Australians at War Film Archive

Yes Louise [interviewer]. I was born at Narrandera, New South Wales on 27th June 1920. My parents lived at Whitton. My father was born in Alton, Hampshire, England. My mother was born at Carousel [?Cuddell] in New South Wales. We

lived in this little village of Whitton, or town of Whitton. Not a very big place but it was six miles from the Murrumbidgee River and on the railway line. Most communication was either by train or horse and sulky or later on by pushbike as regards the young fellows around the town. Eventually

in the family there was my brother, eldest brother Alf, myself, then Reg, another brother Keith and Mel and Ron and two sisters Joyce and Fay. We had uncles and aunts in the town so we were one happy family group really.

Yes my father was in World War I with the 13th Infantry Battalion. He

was wounded at Quinn’s Post in May 1915. My Dad worked on the Coober Station. Well he looked after some agriculture activity and it was about six miles from home. The boundary of Coober Station came right up into Whitton but the homestead was about six miles from Whitton and his

means of getting to work was either by pushbike or rode a horse. And with Coober Station and Wilga Station they’re owned by F.W. Hughes the aim of anybody there in Whitton seemed to be when they left school as far as the boys were concerned they’d work on Wilga or Coober Station. That was about the only real activity around the place. But that was very

interesting. You met a number of chaps from Wilga and Coober. They were real fair dinkum Australians you know, really interesting.

Oh very good. It was all flat country so we ran around a lot barefooted and

so on and went to the public school at Whitton and it was, we never started school in those days till you were 7 years old. And then from Whitton there was a school bus went to Leeton for the intermediate high school at Leeton. So after qualifying at Whitton Public School you went on to

Leeton unless you…

Yeah went to school at Leeton by bus. You left Whitton in the morning about 7.30 and then you came, you arrived back home about 5 o’clock in

the afternoon. But I found high school very interesting because I was always intended to be a carpenter and at Leeton we had manual lessons in woodworking and technical drawings and so on. But the problem at Leeton was when the sports afternoon was of a Wednesday afternoon and if you played sport especially if you played against other schools Griffith

or Yanco you missed the bus home so you either had to start walking or borrow a pushbike and then you had to bring the bike back the next morning of course.

15 miles. But sometimes when you started to walk somebody with you and somebody in Whitton would say, they’d come and pick us up in a vehicle but sometimes you had to walk probably 4 or 5 miles before but

still that never stopped me from playing sport.

Mainly rugby league and we were a certain class and so on. We used to play the Yanco Agricultural High School. They were very hard to beat. In fact I don’t think we ever beat them but we used to beat some of the other

schools. But in home my mother there was a piano and my mother played the piano. My uncles and aunts played the piano and other musical instruments so there was always sort of music in the home beside an old wind up gramophone. One uncle Don was very musical. Don played the banjo, the mandolin and the gum leaf and all that sort of thing.

From Darlington Point they had a gum leaf band the aborigine people. But Don he was so musical he could play this gum leaf and everything was very good. We used to swim out there in the irrigation canals and we

would be probably about 8 or 9 years old and Mum used to say you can’t go near canals until you learn to swim because unfortunately some, later on somebody drowned in the canal but we used to say Mum how can we go to school if we can’t go near the canals but anyhow we still learnt to swim. And then the big thing was to be able to swim the Murrumbidgee River and luckily where we swam a log was about half way across the stream and

for a long time we were able to swim to this particular log and then as we improved we were able to swim right across.

I was fourteen and a half years old when I finished school Louise. The leaving age in those days was 14 and when I left school I got myself a job as a burr cutter on Wilga Station, as they called it. It meant riding a pushbike 9 miles from home every morning and coming back at night sort

of thing and for five and a half days a week was the length of work at the time and the wage in those days for my age group was thirty three and threepence a week which is about three dollars and whatever thirty three cents to keep yourself.

No, no real training Louise but from an early age we were all able to use what they called a pea rifle in those days, a .22 calibre rifle single shot and generally with other boys from the town you went rabbiting as they

called it and you’d take out probably ten rounds or less or a few more but you’d always bring back probably five or six rabbits or it might be a wild duck. We learnt to shoot very accurately because of the cost of bullets. But in those days you could ride down the town on your pushbike with the rifle slung over your shoulder and nobody would take any notice because

that was the thing, normal activity. You’d probably ride about 5 miles to a known spot where the rabbits were and nobody ever shot anybody else. No accidents at all. Everybody survived and so on which was very good for later on in the wartime activity because most bushmen were similar.

Then later on when I had patrols up on the Kokoda Track I would always select bushmen to come with me because I knew they would be able to shoot which they did, and beside the bushcraft sneaking on their quarry and

so on. No it was pretty good really and then I guess as you got a little bit older probably 14 15 16 there was always dances. Picture shows were a bit light on but if you rode your bike to Leeton 15 miles we used to go to the picture show at odd times.

Oh Charlie Chaplin and in those days there was a cowboy called Tom Mix. That was our main probably Charlie Chaplin and Tom Mix and there were always sort of comedy type films and so on. Black and white of course.

They came along later the open air theatre but we mainly went to what they called the Roxy Theatre in Leeton but the open air ones were night time during the army at Port Moresby and so on. They sometimes had films and they were just open air. You sat on the ground or whatever.

Oh there was a burr or a plant called a Bathurst Burr and this plant sometimes they grew up to about half a metre high or less and on this plant had a burr and with the sheep the burr used to cling to the wool of the sheep and that meant the wool wasn’t quite as profitable as the clean wool

so they employed burr cutters to go through the paddocks cutting these Bathurst Burrs down. But a burr gang sometime would vary from about 12 to 20 fellows and you’d walk miles. Like in those days all the paddocks were, this property on Wilga where I worked it went from Whitton to, went

in a westerly direction about 15 miles and the other boundary went from Whitton to pretty near to Griffith which was another probably 15 or 16 miles so it was a pretty fair area and all flat country. We were always used to walking. I could walk and that far to your work if you didn’t walk you

had to find something else. And then in those days too you had morning tea in the morning. They’d allow you to have morning tea but there was no afternoon tea but sometimes it would all depend on the burr boss you could boil a billy in the afternoon but providing somebody kept a lookout for any dust coming up through the paddock. The boss from Wilga might be coming through. So that was how things were done in those days. At

Wilga Station they had ten stand shearing shed and when shearing time came the best burr cutters were offered a job in the shed as roustabouts and the wages went from thirty three and threepence a week to three pound six shillings a week which was much better.

Well that was in the ten shearers each shearer had a picker up, a broomie as they called him and the chap who was the picker up as the wool came off the sheep, the fleece he’d pick up the fleece and spread it out on the table to be worked on and then the broomie he’d have a straw broom and while

the shearer went to get another sheep the broomie would sweep the board clean of bits of wool and so on but looking after five shearers you’re kept pretty busy and so on. They always had a boss of the board as they called it. The manager of the station or if he was not there the chap who done the

wool classing, the classer was the boss of the board.

I worked on Wilga for twelve months and luckily a builder came to Whitton, a chap named Pat Bolger and he asked the headmaster of the school if there was any likely students that had passed through his hands

who were interested in woodworking and so on and luckily the headmaster recommended me to him. So when this, when Pat Bolger saw me I started with Pat. I had to give a week’s notice at Wilga. I started with Pat straightaway and the wage for an apprentice carpenter in those days was sixteen and sixpence a week and after a while Pat paid me a pound a week

and then increased it as time went on. And I really took to carpentry. It was something that I really always wanted to do.

Yes Louise. At Easter 1939 a friend of mine who had already been working in Canberra came home to see his mother, as a matter of fact we used to be next door neighbours and Clive said you know plenty of work in Canberra for carpenters so I packed up my tools and headed back to Canberra with Clive and immediately started work as a carpenter and then

in of course September 1939 I was still working as a carpenter when Mr. Menzies said we are now at a state of war with Germany which was pretty disturbing but well after all the war was over the side of the world and

during this time I had met Joan at a dance at Tharwa in the ACT [Australian Capital Territory]. I was getting good money as a carpenter and my wages in those days were seven pounds six shillings per week and I was doing what I liked doing. So I just kept working as a carpenter and then in 1940 about half way through 1940 they had this universal training as they called it and I was in the 20 year old

bracket and I was in the 20 year old call up and I ended up joining the 13th Infantry Battalion camp in December 1940 and my father said earlier you know, like he said you know, if you have to be in it well make the best of it which I said to myself I would. So I made the best of it. I enjoyed what I was doing. It was a bit different to what I’d be normally up to and before

that camp was finished I was promoted to a lance corporal and then they broke camp and we were out of camp in June 1941 and I went back into camp in June 1941 and I went to what they called Eastern Command Training School, Studley Park near Camden. There was only a few of us

selected and I was promoted corporal and then we went to Bathurst camp and the Japanese declared war on 7th December 1941 and I was promoted to a sergeant and went back to Greta camp and then the 3rd Battalion was put on … and they had more recruits come in so I helped train those

recruits and then we went to the Nelson Bay area north of Newcastle and on the 14th May 1942 we were given two days home leave for final leave and we had chaps with us from Bombala, Cooma, Crookwell and even I was unable to go up to Whitton to see my parents so I phoned my father

and he came into Sydney Central Station and I went to Queanbeyan to see Joan and I headed back to Sydney, I had to go back on the Saturday night. Had to be back in Sydney on the 17th May at the wood chopping arena at the Showground and met Dad at Central and my other brother Alf who was

already near Sydney and that afternoon we boarded a ship called the [KPM] Van Heutsz on the 17th and on the afternoon of the 18th May we sailed out of Sydney Harbour for Port Moresby which was, the boat trip was interesting. As I said I was determined to make the most of what was happening. But after the Japanese declared war it was a different, I had a different attitude

to the war because it was a real threat to Australia but it seemed a bit strange though because the Japanese were the flavour of the month down home because Dad used to talk about the Japanese in the First World War and the Japanese destroyers escorting the Australian troop ships to Egypt. They also used a certain amount of Japanese little bombs and mortars and

so on. But another interesting one there, one of Dad’s or his brothers was in the British Navy and he had been in Japan training, help training some of the Japanese in Naval warfare. I think it was about 1932 Dad had word from England that something had happened in Japan and the Japanese sort

of slipped out of being the flavour of the month. So we didn’t really know what was happening. Also when I was a young fellow I had black curly hair and there was a Japanese admiral called Togo, T-O-G-O, not like Tojo and you know Dad, my nickname was Togo. Dad nicknamed me after this Japanese and this admiral bloke cleaned up the Russians in 1905 at some

naval battle in that area. But getting back to the, we landed at Port Moresby on 27th May 1942 and we went to a place called Bootless Bay inland from Moresby but on the sea, that was Bootless Bay. We trained

there and we also unloaded a ship, some guarded airstrips but there was no jungle training. You could look to the east and in the very distance was this what they call the jungle country but near Port Moresby there’s just savannah country very open country. We trained there just in open warfare and our dress was khaki shorts and shirt and we also had what they called

two man tents pitched in the kunai grass. Kunai grass is a coarse grass that grows probably about a foot high to four feet or one and a half metres and in this kunai grass we had a slit trench which was about four foot deep and we’d pitch this little two man tent over it so if that if there was any

Japanese bombing you could jump into the slit trench or fall in whatever. But that was our existence there. As I said no jungle training. Luckily the platoon I had, I had plenty of ammunition and when we went into the bush I used to get the platoon I had firing .303 rifles from the hip which they

became very good at and the Bren gun from the hip and so on. And then on the, there was a lot of sickness. I had dengue fever. Measles, there was all sorts of things and other tropical complaints. But on the 5th September 1942 the 3rd Battalion was given orders to advance up onto the Kokoda

Track. Our equipment was the army basic equipment and just haversack, small sort of haversack on your back. In the haversack you had half a dixie as they called it, eating utensils. They recommended not to take a knife

fork or spoon just take either a fork or a spoon on account of weight and some of us had class knives, army class knives and then you had a bed roll on your web belt which was a ground sheet, half a grey blanket, half a towel, an army pullover, a spare pair of socks and a spare shirt if you had one. In the haversack too you generally carried some four second

grenades, hand grenades and extra ammunition. We travelled as light as was possible which seems a bit strange today when you see the soldiers going into the war all loaded up but anyhow that’s today’s equipment. And away we went. I know when I got into the jungle I wondered what the

devil has sort of got me and in this dark dingy place, mud and slush and slipping and sliding and I thought that you know one side of the country was sort of heaven and we’d sort of advanced into hell. But then I thought oh well we just have to cope with this which I set about to do and in the

finish, not in the finish but when we were sort of able to see enough the jungle was a pretty place. Beautiful butterflies and orchids and the trees they were massive trees but they were still beautiful trees and of course the rain was a bit hard to put up with but that was it. It was there and we were

there. But some fellows never got accustomed to the jungle and the mud and slush. Some fellows every step they took they cursed the place. They cursed and they moaned and they groaned. The platoon I had I used to say to them the fellows that were really like that I’d say listen don’t be looking down in the mud there, the only ones you’ll find in the mud are dead Japs.

It’s the live blokes you’ve got to look out for and they’re up behind the trees and so on. But the alert soldier was generally the survivor and the fellow who was full of misery unfortunately he was generally the fellow who was the casualty.

I was, I’ll put it this way Louise. The battalion was there from the 5th September till the 4th December where they left the battlefield at Gona. I was on the track from the 5th September until I ended up back in Port

Moresby in hospital on the 29th, about the 28th November. I left the 3rd Battalion at Gona. I had malaria and also scrub typhus and I was just sort of that was it and my best friend who soldiered on he was killed on the 29th November so I think probably the sickness saved me from the same

fate I think but it’s hard to say. That’s the length of time I was on the track Louise.

Yes. Well I went from, when I was flown back to Port Moresby to the 2nd CCS [casualty clearing station] with the sickness I went from the CCS to a convalescent depot at a

place called Koitaki and the interesting one at Koitaki I met Bert Beros who wrote, the author of the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels and other poems and we became very good friends. And I eventually got back to Australia in January 1943. Had some home leave and then back onto the Tablelands in Atherton at a place called Ravenshoe to join the 3rd Battalion again.

No. We got married on 16th September 1944. And then we joined the 3rd Battalion and then there was some fellows that had survived the 2/22nd Battalion at Rabaul and our CO [commanding officer], Lieutenant Colonel Cameron was our CO

on the Kokoda Track. Our first CO, Lieutenant Colonel Fall he was a First World War soldier, he was too old to carry on so Lieutenant Colonel Cameron was our CO and some members of the 2/22nd Battalion came to that area and we were known then as the 3/22nd Battalion. And in July

1943 the soldiers who had transferred to the AIF [Australian Imperial Force] earlier we went the 2/3rd Infantry Battalion and the chaps who still had their N numbers as they called it they generally went to the 36th Battalion. Some other chaps went to Darwin but I was with the 2/3rd Battalion and I was quite happy to be with the 2/3rd Battalion they were a pretty good battalion and I was a

sergeant and I ended up as platoon sergeant of 10 Platoon B Company in the 2/3rd. As I said we weren’t strangers exactly to the 2/3rd because at a place called Oivi after Kokoda our A and B Companies of the 3rd Battalion

we were called on to help the 2/3rd Battalion at Mount Oivi which we did. I had one pretty good patrol there at Oivi and we managed to get in behind the Japanese and give them a fight. Ended up one of our soldiers was wounded, a chap named Doug Downes from Blanket Flat near Crookwell. And

then the next day we attacked Mount Oivi. 10 Platoon led the attack and as we went up over the top luckily the Japanese were on the move so we only expended about fifty rounds of ammunition but our main concern, my main thought there was this was the 11th November 1942 and it was what we used to know as Armistice Day First World War and I thought well if

Armistice Day on the war to end….

Yes the 2/3rd Battalion, yes. As I was saying we fought side by side with them at Oivi and it also made Australian military history because of the two 3rd Battalions fighting side by side. At Milne Bay the 9th Battalion were there and the 2/9th but I asked a chap from the 2/9th and he said they never ever fought side by side. No I enjoyed my stay with the 2/3rd

Battalion as of course I did with our 3rd Battalion. But the Aitape-Wewak campaign was different to the Kokoda Track. There was much more support and the rations and so on were much better. There was more of it but odd times it may have got a little bit light on but the evacuation of

wounded and sick was much more like pretty well mechanical whereas on the Kokoda Track it was always by the Papuans and other means. It was just stretchers and so on. On the Aitape-Wewak campaign of course we were fighting there when the Japanese surrendered in August 1945. It was

no real big event the Japanese surrender. When we received word that the Japanese had surrendered all my soldiers close to me just went about their ordinary soldiering and until the Japanese general surrendered on the 13th September 1945 we weren’t too sure whether the war was really over.

I got back in February 1946. I was, I stayed on with until then. Others came back to Australia. I had been commissioned in the field and I was in charge of camp construction in the 2/3rd and then also there was a nucleus of soldiers kept on the mainland there on what they used to call Muschu

Island. The Japanese prisoners of war were there and I think there was close on 20,000 Japanese prisoners so we had to keep some force still on the mainland. In the meantime mentioning about when I was married, in

September 1944 before we went up to Aitape-Wewak I was given some home leave and during that time Joan and I were married at St John’s Church in Canberra. We were married on the Saturday and I had to report back to Marrickville depot and then on the Wednesday I was heading back to North Queensland again. So I didn’t see Joan again until February 1946

but then others were in the same category but I was lucky I came back. Some of the poor fellows never made it back.

I still had a fair amount of malaria but the treatment for malaria was good. It just meant that you would sort of get over being hospitalised and then you’d be back in again a short while later but eventually the time lapse improved and your health improved and so on.

In 1948 they reformed the CMF the Citizen Military Forces and I joined up with the group in Canberra, the 3rd Battalion in Canberra. I stayed with them until 1957 when I had some other illnesses so I had to give the poor old CMF away which I was sorry about.

In 1953 I was selected to go to Korea as a front line observer for Eastern Command which was good. I was able to see in Japan. We went into Hiroshima and Yokohama and Kobe and Osaka and Tokyo of course. The war, the Korean War was a nasty war. They had air support and equipment

and rations and that but still it was a pretty formidable enemy the North Koreans and the Chinese. They were still pretty ferocious enemy.

Yes. I carried on with carpentry and then eventually got a position in the

Department of the Interior as they called it those days as a building inspector and then from that to senior technical officer. It was during, that’s how I come to lose the sight in my left eye.

I was going back to the offices in Civic and I stopped I was stopped in Manuka stopped at a give-

way and there was a lady there in another car and she was also stopped and she asked me could I raise the bonnet of this Falcon motor car and I parked this government car I was driving and as I raised the bonnet of the Falcon a piece fell off and the fan blade hit me across the face and through my left eye. It didn’t knock me out but I was taken to Canberra Hospital and the

eye surgeon after the operation was over

Not a lot Louise. The thing I can remember he would talk about the jam tin bombs and so on. They never had the equipment like we had in World War II but apparently they used Japanese bombs as they called them. Apparently they were small bombs about the size of a cricket ball. He said

they used to improvise a lot. They’d have an empty jam tin and fill it with some explosive and of course Dad’s words were horse shoe nails, they had some horses on Gallipoli horseshoe nails bits of horseshoe and gramophone needles of all things but that was his jam tin bombs that he used to talk about. He used to

call the Turk ‘Johnny Turk’. He never had any real great animosity towards the Turks. He just called him ‘Johnny Turk’. He landed on the afternoon of the 25th April 1915 with the 13th Infantry Battalion. It must have been

pretty severe going but he didn’t talk a lot about the war. Of course being wounded early in the piece I suppose that sort of because he never went back into action after he was wounded in May 1915.

He was wounded by rifle shot in the side of his body. Went into his lung

and he ended up with just one good lung but apparently stopped one lung cooperating. I know he had a hole in the side of his body. There were times when this poor fellow was working without a shirt on and you could see this pretty deep wound in the side of his body but then of course he smoked like most people did although I never smoked and he died in

Concord Hospital aged 74 with cancer in his good lung. But he was always a pretty happy bloke. He used to sing British or English music hall songs especially when he had a couple of beers. But take him all 'round he was a pretty happy bloke.

My impression was earlier was that the First World War soldier especially the ones that had been wounded and that weren’t given such a good go. Dad with his wound was only in receipt of a very poor pension and he reared helped rear a big family. But I was still was a God King and Country type. As I said once the Japanese entered the war I had a different

attitude to the war as far as Australia was concerned.

No not in the early stages especially when I was occupied doing something I liked doing and I had met Joan and you know everything looked pretty good for me which it was.

Oh yes, yes very much. Every school every Monday morning we used to sing. They’d raise the Australian flag and sing we used to always sing 'God Save Our Queen' and there was always but Dad received mail and letters

from home from his home in England. We were pretty close to the English thoughts and ideas and so on which I am very pleased about because it also helped tied you through later life as far as I can make out.

Oh you had the sort of strength of England behind you and the Empire and we always had a bonfire on Empire Day. I think it was 24th May if I remember rightly. So the Empire was pretty sort of special. Everybody seemed to be happy with what their lot was. They didn’t aim for something that was beyond their reach and so on.

Oh it was, well one thing there with it Louise it was so widespread so everybody seemed to be in the same boat or had the same but Dad always

managed to have some activity. I remember on this Coober Station and that even when they were short of hands there Dad was given or was able to do what they used to call pick up dead wool. He had a horse and cart and where the sheep had died in the paddocks and so on he used to, he was able to with a pitchfork load this dead wool as they called it the wool off

the body of the sheep and he had this cart and he was on a sort of a contract type thing because the manager of the station paid him a penny a pound but in the penny a pound he also had to press the dead wool himself or have it baled. But at least he was doing something and there was always as I say, the size of this property there was a lot of dead sheep around so he was

able to pick up a fair bit of wool and so on.

No not really. No we at this stage, what was I say 1931 I was 11 and Dad he didn’t go much on a job really because in those days dead sheep had

some sort of, you could get some sort of a disease off them but he wanted to do it because he was at least bringing in some money.

Oh yes we were shooting rabbits from about the age of 8 years old. As I

say it was flat country but a lot of the rabbits you shot were about 75 yards talking about the old metric system but at the same time you still had to be a pretty good shot. Now the wild ducks they were a bit harder to shoot than a rabbit because it meant you had to sneak a bit more quietly onto

him. And then as I said earlier we spent time swimming too. We walked around a lot and then of course in those days too sometimes we used to be able to, we always had cows at home for milking or one cow and of an afternoon after school we generally went looking for the cow which could wander for miles and so on. And then other youngsters in the town they

had the same thing looking for the cow and then sometimes some other people in the town would give you a shilling a week to bring their cow home. It was seven days a week so it all added up.

Oh well yes, the skin in those days the going rate was generally about

fourpence a pound for a pound of rabbit skins. It varied a bit but around about fourpence. That was all money. But the rabbits were good to eat. You’d have stewed rabbit, curried rabbits or just plain fried or baked rabbits. They were always pretty good fresh rabbits. There was no

myxomatosis or any other diseases in those days to eliminate the rabbits. They were just plain rabbits.

We grew some at home but from the irrigation area the greengrocers came round with a horse and cart and the vegetables were fairly reasonable. We

really, things were light on but they weren’t like it just wasn’t a tragedy catastrophe or anything.

We were pretty well about even. The eldest brother and then the younger

brother there wasn’t much difference between us in age and then the young the boy who lived close by we were all sort of very friendly and so on. Mainly on this bike riding and walking. When you had work, when I got work on Wilga Station the other young fellows I went to school with they

were employed there also so it was always a pretty close friendship between the group.

Oh from about, they had juvenile dances as they called them where you could go to a juvenile dance from 7 years old onwards. You see juvenile

dances you went to the juvenile dance and then at about 14 you went to the more adult type dances and so on.

Mainly just a piano and one of my aunties, Aunt Alma she was very good on the piano and she was always or generally the pianist at the dances and so on or sometimes they had somebody with a piano accordion. It was mainly piano but they were pretty good.

They had what they used to call polkas and the waltz of course and the quickstep and barn dance.

I was reasonable. I enjoyed dancing. It was a pretty good break from just

the normal activity and so on but there was no larrikinism. There might have been an odd fight but no real brutalism. Everybody was a pretty good clean fun and so on.

Not really. No not really. Just well everybody sort of friendly with everybody and nobody seemed to do much. I think they just accepted you

accepted who was there but until I came to Canberra and of course I was getting on to 19 years old then when I met Joan and that was a dance at Tharwa out in the Tharwa Hall in the ACT. But then the war years they were pretty

disturbing type times but still but there were so many other people involved in them too like you just weren’t on your own with the separations and so on.

Yes. Yes I would say so yes. My mother or my grandmother she played the organ in the Church of England as they called it in those days and it’s

now the Anglican Church and my mother played the organ at the church. One of my sisters played the organ later on there and we went to Sunday school and then later on we were confirmed and continued going to church

but it was also that was the normal activity. The people in the town went to their different churches but that was it. It was a normal thing which it did stick by people later on in their war years. The people with, the soldiers who had some faith they also helped survive. One thing I always

sort of gave them some talks at Kokoda Company, Duntroon a couple of times over the years and I’d tell anyone who wants to listen to be careful of Rambos and these ones who profess to be atheists because the common knowledge was in front line infantry there was no atheist in the slit trench. You got some of your Rambo types and as soon as the first shot went over their head they had messages going up there as fast as they could go. I had

one fellow with me and he came to us from Dubbo campus as a reinforcement and at Ioribaiwa ridge on the way back. This chap he was very disgruntled in coming to this battalion the 3rd Battalion and he had tattooed

on his arm he had a dagger death before dishonour and another one which was a strange one he had on his wrist he had “mum”. I don’t know what mum had to do with it but anyhow this chap as I said he was resentful of coming to the 3rd Battalion and as we were going to advance back from Ioribaiwa Ridge onto the Kokoda Track and I was in charge of 10 Platoon and all of a sudden I heard a shot fired. I went back and this chap had his .303 rifle there and he

was holding his left hand and of course blood everywhere or all around his hand anyhow and I said to this chap I said what happened. He said oh he said cleaning it and it went off. I said where’s all your cleaning gear and he still had the magazine on his rifle. It was a self inflicted wound. He put a bullet through his left hand and this was this Rambo type that was so disgruntled about joining a militia battalion. But anyhow we put a field

dressing on his hand and we kept going forward and of course he went back and was treated at Port Moresby and so on. But then some of the fellows that he despised went on they were good soldiers and some were killed but this Rambo type he just that’s how he got out of the war.

Not altogether. They had some soldier activity around Whitton when we were younger. They seemed to be light horse fellows and so on but my uncle was in the war. At home you’d look up on the wall and you’d see a photo of Uncle Jim and Uncle George and so on in their uniform and Uncle

Tommy. It never really worried me. But when the war came about and when I was going to go away you know Dad said I want you to make the best of it so which I did.

Yes. I was in, I think it was a Sunday. I think it was a Sunday on the news time, the ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation] news and I was in the living room where Joan’s family was and Mr. Menzies I think his words were, “We’re now at a state

of war with Germany.” And that was sort of not exactly devastating but it wasn’t very nice to hear. Anyhow I just kept on working being a carpenter and that and normal activity.

No not really. My younger brother Reg he was sort of straining at the leash to go which he did eventually. He told his mother that if she didn’t sign the papers for him he’d run away from home and join up anyhow but he was the chap who was eventually taken prisoner of war in Malaya and like all prisoners of war he was badly treated by the Japanese. He was on the railway at Burma and then he ended up in Japan.

He came back but he died in '61. He wasn’t very well after. No once I sort of bit the bullet type thing I’ve got no regrets about being soldiering and that.

No I think he joined up after me but he was with what they called the 56th

Battalion and then he was similar to me. The AIF in that battalion out with the 2/1st Pioneer Battalion and he saw active service in Balikpapan in Borneo. And Alf survived. The three of us survived except the brother who was the prisoner of war he with his treatment which we were lucky

because other brothers you know two brothers I mean they were on the Kokoda Track with the 3rd Battalion the Scally brothers from Crookwell they both were killed on the Kokoda Track with the 3rd Battalion. Other brothers there was two Hogan brothers. One brother was badly wounded and the other brother survived. As a matter of fact I went to the poor fellow’s funeral at Crookwell on Saturday. Poor old Nace he was with

me all the time. I went to Nace’s funeral at Crookwell on Saturday.

Not a lot really not much really because I was sorry he never because when I was in Japan in 1953 I would have liked to have known more or less where he was so I could of see if I was in the same area.

No not really no. Alf the chap who served in Balikpapan he only said a little bit about some of their work there or their activity. Oh I think if he had been asked more he would have spoken more of it.

Oh no I would if whenever an occasion arose I would speak out. At one spot Joan said to me I think she thought I liked the war. No it was a matter of, but I was, I made it my own business to like to know what was going

on. I would have hate to fought the war as a private soldier because in a lot of cases the ordinary soldier he sort of sat down in the mud and the poor fellow he stayed there until somebody said righto move whereas in my case I wanted to know what was going on, if we were going further why were we going there and what we were going to do and so on and it made it more interesting.

That’s right yes. So I, well I could shoot accurately for a start. I was a good shot with a rifle and also with what we had in those days was a Lewis gun before we had the Bren guns and with the machinegun I could shoot well with those and accurately and so on.

They were from the 1914-18 war [First World War] and most of them poor things were nearly worn out when we had them. They were similar to a Bren gun only much more, a bit more cumbersome and it had a different type magazine. It had a drum magazine on the top that used to hold 47 rounds whereas a

Bren gun mag held 30 but we used to only load abut 25 because of stoppages and of course the Bren gun was a much more modern weapon than the Lewis. The Lewis gun as I said was a bit cumbersome.

Yes it was but still you could manage it but the Bren was a little bit lighter but it was easier to handle because of the way it was manufactured and so on. But I liked the .303 rifle because early in the piece we had no Owen guns. They came later. In the Owen Stanleys we used Thompson submachine carbines. That was the American Tommy gun a .45 calibre. We

always looked on those as more of a gangster’s weapon because in the mud and slush they jammed or they played up a lot but still they were very good. They were good guns but you had to know how to handle it. We used the Owen gun in the last campaign and the Owen gun was pretty good.

Oh in Queanbeyan. I had a medical examination in Queanbeyan and all the they had a drill hall in Queanbeyan in those days and you met up, I met up with fellows that I hadn’t known, met before. They were good blokes and they were all a bit disturbed about being separated from family and so on.

No, you had to register when you were a certain age. As I said, I was in the 20 age group and you registered and then a little while later the paper come along and said you will report to so and so or to the drill hall down here at Queanbeyan.

Oh well once I was, no hesitation I just, away I went. No I never had any marks against me in my pay book. I behaved myself and played the game and so on. Some soldiers they were a bit different, but I couldn’t see much sense in trying to buck the system once they got hold of you.

I think like most mothers a bit of anguish like as to whether the kids survive and so on and especially a mother that had been through the First World War. But no she accepted. I think mothers accepted that the country was in danger especially after the Japanese came in and I think

they accepted that that was their contribution to the effort for the country.

At Bathurst camp in Bathurst army camp and I remember that time very well because I don’t know just how what the announcement was, we’re now at war with Japan and somebody gave an order that we had to race out

and mount the Bren guns. We had Bren guns by that time or some Lewis guns. Get onto ack ack [anti aircraft] activities. The way we interpreted it was that the Japanese planes would come out of the sky any second and start to bomb the place. We manned these anti aircraft, the Bren guns in anti aircraft positions for probably a couple of days and then it sort of faded away.

Then they brought in more recruits, more fellows for the 3rd Battalion. But when we were leaving there they had horse transport at Bathurst so in the early stages we had all 1914-18 equipment. Had horse transport. The officers rode horses and of course we foot slogged along the ground and

everything was just more or a less a continuation of the 1914-18 war.

That’s when I was called up?

As I was saying you received notice through the mail to report to the drill hall and then you had a medical examination. In those days they used to have what they called a government doctor. I think one of the doctors in the town was more or less nominated to be the government doctor and they just gave you an examination. The strange thing about that we had no x-

rays until I think the first x-ray I had was 1943 and that was in 1940 when I went to the militia, and of course the result was some fellows they weren’t there long before they really got medical problems and yet their papers said they were A1, they were you know, quite in order but they hadn’t had an x-ray

neither. But you know that was how it went. Although some of them in different areas they had different standards. We had one chap with us on the Kokoda Track he had cut some of the toes off his left foot. He was a bushman in the bush cutting trees and so on. But he was accepted as an A1 soldier and the same this fellow he was a good soldier too he came from

down the Adaminaby way there and when the 3rd Battalion was broken up in 1943 he went to the 2/43rd Battalion I think, a different battalion to the one I went to and he ended up being awarded a military medal for his activities so even with his bad foot he was still a pretty good soldier. But normally he would not have been accepted. If he had gone to join up like

early in the piece for a volunteer they wouldn’t have accepted him because he had his toes missing on his foot. But it turned out he was a good soldier.

No, not really. I had made some very good friends in the unit I was in and as I say I had been promoted and so on so I had no real reason to want to leave or go somewhere else. The only place at Port Moresby, well the only

one I had a bit of a yen for was the air force and at Port Moresby this friend of mine Sergeant Bob Taylor we seemed to we reckoned we weren’t getting anywhere so we were in Port Moresby and went down to the air force base and they were only too ready to accept you there for air crew because I don’t think the life of air crew was very long. And the air force

officer said we’ll notify you as for further activity, but when we were about to go to Kokoda it was about the end of October we both received mail that we were to report to the air force, and of course we were half way through the mountains and they obviously said oh no that’s, that was it. I have a copy of the

letter that was sent to me to go back or whatever. But going along the track a bit further, after that I’m on leave from Queensland when I was with the 2/3rd Battalion I was in Sydney and I thought oh, I’ll go around to the air force. So I went around there with some other soldiers and the air force fellow said, “Oh in a couple of days you’ll be in the air force.” And I said, “I will have to report back to battalion.” And he said, “Where is that?” And I

said, “North Queensland.” And the chaps who were with me they stayed in Sydney and I went back to North Queensland to the 2/3rd Battalion at a place called Wondalga and as I was going in the orderly room the sergeant said the CO wants to see you. So I went in and Colonel Hutchinson I saluted him and he never said “G’day” whatever. He said, “You’re not going to the air force.” I said, “Yes sir.” Thanked him and off I went. So that was it. I kept

soldiering on.

Oh I think mainly the conditions. We thought that well we’re in the mud and slush and whatever and we thought at least with the air crew wherever you left from you had a fairly reasonable sort of camp and so on but that

was, and I also was a bit keen on flying. I didn’t mind the flying at all but I’m sorry, I’m glad I stopped in the infantry because they’re really good people there. We always used to say the cream of the earth or the salt of the earth or whatever.

It was at Wallgrove camp out from Parramatta way or in that area. It was pretty intense training. We had rifle range which was good. Rifle range practice which was firing rifles and Bren guns or what you call them Lewis guns on the range. We had a lot of drill like weapon drill and so on and

marching. We did a lot of marches, route marches and so on. And it was interesting learning about the rifle and then the Lewis machinegun and infantry tactics, the art of warfare.

Yes, open warfare yes, and the street and village fighting was all based on

we were going to fight anywhere but in the jungle and the equipment and that was similar to this open warfare type thing.

No, no. That’s right, no at about the end of 1941 I think it was some militia battalions went to Port Moresby because of the mandated territory the part of Australia type thing.

No not really. I never gave it a thought. I just kept doing whatever

training I had to do and so on. But as I said after the Japanese came in I thought well you know it could be anything. We could be a bit more active which it turned out to be we were.

Three months. A 90 day camp as they called it. An interesting thing one at Wallgrove in early '41 before the camp broke up we marched from

Wallgrove to Parramatta to march through Parramatta and the officers rode horses and of course we marched and the colonel, we had our water bottles with us but nobody was allowed to carry water and we were about, we used to march for 50 minutes as they called it 10 minutes to the hour and then you’d have 10 minutes break and then march again and one of these 10

minute breaks probably about the second one the platoon I was with we stopped near a gateway to a farmer’s place and I can still see this fellow he came down with two four gallon buckets of water and a couple of mugs in his hand and luckily we were there close so I got a good mug of water and others were starting to drink and then the colonel he must have spotted us because he came galloping back on his horse waving his swag stick as they

called it saying don’t give those men water, take it away, take it away and you there tip that water out like anybody who had water in a mug and they were this water dish as they called it.

Oh well partly because I think the colonel said there’s just no drinking and that was it but another part was that they reckoned that you had to get your

body accustomed to being short of water because apparently in Gallipoli I think they had a shortage of water or something but I think it was still part of a bit of a thing by the colonel. He said an order and that was it, it had to be carried out.

Yes, it was certainly different but I guess through reading and other things I expected a certain amount of, I’ll have to swear on this one, bastardry something that wasn’t normal. There was one instance at Wallgrove

camp. We were fed these beans and the beans used to be boiled up in the 12 gallon sawyers as they called them. And the thing is we had beans and beans, for I don’t know how many weeks just beans, and so anyhow B Company, the company I was with, I don’t know how the word got around but they said righto no more beans at breakfast time, nobody to accept the

beans. So when breakfast time comes we ate off tin plates of all things, it was just a tin plate and we were in a mess hut with tables and anyhow the fellows you normally put your plate out as you went in and put whatever you were allotted and so on, but this morning the B Company fellows just walked past the cook walked into the mess hut and sat down. And every

meal time there was an orderly officer came around and he used to sing out any complaints about the food. So this breakfast time the orderly sergeant walks around with the orderly officer and when the orderly group into the mess hut the orderly sergeant would blow a whistle, that meant you had to be silent and listen and the orderly officer sang out any complaints about

the food. And then the B Company fellows all sang out no more beans, no beans, no more beans and then they started to bang their tin plates on the table which wasn’t very nice and the orderly officer got a bit irate. So

anyhow they more or less marched us out of the mess hut so we marched out and carried on with our normal training and we trained out in the paddock. They brought some food which we ate. And then we went back for the evening meal parade, we were all lined up and the quartermaster captain who’s responsible for food and so on he came on parade and he

really hoed into us, but he was about 45 years old and of course we were round about 20 under 20 years and so on. So he said to us that we were, he called us just a mob of bastards and he said, “I’ll make you march you bastards,” and he got us marching and he got us doubling as they call it. You

had to run sort of thing. The only thing is he couldn’t keep up with us so he called us to a halt and he handed us over to the colonel and the colonel said we were too fresh and he said for the next four mornings at 2 o’clock you’ll do a dawn attack. So we used to wake up a bit before 2 o’clock and be ready to do what we had to do and we used to go and attack and then

we’d come back in time to start our normal training parade.

That’s in that hour of the day, hour of the morning. It was just like if you were going to attack a position in the daylight only you’re attacking it in semi darkness or in the darkness. You line up and you fix bayonets in

extended line and then you sort of, you could probably walk for probably a couple of hundred yards and then they say charge and you’d jog along for another couple of hundred yards and so on. But anyhow the result of all that was the beans disappeared from the breakfast menu. So that was one case where they really jacked up in a way. But on water discipline we just

had to accept that. But that was about the only time I ever heard or ever known any of our fellows to actually sort of jack up and not do something that they shouldn’t be doing. We did have a strange one on that water discipline again at Port Moresby. The same colonel with the water cart he issued an order the water cart will come around at 8 o’clock in the morning and you’re entitled to one water bottle full of water which is a quart of

water and that had to do you till 8 o’clock the next morning and in the tropics that was up at Port Moresby your perspiration would be severe and out of that quart of water you were supposed to have a shave and give a mug to the cook. I think the cook was pretty right on for water but we used to just use cold water for shaving anyhow but we found that a bit severe

because you use more than a quart of water to drink and that went on only for about ten days I suppose. I think the medical officer told him he had to stop that type thing.

Well this is it and this is right. Luckily in the mountains we had beautiful water up on the Kokoda Track which was very good.

But I’m sure the pure mountain streams helped us a lot with our health. They were so beautiful these sparkling streams.

Three months yes 90 days, yes Louise.

We had about three months break and we went back into camp at Greta camp and that was more or less the full time then. From Greta camp to the end of the war I was continuously in the army.

Pretty similar. They have, in the army they have pamphlets on different things, drill and weaponry and tactics and it was more or less carrying out

what was in the pamphlets, the army pamphlets and if things are carried out according to the army pamphlets it’s pretty good. If you do what’s in the pamphlets your soldier is trained in a pretty thorough manner.

Yes a training manual yes, a training manual on different things. On the

.303 rifle, the appeal tactics and attack defence and withdrawal and so on.

The commanding officer was this Colonel Paul. He was the first one. As I say he was pretty severe but I think it helped us a lot later on when we had to put up with pretty rough conditions and then we got Colonel Cameron up in the mountains and he’d already, he’d been in Rabaul with

the 2/22nd Battalion. He’d been up with the 39th Battalion when their CO, Colonel Owen, died on the Kokoda. Colonel Cameron worked with the 39th Battalion which was pretty good and he had something to do with the 53rd Battalion for a little while and then luckily he became CO of the 3rd

Battalion round about the 8th or 9th September ‘42 on Ioribaiwa Ridge. I got on very well with the colonel, Colonel Cameron.

Yes he was being a younger colonel and also had been in contact with the Japanese. He’d already had previous experience against the Japanese and

he adopted a very aggressive, aggressive what shall we say tactics against the Japanese but at the same time he knew when to back off if you were sort of striking something impossible he knew when to back off and so on.

No I would not like to have been a private you know like through the war because of lack of knowledge that’s passed down to them as to what’s going on.

Yes.

Oh well I was selected. The company commander of B Company of the 3rd Battalion he, they were allotted a certain number of soldiers to go to the course at Studley Park and I was one of them, luckily I was one of the, I was a corporal at the time and I was chosen to go which was pretty good

because it was a very intense school and the instructors in those days were what they called Australian Instructional Corps. They were special regular army soldiers. They were very good. But I made the best of it.

Mainly operational orders and a higher level of tactics. Weaponry was about the same but it was mainly concentrated on orders, operational orders, appreciations and so on or supporting weapons how you could use supporting weapons artillery, mainly artillery. We never had much thing in those days about calling on air activity.

Oh yes still open warfare. Street and village fighting as they called it. We had some instruction on how to fight in built up areas and so on but it was all open warfare there. It was a strange one you just mentioned that because some of the fellows there were from battalions that were in

Malaya and they were already more or less in the jungle type activity but there was no mention of jungle.

Well I think that they never thought, you see at that stage that was in June 1941 so the Japanese hadn’t come into the war until December and I don’t know what the higher command thought that all our activity was going to

be open warfare.

Oh my word yes. From there I grasped the thing that there was such an art in warfare, that warfare was an art and by sort of grasping that thing I think it’s helped me survive because and also the troops I had command of. I

lost very few fellows in the platoons that I looked after. I never ever lost a forward scout in all the activity mainly because of well first of all the forward scouts in my book were always just volunteers. I never detailed

anybody to be a forward scout. They volunteered and also survived.

Yes in the attack and the tactics and infantry tactics and appreciation and

orders. My training there I think that made me more sort of inquisitive as to what was going on and what was in front of us and what was required of us and so on. Because even though I went through the Kokoda Track as a sergeant I was a platoon commander most of the time. I commanded 10

Platoon B Company and in a certain amount of time in the Aitape-Wewak one I was platoon commander.

Yes I did really because I thought well I had my own destiny in my own hands not really in somebody else’s hands because one instance at

Templeton’s Crossing on the Kokoda Track I’d been platoon commander most of the time and then all of a sudden there was an officer fellow came along. He was really our allotted platoon commander but he had been away on signal duties and he was in the initial stage on the Kokoda, on the Templeton’s Crossing and when we were going up against the Japanese the

leading corporal, Corporal Barry Finch from Queanbeyan, Barry’s words were, I’ll just quote his words, Barry’s words were to me he said wouldn’t it bugger you. He said here we are going into this attack and being led by the bloody black prince. That was the name of this lieutenant. He was a fine bloke but anyhow hadn’t been gone very far before the forward scout’s killed and the second scout’s wounded and a little bit further on the

officer himself got hit. He was badly wounded and the platoon reverted back to me then and I took charge of 10 Platoon and we attacked and of course we beat the Japanese and so on. But oh that’s right some of the boys reckoned this fellow was leading us into a Sunday school picnic like the

way he was, he had the command. Another fellow said after I took over he said there was no more pussyfooting around when I had taken over command of the platoon. I had learnt that you had to be aggressive and that paid off. You had less casualties by being aggressive than you know

just sort of going through this pussyfooting type thing and so on.

Well you couldn’t do much. Actually you couldn’t do anything other than you know I wouldn’t disobey. I did query some officers’ actions at some

times but it’s a bit awkward when he’s in charge of a platoon and because if you probably went barging ahead you might end up being shot up by your own troops. No we just, when this fellow was wounded of course it was a different thing. He was out of it and I was able to do my own thing.

Yes it was the company commander yes at Oivi Colonel Cameron used to deal with me direct at times and he used to say, he’d come and get me to do things and then tell the company commander after that, Bede was going to do something. But anyhow after we’d had this successful patrol at Oivi

on the 10th November before we attacked Mount Oivi this company commander said to me, “On the account of the good job that 10 Platoon carried out yesterday they can lead the attack on Mount Oivi.” And I said to him … he said, “You can have the honour of leading the attack.” I said, “What? Is it an honour to get men killed is it?” “Oh,” he said, “if you don’t want to lead them he said somebody else will.” I said, “No,” I said, “if anybody is going to

these 10 Platoon soldiers killed I will, I’ll do it.” But what sort of got at the boys a bit was already in B Company there was two platoons commanded by officers and this platoon commander was a sergeant and he seemed to be always copping the work. But anyhow, as I said, I really looked after the fellows I had and they looked after me of course too.

Yes. Yes, most of them were fellows we taught in the bullring as they call it. They came in as raw recruits and my main job was either teaching like tactics or some weaponry like Bren gun and so on.

Yes still Australia but at Port Moresby we carried out certain, some of that but not, well just refresher type things but the main initial training was carried out in Australia.

Well we didn’t, it was the 14th May really, 14th May 1942 and we were given two days home final leave and it was just sort of sprung on us like

that. You see some fellows, of course I never went home to see my mother. My father came to Sydney. I wouldn’t have had time to go out west and come back again. You see some soldiers that lived at Bombala, Bateman’s Bay and Crookwell, well they had no hope of getting home and back in two days so they took a little bit longer which was understandable because after all I mean some poor fellows never, they didn’t go home to

see their people and some of them never ever came back again. They just died up there and there was really no reason why they only gave us two days. They should have at least say five days or something.

No. No all we got there was an odd time being bombed but that wasn’t as

sort of personal as front line fighting.

Oh I expected to see this tropical paradise that I used to sort of read about. You didn’t hear too much. You’d hear a bit on the wireless but of course there was no TV. The tropical part was there pretty well, the palm trees. As some bloke said, “Yes, the palm tree is here but it stinks a bit doesn’t it.” I

didn’t take much notice of that. No I didn’t mind it at all. I enjoyed my time up in the tropics. I’ve been to New Guinea seven times altogether and I still intend to go back again.

We left from Sydney. We left from Sydney and boarded the ship on the 17th May on a Saturday, no Sunday afternoon and then we left Sydney on the 18th. I’m not too sure what time whether it was early morning or in the afternoon but anyhow we left on the 18th and we arrived at Port Moresby on the 27th.

We had our rations on this ship. The training on this ship was mainly lifeboat drill. They did some weapon training and some lectures on something, lectures on first aid or something like that.

Oh in the kit. We took, well actually we took up our normal kit and at Port

Moresby then we had to hand a lot of our kit in because we were over. We had our serge uniforms which weren’t applicable up there so we packed our surplus gear into a kit bag and it was put into store and sent back to Australia. We had just khaki shorts and shirt. No mosquito nets. No

quinine. No anti malarial things at all. Oh steel helmet, we had a steel helmet and basic web equipment and rifle, Bren guns and Thompson submachine carbines, hand grenades. But other for the sickness at Port Moresby I thought it was quite good.

That’s right Louise. Yes, well see Rabaul it fell about the 23rd January '42 and then the Japanese landed around Salamaua on the Papuan mainland about something in March I think it was and yet we landed in June, in May

rather and we just carried on with open warfare training which it seemed like higher command let the soldiers down because they must have known what was going on. They also knew what was required of us because that’s why we were there. But we were good at our ordinary infantry

weapons which stuck by us. We could shoot and never had many grenades to train with but still what we had was quite all right and the times when submachine was all right. The only trouble is we wore them out training and when we went up into the mountains they were a little bit, a little bit the worse for wear which was a bit sad because we had Thompson

submachine guns jam on us at times and a split second meant whether it’s life or death. But when the Owen gun eventually came along it was a much better weapon for jungle activity.

We had hammocks. They had sort of these ship hammocks type things and there seemed to be enough sort of hooks or something. The hammocks

were down in the hold of the ship. They were pretty hot. Very little ventilation if any and the hammocks seemed to be, they were side by side and so on and that was it this canvas hammock and that’s what you slept in. You weren’t allowed up on deck because, well you could stop up there

a little while but not for long. I think they thought we’d get up there smoking or something lighting matches and so on and they seemed to think there was some ranks lurking around but luckily it weren’t.

Oh yeah it was interesting. It was sort of a new, it was sort of something

very new. You had your friends there and so on, like it was a new experience. On this Van Heutsz it was a Dutch ship it was mainly Indonesian crew but these sort of people were interesting like they were different to us and we talked to them and so on.

Yes, really yes because there was no reason to meet anybody like otherwise because we just worked in, like even in Canberra we knew there was other sort of people here diplomatic people and all that but you didn’t see much of them.

Not really no. There was, not in the 3rd Battalion. I think there might have been a couple further on in the 2/3rd Battalion. I don’t know why but

anyhow that seemed to be how it worked. I know in the 2/3rd they had a Chinese fellow. He was Corporal Charlie Win Kee. He was a fine fellow. We had some Norfolk Islanders in the 2/3rd Battalion but none in the 3rd Battalion and they were good soldiers.

Yes well we landed in about oh some time in the afternoon and then we went by vehicle to Bootless Bay as they called it. It was all a bit hectic, hectic in a way and a lot of things happening in a short time.

Oh well, we were getting on the trucks and going up through the town and then when you got where you were going it was being allotted your area and of course they generally forget to feed you when you come to something like that. The rations seem to be the last thought of anybody. We were there sort of a long time before we got any rations and so on. At

the same time we had other things to do. We had to set up our headquarters and things.

No we only had these little two man tents as they called it. Each soldier had a sort of a groundsheet beside his normal groundsheet they had a half a tent as they called it, only a little thing about six feet long and probably 3 feet, a metre and a half wide and you joined these two together and put a

ridge pole through and that was your cover.

Yes when, at Bootless Bay yes. They had some full tents for company headquarters for the headquarters staff and so on but the ordinary soldier as

I said had these little two man tents and as I said in the two man tents you had to have a slit trench and you sort of slept up on top and you never had much room between the edge of the trench and the edge of the little tent. If it rained at all you got wet because you were up against the little tent thing.

You could easily do that but then you had to get back up out of your trench but we coped with it. It was one of these things that you had to put up with.

Well going through, we left the wharf at Port Moresby and went up through the town, and I remember there was one hotel there called the Hotel

Papua and the other one was called Hotel Moresby. They were, they weren’t operating because they’d all been taken over by military authorities. They were used as sort of when soldiers were working on the wharves they were sort of billeted in these hotels and just other administration buildings and so on and then of course the palm trees, the

coconut palm trees. But it was interesting, a new country, a new strange place and so on.

Oh yes the Papuans were very good. They always seemed to be a happy people and I liked the Papuans, they were good.

Not really. We used to see them passing by. After a while of course they weren’t allowed in the areas where we were but you’d probably just meet up with them on the road or along the coast or somewhere. They were always good people.

Well we were camped in this kunai grass. From the camp once we made our camp we started to do some infantry training but a lot of our time was taken up by work parties at the wharves at Port Moresby or guarding the air strips where the fighter strips. We didn’t mind guarding the air strips because, that’s right one air strip, I think it was Laloki the Americans

had a wind up gramophone and they had some records there so whoever went to Laloki when the Americans left we’d play this gramophone. My friend Sergeant Bob Taylor if he was at Laloki and I was at Bomana, there used to be a field telephone there and I would get this field telephone

and tie a little switch down with a piece of string and put it near the record and the fellow over at the other, it was about 11 miles between and whoever was there could hear the record whatever was going on. It was a pretty good diversion from normal activity.

Some American soldiers. Mainly, oh yes not a lot. I think they were just more or less around the airport concerned with general duties with the air force people. There was a certain number of the Negro chaps. They were drivers. The American Army Negroes, they generally drove the trucks and so on.

Oh I got on all right with them. I thought they were a bit wasteful. Nothing seemed to be any trouble to them. I remember at one of the air strips there they’d be servicing their planes and spanners would be lying around in the dust and I said to one fellow one day all the spanners in the dirt and he said oh don’t worry he said there’s plenty more where they came from. He was pointing over to one of the tents where they had all

their stores and I thought that was a bit wasteful. Just a lot of the gear being trampled into the dust. They were a bit slaphappy but we got on all right with them. They were always smiling and going on.

Oh yes. Had good equipment and rations and they were pretty good with handing out some of their rations. I remember one ration they had was sort of a chocolate ration which of course we never had any chocolate ration but they used to give us these blocks of chocolate. They used to give anyone that smoked cigarettes. They were pretty good. They weren’t

mean at all. But of course I think we used to, our job was to look after the air strip and their job was to fly planes from it and so on. But generally just on dark they would all head off back to their base camp. They very rarely camped near the air strip. But we didn’t mind because then it meant we could play with their records, the old gramophone whatever.

Oh whatever was the going rate in those days. ‘Chattanooga Choo-Choo’ and ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’, that sort of thing. They were well up to date with what was going at that particular time.

Oh there was an odd film, an odd film. Of course they were pretty wary about it because if the Japanese came over at night which they did a fair amount of night time bombing they could probably pick out the light of the projector or something like that. We weren’t allowed any fires of course at

night. But no we didn’t have much other, oh sometimes we used to go swimming in this Laloki River but to get to the Laloki from where we were we used to march about ten miles which we didn’t mind because when we got there we had a good swim and then marched back through the dust so we got dirty again. There was very little activity along the sea allowing you to go into the sea where we were.

Bombing? Not a lot of bombing but there was bombing. Some of our battalion blokes were on a ship called the [MV] Macdhui when it was bombed in Port Moresby harbour it was hit. Luckily none of our fellows were wounded or anything but a fair

number of the crew were killed and some other chaps were wounded. But oh no we used to, the Japanese had pretty well perfect formation when they would come over to bomb. We used to watch them and you’d see the bomb bay doors open and then all of a sudden the bombs would start dropping down and so on. But seeing them from a distance you knew you were pretty safe. Probably only a couple of times where it got a bit close but mainly they were bombing from a distance so that didn’t really worry

us. We knew that we probably could have been but we weren’t.

Well only going on what we’d heard. They said he’d be invincible and at that particular time I had a brother missing in Malaya after the fall of Singapore. I hadn’t taken an awful lot of notice about them but just prior

to going up onto the Track some of us were addressed by a lieutenant, I don’t know where he came from but he gave us a talk that the Japanese they all wore glasses, they use a small calibre rifle at this point .256. You could have a number of bullets in your body and you could still carry on. I asked him what about if it hits some important part of your body and he

seemed to evade that question and when he finished up he said you can’t beat them anyhow and that sort of cheered us up really pretty good. And that’s all we knew about them.

I didn’t believe it because when this chap said you can’t beat them or whatever that really irked me because I knew we would give them a run for their money anyhow and which is what I carried out. But all my activity was the platoon I had we were going to win not just may win or may not win. We were going to win.

That’s right which seemed very strange because this fellow was supposed to be there to give us information as to more or less what to expect in the Japanese and also probably how to deal with them.

I don’t know. It seemed a defeatist attitude right from the start.

No, no in fact we had no word back at all other than things were pretty tough and not going well for us in the mountains and we had no, that’s all we had. We never had any other information as to how we might be able

to deal with them or what tactics they were using or so on. We went up there as real novices. We just had to learn in our own way and so on.

The preparations were very short. We had slit trenches in the kunai grass at Bootless Bay as I mentioned earlier, and all surplus gear was, oh surplus gear that was real army equipment was returned to the quartermaster but other sort of personal bits and pieces we had some little tins and so on so I remember I had letters from home and from Joan and so

I put them in this tin and we buried them in our slit trenches. We buried all our little bits and pieces. I really didn’t think I would recover them again but I didn’t think I was going to ever be a casualty.

Yes I had one there and I carried it all the way through and on other campaigns. But we were working at Port Moresby on the wharves the day

before and then that morning, that night rather they said to be prepared to move the next morning and issued a warning order as they call it, prepare to move the next morning at 0730 hours and the trucks arrived at 9 o’clock but the army always gives you warning before.

Yes we were. We were on the night I suppose. Myself and anybody that was close to me they were anxious to have a go. So the trucks arrived and we piled into the trucks. We went by vehicle to just past a place called Bisiatabu and the trucks were still having a bit of a hard go at that but we dismounted then and started to walk.

As I entered the jungle I thought, well I thought that was about the end of the world. It’s amazing. On one side of the jungle there’s sort of all this daylight and brightness and you get probably a couple of hundred yards into the jungle and you’re in semi darkness and it seems to be sort of

closed in on you and the rain and mud.

It was, it was raining.

Not exactly hot but you had perspiration from the humidity. It was fairly humid even though it was raining.

We were wearing our khaki shorts and shirt and steel helmet and on our back we had our haversack with our eating utensils and so on and in the bed roll in our belt we had half a blanket and half a towel and a pullover and a spare pair of socks if you had a spare pair. We had some small

grenades in your haversack. In your basic pouches you had ammunition and grenades. Beside in your haversack you had sort of the unexpired portion of the day’s rations as they called it. Probably have a tin of bully beef and a packet of biscuits and that was about it.

Well it’s sort of a little bit salty but they’re about a pound of meat in a tin and each tin of bully was to be shared with two others. There were three soldiers to a tin of bully beef per meal and a packet of army biscuits to be divided amongst three.

Oh well they were something like a hard Sao type but they had a lot of

meal in them and hard but what we found about the food was the bully beef and biscuits was good food it was just that it was a bit light on. But I never changed much. I was about the same weight as I am now but somebody about 12 stone they must have really found it very hard to be given the same sort of rations as somebody about 9 stone 10 stone or whatever. To

get back to your question about what was it like. It was good food. It was, the salt in it was very handy when you perspired so much and we had some tea, tea leaves, very little sugar and an odd tin of jam but not very often.

No we had no anti malarial tablets. We had no mosquito nets. That was it. We had no quinine or anything like that and so being in shorts and shirts we were sort of fair game for the mosquitoes. But really the mosquitos were pretty prevalent around Moresby but as we got up into the mountains

the mosquitoes eased up until we got back into the flatter or lower country over past Kokoda.

I’m not sure whether it was in short supply I’m not too sure about that. But then later on you went to hospital with malaria you had quinine and plasma and

so on.

Yes single file. Our group went in single file. Some parts you could, but mainly single file because after we went in a little bit further that’s all we could do is go in single file.

Well while there was no action or where there had been no action and no bodies were lying around the jungle smelled pretty good. The noises generally were some birds, odd birds, an odd falling tree in the distance. There seemed to be trees falling pretty well but they always luckily were

away from where you were. There were so many trees and so on.

No not really. It was more suddenly you hear this thing crashing through the air to your right or to your left. You see you couldn’t really think where you were going to stay when you were stopping if a tree could have

been you know so many metres away and it still could fall but luckily no trees fell close to where we were. We had trouble later on when the Japanese fired mortars or artillery into the treetops and branches came down so you had to keep an eye out for falling branches besides some

shrapnel. But no the jungle was pretty good like an odd bird and of course the beauty of it. There were beautiful butterflies and orchids and the jungle tree itself was a beautiful tree.

That’s where I told my fellows to be alert but some fellows cursed every

step they took they cursed the jungle or cursed the track. I’d like to say here this Kokoda Track or Trail the name doesn’t really matter but I always call it the Track, on the Track in the mud and slush all the fellows would say that I’ll be glad when I’m out of this bloody place. They didn’t say I’ll be glad when I’m off this track or trail they just used to say I’ll be glad

when I’m out of this bloody place. So there could probably be a better name for it than track or trail. But that’s it the alertness because after all that’s where the Japanese were in front of you or to your side or wherever but you fired on movement in most cases. If the jungle or bush would

move that’s what you dealt with. It was rare that you actually saw the Japanese but at odd times we did.

Yes I do. Actually he was on a track when we went back on patrol to Ioribaiwa on Imita Ridge and the 3rd Battalion they asked for 50 volunteers and we

volunteered myself and my good friend and I were in charge of this No 2 section and when we went up onto what the Ioribaiwa Ridge there was four Japanese came from our right. They didn’t, luckily they didn’t know we were there, they never knew we were there and they were just sort of walking along side by side because the ridge at that particular spot was wide enough for people to move like that. And we dealt with the four of

them but they were the first, the first Japanese.

Oh yes these were pretty sturdy looking fellows. Yes they did look after their front line troops and when the Japanese were sick or unable to be of

use or in the front line he was discarded sort of thing. He was discarded without anything, without any weapons. He was generally just no food just discarded.

Yes to the extent of their supply line at Ioribaiwa but in the early stages they had a fair bit of supply with them. They always kept their artillery mountain

guns pretty well. When Ioribaiwa was reoccupied at the end of September there was a fair number of artillery or mountain guns shells found there and so on. They were stockpiled.

Well we were, we marched till we sort of couldn’t go any further probably to about what should I say it would probably be about 5.30 or 6 o’clock because it gets so dark in the jungle and we were in a strange set up and we

never quite got to where we were supposed to be going but we got close. A fair number or some stragglers, some people, some of the soldiers found it pretty hard going so they got a bit behind. On the second and third day we started to get the grip of things a bit more.

Yes it was steep and we only had, our boots had no special soles on them just ordinary leather boot soles with no special gripping devices or anything. So we slid a fair bit. Yes the going seemed to be fairly constant

in climbing and we ended up having one of those bush walking sticks to help us from slipping over and so on and you helped yourself along the side of the track by grabbing a sapling or a piece of branch and that. And then when you got to the top the ridge or a spur and you went down again so we weren’t too sure which was worse going up or coming down. And

then you would sort of start all over again. An interesting one on that one, I had a patrol out just a small one there and I met some Papuans coming down, just five, they were coming down and we were going up, and I said to the head Papuan fellow, “How far to the top Mura?” ‘Mura’ was talk

for ‘boy’ and he looked at me and he said, “This one got no top Capita.” ‘Capita’ was for ‘master’. So they had a sense of humour too. They reckoned this one had no top. So anyhow we kept climbing and we eventually found a top but we then had to go down the other side.

Yes and got no tops. But that was only a bump in the ground compared to

some of the other ones later. But the highest ever I went over with 16th, I was left in 10 Platoon was patrolled out from Bulolo the colonel asked me to take the platoon out on the left flank from Bulolo up over the foothills of Mount Thumb and down towards the Yodda Valley and come back onto Kokoda and he said to me, “Bede expect to climb over 8,600 feet,” and I looked at him and

saluted and away we went. But in our khaki shorts and shirts we were up there two nights and it was pretty cold especially with the groundsheet you had around your shoulders and your half blanket your knees were exposed, but I actually wrapped my pullover around my knees and we used to

always back up against a tree. On that particular one we had to be very careful of course of the leaf mould. Even at that height there were still trees and the leaf mould over probably many, many years you had to be careful that we didn’t step from one buttress root to another we’d end up up to our waist in leaf mould and we had no ropes, but of course there might have been an odd bit of loyer vine there. I thought of somebody slipping into a bit of a crevasse, could be interesting, he’d be gone, but

anyhow we got through.

No, but a number of times we would have to go waist deep in this mulchy sort of mud and so on. We got down through it at Yodda Valley and into Kokoda. We were on Kokoda on 4th November.

I didn’t know anything about altitude sickness in those days or whatever it is. All they thought was we were just plain tired or whatever but it was probably the altitude was causing some of that. At that height you see Templeton’s Crossing I guess it’s around 7,000 feet and around Myola

and other parts where we fought it would be around 5,000 feet. As I said we didn’t know that there was such a thing as, I think when they had the Olympics in Mexico or something was the first time we ever heard that at a certain altitude you get short of breath.

The night up in the jungle. Well it depended on the closeness of the enemy, the Japanese. Well you never ever really set up you sometimes it all depends if you were going to be there for say a couple of days which was a bit rare you tried to set up some sort of shelter to keep the rain off. It

all depends how much time you had. You could probably put some sticks into the ground and put some other saplings along and put some foliage on top to keep some of it off but otherwise you just generally put the groundsheet and these groundsheets I think they’re about 1914-18 vintage

and even the new ones after a while the rubber protection on them wore thin and you more or less still got wet through your groundsheet. You were pretty constantly wet with perspiration or moisture from the rain.

Well that’s a strange one it didn’t seem to, it didn’t seem to really affect us

other than a bit of you know uncomfortable and your steel helmet it only had a narrow brim on it and that sort of let the rain run down the back of your neck. Your boots were waterproof up to a point but some as some bloke said they’re waterproof they won’t let the water in and they won’t let it out neither. We had these American type gaiters. They were handy but

they went up your leg a certain way and being short of socks and so on where they rubbed you on your shin on your leg you’d probably end up with a tropical ulcer which a number, some fellows had more tropical ulcers than others. I had a couple where this gaiter rubbed my leg and of course things were in short supply in medications for that. You’d go to the

regimental aid post, the RAP, and he might have had a little bit of something to put on it but otherwise he’d dab you with some mercurochrome or something, a red mixture but you weren’t on your Pat Malone, others were in the same trouble as yourself. The fellows their spirit it was amazing

how much a human spirit can be almost tortured and still bounce back.

That’s a good question too. I don’t know really. We had one chap there from Crookwell, Laggan rather, a chap named Emmett Francis and Emmett was a real fair dinkum Australian and in the mud and slush Emmett would be sitting

down and you’d wander along and say to him, “How goes it Emmett?” And he would say, “It could be worse.” “How could it be worse Emmett?” “Just you wait and see.” And sure enough in probably 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes she’d be on. It would be worse. But Emmett survived because of his, he had this sort of sense of humour. But as I said earlier some of the

fellows really found the going really hard. I’d say to them listen in the mud the only Japs in the mud are the dead ones, the live ones are behind the trees there look out for those blokes and so on. No you have to keep your morale up. I think probably kept some of their morale up by being

short of things, they probably reckoned if we were short of things it could be worse we could have nothing at all. And then all of a sudden you’d come to some part of the track where the sun was seeping through and a nice stream of water and nobody shooting at you and you could probably even have a bit of a dip in the river and then put your muddy boots back on and start all over again.

No if you were far, if you were away from the Japanese we always lit a fire or fires and everybody was responsible for their own food so you lit your fire or three or four fellows lit a fire and then they used that fire and that

meant you’d boil this little dixie thing that you, you’d boil that or sometimes we had a jam tin making a little billycan and you’d boil your dixie or little billycan and put some tea in it and then sometimes you could have a bit of variety with the bully beef. You’d puncture the tin with a

bayonet and put the bully beef on the coals to cook and then the result is you’d end up with the solder on the tin going into the meat but nobody even knew about lead poisoning in those days. One chap with me Corporal Barry Finch from Queanbeyan, Barry at odd times his mother used to send him part of The Canberra Times in an envelope, and I remember once Barry

in The Canberra Times there were some recipes and he’s poking at this tin of bully beef and he says now we’re going to now eat and he’s reading off the paper what this recipe was, we’re now going to eat this lovely food he was reading out and he’s dishing out to these other couple of blokes some bully beef, those sort of things. The native gardens were pretty

well, had been cleaned out by the Japanese but at one place we could smell tomatoes. You know the smell of tomato vine and we could smell this strong smell of tomato vine. Anyhow some of the fellows went looking for this tomato but came back with some small tomatoes but they were beautiful. They were ripe red tomatoes. That was about the only occasion

up in the mountains. Later on when we got down in the flat country when the Papuans started to move back we were able to get some paw paws and breadfruit and sweet potato but that was down further past Kokoda. That was over the Kumusi River really heading towards a place called Popondetta.

Well the villages on the track there was this Uberi and Ioribaiwa and after Ioribaiwa a place called Nauro and then there was another village called Menari and then there was another village called Efogi, and from Efogi north the track went to the right through Myola but the main

Kokoda Track went ahead through a village called Kagi, and from Kagi it went on to Templeton’s Crossing, Eora Creek down to Alola.

No once with all the activity the natives had taken to the bush. They’d cleared out which was good because we knew then that the only people in

front of us were the Japanese so when we happened to spot movement we knew we weren’t firing at Papuans. We were firing behind that movement would be, of the bush would be Japanese so that was one good thing about that part.

Yes the ANGAU [Australia and New Guinea Administrative Unit] as they called it, ANGAU had these native Papuan

carriers and they also carried the wounded back to the hospitals and to the field ambulances and so on. But they were kept reasonably back away from where the bullets were flying but sometimes some of them came up. They came up to pick up the stretchers pretty well in the front line. But

they were magnificent the Papuans. I said earlier about that fellow and his sense of humour. They’re great people and then later on one the Aitape-Wewak one we were up in New Guinea, they just called it New Guinea in that part and they were similar. They had this sense of humour and we

respected them and they respected us. And one particular part it was going on towards a place called Sangara it was well past Kokoda and over the Kumusi River and we went to give these, we had a spare, some spare biscuits and that so we went to give them, this group of Papuans some of these things and then one Papuan said, he thanked us very much and then

he gave us some breadfruit which was good and he said in English they were taught to give and not receive. That was their make-up. I think they were under some mission, probably the Anglican mission in that area at Sangara but they were very, they were good. But we met them there of course after a lot of the Japanese had been cleared from those areas.

That’s right Louise. You always had a definite order. The first patrol or

any movement was this 50 man volunteer patrol and our orders were to go back to Ioribaiwa and more or less find out the activity of the Japanese on Ioribaiwa. This was on I’d say what about 21st September. We withdraw from Ioribaiwa on

the 16th back to Imita Ridge and the orders were to find out just what they were really up to and also if there were any signal wires there to cut the signal wire which we did.

Yes. Our 3rd Battalion we went up on the 5th September and we moved

forward on the track to help extricate the remnants of the 21st Brigade. We moved through Ioribaiwa and further up the track towards a place called Nauro and the remnants of the 2/14th and [2/]16th Battalions were coming back. Their 2/27th Battalion wasn’t with them at this stage, to say what some fellows from the 2/14th said to me that they’d taken to the bush so we helped

extricate the 2/14th and [2/]16th back onto Ioribaiwa . Some wounded were coming through also. We moved back before the Japanese came along. We met with the Japanese, we were on our part of Ioribaiwa Ridge when the Japanese struck.

Oh they were amazing fellows. They had been fighting for a number of,

many days and yet they still had good morale. This good friend of mine this Sergeant Bob Taylor we had the two full platoons there and Bob said these blokes are coming back but they’re not beaten. I said my word they’re not beaten. The only strange thing there we used to say to them how goes it up there and the fellows would say oh it’s all right everything’s

going … I said to one bloke, “if it’s going all right up there what are you coming back for?” But anyhow their morale was magnificent. They were a great example to us. We were just plain raw soldiers and to talk to these fellows that had been up there fighting and their wounded coming back bloodstained field dressings on and so on and actually they weren’t beaten.

They took up another position on Ioribaiwa Ridge and then of course the Japanese attacked later and they suffered more casualties of course so did our 3rd Battalion. The Australian soldier he takes a lot beating really to really, really beat him.

Well when we withdrew back to Ioribaiwa Ridge we dug in. The 2/14th and 16th, the remnants of the 2/14th and 16th they occupied a spur running down to the creek back out to Ioribaiwa village and our 3rd Battalion, the platoon I had then 10 Platoon we were allocated to an area close to the 2/14th and 16th and then some other parts of the company of the battalion

were over further to the right and another company just slightly to the left and that was all that was on Ioribaiwa at that particular stage. The 25th Brigade were on their way up but when the Japanese drove the Australian forces back onto Ioribaiwa there was only the remnants of the 2/14th and 16th of the 21st Brigade and the 3rd Battalion. There were some soldiers of the 2/6th

independent company. They were in the area. We were there about a day and a half before the 25th Brigade came up onto Ioribaiwa but in the meantime the Japanese sort of fired on the positions, our positions and they also used what they call this mountain gun. We had no, we had no artillery to

answer their mountain gun and between 10 Platoon position our 3rd Battalion had a 3 inch mortar. It had no sights and we had twelve 3 inch mortar bombs and this Japanese mountain gun would open up from the other side of the creek and so on. Anyhow somebody asked the 3 inch

mortar crew to reply so they aimed the barrel of the mortar in the general direction of the Japanese and put the twelve bombs down the barrel as fast as they could and that was it. Then of course as somebody said that mortar up there they used to say it will draw the crabs. That means, so then the Japanese started firing to search for this mortar position which had already, the mortar crew had gone but we were still there. Anyhow luckily any

mountain gun rounds banged back further into the heavier timber behind us.

Well they swish a little bit. They’re sort of not too bad when they go over your head. I think it’s when they start to come down close to you at times sometimes you don’t hear much at all it’s just a bit of air swish and bang

but sometimes when they do start to swish and that’s one sort of going fairly close but it’s either behind you or to your right or left. One of our main things with the mortar bombs was when they exploded in the treetops and the limbs came down. The only problem there is when the limbs came down it meant that they left a bit of a hole up there for the next one to come through. The Japanese were pretty good on their mortars and so on,

pretty accurate.

The other part Patrick [interviewer] he said seeing you’re going to more or less active

infantry action he said a little bit of advice. Where you can sit down sit down and when you can lie down sleep because you never can tell where the next lot of sleep is coming from which I took notice of and passed the word onto the platoon. No he really didn’t say much at all. He talked about some training in Egypt and of course seeing the Sphinx and the

Pyramids, and he also talked a little bit about going in on the boat onto the beach at Anzac or the beach at Gallipoli.

Oh he was saying about how the, they came under some rifle or bullets were going close to them and hitting because he landed on the afternoon of

the 25th so it was pretty visible, everything was pretty visible and so on. He never really spoke much about it because the jam tin or the bomb factory on the beach seemed to be one of the main things that stuck in my mind and also that they did use some little hand bombs from Japan and

also I think there were some Japanese mortars. He spoke mainly of how hard it was, the going was very hard and the trenches had to be maintained. That was about it Patrick. He spoke of his hospitalisation. He was very fortunate to survive. He ended up being right back in England and his

family came to see him when he was hospitalised in England.

No I didn’t imagine that at all. I thought these fellows were you know

must have been pretty brave to carry out this activity. I didn’t really envisage myself being involved in war. But as I mentioned earlier once I was involved I decided to make the best of it which to the best of my ability I did. I tried to be as good a soldier as possible and I never ever like

in your pay book anybody that played up they used to have a mark in it saying you were absent without leave or insubordinate or something like that. It didn’t worry me. I didn’t, if I went on leave I carried out to the rule you had to be back at a certain time and there’s the old saying in the

army where you had to carry an order but you could probably dispute after but you still had to carry it out.

An odd one, an odd one and part of their disbehaviour [sic] was because of their leadership. Some officers and NCOs [non commissioned officer] rubbed soldiers the wrong way and

they responded accordingly. In some instances they were just bits of devils but to be honest I never ever had anybody really that I could say was a bad soldier.

Yes that’s a point too. I think some good soldiers could disbehave [sic]. As the threat to Australia increased I think everybody knuckled down to be a bit more vigilant and paid more attention to their soldiering.

Well generally a fellow that’s sort of got some bit of success in life. Not so

much success but he’s got some sort of purpose in life. Like as far as I was concerned I wanted to be a carpenter and I achieved that object and I think some fellows, that were a bit sort of drifters and had never had any real set activity. It’s a bit hard to judge a fellow what you sort of turn out to be. I mentioned

about the Rambo type. They were to dodge those fellows.

Yes, yes well the going on with that one. Many years after the war at Templeton’s Crossing when we attacked at Templeton’s Crossing our company commander he wasn’t a very popular fellow. I just divert a little bit there. At Bathurst camp at the end of 1941 the officers rode horses and the colonel and the adjutant and we were all lined up in a battalion parade

at Bathurst and this adjutant was not a very popular sort of a fellow. He wasn’t a nice fellow but anyhow somebody snuck a little Foxy dog up his pullover and he was in the back ranks a bit so when the adjutant turned around to ride his horse towards the colonel this chap that had the Foxy up his pullover let the little Foxy dog go. The Foxy went through the ranks

and bit the horse on one of his shins and the horse reared up in the air but luckily the adjutant stuck to it and then the little Foxy went for his life and just disappeared. This is the sort of you know but the same fellow he was our company commander at the attack at Templeton’s Crossing and during that attack the company commander ended up with a bullet through his

haversack and that was always put down to a Japanese sniper but many, many years later some of the other fellows knew the true story, but I didn’t know the true story until probably 20 years after, and somebody said that one of the fellows that had been trained as a sniper had a go at him just to warn him a little bit and put a bullet through his haversack.

Through his little dixie. As another soldier writes. As a matter of fact it was last Saturday I went to his funeral at Crookwell, Nace Hogan and Nace has a writing out, it put a nasty hole in his dixie and caused a leak …

Oh no it just went through the side, went through his haversack. I think it

was more or less a bit of a warning because it was put down that a Japanese sniper. But I had an instance in, when we went to Ioribaiwa Ridge we went further out to what they call the spotters hut and our company commander there the platoon signal fellow, the sig wire cut out

about two hours from where we were so this afternoon the sig came along and said we were to report back to battalion headquarters. The company commander says B Company we’ve got to get out. He and his batman and another officer with his batman. I said to my sergeant friend Bob Taylor I said we’re going Bob but we’re to clean up the area and dispose of any

surplus food which we did by bayoneting the tins and so on and we filled in the latrines and cleaned the place up and then we set off and we set off at about 9 o’clock that night in the jungle and luckily one fellow had a torch which was just a little bit helpful and we camped in the jungle, and then the next morning we set off and we met the commanding officer and the

adjutant and this company commander. And the other officer and the colonel said, “How come your company commander is here so many hours before his troops?” And Bob Taylor my friend went ahead of the column, he said, “He shot through sir.” He said, “He did, did he?” So anyhow he was sent back to Port Moresby and we were given an E company commander, that was this fellow I was just talking about but that was one instance where you know

… but even this new company commander at a place called Menari we set off from Nauro in the morning and before we left Nauro in the morning this is going forward he said, “B Company, no eating before 1 o’clock.” This was about six thirty in the morning. We had no hot tea or anything. We

only had bully beef and biscuits. So we got to Menari about five hours march, just close on five hours and we had to burn the village because the Japanese had occupied it and it was in filthy condition so we burned the huts and there was fires going everywhere, and I found a four gallon container and I suggested a couple of fellows to go down to the creek and bring up some water and we’d boil a billy. So we had the billy boiling and was just

giving the fellows in the platoon, about eight fellows at a time a drink of tea and about the second issue the company commander came along and he said to me, “Sergeant Tongs didn’t I tell you no eating before 1 o’clock.” And I said, “This is not eating sir, we’re just having a drink of tea.” He said, “Tip it out.” And I said, “No, I’m not going to tip it out.” And he said to one of the fellows, “Tip it out.” And they shook their head and he was walking over and it looks as though he’s going to tip the bucket of tea over and the platoon were closing

in in a semicircle and I thought to myself by jingoes if he goes and tips that over, he’s in the fire.

Oh well he backed off or some character said, “Have a cup of tea sir, have some tea,” and he backed off. But that was an instance of, see technically we weren’t eating we were just having a cup of tea.

No, that was only applicable to that particular movement, just no eating before 1 o’clock on that one.

Well their hygiene was very much off. For a start we used to have, the idea with toilets was to at least dig a hole but the Japanese in most instances had pegged a log on the side of a hill and sort of squatted on the log and the squinter sort of ran down the hill or whatever, ran down amongst the foliage and so on. It smelt pretty

terrible. Other parts of their occupation there were bits of this lying around and bits of that sort of thing. There was nothing sort of tidy.

Some ammunition would be left some but not such a lot except if they

went in a hurry but on Ioribaiwa Ridge they left of course, a lot of mountain gun ammunition but it was just generally some place had been occupied by a lot of people for a certain time and no effort of keeping things tidy while they were there. As I said their hygiene and so on.

Each soldier is personally responsible but then in the platoon you have three sections and three section leaders and each corporal or section leader he also keeps an eye on the hygiene in his own section and the platoon sergeants and the platoon commanders they sort of keep an overall eye on things but taken all round the soldiers themselves were pretty good. They

could appreciate the fact that hygiene had to be carried out in a proper manner.

They, Patrick, the pioneer battalion they never came any further forward

than Imita Ridge. There was an odd one came onto Ioribaiwa but they were also self contained and though in the battalion you have a pioneer platoon they are responsible for hygiene but they’re mainly around battalion headquarters and they can’t like when general activity companies are away from battalions and then platoons and so on they’re much dispersed and it

means that probably in open warfare where you would be able to move the pioneers would be able to do a bit more like that but in a battalion the pioneer platoon was mainly on activity around battalion headquarters, protection for battalion headquarters and things like that.

Yes individually yes. And it was a strange thing. There was always a fair number of blow flies or flies even the wet blankets at times your half blanket which was very rarely dry. You sort of hung it up on a branch or something and sometimes the flies would just blow that, they’d just blow a

wet blanket and there’d be maggots on just a wet blanket. And the cockroaches were about two inches long. The cockroaches were very large. When casualties or when a body was left behind in no time between the rats would clean the flesh of the bones and the cockroaches. In no time

a body would be eaten just a skeleton and a few bits of cloth, clothing hanging on.

Yes, yes. Well some instances if you went near, it all depends just where the poor fellow happened to be killed sometimes you went near the body

they weren’t fools and that’s why they’d start sniping at anybody that went near the body. You’d have to probably wait till dark to recover the body to take it back to a safer place to bury. But very rarely did you have to leave a body behind

but in some instances it was. This patrol had forward from Menari to find the Japanese on the Kokoda Track when we came up through a place called Efogi we were the first troops through there and the Australians who had withdrawn earlier they couldn’t take out some of their dead soldiers and there were some even on stretchers who were just a skeleton or

remains on stretchers on the side of the track. And those who were just skeletons they just had a little bit of a cloth from their shirt and shorts and between the rats and the cockroaches had cleaned the meat and the flesh off the bodies.

No not really. Generally at night time in the darkness they were lurking.

No. We were pretty light on and the only thing we ever had a go at to try and get something to eat was a bird of paradise of all things. I was told later they’re mostly feathers and not much body but anyhow we never hit

them luckily. We did fire at a couple. We would have eaten them if we could have but then they probably had to fall down through the foliage but anyhow luckily we never ever hit them. No, even with our shortage of food. One instance with my friend we found a pineapple that was just not

very ripe but we took the top of the pineapple and we divided it into two and we ate it skin and all. This was sort of a green pineapple.

Yes it was part of a garden but the only thing that was sort of edible there was this, was just the single half green pineapple.

Well in some instances yes, there was a sort of twilight effect. In some places the canopy was thicker than others but your eyes seemed to get used to the semi darkness and you seemed to be able, I think it’s something to do

with your eyes, they did seem to be able to pick up things and so on.

Shadow like movement like they’d say another soldier if he was up about say 20 paces in front of you or something like that. But I think your eyes become accustomed to the environment. But then at times, the most sunlight you’d get would be when you came to a creek crossing. It all depends how

wide the creek was the sunlight would come down pretty solid.

It all depends there too, you see Patrick, there was a fair amount of mist at the higher altitude and the mist was like a continuous sort of fog but as you were

saying about the visibility, 10 paces. Probably in the worst of your conditions probably about 10 paces, you could see 10 paces like a blurred object.

Yes, as I said mainly at any creek crossings you got this lovely sunlight. That’s when the

darkness of an afternoon came on you pretty suddenly. It used to get pitch dark in the jungle. It’s really dark but also in the jungle at night there’s the fireflies. They flit around and also phosphorous sticks the little, the phosphorous seemed to glow on certain twigs and pieces of timber and so on. One way we discovered after a while, we had to learn all these things

ourselves, say you were here and you wanted to go somewhere a couple of paces away or three paces or whatever, would be to gather some of these phosphorous sticks and make a little heap and just have a little glow. So if you went away two or three paces you knew where to come back to because you saw this little glow of phosphorous sticks and you went back to that spot. In the dark, the darker it was the better the phosphorous

glowed. But the Japanese were cunning. We learnt from them. They had loyer cane hand rails we used to call it sometimes like which we did do around your perimeter you put a loyer vine from tree to tree

A loyer vine like they make that cane furniture, these little vines that, there were a fair

amount of vines around. We used to put, sort of tie a loyer vine from tree to tree so that if you were going somewhere you would sort of use this as a handrail and guide yourself around, and then the Japanese in some places put one up about ankle height so sort of using your hand you leant against it and you moved along with this thing touching your leg. You knew then

where you had to come back to. But we learnt that off the Japanese. Nobody ever taught us that when you get up there get some of that loyer vine and make something.

Well they had a very good shovel for digging in. We had, well we dug in in the early stages there with just our bayonet and used a steel helmet or

our eating dixie to scoop the dirt out. We had no shovels. The issue shovel in those days was a cumbersome thing and there was some odd one probably around but down in headquarters or something but the general troops we dug in with bayonets and just steel helmets. Then after a while we were able to capture shovels from the Japanese or as the Japanese were beaten back or whatever they were good enough to leave some shovels

behind and the Japanese shovel is a short handle, short handle and the head is sharp enough to cut through certain roots and so on.

No, I suppose we were learning from them at times. We sort of

subconsciously learnt it. As I said earlier we were pretty good with firing our own weapons with our infantry weapons which stood by us. I think we learnt one thing is, they seemed to fire high at certain times and I told my fellows to fire

low always fire low because if anybody was firing high at you well then the bullets would be up above you but if you fired low you had a chance of the bullet coming up a couple of feet and be more troublesome. The tactics were similar to ours. They probably used flanking encircling movements more than we did and we should have used them.

I respected them with the ferocity of them because we were always taught in military training to know your enemy and that’s what I used to always work on to know as much about them as I could and then you had a better chance or you had a chance of coping with it.

Well they were aggressive and I thought the way to counteract that one was to be aggressive also, and that’s how I worked. We paid off through being aggressive but you still had to know when to back off because say a platoon couldn’t take on a couple of Japanese companies but if you’re a platoon matched

against probably a Japanese platoon or a little bit more with the aggressiveness you can generally win the game.

I was.

We didn’t look on it like that. I didn’t look on it that way. I looked on it more like a setback for the British. I didn’t think that we were being abandoned because we also realised that well I did that the Brits had a pretty big fight on themselves. After all the Germans weren’t far away over the Channel. But I thought it was more of a setback because we

seemed to have a habit in going into war going backwards and then bouncing back and sort of going the other way. But I was very proud of my British heritage, my father and we were always you know, God, King and country and things like that.

Not in my case. I think some probably propaganda would take it that way but I think most of them thought that the Brits, the British were having it tough but it was more of a temporary setback. I think the British helped us

as much as they could. We were thankful for the Americans but we were also helping America by beating the, against the Japanese. I think the soldiers generally accepted the British were just having a setback and they weren’t really beaten just a setback. It was probably bad, could have been some

bad generalship I think in Malaya but that happens. We all used to say thank goodness the Japanese have bad generals because I think if they had had super generals they would have made a landing on Australia on the Australian mainland.

I thought that was more of a natural type thing. That was part of there, they were moving so fast down through the Pacific that I thought that that was part of their sort of evolution that they would bomb Darwin or bomb parts of Australia because they were on a roll. There was no reason why they

wouldn’t in that way. But I’m surprised at the number of casualties which we never learnt for a long time after just how many casualties had been caused in Darwin. I was surprised later on when I heard of the number of people who had been killed up there.

Not really alongside them, but there again I’ll get back to the sense of humour of the American Negro soldier and this is talk as it was in those

days. The American Negroes generally drove the trucks that took the supplies from the wharves when we were there and we had what they used to call an air raid warning. One afternoon we were on this ship, this particular ship and the air raid warning came and that then gave you about 20 minutes, and we all were ordered to, the orders were to get off the ship if possible and I was responsible for that particular group of about thirty

fellows. By the time I got off the ship into the truck with the American Negro it was getting close to the time limit and we went up through Port Moresby itself, and out, going towards out of town and there’s coconut palms, and in amongst these coconut palms I knew there were some sig trenches so as we were going along through the coconut palms I could hear the bombs not that far away, and the American Negro driver he jammed his

brakes on and he said, “Boy we better get out of here,” so I got out of the truck with him and there was only just two of us and we raced across to a sig trench and I looked down and here’s a little snake in the bottom only about 18 inches long and I said to him, “I’m not going in there, there’s a snake.” And then as he jumped in he bellowed out, “Move over reptile I’s coming in,” and I think his big feet landed on the snake. But that

was what he called out. Just move over reptile. They were great their sense of humour. And then the American soldier, I had a patrol up the Kumusi River, up across the bridge at Wairopi, the footbridge. Colonel Cameron said to me, “Bede take as many of your platoon that’s left and whoever you can find up to Kumusi

River for stray Japanese,” he said, “and branch off and swing to the left and eventually head back towards Popondetta.” So I went on this patrol after a couple of days I came across some Americans, the first ones we’d ever come across up there. There was about twenty Americans in a group and the officer said, I eventually learnt that they had come down what they called the Keppa Keppa track and came down to the head waters of the Kumusi,

and the officer said to me, “Where have you goddamn Australians been?” he says, “We’ve been looking for you.” And I said to him, he said, “Where you have been?” I said, “I have been coming over those mountains back there.” I pointed back towards the Owen Stanleys. Anyhow I said to him, “Did you see any Japs?” He said, “Not a goddamn Jap.” I said, “You come with me, I’ll show you some.” And he declined the offer. Anyhow when we moved off

again I discovered I had two Americans with me and of course while we were with the Americans we lit a fire and boiled our billy and that, and I had these two Americans with me and I said to them, “You fellows had better go back.” “Oh no, we’re going with you Aussies.” He says, “You know how to light a fire.” And I said… Well the boys didn’t mind because they had these

lovely American rations, soluble coffee and things. So anyhow…

Oh they were probably only about under 20 years old. They were young, very young fellows. They were with us for a couple of days. We showed them how to light a fire. We used their soluble coffee and they had beautiful ration packs, soluble coffee and cigarettes. Not that I ever

smoked. I think they even had some lollies or barley sugar or something. Anyhow we showed them how to light a fire. I kept telling them to go back. Anyhow some Americans must have been following because they came and more or less arrested them and they said you’ve got to come back. And we were sorry to see them go because they had these beautiful rations. But anyhow we said to them we taught you how to light a fire and

they said oh yes we can light a fire and he said we’ll show our buddies how to light a fire. That was one thing our fellow could do was a light a fire in extreme wet conditions and so on.

The main thing there was even in the wet jungle with your bayonet split a

piece of timber and even if it’s very wet on the outside you generally find it’s fairly dry on the inside. Oh that’s right the Papuans said to me for lighting a fire get a piece of bamboo and shave it up, because I had a clasp knife, into little slivers and make a little heap out of this slivered bamboo and even without paper it was one thing we had with us was wax matches, matches with wax

you could strike them on a tin and put the match in these slithers of the bamboo and in time you could build up a bit of heat and that helped to dry the timber. That’s where most mail from home ended up was lighting a fire. We never kept any letters from home. We never got that much mail but we did get some. As I said my friend used to get some parts of The Canberra Times

and so on. But it was great teaching the American blokes how to light a fire. That was my only real contact with them.

Oh well the bayonet is made from pretty good steel. Like most weaponry

in warfare it’s generally made from the best that’s available. The bayonets seemed to keep pretty sharp the one I had anyhow it always seemed to have a pretty good edge on it. We would have had no other means only probably a rock in a creek or something like that but nobody ever seemed to be worried about resharpening their bayonet. We used to puncture the

bully beef tins and dig our holes, dig our trenches our slit trenches and so on. Another one with the American Negro soldiers. When we went back onto Imita Ridge one morning our artillery had just started to fire onto Ioribaiwa, the 25 pounders, but for some reason or other there were some American

Negroes brought up a 37 millimetre anti tank weapon. It’s not a very heavy device but still it had to be dragged through the jungle, and this morning we were there and we heard that these fellows were bringing this weapon along and we just went down to meet them because there was no real activity against the Japanese on Imita, and as they brought the gun up over the brow. The leading Negro he looked up at us and he said, “Boy, this

sure ain’t no white man’s country,” and of course that was it. He was as black as the ace of spades. And we agreed with him too. The funny thing about that gun, I never ever saw any ammunition. The gun arrived but I never, it never fired to my knowledge but the fellow said later on, “Where was that ammo, did you see any ammo with that gun?” And we said no. So we don’t know what the story was there.

Well from my own experience somebody who is prepared to have a go, not to ask anybody to do something that they’re not game enough to do themselves and to lead either by example or from the front as they say. The

soldier always looks forward to somebody that will show some compassion also not especially on front line activity.

One thing is an even distribution of rations for equipment or clothing because some fellows if they had control of the distribution of rations they

were a bit inclined to hog the bulk for themselves or say there was just one tin of jam to the platoon of say 25 or 30 fellows or less some incidences of a tin of jam was only kept at platoon headquarters amongst probably about four or five instead of being opened and distributed amongst the rest of the

troops. Things like that disturb the soldiers. Say like on forward scouts if the leader himself is taking a patrol out and if the scouts know that the chap leading them would be quite willing to be a forward scout himself and that

all helps with the soldiers. But if I may quote an instance where, this is with the 2/3rd Battalion when we were training, when we were training up in North Queensland when the 3rd Battalion when I joined the 2/3rd Battalion … I joined the 2/3rd Battalion from the 3rd Battalion. I had only been there a couple of days when I was ordered to be the orderly sergeant

for the day. I know it happened to be a Saturday and the orderly officer said to me, “Sergeant Tongs take these 20 men by vehicle out to Flaggy Creek and remove a dead horse that’s in the creek and bury the horse.” The dead horse was in what they used to call the battalion swimming pool,

swimming pool and Flaggy Creek is like all the creeks in Queensland, as big as the rivers down this way. So we proceeded to Flaggy Creek and when I got there sure enough here’s a horse that had been drowned and he was at least 30 paces from the bank and luckily there was a fair amount of debris timber debris logs and so on between the bank and the horse. So I

looked at the group of soldiers who I’d never met before and they didn’t know me, I didn’t know them but I was orderly sergeant with my hat turned up at the side and a red sash of authority for the day. So I picked up the end of the rope and walked down the bank stepped on log to log out to where the horse was and I slipped the rope onto the horse’s neck and around one of his front legs and in the meantime the soldiers, I could see some activity on the bank and they had already hooked they were tying the

rope to the end of the truck and I wasn’t sure if that’s a good sign. So I stepped my way back to the bank and the truck driver started the 4 wheel drive vehicle up, pulled the horse out and the soldiers had already started to dig the hole without me even saying dig. So the horse was dragged into the hole, buried and we headed back to the 2/3rd Battalion and these

soldiers even shook hands with me and a little while later I was to learn that they spread the word that this 3rd Battalion soldier could walk on water. So I had the greatest respect after that all my soldiering days with the 2/3rd Battalion. So I still don’t know to this day to this whether I did just actually, but anyhow that’s how I showed those, the fellows there that I led by example.

I was quite prepared to do something. But that word spread through the battalion and everything went very well from there on.

Yes at Port Moresby we were on a hill there called Mount Sadowa [Paga] and

it was only savannah type country near Moresby and it was good open patches and for some reason we had all this unlimited 303 ammunition to train with at that particular time. I knew that what we had heard of the jungle that you didn’t have that much chance of firing. You had no chance of firing the rifle lying in a prone position on the ground. You had a bit of

a chance in a kneeling position you know from your shoulder position. But we had to have something that was instant action. In the jungle everything happened in a split second. So we set up an empty matchbox at about 20 or 25 paces on this bare piece of ground and then I’d give the soldiers four rounds to hit the matchbox from the hip and after, for a start the shots went

very wild and in the finish most of the soldiers would hit the matchbox or go very close to it within four rounds. I as I mentioned earlier as a young fellow I started shooting a pea rifle and we were accurate with the pea rifle and then I was a pretty good shot with the .303 so it didn’t take me long to

set an example by firing from the hip and hitting the matchbox and I’m sure that stood by them a lot in the jungle. Everything was so instantaneous.

Well as I said the fighting in the jungle that we carried out was either 20

paces or 25 paces closeness and you were carrying your rifle with your right hand, you never had your rifle slung, if you knew you were close to the Japanese you were always ready well I had my team always ready to fire pretty split second and firing from the hip as we called it you could do that activity. But not only that

when I fired a grenade discharge from the hip normally the barrel, the butt of a rifle to fire a grenade would be rested on the ground and when you’re firing a grenade from the rifle you have a grenade discharger on the end of your rifle at the barrel end the muzzle end and a 4 second grenade you still

fire the rifle on the side of your hip the rifle slide past but every time you fired one of those it would cut your hand because the bolt would catch in your thumb and forefinger.

The recoil was pretty savage. But the job I’d done, it belted the grenade through the undergrowth. You had to be careful never hit a tree because it could bounce back but that was very effective.

No not to my knowledge. It was one thing we made sure we didn’t hit a tree because it could have even killed the firer beside others.

Well mainly movement Patrick. The scrub would move or the undergrowth would move and we knew there was no wind to blow the branches and we knew like with ourselves we had to be very careful that we never bumped branches too much. You couldn’t avoid not bumping them sometimes but if you’re expecting to be engaged with Japanese and

you’re going along and it’s static and the scrub started to move we knew there was somebody behind that scrub or somewhere close to it. So you fired into that where the movement was. The Japanese did the same. If we bumped a bush and you were in close contact with the Japanese you’d cop fire in that direction.

That was about it Patrick. We knew that they were in there but we didn’t know just exactly where. We had very little or to my knowledge we had

no advance information as to where they were. We found that out ourselves just where they were and had to deal with them as we came across them. As far as I was concerned sometimes some of the officers would say you know not to shoot just to give some indication of where they were. In my instance I never ever issued an order like that. Every

time there was a chance to shoot at Japanese shooting.

That’s right. That’s right there was, as you just said, because after all the Japanese they were lurking close enough to disturb the bush. They weren’t there for any other

purpose than to kill us so it was up to every individual soldier under my control to do likewise. They didn’t have to say, “Bede there’s some movement over there, will I deal with it?” They just did, they dealt with it in their own individual, in themselves.

Yes. There was recognised signals like say there was some one of your soldiers a little bit of distance from you but in visible contact if he wanted

you to go up to him without calling out he’d put his clenched fist on top of his steel helmet. That was the signal for close on me. Another one if they thought there was movement up there they thought should be investigated by me or whoever was in charge of the patrol or platoon the idea with that one was they could either give you the close on me or they wanted you to

stay where you were the signal for enemy ahead was just hold the rifle around about the middle of the rifle and point the barrel the muzzle towards where the activity is and that shows whoever was in charge to look in that direction. I think the close on me one was one of the most

important signals. You could go up to whoever gave you that sign and then talk in a whisper what was going on.

Well when we knew, when we were going forward in the advance forward we knew that every step we took we were getting closer one step closer to them because that was only logic. That if they were out there we’re after them so every step closer we got to

them well that was it. So that was part of the activity. You knew that as time went by in the movement you were getting closer to them but you had your two forward scouts out, and I used to always operate with the two forward scouts and then myself. I was the third one along. We were always keeping observation. A lot of the Japanese had these split toe sort

of sandshoe boot type thing and where the big toe was separate to the rest of the foot so you’re looking in the mud to see the imprint of this particular footprint. Then you worked it out as to more or less how fresh that footprint was as to how close you were. Some of them wore the leather boots and on the heel of the leather boot they only had about half a

horseshoe thing. On our boots our heel had a steel band right around the heel on the bottom and some of their boots only had a part of one on when you could pick that imprint up in the mud. It was a matter then of just watching these footprints just to see how fresh they were. And one

instance when I was on patrol when I had these six men patrol from Menari we were getting, we knew the Japanese were close. We were still two days ahead of the battalion and we were doing everything proper and then we came to on a bump in the ground near the track was a squat where they’d had some leaves in a squat and near the track was some trees with

large leaves so we saw a couple of these squats where the fresh leaves we could see the Japanese had been squatting on these, sitting on this bundle of leaves. I said to the fellows now we’ve got to be very extra careful from there on. The Japanese there had left their, they could have heard us or

just left to go back to their, anyway about 200 yards from where these squats were we ran into a main Japanese position. So it looks as though they had a patrol out there just a standing patrol even though they were probably sitting on these leaves. But things like that you’d pick up, and they were a bit careless at times with discarding little bits of probably paper or some other wrapping or

something. It was a matter of just working out how fresh these little items were and so on.

Yes. You see you got a sense of the closeness of them and the closer you

got the more you moved off the track and got into the jungle and moved through the jungle and then you kept moving through the jungle until you could really see what’s what. In this instance we were able to get to within about 8 or 9 paces from them and we could see the Japanese position and we could see a bit of movement and so on and of course they’re not fools.

They generally find that it’s pretty instantaneous that by the time you see them they see you so it’s generally, I usually liked for them to fire first in a way and it all depends, if you could sneak a bit closer. Whichever side opened up the others

would open up pretty well simultaneously.

If you never had any, you didn’t have to be too secret about it. Just tell them to get stuck into the bastards and that would sort of automatically get

them going but if you still wanted to keep it a bit quiet until the first shot was fired, you’d just sort of either fire the first shot yourself. That’s another strange thing everybody seemed to be, you’re just about thinking about firing and you discover that they’re all sort of firing pretty well everybody fired at the

same time. It was one of those strange instinctive actions. In this particular one we went back another couple of days later with an officer in charge of his platoon and I was back as a guide and he never took the forward scouts off the track. I used to keep saying to him take the two scouts off the track the Japanese are just up there and he said to me this is

my patrol I’ll do as I wish and unfortunately the two forward scouts got killed because they just kept going along the track instead of going right into the bush …

Made us very angry. Made us very angry because the platoon sergeant of that A Company Platoon I think he would have dealt with the officer in a

physical manner at that particular time but the officer was busy saying you know get out of here and the forward section was still engaged with the Japanese and he took the two sections that remained and sort of scooted off with them. But the other sergeants and myself we extricated the front section and just kept, and went through the bush and managed to see that these two

forward scouts were actually dead and then we extricated the section and got back.

Well when I got back, when we got back to where the 3rd Battalion were I went to the CO the commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Cameron and told him what actually happened and that officer was removed from being

in that particular, he was taken away from 3rd Battalion. I don’t know where he ended up but he was taken away from the 3rd Battalion or sent away.

We were so constantly wet either from perspiration or rain for a while it

was pretty uncomfortable but then you seemed to get accustomed to it. I suppose the attitude was well you couldn’t do anything about it anyhow. The rain came down and the perspiration came from your body. You sort of adapted a sort of mental, well I did anyhow and I think the fellows close to me were similar they adopted an attitude of being part of the jungle sort

of thing. I looked at it you were more or less a creature of the environment and that’s how you cope with it and you seem to be happy with what you’re putting up with.

Yes I’d say that Patrick yes. That was part of our survival by adapting and adopting to the environment to being more or less being happy with the

mud and slush and the rain and as I mentioned earlier the jungle still had some lovely, beautiful parts. You see up some of these jungle trees there were these beautiful vines. These vines seemed to like lace they were wrapped around some of these trees and in amongst these vines further up the tree were these orchids, beautiful orchids and then of course the

beautiful butterflies and even at night the fireflies and the phosphorous sticks. It was jet black it was very black.

Yes there were some. I had two members of the platoon I had they just in

the early stages they just gave indication they just didn’t want to be in it.

Oh generally straggling a lot, you’d get to your destination say by 4 o’clock in the afternoon or a bit later or a bit earlier and the couple of fellows would always be still some distance down the track. They were generally

disgruntled with things in general. To have some disgruntled soldiers in a platoon, I know some platoons kept disgruntled soldiers and the result was instead of having two disgruntled soldiers in the platoon they had more or less a platoon of disgruntled soldiers. So I worked it out early in the piece that these two particular soldiers with me would be better off if they weren’t even connected with us. So one afternoon when they just straggled

in late I just confronted them and asked them if they wanted to be in it or not. They said they just didn’t want to be there or whatever, “We’re going forward so the best thing for you is to go back or go wherever you like but don’t come back to the platoon just disappear,” and to which they obliged

and I never saw track of them again until the end of the war.

They went back to Moresby. They went back to what they call left out of battle at Port Moresby. They were just back there doing whatever duties the officer in charge of them there, nobody seemed to know they’d been sent back, they just were accepted back as being probably sick or something.

Like the possibility?

I’m sorry about that one Patrick. Nobody ever sort of actually ran away from the battlefield but we had a couple of cases of SIW self-inflicted

wounds. One chap was a bit of a Rambo type and he just didn’t want to continue so he shot himself in the left hand with his service rifle. This case where I sent these two soldiers back from the platoon well that was the rest of the platoon always hung in there and were very obedient and good

soldiers.

Well that’s a pretty good question too Patrick. Again the more you get

involved it all depends what role you’re onto like see if you’re a reconnaissance patrol a reconnaissance patrol was generally to find just the location of the Japanese and you would get an estimation of their approximate strength and what weapons they sort of had. Well after a while you just, you engage them long enough to find out what you have to report back on but if you’re a fighting patrol that means you really go

there to fight, fight them. The engagement is longer and more intense and of course also on a fighting patrol you generally have more soldiers than you do on a reconnaissance patrol so you’re able to fight longer but then to

disengage it gets a bit awkward at times because the Japanese they weren’t fools in warfare they knew what was, they also knew that if you engaged them unless you were going to keep going and attack them and drive them from their position they knew that you were going to disengage and they could do sort of encircling movements to trap you as you moved off.

That would be, there again it all depends if you were told to attack and

occupy. Say the orders were to attack and occupy that position but some fighting patrols were just there to give them, to fight them and stir them up a bit or find out what you had to find out through more aggressive and that. But if you had to, if your orders were to attack and occupy well you’d just

keep fighting until you were able to move forward. The idea as you fired in that case you’d be moving forward and as you moved forward well the Japanese would either be dead in front of you or moving away, move out of the area out of the position.

Well knowing that they would counter attack with is the normal procedure

you’d sort of go through their position and then you’d take up you know defence positions yourself because after a short while in most instances the Japanese would counter attack. They’d counter attack to try and occupy their position they’d just left or forced to leave and you’d have to be ready for them and after probably two or three counter attacks they then decide

that they couldn’t get the position back again. But you still had to be very, your defence position would have to be on the lookout all the time.

We wouldn’t sort of worry about them until probably the next day and then you could probably only do something about them when the position

allowed, because they were a bit like when our fellows would be shot if you went to the Japanese to do something with the body you’d draw fire from snipers and something like that. But your disposal of them we generally just buried them in one of their own slit trenches, one of their own fox holes as they called it. Just drag the body along and put it down a

fox hole and put a bit of scrub or something over the top.

Well most of them were about 2 foot 6 diameter, what’s that nearly under a metre diameter it all depends on the size of the soldier. They generally dug a fox hole to suit the size of the soldier. They were mostly just a circular

pit and of course we dug our weapon pit was a rectangular pit and the idea was to give our platoon men about 4 foot long and probably a couple of foot wide or not quite, just enough to get a bit of cover and so on. But they used a circular pit and we used a rectangular pit.

Straight down yes. They had these Japanese shovels as what I spoke about. They had a very good digging device these Japanese shovels and we only had our bayonet and steel helmet but we were quick to, any Japanese shovels that we could

find or get hold of we carried those along with us. Because they were very good.

Oh they used and they were similar to us in composition and they had what they called, there was one medium machinegun they used which fired which was point 303 calibre or thereabouts 7 millimetre. It was nicknamed the woodpecker because it had a bit of a slower rate of fire but they were strip fed and they were very effective but otherwise their light machineguns were a

little bit like our Bren gun and there was one a little bit lighter than a Bren and another one a little bit similar to a Bren because it fired a round the equivalent of 303 round. The other lighter one fired point 256 ammunition and their rifles, the machineguns were more seemed to be more

effective against us than the riflemen but Japanese snipers were very accurate and when a sniper was pinpointed the Bren guns and submachine guns and rifles were generally directed in that point. A sniper was generally pretty cut to pieces, if any sniper was discovered. The fellows

had such a set on snipers that they really were determined that that fellow wouldn’t he just wouldn’t move again once he was hit.

Well we were told about them tying themselves there. I never ever came across that. They probably could have been hit and stayed there but in fact there were only a couple of snipers we ever shot at in a tree but they just

fell straight to the ground or hit an odd branch on the way down. I would say some of them would have tied themselves up there and so on.

No we never encountered that but we didn’t encounter, we found that snipers just fired without climbing trees. They fired like from in front of us or from the side but they must have fired I’d say pretty well standing up position and

they were a very well aimed shot

No. The 2/25th Battalion found them. Our 3rd Battalion at that stage were around further. We had been through Myola we were at Templeton’s Crossing

and a patrol of the 2/25th Battalion moving up to Kagi on the Templeton’s Crossing track found the bodies and both bodies had been cannibalised and bits of flesh were wrapped in these broad leaves. I mentioned there were some broad leaved trees there. And the medical officer of the 2/25th Battalion certified that as human flesh and that record is in the official

history of Kokoda to Wau by W. McCarthy

Yes it was. That was discovered around about the 12th or 13th October. By the time we were at Templeton’s Crossing on the 17th October word had seeped through to us that the two forward scouts had been found and their

bodies had been cannibalised. That automatically made the platoon soldiers very determined that they were going to you know no let up on the Japanese and that’s the way they carried on and that’s how they were going to be revenged.

I was disappointed with them because I thought everybody played war to the Geneva Convention like a game of cricket. Everybody obeyed by the rules. But earlier in the piece we discovered that they weren’t quite playing to the rules because as we advanced forward there was a couple of bodies of Australian soldiers found and they had their hands, their skeleton

remains and their hands had been tied behind their backs and in both instances their head was separated from their body. It was as though they had been decapitated but the head was further away from where the main body of the soldier was. We learnt then that we were up against somebody

that wasn’t playing to the rules of warfare.

Yes well we had, well I was an old fellow actually at 22 and I had some soldiers in my platoon was 17 years old. Kids around the 19 year old and some older than me but talking about the age the youngest soldier who died

from wounds at Templeton’s Crossing was 16 years old and his name was Joe Hawkin and Joe was badly wounded at Templeton’s Crossing but he never died till the 11th November when the field ambulance moved from Myola to Kokoda and Joe died at Kokoda. He was 16 years old and he

was the youngest one. Like I said I had some with me 17 years old. You said how did they cope. Well the human nature seems to be that once they’re told of something and it’s something that could happen to them they really get stirred up and determined to cope with it in an aggressive

manner.

Yes. I was reared up in a Christian atmosphere but to give support to these other soldiers well one of the main ways of supporting him was to show some attention and especially with the distribution of food or any clothing or the allotment of the duties and make sure that no soldier was being unduly sort of penalised through having too much to do compared with

some of the other soldiers. There was evenly, the load was evenly distributed amongst the soldiers themselves. Like with the Bren guns the Bren gunners the Bren gun weighed 23 pound and it was an awkward piece of equipment to carry because of the projections and most Bren gunners wanted to carry that gun themselves where on steep climbs and so on the Bren was distributed

amongst the platoon. Other soldiers willingly took their share of carrying the gun but in a lot of instances the Bren gunner himself was so dedicated to that gun that he sort of wouldn’t let it out of his hands. He’d carry it himself. The fellows too now lighting a fire I was pretty good at lighting

fires in the jungle. I’d make sure it all depended on the tactical situation I’d make sure that I had a fire going and then the fellows could boil their dixie or a billycan or whatever. The only thing there is you generally light your fire if you didn’t have a dixie or a billycan of your own handy if you turned your back you’d look around and the fire would be covered in little

billy cans. They always gave you, the first billy that boiled I generally got a tea out of him. But things like that, little things really. And if they had tropical ulcers or other wounds and that or injuries we’d have some attention for them. It was just mainly, you mainly just were looking after them which I did.

No not always unless there was some humorous thing happened. They were generally pretty quiet occasion. There wasn’t a lot of talk because even though we lit a fire we didn’t still know just exactly where the

Japanese were and there was generally not any undue noise or something but quietly talk and so on. But talking about looking after soldiers. Tomorrow morning I’m going down to the dawn service in Queanbeyan because down there I have one soldier down there Jack Lobitz. Everywhere I went on the Kokoda Track Jack was with me and Jack’s now

84 and every time I see Jack and especially at dawn service he says to me, “Hi Bede,” he says, “you’re still looking after me,” because I generally ask Jack to come and march with me and Jack’s words generally are, “Well Bede, you’re still looking after me.” So that’s it. They still appreciate my attention earlier.

Yes Louise. At Templeton’s Crossing I had 34 soldiers in my platoon. That’s four short of the recognised establishment and after that at

Templeton’s Crossing we carried on from the Saturday the 17th until the Tuesday afternoon of the it must have been the 20th when the 2/1st Battalion came and relieved us. We still stayed in the battlefield. We got to a place called the village of Alola. Oh we went back to Myola after Templeton’s Crossing for a while and we went back on and advanced

on the Kokoda Track. At the end of October, I had 16 soldiers in 10 Platoon and they were a solid core and those soldiers seemed to be more or less untouchable and they were the 16 I had on the patrol around the

foothills of Mount Thumb, into the Yodda Valley and Kokoda. And the into the battle of Oivi when the 3rd Battalion helped the 2/3rd Battalion. But those 16 we seemed to get down to a hard core and then you seemed to have and they seemed to stay in there longer mainly because they’re the survivors. They’ve already survived through a fair amount of activity and

they continue to do so and of course at Mount Oivi when I had a fighting patrol there one fellow was wounded, a chap named Doug Downes from Blanket Flat near Crookwell but the other 15 kept going for some time.

Well I think they were putting into practice proper earlier training and

beside being very you know a certain amount of brightness themselves. But the infantry training is pretty good for survival. It’s a matter of how you apply it and also they seemed to be very alert as to what was out there in front of them and they were very quick on the trigger. So I think all that added up to helping them survive.

Yes that’s right. Yes well on the 17th October, I’ll get back to, on the 17th October we’d moved from Myola to Templeton’s Crossing to Eora

Creek. We knew one of other companies had been in contact with the Japanese and we knew then that there was a pretty strong number of Japanese in front of us and the 17th October was the date of my younger brother who was 21 years old on the 17th October 1942. My brother Reg was missing in Malaya. He belonged to the 2/20th Battalion and after the

fall of Singapore on the 15th February 42 there was no other contact. So we, I knew that we were going to fight the Japanese that day some time so I determined that my brother Reg would be avenged and we’d also heard about the cannibalism of two A Company scouts and that had to be dealt

with also. So my attitude that day was one of a very aggressive attitude and do you want me to continue?

On that particular day 10 Platoon had, I had normally been in charge of 10 Platoon and that particular day an officer came back who was in charge of

10 Platoon and my role was platoon sergeant, and we were moving through the jungle and climbing towards this ridge. Anyhow we eventually got to the top of the ridge and we turned to the left because we could hear firing towards Eora Creek but the officer was in charge of 10 Platoon so I carried

out my job as platoon sergeant on the unprotected flank as they call it which was on the right flank, and as we moved along there was some firing from the front and the platoon runner found me and said that the forward scout had been killed and the second scout had been wounded, and just to take up a sort of holding position and orders from the platoon commander.

I was just getting into that position when more firing started and then the runner found me again and he said the platoon commander has been badly wounded, and once I knew that he was wounded that meant that I was platoon commander. And then the company commander found me, I was going back towards platoon headquarters through the jungle and the company commander found me and he said to me, “Sergeant Tongs,” he said,

“Attack the Japanese.” In the meantime there was a machinegun firing more or less into our 10 Platoon position and in the jungle the Japanese in most instances cut fire lanes for their machineguns to fire along and I just happened to be near this fire line and they had cleared the low scrub and it

was sort of like a fan. We were on the wide angle where we were and I thought to myself if we attacked at that particular time their machinegun would just pretty well cut us to pieces. So I said to this corporal Barry Finch and the next senior corporal I said, “Barry I’m going to dispose of that

machine gun.” So anyhow before I did that I got the two forward sections into a position where they could continue later and the third section to be at our rear for protection from the rear. So I got a 4 second grenade from my pouch from my basic pouch and I had my rifle in my left hand and I pulled

the pin out of the grenade and held the lever down. The grenades are quite good while you hold the lever down they don’t, nothing can happen. So this 4 second fuse went over had it in my right hand, my rifle in my left hand, and I crawled down this fire lane and my hands were getting scratched because the Japanese had cut these little twigs and so on and bigger twigs and I crawled and crawled, and while I’m crawling along I

thought this is the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done in my life and then as I crawled closer I got to within about 10 paces of this machinegun, and I ended up looking down the barrel from 10 paces and I thought it looked like looking down the barrel of an artillery gun or something. The darned thing looked so big. And luckily the two Japanese were looking intently to their left and I don’t know why but they were, and I could see one fellow, I

was that close to see that he had his finger near the trigger. Anyhow the 4 second grenade I just let the lever fly off I let it go on the ground otherwise it would be flying through the air and it just let it hit the ground and then there was 4 seconds and I just roughly held it for about 1 second, I suppose. They were still looking to their left and I threw the grenade and then as I threw

the grenade I buried my head in the moist ground and so on with a steel helmet and the grenade exploded and I threw another one just to give me a bit of cover and I didn’t look to see what happened, but anyhow I got to my

feet and I just belted like a Stawell Gift runner, back to the platoon and when I got back to the platoon they were already well I’d positioned them for an attack and when I got back there the company commander wasn’t far away sang out to me. “Get that attack going Sergeant Tongs.” I didn’t take much notice, I just yelled, “Get stuck into the bastards,” and away they went. They already knew how they were going to do it. Fire movement. The right hand section they fired

weapons and machine guns, the Thompson sub-machine gun, the rifle is rapid fire in the direction of the Japanese and in the meantime the left hand section moved forward and they fired from the hip as they went forward and then I sort of halted those

fellows and then brought the other lot up and then this other section they fired intense fire and this other section came forward firing from the hip like that. As we advanced we found some Japanese bodies. There was one fellow there I remember a corporal of this left hand section he had thrown a grenade and the grenade must have exploded when this Japanese was standing up because it sort of, the body was lying flat on the ground as I

passed and even though he had all his body exposed his poor old heart was still ticking over. You could see it moving up and down. Anyhow we kept going and we went past this position that I got with the Japanese and the two Japanese were laying dead on top of one another where the grenade had killed them, and one of the 17 year old fellows a chap named Les Alexander, he was only 17 Les, and Les went and picked up this machine gun and he had his

weapon in one hand and he had the machine gun in the other hand and I said, “What are you going to do with that Les?” He said, “I’m going to fire it back at the so and so’s,” which he did later. And as we went through they had been cooking some rice in little Japanese dixies, there was a number of these dixies cooking some fellows had their rifle and I don’t know how they

managed it but they had a little dixie a Japanese rifle and rice and one bloke came over to me and I grabbed a handful of this, it was still warm this rice and with my grubby hand I ate it. It was beaut. Anyhow we kept going and then the company commander gave us a signal to halt and we took up a defensive position. In the meantime just about as we took that up

the platoon runner well actually a runner from the back section found me and said, “The bastards are behind us.” I said, “Oh well we’re going forward tell your section leader to deal with them.” So there was four Japanese, they said four, anyhow the back section which added up to about ten men they dealt with the Japanese at our back and when the runners came back later said they’d

dealt with them. So even though we were attacking them forward there were still some sneaking around behind us but the back section dealt with those. So taken all round the fellows the morale of those fellows was magnificent. There was one of the corporals wounded in that attack. Then we consolidated.

It took about, oh it would take about an hour and twenty minutes, in the jungle, we’d advanced about 200 yards.

It would have been about, I had to crawl about 30 paces I suppose. You see when they cleared the jungle when they cleared this fire lane it’s a pretty good visibility but it tapers back to more or less like a fan. It’s an apex.

About from there to that doorway over there only about probably 12 feet or so but that’s what gives them away in a sense that if you can pick up where the fire lane had started you know that as it draws to an apex that’s where the gun is.

I could see probably two or three of each section and then these other fellows weren’t visible but I knew that they were there on the extended line.

Calling out but they already knew that that was going to happen. That I’d be letting them know when to advance and when to stop. When they

stopped they still fired. The amount of, the platoon firing rapid fire is very intense but we killed a number of Japanese before and then when we consolidated that was a Saturday afternoon, of course we had no sooner stopped before the Japanese counter attack, but were able to drive off the counter

attack and then during the night they counter attacked again but they couldn’t dislodge us, and then on the Sunday morning over there they caused, snipers on the Sunday caused some casualties amongst our soldiers.

Well it sort of didn’t really occur to me other than my thoughts were about

getting more ammunition. Also about the food. We also had to evacuate the second scout. Before the actual attack started the officer had to be evacuated on a bush stretcher. He’d been badly hit up high on the left side.

He’s still alive today. I see him now and again. He lives up at Queensland now. And the other second scout who was wounded he survived and he was from Wagga. The corporal has died since but it wasn’t because of his wartime activity. And then on the Sunday they were still active and we had gained some ground on the Sunday and then on the Monday it was a little bit less intense.

On the Sunday morning, yes. We only had seven grenades left in the platoon and only probably about four magazines for the Thompson submachine guns and our point 303 ammunition was right on for riflemen

and Bren gunners but luckily about six thirty on Sunday morning my good friend this Sergeant Bob Taylor, Bob came up with a party with little jute sandbags with ammunition in, grenades and point 303 ammunition. And when I distributed that around one of the Bren gunners said, he said, “Have

we got plenty of ammo now?” And I said, “Yes,” and … loaded Bren magazine on and had more rounds there to load. I can still remember he yelled out, “Cop this you yellow bastards.” They got really cheeky. The higher their morale the cheekier they got which was good.

Yes, well at that instance there Louise we were only 20 paces apart and also on some Japanese rifles they had a metal protector over the bolt, and as they worked the bolt to fire the rifle it used to rattle and we could hear this thing rattling. We knew then that bullets were going to fly and they had a grenade that, our grenade had this lever system but one of their grenades they

used to tap it to arm it. You could hear them tapping this grenade and then some of the fellows up close that’s how cheeky they were they would hear this tapping and they’d say let that go you yellow bastard and of course he obliged. They let her go. Over it would come.

Sometimes they mumbled something, some noise back at us. Sort of a growling

sort of noise I suppose it was probably Japanese in you blokes are about the same as what you call us. But see early in the piece too I remember at Ioribaiwa going back a bit when they were rallying against this patrol they even blew a bugle. They had a bugle and of course that seemed to disappear. The bugle calling seemed to

disappear as we went through the mountains. But they were really organised. They were they were pretty savage. We respected them. We knew we were going to beat them. Well it was more or less either beat them or die. We didn’t go much of that dying business so we had to sort of beat them.

Yeah, you’d settle down to, we if you were, we weren’t in a position to advance unfortunately and you know they’re there and they know you’re there so you have an uneasy sort of a truce well more or less a truce but then on the

Monday, on the afternoon of the 20th we were told that the 16th Brigade were advancing towards Eora Creek and on the afternoon of the 20th we got word that the 2/1st Battalion was going to relieve the 3rd Battalion and as I, it was about close to 5 o’clock on the afternoon of the 20th I looked up the back and the scrub had cleaned up a bit with fire and so on, fighting fire,

machine gun fire and here was this 2/1st Battalion, the 2/1st coming through. They were dressed in their jungle greens and these blokes all looked about 8 foot tall. They’re coming through the jungle just behind us and we all breathed a sigh of relief and these fellows a lot of them were veterans from the Middle East. A lot of them had fought in the desert and

in Greece and Crete. Anyhow another great surprise there the platoon sergeant of that platoon was a friend I knew from Queanbeyan, a chap named Sergeant Charlie Johnson. I hadn’t seen Charlie since he, he was originally with the 2/3rd Battalion and here was this fellow came in with his platoon. It was a great meeting up with an old friend. And then the

officer there came through too their platoon commander and he said to me, “How close are they?” And I said, “Oh about 20 paces.” Anyhow they lined up to attack them and they kept going and then fired some rounds and then they came back again and this platoon commander bloke said, “By God,” he said, “they are close aren’t they,” and he said, “anyhow we’ll get them tomorrow.” So they settled down they came back and settled down that night with us and

the next morning just after stand down the 2/1st Platoon went through and that got rid of the Japanese from our front. They kept going to Eora Creek and that sort of started the battle for Eora Creek. The 16th Brigade that was the 2/1st, 2/2nd and 2/3rd Battalion. They fought the Japanese in Eora Creek

and then drove from there more or less back past Kokoda.

Yes. I’d say more so on the Saturday we attacked on the Sunday the 18th on the afternoon of the Sunday I thought oh no we’ve really achieved

something because their counter attacks were less a bit more spasmodic and less intense. We still suffered casualties and the mortar fire got a little bit more intense but with the mortar fire one of my soldiers a chap named Harry Kennedy from Crookwell Harry, I trained Harry earlier and Harry

had a nasty cough. I looked over and he was not far from where I was and there was a ray of sunlight coming down onto the ground, and old Harry has a bit of a cough, and I said to Harry I said, “Bring your groundsheet over here Harry, there’s a bit of sunlight, and lie in the sun in this little patch of sunlight.” So Harry came over with his rifle and everything and he just lied

on the groundsheet and then there was a Japanese barrage of mortars and where the sun was coming through … the mortar bomb came through. Now bang goes this mortar bomb and Harry sings out, “Sergeant Tongs,” he said, “I’ve been hit,” and I said, “Oh gosh Harry,” and I raced over and Harry wasn’t badly wounded but he had shrapnel but I thought, there’s me I took Harry and placed him in this sunlight position in the sunlight and darned if

a mortar bomb doesn’t wound him. But anyhow Harry was evacuated back to Myola. It was about five hours march away back to the field ambulance and then when Harry was right again he walked from there all the way back to Gona and he just arrived at Gona as the battle of Gona

was going on, but anyhow he survived. But that’s how it went.

Yes, it was a place called Myola. It was about half way through the Owen Stanley Ranges. The Kokoda Track itself went through Efogi and Kagi and then Templeton’s Crossing through the famous Kagi Gap as they

called it and then there was a diversion route that Bert Kinsel more or less found and worked out from Templeton’s Crossing down through Myola and joined the original Kokoda Track just north of Efogi when we went into Myola that’s where they dropped a lot of supplies because of the openness. When we went into Myola the jungle stopped

and there’s this, I don’t know how many thousands of acres of openness just the grass about 15 inches high just waving in the wind and I know when I came out and spotted this open area my eyes blinked I thought gosh I really must be having hallucinations there must be something wrong with me and sure enough there was nothing wrong with this open area. It just seemed to be unreal that there was such an open area in the jungle. We

were told it was probably from an extinct volcano crater or craters many, many, a long time ago. That was Myola number one and then Myola number two was a smaller area with a belt of timber between them and in that area the Eora Creek rises there’s this beautiful clear stream comes

through this flat country and ended up going into, this about 6,500 feet altitude. It could be a little bit more. And that’s where they dropped supplies and they also landed some, they set up a field ambulance there at Myola and they also flew a light plane in to evacuate some of the sick and

wounded and they also flew tri-motor Stinson planes in but unfortunately that never went on for long, for many trips because the planes, well this Stinson one bogged in the dampness of this area and then I think a lot of pilots wouldn’t fly into there because they weren’t so sure they were going

to get out again. So that stopped the evacuation of wounded and the sick by plane. But at Myola it was a good dropping ground. The biscuit bombers used to drop and so on. But this stream in Myola when we came to it we were given a bit of time and we knew that the Japanese, some of

the 25th Brigade were engaging the Japanese further on at a place called Bamboo Ridge so we knew it was pretty safe there so we were told we could have a swim or a wash in the creek if we wanted to. Anyhow we peeled off, beautiful sunshine and as soon as I went into the water it was

icy cold. So all you could do was get your steel helmet and stand on the bank and have, but the water was icy cold. You just couldn’t stay in it. It was beautiful fresh water but from Myola that’s when we went on to Templeton’s Crossing. On the 24th October we came back to Myola to

pick up supplies and advance forward again.

Well the attitude to the 3rd Battalion the only ones I ever came across was very good because

we had performed and they accepted performance as sort of something pretty good.

I would say so. Their attitude once we were able to show that we were capable they accepted us as sort of one of them.

Oh I think we were just accepted as being sort of troops but nothing special just soldiers but having not been in any campaign before well we didn't we never knew how we were going to perform. But we also knew that

some of those soldiers that were probably a bit critical but had also had not been in action themselves. It’s really a bit of a myth this veterans from the Middle East because not all of them were veterans. A lot of the chaps were having their first front line activity the same as we were on the Kokoda Track. Even though they might have been in the Middle East it wasn’t necessarily that they were there firing at an enemy.

No, I think a lot of the animosity between the militia, and the AIF and the militia is a little bit, is unfounded and some AIF that criticised the militia were people that I don’t think performed or were able to be the equivalent of the militia themselves.

On the Kokoda Track, we had a fair bit there because we used to meet up with them and they met up with us and dropping grounds we picked up supplies and they used the supplies and then like this when the advance went forward on the Kokoda Track after the

we’d stormed back to Imita Ridge and then the 25th Brigade sort of led an advance back onto Ioribaiwa Ridge but Ioribaiwa Ridge the 3rd Battalion was a vanguard. The 3rd Battalion was actually the vanguard on the Kokoda Track and I led the patrol that found the Japanese on the Kokoda Track after they left Ioribaiwa. There was a patrol by Lieutenant Barnett of the 2/25th. He went

around through Myola and he found the Japanese I’d say around in the area of Bamboo Ridge. An interesting one there was that my task was to find the Japanese, or just find them. On the morning of the 8th of October when we found them about

half an hour or less before I actually found them I could hear firing to my right which is you know a fair way away but it was the [(UNCLEAR)] patrol engaging the Japanese in the area of the Bamboo Ridge area around Myola, and just after that we engaged and we found them and engaged them on the old Kokoda

Track between Kagi and Templeton’s Crossing. So that’s how close it was the two patrols. But we were still a long way from him and vice versa and we at that stage just on two days away from our 3rd Battalion and but actions like that the AIF soldiers

they appreciated the our 3rd Battalion more by knowing that we were quite capable of doing things that had to be done.

Yes that was very important Louise. That was the first time, we were the 3rd Battalion and they were the 2/3rd Battalion.

and you see some of the 2/3rd Battalion soldiers had served in the 3rd Militia Battalion earlier so we had, there was a sort of closeness. But we were very much appreciated by the 2/3rd Battalion at Oivi when we went up to help them and they, and of course right through there so our performance was as good as any.

As I said earlier I ended up being with the 2/3rd Battalion. I fought with the militia battalion. I also fought with the 2/3rd AIF battalion and I was in Korea as a front line observer for Eastern Command and the Korean Force was a special force, all pretty good soldiers but our 3rd Battalion stood up as good as any.

Yes.

One thing there the AIF battalion seemed to just get a little bit more preference with

arms and equipment than the militia battalion. I found the AIF battalion below our CO, Colonel Cameron, was very good. The CO of the 2/3rd Battalion, Colonel Ian Hutchison, was also very good and I found the 2/3rd Battalion company commanders

had a bit more edge on the our 3rd Battalion company commanders.

Well I in my own personal experience I discovered that, I found that, I’m talking about B Company in the 2/3rd Battalion. Captain John McDonald the company commander. In any activity Captain McDonald seemed to be just over your shoulder type thing.

He was always up close to the activity except of course when you were out on some long distance patrol. Our company commanders in the 2/3rd seemed to be always close by, which was very supportive, and it was very good to know that your back up was just over your shoulder.

Yes. I’m afraid our just my own company, the company commander could have been a little more, what shall we say, attentive especially in being up to where the action was. But taken all round the soldiers themselves the individual soldier was similar. Of course

the soldiers had had more battle experience were they did have an edge. I mentioned earlier about the survival of a certain group, well they were survivors because some of them had survived the battles in the desert and in Greece and what activity had taken part on Crete.

Well they had they had new soldiers, a fair number of new soldiers, but when we marched into the 2/3rd with our battle experience on the Kokoda Track we were, we blended in very well.

Well there was that to a certain point Louise.

You still had to more or less re-prove yourself. You might have been very good with some other unit but you’re now in another unit and I mentioned earlier about the drowned horse in Flaggy Creek. I still carried on my activity. I had one patrol out from the 2/3rd

and I can remember very well we were 2/3rd Infantry Battalion. There was the 2/3rd Machinegun Battalion. They were just slightly inland from the coast and they were a machinegun battalion but they'd been, what shall we say, instructed to go in as an infantry battalion. So the 2/3rd Machine Gun Battalion was inland and anyhow the Colonel

Hutchison they must have got word because I had to report for CO through our company commander and he said to me Bede he said select ten men and be protective to two surgeons from the field ambulance. They had to go inland to the 2/3rd Machine Gun Battalion because some of their members had been badly wounded with head wounds and these surgeons had to go on a it was about oh probably

about a three and a half hour march or four hour march. So anyhow I selected these fellows from 10 Platoon of the 2/3rd all solid soldiers. So we picked up the two surgeons and away we went. Now by the time we got to the 2/3rd machine gunners they were still fighting the Japanese in this particular spot. Rations had been dropped to them and

by parachute in this particular place and some of the supply dropping parachutes had fallen in amongst the trees and there was one 2/3rd machine gunner said here we are we were on one side tugging at these supplies and then he said on the other side I’d be darned if there wasn’t Japanese trying to get the same sort of off the parachutes. But anyhow while I was waiting for the surgeons to carry out their

activity with these wounded soldiers we joined in and helped the 2/3rd Machine Gunners, me and the ten men. We took part in the battle. I’m not too sure how long we were there, probably three hours, and one surgeon said to me that one of the 2/3rd Machine Gunners had a bad head wound so they sterilised a two shilling piece

and used that to put over this wound in his head and helped bandage it up and so on. But anyhow the two the patients they worked on survived and when it was time to go we headed back to the coast. We just got back just on dark. The two surgeons unfortunately I don’t remember their name now but they were I did know them at the time, anyhow they

thanked us very much and shook hands with everybody because they I think they were probably saying that they didn’t know that they would get up there and back again in one piece. Anyhow this was another one of selecting soldiers of you know really fair dinkum types.

Well they were still very they were still capable of inflicting casualties and we treated them just like we treated them in the Owen Stanley’s. Our supply and support was better. Had artillery support and in some cases air support.

But the Japanese themselves they still fought pretty well. In fact they fought extra well and then the brigade in the Torricelli Mountains they encountered a bit more probably resistance because they had access to native gardens up there, they were in better condition, but along the coast the 19th Brigade and the 16th Brigade and in slightly inland we fought along there.

Well the front line fellow they kept drawing back. The casualties of the Japanese they weren’t as robust as the one on the Kokoda Track. I think shortage of supply was getting at them a bit but they still had a lot of fight in them. They still didn’t just give in. They just

fought pretty hard.

No I never. I heard about the tunnels around the Wewak area but I never ever encountered any in there we most of our well our encounters was sort of jungle type and semi-jungle foliage.

Well a little bit, because we before on our final leave to go back up I was married on the 16th September 1944 and it was a little bit difficult but then there just wasn't me, there was other fellows leaving their wife and in some cases families so

and of course the war was still on. It was still a pretty involved a lot of people but the war was still on and until the war was finished that was it. It still had to be dealt with.

Well it's

a strange thing Louise. Even at Kokoda Track I don’t know, I never ever asked any other soldier what their attitude of prospects of survival but somehow I never thought I’d ever be a casualty, which was probably a bit strange. But I never ever thought that they were going to sort of get me. I knew at times there were dangerous things and so on but it never ever crossed my

mind I wouldn’t survive but that maybe each soldier had the same attitude. I’m not sure about that.

What's this about 1944? Yes I think by that time I had had letters from my mother and she said that she'd had her notification and Reg was a prisoner of war of the Japanese and I think she ended up getting a little sort of a card from

him, just a card saying he was well and he was well-treated or something similar like that and I was in Japan in 1953. I think I was close to this place where he had been a prisoner up there but it wasn't very distinct just exactly where he was in Japan. He was in he was not far from

Kobe and

Mm.

No. No, I didn’t know. All I knew was I was pretty very sick and that was a strange thing with the scrub typhus. The fellows like I was

pretty slim sort of thing and fellows with type of statue seemed to survive better than ones that were a little bit more padding on their body. We had one fellow with us he was that thin the boys used to say if he stood behind the tent pole you wouldn’t see him and he had scrub typhus and survived, and yet there wasn’t very much of him at all but he still survived.

Nobody ever told me until I eventually got some records and on the records it showed that I had scrub typhus.

Yeah well I think there'd be some there'd be truth in that because

what we seemed to find out is that the soldier that knew he had scrub typhus sort of gave up the ghost a bit. He sort of had this attitude that nothing would save him. There was one soldier when I left to go up the Kumusi River on this patrol one of our 3rd Battalion soldiers was he was very sick there and he was a devout

Roman Catholic and he had his rosary beads in his hand lying in this makeshift stretcher but he had scrub typhus and he died. He died there. But he was much more robust than I was but yet he still died. And some of our other wiry types, another young fellow named Georgie Webb from Griffith in New South Wales

George was about my build and he had scrub typhus and George survived and lived for a long time after.

Well it's what going from my own experience it’s severe fever and not much interest in food or nourishment and I think that’s partly the thing that kills soldiers that

is not wanting to take nourishment and then their condition weakens so much there’s nothing to fight off their complaint.

Well this is right, yes Louise. In 1956 I had a kidney failure in Concord Hospital and I was in Concord Hospital

for 14 days. That was before they had the kidney machines, these dialysis machines, and for fourteen days I never had any food or water by mouth though I had an intravenous drip after a certain number of days but that was an amazing thing and the padre, the chaplain at Concord used to come to give me communion

and he wasn’t even allowed to give me the wafer or the wine. He’d just say the service and so on but then there was a doctor there Sir Charles Bickerton Blackburn. He had a look at me a few times and I don’t know what his instructions were to the others but they were very kind and very good in Concord and I think they got to the

stage of asking Joan whether they wanted me buried and this was on I think it was a Tuesday night and early next morning my kidneys started to work again and been going pretty good ever since. I had another case in 1970 where I was back in Concord with severe pains around my spine and so on and the doctor there said I had a golden staph in my body

still from scrub typhus and I had went into this nuclear scanner and it discovered a lot of the tissues were eaten off my ribs on one side and then Sir William Morrow, another knight, saved me. Sir William Morrow put me on a course of some drug for six months and they put me in a brace, one of those brace things and

eventually my back healed and I’m still around.

I had one big bout of malaria but taken all round I was in pretty good pretty good condition but I had one bout of malaria where I went back in the 2/11th , 2/11th AGH [Australian General Hospital] at Aitape

and then there was going back to the front line area and so on.

Yes. Yes.

Well I had been commissioned in the field in that Aitape-Wewak campaign and I had at that stage Number 5 Platoon of the 3rd Battalion, 2/3rd Battalion

that was the Pioneer platoon, and we was there was a certain number of Japanese anti-personnel mines around but we were up on a place called Mount Chimberonga in August 1945 and we were going inland to join up with the brigade coming in from the Torricellis, and

on the 15th of August 1945 I was doing some activity with the platoon and the platoon runner found me and the our field telephone was left back at platoon headquarters and the platoon runner came and found me and said the colonel wants to speak to you on the phone. So I went back and the words of Colonel Hutchison was he said, “Bede, the

Japanese have surrendered but stand by your post.” I don’t know which particular post it was, but anyhow, I said, “Thank you sir.” But there was no really jumping up and down. I told the boys and they had a bit of a grin of their face and but we were still in the front line area and the war still wasn’t over as far as we were concerned because there was still Japanese out there and but we there was

something there behind the scene that saying that the war was over. And we eventually came back off Mount Chimberonga down to the coast to around the Cape Wom area and Cape Pus. as they called it and on the 13th of September 1945 we assembled on Cape Wom airstrip for the surrender of the Japanese General Adachi, Nagachi, [it is Adachi] and I was with a

group of one hundred and twenty from the 2/3rd Battalion and other battalions had similar groups and it was a really a great scene when they brought this Jap general in a jeep for a little way and then he got out and had to walk with the 6th Division Provo guard. Walk down the airstrip to the surrender table and General Robertson our 6th Divisional

commander was there and when the Japanese general handed over his sword to General Robertson I really felt a load go off my shoulders and I said to myself thank goodness for that 'cause the war is really over and until that Japanese general handed over his sword I thought oh well it the war is still on.

Well we thought it was pretty good and we thought it was also an evolution of warfare. It was sort of him or them or us and we happened to have it first and but there was no… it was part of, somebody's invented a pretty good high explosive sort of thing and luckily it was on our side. But a bit

further up the track I was in Hiroshima in 1953 and saw and Hiroshima at that stage had been well on the way to be rebuilt but we’re also told too that the target at Hiroshima was there was a big Japanese headquarters there, and that the reason for dropping the atomic bomb was also to eliminate this Japanese

headquarters, which was in the just on the outskirts of Hiroshima but no, I think it’s just part of an evolution of war whether it’s an atomic bomb or a nuclear bomb or whatever they come up with. They won’t stand still. They’ll keep they'll still keep inventing these sort of type weapons and so on.

No, I think the fellows walked around a bit, a little bit more freely. We were still fully armed oh after the 13th of September one? Yes I think there was they probably had their well they had their beer issue and I think there was probably a few beers, not that you wouldn’t drink many because

the beer was lukewarm Richmond Tiger but the only thing with that one, one bottle of lukewarm Richmond Tiger was equivalent to about 20 schooners of other beer. No, it was pretty good but we were still in New Guinea, and then the chaps that had been in the army longest they were given an option to go home but not

that I my role was see on Muschu Island, which wasn’t far off the mainland, there was twenty thousand Japanese prisoners and there still had to be a fair presence of Australian troops on the mainland and I was with a group the 2/3rd we were still then until February '46.

Only an odd one. Not

really. Just the odd one. It was I don't whether they were just bringing some in or just an odd one come over for some specific purpose. No, the but I think they also kept them away because you know I think they could have come to some harm if they'd a been you know allowed to wander around too freely and that. I don’t think they'd a got back

to Muschu Island like at that stage.

Yeah I think so yes, because yeah see some of our fellows they still had their friends who had been cannibalised. See at Templeton’s Crossing on the Kokoda Track the 3rd Battalion beside the two men cannibalised near between Kagi, Templeton’s Crossing we still had another I think there was four fellows cannibalised

in the battle for Templeton’s Crossing. So

Yes it did. It eased off a little bit but when I went to Japan in 1953 on my way to the Korean War

I said to myself the first Jap I see I’ll kick him in the shins but in their own country they're different people all together. I went to Japan, these people are happy, they’re friendly, they were very polite and what I saw of Japan it’s a lovely country and the soldiers a different attitude altogether but they certainly never had that same attitude on the battlefield,

well especially when they were on a winning streak.

Oh not really. I don’t think so because after all, the war was over and they were having it pretty hard with shortage of things and so on. But another interesting one about the end of the war on the afternoon of the 13th we had

I had a reason to be over the back of Mount Chimberonga and there were some New Guinea carriers there. There was about probably twelve or fourteen and they were dancing around in a bit of a sing sing. Anyhow we waited 'til they stopped dancing and said what gives and one fellow there said Japan man him bugger up finish and we said no he not bugger up finish. We gotta fight him yet. Oh no he said Japan man bugger up finish. That was the 13th

of August '45 and we still don’t know how they knew, but we were determined that he still had a lot of fight in him and yet they were makin' this having this dance to celebrate that he’s finished. So we still don’t know how they got word of what they worked on, so which was pretty good. I think we got more kick out of that than on the 15th of August when they did sort of bugger up things.

Mm.

Well the jungle area there was generally not quite as thick as on the Kokoda Track. There was still a jungle and the support, we had artillery support and in some, and also some air support

and by having the backup of artillery support which was very it was very good and we knew that also that we had this support, and the mortar bomb or well the mortars and everything was more plentiful and a lot of the activity was you’d use jeeps, at least the jeep could get through to where you were. So all this sort of the evacuation

of the wounded was, this is along the coastal area, I don’t know what happened in the Torricelli Mountains up in the higher country. That was another brigade up there.

It made it a bit quicker. We were able to advance, what shall we say, much more quickly more or less as more or less as fast as you could walk you

advanced, whereas on the Kokoda Track you couldn’t do that. You were restricted by the terrain and the ferocity of the Japanese but in the Aitape-Wewak one the Japanese were still ferocious but you had more mobility. Of course we were still a fair way from Aitape to Wewak and of course that was Wewak was the main

goal and of course some fighting carried on again from inside, from inland from Wewak towards the Torricelli Mountains.

Well I was a sergeant and I received word this afternoon to report to the colonel, the CO of the 2/3rd Battalion

and when I went up to see the colonel he shook hands with me and said he that he had received word that my promotion to lieutenant had been confirmed and there were some other officers there, including a very good friend of mine, this chap named Captain Fred Bell. He was my best man when we were married in St John’s Church in Canberra and we’ve known Fred for many years.

There was some other sergeants who had been promoted in the field also and the they pinned or put these emblems the pips on my epaulette and had a special sort of a meal, which was you know a cup of tea and so on.

It was probably stewed bully beef and some bread. We still had biscuits on that one but then occasionally they’d drop buns. They’d drop like bread buns. The only trouble with most of the buns when you got them they were pretty mildew but we got over that one by toasting them on the fire and sort of toasting the mildew into them or whatever.

And

you ate them because they were toasted. You didn't, there it didn’t seem to worry us and nobody got sick from it. No well that was it, so

No. See ideally by with your sergeant’s activity you were doing platoon commander’s activity and you had a

fair idea of what officers were responsible for and their behaviour and so on and no, it was more or less just a change of taking these stripes off your arm and putting the pips on your shoulders and that was the transformation and oh you’re eventually able to dine in the officer’s mess when it was built and so on, which I

the platoon I had, we built the officer’s mess at Cape Pus for the 2/3rd Battalion and

Yes Patrick. Our 3rd Battalion were still doing normal training after we reformed at a place called Herberton in Queensland and I was out training there one day and the runner from battalion headquarters delivered a letter to me and I opened the letter and I was informed then that I had been awarded a military

medal and also that the CO wanted to see me at lunchtime at the battalion headquarters. No you know, no (UNCLEAR) or anything with the training but see him during the lunch break, which I did. He congratulated me and shook hands with me and so on and of course back to training again but in the sergeant’s mess that night there was another

sergeant had been awarded a military medal, so in the sergeant's mess there was a fair bit of celebrations go on.

Oh drank another few more beers than usual but not too many. I think it was Castlemaine XXXX. It was the main one they drank in those days up that area. That was in but they still had a few bottles of lukewarm Richmond Tiger.

No it was just generally the good a gathering of the sergeants and they all congratulated me on my award.

Yes. I sent Joan a telegram and I sent my mother, sent one home to Whitton where my mother and father were. Dad was very happy because being an old soldier

from the First World War he'd but I had uncle, Tom Finley, he was in the First World War in the artillery. He'd been awarded the meritorious service medal and

Well mainly by

word of mouth unless it was by runner. Each platoon had a runner. You generally picked the most or not wouldn't say that, picked a fairly bright sort of a young fellow or soldier to be the platoon runner because he used to take messages of importance verbally or sometimes a written order but mainly verbal and he had to remember what to say and where to go

but that was one of the main. Besides the they had the field telephone but the wireless sets were unpredictable and they were also pretty cumbersome but most of the activity was by runner. That was some soldier delivering the message verbally or

No. They probably

could have used them on a different level but not well we yeah well the Papuans weren’t very happy about coming up onto the front line, which was understandable. They were unarmed and so on, except the had the Papuan Infantry, but they weren’t involved with us. They worked independently and so on.

Oh not to my knowledge, but they had the Royal Papuan Constabulary there at times. They had their .303 weapons. They were armed but they generally operated on in a different category to us. I don't know of any Papuan, or there was an interesting one. When I was at a patrol over the Kumusi River and we were heading towards a place called Popondetta, we came into the village of a Sasembata

and the Papuans were moving back in, because the Japanese had more or less left that area. Anyhow before we got to Sasembata the Japanese, some Japanese had had bicycles coming riding from Gona towards Kokoda and anyhow part of where we were, some of the bicycles were stuck in the mud but still in a vertical position as though they were riding along and he got stuck in

the mud, and the Japanese officer said dismount and sort of leave your bike. But I had one chap with me and anyhow he grabbed one of these bikes and the tyres were perished so he pushed it along and put his gear on it and pushed this bike along because the going was fairly good there. We got into the village of Sasembata and, but at Templeton’s Crossing one Japanese

before we buried him he had a lanyard poking out of his pocket and I just got a stick and pulled it out the and on the end of it was a Beretta .9 millimetre automatic pistol, and being a Beretta apparently they'd got it from somebody probably from the Middle East, 'cause they had like access to Italian weaponry up there, but anyhow I got this 9 millimetre and a couple of magazines and

put it in my haversack and I was cleaning it. When we got to Sasembata we boiled a billy and I was cleaning this pistol and the head village counsellor said “Imme shoot Japan man in Buna?” I said, “Yes this shoots a bad man,” and, “Oh,” he said, “me want to shoot 'em Japanese man in Buna.” I said, “Righto.” So I took, I only put one round in the magazine and all the villagers he cooeed out

and the villagers come clustering around him and I said which way direction to Buna? And he pointed in the direction of Buna. So I put the pistol in his hand and raised it up in the air so he wouldn’t be amongst his own people and I slipped the safety catch off and I said righto I said you shoot 'em Japanese man in Buna and he held the pistol held and pulled the trigger and bang and they all jumped up

and down and he said me happy he said me shoot 'em Japan man in Buna and I said to one of the fellas how far is Buna? He said oh about thirty miles. So but he was very happy, the chief counsellor, because he shot a Japanese in Buna.

Not as much time as I'd like to because

most of our activities they were out of sight they but when on that other side when the Japanese had been cleared from the area, around that area, they came back in and they had to re-establish themselves and the gardens had been pretty well denuded of vegetables or whatever, but they came back in with their pigs

and so on.

Oh they were so friendly and humorous and then they also could cook this sweet potato. We could cook it but it always sort of turned up a sort of grey looking colour. But when they cooked it, it was always snow white and much more edible, although we ate it pretty well, and they had grape ah breadfruit.

The breadfruit plant, as the name applies you can sort of when it’s cooked the crust is just like fresh bread and then the kernel inside is just like a new potato. So it was a beautiful vegetable.

I would tell him he’s very much wrong because I know soldiers who have said that they

more or less wouldn’t survive and they never survive. I had no intention of being a casualty and I stuck my head out as good as any, and I but for some reason I had this attitude. When I crawled down this fire lane under fire at Templeton’s Crossing, being a Christian one thing I did say was a prayer. I used to say my prayer night and morning and when I was crawling down this fire

lane I thought night and morning wouldn’t be enough, so I had another prayer in the middle of the day and when I threw that grenade, well it was a pretty good shot and I’m pretty sure somebody guided my hand. I don’t know. I had to land the grenade well I had to land it pretty well between these two soldiers Japanese soldiers, or land it

you know pretty close, which happened. No I wouldn’t and I had no intention of dying. I had no intention of being taken a prisoner of war. That's probably where 'cause our 10th battalion we said earlier sort of worked it out that we were going to fight to the finish and we did. We didn’t actually have to fight to the finish because we were ordered to withdraw back to Imita Ridge.

We were told again that’s the last stand but there seemed to be a different atmosphere there.

Well I probably bent the rules a bit there but no, well we also had a sort of another one about this sort of dog eat dog. If we didn’t get them they got us

and no, it didn't really didn’t really worry me. I knew it was sort of part of the seventh commandment 'thou shall not kill' but then again I don’t know whether I suppose the Japanese thought they were getting special dispensation to kill us and I suppose we thought we were getting likewise.

Yes. I join the CMF in the 3rd Battalion headquarters in Canberra when they reformed the CMF in 1948 and I joined up there along with other Second World War soldiers. Our

first commanding officer of the 3rd Battalion in those days was Lieutenant Colonel David Hay, he’s Sir David Hay. He was knighted a bit later on. It was a very good happy group. They're all at our first camp there was at Ingleburn camp. I had something to do with the Queanbeyan

detachment. We took a lot of volunteers from Queanbeyan. We travelled by train to Ingleburn.

Yes and then after a while I was promoted to captain and I was selected to go to Korea as a front line observer for Eastern Command. I went up to southern Japan first,

Iwakuni and then looked through around there Iwakuni and Kure

Not really. We did have something to do with some of the Australian forces there. They were a very spot on force, very well behaved and drilled. There was a certain

certainly a lot of American presence there with the service men but I didn’t really think much more of the American set up.

Mm.

Well we went by air to Pusan first and then

we went by vehicle from Pusan up to Seoul and then from another vehicle of course up to this front line. Where we were the front line was just around about that 38th Parallel.

1953. It wasn’t long before the Korean War finished really, but still they were having casualties and

the North Koreans and the Chinese were still pretty ferocious opponents. It was, in Korea they had well from what I could see they had pretty good support from artillery, the aircraft and they had like the British they had one British unit there that had the 4.2 mortars, which were very good.

Had a New Zealand artillery regiment.

Well I think one of the main things was to not be hit or anything. We were warned not whatever we did we were not to be wounded or anything, but which you couldn’t help because we were up there in the front lines. It was mainly to observe the modern day war at that time,

take notes on how the supporting weapons and if there's any difference like between this Second World War and that particular activity there. But the Korean the Australian soldiers in Korea were very professional. They were very spot on fellows and very good soldiers. The Americans,

the Australians had a certain number of black jackets as they called them, sort of bullet proof vests, per company and whereas the Americans close by were all issued with every soldier had one of these bullet proof vests.

I don’t know whether it was economic, the whether it was the cost or what but anyhow the Australians seemed to be quite happy

with their allotment of whatever it was. Another interesting weapon they had there was what you called a sniper scope. It was fitted onto an American carbine and that was the one you could have night vision. It was back in 1953 and of a night, the darker the night the better the vision because it used to you had this,

what shall we say, a visibility of a certain distance and you could actually shoot it at whatever came up in that area that the night vision one covered, which was but they were pretty limited. I don’t know how many the battalion had there but

Oh only about three weeks I think it was. Might not have been quite that long,

but it was still it was very interesting.

I came back. Oh we left Seoul and flew back to Tokyo and then to have a look at Ebasu camp in Tokyo and then back to Australia, back through Manila to Australia to Darwin.

As a matter of fact we were flying back to Darwin when the Queen's Coronation was on. It was early June '53 and Qantas put on free champagne for the passengers. I think you had five glasses of champagne. It’s a wonder we poor old plane didn’t you know it was stayed pretty stable but it’s a wonder we no, it was pretty good. We celebrated the Queen’s Jubilee with

champagne in the air between Manilla and Darwin.

No not really, Patrick. The war was too close I think to people for them to want to know much about the war. I think that applied pretty well to any campaign. As time went by it became more of a subject but I was I was writing put down writings

like pretty well from when I came home to I still write on it, different things. My wife Joan has been a very good mover on our book on the track. Joan has talked to many 3rd Battalion soldiers and soldiers from other units and has stories from them and writings and a lot of those soldiers now have passed away and

it you know it's just well it's gone forever but Joan has the writings.

Yes, at odd times yes. Yes and some soldiers don’t talk and some are only too honestly I believe people should talk because well for a start if they want to you know make permanent peace, the more people know

about warfare the better and also if somebody has to go to war at least they know how to deal with active service. We had a soldier with us in the 3rd Battalion, a chap named George Clark, and of course all Clarks are Nobby, and this Nobby Clark he served as a billy boy in the Boer War. This is George’s story,

and he’s mentioned in the First World War and he joined up in the Second World War and he was with the battalion in the Middle East and some order came out, there was a parade to some high ranking officer and any ribbons had to be worn or should be worn and of course when he put his ribbons on, whoever this high ranking officer came along and spotted him

and automatically said you’re too old to be here and so he was sent back to Australia and he ended up with us, the 3rd Battalion, he ended up as a warrant officer with the 3rd Battalion and he went right through the mud and slush on the Kokoda Track. This fellow was a billy boy in the Boer War and a warrant officer.

Mm. Yeah, I really go along with that. I think I’d throw in Milne Bay. Because Milne Bay was where the Japanese the first time the Japanese were defeated on the land and General

or Field Marshall Slim he wrote very strongly about that in his book and his writings praising the Australians at Milne Bay but the unfortunate part about Milne Bay, it happened at the end of August early September and nobody told us about the victory at Milne Bay until at least when probably after Templeton’s Crossing. So we still didn’t

know that somebody had already beaten them and if they had of told us like earlier it would have helped the guys a lot, because we knew we would have known then that they were not invincible.

Oh well I think Gallipoli had a part to play. That was a sort of an evolution. I think unfortunately today we seem to be getting too much in this

condemning the past sort of thing and saying what should have happened years ago, somebody should have whatever. No I think there's a bit of a different category. I don’t think Gallipoli was oh I suppose indirectly it might have been protecting any threat against Australia, but on at Milne Bay and the Kokoda Track that was a real threat.

That was really, they were only just more or less a little bit away from us whereas Gallipoli was a bit further but I think Paul Keating was right in bringing it up though. It should be recognised as a pretty important thing. It’s sixty years this year that the battle for Australia was and it really was. We were close. As I said earlier if the Japanese generals would have decided or

planned to land on the mainland of Australia they'd a got here. They'd a got here alright because like the fall of Singapore, thousands of soldiers in Singapore never a shot and the same thing would have happened in Australia. They'd a they'd a pretty near captured this place with a lot of not even firing a shot. It's you know lucky they never

landed on the mainland in any force anyhow.

Well that’s a bit of a touchy one. I think there was a genuine threat there but I think the composition of the force should have been something like the force in Korea. They should have been more or less a special force and they'd a got

enough volunteers. A special force they had a certain number of regulars and I think if that woulda been [(UNCLEAR)] they'd a called for. See the Korean War was a special force. They had this they called for volunteers to go to Korea. Should have done the same thing in Vietnam. They'd have got enough special force so as to fight in Vietnam but

this is sort of going back again on history past like sort of a thing. At the time I suppose somebody decided the composition of what it was and that was it but if they had decided on a special force they would have still got the men.

Oh no only, well I’ve got the documentary there that Peter Luck, that's just it there, made of the Kokoda Track which he called the Trail. That’s a documentary. Well there's been an odd one on Damian Parer that's shot up there

or just his odd short documentary or short footage. No I haven’t but I’m agreeable in last Sunday’s Telegraph Charlie Linn spoke about the need for a film on the Kokoda Track, which and I agree most heartedly or I'm gettin' back to Milne Bay again, I think we should always include Milne Bay because that was the first land defeat

of the Japanese. I think they should, if anybody ever tackles that they should really get in the mud and slush and a bit of a downfall with films I've seen on something similar, the soldiers appear in their immaculate webbing and their slouch hat that hasn’t been jumped on and so on and polish well their boots are newish.

They should get wet sweat-stained shirts and khaki hat that has been jumped on a few times and crushed up and web equipment that's really been in the mud and slush. You know really show the part but no, I would like to see a film on the Kokoda Track or other campaigns in New Guinea too but at least see one on the Kokoda Track and Milne Bay

but Milne Bay is still it's a pretty place. We called at Milne Bay on the way in 1995 with the pilgrimage the Papuan New Guinea pilgrimage Australia remembers.

Yeah, well we…

Yes Patrick well. Had the two campaigns there and then in 1969 our son was working at Mendi in the southern highlands and he invited us up, so my wife Joan and I we flew up to Port Moresby and then flew by a light plane to Mendi.

It was good. Very good. I

went from Port Moresby out to have a look at the Bomana War Cemetery and was able to look at some graves and the resting places of some of my friends and so on and but Mendi in the southern highlands is pretty much into the wilds of New Guinea and from Mendi we were able to go to Mount Hagen and some other places

flying in, and Tari and Neep and that but then the next time was with Peter Luck in 1980 with the Australians, the series called the Australians, and the time after that was with the pilgrimage in 1995 I'm sorry no, in '83.

Yes it did, because in certain places certain actions had taken place and it still seems strange to walk along the track without having a rifle with you in case somebody popped up but that was one of the strange parts of it to walk unarmed on the Kokoda Track but

that was in 1995 and in 1997 I was back there the last time with a pilgrimage to Gona to unveil a cairn at Gona to all the units that fought in the Gona area.

No. No . No I cast the…

like when we came back from the war in the first place well first of all I was married so that automatically meant that I had to provide a home and also nobody was paying me anymore in the army that you get your pay, so I had to make sure I had work to get money, which I did and I think you’re I was so busily occupied

that I never but I had room in my to join up again with the CMF in 1948 and no, but I'm still active with the different units. On the 22nd of June is the regimental dinner of the Royal New South Wales Regiment in Sydney, which I will be attending and then on the 18th of May we have our 3rd Infantry Battalion reunion at Goulburn

that’s with the Kokoda Track soldiers. I’ll be there because I’m president of the association, which I've been since 1953.

And at Duntroon, sometimes at Duntroon they ask me to, they invite me up to talk to the Kokoda Company at Duntroon, which I like doing.

Mm.

No I, I, as I say with that attitude of survival with my attitude of survival that's why I’m still around. I’m fortunate to be here today to talk to you to Louise and Patrick.

Oh well, I certainly I think you'd have to say you were more mature. You grow up quicker. As I

said at twenty two, I was twenty one years old when I landed at Port Moresby and I was already a sergeant but I had a I don’t know what I must have had something in me because when I was burr cutting on Wilga Station at fourteen and a half years old, the burr gang was about probably fifteen or sixteen fellows of all various

ages but when the burr boss, Alf, had to go back to report to the Wilga Station he used to put me in charge of the gang. Here's a fourteen year old half year old kid. There were blokes there at forty in their forties and thirties and twenties and this whippersnapper looking after the burr gang while he was away. But anyhow they everybody behaved themselves and we still kept

cutting burrs 'til he came back, but that was at an early age when somebody sort of found something in me but so that's how that's how it goes.

Yes I’m sure I do. Well with the younger brother

was a prisoner of war, the poor fellow. He was a jovial sort of fellow when he went away. When he came back he was a different fellow altogether, and of course being a prisoner probably influenced that but no he was never the same fellow, Reg, and the poor fellow died when he was sixty one years old. My elder brother, Alf, he was already married when he went away to the war. I don’t think it changed Alf.

He seemed to be the same sort of fellow but our main activity was to be gainfully occupied. Alf was gainfully occupied so was I. I was never ever short of work. Never ever out of a job. Never ever sacked in my life. I left an odd job but I never ever was dismissed from a job and…

But no, I was also happy with my lot. I didn’t expect anything extraordinary because that you know just those sort of things don't happen. You just, no I was quite happy and I'm quite it saddens me now our numbers are so light on. The

corporal last Saturday I was at the funeral of Nace Hogan, one of the chaps that was in my platoon, and the Crookwell fellows tallied up, they said there’s nine now in Crookwell. Nine 3rd Battalion soldiers and early 1942, a hundred and twelve had left Crookwell. There’s still some other soldiers around and alive but they’re still not living in they're not living in Crookwell. There wouldn’t be that many of them but in

Queanbeyan tomorrow morning where I go to the dawn service I’ll be seeing two Kokoda Track soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, which was oh that would be out of probably thirty or more that were around earlier. There’s only two left here. There's another chap so probably about three, but he wasn't he was from another area but he was on the Kokoda Track

but so that’s how the numbers are going down. It's and

Right Patrick. This poem, 'What do you Say to a Dying Man'. I wrote that some time in the 1950’s. As the title says, when you look at somebody you’ve known for some time and their life's ebbing from them the thought goes

through your mind just what do you say to this your friend, your mate, he's dying in front of you so you don’t, it would be a bit ridiculous talking about the weather or anything like that. But the thing I thought of always was his immediate family but then when you go to even say something about immediate family you really can’t say anything. You just sort of look

at him and that’s it. One thing I did discover to help me anyhow was to say the Lord’s Prayer just silently to myself and by the time you finished Lord’s Prayer the poor fellow you were looking at just would be passed on. But my inspiration about writing the poem was through that

to try and portray the thought or put in writing what, when you looked at a dying man, what went through your mind but I was always interested in poetry. I liked the poetry of C.J. Dennis the Australian author. But this poem I

have the title here, 'What Do You Say to a Dying Man?' "What do you say to a dying man, do you call him Bob, Digger or Mate as you look at the face you have known so well and the look in his eyes say it’s late. You recall the first handshake on a troop train amongst many men going to war, training in various military camps.

Wallgrove, Greta, Bathurst, Ingleburn and more. To go hungry. To have tired muscles and thirst. The pub Duke of York where we had our last drinks before leaving Australia’s fair shores. A fleeting last thought of his loved ones you knew from being his friend. If you happen to live through this onslaught they’ll ask you about his life’s end.

Just three minutes ago he was so full of life pouring bursts from a Bren at his hip. The platoon attacking as it had many times before when all of a sudden he’s hit. A Japanese sniper so deadly had fired from a dark weapon pit. The sniper was caught by the last verse from the Bren and my best friend fell close to my feet.

“Tell them I tried,” were the last words he said. My words of goodbye froze on my lips." The mention of do you call him Bob, Digger or Mate. I mentioned Bob there because my good friend, Sergeant Bob Taylor, was killed in action on the 29th of November 1942

but as I mentioned earlier, when confronted by somebody dying more or less in front of you I always said to myself the Lord’s Prayer. Mm.

My father Henry George Tongs. Dad was born at Alton, Hampshire England. He arrived in Australia in 1911. That photo there he was with the 13th Infantry Battalion AIF. He landed at Gallipoli on the afternoon of the 25th of April 1915 and was badly wounded at Quinn's Post in May 1915.

Dad only had one good lung after his wounding. He raised a good family and always was a hard working man. He enjoyed life. He sang many musical hall songs from the English music hall songs and was very popular in the town of Whitton where we lived.

That photo was a photo of Lance Corporal Bede George Donald Tongs, 3rd Infantry Battalion AMF [Australian Military Forces]. It was taken after some training at Wallgrove army camp in January 1941 and I was settling down to army life pretty good in those days.

My mother received notification about

A photo of my brother Reg, Reginald Henry Tongs NX72068. 2/20th Infantry Battalion AIF. Reg joined the 2/20th not long

after that was photo was taken. Saw active service in Malaya. He was posted missing after the fall of Singapore on the 15th of February 1942 and I think it was in the latter end or the early start of 1944 before my mother was notified that he was alive and a prisoner of war of the Japanese. Reg served on the Burma railway and also

in Japan. He was never the same again after coming back from the war and he died at the age of sixty one. That's a photo of Corporal Alfred James Tongs. Alf served in the 56th Infantry Battalion AMF and then when his 56th Battalion was disbanded

Alf joined the 2/1st Pioneer Battalion. Saw active service at Balikpapan in Borneo. Alf survived. He had a raised a large number in the family and was always a happy soldier as his photo shows there.

A photo of Corporal Bede Tongs 13th Infantry Battalion. That photo was taken when I was in Greta camp in 1941. With my black curly hair my father christened me my nickname out at Whitton was 'Togo' T-O-G-O after the Japanese admiral because in those days Dad, the Japanese

were the flavour of the month because they'd helped the Australians in World War I but by the time early 1930’s came along the Japanese had fallen off their flavour of the month but my nickname, Togo, still carried on. A photo of my best friend, Sergeant Bob Taylor, on the left and myself.

Both sergeants in the 2nd in the 3rd Infantry Battalion. The photo was taken in front of Bob's home in Church Lane Queanbeyan on Boxing Day 1941. Bob soldiered on in New Guinea with the 3rd Battalion and was my best friend. Bob was killed in action in the 3rd Battalion assault on Gona on the 29th of November 1942.

This photo was taken on the 17th of May 1942 on the ramp from Central Station in Sydney. On the right hand side is my father, George Tongs. He was my Dad had been wounded in Gallipoli in May 1915. My brother Alf, Corporal

Alf Tongs, in the centre and myself. The reason Dad’s there we had final leave and we I only had enough time to go home to Whitton so Dad caught the train and came to Sydney to see me before I embarked on the ship, the Van Heutsz, on the afternoon of the 17th of May.

A photo of Joan Davies. Joan and I were engaged and we got become engaged on the 16th of May 1942 and later on the 16th of September 1944 we were married. That particular photo I carried that over the Kokoda Track in my wallet and I also carried it over

in the campaign the Aitape to Wewak campaign and every time I’ve been back to New Guinea I’ve carried that photo with me. I also had that photo of Joan went I to the Korea in the observer for eastern command in 1953. The photo there on the left is my brother Reg and

myself and my wife Joan, the occasion being the presentation of the military medal by Sir William McKell, the Governor General of Australia, in around about July 1946.

Photo of Sergeant Bede Tongs MM [Military Medal] was taken at Cairns at the along with the 2/3rd Infantry Battalion. Went on leave in Cairns at the end of 1943.

Photo of Lieutenant Bede Tongs MM 2/3rd Infantry Battalion. The photo was taken outside our tent only a few days after the Japanese had officially surrendered

at Cape Wom from the 13th of September 1945. That was a photo of some of the Queanbeyan soldiers of the Citizen Military Force

about 1953. We had a very active citizen military force detachment in Queanbeyan from 1948 onwards. That’s a photo of me in the centre of the front rank with the Sam Brown belt on.

Oh, that's that one that goes across there. The on the side here you carry your sword. There's things for a sword sort of inherited from year one sort of thing. One of these things that they more traditional than you know sort of use type thing. The identification

disks of Bede Tongs. One disk is for the 3rd Infantry Battalion AMF. Another one is my NX number and the another disk is for my service in Korea, which was 2/52109. On the disk is your blood group. In my case it was A2

and also your religion. The disk was the soldier’s responsibility to wear at all times. The medals. The top row medals Bede Tongs. The top the first medal on the top row is the military medal,

the bottom row of medals is a replica of my father’s medals from the First World War.

Oh the medals across the top is the military medal, the first one, the 39/45 Star, Pacific Star. The next two are Australian Service Medals and the last medal with

the PNG clasp on that was to be on active service in Papua New Guinea after the Japanese had officially surrendered. I was never got home again home until early February 1946.

My father’s medals on the bottom is the 1914/15

Star, sometimes known as the Gallipoli Star, and the two medals one was a service medal and the other one was the Victory medal. The third medal known as the Victory medal.