Australians at War Film Archive

I was born in Carlton of a large family. One of 11 children. In Carlton, I was born, I’m not sure whether it was at the [Royal] Women’s Hospital or the private home. For my

elder sister I believe it was in a private home, which was common in those days. I grew up firstly, I started off in Newport, then my parents moved to Collingwood. And I spent most of my early days in Collingwood. Went to Collingwood State School in Cromwell Street. Then later to the Collingwood Technical School. On

quite a number of times I visited the Collingwood Football Club, after, when I was about 10 year old onwards, and became quite enthusiastic about the Collingwood team. Then in those days it was pretty hard. There was no money about. And I can remember coming home from the technical school, we would call into the Salvation Army in Wellington Street and we

would get a great big lump of bread and jam and eat it on the way home. So it was quite an event in those days to go somewhere where you get a feed. Sunday mornings there was what they called a free breakfast mission in Wellington Street, and of course we always attended there. Probably one of my best experiences was during this time where they had food services, big choirs.

I was a member of the choir and their Christmas trees and etc., etc. The Sunday School picnics that they had were fantastic. It probably meant a trip to the Collingwood station. You marched down there, on a train to Heidelberg, march to Warrigal Park in Heidelberg. Then they’d have sports races and the first time I had ever been introduced to what they call a

lolly man.

When I left school I worked in various places, there was Yarra Falls and Foy & Gibson’s, and then later I went into a foundry and asked for a job

and surprisingly I got a job in a foundry. After being a labourer for some time they put me on moulding and so from then on I become quite a skilled moulder. As we progressed, I was at my friend’s place in Drummond Street Carlton and we were all sitting around the pianola and his mother came in on one Sunday afternoon and she said, “[Prime Minister] Menzies has been on the radio. We are now at war

with Germany.” I was a cadet and I was wondering what my future would be. I was probably 16 years old at that time. And the, from there going home I was thinking about it, this war situation. And of course being a moulder I would not have had to join the army because it was

a reserved occupation. I was working in material for the war effort. And Brewlos was a big foundry in Richmond. And with the Manpower Act at that time, if Brewlos was short of labour they would fill their labour situation from any foundries about. And quite often I had to work at Brewlos and they were making 25-pounder guns, which was a

modern innovation at that time. Well, being a cadet, at work one day, I got home and my younger brother, Percy, he came in and said, “Don’t tell the old man, I’ve joined the army.” And I said, “Well, you’ve got to tell.”

Well he said, “I’ve joined the army.” So well the next day I went into the Town Hall and I had to

join up as his name, Percy. The fellow from the foundry, the boss from the foundry came around and he said, “You’d have to go back to work.” So anyway I didn’t take much notice of that. I was out at Caulfield Racecourse, and being a cadet, one of the officers asked if anyone had previous military training. I put my hand up and he said, “Can you take those raw recruits out there for rifle drill?” and I said,

“I’ll try.” So I went home and I said to Dad, “Mum’s got to sew stripes on.” I was a corporal my first day in the senior army; I’d been a cadet. Well I would say the first job I had then was digging trenches at the Shrine [of Remembrance]. And from there within about 10 days of enlisting, having had uniforms etc., we were on our way to Darwin. And the

when I got to Darwin I was in a pioneer battalion, 2/4th Pioneer Battalion, and we went up as reinforcements. And we got to Adelaide River and they were deciding to shift the Darwin Hospital from Darwin 80 miles down to Adelaide River. So one of my jobs was to try and erect these buildings; they were prefabricated metal buildings. I didn’t have a

clue. But luckily for me in my section was country blokes that sort of was able to put their hand to anything. And they were able to erect these prefabricated buildings and make new wards for the hospital. And whilst working there one day I had a, my brother who was still in the army with me, and strangely enough a mate of mine who was a better moulder than me, he

enlisted the same time and he was with me. Now we were at, building these, putting this work out in the Adelaide River, and my brother came to me and said, “You’ve got to back to camp for a conference.” So I went back to camp, had a change, shower and etc. and go to this conference. Darwin was under attack by heavy bombers. I was to get my crowd together. They were expecting an

invasion on the following morning. So I got them together and I issued them with 10 rounds of ammunition; that’s all they had to offer. And many of them never even had a rifle, so you can imagine the situation we were under. So we arrived in Darwin, and I was given a of beach that my section would be expected to defend.

And so after digging trenches and etcetera, etcetera, we waited, but luckily for us there was no invasion turned up. So in that, there was a hell of a lot of damage done in Darwin, we were cleaning up the streets, burying dead bodies; that was a situation which was not pleasant. And

anyway we got over that and we cleaned up the area as much as we could. And we were living in houses at that time because the population had been moved from Darwin. And then of course they come over again, and we just sort of got into holes and we expected, all the time we were waiting that, luckily did not occur. As the

time progressed, they fixed up the walls after the bombing and ships started to arrive back in Darwin. I might add, up to this time, food was very scarce, ammunition all those materials were very scarce. The equipment was scarce – we didn’t have machine guns, we didn’t have any, we didn’t have ammunition to fire them anyway. So the situation wasn’t too hot at the time.

But as the months progressed they started to fix up the wharves, shipping started to come back. And we were, my company was put on unloading ships. And we worked like that for months. And then my brother, oh I got dengue fever and I was in Darwin Hospital. And my brother came in one night and he said, “You wouldn’t believe it. They are disbanding our company.”

Which was blow because if you are in a unit you sort of wonder what’s going to happen. Again you get pretty matey with a lot of these fellows and you have your best mates and they are going off to different positions. One of my best mates went to the bakehouse, another went, I don’t know where they all finished up. But I had to go to a transit camp and my brother was with me.

And an officer from an artillery regiment turned up and he said I had the expertise that was needed for his regiment. So then I said, “Well what about my brother?” I said. They found him a job and I was in charge of their anti-aircraft in this 2/14th Field Regiment. And when I got to the regiment I found

that it was still under severe, you were expecting invasion all the time, at this time. And I found that this artillery unit had less rifles than some of our fellows had. They were poorly equipped. And where they were defending or depending on the battalions of infantry to defend them in case of attack. Three battalions were sent, one to Rabaul, one to Ambon and one to Indonesia. And

they were left having to look after themselves with very little equipment. So it was quite a mess all around. And from there I found that they were still using old 18-pounder guns. And while I was a cadet out at, going to Broadmeadows training, there

were more modern guns that we trained at Broadmeadows than what they had at Darwin to use in the defence of Darwin. Old 18-pounders, pre-war stuff from the First World War. And anyway it went on and on until I was with the 2/14th Field Regiment and stayed there until we were moved down to Sydney. One of the best trips I think I enjoyed was

coming from Darwin to by rail and transport to Sydney. And we were re equipped with beautiful equipment: jeeps, 25-pounder guns, first time I had seen Bren guns, first time I had seen modern equipment. And then after about 6 months, we were later sent to Queensland to finish our training. And then later on we

went to New Guinea. And I stayed with the 2/14th in, well they were going up the north, they had taken over from the 2/12th Field Regiment, that was 9 Division, already in a place called Finschhafen and we were moving up the coast, north coast of New Guinea. Pushing these Japanese back. And they invaded

a few places along the northern coast. I remember going in on a landing barge one day. The fellow in charge of the barge put me, I couldn’t swim, and that’s another thing I meant to mention about Darwin. I couldn’t swim and we were unloading ships. And then there’d be air raids come over and we were battened down in the hatches underneath with the tops closed and we could hear these

bombs going off and we were wandering around in the bay to avoid these things. And I couldn’t swim so you can imagine, I was in a panic both ways. If the thing would have been hit, how was I going to swim out of it?

Only a few, not too long in Finschhafen and then we started

to move up to Madang. And I was in this invasion in Madang, and the fellow in charge of this barge dropped the front of the barge I think prematurely. And instead of being in about 3 or 4 feet of water I was in about 10 feet of water. And I had, my shirt was packed with tins of bully beef, army biscuits, hand grenades, etc. And

I’m in about 10 feet of water, couldn’t swim, I had to throw the gun away, I had an Owen gun, I just tossed in the water, I was pulling all this stuff out of my shirt. And luckily for me there was a gun alongside and I got my head up above the water, and I waded down till some one came out with a rope and dragged me in to. So that was one of the experiences I thought I was finished. But anyway

that went on. But after that there was a notice on the regimental board that they wanted volunteers to go to a unit called ANGAU, Australia New Guinea Administrative Unit. So I thought, “Oh, I’ve got nothing to lose here.” And I put my name down with a mate of mine to go to this ANGAU. And my brother, actually I missed my brother too, he was hit with a bomb splinter in Darwin

and he was discharged from the army, so I was on my own. So then I reverted back to my own name, from being Percy I was able to change back to Charles Alfred. Then when we got to New Guinea I decided then to go across to ANGAU and the only thing I could think of that

might suffice to get me over there was being a driver. So anyway they sent me to a plane from Finschhafen, there was an air strip down back to Port Moresby, and when I get out the sergeant met me and he said, “Jump in and I’ll take you to the camp,” and I said, “I can’t drive,” and he said, “Oh, that’s great. You’ve joined a transport unit and you can’t drive.” Well

anyway next morning I was told to report back to office at 9 the next morning. And of course there’s the driver there ready to teach me how to drive a jeep. And for a while I was just a chauffeur for officers going to various meetings. And then I was put onto trucks and heavier stuff which was easy meat in those days when you started. And I learnt to drive. Then it was suggested that I might like a job in the transport office, which

I accepted, which was the best thing I did because that was a different life altogether. Well with ANGAU I worked there for a long time and there was probably about 80 vehicles on the line. And they used to supply transport for natives. They had native workers. They looked after the native population with foodstuffs, etc. And

quite often ANGAU would supply various people with New Guinea experience to go with troops further up north. And I found that far more interesting than being in the artillery and so I stayed with them until the duration of the war. Then I suppose my life became quite a little bit easier then because

having to work in transport, you just had to allocate vehicles for various jobs during the day and things like that. And there was some fairly interesting experiences I had. Going all over New Guinea there was various places, went to Lei, Wau, and we sort of…

ANGAU was a sort of support for units that was in the front line. And they used to supply native boys to take the heavy gear with them, carry porter jobs and things like that. Then I had to go back to Port Moresby. And whilst there

met some American girls, quite accidentally. One of the ANGAU officers wanted transport, so when I found that he was going to a WAC’s [Women’s Auxiliary Corps] camp for dinner I thought I’d do the job. So I cleaned myself up and went across to the WACs. I took these two majors to this WAC’s camp. And put myself in and, they had

presents for some of the girls who they had met on the previous Sunday, fruit and vegetables from an ANGAU farm which I believe may have been stuff that we should have been eating. They were giving it to these Yankee [American] girls. But anyway I met these girls and made a date with one and made a date with a mate of mine with the other. And we met them. We hung around with them for a long time during our course

until they were moved. And on one particular day they were moved to Bali, which is a little island off Indonesia. And we used to have quite a lot of parties with American girls.

They could get very, very lot of stuff from their canteen. They could get whisky, they could get Australian beer. We were given a bottle of beer a week, Australian beer a week, with the top off. They were given a bottle of Australian beer a day with the top on. So you can imagine we were able to accumulate quite a lot of beer

and have quite a party with the girls and several members of our crowd. But then they were shifted up to Bali. And on one particular day I got a later saying, “Bad luck you couldn’t get up here, so and so is having a birthday.” So I went down to Jackson air strip in [Port] Moresby

and I said, “What’s the chance of getting to Bali?” So anyway this American sergeant, he organised a plane trip to get to Bali. And when I got to Bali I found I couldn’t get back. I had to give myself up to Provos [Provosts - Military Police] and then I was charged with being AWOL [AWL – Absent Without Leave] because, and I remember the major who was hearing the case, he said, “The first I’ve ever heard of anyone going AWOL in New Guinea.” And I tried to explain why I couldn’t get back but it didn’t make any…

So anyway that was it. So I lost some stripes and had to work doing the same job, etc., etc. Anyway life carried on exactly the same then. Then I did tours of duty then, mostly in, it was a sort of a support for troops that were fighting up the front. If you can, and I had a few moments, I remember being on my own

one particular day and I got lost. I was in the jungle and I didn’t know where I was. And I had an Owen gun with me and I could hear noises left, right and centre. I didn’t seem to be able to find my way back to where I had started and I thought, “This is it. I’m lost.” I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know who was around me or any other thing. Every now and again you’d hear individual shots going

off. And so by the time that I did orientate myself and found it back to the main track I was quite in a state. And anyway I was luckily able to find my way back to our camp. And I was very pleased to do so.

I think what caused that, I was heading off to see my brother-in-law, who I hadn’t met, and he was in a forward section which was much more forward than us. And I had a jeep to give me a lift for part of the way, and coming back, that’s when I got disorientated and lost my way. So I was lucky to get out of that

with out real trouble. But I think, most of my life with ANGAU was much easier than being with an artillery unit. And maybe it was much easier than being with the pioneer battalion. And so I was in the office. But that sort of covers most of my history. Not many heroics in that but.

I was discharged in ’46. The, about March ’46 I was discharged.

Yes, I returned to Melbourne and

there was one of the problems. I mentioned, I didn’t mention another incident too, again Darwin.

Well after the war I tried several jobs. I thought I wanted to go back to the foundry and I tried several jobs. I found, by going home I felt as if I was a stranger in my own family. My brothers who I had

left as children, you know, young ones. They were all grown up, my sisters were strangers to me, most of them got married, I had 5 sisters, they were married. My mates who I knew were all with other people, I had to find new friends. My best mate at the time, he’d been in Darwin with me, but he, this is an incident I’ll mention later,

he came back and he was stranger to me at this time. So I had to make new friends. Then I went back to the foundry for a while. And then later on I joined the post office and I worked in the post office for about 40 years. And that was the best thing I did. Started off as a postman and then from a senior

postman up to a supervisor of postmen, and then right up until retirement from the post office. I think from then when I moved out there. Then of course I got married during the war, 1944 I was married. And when I came to live out here, I put in, tried to get houses, houses were very few and far between. And

I put in for a house in this place in this area and when I got the house here I found that there was no sports around for kids. So I started football bubs [beginners], mainly to give my kids a game of footy [football]. And the North Heidelberg Football Club is

still operating from when I started it. And I started an Olympic football team because the need for sports out here for young people. I had, I’ve got a sport pavilion named after me in Heidelberg. Because I was, 5 years I was secretary of Heidelberg Youth Club and I did a fair amount of work for youth in the area.

And I played football with North Heidelberg until I was 43. Played cricket until I was 60. And got the man of the match when I was 60 playing with rise. So I was able to stay fit and well. Then

I sort of retired from all those sort of things then, so. I think I have had an interesting life.

Well my, I had 5 sisters and 4 brothers. And you were never on your own; you always had company. And with having sisters there is always girls around because their friends used to be there. And we always had someone to go to the footy with as a kid. My Dad

had horse and carts. And I used to go to the market with him Saturday mornings, and being a large family we would buy in bulk: a bag of potatoes, a bag of peas, that sort of thing. And we’d have to go to early market and your reward was possibly a snowball, and such thing like that.

A snowball, ever tasted snowballs? They were just like beautiful they were, with coconut around the outside and the

inside was like marshmallow. And we used to think that was great. Well that was your reward Saturday mornings for going to market. ’Cause he, there was not much money about, I saw the old cable trams in Richmond being taken out of service and the new electric trams

going in. We used to go down there and watch the workers working on the site there. I used to, I didn’t play much sport until I joined the army because no-one had footies [footballs] and no-one had cricket bats, and if a kid at school had a cricket bat, he was the boss. He was captain and you had to depend on his willingness to give you a game

because he was the boss cocky. And the same with anyone that had a football. So I didn’t play much sport. But I did run a lot and I used to like running. And later on, I found that with the boys, we’d be over at Collingwood enjoying ourselves, and at the time if you went into the Collingwood rooms after the match – you can’t do it these days – but you go in and you’d see, oh, Marcus Welland and

Ron Todd used to be there, and the other names I just can’t remember now. And they’d sit you down, “Come over here son,” and they’d give you a bowl of soup and big hunk of bread, and you’d be sitting down with them enjoying a soup, and these are your famous football blokes.

And you’d go down to Collingwood every Saturday, jump the fence, wouldn’t pay to go in. There wasn’t a ground we couldn’t get into, if we had to pay. Even the Melbourne Cricket Ground – I was there before they built the Southern Stand –

and we used to be able to jump over the fences there. And if you didn’t there was always a hole, somebody always put a hole in the fence which you could sneak through. We went, even city theatre pictures, there was always ways and means of getting into a theatre for nothing. When I was a kid we used to do all those sorts of things.

I saw the last cable tram running in Smith Street, Collingwood. And they were replaced with double-decker buses. And then of course they were disbanded and now there is an electric tram up that way. My sisters used to work

at various jobs. One of them used to make trousers and I used to be able to get her to make me trousers which were quite good. As a child I went to St Phillips and played basket ball as a sort of a hobby. I later became quite a good basketballer and I was in interstate teams playing basketball.

And I think it was mainly because I could run. I wasn’t a bad runner. I played a lot of basketball at the [Royal] Exhibition Buildings, where Saturday night was a big event. They used to have the basketball on the main court; there was 5 courts in the Exhibition Building. This is long before they built South Melbourne. We used to play at the YMCA [Young Men’s Christian Association], etc. And as a kid, the YMCA used to have organised for the kids of Collingwood to go down to camp at Shoreham. I used to love those camps. They’d take you down on the beach at Shoreham as a kid, about 10 year old. And enjoy the… And that’s where I played a bit of sport there – played baseball and cricket and those sort of things. But as a

child I didn’t play much sport until I was in the army. And the 2/4th Pioneer Battalion I joined, they… There was quite a lot of league players at the time: Fred Fairweather, he was captain of North Melbourne, called him ‘Stormy’, ‘Stormy’ Fairweather. He was captain of North Melbourne; a huge fellow. Not only a good footballer, but he was boxing champion of the Northern Territory.

A fellow named Doug Quoil used to play for Hawthorn. There was a fellow George Bates was centre man for Richmond, he was playing. There was a fellow from Geelong, played football for Geelong. Then there was… Tom Roulent was a South Melbourne footballer. So you can imagine we had quite a good football team.

And I used to be, I was a good runner and I was able to get in the team as a wing man only, and only because I could run. I didn’t even know how to kick a football but they eventually showed me how to kick a footy and I was part of the team. And I had mates of mine who could play footy quite well. And I can’t ever remember getting beaten. And later on when I joined the 2/14th, they used to have a story there

that they were never beaten. But they never came across the pioneers we had or otherwise I doubt if they would have won because we had such a strong side of league players at that time. Then when they disbanded the 2/4th Pioneer Company that I was in, I think the main bulk of them went to Timor. They were in a sense… I was fortunate that I didn’t, that they did break it up, otherwise I might have been

captured in Timor. So when I went to the 2/145th, then I could play footy and then that’s when I started playing bit of cricket, and I was able to carry on from here when I come back into civilian life. I was able to handle myself playing football and played quite a bit of cricket. So when we started these clubs here after the war; I was sort of adept at doing it. And

well we had quite a lot of teams going at that time.

He was mainly what they called a marine dealer, used to go around the streets in his horse and cart and collect old bottles and rags and things like that. And he quite often at he footy of a Saturday afternoon he’d load his truck up, his wagon, he’d load

them up with fruit boxes. And Collingwood only had hills to stand on. And he’d go in there and for 2 shillings you could stand on a packing case on one of these fruit boxes. And then of course after the match was over, we’d collect the bottles and he would bag them up and take them, he’d give you a halfpenny each for a bottle. And so that was the

situation on the… But he used to mainly collect these things. And there was, he had two horses, and I used to like riding horses. And there was a place at the… There was a fisheries where they used to have, I forget what you call it when they make

new fish, you know, they breed fish, fishery, little joint. And that was divided by fences and he had the fellow would allow him to put the horses in for the weekend to eat the grass around the place. It was my job to take these horses of a weekend, after he had finished the week’s work, and get to this fishery place at up in

can’t think of the park, it’s in Fairfield just above…

Studley Park, yeah, that was there and we would leave these horses loose for the weekend. I’d go there Sunday afternoon to pick them up and, boy, it was a job catching those horses after a weekend of freedom. And you used to have to try and get them in a corner

and, oh, it was a hell of a job. Anyway I would eventually catch them take them home and he’d used them again for the week and that’s… Off I’d go.

My Dad when I was young, being the eldest boy, we’d take off into the country. And he would be rabbiting on occasions, mushrooming, etc. And I was one of those when I was about 10 year old that I could fire a rifle quite accurately because he had army .22s.

But we’d go shooting rabbits. And then in season, and then get mushrooms on another occasion. And he used to go gold fossicking quite a lot and he used to have what they call a miner’s permit to go into any of the creeks and fossick for gold. And apparently it was permissible

to even build a hut on these, on the shores of the, on the banks of the rivers and the creeks we used to go to. And one of his places was Research. He built a hut of his own there and he used to grow vegetables there. And it was quite an entertainment to go there weekends and we’d go to Eltham station on the train

and then walk to Research, and he’d have a little buggy affair on wheels to carry our goods. And that’s where we spent many a weekend doing that. But I become quite accomplished with a rifle, I was a pretty good shot, and my brothers finished up good shots also.

And then as the war sort of came on he was a bit worried about how we were going to get on because he had boys. And he was quite concerned about enlisting. And I was in this reserved occupation, I thought, “Well I won’t have to go of course,” but when my brother joined early I had to sort of go along with him. You couldn’t have your younger brother in

the army and you be out of it. So that was mostly my childhood; I grew up with that. And then that caused me to, with being interested in horses and my brother-in-laws, my sisters got married, and my brother-in-laws was in the 29th Battalion in what was

called then the militia. And that caused me to join the 29th Battalion Cadets. Now I was with them for quite a while and being a cadet I saw how the artillery moved about, etc. And I had a yearning then to drive horses. So I transferred then from the 29th Battalion, which was an infantry battalion, and I went across to 8th Field Brigade artillery

which was… They had fired 18-pounder guns. And they were horsedrawn at that time, so I was a driver on these horse drawn vehicles. And we used to go to camps. And we used to get on these horses at Broadmeadows and do manoeuvres with guns, etc. And even when the war came on I was still a cadet and

I remember the training we had at Trawool with 18-pounder guns. And they were firing blank ammunition from the 18-pounders there one day which created a fire in the long grass, which was stupid. Instead of getting to the fire straight away they let it go and it started a huge bushfire that travelled

quite a long way, and I think it even went down to Yea. It was all because of a stupid mistake of an officer not getting onto the beaters and beating out the fire immediately, what he should have done. And I had problems with horses because we had to keep these horses out of the way of the fire and they were playing up. And then we had to get back to remove these guns, which were quite an eventful situation.

And there was blank ammunition about and we didn’t know if that was going to go off or not. But that’s one of the reasons I joined the cadets and that was at, in North Carlton, we used to go there. And did quite a lot of bivouacs and camps with the 8th Brigade, in that, and that was at North Carlton.

Growing up there was quite a lot of gangs around, but we didn’t, my crowd didn’t seemed to get too involved. I think we were pretty strong. I used to go around with a pretty strong crowd of fellows. And they weren’t molested like some of them were because I think we could handle ourselves.

Myself having brothers, every Sunday we used to go to a place called, it was above, on the second floor of, a Wardoff’s Tailor had on the corner of Smith Street and Johnston Street, Collingwood, and there was a training place on the second floor. And we used to every Sunday, my brothers and I

would go in there and belt each other up with boxing gloves. So we become quite adept at fighting and looking after ourselves in that sense. But it was interesting being at Collingwood in those days, even going to Collingwood, I didn’t know them, but I’ve seen people like Jack Rim and I remember [Roman Catholic] Archbishop Mannix, he’d been marching down Johnston Street, he used to walk from Raheen in Kew all the way down Johnston Street

and he’d pass us and have a few words, and then he’d head over to some patch in East Melbourne. So you could imagine that was quite a walk from Kew across to… And he used to do that every morning, or most mornings, and we used to see him.

Archbishop Mannix. And he was a pretty outstanding figure, standing straight up and he used to always wear a top hat, which we used to make a bit of fun of

sometimes, but he’d always have a yatter [chat] and things like that.

Oh yes, a lot of people, he used to walk up along to these people and most people would talk to him. He’d talk to them. But it seemed to me a daily occurrence, but we’d see him when we were out and about. And then going into Collingwood, the Don, there used to be someone called the Don mob,

must have been a Don Billiard Room in Johnston Street, Collingwood, at the time. And there was supposedly a lot of ruffians at the Astral Theatre; we used to go to the theatres there. I don’t know whether I was able to dodge them or not but we never got into any strife at all. And

No, no. Not those.

No, well we used to go to Carlton, but our main trouble was, when we used to go to football Saturday afternoons, there’d be more trouble at a footy match during the match than what there would be just normally going along. Friday night in Smith street was, well it was late trading in those days, it used to shut at 9 o’clock. And if you went up to Smith Street

wandering around there you could get yourself into a bit of bother. But we used to go with a crowd and we didn’t seem to meet much of a problem. But it was certainly, there were some roughies about, I know that because we did see quite a bit of it. And but my days was dancing, I used to dance at the Collingwood Town Hall when I was

14 upwards. You try and get enough money to go into the dance and once you got into the dance you could learn to dance. And then I remember a mate of mine, he said, “We can go into Mickey Powell in Bourke Street and get in there for nothing.” And the dance… This Mickey Powell used to be a dancing place where they teach the girls and boys to dance. And it wasn’t long before we found that Mickey Powell was using us up because we could dance. We were teaching these little girls to dance

and no wonder he was letting us in for nothing, because he wasn’t paying any wages but he was teaching the girls to dance. We were teaching his clients to dance. And that went on for a while, but we used to like dancing. We went to balls at a later stage, but that was our big thing dancing, we did, dancing and football that was about it, I didn’t play that much football

as a kid, but I was interested in ballroom dancing and basketball; most of my sport was basketball. Then of course my sisters got married. We had quite an event there because their husbands, they were interested in various things. They used to take you fishing.

One was a trout fisherman. He’d take you along the rivers to trout. And there was bit of trout to be caught in the Yarra in those days. The others were mainly down North Williamstown, going out on the bay fishing. And I was always seasick. And always worried about the water because I couldn’t swim. And but it was quite an eventful… And they eventually

got married, and all the girls, and then brothers came along and they got married. Then I lost my army brother, who was in the army with me. He died of a leg poisoning. We are not sure that it may have been caused by from his war wound, that discharged him from, when he was with me in the pioneers.

So then, but I was mostly, we did get on all right together, the kids, because my sisters and girls used to come around and see them and they eventually got married and we had brother-in-laws galore.

And that, mostly interesting in you know football and going to the footy, not so much the playing it, we used to go a lot. The, just, the old memories are not so crash hot these days. But

do you want me to revert back to anything?

Well I think my father had 3 brothers who were engaged in the First World War, and he was a small build and he couldn’t get… Apparently he didn’t pass the requirements to get in and he was rejected, and I think he suffered

pretty badly from that. Not that he made it known. I didn’t know too much about the First World War, only that, we used to go down and watch the Anzac Day march and things like that. Occasionally, I don’t think I knew too much about that, the First World War. It was…

See I was born after it finished and the only thing we had, you’d see fellows walking around and you’d see in their uniforms, a lot of them still had the First World War uniforms. And we used to go down to picnics down to Warrigal Park down in Heidelberg and on occasions there there would a troop of cavalry would be bivouacked down alongside the river. And you’d see them with their hats with the feathers in the caps and all

that sort of jazz. And the uniforms and leggings and they looked pretty good. I think that sort of enticed me later to be a driver in the artillery.

I think, I think, I was in a cadets, 29th Battalion

then I saw the artillery, they had blue uniforms instead of khaki. They had a stripe down the evening dress they used to have. It was a big stripe down the side and blue trousers, and it was very, stood out pretty well. And besides when you went anywhere with the leggings and breeches and spurs on, and we used to get the spurs and put a hole in the middle and put a whole sixpenny piece in the spurs to

make them jingle as you walked along the street. And I was it and a bit with the slouch hat and the spurs jingling. And you thought you cut quite a figure. This is before the war started. Because the uniform changed after that, we just got into khaki when I enlisted. And the old slouch hat, I think the old slouch hat was one of the great hats of the whole world I think

that stands out. It distinguishes an Australian from most other people. And even when I knew Americans, they were intrigued by the Australian hat. Quite more so than I think a lot of Australians were interested. They were in the, but I think, that’s about all I can remember most of

my childhood. But it was

Rabbiting, oh yes. Going out in the bush with my Dad rabbiting and at that times, even when I was a teenager, I could get on a bike and you could go with a rifle and you could go shooting out at Preston Cemetery – there would always be rabbits even out there. And you could come home with 6 or 8 rabbits, which are heavy to carry. It’s hard work rabbiting if you, its all right going

out there empty handed, but if you catch half a dozen rabbits and you’ve got them and you carry them, well they are not skinned then, but you carry them, they get pretty weighty. And you know with, I used to think rabbiting was hard work, and I remember once going out with a cousin of mine, he had a good dog, and he lived at out near Seymour. And he had good dog.

He used to go out there with a truck, go into the bush and go to the burrows, put down a ferret. The dogs would race away, catch the rabbit bring it back. He’d have it skinned, thrown into a tin with ice, into a bucket with ice, and he’d put these skins into another, all in, he used to be able to, on the back of the truck he had, get the leg of a rabbit, put it on a nail

and slit it down and he’d have it skinned in moments. Throw the carcass in ice, the skins would go into another, because skins were valuable. And apparently they made hats, etc. out of the rabbit skins. And there was always, and it was one of the easiest ways I have ever seen to go rabbiting. From one hole to the other. And of course you just jumped up onto the truck. You didn’t have to carry them at all.

That’s right, he lived at Broadford, and we used to go in there to the bushes, because the farmers used to welcome you at that time to get rid of the rabbits. Rabbits was a bit of a menace in those days.

Well we all liked rabbit. We used to, even when you went out camping you would cut a rabbit up and just fry rabbits, young ones,

they were beautiful. And of course we used to have plenty of rabbits at home. And they were quite tasty, a good rabbit. But I know the family used to appreciate them. But that was part and parcel living in those days – as many rabbits as you could get. If you got a dozen rabbits and brought them home they were quite welcome in a big family. But…

And then you’d go out with the mushroom on mushrooming days. But that’s how you spent most of your childhood. Just going out enjoying yourself and making the most of what you had; you didn’t have that much. But go to the footy, jump the fence. Go to the pictures, get in here, you didn’t have to pay because there was always ways and means of getting into these places.

But the big thing was dancing, I think. You know, as I got 14 into the teenage, but, and my friends and I used to go dancing. Then even in cadets, as a cadet, you’d go to dances at Seymour. And you would meet plenty

of young girls there. One of the best parts about being at Seymour was you could go to the Seymour Baths. I couldn’t swim, and you’d see all your mates frolicking in the water with all the young girls and you’d have to sit up on the outside and you couldn’t be part of it. So that was one of the disappointments of not being able to swim. But that was life at Seymour in those days. But

then, going into the foundry, it was hard work. But I enjoyed foundry work.

Iron, yep. Making all iron products. In those days there used to be a lot of fretwork made of iron. And just about everything that came out of an engineer’s shop at one time was made in a foundry. You had to make castings for engineers to work on. All the

teeth of most machines was made in a foundry. And the engineers on lathes and that, we used to shape them up on a lathe after the foundry had made them. And I worked at making all sorts of these street hydrants, street hydrants were made of cast iron.

They’re made of sand. Do you know much about a foundry?

It’s all, you know, those days it was all sand and molten metal.

Well a lot of people thought it was. You would get burned occasionally and those sorts of things. The there was what they called job moulding and plate moulding. Plate moulding was simple because you used to have a pattern on a plate and

you’d throw in some sand, which was special sand, on top of a mould. Then later on you’d fill the box with, you’d tap it around and fill up a box with sand and then you’d ram it tight. You’d put a board on the base of this particular box you were making and you’d turn it over on a bench. And that would make the top part of

whatever you were making, show out and the pattern. You’d get a good mixture of sand, put it on the top, and then later on the rougher sand would go on, fill it up, you ram it around so that when you poured molten metal in, it wouldn’t break out. Well you’d scrape the top off, put what you call runners in and gates to the various moulds. And then you would take the board off.

And the box itself was hinged, with a hinge on a corner. Be a rectangle or a square box, of all various sizes, some were huge sizes to small sizes. When you undone the hooks at one end, one was able to open out so that you could take the box off this box of sand that you have created. Put it aside, clean up the top of the

sand, get your fingers under the, if it was light enough to lift. And you’d just carry it away and you’d put in a row of other boxes. So that later on when you started a cast it was only a matter of going from one to the other. And that was a matter of making quite a lot of various small castings. But as the castings get bigger, you might only have one

pattern in a box until it got to that size where you might have to make a huge pattern. And it might be dug into the ground. You might have to go in that sort of sense. If an engineer came in he may have broken a, some sort of a wheel on a machine, and they couldn’t replace them. You might have to lay the old wheel on a board and try to manufacture, in sand, the

indentations of that wheel. So that when you took the sand, took the pattern out from that sand, the indentation was there in the sand. You put the top and the bottom together. You’d have your runners cut down so the metal would go in. Then when the, you pour the cast iron in when it was molten.

Then you would, once it cooled down a bit, you’d just throw it out, break the sand off and you’d put it on an emery wheel to clean up the edges or something like that. And then if it was a good mould, well the engineer come away and he’d be able to use it. In those days, just after the war especially, machinery was very hard to get and they had to make do with a lot of makeshift, and there was a lot

manufacturing the parts and pieces that they needed. All brake jobs was made in a foundry, made of cast iron. When I started I was a labourer, and I used to have to break up metal, pig iron and old types of old cast iron. And they had a foundry, had a furnace which was made of, oh, probably 3 or 4 feet diameter tube, probably 18 feet long

it would go up. There used to be a platform to hold the metal, the coke, etc., that would heat up the foundry to melt the metal. And this particular, was bricked out with fire bricks, you know, the circular fashion. Then prior to casting you would have all mud up the sides of the bricks so that it

wouldn’t burn into the bricks. On the bottom you’d make… You’d have to lean into this little hole and you’d pat a platform at the bottom, a base. And the metal would be shaped to go into a sort of a gully. And that would run out into a… I can’t think of the right words these days. That would come out where the metal would run out and come out of a chute.

A chute, yeah. And you’d have, well once a… Then on a casting day you’d light the furnace with ordinary… Anything to get it going. And then you’d put a layer of coke on, and as you progress you put heavy coke from New South Wales mostly, and that used to have a terrific heat in it. And once you got your heat going, you’d put in cast iron fragments, pieces, broken old cast iron

and then pig iron to soften it down. And then you’d built up your furnace, right up until it was full. And then as it started to progress and it was starting to melt, you’d chip away at a little hole in this chute until the metal would start to run out. And you would have a ladle on the outlet of it, of this neck sort of thing, where the metal used to come down. Fill your ladle up,

you have a bit of clay on the end of a long piece of metal so that you could. Once the ladle was full you’d just jam it in like a cork, into this hole that you had already created. And stop the metal running, until you got rid of the metal that was in the ladle. You’d take the metal, you’d take the ladle of metal around to the boxes of castings. And then you’d pour it in, in turn, until the

ladle was empty. You’d came back and you’d chip away at that little hole again until the metal started running through to the ladle, and do the same thing. There was various size ladles. Some were hand ladles that you could handle with one hand, or with two hands, like one man with two hands. And then there was bigger ladles which would be one man up one end, and in larger foundries which I worked at, they’d have cranes, two handle, just about everything. My last

job in a foundry was out at a foundry in Brunswick, where it was all done by huge machines. And you’d have instead of shovelling in sand, you’d have hoppers that would fill the top of the box. A crane would come over, turn your box over. You’d clean it all up. The crane would do most of the heavy work. And then later on the crane would carry the

ladle full of metal down and cast the, whatever object you made, no matter what size, whether it needed a crane to do it. That was in a big foundry at Footscray. And that was my last job in a foundry. Then I decided to go into the post office. Started as a postman, and

lost quite a bit of wages in doing so. But within 12 months I found out that with better sick leave, better holiday pay, etc., I was no worse off in the post office than being a tradesman as a moulder. And then of course as I progressed in the post office. I got senior jobs. Until I retired, until I retired from work, I stayed in the post office. It was quite a good job, well I thought, in the post office

then. I don’t know what it’s like now, I’m told it’s different to when I was in it. But I really enjoyed working, but I was lucky, I never been in jobs that I didn’t enjoy working at.

13.

Yep.

Yes, there was no money about and you had to

work. I was getting 7 and 6 a week. I used to keep, give my mother 5 shillings, which was 50 cents, and I’d keep 2 and 6, which was 25 cents. So you can just imagine the difference in wages then.

Oh good, I came out of the army on about, I think it was about 5 pounds, 8 shillings, which would be

5 pound would be 10 dollars. Say about 10 dollars 80. And you could buy a house and buy a car. The houses were only about 340 pounds to buy. Just about, you could get a good house for 400 pounds which was 800 dollars. So you can just imagine the difference in the values was quite

substantial.

Well no more than what the average house I suppose would today. For what the kids are buying now. See if you, you’d probably buy a house for, probably 10 shillings a week of it, out of your, out of 5 pound 8 you are probably paying,

oh, maybe, well even a pound a week out of that, which would be a living wage. And you’d live on it and you could still buy a house and you could still buy a car. When I came out of the army I had, I was one of them that bought myself a car, I don’t know whether I was foolish or not. But

I could have bought houses for 400 pounds in those days. Mates of mine did. But I moved out here and I finished up buying this place. There was a lot of difference in the value of money between then and now. And I don’t think, people earn quite a lot of money, quite a substantial bundle, but in reality I don’t think there is any much difference between 800 dollars today, and probably

5 or 6 pounds in those days. The value is not there. A house, look at the price of a house if you want to buy a house today. It’s enormous. See if you want a house, you’ve got to have your wife working, you gotta be working. And you’ve got to save like wages to get a sort of reasonable house. Which present day it’s out of the means of, out of reach of quite a lot of people that’s working. But

tradesmen in those days could buy a reasonable modest house and have a car at the same time. It’s just the way the value of money has escalated and it’s not worth much really. A handful of money today isn’t worth that much. You know, I don’t think.

No, 50 cents,

they cut out, I think… You take pennies – they cut out the pennies had halfpennies because pennies and halfpennies wouldn’t buy you anything. But in my days when I was young, a penny was a valuable coin and a halfpenny was a valuable coin. In fact a penny would give you a trip from Collingwood on the tram, on the old cable tram, into the city, a penny. You could go… And

I used to go into the pictures for sixpence, sixpence would take you into the pictures. And then the, I think a stamp to buy anything was only a penny. You could go and send things away for a penny, from the postage. Now look at the price of a postage stamp that you’ve got to buy for now. So the

depreciation of money was… I don’t think really, people are not much better off. I was a bit of a union activist, too, when I was in the foundry. And my argument was, wage rise was never any good to you because long before you got a wage rise the value had gone, people already knowing that you were going to get a wage rise, prices of materials went up, prices of

foods went up. So that by the time you got your modest wage rise, you were paying more than it was before anyway. So I never, right through my working days, I don’t think wages rises was anything beneficial to workers. What they should have done was improve their working standards. And made even work less for the same wages would have been far better for… That’s my idea of it.

I might be a bit of a socialist, I think. But…

Not only that, but if you once you get a rise, your rents go up. People are renting places, the rents go up, the situation today, our trams and trains are going to go up. All those things, that’s going to create another wave of wage rises which will probably…

A lot of strikes heading for to get their wage rises, to get, to counter the increase in living costs.

Well, ’30s, when I was growing up, communism seemed to be the way to go because it was, everything seemed to be run by a capitalistic situation.

And there was quite a lot of talk about communism. To be quite honest, all my life, and I have been in sporting crowds and in the army, I don’t even, I couldn’t say that I know a real communist. And Menzies used to give you a myth about so many communists destroying our way of life. And yet I was actively engaged in sporting arenas, I was

actively engaged in quite a lot of things. And yet in unions, and yet I can’t honestly say I have met a communist, a real fair dinkum communist. There may have been a lot of pinkies and socialists. Which I think I might have been one myself. But I was never, I was never a communist. And I used to be called a commo once, when I was a bit outspoken on various things. But that’s my opinion, I think it was just a myth.

Well I didn’t play much football, I only went to the footy. Mostly you would go to the pictures if you could afford to get in, and if you couldn’t there are ways and

means of getting into most of the theatres. At school we used to, I spent a lot of time at National Park racing up and down the hills and sort of spending a lot of days just walking around the bush, and at that time Studley Park was quite an area to cover, it was all bush. The roads weren’t made

then, The Boulevard wasn’t built. It was quite a good place to go. And at school we used to play sport over there, so to take anything over there to play sport with from the technical school, you would have to walk. The technical school was situated near Smith Street, Collingwood. You would have to walk all of that way across to

these playing ovals, National Park or Studley Park, and it was quite a walk to start off with. Then you would play your sport. And sport was compulsory in those days. And then you would have to wander back. They were sporting days from school of course.

Oh yes, we used to go around in mobs of about a dozen or so and it was pretty thickly populated with boys and girls, Collingwood, at the time. The, you got into the occasional brawl because you would meet another

gang. There would be the Abbotsford gang, and they would come from what they called Lithgow Street, and there would be others. There was a Don mob from Johnston Street, Collingwood, and you might find yourselves at odds with them on occasions. I think most of the time you were just trying yourselves out. Never done much damage.

No never heard of those and I spent a fair bit of time up there. I seen Red Maloney – he was an outstanding figure at that time, he and his family – the family was rougher than what old Red was I think. His mother used to be a pretty rough and ready woman. I lived

in just about every street in Collingwood. I have lived in Wellington Street, Hoddle Street, Gipps Street. I used to change houses as rents got cheap, change form one house to another to save a few bob. Rupert Street was another, Langridge, Rupert, Wellington.

We used to do all of the, Cornwall Street, all over the place used to change our residence.

The only thing I have seen, I have just seen him, when you go into the Collingwood rooms he would quite often be there and you knew who he was. But it wasn’t until later that I knew anything about

all of the rumours that went about with him etcetera. Although I was in the rooms there one afternoon after the match when Bill Twomey was playing, this is after the war, [bookmaker,businessman John ] Wren went past Bill Toomey and I heard Toomey say to one of the other players, he had played a terrific game the Saturday before and he said, “I thought the old boy was going to throw me five bucks.”

Which was five pound at the time which was quite a lot of money. But he said he didn’t and he was quite upset that he had bypassed him and didn’t throw him any money. But in those days I mean you go into the club rooms afterwards and if one of the players had had an outstanding game that day a hat would be thrown in and supporters and others would be tossing in quite a lot of money. They

used to do quite well out of it. And that used to be a ritual after a good match, and a good win. Especially if it was a good win against a good team and the players played well, they would throw the hat around and they seemed to be well rewarded for those games. I was there when McKenna kicked a heap of goals there one day and he got looked after quite well.

It was just one of those spur of the moment things.

Oh yes. There was no motor cars to worry about in the streets. We played cricket with a bit of wood that resembled a bat. They only thing about it that resembled a bat

was that it was made of wood, it didn’t even look like a bat, but you used that. And someone would toss a ball to you. You were lucky if it was a decent ball, it used to be one of those tennis balls that had most of the padding knocked out of it. And your football of course was a rolled up newspaper with a bit of string around it. And you would be up and down the street kicking this newspaper thinking it was a football and

thinking you were one of the star players, to no avail. One of our good days was always when the, I think November there was, I can’t think of the event now.

No it was after that. One of the events was the, not Moomba.

Boat racing on the Yarra. And it was a big day and people would go down there to watch these rowboats racing down there. Henley, it could be Henley?

It might have been called Henley here too. They used to go down in crowds on the riverbank and that was a big

event too. Sundays you would go down to the riverbanks and there was always these bodies on politics, anti-communist, for communism, all of the big fellows that had something to say was always spruiking. There would be a lot of religious messages given out as well as political. And we used to go down there en masse

and enjoy a bit of picketing with them. Carrying on. And we used to enjoy them. How the spruikers put up with it I don’t know. We used to annoy the hell out of them I think.

They used to gather down around the riverbank where they have the racing and that, you know. And every Sunday was entertainment plus and we used to enjoy

it.

There used to be so-called communists but I didn’t know them, so whether they were real fair dinkum communists. But to my knowledge I have never met a fair dinkum communist in my life, and I used to be involved in sporting clubs and unions.

I think there was a lot of socialists about. But any of those that really believed in communism, I think it was just a farce, you know.

There was a lot of Susso workers about. They always, there was always this bit about communism in them; they were going to improve working conditions for people. And we used to

go down to the river quite a bit after school, go down to where the Susso workers were building The Boulevard, and they used to have to work just for handouts for food and stuff to take home. They didn’t get money to my knowledge, mostly it was just food handouts to take home. They’d get a bit of meat to take home for the weekend and things like that. And there was quite a

lot of so-called communists about in those times. But whether they were communists or just wanting to improve workers’ lot, I don’t know. But jobs were very scarce in those days and it wasn’t until the war started that things started to improve. I suppose you need a war to create employment. Probably a lot of countries’ economy is dependant upon wars and

what creates employment, and war certainly does that. Before the Second World War here I know there was a hell of a lot of unemployment. And as the war started and progressed I know employment rate went up to blazes. So I was one of the lucky ones. I was always able to be in work

so it didn’t worry me greatly. But then of course after the war there was quite a lot of strikes. This is when I probably worked at every type of industry that was available. The foundry I worked in, the iron workers would go on strike. You couldn’t work because the labourers would be on strike. So what you did you went down to the jam factory,

Lego’s, and you did a couple of days’ work there until the strike was over. Or you’d try and get a job in at the railway loading the goods on the railways. You would go down the wharf if you could get on the wharf. But most of the wharfies down there were well organised – you couldn’t get a job there unless… That is they would have to be desperate to employ

someone who wasn’t in their union. And some of the rates was, to get a job in some of those places you had to pay excessive amounts of union fees to get a job, which took the glamour out of getting a couple of days’ work if you had to pay a substantial sum to join a union. Even when the Olympic games come up, I went down, I was on leave from the post office and I went down. I thought I would find a way of getting in to see the Olympic games. I thought, “I will become

a cleaner.” And when I was told the amount I had to pay to get to join the cleaners’ union, that put the kaibosh right on me going in there as a cleaner. So I knew the secretary of Melbourne footy club pretty well. And I said to him, “What’s the chances of getting in to see the Olympic games?” and he said, “Oh no way in the world are you going to get a seat.” But

he told me about a guy on the gate. He gave me his card and he made a little note and he said, “If you go down and see him, he’ll get you in.” So I went down to see this fellow on the gate and showed him the card and he said, “Well I can let you in, but,” he said, “don’t try and coax a seat. You can stand between here and this area over there.” So I was able to see the

opening ceremony and the closing ceremony of the ’56 games and I went down and saw the Australian Rules football match during the ’56 games and I was quite happy. But I was in tears at the closing ceremony of the Olympic games. It was such an emotion, it was all emotion the closing ceremony at Melbourne and I thought it was one of the most wonderful spectacles you could see.

All the athletes getting together and singing this, it went to the tune of ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and it was ‘Farewell Olympians’. And it was a very emotional time for me. So I could appreciate that I was able to see it free of charge. So, and so I was lucky in that sense. Only because I had known the secretary

Cardwell through being involved in sporting events out here with the kids.

I think I may have been a little too young

to be worried about it. See it was so far away that us young people didn’t seem to be worried about it at all. And it really didn’t seem to be a concern to us. And I really don’t think I would have ever entered my head to enlist just to go overseas and fight. It was only when Australia was threatened

that I felt that my brother was enlisting, firstly, that was a deciding factor. But I think when Japan was in the war I felt that we had to do something, otherwise. We didn’t want them here. Prior to that I was involved in a volunteer fire fighting brigade down in Northcote.

Used to race out and fit hoses to hydrants and things like that and they used to have drills in case one of the buildings was hit and you needed to put a fire out. You did that after work from the foundry. But when the war was coming on I really don’t think that we gave

it much thought at all. It was only until being at my mate’s place and his mother came out and said, “Well we’re now at war.” And that’s when I first started to… And I was a cadet at the time, but I wasn’t considering that I would have to go over to Europe. But I enjoyed the training.

I was very adept at machine guns. I was quite experienced with Vickers machine guns and the old Lewis machine guns. I had never seen a Bren gun or a more modern gun in those days. And it went well with me in Darwin, because the few times you did see a Vickers or an old Lewis you knew what they were about.

Yes. We used to go to training two nights a week. Mostly it was done drilling and then rifle drill and learning how to sight a rifle. You couldn’t shoot a rifle, but they used to have a frame there with the rifle on this frame and you used to sight it,

and the instructor would come along after you had got onto a target and he would tell you whether it was correct or what. And he would bang it and say, “Now I want you to put it on target.” And you would do it again. Saturday afternoons, quite a number of Saturday afternoons, we would be down at North Williamstown where they had a rifle range. And when I was in infantry they had some sort of a

contest. There would be one Lewis machine gun with I think it was about five rifle men. And you would start off at a thousand yards. And you would have the Lewis machine gun crew and the rest would be riflemen. And you would go along and you would each have a target – the riflemen would have their targets and the machine gun theirs. And as

soon as the targets came up you would have to throw yourself on the ground and shoot at the target. You were all designated a target, which one you were to hit. Now if you went down first you were able to have a go at your mates’ [targets]. As soon as the targets came up you would drop down and fire your rounds of ammunition until all of the targets disappeared. You weren’t allowed to hit at the

machine gun target. And you would be just trotting from the thousand yards and you would have to drop down and knock them off again, you see? Then as soon as they went down, as soon as a target was hit they were supposed to pull them down, and then you would go on again until all of the targets were finished. And there used to be a time factor in it and accuracy.

And we used to enjoy those afternoons. You know just going down there and if you had an opportunity you would get on the machine gun or you would be on a rifle.

Live rounds, yeah. North Williamstown was the live rounds. See the rounds used to go out into the bay [Port Phillip Bay]. And there was a restricted area from out behind the mounds at North

Williamstown. People weren’t supposed to be there at all, boating was prohibited, etcetera. But we would go down there quite a lot shooting on the range area. Then we had a weekends away, firstly at Broadmeadows and then later on Trawool near Seymour. And there would be all sorts of bayonet practice and all of that sort

of jazz, and I became quite proficient at those sorts of things. I remember bayonet training, most of us were so proficient it was pretty good to see attacking each other with makeshift rifles and that and they would have one end padded. So you would thrust or you would parry and you would come

across. And it was quite good training for the purpose. And then of course going from the infantry battalion into the artillery it became more interesting because you would go along there, you would have to go and pick up the horses, you would have to harness them.

The guns were drawn by three pair of horses. They had the lead horse, the centre pair, and of course what they call the wheel pair. And used to have to race up, the six horses would have to race up to the gun and the gunners would hook you onto the gun and then they would jump on the limbers and then you would have to race up a hill,

and a sergeant on a single mount would tell you where he wanted the gun placed. And these horses would have to manoeuvre the gun, you couldn’t back it of course but they would have to manoeuvre the gun where they wanted it. The gunners would jump off, unhook the gun and you would then, the drivers of the horses would take the horses and hide them behind a mound somewhere, and then the gunners would get their gun into a position to fire. That was all interesting.

There was quite a lot of interesting things that went on during the afternoon training and during the camps. Things like that. I enjoyed it. I thought it was great. More so the artillery than ordinary infantry. Although we did put on infantry displays for various people.

We have been guards of honours for various openings of places. We used to turn up and you would have to slope arms and do the right thing in a group, that was the main thing in the infantry.

It was ordinary khaki one in the 29th Battalion, but then one of the

reasons we joined the artillery was the uniform they had. They had a blue jacket with red piping around the collar. Their dress uniform was blue trousers with a red stripe down the side and a blue cap with a red band. And it looked classy. And being a driver you had breeches,

leggings and boots. And we had spurs, and what we used to do was drill a hole in the spurs and drill a hole in an old sixpenny piece and cut a little niche in the old sixpenny piece and attach them to the spurs, and then when you walked down the street they would jingle as you walked. And you thought you was it and a bit walking down the street with this uniform on.

And the slouch hat. The slouch hat made everything. You had to have the slouch hat with your breeches and you only wore the evening hat when you went with these blue trousers. That was just a cap. But it was quite, the artillery uniform was much more interesting than the infantry one. And being young of course in those days you used to think that was it and a bit. And you used to go to dances

with these blue uniforms and used to think this was going to get the girls, but I don’t think it did. It was only the person in the uniform that won it. Well that went on and as I say I was still a cadet when the war came. And I was still training.

Well I think, firstly, joining the infantry… My brother-in-law was in the militia. They were in what they would call a private army, civilian army at the time. And they joined and they used to go there, and then of course they mentioned these cadets and that was in George Street, Victoria, for the 29th Battalion. And then

one of them got, one of my brother-in-laws had a car accident and he got his leg damaged and that put him out of the services. The other brother-in-law, he become an instructor when the war started. He became a sergeant instructing new servicemen to drill, and he instructed them in the

art of what he knew. And he knew the machine guns and he knew drilling. He could drill them, and that was initial training they had through his hands. And then I went on to the artillery. Well of course I joined the army from being a cadet. I went into the army. And on the first day I was made, well practically, it had only been a couple of days,

and one of the officers said, “Has anyone had previous military training?” I put the old hand up and said, “Yes.” And he said, “Do you think you could take these fellows out and teach them rifle drill?” and I said, “I am not sure. I’ll try.” So I am at Caulfield Racecourse in the centre with all of these new recruits and I am giving them rifle drill and all of the jazz that goes along with it. And I went home that night and I said

to my old man, “Mum has got to sew these stripes on.” I was a corporal. And he couldn’t believe it – a few days in the army and I was a corporal. And my brother was going crook because he said, “I was in a day earlier than you!” Anyway I would think my first job, once we got our uniform at Caulfield and got settled a bit, they

gave us a shovel and took us down to the Shrine [war memorial] opposite the barracks and we were making slit trenches in the Shrine gardens. You have got no idea how messed up that all was. And that was the first job I had. And within ten days of enlisting we were on our way to Darwin because things were pretty bad then – Singapore had fallen. So that’s how I got into

Darwin so quick and lively.

He was too young; he was younger than I. And he came home and he said, “Don’t tell the old man I have joined the army.” And I said, “Well you have got to tell him you have joined the army. He is going to kick you out for being too young.” And he said, “But I joined up using your name.” And I said, “I am too young,”

which I was at those times. Before you could join the army without your parents’ permission you had to be twenty-one, and I think I was barely eighteen. But anyway I told the old man. I said, “Skeeter has joined the army in my name.” And I thought Dad, my old man, would perform, but he didn’t. He accepted it because we were in a dangerous situation. And then the boss came around to my place

from work and he said to me, he said, “You wont stay in the army. You have got to go back to work,” because it was a reserved occupation. And I said, “Oh well, okay.” I didn’t take any notice of him and I went back to Caulfield and then, lo and behold, a mate of mine, my best mate, he had enlisted and he came out with us, and he was a far better moulder than I. And I thought now, “Well Jimmy is going to have to…

He will have to go back to work. They will miss him.” Anyway he stayed in and we went to Darwin I think together.

I don’t know. See nobody cared. I went into the town hall and I said, “ I want to enlist.”

And I gave him Percy’s name, just Percy Skerry. And he said, “Where is your birth certificate?” I said, “Left it at home. Didn’t know you wanted it.” He said, “Well you’re going to Caulfield.” I told him where my brother was. “You’re going to Caulfield. Take your birth certificate out there.” So when I went to Caulfield somebody there said, “Where is your birth certificate?” and I said, “Oh I showed that in the town hall yesterday. I didn’t think you would want it today.”

I am in the army. No-one cared; they just accepted you. They didn’t want to look at my birth certificate. I don’t think I had one anyway. I didn’t take one with me. I would have had to go into town to get mine. I never had one at home. And when my mate Jimmy turned up I got a hell of a shock. I said, “What did Pascoe say?” He said, “I am in the army.” There is a story about Darwin that is interesting about him, do you want me to tell that now?

Well my brother… When in Darwin, we had been there quite a while and he got hit with a bomb splinter and he was discharged – he had bad legs. And when he was discharged, this was later on after I joined the

2/14th Field Regiment, when I went to New Guinea he wasn’t with me, so then I asked to revert back to my old name. Which I did do.

No nobody took any notice. The only notice I got was regimental orders on such a such a date, Percy Skerry has been changed to Charles Alfred Skerry.

No change of date or anything like that. My birth certificate was the same. No-one ever questioned it after that. But since then brother Percy died – he died not long after the war – but I was free to do that when he wasn’t there.

Went into the town

hall on my own.

They were a bit upset of course but they didn’t make any overtures to hold me back, which they could have in my instance. Well they could have in both instances because Percy was younger and I was in a reserved occupation. They could have forced me back to work. But I got away with it.

Well as I said I had been a cadet and I was sort of familiar with some of them.

What I didn’t like most about the army I think was the class differences between the officers and ordinary serviceman. You had to salute them and all of that. That didn’t go over too well. I don’t think I have ever been a disciplinarian. I think I have been one of those casual people who just get away with murder and try and get away with anything you can.

And even through all of my army career I was never one to work to the rule books and things like that. And I don’t think that endeared me with certain people. I used to do my own thing most of the time. Whether it was right or wrong. I didn’t suffer greatly from it. It cost me a lot in fines and like that.

Well a mate of mine – he was a good mate of mine; he had been at cadets with me. When I got into, I am not sure now

where I first met him, but he was a captain and we were cadets together. But the fact that he wouldn’t allow me to call him by his Christian name, I had to call him ‘captain’ and salute him, which was a bit under the weather for me. I just couldn’t. I think I got a bit of something from that. If I hadn’t have met him and hadn’t have known him…

To me, I had as much right to be a captain as he had with the training he had. That sort of situation.

I am not sure. The circumstances may have been that they needed someone similar to me when they needed a corporal. And he may have just jumped the gun a bit in that sense. And he did.

When I went back to work from the cadetship and only went on weekends, he stayed in and I think they may have needed officers more so at that time. But what disturbed me was when you met him I had to call him captain and I had to salute him, and I think I was a bit put down because of that. That was just one of the instances. But there was a lot of

things came up were mostly when I joined the artillery. Prior to that I was in probably what you would call a work unit; it was a pioneer battalion. The officers there were engineers and people who weren’t oriented towards the army, and you would see them around without a hat on and no doubt no shirt on out in the working party, and

you got used to that. And most of my Darwin days I was with this particular unit and you worked with these people and you called them by their Christian names. You might say, “Sir,” but you wouldn’t have to salute them. And then when I went into the artillery, every officer had to be saluted and you had to treat them with their respect.

[Arthur] Rylah was one of the officers, Rylah, he was the secretary to [Henry] Bolte I believe when Bolte was Premier of Victoria. Well he was 2IC [Second in Command] of the 2/14th and I remember he was a bit of a, he used to

regimentise the regiment. You had to be on your Ps and Qs with him. You had to do everything right. And I remember when I was in the artillery when I joined them I was able to run, and I think they used to like fellows who could win. My brother, when he was there he could win a fight, a boxing match; he finished up a professional boxer. So he could win a boxing match and I could run a mile

in pretty good time. And I was a mile runner and he used to bet on it, and I remember going (UNCLEAR) and Rylah, he abused the hell out of me. I shouldn’t do those things, you know. And I think it was because something upset him because one of his pet persons had done the wrong thing, if you get what I mean. I may not have said that in the right way, but I think he was more upset that one of the

people that he relied on let him down a bit. Didn’t worry me too greatly at that time.

My brother joining up firstly, then I joined the next day and we were within about ten days on our way to Darwin. Then when we arrived there, we arrived at Adelaide River, there was no camp for us to go into. No tents, no nothing, no mosquito nets. It was pretty hard going. Eventually

we had to put up our own cabins from timber, bush timber. Again I was lucky that my unit had bushmen in it that could handle the circumstances and make bush huts out of almost nothing. The rooves were thatched with gum leaves, etcetera.

Supposedly we were to be 2/4th. We went as reinforcements to the 2/4th Pioneer Battalion. We considered ourselves 2/4th Pioneers, you know. And then we started erecting these metal huts that were prefabricated in Sydney

and then sent up to Darwin. And we were putting them up at Adelaide River for the transfer of the Darwin Hospital that was situated in Darwin at that time. For the floors of these huts we were cutting down ant hills, huge white ants, and they make huge mounds.

And that spread on the floor with a bit of water makes a terrific base. It sets as hard as concrete. It doesn’t even have much dust come up. Makes a good grounding for what was needed, and that was a floor in these huts. That was hard work. They are very strong there, the ant hills. They had to be chopped down. What we used to do, we would

put wire around them and pull that with a truck and cut them in half, break them up as much as you could, throw them onto the truck and take them into the site where we were erecting these huts.

Not too much, just to keep the dust down. Then as you fill your floor up, maybe a foot in height

and a little bit of water to make it settle, and you flatten it all out and sweep it down flat and it makes quite a good base for what we wanted in these huts.

Well somebody got the idea of doing it. Don’t know if it was before us or with us. I couldn’t say where it

originally came from, but that was what we tended to do and it became very efficient. These were galvanised iron huts with a steel frame, quite a substantial size. And we had no loaders, we had no trains, we had nothing to lift them with. So we had to devise schemes so that once you put the frames up, and they were wobbly because

they were free of any base of pinning them together, we had to get these rooves up. What do you call them? What do you call the part of the roof that comes down?

No, the part that goes to a point?

Anyway we had to devise that scheme to get those. So the idea was you just push, you leant it this way, longways in the hut, pushed one side up with the wall hanging down, the other side up to the top. Get a rope on one end and throw the rope over the top of this particular frame that you are putting up, attach it to the truck,

get a post, and a couple of men would push the point up until the rope took over and then straighten it up. And then you had to have someone climb up this very unwieldy stanchion that was standing, to climb up and drop a bolt in a hole and do it up. Do it to the other side. You found that once you got two up, it was pretty stable and you could go along without too much trouble, but getting the first two up was fairly

difficult. But anyway it was organised, and once you got the first two, we found that doing the second one first and then coming back to the first one was the most efficient way of doing it. Then we would just go along and put these frames in and then later on there would be timber put along the ridges. And galvanised iron then

would be fitted to the timber frames. That took some working out, and we worked on that for a while. Then we had to go in, there was another, a scare situation they thought was going to be another invasion. We had to leave that work, go into Darwin and take up our defensive positions again. And when it was found that that was a false

alarm, you were able to come back and try to do some more huts until we got a few huts built. Then we went permanently into Darwin, working on the ships unloading as they came in. By this time I think the civil authorities had taken up a civil crew to mend the wharves that was damaged in the air raid, first air raid.

And there was quite a substantial amount of damage done to the wharves in the first air raid and oil tanks and that sort of thing in the first air raid.

Not in the first air raid. I was there at later air raids, but not the first one. We arrived there possibly a week after the first air raid, and that was when it seemed to be the most

vulnerable time that there was going to be an invasion. And they thought with consistent air raids they are sure to come over and invade the place. They could have walked in because there wasn’t much opposition. So when they got the wharves fixed and they started bringing in ships, before then foodstuffs and supplies was very inadequate.

There was little if anything at all. There was a hell of a lot of our blokes suffering malnutrition from lack of food. It is hard to believe someone in Australia suffering malnutrition, but this was the case. They were being admitted to hospital with malnutrition. I remember for about three months all we had for meals, for breakfast, all you would get was a dessertspoon of rice and a dessertspoon of beans

and two army biscuits. An army biscuit is a hard sort of a square biscuit which it is hard to bite through. Well that was your breakfast and that was your lunch and that was your meal of an evening. Well this went on for months, I imagine, before we got a reasonable feed again.

Well we suggested that. Ammunition was very short; you couldn’t waste it. As I say when they expected the invasion they issued me with rounds, ten rounds per man in my unit. Now if you had been rabbit shooting how long would it take to expire ten rounds? We had an old Lewis gun that we weren’t game to fire it.

In action it wouldn’t have been proficient because it used to have bad springs on it and it used to jam. We tried against anti-aircraft one day and we couldn’t use it because it would jam up, and found out it was a waste of ammunition anyway. So we didn’t worry too much about the machine gun side of it and kept the ammunition for rifles. I have since later heard that some battalions up there were issued

with only five. One clip of bullets per man. You can imagine how long five bullets would last if there had been an invasion. Then I remember a church service we went to one Sunday morning and the padre was very certain about we should not go out into the bush and shoot wallabies, and if we did that they

would starve. So it was not only not having enough ammunition to do that it was the advice we got from the padre not to go out shooting the foodstuffs that the Aboriginals might depend on. So then we just had to accept our situation as it was. And hope that it would get better.

One of my main gripes was when we had tinned fruit came in, instead of being on the mess it was put in the canteen, you went and bought it. And I remember going to the canteen and buying a tin of peaches or apricots, a small tin of cream, mixing them together, eating them, and I went outside and I was sick as a pig.

And if we had have thought about it and shared a tin with four other members we would have been able to consume without losing a tin of fruit. But at that stage you didn’t think about those sorts of thing, you just wanted to get down as much stuff as you could, and then we lost it. I wasn’t the only one; several of us did the same thing. Things did start to improve a little bit after that when the foodstuff

started to come in. The ammunition was bad for along time. And to top it off there was a bushfire near where the ammunition stores was held and that destroyed quite a lot of ammunition. That was close to Adelaide River. And that was another nasty effort where we had to ask for volunteers to go and fight a bushfire where there is live ammunition

all over the place, and apparently TNT [explosive] etcetera. And we got over that, there wasn’t too much damage down with that although it did create a lot of humorous with rounds going off all over the place and fellows running up and down the path trying to dodge this ammunition. You didn’t know where they were going to go once they started going off. And then of course I was sent into Darwin then

to unload the ships. Unloading the ships was a bit of a hazard for me because I couldn’t swim. We would be put down in the hold of a ship and, if an air raid come over, what would happen was they would put the tops on the holds and we would be in the hold and we would be floating around the harbour. The captain was dodging the aircraft of

course and we could hear bombs going off, and you could just imagine a person who can’t swim wondering how you are going to get back to shore because you can’t swim. So it was a hazard in that sense. Then this mate of mine, Jimmy Diltz. He was a moulder that worked with me in the foundry, a good moulder,

and I heard on the grapevine that his house that he was staying in had been hit by a bomb. And I saw him that night, there was going to be a picture show on. Anyway as it started to get dark, they used to put messages on the screen, ‘air raid pending’. They used to have alerts in red if they were over the top.

Anyway I just met him and we just sat down and this air raid siren started to go and this warning come up on the screen and he said to me, “You know, Charlie, you could die in this bloody war. I might go back to Pascoe,” that was the boss, “and go back to work.” And he did. He wrote to the boss in the foundry and went back to work. I couldn’t do the same. I might have, but I had my brother with me so we stayed it out.

Another night, he had been in taking some food into the fellows that was working on the ship and this air raid came over and I thought he was in Darwin, but he wasn’t. Apparently he had orders to go back to camp. The air raid tunnel that we had in Darwin wharves, the officer in charge of the entrance said there was enough in it and he was sent back

to camp. And he was telling me, he was coming home on a moonlight night, flat out in a truck and he could hear bombs landing in our area. And it was essential to put a truck in a dugout where the engine part had to go in first, because the engines were the hardest part to replace. So you had to put the engine in a dugout, make sure that the front, that

you drive into these dugouts. Anyway instead of staying there, he may have been safe in the dugout with the truck, he started running down the hill towards us. And he got hit with a bomb sliver and all I could hear was a bit of bad language and, “Charlie, you bastard, come and get us.” And somebody said to me, “That’s Skeeter.” And I said, “It couldn’t be Skeeter. He is in town in Darwin. He took some food stuff in

in the truck.” Anyway later on I could hear this bad language and picking out Charlie, and I knew who it was. Anyway we raced up to pick him up and all of his leg was all blood and everything else. So we just had to pick him up and tend his leg as best we could and get him to a hospital later on. But if he had of stayed where he should have stayed, I suppose. But people are like that. They want company when they are in trouble. Then later on he was discharged

out of there and I was left on my Patsy Malone [on my own]. And of course at that time they started talking about our unit was disbanded, well we had been disbanded before and we went over and joined this 2/214th and he was despatch rider and I was in charge of anti-aircraft guns. And one of the best

moments I had in Darwin, I had an only Lewis gun set up for the aircraft and there was an air raid pending and he come over on this motorbike and it read, under no circumstances was I to fire on enemy aircraft. I was pleased as punch. I grabbed the camouflage net, took the gun down and put the camouflage net over the dugout

we had made for ourselves. And I am out there watching these little planes and little Zeroes coming down and little Japs [Japanese] sticking their heads over the side to see what they could see. But I was quite happy to be in that hole and not having a go at them. Some of them used to have tail gunners and as they came down the tail gunner would have a go at you too. So I was quite pleased that I

had this order otherwise we would have been having a go at them. Whether the guns wouldn’t have done any good, I don’t know.

Oh they were that low, this was fighter planes that you could see their head down. It wasn’t until later on, later on they got American Kittyhawks in and that kept them up higher.

When the Kittyhawks first arrived they had nowhere to land, and they widened the North South road and the Kittyhawks used to come in. See they damaged the air strip. In Darwin itself. They bombed the hell out of it. So they landed on the roads and they used to call upon us Aussies to come and grab the planes, roll them off the main

road, highway, under trees for camouflage. And cover them up with anything that was going. And then wait for the next one and put them under the trees as best as you could. And when there was an air raid pending they would race out and we would have to put them on the North South road again and then they took off. But it wasn’t long before they had a lot of Negro servicemen who were maintenance crowds and they made an airstrip. And the rear of Adelaide River itself…

And that’s where, whilst the Americans were there, that’s where they used to have their Kittyhawks at the rear of Adelaide River. But then as the war progressed we were changed over from Kittyhawks and the Australians came over from England, [Squadron Leader "Bluey"]Truscott and a few of those fellows from the war scene in England, and they had their Spitfires with them.

There was a change there dramatically. And as the Americans evacuated the Darwin area they took their Kittyhawks with them and left Australians flying Kittyhawks and also Spitfires. So it was a sort of a changed scene.

Well some of the night fighting, it was mostly tracers, but it was a real show that you could

really see. It was a really good show to see. And if you were lucky enough to see, most of the fighting was done over the bay. Most of the fighting was away from where you could see it actually – you could hear a lot but you couldn’t see too much. Instead of coming over at daytime then, the Japanese would come over at night. They give away daytime when they had some defensive planes there.

They give away daytime bombing and it was mostly night-times. It was very rare for them to come over in the day. They had reconnaissance planes come over but never really a bombing raid.

That was early, yes. That was one of the early bombing raids after the big one.

You see when we were putting these huts up, again a conference was called and I had to go into the conference. And they said Darwin was under attack and they were expecting an invasion and I had to get my men together, issue them with their rounds, only ten rounds per, and then we would move in. And when we

got to Darwin we would be given a section of beach to defend. We dug slit trenches for ourselves and we were there waiting – it was a matter of wait and see. We were trying to find out where we would get our food from. It was very difficult to find out where the kitchens were and all of that sort of jazz. Everything was done in a hurry. We didn’t have mosquito nets even, and the mosquitoes were a

terrible situation. And then we found being on the beach itself, sandflies was another nuisance. They were the irritations that you had to put up with being so close to the beaches. Then well these people, they finished their damage and then we found we had to go into actual Darwin itself and clean up the damage the bombing had made. And if there were bodies

around at that time, you would have to clean up the bodies and bury them if necessary. Some were buried on beaches and some of them were buried in the best places you could put them. You know, you find places for them.

I never counted them. I think on occasion there was probably fifteen or twenty,

and that was only the area I was in. There was a lot of damage in areas around. One of the most devastating news, if there had been an invasion a good many of our fellows didn’t even have a rifle to defend themselves with. When I went into the 2/14th Field Regiment I found that they had only had, out of about a thousand men they were

lucky to get eighteen rifles between them. There were stories like that circulating. And they went and, these three pronged prickers. They used to go down to the workshop and sharpen the points of them to be used as prickers to be used as a weapon if there had have been an invasion. So it was a scary sort of a time, and we were very lucky that they didn’t come over.

We had very little to defend ourselves with. I was lucky I did have a rifle. There was a number that didn’t have rifles and the couple of Lewis guns we had there, they were prehistoric things. You couldn’t depend on them to fire. They had balls on the magazines – if the springs were a bit weak they would jam and once they jammed it meant the round had

jammed, and sometimes you couldn’t get five rounds out of a Lewis machine gun and it would jam. It wasn’t until well into the war that we got better equipment, better machine guns.

Later on, yes. We transferred when, the 2/14th they were, transferred from Darwin down to Sydney and we were at a place called

Loftus and there we were equipped with all new vehicles, twenty-five-pounder artillery which previously they had out of date eighteen-pounders. We were given Bren guns, Owen machine guns, all of the equipment that you ever want to see in comparison to what we had in Darwin. And of course it was the first time I had seen a Bren

gun so I had to go and get the books on the Bren gun and learn about the Bren gun itself, and then teach it to other members of my sections. And my job initially was to go out and protect the artillery from enemy aircraft if any aircraft was attacking. And also as a defensive measure if an infantry

style situation was needed. Because the gunners were mainly concerned with looking after guns. But I think they learned from Darwin that most of the gunners were armed with personal guns themselves, they had Owen guns to defend themselves in a situation. They weren’t deprived of weapons like they were in Darwin. But it created quite a lot of companionship and whatever in the fact that you had to

depend on each other. And I think this was the biggest thing to come out of the war, the mateship that evolved. Each person depended on the other person for survival more or less. If you got into a situation where your life depended on it, so each one, and sort of gunners on a gun they got inter-knitted with one another. They would be really close and you couldn’t break into that sometimes.

These gunners on a gun crew would be so close-knitted that it would be really hard to break into their group. And this was one of the sections, they were inter-mixed, instead of being… Since the war I have known of some gun crews that have met each year, until they have started passing away. They met on a certain day of the year just to get together. And they come from all states

just to get together. It was one of those feelings that you had with your fellow servicemen. It was very close-knit. Closer than I think than men and women can get. I think there is a mateship there. It holds them together in an emergency and that’s what it is all about.

I think it is the fact that you depend on them. You get to know how they think, how they live, how they treat life. You talk about so many things together, you have all got an opinion and you find exactly what makes another person tick.

It is just that union, it is hard to define once you get away from it. After the war I think this is one of the, when you broke away from that union type of thing. I didn’t feel it so much in the artillery as I did in the pioneers because you depended on more in the pioneers than the artillery. And then when I went to ANGAU. Of course it was

more individualistic. It was not a team situation at all, whereas your pioneers you were on a team. On the guns the fellows were in a team and they were close-knit team that stayed together, acted together and did things together. And as you got away from that you

found that, especially ANGAU it was more individual. You didn’t need to depend so much on a crew or a group or any such situation. The drivers were all more or less individuals. And then we started teaching natives how to drive, teaching natives

how to manufacture houses, how to manufacture huts out of timber, how to use tools and things like that. Well it was an individualistic thing.

This was in New Guinea. Later on when I went to New Guinea and I joined ANGAU.

We didn’t see too many.

There wasn’t too many. Most of the population was out of Darwin itself. I think they must have been in there, which we didn’t know of. We didn’t see too much of them at all. They must have been on the outskirts of Darwin in their little humpies and all of that sort of thing. The bush aboriginals of course

I didn’t see too much of them at all. It was only on occasion. You might go on a fishing trip trying to get some fish or something like that, then you might come across groups of Aboriginals. But in Darwin itself they had all seemed to be moved out of Darwin. And to be quite honest I don’t know what their living conditions were,

whether they were sent back to reserves, because I didn’t have a clue where any of them were because we didn’t seem to come up against any of them.

Oh yeah, if you left Darwin itself and you may go into the bush to the river, the Roper River and the Adelaide River and you try and get fish or something like that. Then you might see a group of aboriginals in their little camp. But their attitude to us was quite good.

We didn’t have any problems with aboriginals. We never saw women aboriginals much. It was mostly males.

Oh no, nomads in the bush. I didn’t come across any aboriginal servicemen. Although there were aboriginal servicemen in the services, I didn’t come across any.

But if you did come across them it was just cordial, “How do you do?” and all of that sort of jazz. There was no animosity at all, didn’t appear to be anyway. They just accepted you and you accepted them.

Just coped, you couldn’t do much about it and you just coped. As I say the only women I saw in Darwin were the women in the hospital, and they were nurses and they were VAD [Voluntary Aid Detachment]. There were no AWAS [Australian Women’s Army Service] up there as far as I know.

I never come across any. That’s the Australian Women’s Service, VAD was what they called the Voluntary Aid Detachment. They were women who were attached to hospitals who might do Red Cross duties and things like that. And nurses. But they were the only ones that I came across, women. And then I was in hospital, I didn’t come across any civilian women at all in Darwin.

Well you just talked about women. I think that was one of the main topics of conversations. I think if any arguments came up it was either religion, women, or…

Politics. And that was just about every argument. Even football wasn’t mentioned because that was out of the scene at that time.

But most of the arguments was religion, as I say politics or women, how to treat women and how to get on with women.

Well a lot of it, see there was quite a number of married men up there and you had to be careful about

how you talked about women in front of them because they were relating to their wives and possibly their mothers. And there was always, if you got a bit nasty about women there would be always someone who would say, “You wouldn’t talk about your mother like that, so why do you talk about so and so like that?” and such and such a thing like that. I think in the most part there was a lot of respect for women in their absence.

Because there is a certain different blokes, in any groups of persons, you have got the no-hoper who couldn’t care less what he says or what he thinks about any subject. And then you have got the intermediate, and then you have got the other bloke who is over the top a bit. For the most part what I always found was a nice bunch of blokes who respected most things in life. Respected women, respected authority,

respected the church, even though they didn’t believe in it. If you were a Catholic they would respect you for being a Catholic. I was a Protestant and I had no qualms in religion at all. If my friends were Catholic it didn’t worry me; I couldn’t care less. And likewise they never held it against me that if, and at that time there was no Islamics,

what we would say would be Middle Eastern type persons there which might create a problem. Nowadays in the army if you come across an Islamic person that might cause some sort of discussion on their religion. But ours was clear-cut, it was only Protestant or Catholic. Never mentioned Jews. I might have had mates that were Jewish, I don’t know.

Never ever mentioned Jewish. There was no talk of Jewish. Whether it was there I don’t know; it never came up. Most of it was what I say Protestants. And the Protestants, what we used to gripe about mostly, the Catholics used to go to a church service and they would leave the Protestants there and we would have to do all of the dirty work because the Catholics were at a church service.

We didn’t worry too much about church as a Protestant, but a Catholic used to like going to mass. That was the only difference we found in religion. A Catholic used to attend mass more often than the Protestants used to go to church. Although you would be asked to go to church and it got a good roll up then,

especially when things got dangerous. The padre then, I remember one church on a Sunday morning and the padre, he got up and he was saying how bad the situation was and he didn’t know whether we would be there the following Sunday or not, and “A lot of you fellows might have ideas

of going south, to get as far down south as quick as you can.” This is in the event of an invasion coming up. And then he was telling us how we should protect the Aboriginal system, that we shouldn’t shoot the wallabies, etcetera. So I couldn’t imagine, if you are hungry and you see a wallaby

and you had the means of knocking it over, I don’t think an Aboriginal being hungry would worry you if you were hungry. But I never had that come up. I wasn’t put in that position where I might have had to make a decision on it and the eventuality didn’t come up that there was an invasion.

See for about my first ten months in the army I was in this pioneer battalion and it wasn’t regimented at all. The officers were probably engineers and probably bush people who knew how to build a bridge and a hut and things like that. And they weren’t subject

to real discipline. You didn’t have to salute them, you just treated them as more or less yourselves. It wasn’t until later on when I went into the artillery that they seemed to be regimentated, and the discipline was pretty strong. You had to be dressed properly all of the time,

especially when you were in camp. You had to salute officers as you passed. When they played Reveille you had to stand to attention. Which you did normally. When they played Reveille or the Last Post you would stand up anyway if you were in the vicinity. But there was such a marked difference between

the two groups. It was rather outstanding. And I had to sort of knuckle down and be a different person to what I had been. And my brother was only with me for a little while. Once he got hurt, he got fixed up in the hospital and he was brought back and he was with me in the artillery

regiment for a while, and then his leg apparently got a lot worse and then he was sent home and later discharged. And I think when he wasn’t there I felt that I was out of place. I felt out of place in the artillery regiment. I felt they had done the dirty on me by disbanding the unit I had joined. You just join as an

individual and you go in and you join a group of people and you’re really part of that group, and then all of a sudden officialdom comes in and says, “That group has to be broken up.” For no apparent reason. If they had have taken the whole group as a group I don’t think my attitude would have changed.

But once we were broken up and Jimmy Diltz as I had said, he had been in his bed at night when this bombing raid came down, and he was upstairs on the first floor in Darwin and the bomb took the wall down. And he was in bed and it took him out and dropped him on the ground. And he saw me and he said, “I am writing to Pascoe to go back to work.”

Which he did do. Now Diltzy had gone back to work. And other good mates of mine, one had to go to a bakehouse, one had to go God knows where, and to this day I still don’t know where they finished up. And then you have to make all new friends, not that that is hard but you don’t feel as though you belong., you feel as though you’re an

interloper, you’re a second-rate sort of situation. And it was hard for me to take anyway. Most people might have been able to cope with it. But I was always antagonistic because of that. I had good mates in the artillery as well, but unfortunately, after the war they were interstate players. One of my best mates is in Tasmania, another one in Sydney.

And if you wanted to go and see them you had to go interstate to see them. Whereas good mates joined here together and they were together all they way through. And then when I changed, I went to Finschhafen and went up a bit north with them with the artillery, had a few adventures there with them. And the opportunity

came to join ANGAU and I accepted it. And a mate of mine from the artillery, we both joined ANGAU together, then they did the dirty on us there they put him in signals and he was transferred God knows where and I went down to Port Moresby. And then later on I was in charge of a transport section and then they transported

us all over the place, which was a good job for me. But you sort of, there is no group linking you. And the drivers are, in each of the sections we had there was quite a number of native drivers which the men had taught to drive, taught to maintain the vehicles and things like that. Well that was part of your association. It wasn’t the close-knit relationship that I was used to.

Then I was put in charge, as I say, of a section of vehicles and which I thoroughly enjoyed because I suppose there would be about sixty or seventy vehicles on line and you had to allocate them as needed. Officers would needed chauffeurs to go to various meetings. You had your ordinary workday jobs, the

truck would have to go to the kitchen, truck would have to go and collect wood. Some would have to go down to the wharves or wherever to get supplies and bring them in. some would have to go to native villages to feed the natives. Such a diverse amount of jobs for the trucks to do, so really you only had to play with about ten or twelve of these vehicles. We even had a general’s…

Then I was put in charge, as I say, of a section of vehicles, cars there, and when the general wasn’t in residence you had a car at your disposal to use for senior officers if they needed it. And ANGAU was an administrative office, it was I would say the government body of New Guinea at the time. Not only were they in charge of the army but they were in charge of civil administration. And the civil

administrators used to want transport. That was all while I was in Port Moresby.

Well they did definitely say that they were expecting the Japanese to attack that morning. At this briefing that I went to, the officers in charge said

they weren’t sure whether they were going to come up the mouth of the Adelaide River or whether they were going to hit the beaches. But they had some intelligence reports that they were heading our way. Of course our defences were reasonably limited. All I had to do, they gave me a map of the beach, it was a rough ready made beach and it gave me various points that

I had to imagine more or less because I had not seen it before. And these were the points of the beach that I had to, with my section, a section of only eight men, and, “You have got to defend this particular section.” And that’s how we went into Darwin in that state. And there was no talk of provisions, how they were going to provide our meals for us.

This all had to come up at a later date. And so the whole situation of going in under those circumstances was very touchy because we had no bedding; we didn’t know where we were going to sleep. We didn’t know who was going to feed us. If we ran out of ammunition we didn’t know where we were going to get any. There was no backups. See in artillery

regiment or battalion you know exactly that you have got a rear echelon to fall back up. You know that you have got people to bring up supplies to you. You are going to have a field kitchen come with you and they’re going to bring food with them. In that situation you know there is a back up system. But when you go up there, just called out like this, and you have got a few tins of bully beef and a few packets of biscuits

and you know it is only going to last you a day or two. And there is no provisions made for where you are going to sleep even. We finished up sleeping on the beach as I said, and it was full of sandflies and then mosquitoes drove you nuts; we had no mosquito nets. All of that situation made it very difficult. And then later on, when the

invasion threat wasn’t evident we moved into the houses in Darwin and we had quite good accommodation then. And then…

I am not sure. I think we did it of our own accord.

And any car that came along if there was petrol in it you had a transport, but the petrol didn’t last long and there was abandoned cars all over the place. There was abandoned little boats all over the place; you had no petrol for them. There was so much abandonment that you just accepted it, and you used it if you could. If you found a use for it, you would use it.

Well once a motor car has got no petrol and you cant get any petrol from the pool, you just leave it on the side of the road; you push it in off the side of the road.

There was very little food when we got there, very little food. See they had been ransacked before we ever got there. I have heard they went on a rampage after the first raid, whoever was in

Darwin at that time, and I understand that they knocked the place about a lot after the first raid. As I say, we were in there probably six, eight weeks after, and we went in there. All we were lucky to do was get a bed. Used to have hot showers because the water pipe to Darwin was above the ground and that used to supply the water for Darwin, and it was always warm because of the warm weather.

You never had a cold shower and that was one of the terrible things of Darwin. Their beaches were lousy, you couldn’t go and have a swim. I don’t think even now there is a good beach around Darwin to go and have a swim in if you could swim. But what we did do, there was double beds and there was beds with good beddings in them you could make use of those. There was refrigerators. There was electricity while it was on. And we

stayed there for a while and then of course we got chased out of there and went into army barracks. These were made of galvanised iron and they were hot as blazes, concrete on the floor. We had only straw to make a mattress out of, and I tell you those concrete floors weren’t the best, especially after you had

one of those houses with the double bed in it. And I remember I was giving my crowd a gas… See they used to have, in those times they thought there might have been gas problems. And I was giving my crowd a gas alert. Now with the idea of a gas alert you had a respirator up here, first down on your side, you had to bring that up to your chest, tie it with a string

around the back. Then open the flaps of the haversack. And then when the order was given, “Gas,” you had to put your hand in, bring out the mask and put it over your face in this fashion. Well I got to the position where I said, “Gas.” I put my hand in to get this gas mask out and I come out and on my thumb there was a scorpion, and I tell you it was huge.

And I am trying to get this scorpion off my finger. And my finger, I could see it swelling. I don’t know whether you have ever seen a scorpion or not, or ever heard of them?

They bite. They bite with their front and then they have got this tail with a sting in it and the tail comes over, and I am belting it out like that.

And I am doing this and my section who I am giving gas drill to is laughing their heads off, as you can imagine. Having a great old joke. And I couldn’t get this scorpion off. Other blokes made a grab to grab it to try and knock it off. Anyway my finger finished up, my hand swelled like blazes and he said, “I cant do anything about it. All I can suggest is that you try and get an onion to rub

on it.” I had a hell of a job getting an onion. There was nowhere around where you could get a simple onion. All night long there was this throbbing. And an air raid came up that night, and hand up like this and I had to go down into the slit trenches, and I can tell you what I was very uncomfortable about it. And all of the mob was laughing their heads off. That was one of the occasions – sort of

humorous for the fellows, but unpleasant for Charlie.

Very few I think. Very few of the locals. We didn’t come across any. There was no bar. Hotels were all empty. Post office was empty. There was no shops open. You couldn’t go and buy anything.

No trading being done. When you went down the wharves was full of mother-of-pearl shells. It was amazing how much mother-of-pearl was hanging about. It must have been in sheds and the vandals must have got in there and just threw it all over the place, because that was one of the trading things prior to the war, was mother-of-pearl, apparently.

And they had all of this mother-of-pearl and you can get some beautiful things made out of mother-of-pearl, I have some nice little trinkets that I got in Darwin. Some of the aboriginal work in mother-of-pearl is amazing too. Some of the intricate work that they could do. But there was nowhere we could go and buy a feed. Even beer – we couldn’t get beer. I suppose we waited for about eight months to get a bottle of beer. And when the

beer came up it was usually warm and you tried to put it in a creek or something, but the water was always warm. You couldn’t get a nice cool glass of beer and enjoy it.

No not much at all. We didn’t see many of them. And we were told not to kill the wallabies –that that was their staple diet and things like that. But whether they were herded out by officials I don’t know

or whether they just wandered back to their own tribal areas. We didn’t have much to do with them at all. Rarely did you see them.

No, there was a little Englishman and a Scotsman, but

there was no foreigners, what we would suggest as an Asiatic or a European, none of them. I never met any.

Well that was when, when a raid was over we were just sent out to clean up.

A lot of it you took upon yourself, you see? You just, you took, you tried to clean up areas that was damaged, make sure the roads were clear so transport could get through, and if there were bodies about you would take their identity cards from them – each man has got an identity with a string around his neck, meat tickets we used to call them –

and you would make sure that you would take them off so you could give them to an officer and they would be registered as known persons who has died. And then once that happened you would find a place to bury these people, and always mark it. And they were moved at a later date. I wasn’t involved in it. But there was an official burial crowd going around and moving these bodies to

cemeteries and see that they were properly installed and respected and things like that. But you would always make sure that firstly you would get their identity tags off their neck. And you would give them to an officer so that they would know exactly who had gone. And then if you buried it, you would make sure that it was clearly marked so that whoever come to recover that body would know

who it was. And quite often – see all a meat ticket had on it was an army number and name and initials; that’s all it had. The unit, you didn’t even know whether a good many a time it was navy, they might have been navy or air force. And working down on the wharf there was quite a lot of civilians also. And quite a lot of times you didn’t know whether it was army, navy or

air force or just civilians. The wharfies they had down there working on the wharf were toughies. They used to be a law unto themselves and they were pretty hard to get along with, and they would cause a blue here and there and everywhere.

Oh well, yes you did. It was,

especially if it was your own familiar people. If it was stranger it didn’t matter so much, but on occasion when they were close to you it was traumatic. And it was surprising how you acted differently with them. If you knew them you treated them like babies and would be gentle and all of that

sort of thing. But if you didn’t know them you would just put hem in a blanket, dig a hole and put them in, things like that. But if they were personal friends of yours, you were really affected. It was emotional, it was. It was bad seeing people.

Even I was in a tent in Darwin one night and there was six of us in this tent, and there was an electrical storm came. And I don’t know how or why, or there was no reason for it, but a bolt of lightning came down. I am in this stretcher here, another bloke is in this stretcher and the bloke in the middle gets hit by lightning and he is dead. One of my good mates. You can’t account for it.

He had a rifle on a cross piece, which we all did under this stretcher. Homemade stretchers. But we used to have a cross piece and a rifle under there. And this lightning struck him and he is dead. And you just can’t, the rhyme or reason for it you just don’t know. Why didn’t it hit two or three of us in this tent? Just the one fellow. And it was very emotional burying him.

And the war had nothing to do with it. It was just an act of nature, just one of those things. We had to take him out and bury him and that was a very emotional thing. But with him they made a coffin for him and put him in a coffin and we had a real ceremony about that. But these are the, there, in New Guinea I had moments like that too. One of my first jobs in New Guinea was burying dead Japanese.

And even that was a bit traumatic. Some of them had been dead for quite a while, and you just threw a rope over their legs sometimes and drag them into a hole, or you might shovel them into a hole. You wouldn’t, you didn’t use any finesse about a Japanese body, as long as you got him out of the way. And you tried to leave a mark somewhere to give him a name, but you didn’t treat them anywhere like

your own personnel.

Oh just a service. You always made sure with your own that you had a prayer meeting or something like that, and someone would say prayers. If the padre wasn’t around you would just do it yourself or nominate someone to do it. Say a few words and that was it.

I think for me that was the hardest part of the war was those sorts of things. The, I think emotion is one of the things you have got to put up with.

Strangely enough, I didn’t care. All I was interested in was if I copped it I wanted to be dead – I didn’t want to be injured and I didn’t want to lose

a leg. That’s my attitude even now. I am not afraid of death. I have never been afraid of dying. I don’t want to die, but it has never frightened me. But my main problem has been that if I got hit with a bomb or something like that, I didn’t want to lose a leg or be knocked about. I would prefer to go entirely, one piece and

be out of it. The same applies now. In a motor accident I think if I am going to have a serious accident, let’s hope I go bang and that’s it. I don’t want to finish up in a nursing home. I would prefer to knock myself off than finish my time in a nursing home.

No I don’t really, I think blindness. I don’t think, if I had have been unfortunate enough to have a wound at all I would have hated to be afflicted with blindness. Hearing, I have got lack of hearing now, mainly because of machine gun fire I think. See when you’re firing a machine gun your ears are right along beside it.

And artillery you have got ‘crack’, ‘crack’ every time the gun goes off. And I had a bomb come down and hit me pretty close, the amazing crack. I have never experienced anything like it. The crack was so resounding it just dulled your senses. You didn’t even think about

the good fortune that you missed. The noise was so dramatic that you… And then when I went down the next day and seen how close it was and thought, “Now that could have been me,” the outskirts of the bomb was only a yard away. This crater had come all over us and the tree come down on top was chopped in half. And I thought to myself then, and I shivered and I shook for a month.

And it affects your attitude then, later on. But I have hated storms, I have hated electric storms since that fellow in Darwin was killed. Before that electrical storms didn’t worry me. But after that I used to dread them. I still worry about them. Electrical storms, most people take for granted and don’t worry about them. I remember when I first came home, bad cracks of a night, cracker nights, I used to dislike them.

After the war I tried to go shooting rabbits with my other brothers and I found that I couldn’t shoot a rabbit. You have got a rabbit in your sights, after the war I just simply couldn’t shoot a rabbit. My mates, they’re younger than me they go duck shooting, and I just ask them every now and again, “I just can’t understand how you can enjoy, how you can go duck shooting and think it is a sport?”

I couldn’t shoot a duck. I couldn’t shoot a rabbit even. I have had them in my sights after the war but I couldn’t shoot them. It is a mental attitude I think.

I’ll eat a rabbit even now so long as I don’t have to kill it. I will eat meat but I won’t go purposely out. I have had bunnies in my hand you know, you feel the furry little rabbit in your hand and

it is nice and warm, and after that you think to yourself, “I couldn’t kill a rabbit.” It is a weakness in me I suppose, but I think it is a mental thing.

Finschhafen, yes.

Well we were in Queensland. The unit was training in Queensland, and then when we left Redland Bay it was, then they went up further north. And I went with a smaller group than the unit went with. And we went on a foreign ship, it may have been Dutch, and there was quite a lot of Americans on this ship

and they had the duty of feeding us. And it is a terrible situation when you have got Americans feeding you, everything is sweet, everything is like honey. They couldn’t make a cup of tea. And I remember going out on this ship and we were out there a few days and I get seasick and we are out in this harbour and the ship is going up and down and I am over the

side being seasick. And I am trying to drink tea which is made of cold water – you can imagine how that would taste. I wasn’t happy with the meals; they were all syrupy. All of that sort of jazz. Then eventually we got off the ship over the side had to climb down these cargo ropes, mats. And got into

a little landing vessel and the front used to go down. And I remember getting in there and walking ashore and the first thing I see up on the hill was a Salvation Army fellow and he was making tea in a little wee tin cup. And I

went up there and I think that’s the best cup of tea I have ever enjoyed in my life. This Salvation Army bloke, and here I am drinking this cup of tea. And it was really one of the outstanding parts of the war, just a cup of tea. After being for about a week on a ship, being fed by Americans and they couldn’t make a cup of tea. I didn’t enjoy the meals so I was glad to get some, to be fed

by our own cooks and that when we got back. Then we were near the Finschhafen, the Song River and I remember having to walk across this Song River and I think it is one of the coldest bits of water that I have felt in my life, all of this water coming down from the mountains. Just the fact that this water was so cold, and you have got fellows swimming in it and I couldn’t imagine

how they were enjoying swimming. Anyway we got across there and I joined the unit from Finschhafen and from there is was a unit thing then. I went with them and we knew where our next feed was coming from. See mothers have said to me since the war about their young kids going overseas on the war, sixteen-year-olds, and I used to say to them, “Gee, they’re game they have got a lot of nerve.”

And their immediate answer is, “Oh, you were in the war about he same age. You know, you’d know, you would have been in the worse predicament.” “But,” I said, “it is entirely different. When you join a regiment or a battalion your life is regulated, you have got the cookhouse to go to for a feed, you know where the transport is coming from. You send a kid that has never been overseas before and he is young and he has got to find his own way across,

and he has got to find his own meals, and he has got to find his own accommodation. Our accommodation more often than not was allocated to you.” All you do if you have got a tent handy is put a tent up. Or they might have an existing shelter for you. And most of your war years is similar to that. It is only when you get stranded from the unit

or you go out on patrol and you go into the dark areas of the night. And rain. Rain is one of the worst things. Rain and being cold and hungry. The three worst things that can happen. Probably getting hungry is the worst, but then getting wet and cold, and you’re freezing and you’re scared of course. You’re always scared. You don’t know what is going to come around the corner. I think this is the, probably this is the most telling part of your life.

Probably you can feel the same thing as an emotion without a war being on. If you’re in the bush and you’re went and cold and hungry, you get the same emotions. But around that corner. I have been in situations of a night on guard, and you’re hiding behind a tree hoping no-one comes up anywhere. And all you can hear is ‘ping’, ‘ping’. There is shots going off all around you and you’re wondering who the hell they are having a go at

and where they are. So it is just one of those things that you sort of gets you thinking. Especially if you happen to be on your own. It is all right if you have got someone with you. It is so much easier if you know you can… See even on a patrol you went out and you had a bayonet scabbard in front of you, and you hung onto that

bayonet scabbard, you would never let it go in case you were left in the dark on your own. But I used to think, “The poor bloke leading the patrol,” often. I never led a patrol so I don’t know what it was like being the leader, but if you get the leader bloke going where he has got to go and you’re stepping over, but you have still got that bloke in front of you and you’re holding onto his scabbard.

It feels safe just to have someone alongside of you. But anyway,

I suppose it wasn’t long. We just more or less landed there and then they were going up north all of the time. Going up chasing the Japanese up north,

further and further. And then later on when I left, I left and joined ANGAU, and the 2/14th went across to Rabaul and they carried on there. Well I was left in New Guinea and it was a different war all together for me then. All I was doing was transport.

We were transporting natives to these forward areas that was already in New Guinea and they were going further up the north coast, and of course the 2/14th had already moved across to Rabaul and gone into those areas. My job was entirely different to what it had been in the artillery. As

you moved along you had to find transport for those blokes that took… There was men at ANGAU, may have a group of natives, and they would have to organise natives to be bearers, inaccessible areas where the vehicles couldn’t get. There was a lot of areas even a jeep couldn’t get to. They needed boys – we used to call them boys, the natives – to manhandle all of the goods up there,

ammunition, etcetera, into these outlying areas.

Oh yes, quite a lot. We used to teach them things. They used to call you ‘'taubada". They had quite a lot of respect for you. We tried to teach them how to maintain a vehicle. I used to get up of a morning –

this is where I found it altogether different in being in these forward area in the fighting areas – I used to get up and take my clothes off that I had on yesterday and I would just leave them. They had a bed there. I would go into the transport office and I would start working. I would come out at lunch time and there was the clothes that I had on yesterday all washed

and ironed, put on a spot, my bed had been made and everything else was all ready for me. There was a native there, always a native to look after your wants and needs and everything else.

Well as I say, I landed, we got off this ship that we were fed by Americans. It was a foreign type small boat; it wasn’t big or anything. And we got off this onto one of these landing barges

over the side, had to climb down one of those rope cargo nets. And then sort of dropped into this thing going up and down there on the water, and then eventually we go into the beach. The drop the front down and I walk into the beach. And up on the hill there is a Salvation Army fellow making tea and he

hands me a nice tin cup with tea and it is possibly the best cup of tea I have ever had in my life. Most welcome, most enjoyable after being so long on that American boat and they not able to make a cup of tea you could enjoy. They were terrible tea makers.

They used to drink mostly coffee.

Well they had their coffee in big jugs, but I didn’t like their coffee. And you asked them to make tea and they make this terrible tea concoction, and I reckoned they used to top it off with cold water. It wasn’t even made with hot water. But anyway it was deadly, it was sickly. I was glad to get off the boat. I didn’t like the American food. Then from having this cup of tea

there was another barge turned up. See most of the travelling was done on barges around the beach. The road was atrocious. Even the jeeps couldn’t negotiate the tracks around the beach. Up to that area there was no main roads, no formed roads even. So when I got onto this other beach and I am seasick as we are heading up to the

beach, and then I get to Finschhafen itself, past the Song River, I had to get out. Then I walked through this river, the Song River – it was freezing. I can remember being cold. And then I got to my camp. This is where the 2/14th camp was. Only a section of them. And so I was reunited with the artillery

unit after being transported across from Brisbane. And then after that they were put into barges and they went up and they went into beaches at Madang and places like, further up the coast. I can’t even remember the names of these places now.

And then after that I decided to join ANGAU and the reason I joined ANGAU, there was a notice on the regimental board saying they wanted volunteers to join ANGAU, and I didn’t even know what ANGAU was at the time. So I put in, and a mate of mine was going with

me because he was a sig [Signals], and it said sigs, they needed sigs. So I was wondering what to do and how to get there, so I said I could drive; I was a driver. Well I get the transfer to ANGAU and I was sent back to Port Moresby my friend, and I, and he was immediately grabbed by the sigs people and the sergeant met me and he said to me, “Jump in the vehicle

and I will show you where camp is.” And I said, “I can’t drive.” And he said to me, “Well you have joined a transport unit and you can’t drive?” and I said, “Well no-one asked me whether I could drive or not.” But that was neither here nor there. I had to report to the office nine o’clock the next morning and they had a jeep there and within five seconds I was driving a jeep around, and for a few weeks I was chauffeuring officers to conferences and things like that around Port Moresby.

And of course in between times, in my spare time, somebody, one of the drivers, would have me in a vehicle of larger tonnage. There would be fifteen hundredweight ammunition wagons and then later three ton trucks. And eventually I got to be able to drive just about everything that was on the line. Cars as well as other things. And I suppose I was there a couple of months

and the officer said to me, “Would you like to work in the transport office?” So I said, “Okay.” So it was a new life for me. I was working then in the transport office and it wasn’t long until I was in charge, allocating vehicles to various jobs as they needed them.

Combat? Only going up with the 2/14th.

Well I was in charge of what they call the anti-aircraft part of the artillery, and the artillery would move up and I would have to station my section with the anti-aircraft guns in areas that, if they were attacked by planes or attacked by personnel, we would be in a position to protect the gun and the gun crew,

especially if they were in action. And as they moved into various areas I would have to position myself and my crew where I thought it was most advantageous for not only protecting the gun, but if an enemy aircraft came over, that we could protect them from the aircraft. I think at this stage, when I got to New Guinea,

enemy aircraft was at a low peak because I think a good deal of it had been knocked about, and it was only rare occasion when you got a bomber come over, and enemy fighters were few and far between. I think when we got to that part of New Guinea our air force was in ascendancy and theirs was going downhill. And I think this was one of the reasons I was allowed to go to ANGAU.

Not while I was in New Guinea with the unit, and once I left them I hardly ever saw a Japanese plane after that. And the Americans were advancing further north all of the time.

It seemed to be the Australians’ job was to clean out all of the pockets of resistance that the Japanese were offering, all the north of New Guinea. The Americans were hop-stepping islands and it appeared to be getting ahead of the Australians all of the time, and our job just seemed to be left to clean up the pockets of Japanese that were resisting in areas and

making a nuisance of themselves, and we had to clean them out. And this was the thing. But they didn’t have much aircraft to assist them at all. I think their aircraft was just about had it. Or it was needed in the defence of, see this was when MacArthur was starting to go into Leyte Island and the Philippines and in that sort of…

He was leading. MacArthur and the Americans were leaving the New Guinea area and they were going into those areas heading towards Japan. He was heading towards Leyte, the Philippines, and the Australians more or less were left to their own devices. Had their own air force to support them. And there was very little, to my knowledge there was very little

aircraft. When we arrived in New Guinea there was very little Japanese aircraft about that was left because by then they had lost their aircraft carriers. And it was their aircraft carrier that did most of the damage bombing Darwin. Well they had lost those I think in

about June ’42 I think they lost their aircraft carriers, which must have made a big hole in their air force defences and left very few aircraft to attack with., that’s what I would imagine. So we had it very easy in that sense that we did not have to combat aircraft.

It was mainly troops and you had to dig them out of pockets dig them out of dugouts. It was a situation which was hard to get out because they were well and truly dug in, and you had to dig them out. And quite often it was very difficult situations to get them out. Even though they

were getting beaten, and badly beaten, they still showed a lot of resistance and our crowd had to be prepared for that. Well that was my job just to make sure that if there was any attack made on our fellows our gun was there to protect the gun, well help defend them. And then of course I got out and joined ANGAU, and ANGAU was a different proposition all together.

Aircraft didn’t seem to worry us. Port Moresby appeared to be safe. And I was at Port Moresby for quite a few months, and Port Moresby never had an air attack at that time. We’re getting towards late ’43 then, and the Japanese were getting knocked back all of the way up north and New Britain was invaded by Australians.

And they were getting kicked out of New Britain areas, the Americans had retaken other islands. They were on their way to Leyte that time and then further on to the Pacific Islands that the Japanese had taken way back in ’42. The Japanese defence was crumbling, I would say

and even though in Tarakan and those areas, from what I can understand, there was a lot of Japanese hanging out. They didn’t have support, there was not much chance of reinforcements. Their navy was getting knocked about; their aircraft was non-existent. Also it meant that possibly we could have just let

them stay where they were, just surrounded them, and they might have been starved out of positions. You wonder why we had to lose personnel by going in chasing afterwards when in many ways it was a lost cause.

I don’t think it was Australians’ fault. I think it was the way MacArthur ordered it.

I felt – in hindsight of course – I feel the Japanese was, their potential as a invasion force had gone. All they could do was defend with the

supplies and that they had. Their navy was getting less and less efficient. Their air force was more or less non-existent in those areas that I am speaking of. There was still a lot of activity in the other islands of the Pacific, but where I was situated I feel that a lot of the troops could have been put into a surrounding situation and

starved them out and we could have saved a lot of lives by doing that. We went into Rabaul and the same thing applied. I don’t know whether they might have starved the natives out or not. I don’t know if we went there for the purposes of relieving the natives of the Japanese occupation. But certainly we could have saved a lot of Australian lives

if we had have. But whether the natives would have been the sufferers, I don’t know. We may have been there to jointly get the Japanese out so that the natives could exist.

I had nothing to do with that up there in Borneo. But that was apparently that was one of the what the Allies wanted, to get into Borneo and get that oil. And even though we had Australian troops go into those areas I was not attached to those,

so I don’t really know the purpose of those situations at all.

That was in, around the Finschhafen area, the Madang area. They were in the scrub and they were already dead when I got there. Some of them had been dead quite a while. And we just had to clean up the area and…

Probably weeks after the battle; there was disbanded ammunition. We used to come across piles of Japanese ammunition that was just abandoned; there was all types of guns that were just abandoned. We come across a lot of those situations where there was abandoned stuff and you could see that they were on their last legs. And we just, and the Australians were sort of chasing them up, and even though the resistance in parts

was pretty determined from what I can gather, whether it was good policy to chase them up there, that is up to the men who knew what they were doing. Blamey and these people might have known what they were doing, but there is a lot of thought about it, that we could have just put a ring around a lot of areas and they may have been starved out. Even the Americans lost quite a lot of people going into some of those islands.

Perhaps a lot of Americans might have had their lives saved if the tactics had have been different. Again we don’t know. There was no way the Japanese could have won the war after they had lost those aircraft carriers, and they lost land bases one after the other.

There was Guadalcanal, they lost and then they started to lose the Philippines. There was no way known that they could have won the war. But whether they would have been eventually been able to starve out or, who knows, maybe the war could have gone on for years if they had tried those tactics. That’s what we can believe with the atom bomb. Once they dropped the atom bomb it probably saved a lot of American

and Australian lives because within a day or two the war came to a finish. So me being an Australian I am quite happy that they had a bomb to drop and it brought the war to a finish. A lot of people say it was immoral to drop it, but I can’t see that. We didn’t start the war in the Pacific and probably a lot of innocent Japanese suffered

because of the dropping of the atom bomb. But if they hadn’t dropped the atom bomb, would that have shortened the war or would the war have gone on for a great many years? That was the big thing because apparently they may have had to take Japan itself in the long run and that would have cost a hell of a lot of American

lives to invade Japan itself. They got on the outskirts of it, but it is a big thing to… And you don’t know what the attitude of the Japanese may have been to a wholesale invasion if it had have been without an atom bomb. They knew the war was really over for them. But that’s just what they used to talk about

and we don’t know, no-one sort of knows.

Yes, we captured quite a few and we seen them in Japanese prisoner of war camps. And not only the Japanese but a lot of Koreans captured too. They used to get the Koreans to do a lot of their dirty work, the Japanese. And there was a lot of Koreans captured and a lot of Japanese captured.

In holding camps.

Not actually. They had special units for prisoner of war camps. They had special services for those. And then I think some of them were transported back to Australia, I don’t know much about that situation at all. We do know that they were taken back into

holding areas and then transported back to Australia. Or transported back somewhere which I wouldn’t know where they were taken.

Not really. There was mostly…occasional photographs, but not to any great extent.

Most of them were our own personnel. We didn’t carry too many photos about with us. We had them in our kit but you didn’t have them on your body. I felt that if you went through my army kit anyway if I had photographs you would find them in my kit that was left in camp, left in a so-called safe

position. You didn’t have them in your pockets and things like that.

I didn’t really see too many Japanese dead bodies. Only a few that was more or less. I think people before me, probably if anything they would have taken anything of value or any photographs, they may have taken them. All I found was a dead body and they just had to

be put out of the way. And quite a lot of the time they were hard to get close to because they had been dead for some time. And that was a nasty job. That was one of my worst jobs there.

No, not a bit because we had…

I couldn’t care less now, but if you’re months and months and you are underneath a lot of planes coming over you and you know that they’re, you’re just plain rough on your side and these people are up there in the plane just dropping bomb after bomb on you and they couldn’t care less who it hit, I think that takes away a lot of sympathetic feeling when you’re in a position where you can catch them

or kill them. I wouldn’t have had any hesitation in shooting a Japanese. I have been in a long range situation where I don’t know who was killed.

Well, an artillery shell going off in the distance.

Well, the unit did. But I wouldn’t know individually. I wouldn’t know if those shells killed people or not. That was our intent to

destroy. Ruin and destroy. But there was no compunction on our side. We, at least we knew that we weren’t against the civilian population, they weren’t, there was no civilians to get in our way. It was only army personnel. We didn’t need to have any sympathetic feeling.

We knew the natives weren’t about, or shouldn’t have been. All we had to do was deal with the Japanese themselves and that was most of the time. If they got near villages, I don’t know what the situation would have been. If we had got near native villages where natives may have been involved, but the natives used to clear out anyway. So…

But no, I had no sympathy for the Japanese, not one iota of it. Because we had heard all of the stories of the prisoner of war camps. I could have been involved in one of those. From Darwin, if I had been sent to Malaya a little earlier, then I would have been involved in a prisoner of war camp. And then if I had have been sent to Timor I may have been captured. So I really don’t

think that I had any sympathy for any Japanese that I saw dead. I think probably the same as most – a dead Japanese was a good Japanese, that was the feeling.

Well being in ANGAU,

they used to rely on ANGAU for their sustenance, food, etcetera. We employed quite a lot of natives in manual work. They were in the cookhouse, serving on tables. We taught them to be drivers: they used to drive vehicles, they maintained vehicles, they used to wash vehicles and keep them in order.

There was others that was gardeners. They had ANGAU gardens stretched all over the Papuan area and they used to grow a lot of vegetables and grow a lot of things for themselves and for the army. So they were reasonable workers. I always found them reasonable workers.

They were easy to get on with. I never had any difficulties with any of them. We used to go and visit their villages at times and see what their relatives were like, and they were good. I think the plantation owners had a different opinion of natives because they thought the army was spoiling the

average native because they depended on them for labourers before the war, and they would have expected them to be their labourers after the war, and you get the idea that the average planter felt the army was spoiling them because they used to give them a wage, which they probably never got from the plantation fellows. And they

taught them such a lot of useful career things, like making things and doing things for themselves. They worked on making buildings and sheds and all of that sort of things, which after the war must have come in handy for a lot of those would-be carpenters, and there was a lot of individual effort in that.

But it was part of the ANGAU situation where various teachers would teach the natives how to manufacture. And I think this all went well for them, that when peace came they could do things in their own villages.

So I feel that the war eventually may have done them a lot of good. In the news these days you have got New Guinea seems to be in a lot of strife and probably needs to be better controlled, but that’s their worry; they should have better government. But in our part during the war at least a lot of our instructors instructed them to look after themselves,

hygiene wise, medical wise. They worked in some of our hospitals, they worked as cleaners, they worked in all capacities, as cooks, kitchenhands. So I think the war probably gave them a big kick from what they were prior to the war,

which plantation owners probably might not agree with me on that.

Oh yes, I met quite a lot of planters. They used to have to come to us for their petrol supplies and they used to have to come through ANGAU to get their supplies to exist. And as there was no trading, they couldn’t go down to a shop and buy anything.

They had to do everything through the army situation. And we used to have to deliver petrol to them for their implements, and they were rationed. So there was, you know there was quite a lot of things. They had to depend on ANGAU for their sustenance and they still had their trees going.

A lot of their trees were damaged, but there was a lot of the rubber plantation that was still in operation even during the worst part of the war. They were able to keep their plantation going. As far as I know, they were still producing rubber right until the very end. That is beyond my knowledge. I can only say what I saw, and they were producing rubber when I was up there.

So I would imagine that would have stayed with them right through the war. The coconut dealers and so on, they had a bad time because a lot of coconut trees were damaged with artillery fire and planes. Japanese snipers used to get up in coconut trees and a lot of planes used to cut the top off a coconut palm. And a lot of damage was done by artillery shells.

So how much detriment that was to the coconut industry, I wouldn’t have a clue.

I got on quite well with the Americans. I thought they were all right. We didn’t have all that much to do with them, but they used to have access to films, which suited us because

if there was a film showing in an American camp, they… We were only given a time limit. If the films came in at a certain time, we weren’t allowed to go in there until all of the Americans were sat, and we would have to take our own seats and sit at the rear. Which we didn’t mind doing that because you went along and they had access to a lot of films that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

And if you got matey with an American, good mates, he would take you to use his canteen and things like that, which was good because their canteen could offer so much more than ours. The girls could buy nylon stockings, which was unprocurable in Australia. We used to get issued with a bottle of Australian beer a week with the top off;

they were issued an Australian bottle of beer with the top on. So you can just imagine the difference. You could accumulate beer if you got it from the Americans because the top was on. But you would have to drink yours straight away because when you bought a bottle of beer Australia way they would just take the top off. Smokes was pretty difficult to get through the Australian canteen;

Americans was almost unlimited. So it meant that there was quite a lot of bartering with the Americans. They could get a carton of cigarettes and you could barter almost anything for a carton of cigarettes. And when I got to know a couple of the American girls it made life a lot easier because they used to get a lot of things from their canteen, which made it for us bartering, to

get things that we wanted from male Americans and ordinary other people. And you could just imagine if you collected a dozen bottles of beer you could go with a group and have quite a nice little singsong, you know. But if you drank your beer as it was issued to you with the top off you couldn’t save it at all. You had to drink it

straight away and that meant a lot. And if you could go from the American ladies, and you might get some cosmetics for ladies to send home, that made a bloody nice present for a present to send home. Australian canteens didn’t have it. Even in New Guinea, the only ladies I saw in New Guinea, Australians, were those that worked in hospitals.

I didn’t see any AWAS up there, but the Americans had quite a lot of women working up there. They had censors that used to censor the mail from the American servicemen. They had women support groups for a lot of things. There was VADs there, and Red Cross was there, and they were all ladies. You met quite a few of those, and my mates and I got quite friendly with a couple and

they were there for about four or five months when we were stationed in one area, and we got quite pally with them. And I was able to send home gifts from the canteen, gifts, a pair of nylon stockings, no trouble to get. Get cigarettes to barter, and you go down to your meat store and you get lumps of steak where you can go and have a barbecue. You couldn’t do that without a carton of cigarettes.

So it meant that access to American canteen opened a lot of keyholes. They even had ice-cream, which our army didn’t have; we didn’t have ice cream. But they used to have homemade ice-cream that was made on the site, and you could go and get ice cream. They could have doughnuts. You could go along there and you might get a dozen doughnuts, which in our canteen you couldn’t

get them. There was such a lot of things that was available through the American service that you couldn’t get through the Australian service.

Well the ones we met, I thought they were great because we got on quite well with them. And I know the American male was very jealous of our being able to take an American out when we went out.

We used to take them to dinner to our canteen, where for a shilling you could get a meal. And we used to be able to take in an American girl, girls being so scarce that if you walked in with a girl on your arm you were thought of as a really privileged person. And the only problem with that is the situation being as it was,

you had to be armed every time you… If you were escorting any female you had to be armed. Where as early in the piece I could get a side arm, a revolver or something like that, as the war progressed they took those out of the areas where I was, and if you had to escort a lady you had to have a rifle, a .303 rifle. Now you can just imagine you’re going to dinner and there is a big .303 rifle leaning

against your table. It doesn’t, it doesn’t favour the situation at all.

Well, a lot of women were getting raped in New Guinea. And they blamed quite a lot on Negroes, but knowing males as we do, it would always be a male, a Negro problem. There would probably be others involved also.

But for their safety we had to be armed, and even though a .303 was a useless thing to carry around, everywhere you went with a female you had to be armed.

See Negro was, I think it was just that they had that,

I would, they had that sort of, let me say, that was the general trend towards a Negro rather than a white man. A Negro would be more apt to rape than a white person. But as humanity had progressed since those days, I feel that we now realise that a white person is just as

liable to rape a woman as any Negro or other person.

Well they seemed, see it was mostly in the American forces. When we went out with an American girl

we went to Australian places, and luckily for us there was never any problems with rape or any other such thing like that. But the Americans, their army consisted of women and their army consisted of Negroes, and they were isolated a bit from us, and when there was a rape eventuated at all, it wasn’t in a sort of Australian area, and it always leaned towards a

Negro because there is a Negro camp in that vicinity. So I would assume that that was one of the reasons why a Negro was more blamed. Who knows? It might have been a white person committed the offence and then being in a situation where he would probably know a Negro would probably be blamed for it, because the attitude towards Negroes was bad, the same as it was in early days.

Not like it is now. An American white person couldn’t understand why we would mix with the Negroes they way we did. We would go and mix with the American Negroes as easily as we did American whites. And they couldn’t understand why we would invite Negroes to our camps, and it wouldn’t happen in their camps. We would invite a Negro into our canteen; it wouldn’t be done

Yes, Redland Bay. As I say we had got all of this new equipment from when we stayed at Loftus New South Wales. And this had to be…

I had to teach or I had to make sure that my fellows were proficient in the use of the new guns that they got. And the twenty-five-pounder gun was a new concept for the gunners in the regiment. So all of the times they were there they were mainly out on manoeuvres, manoeuvring these guns into position. And they expected to be doing

inland invasions so they had to be put on barges and shown how to get a gun and tractors off the barges and all of that sort of jazz. Mostly training for beach invasions. And that went on for quite a while and then of course they moved up further and then later on

the bulk of the guns went. I don’t know how they were transported, but they went across and my little group went over on their own, and we were independent of the main body. And then we arrived over just out of Finschhafen.

Well from a free and easy sort of a situation with the pioneers we had to be, had to line up every morning. Had to, there was sort of a… Had to have a roll call, had to stand to attention, “Yes sir.” And all of that sort of jazz.

Then if you walked around the precincts of the camp at all and officers were passing, you had to salute them. If you addressed any officer it had to be by his rank. And they had guard duty. Instead of being a nice easy guard duty that just used to guard the place,

you had to be on an almost ceremonial situation, had to be dressed properly for guard duty, had to have everything up to date, properly attired, properly dressed, your gun had to be correct, your rifle. And you had to be seen all of the time. And if anyone approached

you had to be regimentised to do exactly what was expected of you. A band used to go around of a morning and play before Reveille, and that meant that you, if you had had a late night or something or you got to bed late, to have a band out of your front tent making a hell of din before six o’clock in the morning wasn’t very pleasant.

And when you went on parade you had to be correctly attired. And it was just more regimentised all over.

I got used to it. You can accept anything under some situations. It wasn’t that difficult but you sort of resented it up to a point because you had had things so easy in the past.

A change for the better for the army, and worse for you. Things changed a little bit in New Guinea. When you got there in New Guinea I found that you were treated a little bit more, less formally. You didn’t have to shave every day. And I think for the most part you

were left to your own devices quite a bit. And I think they expected you to have been trained enough to do your job without having to be ordered to do it.

It was all aimed at New Guinea fighting,

but I found map reading very difficult because the terrain in New Guinea was altogether different from anywhere we trained. But the idea was right. But you couldn’t get the same… They would tell you to look for a certain aspect that wouldn’t change as the night went on. But you found in New Guinea that things changed.

I found a lot of those sort of things changing. Some fellows I think were adept at map reading, but I, just for me, I just don’t like reading much and it has been one of my problems through life. I am not a reader. I don’t like reading much. And a good deal of your training is reading books

about things and learning from books, and I find that reading is a bit of a bore. How I have mostly got on, even when I went and worked in the post office, we used to have morning breaks and I would ask my counterparts certain questions relating to what was written and I would get their views. They would be reading the books and they would know the answers, and I would give the answers from conversations with them.

And I think I learnt that from early days in the army. I used to find most of my answers not from reading but from other people’s viewpoints form reading. So I went about it the wrong way. I think if I had liked reading I might have been more advanced, but I didn’t like reading.

Well, I would say

probably have a glass of beer when I was thirteen, especially when I was working in the foundry. I used to get seven and six a week, I used to give my mother five shillings and I would have two and six, that’s twenty-five cents to keep for myself.

Now a pot of beer at that time was sixpence, that’s five cents. Now after work from the foundry we would go, and the pub was right next door to the foundry I worked in. And it was the Richmond Hotel, Richmond. Beer was served. And if you went in Monday your five cents or your sixpence was gone. So you can just imagine by the time it’s the weekend I am borrowing money. So I was always broke

come weekend time. So I found myself with very little finances to go out anywhere at the weekend. And this was a problem, only one pot a night, all your money was gone before the weekend was up. So I had problems in that way, so I used to try and gain money elsewhere working. I used to go into a butcher’s and deliver

meat for maybe to get another half a crown, which was another two and six, but that was another five pots, so I was able to manage the week out until I got a rise. And the my first rise I got from seven and six I got to twelve and six. And then I was able to give my mother a little bit more, but I was able to get a little bit more. But if you

wanted to go to the pictures, which was only sixpence or seven to get in, if you met a girl she would have to meet you inside, you couldn’t afford to take her in. If we went to the footy it was always over the fence, you would always find ways and means of getting in for nothing because you couldn’t pay the way. The old man, he would go to the football with these fruit cases and then he would hire them out for people to use as

grandstands behind the crowd at Collingwood especially, and I would go out and collect them and he would give us a couple of bob for collecting them. And the fellows used to take bottles of beer into the ground. You couldn’t buy bottles of beer in the ground in those days and you would take the bottles into the ground, and it used to be a halfpenny each for each bottle you collected. So at the end of the day you might find that you had collected,

you might get a couple of bob with the bottles you got. You would bag them up and you would help carry them out to the wagon, and he might be a little generous and he might give you a little more. So that’s how I was able to sustain my early days of working, doing a little bit for the old man and at the same time looking after myself. It was pretty hard going because

money was scarce, everyone didn’t have much money.

No troubles, when it was on there was always a canteen there and you could go up and get a glass of beer. If it wasn’t available, well there was none for the whole crowd. And there was some occasions, when we came down from Darwin we went down to Sydney

and they used to have beer put on, I think it was about five in the afternoon and you joined the queue and of course we had then what we called ‘Lady Blameys’. There was no glasses available, so you would get a bottle, the old style beer bottle, and tie a kerosene soaked piece of string around this bottle, as high up the neck of this bottle

or the body of the bottle that you could get it, and you would light that with a match, and when it was hot you would just hit it on the ground and that top used to come off the bottle, so you used to rub the rough edge into the sand or the dirt to take the rough edge off the glass and that became what we call the ‘Lady Blamey’. And you would get in the queue and you would walk up to where they were selling the beer,

you would get it full for a shilling and then on the way back you would be drinking it and on the end of the queue again and you would be like that until they ran out of beer with this Lady Blamey. But so if you ever wondered what a Lady Blamey was, that was a Lady Blamey.

Haven’t got a clue. Whether it was because of Blamey or not I don’t know, but that’s what we called them, a Lady Blamey.

Did the job.

Oh yeah, there was a lot in Darwin. It was, they used to put it in old, how they could ever drink it, I couldn’t drink it. How these other fellows who tried to drink it, I don’t know. They used to make it with every conceivable product, potato skins,

and fruit or vegetable, anything at all with fruit, and they would leave it rot in these old rusty kerosene tins and let it go on and it used to create an alcohol. Some people used to even put toothpaste in these tins and let it ferment and ferment and all like that, and it used to get a scum on it. And we would go and look at it, but that was as far as I ever went. I never ever tried to drink it

and thank goodness I didn’t. Some of them used to take the skin off and it used to be like a green slimy mixture, and they would bottle it and sell it; they would get their shilling a bottle for it. There was always plenty of people ready to buy it, jungle juice.

Not to my knowledge. They never blamed that anyway, as far as I know.

I got married in January ’44. Came home form Darwin and we were in Sydney and I was from Sydney, and I came home here and decided to get married, and I was married in January of ’44.

I met her probably a week before I enlisted. Didn’t know her that well when I got married, but she was at a place in Carrum on a holiday sort of excursion. Her mother had hired out this holiday house at Carrum and a mate of mine, we had been on the Puffing Billy [steam train] on the Friday night, and his brother was

taking his mother up from Fitzroy to Carrum, and she was staying at this particular house. So I decided with my mate to go with his brother and his mother to go to Carrum. And that’s where she was staying, at the house, and that’s how I first met her. And that night I slept on the beach at, I think it was Mordialloc or Carrum,

it was freezing cold, because there was no bed for me in the house and I had missed the last train. And I was sleeping down on the beach. And I think I saw her once after that, and I finished up enlisting and I was away quick and lively. I didn’t have a

chance to see her more than about once before I was away. It was pretty quick, after joining up I think we got moved pretty quickly. We had no training at all. The new recruits were in Darwin without any training.

Well she had to hire a dress. Quite a good wedding. We hired a hall for dancing. We had a band turn up. Dancing was the thing in those days. And the hall was right opposite to where her mother lived in Fitzroy, Delphi Street,

North Fitzroy. So all we had to do was go across the road from where her mother lived to the hall, and we got married at St John Clintonville [?] Catholic Church and then had the reception down in this little hall opposite. And there was a dance, and I don’t know how they got the food together. The girls managed that. And she was able to hire a dress for herself.

Jimmy Diltz was my best man – he was out of the army by then – snd he turned up as best man. He had been gone back to work, but he still had his uniform so it was a uniform-clad wedding. And I had another mate who was in the army and he was on leave at the time, so he became, three men in uniform was at the wedding.

I arrived on a beach that was not neglected,

but by the time we got there and we got in, this is where I nearly drowned myself, the fellow he opened the hatch too quick and too much water came in and I was loaded up with, my shirt was loaded up with material, I had ammunition for an Owen gun I was carrying. My

section, they had a Bren gun and they had ammunition for the Bren gun in their gear. And when this, the front of the landing barge went down too quick and I am in all of this water, my first thought was, “I am going to drown.” So then the last thing I wanted was an Owen gun; that went. Then I was getting all of the stuff out of my shirt because I had it bulging right out. And I struggled

across and there was a gun that was abandoned in the water and I didn’t know what it was, so I was able to climb up and got my head above the water and just stayed there and yelling out to people who were swimming in, and they let people know who were on shore that I and a couple of others were stuck out on this gun. I wasn’t the only one. And we were there until they came out and they had ropes,

see they used to have ropes in the artillery. They could hook one end into the wheel of the gun and the other was self splicing, you just touched it like that and you could join it together. So if you had enough ropes you had a never-ending line. And so one of these ropes, they must have put one of these together, and I was able to pull myself in. And got abused for not having a gun, not having an Owen gun,

but I was soon issued with another one. But I only heard a couple of rounds fired. I think the main battles were further up the beach. So I think, “I wouldn’t be surprised if our bloke went in the wrong end of the beach anyway,” the bloke that was in charge of the barge that took us in. And, but again I was lucky, I could hear firing in the distance, nothing

too substantial. I later heard that there was quite a battle around that area. Luck does a lot of things. I was lucky to get out of swimming, but I got out of it.

We just sort of consolidated and we spent a couple of nights almost where we landed. Just went into the beach and got under cover. And I got re-equipped

again with some dry clothes. And I got another Owen gun and some ammunition. And then we just resumed our situation and started going with the unit up the beach, up towards, up north again. And it was just after that that I decided to join ANGAU. So I didn’t really go too far with them, but there was quite a lot of

activity going on in that area at the time. As I say, I missed most of it. I think I got there too late, thankfully.

When you went into see them they always seemed to be, instead of having a nice casual patter with each other, they would be sort of abusing each other. And they were calling themselves, or calling each other quite a lot of names. ‘Cocksuckers’ was quite a common phrase, and even good friends would call themselves, “Oh you cocksucker.” All of this sort of business.

And it came as a surprise to us. We would talk about it afterwards. I would go in there with a mate and we would be talking to them and then we would discuss it later, how they sort of abused each other and how they talked to each other and that situation. And their attitude towards each other seemed to be a lot different to ours.

Oh no, I think it was only on the surface.

I think if I had called a mate of mine a cocksucker he would come and clocked me over the ears. I might have got a punch in the nose. And he would have let me know in no uncertain terms that he didn’t like it.

Oh yeah. It wasn’t so, it didn’t appear at that time so sexually out of context. You can call him a bastard easy enough, that’s no trouble. And even, I know it is a colour thing now, but it wouldn’t be hard for anyone, I was dark skinned and it wouldn’t be hard for anyone, “Oh you’re a black bastard.” And I would take no offence to that. And if you called an Aboriginal

a black bastard, of course, he would be up in arms over it. And you would never think about calling a Negro a black bastard. Yet I permitted and didn’t worry about my friends calling me a black bastard, mainly because I was sunburnt and I was dark complexion and it didn’t worry me one iota. And that was one of the most common terms you would get called. A bastard, a bugger and a stupid bloody idiot.

Common sort of shots at each other, but cocksucker, I have never heard an Australian call another cobber, a cocksucker, he just wouldn’t get away with it. So…

It was strange. We hadn’t… A lot of their meals was

different to ours. A lot of their mannerisms was altogether different to our. Once you got used to it, you could understand it a bit. Their mannerisms at meal times was different. And then of course they didn’t like tea. Tea was almost unknown to them. They used to go for coffee. They didn’t know how to make a cup of tea. Whereas we wanted a tea all of the time, even a cold tea was no better than no

tea at all. So you found that there was quite a big difference in that situation.

We didn’t think so. I went down to the Jackson strip on a job there one day and I had doughnuts and their coffee from the Red Cross girls

that was making, they had this stall there. All free of course. And their doughnuts was all right but I thought their coffee was bloody terrible. But it was always handy if you were ever going down to the Jackson airstrip for anything, was to go down to these Red Cross girls and get a heap of these doughnuts and take them back to camp, and they appreciated the doughnuts, but they didn’t appreciate the coffee.

They were very jealous. They were very jealous of the Australians if an American girl showed any interest at all in an Australian. Especially the MPs [Military Police]; they were quite hostile. Where we didn’t have much time for MPs, either Australian or American. But we got to dislike the American MPs intensely because if we had American girls in a jeep, these

American MPs would do their utmost to antagonise us. Stop you at every opportunity. They would want to see, make sure you were carrying arms. All of these things which an Australian MP wouldn’t – he would just brush you aside and let you do what you wanted to do. But they were antagonistic. Whether that was their instructions or not, I wouldn’t have a clue.

Where we were tolerated well in our canteens, if you went into an American canteen it was like being in a hostile bloody... If you go in with an American serviceman – no problem. But if you went in with an American girl they would be eyeing her up and down and eyeing you up and down and the comments around the table wasn’t too crash hot. And I just met the American girls accidentally.

I was on the phone and two majors were going. The message I got was that they wanted transport to the WAC’s officers’ camp for lunch and the driver would have his lunch provided at this WAC’s camp. So I said to myself, “This will do me.” So I got a relief to do

my job and I went and got cleaned up, good shirt and a good pair of trousers on – one that had been ironed and cleaned. And I went and picked up these two majors and they were surprised to see me. And I said, “Oh we were a bit short of a driver so I thought I would do it myself.” And not only that, I took a car which was available. If it had have been them I might have sent them a truck.

So we arrived, and on the way they were called into an ANGAU farm which was run by ANGAU people. But the natives used to produce these ANGAU vegetables and fruits. I can’t think of the fruit they used to make, custard apples and things like that. And they had this nice box of fruit. And they had met these two girls earlier

at one of the plantation owners that they had been visiting on the previous Sunday. And these two girls were on a the visit, and that’s how they had met them, and they had promised them these things. And they promised that they would take them to the camp to give them to them. So I had to call into the ANGAU farm with the officers and they got these goodies, and then later on we took them up to the WACs, that was

Women’s Army Auxiliary something. And we went into there and of course they made themselves known, and an officer came down from the WACs and said, “One of the girls will come shortly and pick you up for lunch.” I had to sit in the car. Eventually a girl came up and I had to walk through this huge big,

not a big tent – it was like a big huge building. And there was all American girls on either side. And instead of taking me around the back, which they could have done, and snuck me in the side door, I had to walk all the way down with all of these catcalls of these girls having a go at the Aussie going down the centre of this thing, you see. So I went right down to the bottom and waited for the lunch to arrive, and after lunch a girl

came in and said, “Those two sergeants have arrived. You have got a present for them?” And I said, “Okay.” So I went out then to the vehicle and I got this box of goodies and I drove them back to their camp where they were, and of course that was good enough for me then to make a date with the two girls; they were two sergeants. And

so I made a date with one and fixed up a date for my mate. So we became quite pally, and with their access to the canteen meant that they could get a lot of the goodies that we couldn’t get. They could get bottled beer with the top on that we could accumulate. They could get cigarettes that was bartering, you could go down to our coolstore and for a carton or so, bottle of whisky,

quite extensive some of the presents we used to give, for a certain supply of steak and other things to have a barbecue. And you would go to the bakehouse and get some bread and you would go off to some isolated area which was usually an abandoned camp that… When troops move north they leave a camp sort of empty,

and we would go there and we would have quite a bit of a dance. Someone would have some music, play from a music box of some sort. Have a dance and plenty of beer and this meat, a barbecue and this bread. And it was quite an event for people fighting a war in New Guinea. I thought it was hilarious. This went on until then they were shifted to Biak.

They were moved up there and I got a letter one weekend and it said, “Bad luck you can’t get here Saturday night.” I can’t think of her name now, but, “She is having a birthday party.” And so anyway I went down to this Jackson airstrip and I said to one of the sergeants there, “What’s the chances of getting to Biak?” See most places

you get a plane, that was the surprising thing about New Guinea, you could get a plane almost anywhere you wanted just by finding that there was a flight going somewhere, mostly cargo, and you get in with the cargo and you sit there and you get a flight back. And you could wander all over the place. It was amazing really. Just from being in ANGAU – I couldn’t have done it in a unit, you couldn’t have done that – but ANGAU you had so much freedom to yourself in that situation.

So anyway I finished up, land here, there and everywhere, and I got to Biak all right and I found after the party, which I enjoyed, I couldn’t get back and I had to give myself up to the American provos. There was hell to do then of course. They had to find Australian provos for me to be put in charge.

And I am charged with being AWL and it took me a couple of days to get a plane and get back to my job. Of course I was court-martialled. And the major said, “First time I have known of people going ak willy [AWL] in New Guinea.” And I said, “Well I had a good reason.” Anyway I still got fined, I thought too much.

AWL. Away Without Leave.

Oh we used to call that aquilly. That’s just slang for AWOL. Away without leave, you see? Anyway I was put back. I lost a couple of stripes and put back doing the same old job but getting less pay. And eventually I got the old stripes back only to lose them at a later date.

That was when the war ended.

Oh, they were very friendly. Their job there was mainly to censor letters. I suppose you have seen where if a man writes a letter and if there is any information that may be helpful to the enemy

these girls would just snip that piece out. Any locations or even the name of their regiment or anything like that. Our officers used to do ours in our army. They didn’t censor every letter, our officers. But it was there that you had to put your mail to home. It had to go through the officers and quite often, and they would let you know that people would censor the letter and so you weren’t allowed at any

time to put your destination or any of the information that, might be likely to be handy to enemy forces in a letter. And with the Americans they were more sensitive to it than ours were and they had special units. And these girls had the job mainly because they could speak various languages. The girl I knew was Spanish and she could speak

about three different languages. So that, and she could read various languages and that was their job to go through these, the mail of personnel writing home and censor the letters.

Well the one I knew was married and she had a husband who was in the forces, and she was easy to get on with. We never used to talk about sex much. We used to go along and go to the beach with crowds of the girls. It was just a wholesale mix up, go to parties. We just enjoyed each other’s company while we were there

and made the most of it, what you could get out of it. And I used to take them to, take them to our canteen for meals. Go to the YMCA and you could get a meal for a shilling. Our canteen you could get a meal for a shilling. And quite a substantial meal for that. So all in all it was damn good company while they were there and I was disappointed when they left.

When they went up to Biak, that’s the word, they went to Biak Island up in Indonesia. And as I say, the Americans then were on their way away. They were on their way to various islands. And they moved the girls probably before they moved.

I was home for leave, a month’s leave, and I was going back to New Guinea, I just can’t think of the name of the camp now. It was out of Cairns, there is a place near Mildura the same name. But I just can’t think

of the name of the transit camp where I was. And the idea was whilst I was there any personnel had to line up and ten o’clock each morning. If they had a plane for you to catch they would call your name out and you would go and catch that plane. If there was no plane for you to catch you were to immediately to be given twenty-four hours’ leave until the next morning, when you would line up again.

And one particular morning, ten o’clock, I am standing in the queue and the officer called out all of the names of those that had to catch the plane back to New Guinea, and he dismissed those men that had to catch the plane. And his next words were, “The war is now over. Japan has capitulated.

This camp is closed for forty-eight hours.” Now you could just imagine how you would feel, we were going to get twenty-four hours’ leave but the war being over they were going to close the camp for forty-eight hours. So me being me, I thought, “This is no good,” so I stayed there until about four in the afternoon and I went AWOL. And when I got to the local pub they had run out of

Australian beer of course, there had been a rush on it. So I bought a bottle of gin. And a mate and I we had a bottle of gin each. And we drank that gin, it was only about twenty miles I think from this transit camp to Cairns. So we drank this bottle of gin and I am worse for wear when I got to Cairns. I got off the bus and I can remember them dancing in the street. And

we had made arrangements to go to a dance in Cairns and I went along to the dance and I got to the dance okay, and as the night progressed I was wondering why I was being sort of isolated, not thinking about anything. And when I went to the toilet I found I had wet myself.

So I don’t know whether you have seen a situation where you have got green jungle pants on, cotton type, and they are wet down one side, and you can imagine then why they are all neglecting then, they don’t want to talk to you. So I wandered outside of the dance, got out and that is the last I can remember., I woke up back in Opeter [?] somewhere.

I had been picked up by the provos and I was charged with being absent without leave again and I cost me twenty-eight days’ pay and loss of stripes. And it was, I had to go back to camp and do the same old job for less pay. And that was it. It was my own fault because I went AWL. But I always think, and I have thought since the war, it was a most unfair decision to close the camp on

the day the war finished. And when the camp was full of ex-servicemen going back to New Guinea, I thought if anyone was entitled to a night out it should have been people who had already served in New Guinea. I thought that was very unfair. That was the day war finished. Anyway, the next day I was put on a plane back in camp and I

continued my job there until I was able to be transported back to Melbourne where I was discharged. But that was a nasty part of my feeling about the war. On the last day, to be charged with being AWL. I thought it was an unfair decision for the camp commandants to make, close the camp to the servicemen who were on their way back to New Guinea. But I don’t really know what the reason

was for that, perhaps he might have thought we might have all shot through. I don’t know. I could have shot through. I could have easily gone and not come back. I think it was an unfair decision on his part. Even if we had just gone up to the local pub. We might have just had a few snoggins up the local pub, there was no beer in camp, that might have made a difference.

Well I felt angry. You can’t argue with a senior officer when they are charging you at a court martial, it would only make the sentence worse, so you have just got to accept it. But I have been angry ever since, not only on my behalf but on all of ours, that he found it necessary to close the camp. We all thought it was a lousy thing to do, close the camp. We were all servicemen on our way back to New Guinea and

I don’t think any of us had ideas of shooting through. Whether that was his idea or not I don’t know. But he could have explained that, might have made you feel better. But that was the last day of the war. That was not my last day in the army, but that was when the war finished and I was at this little transit camp just outside of Cairns.

Yeah it was about twenty mile out of Cairns, it was a bit of a bus trip into Cairns. So we just went down the local pub and there was nothing doing there, the beer had all gone out of it. So we just bought a bottle of spirits each and drank them on the bus going into Cairns. And when we got into Cairns they were all dancing around. So I found I couldn’t drink a bottle of whisky

straight without being affected by it. I haven’t tried it since. Not whisky. I think it was a bottle of gin I bought. Since then I keep off the gin it has been one of my no-nos.

Oh it was. This is why I was so disappointed with the

closure of the camp that we couldn’t be part of the wholesale enjoyment the people were getting out the war finishing. All we would have been had to done was be stuck in camp just sitting on our heels waiting to catch a plane. And I thought it was most unfair for the powers that be to order it that way. What their reasons, I wouldn’t have a clue

and still don’t know. I still think it was an unfair decision of the camp commandant to do that. He wasn’t our officer, he was just in charge of that particular camp and we were just transit people going through. So that didn’t endear me to officers any further.

Oh it was only Australians in that, in Cairns?

Oh it was full of Americans.

Oh yes, north of Australia was full of Americans. Every time you went to Brisbane there was more Americans there than there was Australians. Most times that we went into Brisbane there was plenty of Americans around. And same applied when we got to Cairns, there was a lot of Americans.

Quite a lot of air force, American Air Force in Brisbane and Cairns. A lot of American servicemen. You would always see navy and American servicemen of air force around.

I wasn’t there long enough to know. I wasn’t involved in any.

And I never noticed any because I was not there long enough. I was never in Cairns long. I wasn’t in Brisbane long. We only went to Brisbane for maybe a weekend, and then you would be, when we were on manoeuvres around outside of Brisbane, we only went to Brisbane for a weekend, and mostly you went somewhere where you were billeted out somewhere.

Somebody’s family looked after you; they fed you for the weekend. You might go to a dance and see a few Americans there, but you didn’t see too many. I didn’t see too many because you weren’t there long enough. I wasn’t.

Oh yes. See all these blues and all of these people talking about servicemen coming back from

service on the Islands and that and having blues with these American servicemen. I heard a lot of those stories. I was never involved in any. The nearest I got to a blue was one day here we were in camp I was in camp at Caulfield. This was early in the war. And I had met a girl and we went to Luna Park and I was on what they call the

Big Dipper, and it goes up in the air and comes down in a hell of a way. And in front of, sitting in the seats in front of us was two American servicemen, I think they were navy personnel, and they had bottles of whisky and were with two girls. And they had whisky bottles there with the tops off.

And as this carriage went down hill all of this whisky was coming up and spraying myself and this girls, I was on my own at the time with this girl. And I was yelling out when it stopped, “Put the lid on it. Put your hand over the top.” Anyway they didn’t take any notice and the next time we went down we were sprayed again with this whisky. Anyway I just lent over,

pulled the bottle out of their hand and just dropped it over the side, this bottle of whisky. And they started trying to climb back to get at me, see? And I thought, “I am in for it when we land.” Luckily for me when we got down to the bottom and we were getting off the thing there was my brother and three of his mates from the unit were coming over,

and there was huge footballers, Fairweather was one of them, and they were all League footballers and they were a big size. And I can remember calling to Skeeter to come over., which once he heard me, he started calling back that they were coming over, coming over to where I was. And of course these Americans, the two of them saw that they were going to be well and truly outnumbered so they give away any idea of stoushing with me, so that was it,

and I got out of that nice and easy. But before I saw my brother I thought I was in for a quilting, but it didn’t eventuate. That was the only time I might have got into bother with the Americans.

I think we needed them. We would have been in a mess without them. They were well equipped. They had everything they needed, which we didn’t have. Without

them we would have been in dire straits. A lot of people say that Americans won the war, but I firmly believe that the Americans needed us as much as we needed them. They needed our bases; they needed our servicemen. We had taken quite a brunt of the war up until then. If the Japanese had not attacked them at Pearl Harbor they

might not have come into the war. If they had have just attacked in Malaya or something like that. Who knows? My feelings are the Yanks might not have come into the war at all. But once they were attacked in Pearl Harbor, they had no choice but to join in the fight. And I think I was surprised and most people were surprised

when Roosevelt not only declared war on Japan, but Roosevelt also declared war on Hitler. And I can imagine Churchill being nice and happy when that happened because it meant that the Americans were in the European war as well as the Pacific war. And I would imagine that Churchill would have wanted the Americans in the European war and probably tried hard to get them in. But who knows?

If the Japanese had only attacked Malaya and that area which was under the British authority at that time, the Americans may have kept out. If they had only attacked Hong Kong and Malaya, the Americans may have kept out of the war. But once they attacked Pearl Harbor that was it. That’s my thinking.

Well the following morning I was immediately sent back to my old unit, which I went back under normal circumstances and just carried out my old duties again and just played out the war until the war finished.

And we got a boat back and I was shipped back to Australia then, well and truly after the war finished. The war finished in August ’45 and I got out of the army in about I think it was March ’46.

I had to go back up there to my unit, ANGAU, yes.

And there was a lot of jobs there to do. These, a lot of natives had to be reinstated back to their own areas. There was quite a lot of work to do there from the native point of view. They had to be transported back to their own villages and they had to take up their own jobs, and we just did what was

necessary until we were discharged. I got on a ship and came home then. That was it. Landed at Royal Park and discharged.

I think I had missed most of them. They did have a big victory day, probably the twelve months after that on the anniversary. They had a big victory march in the city, which I was a part of

and we enjoyed that. And then the next big one was the fiftieth anniversary. They had a big victory march then; you may remember that. After the war had been fifty years on they had a victory march in the city for the fiftieth anniversary. But Darwin has an anniversary every, the 19th of February, the anniversary of the bombing of Darwin. That was the

first time Australia had come under attack from enemy aircraft. I haven’t been back for an anniversary, but I have been back to Darwin just to see what it is like and to see the old wharf again. And see a bit of the damage that was done from the bombing, the bombing was minimised by the cyclone they had there.

Cyclone Tracy destroyed Darwin far more than the bombing did. It flattened Darwin. It destroyed most of Darwin, the cyclone. I am not sure what date it was. It could have been 1970 when that happened. So Darwin now seems to have been changed to a tropical

paradise at the moment. They put in all tropical type trees and they have remade it. That was the last time I went up there. I haven’t been back to New Guinea. I would like to go back to Darwin again. I am thinking I might go on the next train ride when it starts up, the train going from Melbourne to Darwin. I might try that next year when it starts and just see,

not only to have the train ride but to see Darwin again.

No, I never saw any. I don’t think anyone was interned. I don’t think in Darwin itself was anyone to intern.

I never heard of any; never heard of any of those. But of course there was a lot

of difference in Broome. They may have been sent across to Broome. There may have been some circumstances there where they interned pearlers and things like that, but it never came to our notice. See Broome was supposed to be bombed a few times too, but we didn’t know too much about that.

When the Americans moved out of Darwin and the Kittyhawks went with them, there was a lot of Australian squadrons turned up with Spitfires, and I understand we lost twenty-four Spitfires in one day there. So the war was going on even after the Spitfires arrived.

Yeah, they were destroyed during one of the bombing raids or during one the clashes.

That’s a fairly big loss for Darwin at the time because they wouldn’t have had too many Spitfires, I imagine, engaged at the one time. Might have been a few over a period of time, but at one time, to lose twenty-four Spitfires would have been a big loss at that time, I imagine. Well, Kittyhawks themselves was a big loss when they lost them.

And there was quite a few Kittyhawks lost by the Japanese Zero. Apparently the Japanese Zero was not a bad fighting plane. You don’t know the circumstances, how they were destroyed. They may have been destroyed on the ground. I don’t know too much about it. You are not too close to those things and you can only hear rumours about it. You don’t hear actual facts.

Well I tried various other jobs but I ended up going back to the foundry, and the boss always wanted me back to my original foundry. Well I stayed there for a while and then I wanted to move onto making bigger parts so I moved onto a bigger foundry in Brunswick. And I was making much more bigger

material.

No you have got me. I can’t think of it.

No, Lincoln Mills was the knitting mills. Just got to go down almost any street, and you will find the names over the guttering. Made in a foundry,

most of these parts. But they did make big castings and they had cranes and it was a huge project to what I had been used to. And I was there and they were making heavy truck brakes and they had cores in them which was upsetting my eyes, and my eyes seemed to be burning with the smoke and stuff,

and up here they were making a post office. So I thought to myself, “I might give the foundry away and join the post office,” which I did do, and I became a postman up here. And I came down in quite a lot of finance. From being a tradesman to a postman is a lot of difference in financial return.

But after I had been there a while I found with the extra sick leave and holiday leave that you got, and then later on when I got senior positions, I found out that I had done the right thing. And I spent about forty years in the post office. And I was quite… I finished up in senior jobs. I worked in the city for ten years and then finished up over at

Thornbury in a supervisory situation, and that suited me down to the ground. Had a car that I could use. And it was quite a good job after what I had been used to. And then coming out here there was no sport in this area. So I started playing cricket with the Catholic church, and after playing a season with them some of the parents were

worried about too many non-Catholics playing and taking the place of their own Catholic kids. So they decided to kick out all of the non-Catholic players of the cricket and football club. And I had formed a football club over there and I was president. And I played cricket with them. Well when I was, had no team to play with,

one of the local kids came down and asked was it possible to start a local footy team down here so I thought about it. And I said to the lad to have a meeting in my garage with the chaps interested there was enough interested so we formed the North Heidelberg Football Club. And the North Heidelberg Football Club is still in existence playing in the Diamond Valley [League] . And I played with them for a while, I have been coach, you name it,

chairman of selectors, and I have been president. And then it grown out of…too big for me to handle. And then it had too many young teams in the North Heidelberg team and some of the committee wanted to break the number of teams down to a manageable selection. So I took it upon myself then to start the

Olympic Football Club. So Olympic Football Club came into vogue then. That lasted a few years, and then the cricket club and the football club they disbanded after quite a while. But they were successful for quite a number of years, which was quite good. Heidelberg council named a pavilion after me in Heidelberg because of my commitment to sport in this area.

I was secretary of the youth club for about five years, Heidelberg Youth Club. So for about twenty-nine years I was involved in sporting and social commitments. You know, causing people to have picnics and various things like that.

It has been rather a good life for me to make activities for other people, especially younger people.

I wasn’t interested much. My kids I never went to an Anzac Day march for years. I never went to a reunion for a long time.

I just wanted to forget the war. I just wanted to forget all part of the war. I was not interested in going to reunions and my kids did not know about my war service and so we sort of grew up in a… They still don’t know much about my war experiences. And then I was coaching teams, local

teams and one of my boys come home and said a Mick Hogan was saying he was in Darwin during the war. So I said to one of my boys then, “Ask him what unit he was in because I was in Darwin.” And it came out of the blue that he was in the 2/14th Field Regiment. And so then he came over to see me,

and he said, “I was an old member of the 2/14th.” And I told him I put in a couple of years with them and then later ANGAU. And he suggested I go to a reunion of the 2/14th and march with them on Anzac Day, which I started marching with the 2/14th on Anzac Day and still go to their reunions. And last year at the Anzac

Day march one of my boys and his daughter marched for the unit. And I was very pleased to see that they were interested enough to take that on and meet some of my mates from the 2/14th.

I just wanted to forget everything about it.

Oh, I just didn’t want to remember anything.

Didn’t want any part of it. My brother had died. One of my brothers died. He was part of the war and I lost other mates during the war. So I just felt I didn’t want a part of it. So I didn’t talk about it to my kids.

Never. I worked with fellows for probably thirty years in the post office and it wasn’t until the death of one of my mates’ wives at Mornington, he came out with a 9th Division tie on, and I said, “What were you in the 9th Division, Chas?” He said, “Yeah, I was in the 2/43rd Battalion.” I said, “I

didn’t know that.” He said, “No, you never asked me.” He never asked me what units I was in. And then at the same wedding another bloke I used to work with, he was in the Middle East and I didn’t know what unit he was in. and there is a lot of people say we glorify in war us ex-servicemen, and to me that’s a lot of rot. I never discussed

my war service with anyone, mates or… It is only since I have been going back to reunions that we have been going over a lot of parts that happen. We certainly don’t glorify any part of war. What we do it is more or less a nostalgic visit over the years. As I say, these fellows I worked with for all of those years, I didn’t even know what units they were in until

he came out in a 9th Division tie on. I was in 8th Division. And when I said him he was in 9th Division, and then he told me what unit he was in, and I knew a fair bit about what particular areas those units were involved in. My other mate at the funeral, he admitted he was in the Middle East and said what unit he was in.

But that’s as much discussion we had. My other mate was a prisoner of war in Germany and he has died since. And he is one of the blokes I miss most. We used to go to the local footy together. He was in the 6th Division, which was very early in the war, and he was captured in Greece and he spent most of the war years in a prisoner of war camp in Germany. And we never

ever discussed… He used to tell me a few things that happened during his war, in the prisoner of war teams. And he said he hated Germans and things like that. But there was no real discussion of any war activity. So anyone who gets the idea that servicemen like myself glorify in our past history is a lot of rubbish because we simply don’t get together to talk about it.

My kids don’t know much about my war service at all.

Well if they see the show they will probably be surprised. I have written a life history about myself which they can read when I am not here. Well I have only got one boy left now.

The only thing they know now is what unit I was in. They know I was in Darwin. But they don’t know of any real sort of instances I was involved in. I never talk about it.

I couldn’t kill a rabbit.

See we used to go shooting quite a lot before the war with my brothers. And my brother-in-laws. We just thought we would take off after the war as we were before. My brother-in-laws and I, it would be no trouble to get on a motorbike and go up in the bush and shoot rabbits and bring them home. But I went, after the war I went trying

to shoot rabbits and simply I couldn’t shoot a rabbit, I couldn’t kill a rabbit. I think it is a mental block. There is no way known I could go shooting ducks or shoot a bird. And I remember, my brother was in Darwin with me and a bird flew past, and he was a good shot, and I think it was a lucky shot, but he put a .303 up to his shoulder and he went bang

and he hit the bird. .303! An amazing shot! Whether that’s luck or marksmanship I am yet to determine, but I think most of it was luck. But his instincts were there, he just grabbed, this bird was flying across in a manner like that and he just picked the gun up and he went bang and shot it. He was a good shot and he went shooting rabbits

after the war, but I just couldn’t go with them. I couldn’t shoot a rabbit.

I came back to a strange household because my brothers had grown up. Where they were only young boys at the time, they were teenagers. They were different; their attitude to me was different. My sisters’ attitude to me was different.

My father was a sick man and where I used to be very friendly with my father and he used to take me out. And during my war years I used to think, “When I go home, my Dad and I will go to footy matches and enjoy footy matches,” he was too sick to go out, so I missed him. My best mate, Diltzy he had come

home and made other friends and we couldn’t take on the same matesmanship as we did have. We lost that. The friends I knew we had all separated, they had gone by the board. Job was different because all of the workers had a different attitude to work.

Different staff. I didn’t like the way they moulded. They were poor moulders and I couldn’t stand that. So that upset me even working with them. That was one of the reasons I wanted to change jobs. I just found the whole existence, going to dances was different. The entertainment was different.

Just a different world altogether, and I sort of isolated myself from it. I was married and that, and I had a different thing. I still played basketball and that. One of the good things in life was that I could play basketball and I was a good basketball player. I couldn’t get a game now with my size. But before the New Australians arrived in Australia, basketball was played by nippy people who could

shoot for goal and who could move across the court. And I was a fairly good goal shooter and I had a lot of pace.

No, she didn’t know anything about my war service much.

No not much. She didn’t ask much about it.

We just kept to other things and other subjects.

I think the war was good for me. I think the war made me a person that could organise. I felt during the war I was an organiser that learnt to organise.

I learnt the meaning of mateship. I learnt how to do a lot of things I didn’t have a clue about doing. I learnt that you could manufacture huts out of ordinary wood and learn how to do it. You could make a brush roof out of anything and make it waterproof. There was so many things

that I learnt through activities with the pioneers, and then later on association with blokes that could use gelignite, and blokes that could use explosives. I have never been called upon to use explosives, but I could if I needed to. I could drill into rock and things like that, which I couldn’t have done.

I learnt so many aspects of life that I believe that my war years were beneficial to me.

Well the, being in the transport situation we used to get natives and we would teach them to drive and they would drive vehicles.

And there were other areas of ANGAU where they would teach them how to be tradesmen, work with tools and things like that. But my main job was looking after vehicles and we had native drivers. Outside I have got some photos of native drivers on the trucks. And they used to maintain the trucks and keep them clean. And quite often they used to do a lot of

the dirty work attached to vehicles. They used to keep the vehicle spotless and when you consider the mud and rubbish that they used to come through, and they would clean them down and they would do a great job. The driving was second to none; you couldn’t fault them. And that was my main concern. You could put them on a

job with all different sizes trucks and they could handle the trucks as good as most Australian drivers. So needless to say they were very handy in that situation. And we mostly used them for their own type of work, feeding them and going from village to village where transport was necessary. You would allocate a truck to it and give them a driver and they would

take supplies to various villages. Take stuff up to plantation owners. This was when I was in Port Moresby itself. And then later on out in the other areas we had them there as duty drivers that just did anything that needed doing. Taking supplies to various camps and

supplying chauffeurs for various officers and things like that. We found them easy to educate as far as driving was concerned and that was our part, and we found that they did a good job.

Personally it was quite good. You used to make sure that they respected you.

They used to respect a white person far more than themselves. They would always call you ‘taubada', white boss, I think was the original term for it. But if they spoke to you it would be ‘taubada"this and ‘taubada"that. You got on all right. It was only the men we mixed with. We didn’t mix with women and families.

Even though we had been in the villages we didn’t mix too much with them. We used to transport their families sometimes from one area to another for various reasons. But we used to get on quite well. We didn’t have any problems with them at all.

I couldn’t speak. There was so many languages. Pidgin was just one of them.

And I always appreciated the fact that when a native spoke to you in pidgin you had to sort of know exactly what he was saying and it was very hard, because, “Me go alonga here,” now you would think he was going to go somewhere but it may not mean that at all. He has got something in a certain space. Quite a lot of the language you had to imagine more or less. Because even though he

said the correct English words it was an entirely different meaning put to an English word. “Him come alonga,” meant nothing about someone coming to see you, so you had to work out what he really meant and it was very difficult. Pidgin English was one of the worst things. In fact you could understand some of their own words better than pidgin English.

Well most of them spoke fairly good English, and the ones that couldn’t speak English then you would get one of the ones that could speak both languages and they would converse for you. There is ways and means of getting over it.

I probably would have been home on leave, because when I got back to this transit camp near Cairns I was just finishing a month’s leave so I would have been on leave here. I would have been around the Fitzroy here.

And this transit camp, I am back there a couple of days waiting for a plane there to go to New Guinea and that’s when this officer said, “The war is now over,” and closed the camp for forty-eight hours. So I imagine I would have been home on leave when the bombs were dropped.

No, actually I don’t. I think I sympathised a bit with the unfortunate bloody innocent people, but if it had have been put on an army camp I wouldn’t have worried about it. But being in cities like that, and the immense amount of damage that was supposed to have been done, and then you see pictures of it, it certainly…

Later on you certainly realised the enormity of the damage that was done. But when it was first dropped, it was all so secretive and we didn’t know much about it until probably weeks later when photographs and pictures revealing how much damage it did create. But we knew then that the war was just about over and we were lucky that the

Germans never got it before the Americans.

Yeah, I was discharged at Royal Park.

Fell off a horse. Oh no, that was a different… No, the homecoming was different. I should have

mentioned this earlier. When I came home earlier from leave in Darwin I got leave from Royal Park, and on the way home I met my brother who had a horse, and I threw my duffel bag to him and I jumped over the horse’s haunches and the horse started galloping up the street, and I tried to find the stirrups and found the stirrups and went

around a corner and came off. And I was in, firstly they took me to St Vincent’s [Hospital] they tell me, and then later on they took me to the repat [Repatriation] hospital. And the sister there said, “Well 2/14th have only arrived in Melbourne this morning. I am going to a dance with one of the officers.” And I said, “Well this is how I spend my first day home on leave from Darwin, in the hospital.”

Later on my brother told me that the horses what’s-a-name was loose, he had loosened it off; it wasn’t tight. That’s why the saddle and all came spinning around when I put my foot in the stirrup. The worst part being here in the repat in Heidelberg, I had visitors, and then they shifted me up to Seymour camp, the hospital up there, and the only

ones that visited there was Mum and Dad. So I was a bit put out because I had a few locals visit me at the repat here, but none of them would come up to Seymour. That was my first day on a month’s leave from Darwin. That was memorable, so…

I think I coped pretty well with it.

We didn’t talk much about the war at all. I didn’t want to talk about the war. My Dad, who I was looking forward to seeing, he was very ill in the hospital and later on he died in hospital. And you know when you’re thinking about things when you’re away, I thought, one of the things I would have to do is get Dad and my brothers and go to a footy match. Well Dad wasn’t able to get to a footy match and that was a bit upsetting.

But I don’t think I thought that much about the war. I was just glad to be free and easy out of it. Whilst, before the war finished and they wanted people to go to Japan, I toyed with the idea of going with the occupation forces to Japan, but I only toyed with that for a little while and then I give it away.

I thought I had had enough. And I didn’t worry about it after that.

Probably a good glass of beer and that was almost unobtainable. There was very little beer about.

It took about two or three years before you could get a supply of beer back again. Everything was scarce, butter was scarce, you found that foodstuffs, clothing was scarce the clothing was lousy, you had to have coupons to buy clothing, there was coupons necessary to buy food.

So you found that in some aspects you were better off in the army than being a civilian because you didn’t have to worry about coupons and you had your uniform so that was it. So when I got home I found out that my brothers had been into my private clothes, where I had a few suits, and that there was very little left. According to my father my brother used to throw my suits out of the window.

They were living in a two storey place and he used to toss them out the window and then go out with my clothes on. So that when I got back there was nothing decent to wear. That was according to my old man. He was quite upset about it that they couldn’t mind my clothes from being worn. Whether I would have fitted into them or not. I didn’t seem to change much in those war years. I was around about ten stone for a long time,

so I probably would have been able to get back into them. But I doubt that I could get back into a uniform that I wore in those days.

Oh yes, they were all pleased. And on one of the occasion, twenty-first birthday, and my Dad was overjoyed to see me home. I

can remember he was real pleased about it. He sort of embarrassed me. I wasn’t married at that time It was sort of an embarrassment to be looked after so well. Of course my other brother, he was out of the service then. And we went to this twenty-first birthday and they made a big fuss

over me and built me up no end. I was… That affected me greatly. That was again during the war. Coming home then. My sisters by then had all married. Even my younger sister had married. She had married a serviceman. No, not the youngest. There was…

My eldest sister was married to a serviceman and, oh, that’s right, the next one had an accident – he wasn’t able to get in the army because he had a bung foot. He had had a motor accident and he was in the militia prior to the accident and he was ousted out of the army because of that. So I came

home to a very diminished family because all of the girls had gone. Got married. And they had gone away. My brother that enlisted before me, he had got married. He married a girl that he met in Sydney and he was not living at home. So it was sort of… I was married, so I think I only stayed one

night at my place and then later on I found a place of my own. So it was a changed circumstance all around, from being in a big family, leaving a house full of kids and a family of sisters, no sisters and no-one to have to put up with, and they didn’t have to put up with me. And my brothers had,

one was a bit of a ruffian. He grew up a bit of a ruffian. And the other one, he worked with me for a long time, he is the only one left now, I have only got one brother left. And he joined the services but the war was over before he went away anywhere.

So I had to retire with my wife into a very quiet and secluded area of things. And it wasn’t long after that that we come out here, after. And the idea was we were going to live in Clifton Hill. I had Clifton Hill in mind because it was on the railway line and I worked in Collingwood. And it was not far from North Richmond station. Or even as far as Eltham, so long as I was on the rail line.

And but it didn’t eventuate. I couldn’t get the wherewithal to get the house I wanted, and I put in for a commission house and I was granted this thing. And I thought I would only be here for a little while. Never dreaming that I would be here for so long. But once living here I joined this

cricket club with a friend of mine that I used to know when I was living in Collingwood and I used to play cricket at Charleston. He met me there and he took me over to his club there, and once I got going there I didn’t feel like moving. And later on, when I did feel like moving, my kids were too old and established; they didn’t want to move. And I thought they would have carried on a bit

if I had decided to go. I wanted to go to Chelsea to live. I had been and picked out a spot and everything else there. And I was going to move and finished up they didn’t. And then my son did the dirty on me he went and moved when he got married; he moved to Rosebud. So to see him I had to, I had a caravan at Rosebud for a while and then I finished up buying a house at Rosebud.

You sort of lose control over a lot of things that you planned, and I often think very few people have got control of their own lives, it is controlled by so many other factors. A person thinks he is looking after himself has got another thing coming I think.

Well I intended, this mate of mine Ditzy, he and I were going to start a foundry, go into a business on our own because we were both good moulders and we knew there would be plenty of work to do. But what we didn’t count on that we lost a fair bit of money in trying.

We could not get the supplies that was necessary. Pig iron was impossible for new people like my mate and I to get any pig iron that was necessary from New South Wales. Hard coke essential for melting metal was impossible to buy. So we found that all of our plans for a foundry went begging because we couldn’t get the supplies to handle them.

There wasn’t enough supplies to go around anywhere. They couldn’t even supply the regular foundries with the stuff they needed, so there was little chance of us getting it. So that kind of put the bugbear on that. I went to try other jobs and we went to a painting school to learn to paint, but that wasn’t very successful. And I went down

the railways as a railway detective. And I was down there, I didn’t mind that job. I thought that was a good job, and I enjoyed being there. And then the boss of the foundry come over one night and talked me back into going to the foundry because he couldn’t get moulders. He was in dire straits. And he talked me into, against my will, to go back there for a couple of years. He was promising me the world. I was going to be foreman and all of that.

But it didn’t develop; it didn’t eventuate. So I changed from that foundry to the Gatick [?] Foundry used to be over in Brunswick. And I used to enjoy the Gatick, working there, because it was one of these you could sign on any time of the day or night. If you felt like going to work at midnight you could sign on at midnight and you could finish at midday if you liked. If you were going to the footy of a Saturday

you could go there early. As long as you, you had to take the patterns that they required in sequence. They had the priority patterns lined up, and if you come in and the foreman or anyone wasn’t around you had to take these patterns off the heaps in sequence. So you just couldn’t come in and pick the eyes out of the patterns, pick the easy ones to manufacture and get away with that.

You had to do them in priority. So you could come in at any time of the day and knock off any time you like. If you wanted to work a twelve hour shift, you could. If you wanted to work five hours one day and six the next was okay. Well I went there and I was there for a few years. I met one of the eventual senators, he was a union fellow at the Gatick. Can’t think of his name now.

But he, from there one day I was making brake drums for big trucks and you had to put a core in them and it was very smelly and offensive. And my eyes started to suffer and I thought, “I think I have had this foundry work.” And they were building a post office up here so I looked around and I thought, “I might give the post office a go.” So I went down and got myself a job as a postman.

And it turned out I did a bit of wages right off in the start, but I found out that within two years I wasn’t any worse than I was. Better sick leave, better pay, better holiday pay, etcetera. And then I got senior jobs; I was senior postman. Later I was overseer of postmen and later supervisor of postmen and I finished up with quite a good job. I was in the city for ten years and I

enjoyed that and I started footy clubs. And being in the post office, I was in the Postal Institute and I used to organise dances and balls and you name it in the Postal Institute. And I did that for quite a number of years. I am a life member in there. I am a life member of North Heidelberg Football Club, Olympic Football Club.

So I think I have done, since coming out of the army, a lot of good for youth and a lot of good for people I worked around and worked with. They have had a fairly good entertaining life through me being associated with the Postal Institute. We used to have picnics.

I have had two thousand up the mountains at a picnic organised, and the cost of that was minute in comparison to the overall cost. We have tried to keep costs down as much as you could. Organise a ball, organise dances here and there. The football club, we were able to do well. I suppose there could be thirty young footballers played

League football because of the efforts of these clubs that I initiated. Well-known footballers, too, came from out here and I was responsible for the management of the clubs as well as keeping the kids interested in keeping off the street. The Olympic Hall

they had up there for five years, I was secretary of the youth club up there. That was the Heidelberg Youth Club. I was secretary up there. And it got to the point where I had plenty of fathers to help out with the boys, but the girls was a problem, and I don’t know if you have ever handled girls or not in sporting areas? We had marching girls, Heidelberg Marching Girls. We had quite a lot of facilities for them

but we didn’t have enough mothers to be there and look after the girls. And if you are in situation where there are girls around you worry about the circumstances that might arise from men being in charge of girls. And it come to the point where I tried to get mothers interested to turn up and I couldn’t, and I went down to the Town Hall

and had a word to the council about it. And I suggested that they invite one of the clubs to come in there, which they did do, and I was glad to get away from the youth club. So I was glad to get away with it. Now the youth club is managed by a good management; it is well organised down there now. I think I have been of some use since the war.

I spend a lot of time going down to Collingwood to watch them now, because when I got too old to play cricket and footy I had to find another alternate, so going to Collingwood filled in that. Been a member there now for quite a long time. Things have changed even there. You don’t get the pleasure out of being a member like you used to.

One time you could go along there and you could participate in their after-match services that they had, like get-togethers, and you would meet all of the players, get to know their parents. It has changed so much and so drastically. It is pointless really, even thought I am still a member, just paid out last week. And all I think I am waiting

now on is to see what’s offering in the new Northern Stand. Collingwood is supposed to have a social club in the new Northern Stand when it is built. So if I live long enough I might find what they’re offering there. And they are going to train over at Olympic Park. Collingwood is finished as far as their present ground is concerned.

That’s my memory. I can’t even think of a ground I have been associated with for years.

Not originally, not when I first came out of the army, but now I feel that it is necessary and it keeps a body of people together. I can’t

march these days but I go along and I go in our transport that is provided. I have attended, since I met Hogan and started marching with the 2/14th and gone to their reunions, I have participated in the Anzac Day march since and I think that’s necessary . And I am always surprised at the participation of the

crowd. The crowd has always been a good turn up, especially with good weather. And I have found the last couple of years the crowd participation has been very good, and I think they make you feel that it is well worthwhile attending an Anzac Day parade.

Yes, I go to them regularly.

No, only the humorous parts of it. We don’t discuss it too much at all. Even the, most of the… I get a journal that comes out two or three times a year and most of the information in that is about what members are doing now, nothing about the war. It’s, “Someone has had a trip over to Hong Kong,” or, “Someone has been invited to this.”

What they are doing in their private life. Very rarely does it relate back to the war years.

I find that they are never very accurate. They just make a romantic

sequence of the war, or they make it too realistic. They don’t give you… I was watching Changi the other night. Now I couldn’t imagine prisoners of war carrying on like they were supposedly to have done when a man is supposedly standing out in the sun for hours and collapsing, and I can understand them relieving him and putting another man in his place. But for them to start carrying on

the way they did after that, I thought it made the whole film look ridiculous. Now whether that…

Well some of them started dancing and singing songs and all of that sort of thing. I couldn’t not imagine seriously a situation like that coming up. I could understand the circumstances of the Japanese, how they treated them.

How a man could still stand up after they had chopped his foot off or half of his foot off with a bayonet. They are not realistic. If he had have collapsed on the spot and needed medical attention, even if he had have died it would have been realistic, but to me it was just manufactured for entertainment rather than realism.

And I think a lot of war pictures are made more or less for entertainment rather than to be a realistic section of any war. I feel that anyway.

No, I don’t really think there is.

I would hope that there is never any wars. I don’t agree with this present situation that we are in with Iraq. I think there is certain various reasons we are in Iraq and none of them seem to be to me the real reason. We’re told why we are there by a prime minister that

I think has got a forked tongue when he talks about this Iraq business. I don’t think they are that much interested in the people of Iraq as much as they are interested in who is going to control the oil, and who is going to control the Middle East itself. I think they are worried about the Israel situation. I think the United Nations should take a more offensive manner with Israel to make sure

that they get out of Palestine. All of that area that they have occupied. It is occupied space. I can imagine if someone came to occupy Israel itself. Early in the war I think, they have got the Israel situation, they wanted to take on Lebanon and they would have occupied Lebanon but the circumstances there were too difficult for them and they got out.

And I don’t think the way they are going that they are going to be satisfied until they occupy the whole of Palestine. And I am not anti-Jewish, I am not anti-Israel, but I think the Palestinians themselves have had a pretty rough go. And I think they talk about terrorists and we have got to go back to 1948 when these Israel people themselves were the greatest terrorists because they wanted a place of their own.

And it was their terrorism that created Israel as it was. Americans and the British, they developed Israel at the expense of places like Palestine and I feel that Bush and the United Nations and our own prime minister should concede that Israel is being very unfair to the Palestinians themselves. They should get out of all occupied

territory. Perhaps then if there is terrorism in Palestine I might agree with them. But while there is terrorism from Israel in occupying their territory, I can’t see how. If I was a Palestinian myself, I am sure I would be a terrorist if I could get away with it. Now whether I would have the guts to be a terrorist, I don’t know.

But I feel that they have got a just cause to look after their own Palestinian country. And the United Nations especially should take it upon themselves to make sure that Israel conceded Palestinian territory back to the Palestinians, and then perhaps the Palestinians may not be a terrorist group as they main they are. That’s how I feel about it.

Vietnam was only a supportive feature of the Americans. Why the Americans went into Vietnam as far as I am concerned, an American personal problem that they were worried about the Chinese escalating down from North Korea and possibly endangering their areas.

But to me, no Americans should have been involved in Vietnam. Korea, I am not sure about Korea but I am sure the same thing applies. That perhaps firstly you have got to determine to make two Koreas after the Second World War. Korea was occupied by the Japanese now when they beat

the Japanese for some purposes, both Koreas, North and South Korea was divided. Now I am not sure why that it wasn’t left as one Korea. Why have a North and a South Korea? So whether the Americans when the North invaded the South, whether the Americans should have been involved in that I am not sure. I don’t know because I am not sure

why the two Koreas was developed in the first instance. Because earlier, before the Second World War, Korea was occupied by the Japanese for years. And it was the war with the Chinese. The Japanese were fighting with the Chinese for years and the Chinese didn’t get much assistance from anybody to fight the Japanese and it was only when the Americans was involved

that they started to think about helping out the Chinese. So I am not sure that, I don’t believe that we should have been involved in Vietnam and I am still very suspicious of why we are involved in Iraq and I am very suspicious of why we were in Korea.

It just seems to me that we are following an American agenda for America’s reasons of their own.

They are my views. Probably different to a lot of people’s.

Okay.