were subject to an attack.

Yes I do.

Yes I do, it was a terrible thought. Yes I do very much, it was a great fear. And that they would actually come, win the war. It was dreadful. And I think we didn’t, probably a lot of it was

ignorance but we were buying Japanese products and Japanese products were always considered, well crockery and things, were always considered a very cheap version and I think Japan didn’t hold very high in our category of people. And no I wasn’t a bit happy about the Japanese being there because of what was happening.

\

Yes I certainly do. It was all fearsome. And it was all fear that they would in fact attack again.

As they attacked Darwin. And they were consistently attacking Darwin. Not that we know a lot about it. Now do remember that there wasn’t a lot revealed. We had no idea that the numbers of attacks on Darwin as we do now. And but we certainly knew about the submarines in Sydney and that was terrible. It was really fearsome.

Oh yes,

yes, but just it was bombed. We had no idea it was being bombed consistently. As a matter of fact it’s only in the last few years that we’ve realised that there were so many casualties. It was all very secretive and we didn’t have televisions in those days remember. And it didn’t hit the newsreels the way the German news hit the newsreels or our Australians in action certainly hit the

newsreels. But no it wasn’t made known that Japan was so vicious when it came to Darwin and attacks came to Darwin. No way, no way. I think if you check that up you’ll find that is very much true. It was all confidential, very confidential. We still didn’t like the Japanese and we were, I was afraid of

them. They were, when you go to the Japanese camp, which I only actually went twice. They seemed a very fiercely strong, competitive type of person. But they of course were in a big compound and we were on the outside. But somehow or other you got the impression that they were a very strong,

determined, because they were playing ball games. Not football but ball games and they showed that they were a strong type of person and we just didn’t like them really.

No, I think they were just resilient and they were keeping fit.

Very much so. Oh no they weren’t putting on a show. No.

Well they had a compound and they had guards up high, observing them. And,

and of course their army hut, their huts that they slept in. They were well looked after I think. I don’t think they lacked anything. But when they broke out they had a lot of equipment, they’d made a lot of defence equipment. And for themselves. I mean they certainly didn’t have any guns but they had a lot of destructive equipment because they went over the fence, and they went over the

fence one on top of the other and those people on the electric fences, they just made the barriers for the others to go over them. They just gave the impression, the little bit that I saw of them, that they had no fear. And that probably was so, the fact that when they broke out, they couldn’t possibly have known how far they were from their forces. They

couldn’t possibly have thought that they were close to their own forces. And yet they broke out for what reason. Why? Because if they went home, and they’d been prisoners of war, they were shunned. That was a disgrace to be taken a captive, where I don't know that they really wanted to survive some of them. And you know it was an awful time. I can remember quite clearly,

the morning we heard it. Well they broke out in the night. Nobody went out for a while. We didn’t go out at night after that because we didn’t know how many people there were. And they did get some distances away. There was a story about one guy who was caught in, with a mob of sheep. And he’d actually slaughtered, now I wasn’t there but I heard this story, that he’d actually slaughtered a sheep and got inside the sheepskin

to be concealed among the sheep. That was about probably ten miles out of Cowra towards the Blayney area. And but some of them just threw themselves on the rail, on the rail lines and committed suicide.

That’s right, that’s right.

Well I wouldn’t

know. I wouldn’t know. I can only think that they broke out because they thought they were closer to the Japanese forces or they, well they’d have had to want to escape or commit suicide, one or the other. Now remember it was 1944, I think it was August 1944. And things were really pretty traumatic in the war at that stage, for us. And they

would’ve had their intelligence reports I imagine. They’d have manufactured radios the same as our guys did. Except they’re more inventive than we are and they’re smarter in the head than a lot of Australians. And their intelligence, they would have had their intelligence sources.

It was early in the morning. Now also remember, no I don’t remember

how we first heard but we knew early in the morning. And I’d been out that night and I hadn’t arrived home til midnight. It was only a couple of hours after I got home. And no I remember hearing about it but I don’t know how we got the message. And once again there were no telephones in our houses in those

days so obviously it had to be, it had to come through somebody who had a telephone who lived nearby. And it would have been very well known. Well of course it was a terrible thing.

Until midnight. I’d been to a dance in Cowra. Nothing terrible about that. Must have been a Wednesday night. No I don’t know what night it was. But I was out.

I was in Cowra. Actually we lived two mile out, two and a half mile out of Cowra. And I’d ridden my bike home. That’s how I used to go home. And I’d ridden my bike home and it actually horrified me to think that I might have been out, they wouldn’t have come our way because we were on the western side of Cowra and they were on the eastern side of Cowra. They wouldn’t have come our way, they’d have gone the other way. So.

What was I doing out at midnight? God I wasn’t a baby. Turn that thing off.

Of course. Of course.

I was going to win the war by myself wasn’t I? I don’t know, why did I want, because it was patriotic, it was what we wanted to do. We wanted to help win the war. And everybody who’d contribute not working in a munitions factory but everybody who wanted to help you joined up. And the females that joined up they released a male to do things that we,

we could take their place and they could go, well the term was to the front, or they were released for active service. And every female that joined up, yes you were doing, supposed to be doing your bit. Well, oh as you know my bit wasn’t very big but anyway that’s why I tried.

Yes, perhaps so. Yes, perhaps so.

Yes, he might have.

No I think, actually I made up my mind to join up long before I was eighteen years of age. And our boys were all going. And one guy, Ted O’Connor, went in to the air force he was killed actually. That was a very sad day, I think he was a tail gunner. He was aircrew anyway and he was killed. And that was, I can remember the day that news came through. And then I heard about somebody else who was

killed. And from that day I’d made up my mind I was going to join up. When I was old enough. Not to get killed but to help. And I remember the day, oh no we’re getting away, go on.

Everything, everything. What Hitler was doing, how the Japanese were coming down over the Owen Stanley Ranges, how our divisions were being demolished, and they were, and in Germany

how the Germans were bombing Britain day and night. Day and night. And that was all our affair at that time. But I think probably most of our guys went to, went to the islands. Some of them went to the Middle East and but most of them went to the islands. And we were hearing things about atrocities in

New Guinea. We were hearing about the 7th Division. And we were hearing about the Fall of Singapore. And the fellows who were taken POWs. And it was just a terrible time. You really can’t isolate any one particular incident. Although I remember the day Len was wounded, paper came out. And you’ve gotta remember that every day the papers came out, there were casualty

lists. Lists and lists of names. And I remember the day dad came home with the paper and he said “Oh Nelly’s boy’s been wounded”. And Nelly’s boy was Len of course. And the lists had come out of the guys that were wounded and or Killed in Action. And it was just dreadful. Living and knowing these young kids, much younger than you of course, weren’t coming back

anymore. And it made you want to do your bit. And to do your bit you joined up. Or you worked in a munitions factory, which wasn’t my scene. And no, and if I’d have gone, no I hadn’t decided to do anything except join up.

It was just devastating.

Was just dreadful reading them. I mean you still think about them today. And it still has the same effect on you today as it did those days. Like Pearl Harbor, I can still see the paper with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. I can still see the paper the day Darwin was bombed. I can still see the paper, and we didn’t

get anything on the radios or perhaps we did but it was the written word when Sydney was, had the submarines come in. They were terrible days, they were really dark days in our history. Yes they were. And the casualty lists, it was just our kids getting killed.

Sadness. Sadness. A feeling that we might be defeated I think was a great worry. Yes it was. Terrible. Wouldn’t have been so bad being beaten

by the Germans if we’d have been beaten by the Germans. But being beaten by the Japanese, that was just not on you know.

Because we used to know of the atrocities that happened. And that would have happened to us. Wouldn’t it? Yes it would have. We were hearing stories about the prisoners. And that would, the same would have happened

to us we felt if the Japanese had won.

Oh well I can’t be specific about that now but I

certainly know that there were details and I think I told you the day, well the day we heard about it, that Jenny Kerr was killed and the nurses were marched into the water and shot. I mean you couldn’t believe that could happen. But we knew about it so the, how did we know of, there was a total censorship.

There couldn’t have been a total censorship. But we knew Darwin had been bombed, we knew Sydney had been bombed, had been submarined. But every day you opened the paper there were details. And I’m sure if I went and got, looked up the archives there’d be details of what happened. And there were, and the casualty lists came out continually and it couldn’t come out if they weren’t being

killed, could it. There’d be huge lists of them.

I didn’t know him then, I just knew of him. I didn’t meet him til 1944. When I came to Sydney and he came home on the, he’d been

sick. He came home on leave from being in the islands when I met him and I was stopping with his family. I remember how they looked forward to him coming home then. People coming in and out all the time on leave though at that stage. I don’t think I realised that he’d been quite as badly wounded as he

had been. Because shrapnel does a lot of damage. And all his back he had black marks all over his back. Say as big as there or bigger than, one of them bigger than that where the shrapnel had gone in and some of it had penetrated his kidneys. And I think had he have lived, he’d have had a lot of problems later on. And he certainly started to get problems

when he, with his kidneys when he was in Korea. So, cause the intense cold over there caused that. But anyway you’re getting, I’m getting five years ahead aren’t I.

Yes.

I have no idea, I have no idea. No idea. All I know that it made an awful scar. And he had one on his buttock that was about that big round and so it must have been a fairly big piece of shrapnel that entered there. But he was in hospital, I can see by his records that he was wounded, well wounded in action it shows you, Wounded in Action, but they’re

not sure of what day he was wounded in action. Because it shows on your file, or your service sheet, what day you were wounded in action. And on his case, in his case there is no date wounded in action. It shows when he was evacuated to hospital, to a field hospital and then transferred to another hospital. But it doesn’t show, actually show the dates so I take it that he was

wounded. And it’s, he didn’t talk about that. I don’t know anything about that part of his life. He certainly never talked about it. I know one of his mates was very badly wounded and that, that upset him a great deal. He died, he lived but he died years ago now. Long time ago.

Yeah I thought about that. Yeah I thought about that last night. Yeah I was the only female in the aircraft repair squadron as far as I can remember. Everybody else,

worked there, I wonder why I don’t feel a bit strange about that. Everybody who worked in the office, and if I had to go to the office, I was the only one there. All the guys in the orderly room were all, they were all guys. Everybody was, when I thought about it. I really don’t know how I handled it. I guess I must have just felt the same as they did. And do bear in mind that we worked in overalls. We had, we didn’t look like females.

We had the same clothes as the guys. And so I didn’t feel any different. And I didn’t build any close, and I think, looking back on it, that’s why I didn’t build any close friends at 5 AD because they were all clerical staff or cooking staff, or medical staff. And I was really, when I thought about it, I was an outsider.

Because I wasn’t one of them. And I’d never really thought about that until I was talking to you yesterday. And in our course, see we were only a minority that did, we’d be a third at the most that, of females that started off on that course and they branched off to different

groups. And I think there were only four of us that actually finished that fitter’s course. So and there’d been a fair few guys and they didn’t become instrument makers, and they didn’t become fabric workers so there was only two categories that they’d have finished up which was aircraft engines, flight engines and flight riggers. And so

yeah I guess that it was a minority. We were in a minority I guess. That’s all.

The guys? No, they were all older than I was. And they were permanent, they’d been there for a while.

Only was friendly with one guy, who was quite nice. I don't know. I remember going out with him a couple of times. Gosh we looked at fabrics, I think he was a bit effeminate but he was nice. I liked him, he was my friend. I don’t even remember his name. No.

Well he used to like materials. He’d go along the street and he’d say that’s a nice piece of material. And he’d

look at children and talk about them as though, more feminine than male. And he didn’t have many friends, male friends. And I think I was sorry for him. I probably was but he was a nice kid. Nothing romantic, absolutely nothing romantic. But he was a nice boy.

Not my scene, not my scene.

Of course we did, Edward, Edward Leonsky married a, murdered a girl. He was my, he was enough to stop me. Crime wasn’t like it is now. The guy named Edward Leonsky and I know it didn’t happen in Sydney, it happened in Melbourne and

he murdered a girl. But he to me represented all Americans. And the Australian servicemen didn’t like them, they’d have killed them. They stole their girls, I’m sure some of the guys have told you that.

That’s exactly right, I’ve got

some. From Korea. No, not the girls but you should be home, yeah I think there’s a couple of them there. That’s right they did. And they were sweeping away the girls. And they had lots of money and they were charming. But not for me, I never, may God strike me dead if I’m lying, I never went out with an American, I never looked at one.

No.

I know a girl that married one. But I didn’t know her til later and she married him, went to America. Didn’t strike me as being very important going to America. Australians were good enough. No, no, no, no, no.

And nobody I knew went out with them.

Everywhere. Oh yes of course they were and they looked so handsome. They’re always stripes on their arms which, and lovely uniforms. But they still reminded me of Edward Leonsky who murdered a girl. Admittedly she was a prostitute but I didn’t know what a prostitute meant in those days. Didn’t. So, as far as I was concerned, she, he just murdered

somebody. But he was what I saw as America, represented American servicemen. No point asking me anymore, I know nothing.

Well they were just flamboyant weren’t they and the girls were hanging all over them. Because they had lots of money. Our guys didn’t have that sort of money.

They just didn’t, nothing.

Well it had to be, they were only here for a short time weren’t they and then they were going on. And if our guys ever heard of our, of them going out with the girls they’d have probably killed them. I’m sure other people will tell you that. They hated, the Australians hated the, but you probably don’t realise the

7th Divvy [Division] hated the 9th Divvy. It was just absolutely ridiculous, they’re all fighting for one country. But they were the best, the 7th Divvy, and I’ll tell you what something that I think is really sad. The guys that were fighting in the, say in the 7th Divvy and the 9th Divvy and the 8th Divvy were captured, the 6th Divvy and

the guys that were still in the front they resented the fact, they didn’t know anything about the way that the prisoners of war were being treated, but they had the audacity to say to these guys, “Well you weren’t being shot at”. But they didn’t know what was happening in the Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. And they thought that they were worse off

because they were still in action and being shot at. And they you know they didn’t understand. But it was dreadful, when the Japanese, when our prisoners came home, they were just skin and bone. It was just awful. And that you certainly remember. And them being loaded off hospital ships and the photos of them. It was dreadful. Anyway I’m getting away from the subject.

I didn’t think anything of it was

complicated. It was just a breeze. It wasn’t hard work. I can do things with my hand. And I’ve got a small amount of grey, brain. That allowed me to do things with my hand. I never thought that was hard work. Even standing for hours, that wasn’t a problem. It was part of our job. You just accepted it.

Time’s up.

Oh right, where. Oh God it’s a long time ago. Okay. Training. Well we got up with Reveille. We went to breakfast then we had an inspection, a room inspection

or a barracks inspection it was called. By the WOD. who was the Warrant Officer Disciplinary. Of which Warrant Officer Fitzpatrick was the worst one I came across. But she had a job to do. And then we had to go on parade and we marched to our hangars or wherever we were going.

It was an orderly day. I don’t remember when we had, what we did, we would have marched down for lunch because the mess was some distance away. And there was a Rec. Club at night. There was a Rec. Club, you could play table tennis or you could listen to music, or your radio, or go to the movies on the camp. You couldn’t go out,

couldn’t go out and leave it, just freely. They had entertainment on the camp. But I don’t remember the hours quite frankly. I mean it was just a day’s work. And I don’t even know what time I left work today except it was about half past twelve.

Yes, that’s right. I wish I still had one.

From a piece of metal which we then marked out, this was our training though, which we then marked out and which we cut to shape and which we filed to an accuracy of one thou’ of an inch. Pretty small. And that was an examination. You had to make a spanner to pass that exam.

Well I just quote the spanner but we had to make other things as well. But the spanner’s pretty intricate

and accurate. We had, were they micrometers, they would have been, micrometers that you measured them.

It is, it is, there’s no doubt about that. I think we must have had drills

to drill out round, I’ve got a recollection of drills. And we drilled, would have drilled around it. And made it. But yeah we did. It was good, I liked it, I was probably good at it. So you enjoy anything you’re good at don’t you?

We were trained, we had nice Sergeants to train us. Well they were very helpful.

Well they were all Fitters 2A which is a higher grade of fitter, they’ve been fitters for a long time. And they came back and they were instructors. And they were helpful, very helpful. And I remember one of my nice Sergeants, I think it was a Staff Sergeant, he was always showing us the photo of his little girls. I can’t even remember his name but I remember he had a couple of little kids and he loved them. Couldn’t wait to get home for them, to them. He was the nicest

trainee, training Sergeant we had. Oh it was good days I suppose.

Only as groups, yeah we did. Oh the air force guys.

Australian soldiers?

Anyone I met casually? Only in a group, only in a group. Down in Melbourne we’d go out in groups all the, I suppose we stuck to groups more than they do, like a lot of the young people do now. Don’t they. They didn’t seem to pair off very much. I think they were all pretty much short

term friendships because everybody was moving. You’d do three months here and three months there and they’d be gone. There was a nice young guy, can’t remember his name. Oh he might have been a 2A and he lived in Melbourne. He asked me to come home to, take, took me home for Sunday dinner once, to his family. Oh God I can even remember his name, Jack Fudenstein his name was. No romantic attachment though, just friends.

It was nice that he took me home to his parents, asked me home to dinner. Probably would’ve asked anybody else who was out of town.

No, that’s training. Well as a flight rigger you learn to rivet, repair metal, although they have metal repairers, as a flight rigger

you learn to do that. Refuel the aircraft and general maintenance on an aircraft it is. You had to check whether the ailerons worked which you probably don’t know what an aileron is. Neither do I, not any more. That there were no stress faults. That the aircraft was in good condition.

I don’t remember, don’t ask me things like that. I suppose we had metal detectors I don’t know.

The real riggers were yes. The real riggers were. Oh very important. I wasn’t one of them I keep on telling you.

If you’re trying to delve into my war service, you might as well pack up and go home.

Cause I told you from the very beginning that I contributed practically nothing. I suppose I did in a way.

I ate their food. And sometimes

well I had to work in the office. And I worked for the Squadron Leader, Lee his name was. And I quite enjoyed that. And I suppose look if you call that work, yeah I did work I suppose but it’s nothing, it wasn’t in the front line, I wasn’t nursing troops. I wasn’t looking after them and taking their temperatures. It’s all so unimportant.

Turn that damn thing off.

That’s right, yes.

Yes, but then you’re talking about front line teams. You’re not talking about guys who were working in the situation that I was.

You’re talking in, talking about a whole different group of people.

And yes they probably did depend on each other. Maybe I was just too irresponsible to know.

Yeah I would’ve too.

My word

I would have. I’m not, oh no, I would’ve preferred to be where the action was. I didn’t really think that being stuck in Ascotvale or Wagga was too much to do with helping win the war. I keep on telling you I didn’t do anything.

Well they came back, they came back in troop ships. And there was, they were bought home on stretchers. They were transported to the hospitals. It was just dreadful

images of those poor incapacitated men. Just skin and bone they were. Just, it was just dreadful. Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful. And I actually went to visit somebody in a hospital. Which is, it was at Hearne Bay Hospital, and Hearne Bay is now Riverwood. Riverwood. But there was a big hospital there.

And I can remember seeing these poor creatures, just absolute skin and bone they were. It was just dreadful. I knew one guy, he didn’t, only lived about four years. Don’t think he, no, don’t think he even lived that long. He did, he

died about 1950. He lived in the country. Just dreadful. Don’t want to think about that.

Probably nobody realised it was as bad as it was. See they had hospital ships as well you know. They came home on hospital

ships.

Yeah well I guess that looking back on things, a lot of people tell me that

the people that came back weren’t the people that went away because the war had affected them. And remember that these boys when they went away, they were just eighteen year olds and they didn’t smoke and they didn’t drink. But immediately you put a uniform on, you could do both.

And so the boys that came home their, they certainly liked to have their beer. And they were issued with a beer ration and a cigarette ration. And all those young kids that had gone away, that didn’t do those, didn’t smoke and didn’t drink, they did when they came home. And it seemed as though they wanted, wanted to be at the

pub a lot of times and I think that would’ve been for mateship and if they drank they forgot. The beer dimmed their memories of the things that’d happened to them while they were in action. And I’m sure, and I know now that

that was the case for a lot of boys that came home, didn’t settle very well. Some of them did training and you can, we, we had a housing shortage, an acute housing shortage. And so they trained a lot of bricklayers, they trained a lot of carpenters. But a lot of those guys weren’t suitable for that.

But they seemed to think that that was the way to go. And of course that type of job also encourages them to drink more and smoke more. And I think that was to the detriment of the health of a lot of them.

He used to like to meet his friends after work. No he didn’t drink a lot, he certainly smoked a lot. And it was always to soothe the shattered. He smoked his issue of cigarettes

and my issue. See after we were discharged we got a ration, a tobacco ration. Worse thing that they could possibly have done. But that’s what happened and they sweated on getting somebody else’s cigarettes, that didn’t smoke. And you had to go, you handed a coupon in and you gave it to your tobacconist and he dished out the rations of your tobacco.

He didn’t drink a lot but he certainly smoked a lot. And remember you couldn’t drink a lot in those days because the pubs opened, closed at six o’clock didn’t they. But he’d enjoy a social drink with his friends. No much more so than anybody else I know.

But I, two of his cousins drank excessively. And I know it was, they were both had fairly rough times. A lot of the guys did drink excessively. But my brother-in-law with whom we lived, he didn’t drink excessively. Or did, well sort of, I suppose we were a bit different from a lot of them. And the two boys weren’t married, the two

cousins weren’t married. They died alcoholics as a matter of fact. Came from wonderful parents, wonderful father and wonderful mother. And they both died of alcohol problems. Terrible, and it was the war experience. I didn’t understand it then, I didn’t understand why they drank. But I certainly do now and I have done for a long time. Because there was no alcoholism in the family. And I don’t

believe they would’ve done it if they hadn’t had, been in the army.

It’s alright you don’t have to be afraid of asking. When were

we married?

Oh I see near the end of the war. January 1946. Nineteenth of January 1946. And where did we live? We lived in Earlwood. 6 Stone Street Earlwood. With his three sisters, and a brother and his widowed mother. And that was what you did because there was no

other accommodation. But that was fine, I liked all those people. We got on well together and I still hear from them.

Yeah it was a nice time because we all got along together. Actually Max, Len’s father was a tailor and so was his mother. And his father used to make suits for Billy Hughes.

He was a Prime Minister I think. Certainly to do with Veterans, the Little Digger and it was the Little Digger that got Len’s mother’s war widow’s pension through. When she died, when he died. Yeah we all got along well together. Was a nice time. But then we got our house, well my dad owned a house and we moved

into that. And that’s when we were when. Think the worst day I can ever remember after the war was the day Len went back to his Lever & Kitchens. With his new suit on, fully expecting to get a job, get his job back. And he didn’t get his job back. And he was very unhappy.

Think he went to the pub that day, I can remember very clearly. Didn’t get drunk though but he certainly had to have a beer and he had to have his cigarettes. I don’t think he did either before he went away. He wouldn’t have. He wouldn’t have had the money, I didn’t know him then though. That was a black day in his life.

No, they never talked about it. Never talked about it.

No because you didn’t expect to be. That was something the men talked about if they talked about it. But I don’t think they did talk about it much. Maybe they did at reunions or at the pub or wherever they were together, but it

wasn’t anything they talked about. I don’t know anything about Max’s life story. You know I’m diversifying now I know. But he’s written his life story in the army and so help me God, I say “Max, what did you feel like when this happened?” “Oh well nobody’s interested in that”, he’ll say. I say “Well let’s

put that in”. They just don’t talk about it. I said “Well, you know”, I said to Max “Well what did you think about when Len, you saw Len on the side of the road?”, and I said “You talk about it in your book”, and “I saw Len Smeaton on the side of the road, but he looked alright to me. But later on I’d heard that he’d died.” I said “Let’s go into that.

How did you feel? You know enlarge that, because that day changed your life forever.” But they just don’t talk about it.

After the war?

I think it was just something that everybody accepted, that they’d go into the pub for a drink before they came home. I don’t know that they, he certainly never came home drunk, or with too much to drink. It was just something they did, they just went for a beer at night before they

came home. Same as people go to the club now I suppose. But it never affected his life in any way. Well I don’t think it did.

Yeah I don’t think really he ever settled down. I think he’d have been much better, he missed his friends and none of them lived in

Sydney. He talked to them, it wasn’t the locals he talked about. It was the guy that, the guys that he was in the army with like Ron Shaw and Fred Morath. They both lived down Wollongong way. They were the people he cared about. But he seldom saw them except on Anzac Day. Because they didn’t live here. And yet somehow or other they were very special people

to him. And after he was killed the one person of his friends that came to see me was one of them. See, there was just a strong bond between these guys. They’re not, I don't know, it wasn’t a part of our life

that they talked about. He certainly never talked about how dreadful it must have been when he was in hospital. And evacuated. I knew because his mother talked about it a bit how he’d been wounded and evacuated and brought home. And it was something I never quite understood about him,

and we’re getting back to the army. Three months after he joined up he had rank. But he used to give it in. If I’d have got rank I’d have never given it in. Because I didn’t understand why you have, and I said to him once, “Why did you, why did you give in your stripes before you came on leave?” “Well because if I go AWOL [Absent Without Leave] I’ll lose them when I go back. And if we go into action again

I want to be, I want my stripes then”. “Give me strength, don’t go AWOL. Go back on time.” He didn’t do it. He didn’t go AWOL. But he wanted stripes when he went into action.

He was a good soldier. I don’t mean, I know he was a good soldier.

How I know?

I

just know. I know from what people tell me, I know from what’s been written. I know from what his young officer told me. I know from his letters. I know from George Harris. He told me he was one of the best

soldiers he ever knew. Yeah, when he went to Japan from here and bearing in mind they joined up in August and they were gone in five weeks from the time they enlisted. And a week after they got to Korea they started having casualties. He was in Japan

training and they wanted to keep him there as a Sergeant. And he wasn’t very happy about that he says because he wanted to be on that first contingent that went to Korea. And that was his aim. God only knows why. I don’t understand war. But he said in one of those letters he said “I think they’re going to make me a Sergeant, they’ve made me an acting Sergeant on this and it looks as though they’re trying to make me stop here”. And George Harris

said they were on a training exercise. And he said “I said to L.G. Clarke who was a young Lieut.”, he said “I said to L.G. do you know where we are?” and L.G. said “No he didn’t know where he was”. He said and I said to Len “Can you read a map or something?”, he said, so I handed him, he said “What rank were you in the army?” And Len said

“I was a Private”. And he said “Well you must have been a pretty good Private. A bloody good Private. Cause I’ve never seen anyone who can handle a map the way you can”. Well he wasn’t a Private was he? If you said you were a Private you didn’t have to stop in Japan and train other troops did you.

Well I just knew that he missed his friends. I knew that he joined the CMF [Citizen Military Forces], well he did join the CMF to try and keep that army association going.

But that wasn’t rewarding for him. So he threw himself back into tennis. Before he went to the war he was an excellent tennis player. His ambition was to get to the Blackwell Cup and I believe he would have. Because he was a fantastic player. And I think he resented the fact that (a) he couldn’t go back to his job

that he wanted to because he was very creative, he didn’t appreciate the, he didn’t get from the CMF what he got from the army. I always, it was always obvious to me that he missed his army friends and he talked about them but he didn’t talk

about the war. But he was, when he first went to the PMG [Post Master General] we studied together. In those days it was totally different than it is now. And they had to learn every country town. There must have been, it was before postcodes. And they started off as mail

sorters. I don't know that this is what you’re looking for right? They started off as mail sorters and I assume the mail had to be sorted. And you progressed up the road from that category. And he was a Level 3, which was a Registration Officer by the time he went to Korea. I don’t think that was

ever satis, very satisfying for him. I think he was working way below the capacity of his intelligence. And he, I just knew that he should, he wasn’t getting the fulfilment out of a job that he’d had out of his army career.

Otherwise it was just a normal life. Three meals a day, nothing very spectacular.

Yes he did actually but I don’t know what they were.

Life wasn’t difficult for me so it was uneventful I suppose. Really. I just knew that he would’ve, he’d love the army and he really should’ve been a permanent army soldier, he would’ve, liked that. But then he may not have because he didn’t like the

CMF and that was like regular army. I think there must have been something about that active service life that they just didn’t get rid of. But I don’t know what it was. I don't know what it was. But I knew the day I heard on the radio that the Australian troops were going to Korea, I knew when he came home that day,

I knew he’d say he was going. I just knew.

Terrible. Terrible. I knew he’d never come back. And I told him that. I said “If you go away, you will never come home”. But he thought I was being stupid. No he didn’t, stupid, he thought I was being silly, melodramatic. But I just knew that he’d never come

home.

I don't know I just knew. I just knew when he went I’d never see him again. I don't know how you know these things. But I did know that if he lived until the baby was born he’d come home. But he didn’t. It was just I had this terrible feeling.

And the black hole that’s in your heart never goes away. The tragedy of it all never goes away. The unfairness of it, the non-finality of it. It’s not as though when a man goes away, you’ve got a funeral. You haven’t got a funeral. You’ve got no finalisation. And if someone dies or you know they’re

sick, but some young, tall, fit, active person who was full of life suddenly gives it away, it’s very difficult to take. And it’s very difficult to understand. But I knew when he went away I’d never see him again. I don't know how you know. And yes it’s very difficult. And it was very difficult.

I begged, I pleaded, I said “Don’t go away. Don’t go. It isn’t our war.” But it was Communism and he hated Communism. Because he worked with people who were refugees from Communist, the Communism in Russia. And he was so, he hated Communism. And I can show you in letters where he said “I know you think what I’m doing is wrong but believe

me it’s going to come here if we don’t stop it there.” Because during the war the Communists wouldn’t let them load the boats to go take ammunition overseas. There were war strikes. They weren’t just ordinary people. They were our enemy weren’t they? If we couldn’t get our, and he remembered that. And he thought it would come here and Communism was something that was pretty much

made very public in those days. And I mean I wasn’t afraid of it coming here but he was. And as he said, I know that we’re only going, believe me, this is the beginning of a World, a war that we’ll all be involved in and I’m just going early in the part and get it over and done with.

They all had their reasons why they went. When the Government called for volunteers for experienced infantrymen to go to Korea they lined up, they couldn’t get their quick enough. Why. And they were all experienced infantrymen.

It’s not something I understand.

It didn’t make any difference, he loved the army more than he loved me. Absolutely. I

was wrong. It was going to happen, we were all going to be in a war again. And I was wrong. They were all the same. Max’ll tell you he was the same too. They thought they were going to save, and we did. And they did because it would’ve come here. Although there was never a finality

to the Korean war and there still has been no peace in Korea. There was an armistice. But there was no peace. There was no, nobody won that war. They left at night,

it was all very quiet. They weren’t allowed, about five weeks after they joined up, they were told they were going. They weren’t allowed to ring up and say “They were going”. They left about nine o’clock at night and in fact he wrote and said “We came down the road, Canterbury Road in the bus and I thought we might go past our place but they turned off at

Belmore Road.” And he said “I, well they didn’t get a chance to ring anybody”. They weren’t allowed to ring. It was ridiculous. Few people did and apparently a few people went out there but not very many. And they would’ve been people who had more, the guys contacted the families. I don't know but it was all secrets, secrecy.

It was five weeks from the time they went into the army until they were gone.

Oh yes that was different, that was different. It was different.

Well because that was a real big, that was

really big whereas I don’t think, I think this was all just ridiculous that they were sworn to secrecy. One aircraft of troops going. It’s not on.

My children?

My daughter?

Sandra had started to fret after he went. I’m talking about, you’re talking about after he went. Sandra was sick, I didn’t know what was wrong with her. And but this was a few weeks after he’d gone. And the doctor told me “She was fretting for him”. But that was not until he went

to Korea on the twenty-ninth of September on the Akon Victory. And that wasn’t until October about halfway through October that she was fretting and the doctor said “He thought that there was no way he could treat a fretting child”. And he suggested that he would write a letter to say “That he had compassion, he should have

compassionate leave”. By this time I was getting letters from Len saying “That the war was, the cold was affecting his kidneys”. And “He had cut his finger to the bone. And there was no way that he could, he couldn’t get treatment for it.” And I can recall his words that, “I realise

now that I’m not fit enough for this”. This intense cold and the doctor, I told him that the doctor I must have told him because he wrote a letter to me on the back of a letter that I’d written him, that was the only letter and he said “You gave me a roasting”. Must have been about that. About him being away and Sandra being sick. And I’d take, been taken to hospital

cause they thought I was going to have the baby early. Probably owing to the worry. And he said “If you, if the doctor feels that I should be home, if you get a letter from the doctor, take it to Victoria Barracks and I’ll come home because I realise I’m just not fit enough for this war.”

And that letter actually arrived there about three days before he was killed. And Lawson Glassop wrote in the paper that a soldier was coming home on compassionate leave but the enemy attacked and he decided to go after the batt, offensive but he was killed.

And that’s exactly what happened. Because you see the intense cold, they were sleeping on the ground, they had, when the Australians soldiers, I don't know that you’re interested in this, but when they went over there, they weren’t fully equipped. They were supposed to be the best lot of troops, the best equipped lot of troops that ever went there.

They didn’t have, he didn’t have his full equipment. And he lost his great coat and it was snowing. And he didn’t even have a great coat. And they had no sleeping bags and they were frozen. Their feet were frozen. It’s all very well documented. The things he wrote about and that were affecting his health,

see he’d turned twenty-seven he’d had that, what did happen, what they call a leather kidney. The doc, the kidney had formed in, I don’t understand it, but apparently the shrapnel had damaged his kidneys. And in that terrible intense cold it was coming against him. And he just wasn’t fit enough to cope with that. He’s not the only one

that will tell you the same story. They weren’t fully equipped. Their gun, their bazookas froze and they couldn’t fire them. And a few days before they had the Battle of Broken Bridge and their bazookas just did not fire because they were frozen. They didn’t have trenching tools to dig in,

to dig in and get yourself out of the fire. They didn’t have those things. And I think he’d only just become fully equipped just before he went, he was killed. Actually what happened was they were, from what I can see they were totally disorganised because they were

posted to their battalions to 3 Battalion and they didn’t have their equipment and they hadn’t had it when the Akon Victory went to Korea. And they really didn’t get it. Australians here told me this and that was one of the reasons I had one of his letters published because I wanted people to know that our troops were there without being fully equipped. And I read, everything

I read about that time it proves beyond any doubt they weren’t fully equipped. Max will tell you. His equipment got lost, he had no equipment. He had no tool to dig in. They had their bare hands. They were supposed to be the troops that were the best equipped troops to leave Australia and they were probably the worst.

To me nothing. To him it was a fight against Communism. And Communism is what he hated and

nothing. I mean I don’t understand, I’m not going to pretend I understand anyone who leaves a safe secure position in which you’re doing well to go off and fight a war is not something women understand. Men do, but women don’t. And remember that I know two men very well who, or a lot of men

very well who did exactly the same thing and I just don’t understand.

Well Communism certainly meant that we wouldn’t be our own master. We wouldn’t be able to decide what we were going to do with our lives. It was just a fear that we all had at that

time. And I don’t really, I don’t really understand Communism very much but, well I don’t understand Communism at all but I know that it would mean that we couldn’t do whatever we wanted to do. And I don’t know, I don’t understand why he hated it so vehemently. But let me assure you he did. I don't know. And as he said he believed that he was

fighting a war that was just and worthwhile. Going to fight in a war that was just and worthwhile. To stop Communism before it gets here. That was his, that was it. I don't know.

No. He had two weekends leave in that five, final, in that five weeks. And no, he, they didn’t expect to go so soon. They were suddenly gone. And no, we never said goodbye, there was no goodbyes. Just,

it was just ridiculous. Everybody thought the same that all the secrecy shouldn’t have been happening. Nothing else.

His mother.

Oh the poor thing. I mean she’d lost her husband in World War I

hadn’t she. And she’d brought up those five children by herself. And she cried but she was a very hardy lady. Must have been very difficult for her. I know because I had to be the one who, I had to go and tell the family what, that he was

wounded in action. And I did that the next day. And yes it was very difficult for the family. After all he was their hero wasn’t he? And I think she probably took it pretty hard. But at that time when the wounded, “We regret to inform you that your husband has been Wounded in Action”, it was great,

because he was coming home. He’d have only had something wrong with an arm or a leg. And we didn’t know he was dead. And to me getting a telegram to say “He’d been wounded in action” really was a great relief. Because it wasn’t, he wasn’t dead. He was just wounded. And that’s why I think it was so difficult three

days later, when the second telegram came because that was a total reversal of what I’d expected. And I certainly wasn’t prepared for it. Because up until then I’d been thinking “Well it’s all over he didn’t get killed after all”, I was wrong. And he’ll be coming home. And that was really very difficult.

Very difficult. And I’ve never wanted anyone else to go through that. Not the way, way it happened anyway. No.

I would have, yes I would have. Because it gave a false hope, and

the hope wasn’t, it wasn’t there after that. It was just a terrible time because there was my child, they didn’t have a father. Their father was gone. And even though I knew it was going to happen, it was just very difficult to happen, that when it happened, it was

just very difficult. And everyone was saying, “You have to think of the baby”. All I could think of was, and poor Sandra when I think of her, how much, how did she cope with it. They say children know, are, children understand even though they’re only two and a half years old, they’re capable of knowing of turmoil around them. And it can affect the rest of their life. And I wonder

how much of her life that, that changed her life. Because I mean daddy said “He was coming home didn’t he?” Just a couple of days before that. He said, “I’ll be coming home soon”. And yes I worry about, I worry about how that may have affected her life. Although she’s a very successful, she had a very successful career,

I feel there’s a lot of hidden tragedy in her life that she’s probably never discussed and I never knew how difficult it had been for her until just a few years ago. And I realised how difficult it had been for her. Cause I don’t think you think of them being as hurt

because they’re small children. But from people I know now who have gone through the same thing, tell me that the, everyone would say, “Be sympathetic to the wife”, but they’d never say “Poor little child without a daddy”. They’d say, “Poor wife, poor mother, poor everybody”. And it is really important that we do think that when a man dies, in actual

service, he loses, his mother loses a son, his brothers and sisters lose one of their families. The whole family suffer. Aunts and uncles, who’ve seen these kids grow up, they’ve suddenly, they’re hurt too. It really affects just not one family, it affects everybody.

Everybody.

Well the lady who,

she was working, no I didn’t, I probably didn’t have as much sympathy for her as I should have. But my, the lady who brought me the telegram, she looked after Sandra when I had to go to hospital.

And I was very close to her. And she was sort of there more than I suppose his mother. And yet she must have been very closely, she must have been very seriously affected too. But I had so much grief, I didn’t really care about anyone else. I just couldn’t understand how life could go on for other people, how when it

came Christmas time six weeks later, how could anyone possibly celebrate Christmas? Because Len was dead and my children didn’t have a father. And how they could have Christmas I just did not understand. It was only six weeks before that, and how anyone could celebrate Christmas. The grief was so enormous that you couldn’t,

I couldn’t understand how anybody in the world could even celebrate Christmas. It was just awful. Anyway, stop that. And when Leneece came home, well I went to the doctor, I had to go to hospital. And Leneece wasn’t very well, she had

projectile vomiting and that meant she had to go to hospital and she was in hospital for three weeks. This poor little thing I remember, I looked at her in the hospital and she had a little curl on the side of her head and it was just like Len’s, he had a little curl just on the side of his head. The most beautiful brown hair that I’ve ever seen in my life. He had. Beautiful hair.

This lovely little hair of this little blonde headed baby with the same curl on her forehead. But there they are, were, without a father. It was just terrible. Cause I was not thinking of other people being sad was I. I was only thinking of selfish me.

But you’ve got to get on with your life. The doctor told me. He said “Memories are very poor company”. And if you don’t, oh this was three months down the track, he said “If you don’t pick yourself up you’re going to be in an institution and your children’ll be in an orphanage”. I can see myself sitting in the surgery, old Dr Hudson, to this day. And no-one was gonna ever bring my kids up

but me. So I started to think “Well, I’ve just got to get on with my life”. And I did. I had to. And young Sydie, Len’s brother, he’d joined the army. And so he used to drop in a fair bit. One of the off, one of the bad things about it was, a lot of the guys that he was friendly with, their wives didn’t

like me being friendly with them and them being friendly with me. And I, I thought that was a reflection on me. But I found from other widows as a matter of fact, that they had exactly the same reaction. The men, the women didn’t want their husbands to be friendly. I don't know why but they didn’t. And a lot of his friends that he worked with. I remember one particular guy, really nice

man was married with a couple of kids. And I called to see him one day and he said oh, can’t mention his name, “Well I better go and do my shopping, if Beryl comes home and, oh God, if, oh doesn’t matter, if Beryl comes home and finds you here, she’ll think there’s something going on.” Now how stupid can you be. You couldn’t even

be friends. And it happened over and over again. I thought it was just me and I regarded it as being detrimental to my personality but then I talked to another friend, whose husband had been killed and she said “Exactly the same was, thing was happening to her”. So it’s just something, their friends avoid you in case their wives think they’re having an affair with you or something.

It’s stupid but it happens. It happened.

No, a friend of mine her husband was killed a bit later on. And it was only her that I had much association with.

No I met, mixed mainly with the family, Len’s sisters, pardon me, I had a fair bit to do with them because they still lived in the area. Otherwise life went on, pardon me, life went on as normal. How can life be normal? I realised that I wanted to get out of the house that my dad owned and I wanted to get into my own house.

And so a solicitor, the RSL solicitor, we went to court and we got permission, got possession of the house. I think this guy had about three months to get out or something. And so then I did it up. And I had to start to

think about going to work. Which I did.

Well we had a war widow’s pension and I had a superannuation. But it wasn’t a lot of money. And I was paying off my house. And I probably could have lived but I think my life was pretty

useless and so, and I just wanted to get a job. Which is what I did. Did I mix with other people? Yes. I mixed with, not immediately, although we got an invitation to go to Sydney Legacy for Christmas for the kids, the

girls to go to the Christmas party in December. See Len was a legatee, his father had died and so he was a legatee. And my dad knew a lot of legatees. Other men and they, and yeah, it was good because all those women, they were, and those children, see it was only five years after the war and those kids had lost their fathers in

the war. So yes there was a bond with those kids. But then, they went to Legacy but nobody ever talked about their problems. They was never any “Let’s sit down, talk about your dad. We have voice production, we have physical culture, we have a library and wonderful things”, all those wonderful things and yes the

girls enjoyed it. Sandra absolutely loved it as she got a bit older, so did Leneece. And about once a week we went to Legacy. And I used to go in on the train from Canterbury. And yeah I enjoyed that, I enjoyed being with the other women. But even then I can remember telling these women, one particular lady, husband

had committed suicide, he was a Tobruk Rat. And I could see from what I, she was telling me that he’d suffered pretty much as a result of his 9th Division excursion to the Middle East. Anyway I told her “She should be applying to get a war widow’s pension” She said “Oh no, I’d never be able to do that.” And she was really quite angry that he’d committed suicide. And then you

some years later, Max got her pension through for her. Because he committed suicide owing to his problems. When we, when the Queen came here in 19, Legacy.

When the, was it 1952. August 1952 it would’ve been. One day a couple of the legatees, one night a couple of the legatees came to see me and they said “You’ve been selected to represent us to meet the Queen”. I thought that was a pretty great honour actually. And so we were one

of those families that were presented to the Queen. Sandra, later on Sandra was an outstanding young lady. Seven years old. And she was selected to lay the wreath at the Cenotaph. Which was sort of went to the seven year old of the ti, period. And that was a very pleasant time, I felt very proud of her. Very proud that she’d been

selected to do that. Each year they competed with physical culture. Sandra and Leneece were both very good. And they used to have competitions, national, state competitions. And they would compete in the teams and champion girl. And they always got into the finals. And

they had lots and lots of medals. And they had good friends. And then when time came to make their, they were grown up in high school, Sandra was a junior I think, yes. And they made their debut in Legacy. And probably lots of things happened in the meantime. But they Sir Roden Cutler was the Governor at that time.

And they had the honour of making their debut, Sir Roden Cutler and Lady Cutler. Both of them. And they were all benefits. But back years before that when Jeanie used, that’s my sister-in-law, she used to have this little white uniform with this lovely torch on the, I think I might have told you about that, she had this lovely torch on her, on

her white uniform and I thought “Gee that sounds a good club to belong to. If I ever have children I’ll see they belong to that club.” But I didn’t know you had to lose your father to belong to it. But it was good, it was good for them I think. They had a feeling of belonging. They were with children, although I don’t know, when you look back on it I don't know really that it would ever have occurred to them that

all those children had common bonds with them. But they did I suppose they did, but then they went there for a purpose. They went there for physical culture, they went there from one thing to another. And so I don’t really know that they thought too much about it. I don't know. But we were pretty involved with Legacy. Then when Sandra got married, there were six legatees came to her wedding.

Oh she used to teach at St George Legacy. Physical culture at St George Legacy. So did Leneece actually. They both taught over there. So they had a long history of, with legacy and they still do. So it changed their, I mean their life was totally different. I don't know what would have happened had it not been the, had things have changed. Had things not happened, what the changes

would have been. That’s all

As a baby. Well yeah. Well I don't know I can’t remember that what would have happened that in my letter I wrote

to him, I told him that the doctor said “She was fretting”. And he wrote back and said “If she’s fretting”, I don't know, I don't know whether she was crying, I was so up, so, too involved in my own misery probably to remember how she was fretting. I don't know but I know it happened. Whether she was crying a lot or not, I don't know.

Probably me, I was probably a bad mother.

I don’t think she’s ever stopped. And you read that and doesn’t that indicate that something like that.

And Leneece, she’s got a real chip on her shoulder because she never saw her father and Sandra did. Sandra really doesn’t remember him, she will say that. But she has a photo and on her bed

side table she’s got a photo of him when she was two years old, just before she went away. But Leneece has nothing like that. And when we went to Korea and took the girls with us, I fully realised that they

had never mourned. And that wasn’t until 1995. I’d been there before but we never took, the girls didn’t go ‘til... And that was the most tragic day of my life. When we,

the day we went to the cemetery in Pusan. I think that every child, every person should be able to go to see the graves of the men that are killed overseas. Because you say, can say goodbye and that, it was only then that those girls

really said “Goodbye to their father”. And Leneece just, she just fell on the ground in the most tragic way on that grave and she kissed the grave and the headstone and I think it was the first time that she’d ever really

felt that she had any contact with her father. Because until then she hadn’t, she hadn’t known him. But good old Max, he was there to hold them and comfort them. Me, I couldn’t do that. I just had my own grief but he was there for them like he had always, has been there for them.

And the girls, Kate and Maya, we took them too and they couldn’t handle it either. But they just, they just didn’t cry, they just walked away. They just distanced themselves completely from the grief that my daughter’s showed. And we were in a tour

with other Veterans and I’m sure that, that outpouring of grief will never leave those people because we just did not expect that to happen. We were all just going to see the graves. And then the girls found Lens and

it was just so much grief that they couldn’t handle. They just couldn’t handle it. And I don’t think, I didn’t know prior to that, they’d never really told me how they were dreading the day before the next day. They never said “I’m dreading going to Pusan tomorrow” but I found that they didn’t sleep very much.

And they would, although they wanted to go, they dreaded going there. But then they seemed as though they wanted to buy things, to take things, anything they could take away from there, they wanted to take. And we got to, when I’d been there in the 1970’s I’d planted a tree, I’d bought a tree on the way.

And I told these Korean people “I wanted to plant a tree”. And they didn’t want me to but I wanted to. And I needed to. And so I asked them for a shovel. And they wanted to dig a hole, and I wanted to dig the hole and put that tree into it. And so I think they actually let me dig part of it.

And I planted the tree. So when we went back years later of course, that day when the girls were with us, we couldn’t find this rotten tree anywhere. So they called the head gardener. And the head gardener had been there when we were there before. And he said “Yes, I remember plant, the lady planting the tree”. I’ll bet he did.

I’d probably been the only woman who’d ever planted a tree in a cemetery, insisted they did, even then they were trying to be kind to me. And but I needed to do it. I needed to plant that tree. It was something alive. Anyway they couldn’t find it anywhere. So we made arrangements to, for them to plant new ones. And I think we paid ninety dollars to plant two new Yew

trees which they planted and put a plaque on for us. And somebody told me just today that “There’s been a tour over there in April and they’ve bought a photo back for me of the new Yew trees”. So I’ve gotta have a look at them. See how they’ve grown.

I’d like to go back to Korea again but I want to go to Pyongyang. Want to go back to where they were. But I don’t think there’ll ever be peace up there and we’ll never get there. But I certainly don’t want to go back to where we’ve been twice before. I want to see what it was like up there. And every year we keep on thinking that there’ll be more peace and that we’ll be able to get there.

But it doesn’t happen that way. And I think that’s Max’s desire too. He wants to know, he wants to get to Pyongyang but while ever the Communists, that word Communist again, while ever the Communists are in control, we won’t be able to go there. And so it’ll probably be something I’ll die without doing.

But I really don’t have any desire to go back to any other part of Korea again. Oh well I wouldn’t mind going back to the cemetery. That’s the other part I want to know, I want to experience, I want to know what it was like there. When they were there that Broken Bridge and the things that I’ve heard about and I know about like I know the back of my hand. Those actions they were in.

And I’d like to go to the church, the original church where he was buried. And you know they were buried in North Korea. And it was five years before they, the United Nations could go to the cemeteries where our boys were buried and

with the North Koreans assisting them, they were able to pick up our soldiers that were buried there. And I feel very sad and angry that seeing it was five years down the track, I feel that we should have been notified that they were looking for them. And they took them back to Japan, the bodies

back to Japan and they were identified. Len didn’t have any, they called them dead meat tickets. He didn’t have any IDs on and they identified them by dental charts. And they were recovered under Operation Glory in

1955. And I think that we should have been notified that they were, and as a matter of fact, the Australian War Graves do not hold the burial records. And it took me about forty years before I could prove that he still wasn’t in a cemetery in North Korea. And I finally got it

from the War Cemet, the United Nations War Cemetery in Pusan. And they told me, the “Australian records only hold the procedure of Operation Glory”. Operation Glory meant that they picked them up and they took them to Japan. But that did not prove to me beyond any doubt that they were in fact re-interred in Pusan and it was

the United Nations Cemetery that gave me that information and they told me that on the date, and I can’t remember the date in 1950 with a padre from the Cameroons, their bodies were re-interred in Pusan. He came back, his bodies was brought back with a name, a guy named Kirby who was killed on the

same day as he was and they were buried in adjoining graves. In this little churchyard, the Presbyterian church yard in North Korea. And we, Max and I, offered to pay to copy all the, every re-burial record

of every soldier that was buried in Pusan. So that the records can be held in Australia which I believe they should be held. They’re not held here because it was a United Nations war. And we are not allowed to hold them here because it contravenes the Privacy Act. And yet we were prepared to pay, so that all these records, for all the copies of all the records to be held. And there’s letters I’ve

got there telling me that it can’t be done. And I think that should be done too. I’ve written for other people for their records for them. And they don’t come to me they go directly to the, but I build up this association, because of the trees, I build up an association with the Korean at the United Nations Service,

Cemetery and I was able then to write to them on behalf of these other people. And I know they’ve got them and they’re the only ones that I know that have them. So, times up.

He wrote everything so casually, so cold, so... a few of us we lost a few men, but it was better than losing a

whole company. The Battle of Broken Bridge how they went across the bridge at night and they were, they didn’t think they’d get back. It was all military type letters and that’s why the memorial would like to own them. Very little personal stuff.

the guys tell me as the fellow who was always writing, as the fellow that was always writing letters. And I don’t quite understand but he... here he says, “Everyone’s been wondering whether Russia is going to come in.” Now this was the sixth of October. That was when things were getting bad.

“If she does, I hope I can still run as fast as ever. There is between seventy and one hundred thousand of us altogether, and that sounds a lot. But when you think how many the Ruskies can muster, we wouldn’t be able to stop them for long.” It was military

letters. “Last night we heard that the South Koreans had crossed the thirty-eighth parallel and there were being battered back. But it turned out that it wasn’t that way at all. Wednesday night after we came from a patrol after dark they told us to pack straight away as we had to move out.” That sort of stuff. “No doubt you’re wondering why

this, I’m writing on this type of paper. No doubt you’re wondering why this paper but it is all I have and I can’t do anything but use it. We got an issue of a pad but when I went to get it, when I went in to get it to write this letter, there were only two pages left. Another bloke had just starting

to write on them.” They got a pad issued between them. “Hope to get some YMCA paper or something before I write again. I had a pleasant surprise at lunchtime, I came back from patrol and there were three letters from you waiting for me. Your letter were dated the twenty-fifth, twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh, all redirected so I will be glad when I get them

straight away instead of them going all over the place. Pleased that Jeanie had a son.” That was his sister so there was something personal in that. I think that this is most unusual, this type of paper. And you see, ending up with, “Your loving husband, Len. Dear, P.S. Dear Sandra, a big hug and a very big kiss from daddy who misses you darling.”

That’d be a bit personal. That’s all I’d get. The rest of it would be military operations. That’s just the way they seemed to write. Put that back in there, come adrift.

I don't know there’s one letter here that actually ooh I don't know he said

I was going crook on him for something one stage. There’s one letter here. Oh this is an interesting one. “My darling Sandra, I received your very welcome letter last night sweetheart and was very pleased. Your daddy was very happy to get it and see how

good you can write. Don’t forget to give mummy a very big hug and a kiss for daddy every night. I miss you darling daughter and I hope I’ll be able to come home very soon and play lots of games with you.” That was the twenty-ninth, that was the last letter he ever wrote. There you are, there’s a letter. He wrote that letter on the back of a letter I’d written to him. That was all the paper he had. I just said I was in hospital.

“By the way last time I saw Eric,” that was his best friend, “he told me to tell you something and I, I’d forgotten to tell you about it. I think it was your grade exams had come through. Would that be right? Anyway will ask him next time I see him. Had a dreadful night last night, I couldn’t sleep at all. And only had got to sleep about midnight and Sandra woke up and she was awake until three thirty.

And by this time I got, by the time I got to sleep it was four o’clock and I woke up at five o’clock after rushing around all day I was pretty tired.” The lawn mower broke. That’s, that was the last letter and it was written on, now this is really interesting. I think this is it, written

on a paper that he got from, they captured in a Korean house. And I really have often wondered what that is all about. I’ve often been going to talk to somebody about it. That was it. Oh this is interesting. Said, “We

ask, just after the jeeps and motorbikes were knocked out,” no, “Well, Wednesday here I am again after a hectic time and I will tell you about it as I go along. We had to knock off in a hell of a hurry and before we knew it we were in a terrific attack. But I will come to that one later. Just after the jeeps and motorbikes were knocked out the gooks [slang term for the Chinese or North Korean enemy] counterattacked and what a hell of a night. It was terrific trying to dig in

under the artillery and mortar fire and the ground was really solid gravel. Only had my hands and a small shovel but I managed to scrape out a bit of a hole. I never had a wink of sleep and nothing to eat. And to make matters worse, at half past four in the morning, the enemy tank came up and stopped about ten yards from our position and started blasting away with his machine guns and a

big cannon. We all thought that we’d had it and we didn’t think we had a chance of getting out of it. I tried to get the bazooka working but something went wrong and I couldn’t get it to go, so we just had to blaze away with our rifles etc. We lay there and prayed til dawn an air support but the ‘b’ shot through.” He didn’t swear. “But the ‘b’ shot through just before dawn. It

was marvellous luck for us as he only got a couple with his tank fire while we collected a lot of his infantry behind the tank. That day and after that it was a case of advance until his tanks held us up and wait until our planes knocked them out and we haven’t stopped at all. As I told you at the start of this letter, I started while waiting for the planes to come to get some of his tanks. In our little section they got

eight tanks. While trying to scribble a few lines, they told us to move on and hold our position after one of our companies had attacked and taken it. We had to advance across a very wide stretch of paddy fields and we still made it out. How we ever got across, as he put up a terrible fight, I do not know. Before we knew what was happening A Company was told to attack the ridge. We went charging up and found a ‘b’ tank up there

waiting for us. Luckily the bazookas were working and we got it with out first shot. Altogether we got three tanks to A company’s credit that afternoon. After taking the first ridge, the company commander just kept going and much to our surprise we finished up taking four ridges, each one higher than the last. We had a lot of casualty that’s killed a terrific amount of gooks. By the time we took the last ridge, we were getting pretty short of ammo

and in a bad spot. And we had no shovels, no tucker and no warm clothes with us and the gooks massed up for a big attack. They looked like wiping us out. Luckily an American RT officer [Rail Transport] was with us and we asked him to provide fire for us. He said he couldn’t do it as the guards, as the gooks were only a hundred yards away and as the shells, over six-inch, had a killing range of over the distance, he couldn’t guarantee

fire for us. We ask all the blokes and they agreed to take the risk so that, and so up came the shells and gee it was a marvellous sight. Right in the middle of the mob of gooks, gooks went thirty-six inch shells and what a mess. We had a few casualties and were about bomb happy by the time the barrage had finished. But it was better to lose a few blokes

from shrapnel than lose a whole company. The Yanks reckoned it was marvellous and they just can’t get over the way we let them shell so close to us. We didn’t have any holes to get into, we were just laying on the open ground. We had to dig in with our bare hands and bayonets and until two o’clock when they bought up a small amount of tucker, ammo and shovels and much to our surprise a couple of very, our own

heavy machine guns. We lay awake all night expecting the gooks to attack but the artillery did too much damage to their, to their morale and they never attacked. The next morning the Brigadier, a Pommy and our Colonel were very pleased and thought we’d done a good job and we all thought every one of us was lucky to get out alive. We moved into the position we now occupy late Monday night

and the Yanks took over from us. We were supposed to have at least two weeks rest but we got word that we, and we just have to move at dawn in the morning, so it looks as though they just can’t do without us. Received three letters yesterday and managed to read them before dark, the twenty-fourth, the twenty-fifth and the twenty-sixth. Gee they were welcome sweetheart. I just didn’t get a chance to write yesterday as we’ve had too much to do. We had to fix all up our weapons

and ammo and we even managed to get a hot bath. It was great. We took over an empty gook house and in the kitchen boiled up a big, in a big earthenware jug. And we didn’t recognise ourselves after we got all the dirt off our hair and off our bodies. We went out on a patrol yesterday afternoon and got two fowls and a sucking pig, about fifty pounds, some sweet potatoes and some Chinese spinach. We got the cooks to cook up our pig

and last night the six of us in Headquarters Platoon ate the whole pig. Gee it was just beautiful. Not a very big one after cleaning and as it was the first fresh food we had, meat we had, you can imagine, we just gorged ourselves until we couldn’t move. We got up this morning and as soon as we were able to we lit a fire and stewed our fowls. Had a beautiful broth and a fowl between three

men. Our stomachs are beginning to feel normal again. Our cooks cooked some buns for dinner and honestly they were as good as I’ve ever had. Hope we get a chance to get some more. So much for our stomachs. We all thought that we would get a full night’s sleep last night, the first one since we’d landed in Korea. We settled into bed but ‘b’ me if at eleven thirty a plane came over and bombed us. Only one bloke wounded in the hand. But

he ruined our sleep the ‘b b’. He dropped four bombs, not very big ones and sprayed us with his burp guns, his machine guns, very cheeky. I was all laced up in my sleeping bag and I couldn’t be bothered getting out. A Company has copped everything now, mortar, artillery, infantry, tanks and planes. They all seem to pick on us. And as one bloke said he wouldn’t be surprised if he saw a submarine coming

across the paddy fields and started throwing hand grenades at us. And that would be everything. Yesterday we got issued with a pair of windproof trousers to go with our jackets, a beaut warm angora scarf and a sleeping bag.” This was the twenty-sixth of October. “The bag is waterproof and you have to get inside and button it up and then once you’re inside you,

the cover has a large zipper and it zippers right up and round your neck. Very warm and so you can understand why we didn’t get over, get out when ‘Bedcheck Charlie’ came over and bombed us.” ‘Bedcheck Charlie’ was a guy, a plane that came over and it’s well documented. “The weather of a night now is round zero mark and we expect snow any tick of the clock.

We have been wearing enemy caps with earmuffs and padded jackets to keep warm but they stopped us because we look too much like the gooks at night and we had to burn them. I’m feeling pretty good again but had a bit of trouble with my feet and could hardly walk for a couple of days but they’re just about better. But I still want to get home to my family. I

hope it isn’t too long. They won’t get me in any more wars. I will be at home and I will read about it and any of them in the future. I love you darling. I have decided to shave my moustache off but when I read your letters and you said you’d like to see it I decided I’d change my mind. I don’t think you’ll like me very much with a moustache so. I think I told you about getting a letter from Athol

Rogan,” that’s one of his friends “last night and half a dozen books. I don’t get much chance to read books but it was a nice thought. Yes, yes all the papers and cakes will be more than welcome. Some of the bags are getting, some of the boys are getting cakes all the time and I would appreciate it if I get a cake from you. Send

anything, everything through Eric.” That’s one of his friends. “And won’t be very expensive, as expensive to send it. Were out on patrol and found a house full of loot. Beautiful silks and kiddies boots, rubber, fur lined, but we can’t carry any of that stuff or get it home so we just had to leave it. Nearly broke my heart having to leave it. Well I will knock off, well darling I will knock off for today and try to write

you every day. I know it’s impossible but I always hope I get the chance to write every day. I know I will go to bed tonight wishing I was home after kissing my darling daughter goodnight and getting her a goodnight hug from her. Dear sweetheart it will be good to be home again with my family. Thanks for the photo, we all thought it was beautiful.” That would have been of Sandra. “And send any more up, they will be

welcome. Please forgive this letter, I know it is horribly written but it is better than none at all.” That was the last letter. Except there was this little bit. “My darling Sandra.” So you ask what he wrote about, nothing but war was it. Just a paragraph of personal stuff.

I don’t know what other guys wrote about. I didn’t get any letters from them.

Yep. Yep, two or three days before. That was Sandra before, when he went away. I had that taken. And of course why did we know that all this was happening

because it says “Aussies in fierce fight over the river.” Lawson Glassop, this is what I was telling you about before, “Lawson Glassop The Herald correspondent in Korea sent two contrasting stories of the fortunes of war. Among the Australians was a Lance Corporal known as the enemy couldn’t, as the man the enemy couldn’t kill. He was Butch McHenry of Charters Towers who was wounded three times in Middle East and once in New Guinea.” I

told you, they were mad. I haven’t changed my mind. “...once in New Guinea and now he’s been twice slight, slightly wounded in Korea but still fighting on.” Butch McHenry. Anyway, “Another man delayed his compassionate leave to return to his sick wife and child but he couldn’t, didn’t want to leave his mates at a critical time. He said when things get easier I’ll go.” And

that night the enemy attacked and he was killed. Then it says “New South Wales men die in Korea.” “Aussies fierce fight over the river.” That’s the story of Broken Bridge. “Miracle escape in shelling.” And that’s when they were wounded.

I first saw him in early 1951. There’s one of those leaflets you were telling me about. I’ll get back to that in a minute I promise you. Going to show you one of those leaflets they dropped, can’t see one now. When did I meet Max. He,

he came home, he left Korea in after the fifth of November and went back to Japan to hospitalise and hospital and recreation, no recuperation. And he came home in January and no, he didn’t come home in January. Didn’t

come home til June. In January his parents wrote me a letter saying “They were coming to Sydney and they’d had a letter from their son that was his best friend was killed and would they go and see me”. “Right”. Which they did. Then sometime later that year they wrote to me and said “Max was in hospital in Concord and would I go and see him?”. And yes I did go and

see him. And he went on his way and I went on my way. I certainly wasn’t interested in him or vice versa I imagine. And in 1954 I met his mother again by accident. And she told him that she’d seen me and he came to see us.

That would’ve been towards the end of 1954. And then we be, he lived at Bowral at that time and he used to come up, his parents lived at Wiley Park and he used to come up on the weekends and he’d go down, he’d come down and see us. And we became very good friends. And he was a link with my past which

I was not prepared to forget. So that was 1954. That was a long way of getting around to an answer wasn’t it. You asked me a question. I’ve answered it.

In 19, November the, November the nineteenth, 1955. And then

about six months later his World War II problems started to come against him. God and he was in and out of hospital. And it was all on again wasn’t it? And he’d be in hospital for months and he’d moved to Sydney in the meantime of course. And

we decided to build a new house in Beverley Hills. Which we did. And he was sick, he was in hospital and he had two major operations on his kidneys. And they, the doctors, gave him just a very short time to live.

And I can remember saying to the doctor, “But he’s had an operation, he’ll be alright.” And he said, “There’s going to be artificial kidneys.” And he said “An artificial kidney will be as big as a motorcar engine.” But anyway during the time, he was working at the Repatriation Department, and helping people.

At night he’d come home, ring up these guys, and he’d say “You’re coming in tomorrow for an appeal or whatever it is. And if you keep on telling them that you’ve got a bad back and you can’t go to work because you’ve got a bad back, they’re not going to listen to you. What you really can’t go to work for is you can’t stand being with people can you? And say no.”

And that’s when he realised that people were going the wrong way about claiming for disabilities that they were entitled to have accepted. And he’d have got the sack if he’d have, if they’d have known that. But you see what a lot of guys do, they claimed for disabilities, they won’t admit there’s something wrong in their

head, or something wrong here, they claim for a bad back. And the doctor says, “You might have a bad back but it’s not stopping you going to work.” And unless they admit they’ve got a disability they get nowhere. And I suppose it’s ever since then that he’s been interested in helping people. But anyway in 1964 his career came to an end.

Because the doctors decided that if he was to live a normal life he’d only be able to live it if he didn’t have to stand up in the train and go to work every day. But modern medicine has come into his life and instead of giving him, see he couldn’t be superannuated, because and this is another tragedy.

He couldn’t be superannuated because of his war disabilities. And so he couldn’t be made permanent. And psychologically that must have been very, very bad for him. To know that he could do a job but he couldn’t get permanency because he’d moved from another government job and in those days you couldn’t transfer your superannuation from one government department. And so he couldn’t be superannuated which meant he couldn’t get promotion. And even

though he devised a whole new system which would have meant a big increase in his salary, he couldn’t get it. And psychologically that must have been devastating for him. And so in 1964 he left work. He had a lot of time; he had a lot of time off before then. He was in and out of hospital the whole time.

He has an exceptional ability for mathematic and engineering. He was offered a job with a very big company. He did a vocational guidance test for a very big company in that field. But could he get it, no. Because he couldn’t pass a

medical. And so I went to, I went to, when he couldn’t get permanency I went to see my Member of Parliament. I think my, my, I could probably blame or give credit to my grandfather because I used to read about him and he seemed to be doing good things for a lot of people. And I think he probably influenced me a fair bit to go for a Member of

Parliament. And his name was Mr Stewart. And I put it to him that a government should employ a Veteran who couldn’t be employed in other places. And he got through parlia, and he should be able to be superannuated, and that came through that Veterans from then on would be

able to, their war disabilities would not be held against them as far as their medical was concerned. And so that was a really great thing to happen to future veterans. And but he got into trouble. Because you’re not allowed to go over, past your immediate superior are you. And Betty had done exactly what she shouldn’t have done.

But they couldn’t demote him because he couldn’t be permanent anyway could they. So I guess that his life, through the war, has been ruined. Because after the war he wasn’t able to hold down a permanent

job. I mean a job that they considered he would give them permanent, a permanent position. He couldn’t even get a job, there was a providency type of fund which you had to be able to guarantee seven years work. And he couldn’t even pass that medical. And yet here he is today

still surviving. And still helping other people. So, and getting a great deal of reward from it. We don’t get paid for our work. We’re not paid employees. We get out of pocket expenses and I get petrol to run my car.

And I’m quite satisfied with that.

Well I volunteered to be, do welfare work. They lost their welfare, oh their welfare officer got sick. And the assistant welfare officer took over and they asked for someone to help and I said “I’d do it”.

And so it sort of got it from there. And then I realised they didn’t have a pensions officer, because when you’ve got a pensions person in your own home you don’t worry too much about and you don’t need it yourself. And I thought my God, oh please don’t tape this, I thought God... And that’s not, yeah it’s

an elected position and it was very much needed, very much needed. And yes it is an elected position, nobody ever opposes him, nobody wants to do it do they. Mine’s, my job, I was elected, I’m the only female on the committee

of ten. And I never thought they’d elect me because I once took them to the anti discrimination court. I never thought they’d speak to me again.

I visit people in hospitals, I talk to them about their,

what disabilities do you have accepted. And if I think they’ve got disabilities that are associated with their war service I suggest that they come up to the office or else I’ll see them and I’ll fill in a form for them. If we don’t, if they don’t know anything about it we apply for their Service Documents which

helps them remember. Not supposed to do that because it’s called a fishing expedition. But we do it anyway. And it helps them remember the things that might have happened that they’ve forgotten about. My particular interest is disabilities and war widows.

widows, women whose husbands have died and perhaps never looked at claiming a pension for their disabilities. And I suggest that we talk to them and look at the history of the Veteran. Idiot. And, not you, and

we look at their claims and we, if we think that there’s a hope of them getting a war widow’s pension we do that. We’ve actually this year, I think, this year handled a lady, or might have been last year, whose husband died. He was a World War I Veteran. And he’d died many years ago.

And it had never been suggested to her that he might have died of war related disabilities. I’m talking about forty years ago. He died. And somebody said to her, she said “Why don’t you go and see Max and Betty at the RSL?” And yes she did have a claim. Because of his disabilities

that she knew of and because he died of some particular condition. And we claimed for it and yes we got it, it came through. And that’s very rewarding.

A huge difference. I guess that it isn’t, it makes a big

financial difference to them. The current rate is probably about sixty dollars a week if they don’t have a lot of money. They get the same pension as they would if they were a civilian widow but they also get an assistance, which amounts to about sixty dollars a week. And they also get a Gold Card. And the Gold Card is their treasure. Because that means they can be treated as a private patient

in a shared ward situation if they go to hospital. And they’re not a public patient. But to me the difference is that they get their husband’s death recognised as due to war service. I guess it isn’t so much money and when I wanted, I worked desperately hard to get the reinstatement of war widows’ pensions

for a long time, it was not a matter of yes there’s extra money involved, it was a matter of, if the ladies who husband died after 1984 got their pensions re, they kept their war, they kept their war widows’ pensions if they remarried because it was considered as a compensation

for the loss of their husband. So okay why weren’t the widows whose husbands died in war and are buried half a world away and whose grave you can’t see and whose children were deprived of their father all those years, why weren’t they equal with the ones whose husbands came home and they had them for forty years. And yes I was very upset about that. And it wasn’t that they were, it wasn’t a matter of money,

as one Member of Parliament told me it was. It was not a matter of money, it was a matter of principle. It was a matter of being treated equally. And to me that’s really important. And yes it did come through and yes it was a lot of work, a lot of work, and except for radio station 2GB announcer who fought our battle for us, we’d never have got it through. Because he talked to the Prime Minister, every time he talked to the

Prime Minister, of course we were talking to him all the time weren’t we and asking him to support us. And he did see it was, was something that was wrong. Another thing Alan Jones did for us, was he, the Australian guys who went to Korea and who were killed in Korea, like Len, were not entitled to the ‘45-‘75 medal. Now they served outside

Australia between ‘45 and ‘75 but they, I was told that “No” he wasn’t, “Len wasn’t entitled to it because he got the Korean medal”. But a lot of other people were. Anyway Alan Jones took that on because he could see it was unfair. And he spoke to Max on the air and a lot of people had been speaking to a lot of other people but we weren’t getting anywhere. And I don’t care

who knows this because this is the truth. And Max, he spoke to Max on the air and he spoke to Max on the air about the war widows reinstatement and he spoke to Bronwyn Bishop. He got, asked Bronwyn Bishop to come onto the radio and debate it but she declined. But it was only a few weeks after he took it on and many

people had tried for years to get an Australian medal for the Australians who served in Korea. Not the United Nation medal, Australian medal. And I have, they, all those Veterans have a great deal of thanks to give to Alan Jones because he fought for them.

Ah, what do you mean by that?

I think it’s, I think we should be learning about our,

our Veterans, how to care for them, I don’t think we have learned. I have my doubts at this stage whether the Vets are getting the benefits that we’ve learned or should have learned that they need. I don’t think that to me it appears a couple of young guys I know

don’t seem to be able to achieve much more than the Veterans did after Korea or Vietnam or World War II. From what I’m told,

the people at the top tell me that “They should be receiving treatment” but the guys tell me, and I’m not talking about Vietnam Veterans, I’m talking about the current campaign Veterans. They don’t seem to be getting the treatment that I consider they

should be getting. And I know one young man and yes why shouldn’t I say it, it’s the truth. I know one young man who is on leave, he’s off, he’s obviously suffering from a great deal of stress from an injury he received in Timor. He had two tours of Timor. He had, he told me

he had eye injury after the first tour. He really didn’t want to go back, he didn’t protest about it, but he didn’t want to go back because he was afraid that he was going to injure it more. And we don’t understand how we feel remember, why we feel this way, why we know things are going to happen. But he said “He felt that if he went back

he’d injure his eye again” and that is exactly what happened. Right. Now he is off on leave, he’s still a member of the Defence Force. Please don’t tape, don’t release this for a while. He’s still a member of the Defence Force, he lives in, he’s living in a unit away from the camp. And he’s on leave to try and sort

himself out. But how can you sort yourself, sort yourself out when you’re not getting enough treatment. And I don’t mean drug treatment. And this lad worries me that he’s going to end up, although he’s telling me he’s trying not to drink and spend his, sit and drink all day and watch television. But how’s he going to recuperate if he’s not seeing, having treatment on a pretty regular

basis. Not only six weeks and he tells me “He can’t get treatment because they’re too busy”. There’s too many of them need I suppose, psychological treatment. And he doesn’t think he’s getting it. Well he’s not getting it. And that worries me a great deal. But if they’ve got problems and they recognise them now and they get them

accepted now, then they’ve got at least some sort of compensation in the future when they if they develop other problems. I mean this young kid’s lost the greater part of the sight in one eye. He’s twenty-six years of age. And of course he’s messed up in the brain. If I were twenty-six and I’ve lost the sight in my eye.

I’d be worried. Go on, take that. Oh I thought it was something for me.

I’m absolutely positive. Absolutely positive. I don't understand it myself. I try to, and I try to see why they drink.

It worries me a fair bit that these young men now who are smoking very heavily. And I know another Timor Veteran who is, and outside those two, and they’re smoking heavily, they’re doing damage to themselves. And where did it start, it started after Timor. The point is now that those kids

aren’t covered. Because they know the damage that smoking can cause them, they know it kills. And so the Veterans Affairs aren’t going to cover them or ADF, Australian Defence Force compensation aren’t going to cover them. And yes I can understand it but where are they going to be down the track? They’re not going to be covered for their heart conditions and their lung conditions and their periphular

vascular disease or their impotency. And where are they going to go? Because they know they’re not covered. But it isn’t stopping them smoking. And yeah that worries me a great deal. And it isn’t stopping them drinking to forget.

And until we overcome those two problems I think these young fellows of tomorrow are going to be the same as a lot of our guys now. Who sit in the clubs and drink all day. And have those disabilities accepted. But these young fellows won’t. So no I don’t think that,

I don’t think they’re going to be looked after properly. Well, no not properly, but to cover their disabilities. That they’re going to have healthwise. And they’re probably not going to cover their psychological problems because the guys that I talk to, I talked to a guy today, he still has nightmares. He’s seventy-seven. Seven,

yeah, seventy-seven he is. He still has nightmares. And I said “How much pension have you got?” He said “Forty percent”. I said “Have you ever claimed for post traumatic stress?” He said “No, I claimed for anxiety disorder and they knocked me back”. There you are that’s what I was telling you about before. They claim for the wrong thing. Or they find no anxiety disorder and there’s

a difference between anxiety disorder and post traumatic stress. And so he tells me “He’s still having nightmares”. Terrible nightmares. So what’s going to be different between these guys that are at Timor or over in the Middle East. Nothing. Because they’re all going to have the same problems. I said to a guy one day, I said “Jack, did you have any problems when you were away?”

I said “Do you want to claim for a pension?” I said “Do you have any bad memories?” He said “Oh no not many”. And I said “Well just tell me about it for a while”. He said “Well, I suppose there’s one”. And I said “And what happened then?” He said “Well, we were landing in somewhere up in the islands” and he said “The Japs attacked. And they shot my officer next to me.” And I said “It didn’t upset you”. I mean he’d been

telling me “He didn’t have any stress”. He said “Of course I did”. I said “What did you do?” He said “I shit myself. Sorry.” That’s, and he tells me he’s had no stress. You don’t do that. Unless you’re in a stressful situation. Do you? And those are the things you come up against.

Anyway. He’ll be E.D.A [?]. very soon.

What can we do to help? I don't think we can do anything because you and I aren’t going to be with those Veterans. And we’re not going to see what’s happening and I don’t think the government understands. I think there are people that do understand. I think Danna Vale for example understands. But I

don’t know that she’s going to be able to see all those people that she says, we will treat these boys differently. But she’s not going to be able to find out that those boys aren’t being treated differently is she. Unless someone tells her. And I’ll be telling her, I’ll tell her too. And don’t write that down.

She said to me “We don’t want this to happen, we want them to have proper treatment”. But nobody’s going to be reporting to her as the Minister and telling her that it isn’t happening. Are they? And if it’s not the Veteran’s Affairs and the Department of the Army that look after them or the ADF, then they’re going to be suffering exactly the same as those guys

have done all these years. And I know a young man that we’ve helped who’s a really bad alcoholic. And I can see some of these kids going down exactly the same way. Unless they get help. And

actually there’s one guy I know who’s a Korean Veteran and I would like to take him and a Timor Veteran I know, and be able to, say to somebody “If we don’t watch out this young man is going to be that young man in fifty, that old man in fifty years time. A chronic alcoholic.”

Because the younger they are when they start to drink and become, and drink alcohol to dim their memories, the worse it’s going to come, be for them. And they do drink. I said to one guy once, I said “Why do you drink so much?” Actually he was a pilot, DFC [Distinguished Flying Cross] winner. He said “Because it helped me forget.”

I said to another guy one day “Why do you drink?” And he said “Because it stops me thinking of seeing my mate’s arms going through the air. It stops me seeing the fellow that was in the minefield that we couldn’t get out, one fellow told me.

He was there and we couldn’t, we had to leave him. He was in a minefield.” And as soon as they went to get him, the enemy went to, this was in Korea I think, and they would be shot at. And they went back the next morning and he wasn’t there. And that’s why they drink, to forget.

But you get people like Max who don’t drink. But God only knows what goes on in his mind. I’ll never know. He doesn’t drink to forget, he doesn’t smoke. But if they’re that way inclined, some people it’s like a medicine. But alcohol’s also a depressant and so they just

get melodramatic. And I think things get worse for them and they have another sm, another drink and another smoke. Well that’s what they tell me, I don't know any of them, I’ve never lived with them. But that’s what they tell me happens.

With me? With great difficulty. How does he cope, I don't

know. I don't know, he’s got an amazing tenacity with things of great difficulty. He’s not a demonstrative person, he’s not a person who talks a lot. He doesn’t talk very much at all. I don't know how he’s ever coped with the lot, the medical problem that he’s had. Any

less a person wouldn’t have. I don't know. And I have never heard him complain. Never. He just does not. He just does not. I do know that he does have a, there is a stress there. Because,

and I didn’t understand that for many years, because he never said anything about it. But one day I walked up behind him and just touched him and he didn’t hear me. And he jumped. I’m only talking about a couple of years ago. And he suddenly said “Don’t do that to me”. And I never knew that when anyone came up behind him he always jumped. But I had no idea that it was a reaction to the war. I always

thought it was always something, I just did not understand. I didn’t understand why he did it. Until he said, “Don’t do that to me”. And if he’d have said that years ago, I would’ve known. But you interview people and you know that they don’t talk. They don’t tell you their problems. I don't know.

Of course it is because you don’t know. You don’t know. I mean back to Len, he never talked about how difficult it was. And yet I looked at his records and I could see that he’d been in hospital, in, no, I didn’t know him, in hospital, out of hospital, home on a hospital ship, in hospital.

And then as soon as they’re better they go back into action. But he never said one solitary word about it. And most of them didn’t. Maybe they did on Anzac Day to each other and their stories probably got longer. They just didn’t. And they don’t. They’ve all got to be admired.

And on Anzac Day when I saw Dick Smith, waving, standing there with his thanks I somehow got a real big kick out of that to see such a big man can stand there and say “Thanks”. That’s something that was really important. Something I’ll never forget. Just seeing Dick Smith holding up and saying “Thanks”. And we wouldn’t have had that except we had all these protests before Anzac

Day from all these young people who are brainwashed at university. And I know one of them. They’re not getting the picture of what life is really about. They’re blaming John Howard for everything. John Howard has nothing to do with the Bali bombing. He has nothing to do what happened in

America. And so a lot of these students blame John Howard for what. It’s not his fault what happened in America in September [presumably referring to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks]. It’s not his fault Bali was trashed and we lost eighty Australian lives, eighty-eight Australian lives or some number like that. And but why is he getting the blame because

somebody at school level and university level is feeding these young people with nonsense. Why don’t they say “What’s it, what’s happened over there? Why, there were a thousand bodies found just recently.” No, none of these young protesters are saying anything about that. Isn’t that

important? Isn’t that a tragedy and that our young Australian soldiers have gone over there. Yes I didn’t like to think of them going either. But fortunately they had no casualties. But isn’t that something that we should be thinking about and trying to stop before it gets any worse the same as those guys who went to Korea, believed they were stopping Communism.

I can understand I suppose the same situation now. Australia went to the aid of people in, half a world away the same as Australia went to the aid of the South Koreans when they were being pushed up, away by Communism. This wasn’t Communism over there but it was tyranny. And Unfortunately I think our younger generation just have

a totally wrong concept of what life is about when they can stand up like they did at Town Hall. And I got caught up in one of those demonstrations and I was absolutely horrified at the way they were carrying on. And these are the young people that our men in all the past wars have fought for. For the country to be like this. And I really have talked to a number of soldiers, servicemen who’ve said

“If they’d have known what this country was like, going to be like, they would never have offered their lives”. And I don’t think the ones that I talked to would be the only ones who would think that way. Because they offer their lives for a better life, they offered their life for, and gave their lives for something that they believed was just and worthwhile. And I don’t think what we’ve got now is what, worth what they’ve given their lives for.

Sorry.

No, not at all. No, not at all. I think they’re totally ignorant of what is happening. Weren’t the people in the Middle East, wouldn’t they have

those scars? I don’t think they were doing it for us at all. I don’t think they were doing it for our soldiers. I don’t really. They wouldn’t know about these sort of things. Would you?

Prior to your work, would you know what it was like, you wouldn’t have. You don’t know, you wouldn’t have protest, you might have protested

in your time. But that’s your right. But don’t protest about things they know nothing about. And those young people who were protesting, they weren’t protesting really about our soldiers going there. No I don’t believe that, it was all to do with politics. All to do with politics. The same as they’re hounding, the people now are hounding the Governor General.

Well okay he did, made a very bad mistake but I don’t think he should have been hounded and I don’t think that they’re really hounding him for anything apart from politics and their dislike for the position of the Governor General. What are we doing, we’re supposed to be talking about the war.

If that’s what you believe in, that’s what you do. I wouldn’t advise them either way. But I will wish them, I would wish them luck. And

hope they come back. My life would have no bearing on what I would say because my belief is we fight for what we believe in. And I think if they go to war, if they don’t want to go that’s a different matter, but if they’re going because they’ve joined the army, the navy or the air force for a reason, they’re a national force.

And if they feel that they want to serve our country, yes they should go. You don’t agree with me do you?

No.