Australians at War Film Archive

I

was born in Lugarno, which is south of Sydney on the Georges River. My father was an orchardist. He had a large citrus or fruit orchard. No schooling, no transport, so I never went to school until I was nine. My mother taught me to read and write and arithmetic and all those sorts of things.

I have two sisters, both older, who went off to boarding school when I was about five I suppose. From then until I went off to boarding school I was on my own. There were no other children in the area so it was a pretty lonely life, although I probably didn’t realise it.

If we had to go anywhere we went by horse and sulky. Mother would drive to Hurstville, which was about five miles away.

I went to Shore Sydney Church of England Grammar School. I went there when I was just turned nine.

It was a bit of an experience I suppose, but I enjoyed it. I stayed there for 10 years. After that I went to university, did first year engineering. Then the war broke out and I’d been in cadets and I was in the university regiment and I suppose

lots of the people I was at school with were joining up, so I decided to join up. There were stories about that. I wanted to join the air force, but I couldn’t make it. Had five years away in the army. Three campaigns, Syria, the Owen Stanleys [Owen Stanley Ranges] and Lae/Ramu Valley. One of the things that

I’d had all my life was a club foot. I was born with it. It caught up with me in the army in the end, so they made me A2, which meant I couldn’t be frontline service. So I said, “I’d like to get out,” and they let me out and I went back to university. Finished the course. Then went up to Broken Hill and stayed there until I was retired from the place. Retired to Bowral here

23 years ago. My wife and I. She died about 1995, eight years ago. Since then I’ve shifted house and come into this place, which is good. Excellent for people like me. You can walk up the office and say, “I’ll be away for a week,” and you haven’t got worries about anything.

Everything’s looked after. So that’s what’s happened. I’ll be here probably until I die.

Three children. Two boys and a girl. The oldest boy, Andrew, he lives in Perth. He is a geologist. His

office now, he’s in charge of future development for Hammersley Iron at the moment and travels to South America. He’s over in South America now, looking at iron deposits in India and other places. I’ve got a daughter who lives up near Gosford, Forrester’s Beach. She is a social worker. She’s just gone back to work. She’s got one child.

Her son’s 10. I’ve got another son who lives north of Newcastle at, what’s the name of the place? Just north of Newcastle. He works as a bricklayer/builder etc. That’s where

the family are. They’re not handy.

It was an area in those days, as I remember it, there were no houses at all between Peakhurst and Lugarno. Or there were a few. There were three. Oatwrights, Chivers ours, one further down the road. No school, no transport

services, no electricity or water, any of those things. It was just outer suburb with nothing. Had a punt that went across the Georges River. That was the only way you could get up to Menai and Sutherland other than go via Tom Ugly’s [Bridge]. So I just played around I suppose.

We had this orchard, which was about 40 acres. One of my jobs, I remember, we had dogs. These were tied by a chain onto a steel rope stretched between two trees, probably 30 or 40

yards apart so the dog could run up and down. But they were there to bark because people used to come down the weekends and start to get into the orchard and steal the fruit. One of my jobs was just to feed the dogs every second day and that sort of thing. I’ve forgotten that we had cows, which were milked. We made our own butter. We made jam from everything. One of the things I remember

I used to do in the summer was to go and pick blackberries everywhere they were. Make jam from that. We had a fowl yard, which there were I suppose 30 or four WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s in it. Collected the eggs every day. Used to put them in a barrel which had fluid in it.

I can’t think of the name of it, but anyway. It preserved the eggs. So we had eggs by the hundreds. That was what was the main thing. We had a telephone. That was the only thing that was there. Great big box on the wall with a side thing that you wound the handle. That was my early life there.

My mother’s stepmother, or my step grandmother lived in Wollstonecraft. She used to ring up every day I think, I’m not certain. I’m not certain who would ring on the telephone. After my sisters went to boarding school, they went to Wenona in North Sydney, they went there

because grandmother lived near there. We perhaps my mother would ring or they could ring. I don’t know who rang. But it was just a normal thing and maybe ringing up to order things and all the rest of it. That’s be about the limit of it. My father was a sportsman.

As a sportsman he grew up in Gippsland. His father died when my father was three. He left school when he was 14 and worked in the bush on all sorts of things. He even rode boats for Banboards Railing Station, cut sleepers, he worked on properties, he did all sorts of things.

He was a keen golfer. He had played cricket for St George for a while, but he was a keen golfer. To play golf, he had to saddle his horse on a Saturday morning about 8:30 and ride to Hurstville, put it in a paddock there, get a train from Hurstville to Arncliffe and walk from Arncliffe station to Bonnie Doon golf course, which was where Mascot is now,

play a game of golf, and then the return journey. He’d get back about 10 o’clock at night. So that was the sort of thing. There was no transport. There were buses later on but very few. So it was a life in the bush. You could wander down to the Georges River and get a feed of oysters if you wandered off the rocks. Used to go fishing.

Can’t remember the other things much.

No. None at all. No, I don’t think, I don’t remember any aboriginals at all. There were a few migrants. German and people like that, but other than that, no.

He did nothing. My father was in his 40s when the First World War broke out. That was one of the puzzles that I’ve solved since. My mother lived north of Townsville. Her father

was a sugar planter and my father lived in Gippsland. How did they meet? I found that out. They met in Bega where my father and my uncle, my father’s brother, and their mother had a farm.

My mother and father met, I think, in 1912 and became engaged. Our step grandmother was my mother’s stepmother, she was a very strict Presbyterian. She insisted that my father and my mother stay in mourning for two years before

they could get married. So they were married in 1914. My father was 44 then. He never went away to the war. My first, my sister was born in 1916, other one ‘18 and I was born late in ‘19. So he just worked the farm, the orchard and

he didn’t go away to the war. I’ve got a certificate in there from the Kogarah Rockdale, I think, rifle club to say he was qualified as a marksman. That was in 1916. I don’t know much about what he did.

Nothing very much. I learned a bit later. I had an uncle, my

father’s brother, younger one. They were on this property down in Bega when war broke out. No, sorry, in 1912, when my grandmother died. So the two boys were left. I think they must have sold the farm, I don’t know. But my uncle, the younger brother of my father,

he was a keen horseman and he went to Wagga and became chief instructor to the Light Horse people in Wagga. When war broke out he decided that it might end before he could get into it, so he paid his own way to England to join the Czars or one of those, and fought the war from there.

Got married to an English person, girl, there at the end of the war and came back to Australia after the war and was granted some land down near the Rock, out from Wagga - 500 acres. Not enough really to make a living in that place. But that’s where he grew up and his four children.

I don’t know much about the war until, at that stage, until I went to school and started to read a bit about it and the rest of it. So that’s all I really know about the First World War.

Her father was a, she was a Scot,

a Boyd, well, he was a Scot, a Boyd. He came out here with some of the Boyds. They both were in, there were two of them, were in sugar. He worked for CSR [Colonial Sugar Refining Co Ltd] on the Clarence River for a while. Then he decided he might as well get

into it, so he took up land north of Innisfail, up near Innisfail, developed sugar plantations, had a sugar mill, employed Kanakas [Pacific Islanders] from the islands and that sort of thing. My mother was born on the Clarence River, Chatsworth Island, but went up when she was a small child to north Queensland. After the birth of

the third child, my uncle Archie, she died and that’s when her father married again and we had the step grandmother. She grew up in north Queensland, was sent away to boarding school in Sydney from there.

Only got home once a year, Christmas. Had to come by boat in those days from Townsville down to Sydney and back again. There was no rail or anything. So she, that was her background. She taught me to read and write and everything.

When her father died, in 1912, he left quite an estate to his three children. One third to each of his sons was grafted out. The third that was given to my mother was put in trust because they wouldn’t give it to a woman in those days.

So she had some money behind her, It was that money really, that allowed we three to go to boarding school and the rest of it. Otherwise the income from the orchard wouldn’t have been able to support it. So that’s what she was.

Nothing. I’d go into Sydney once every six months to go to a dentist and that’s about all. I might go over to see my step grandmother. But other than that, nothing. You just stayed there and that was it. No, it was fairly lonely life, I can remember. There was three,

I suppose teenage boys, 14, 15 and that sort of age I suppose from what I remember. Two of them lived at Herneway, which is now Riverwood and another one lived down near Lugarno. They used to come out on weekends and mess around and do things. They each had a nickname

they’d given themselves. One was ‘Lord Eat More’, another on was ‘Lord Walk ‘em Quick’, the other one was ‘Lord Abide With Me’ and me. And the three of them had these nicknames. They used to come out and do things and run around. I can remember when they came out on Sunday; they’d walk all the way up. I was very happy to have them around doing things and play, but other than that it was

a fairly lonely life for a child.

These three. They called themselves Lord Walk’em Quick because one was, I don’t know why they called themselves that. The other one was Lord Eat More because he was hungry I suppose. The other one was Lord Abide With Me, because I think he went on church on Sundays. I don’t

know why. That was their nicknames.

It changed quite a bit. I went to boarding school in the proprietary school in Shore. The lowest form, 1B. The master there was a chap

called Robinson. His nickname was ‘Pansy’, Pansy Robinson. The first night, the first day I was there, I was given homework to do. Part of it was, I was given six words to put into sentences. I was very miserable. I didn’t know what a sentence was. I could have done it,

but I just didn’t know. After you’d been there a while, there was a bit of bullying and things like that that went on, but after a while you got used to it. I boarded for 10 years at Shore. I sent my sons there from Broken Hill. I thought it was good training, and it was, growing up,

because as you got older you became prefects. You had to take charge of the children. You were responsible. The discipline, everything in the place. It was a good training for later in life. So that was it. You started to play sport. I represented the school in rugby, cricket, athletics, rifle shooting. I was their boxing champion.

I did all sorts of things. No, it was good. I enjoyed it.

Well, you were suddenly put in a house at prep [preparatory] school as a boarder with, there must have been 25 other boarders. All different ages. Suddenly you were a mix. It probably took me

quite a, I don’t remember too much of that. It would have taken me a little while to get used to it. After a while you were just one of the mob. All got up at the same time, we all raced to have your showers and get dressed and get down on parade, go over to breakfast and do your homework at night time under supervision of a master. It just became a routine thing. So you all did the same thing.

There was lots of people to play with. You go down the nets, practice cricket, you could play marbles, you could do all the things you did when you were young, no trouble. That was the first time I’d really been mixed been other small children of my own age.

Discipline. It’s all altered now, but in those days, if you did something wrong you got caned across the backside. I, as a prefect later on, could do the same to people. The example was

if you were caught smoking you were expelled. Finished. No arguments. Your parents had been told that, “If anyone smokes anywhere he’s out. We’ll not have it.” So if you were caught smoking you went to the headmaster and you went home. Didn’t matter if you lived where you are now, or Broken Hill, or what. Finished. That was that sort of discipline. I can remember

when I was head prefect of Robson House, one of the major boarding houses, I caught a country lad, Rick Tindle, smoking. So I said to Rick, “Right, you can have my punishment or go to the headmaster.” He said, “I’ll have yours.” So I gave him six across the backside with the cane. I said, “Next time you wouldn’t get mine, you’ll get his.” But that’s what happened. Discipline was such that

in the morning, everyone had to have a shower etc. As a prefect I had to come down if I was on duty and line them up and see if their shoes were polished and all the other things. If it wasn’t right, they had to do it, or get into trouble. So that’s how the discipline worked. The masters, as far as I was concerned,

were all my friends. I knew a lot of them after I left. They were wonderful people. Although they disciplined you, I never, I was caned a few times, but I always deserved it. I’d done something which I knew I shouldn’t have done. That’s how the discipline was given. Then you had cadet corps and sport and in football and cricket team,

you learned that, no, well the discipline when you’re in the team, you’ve got to do your job. So that was it. I found it very good in later life all that, and the army etc. I found it no trouble at all.

School? In those days it was

everything was standard. Maths, which included algebra and mechanical type maths etc. Latin, French, English, what else? Divinity

and everybody did the same thing up until the intermediate stage. At that stage, you could start to shift a little bit. In those days, for instance everybody had to have a foreign language to go to a university. You could not get in. There was only one university in Sydney. You could not get

into it unless you had a foreign language, even if you did engineering. It didn’t matter. You had to have one foreign language, and English. Had to pass both of those. You had to have Latin if you wanted to do law, and Latin if you wanted to do medicine. So they were compulsory if you wanted to go on. So everyone did. When I got to the intermediate, I gave up the Latin, kept French and did economics

and other subjects. They were the main subjects and everybody did the same thing.

By the time you get to the intermediate you know whether you feel at home on the art side, the languages, the rest or you’re on the mathematical, that sort of side.

So there was generally a split by then and you knew you wanted to do engineering or something. That was the main subject, or you wanted to do arts and law on that side. So there was a sort of, by intermediate, you had some idea what you were best at. That’s really what it was.

I just wanted to do mining engineering.

The reason for that was that I had an uncle on the mine. My mother’s uncle, he’d done mining engineering at Sydney University in 19, I think he graduated in 1900. He went to Broken Hill to work with BHP [Broken Hill Proprietary], which was then the big mine there. He was there for about six years.

He found out, or he noticed that whenever they wanted a senior mining person they went over to America and brought him in. So he decided he’d go to America, see what it was all about. So he took off over there. Never came back. He became the general manager of Arizona and Utah Mining Company. He had a wonderful life there. So he done mining, so I

suppose that was the thing that influenced me. The other thing about mining was, which I probably didn’t know when I was in first year, but after I came back from the war, mining is not exact science. Really, to be a good mining engineer you got to control men. You’ve got miners, you’ve got all the things safety, you’ve got accountants, you’ve got everything.

So you had a bit of everything. The mining course had, you did two years geology, you did mathematics, you did building construction, you did a whole heap of things in which you had an idea of most of those things. But you didn’t graduate in any. And you did metallurgy, the treatment of ores, chemistry, physics, and as the professor of mining in Sydney then,

Ted Eastall, told us, he said, “I’m not teaching you to be able to answer exactly exam papers and the rest of it. I’m teaching you to be able, when you get a problem, to know which book to read, understand what’s in it and solve the thing, because that’s what it’s about.” He was right. So I always wanted to do

mining. I did first year in ‘39. When I came back from the war I went back into second year. I always remember it. We went into the maths lecture, Dickie Lyons was the lecturer. He put on the board a big interictal sign and interictal equation. He said, “You all remember that comes down to that.”

I could just remember the interictal sign. So I had to start really from scratch. It was tough. But because it’s not an exact science, it was easier to do that civil or aeronautical or any of those sorts of engineering. I enjoyed it. If I had my life over again I’d be a mining engineer. Travel the world, you see everything.

Nothing. Wasn’t interested in politics. At the university there was politics I suppose in the undergraduates etc. But the engineers,

we were a different breed I think to a lot of them. We were more mixed up in doing thing which were solid. Not theories or etc. We didn’t argue about those things. I can always,

well, that’s later in my university career, but there weren’t many that ever did mining. It wasn’t a subject which people do. As a matter of fact, Sydney University hasn’t got a mining course in engineering now. It’s done at Wollongong or NSW. But in those days it was the only course. You didn’t start until you were in third year. Everybody did exactly

the same first and second year. Then in third year you had to branch out into aeronautical, civil, mechanical, electrical, mining etc. Then you altered courses a little bit. So first year at engineering we all did the same things. Maths and all the other things.

I can remember, in third year, when I came back, doing surveying. We did surveying with the civil people, but they didn’t do underground surveying so we had to do underground. There were only three of us doing mining. We went down to Coalcliff, Collaroy for a few days to do underground surveying.

I always remember the manager there. Geoff Jefferson. He used to get us out at the end of the day and have a cup of tea in his managers’ officer. He had a daughter at the university at that stage. He said the daughter, who was doing arts or something, always referred to the

engineers as the ‘Godless engineers’. They never took any interest in those sorts of things; it was all hard facts and the rest of it. But that was how the engineers were really. They were sort of separate from the rest of the place.

I played rugby and cricket with them and that was about all.

Because I’d been boarding at a boys’ school I’d never, we never mixed with girls. So I never had a girlfriend or anything like that. Even in university. I knew a few, but you got up and travelled to university,

I lived at Roseville then on the north shoreline. You did your engineering, I went down training football Saturdays, the same thing. We always used to have a keg under the grandstand at university after the match. People would come in, you got to know a few people, but really as far as entertainment, that was it. Then in summer I played

cricket in those days. Later on, after I got back to university, I started cricket and then gave it away and took on surf lifesaving. Did that for the last two and a half years before I went away to Broken Hill.

I can remember I was over with another one of the three of us that were doing mining, Ray King, he was a younger chap,

just come out of school. I was over at his place and we were going through something that we’d been set to do and discussing it when the announcement came over that Britain had declared war and Australia was with them. I was in the Sydney university regiment then.

I can remember thinking, “I wonder what’ll happen now. I’ll probably have to join up and go.” So that was the feeling. We immediately were summoned to go on duty sentries round

army barracks and things, because we had to stop any sabotage for a while. Then we went back to university. Then at the end of the year we did a month’s camp with the Sydney university regiment down here at, not Narellan, where’s

the bridge they’re having trouble with? The railroads. Anyway, just down here. After that, three of us, all who were in the Sydney university rugby team, decided we’d join up. That’s the sort of thing we did. Lots of people did that.

I’d say because lots of my mates were joining up. It was something to do. It was no pressure put on anyone, me anyway. But I just felt it’s the thing to do.

The three of us that were in the university regiment for that month, we talked about it and we all decided we’d join up. Decided we’d all join the air force, but that didn’t happen.

I think it had quite an influence. Not, I never

thought of King and Country, I just though that Australia was part of the empire, we had declared war and it was your responsibility to back that up and go to war. That’s about the summation.

I was in the machine gun platoon. It was a mixed regiment. They had artillery, infantry and everything. They had a machine gun platoon, which I was in. I was a sergeant by then. We just trained.

Route marches, exercises, all sorts of things. We had horses, horse limbers, which machine guns were on and then galloped into the place, put them up etc. One of the riders of the horses that used to tear around with us was Rowan Cutler, the late governor and VC [Victoria Cross].

He was there. That was what it was. You were practising what in those days was standard practise. You’d do a night exercise and things, but by comparison of what you were learning there as what would happen later was totally different. Except that you learned the discipline

to do things, coordination and other things. They were the main things you were learning.

They were two square boxes, just like a little square with wheels and a connection between the second box. There were two of them.

There was two horses, a central arm up the middle. You put your machine guns in these two and the crews lay on top of them, and a chap was on one of the horses and then you gallop into action wherever you were, stopped, got your guns out, set them. It was just practising movement. That was the only

transports we had. They were horses and these limbers, which were really just two carts joined together and that was a limber.

Vickers.

It’s a machine gun which is on a tripod like that. It has a big, round, water-filled

barrel in it. The ammunition was in long strips and as you fired it, you got at the back, it went through, and away it went. It was a machine gun that was used in the First World War and that’s it. We never used it in this war, but

that was it. The Bren gun and various others took over, but that was the Vickers machine gun.

You did it every vacation. We did a fortnight in the May break, wherever it was. Then there was one in September, which you, well the war had broken out then and we were put out on sentry

duties. Then in the long vacation we did this month’s camp. That was what was going on.

It was just that when war broke out, they went out and arrested, or took into custody, all the

German people who were in Australia, in South Australia, which was German settlements. There were lots and lots taken into custody there. Virtually, they were rounding up all the Germans in the place not to do anything much with them, but they wanted to round them up before they could do any damage to army establishments

and that’s what we would roughly do. Just protecting them until they’d rounded up all the suspects so that they couldn’t sabotage our war effort. That’s as I understand it anyway.

Just go on and arrested. I don’t know how they were actually taken, but

Clem Semmler, you wouldn’t remember him, I don’t think. He was number two in the ABC for quite a while. He was a South Australian, his father was a German. Clem went through university and all sorts of things. I knew him quite well. His father was taken into custody in South Australia because he was a German immigrant, and there were lots of Germans in there.

I think they let them go once they’d established that they’d got control of things. They were just frightened I think in the beginning that they might rise and start to do damage before we could do anything. That’s all. We were put on sentry duty at Ingleburn or Holsworthy I think to see they didn’t come and wreck things.

Well, I’ll probably talk about this later, but as a soldier, or as part of the… we knew nothing about Hitler. Anything about what he was doing, about the Jews or etc.

Your attitude towards the enemy in Syria and down in the desert was that if you captured someone, you just would say to him, “Bad luck, mate. You got caught. Off you go and be a prisoner.” You treated them well; you did everything well because they were doing what they’d been told to do.

It was bad luck you got caught, or if we got caught, the same sort of thing. There was no hatred in it, it was just you were doing your job. We didn’t understand the background of Hitler. When I say there was no hatred in it, there wasn’t.

But if you read Stalingrad and the Berlin thing, it was a totally different Russian-German thing. Hatred was there and what they did both ways was terrible. That was the difference. If you read this thing, which is about the desert campaign, Rommel and the rest of it, there was respect

for both sides and although you were fighting and you fought like hell, there wasn’t hatred in it. They were doing their job, you were doing yours. The reason behind it you probably hadn’t analysed.

Well, that was a little different. You’d learned a little more about it.

The Jap [Japanese] was a different type of army. It didn’t obey the Geneva Conventions on fighting. Their soldiers were told, “You’ll never be taken prisoner. If you are taken you’ll be tortured and murdered and killed.” For that reason, they never

instructed their soldiers on war prisoners. One of the advantages for us, though it was hard, we’d be told they wanted the prisoner occasionally. To try and get a Japanese prisoner was very difficult because they’d fight to the end because they knew they were going to be murdered or etc. The thing was, once they were taken prisoner

and found out they were treated well and fed, they’d never been told they weren’t to tell you anything. So you could get all the information out of them without anything at all. That was one of the things that made it a little easier. If you get the Japs you learned all about what was happening. But it was very difficult to get one.

I didn’t hate them; they were doing their job as far as I was concerned. I think if I’d known the sorts of things they did in China and in the Far East and how they treated our prisoners, I might have hated them, but we didn’t know this. They were just doing their job and we were doing ours. That was the difference.

It was just a routine camp. When I say routing, like a lot of other camps we did route marches, we did exercise

out near Camden and through there. Often think about it. We wandered round the countryside. Campbelltown in those days was a pub, two shops and about four houses. There was nothing between Campbelltown and Liverpool at all. So

we wandered through all that country, just dairy farming places, did exercises, went out on night exercises etc. Just learning how to keep together, be fit, work at night. It was just learning how to coordinate, how to organise

and the rest of it. It didn’t teach you the actual fighting. You didn’t have to use the bayonet or anything else. That was roughly what it was. We’re all university students. We’re all educated very well so it was, you were all together, you knew one another.

We knew the officers. The officer of my platoon, Phil Green, he was a dentist. He’d been at Shore with me - he was ahead of me - but I knew him well. I can always remember amusing things that happen you do. At the end of the camp, three of us who were in this platoon.

John Fitzherbert who’s a doctor now and John Fuller and myself, we decided that last night in camp it was time that Phil Green, our platoon commander, should be dumped in the horse trough. So we went over, Phil Green was around somewhere. We went over to capture him and dump him in the

horse trough. He saw us coming and worked out what and took off. We were after him. He raced out of the OR [Other Ranks] lines into the officer lines, right up through the lines and dived into the latrine shed at the end. We were after him; we dived into the latrine shed. There, seated on the throne on one of the pans

was our CO [Commanding Officer]. Wyndere, Colonel Wyndere. So we retreated in a hurry. There was a lot of mucking around that night, so Wyndere got the whole battalion out and route marched us for two hours. From 10 o’clock till midnight. That’s the sort of thing that went on. We were all university students and it was just we knew what was happening, that was it.

Not much. It was just we had to do more camps and more training. In normal CMF [Citizens’ Military Force] training you did one camp a year and you had to do parade a few weekends in the year. This was we were there for longer, that was all. We did a camp in May and a camp in September and this long one.

In other words, your holidays from university were taken in the regiment. So that was the only difference.

Nothing much. I didn’t see anything. I think in Australia

there probably was, round the place, it always amazed me, well, the one thing amazed me, we were the first troops to arrive back in Perth from the Middle East after the Jap came in. Singapore had fallen, they’d bombed Darwin and various other things. We arrived in Perth

on a large American troopship, the USS Mount Vernon. We had a day in Perth off the ship and then we were going on to Adelaide. I was made officer in charge of the guard on the ship. I had various duties to do, which started at midday.

I had the morning off and I went into Perth and wandered round and went into a pub and had a few drinks and the rest of it. The troops on the ship were doing much the same. I had to get back at midday because we knew we’d have a few drunks and things coming back and it was my job to see they all got back aboard. One of the things in one

pub, I can remember being rather amazed. I’m talking with just the chaps in the pub, not army. Some of them, they were really nervous I think, about what had happened with the Japs. They were angry with us that we’d gone overseas and left Australia

unprotected. I was amazed they could think that way. That was that and I think there was a lot of worry etc. We came back and went up to Brisbane and we got into berth and we were told there was no leave. We went straight into training again for the Japanese were on their way.

The unit, my unit, the 2/33rd, I’d joined them in the Middle East, but they’d been formed in England from Australian units that had gone over there. They’d been away since late ’39, early ’40. They’d been two years since they’d been back in Australia. A lot of them were married,

girlfriends, family. When we arrived in Adelaide we were told there would be no leave, just go back in training, ready, in case the Japs come. So at one stage we had 230 AWL [Absent Without Leave] who had decided they were going to see their family or their wife or their thing before they went back. Most of them came back voluntary in the

end after they’d been away, but that was the thing. It was, I can remember the regimental sergeant major on one parade in the morning sounding up and addressing the troops before the officers came out. He was handing orders for the day, which was standard. One of the things he said,

I can remember he was saying, “And if anyone’s going AWL, will you please take all your gear and put it in Q [Quartermaster] store? I’m sick of picking up after you.” That was the sort of thing that went on.

I was an officer.

I hadn’t got a wife, I hadn’t got children. I just accepted it. That was it. If the Japs came we had to protect our families and all the people in Australia. It was no good us saying, “We’re not going to do it.” We didn’t know whether the Japs would arrive next week or whatever it was. We were the first brigade back in Australia

so that was what was happening.

That’s right, I felt amazed that they’d say it. We didn’t feel we’d deserted. We were at war with Germany and we had gone where we were told. Now we were back and that was it. So that was just the feeling I got in that

one hotel. It amazed me. But they were nervous. No two ways about it. We came after we, we actually did get some leave. They’d brought us from Adelaide up to Casino in northern NSW and we were all given a week’s leave. We went and saw families etc. Then we went up to Brisbane and

we were in Caboolture north of Brisbane. The Brisbane Line was on and the whole place was nervous. They were fortifying Brisbane and around that in case the Japs came down and landed. It wasn’t until when the Americans came into the war and the American

fleet and the Battle of the Coral Sea was won that threat stopped, plus the fact that we were pushing them back in New Guinea. I’ve got odd stories about the thing, but that was it. We trained in, just north of Brisbane. They were putting up barbed wire entanglements along bridges.

They were putting up all sorts of things in case the Japs came in. So everybody was nervous. That’s how it was.

There were three of us. Keith Chism, he was

doing dentistry, John Fuller was doing med [medicine] and I was doing engineering. We’d all played for Sydney University first grade rugby team in 1939. We were in the university regiment and we were talking about things and we said, “Well, soon as it’s over, this camp, I’ll go and join

up.” So we decided we’d join up and would join the air force. I said I wanted to wait, I had one post to do to get through my first year, it wasn’t being held until February sometime, I’ve forgotten what date, but it was in February. I said, “I want to do that and at least finish my first year before I join up.” They

agreed to that. So at the end of February, in early March I think it was, we went out to Victoria barracks to join up the air force. They took all our particulars and examined us and said, “Yes, you’re okay.” Then they said, “We’ll let you know when we want you.”, “How long will that be?”, “We don’t know, it could be six months.

We haven’t got the equipment for training.” And the empire training scheme hadn’t come in. John Fuller, who was doing med, said, “That’s’ no good to me. If I go back and do second year med, they won’t let me out, I’ll have to finish my course so I think I’ll join the army.” I said, “Okay, I’ll join with you, John.” But Keith Chism

said, “No, I want to join the air force.” The only ones they were taking into the air force then were the ones that had a pilot’s licence. So he went out to Bankstown or Mascot or wherever it was, and in six weeks got a pilot’s licence. Went back and joined the air force. He went over to Britain, was shot down over France, parachuted

safely, was a prisoner of war, he was in the same prisoner of war camp as ‘legless Vader’, the British air force fellow. He escaped with Vader, Vader couldn’t keep up, he got on his way, got into Warsaw and fought with the Polish underground for the next couple of years. So he was a prisoner of war.

John Fuller and I, we decided to join the army. I was born with a club foot and I’ve still got it. I’ve only got that movement up and down in that foot. It used to give me trouble playing rugby and other things. I was worried about joining the army. I thought they’d pick it up. So we went out to Victoria barracks to join up. This was about

late June I think it was. It might have been before that. They took all our particular right and we had to go and be medically examined. I thought, “Well, this will stop me being in the army.” I wandered in to the medical officer, a chap called Russell Jones.

He said, “George Conner, you play for the university?” I said, “That’s right.” He said, “I follow them.” We talked about rugby and the rest of it for 10 minutes or more. He said, “You must be fit, I’ll examine your eyes.” So he did and he didn’t worry about this and I got in. It caught up with me four/five years later. But that’s how I got through the medical exam without any trouble.

That’s why we joined really, be cause we thought if we stayed at university for six months they wouldn’t let us out.

The first thing, John Fuller and I were put into an officers’ training camp, an officers’ school near Narellan or near Windsor actually. That was

for six weeks I think it was in which we did training to be officers. Towards the end of the camp, the 8th Division was being formed. Three colonels came up to the school to interview us. They were looking for young officers. They

were forming three regiments. So we were put into a group, “Right, you’ll be interviewed.” John Fuller was selected and I wasn’t. I was very disappointed because I wanted to stay, we were good mates. So I went to the adjunct, who I knew, a chap called Stewart Peach

who was a Duntroon chap. I went to Stewart and I said, “Look, John’s been selected and I wasn’t. I’m disappointed. I want to stay with him. Do you know the reason why I wasn’t selected?” He said, “As a matter of fact I do.” I said, “What was it?” He said, “Remember when you walked up the steps into the hut

to be interviewed by colonel Jeeter?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Remember you tripped on the mat just at the top of the steps?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Colonel Jeeters saw that and he thought you were a nervous type and he wouldn’t have you.” John and I left Australia in the same convoy. He went to Malaya, became a prisoner of war for all that time. I went to the Middle East; I became a prisoner for a couple of months. So the three

of us had decided, all became prisoners at one stage or another.

Mine was the lucky one. I’m glad I tripped on that mat.

I then started looking after recruits. I

had a part-time job, I lived at home, I had to go down to North Sydney Oval and get recruits and march them round so they learned how to obey orders and a few things. Give them a bit of marching. Then after that I was sent to Tamworth where there were lots of recruits run by First World

War officers. I was one of the few young ones. We just used to do route marches and rifle shooting and various other things. Not much. We’d go out on a night exercise, which didn’t mean much. That was it. Just getting them used to being in the army and falling in and being in uniform and going on

sentry duty and working in the kitchen. All those things. I was the only young subaltern in the whole place.

Good. No trouble. They were all back in the place. They had come into it, volunteered I think.

They were quite keen to do it. It was necessary. They weren’t the trained people. You were suddenly recruiting a couple of hundred thousand people and you had no one with experience other than these senior ones and a few people that had been in CMF, to try and get them into order. That was the problem

they were faced with. No, they were good. I had no trouble with them.

One of the most odd things, I had a strike. All the chaps I had in my company I had up in

Tamworth came from Newcastle, they were miners, they were all very strong union-type people. Used to ruling the roost etc. I came out, one of the things; they had to fall in in the morning for breakfast parade. You’d come out and see them; they were all there and then march them into the mess

huts for breakfast. I came out this morning and the sergeant I had in charge of falling them in said they refused to go into breakfast. I said, “What’s the matter?” He said, “They’re demanding they have two eggs instead of one.” Breakfast was cereal,

milk, they got an egg and bacon and tomato and something or other, which to me was a pretty good breakfast for the army. But no, they decided they were going to have two eggs instead of one. So I came out and I called them to attention and I said, “Right turn and march into breakfast,” and they refused to move. Some of these more unionised chaps from Newcastle had got

them there and said, “We’re going to get two eggs and we’ve got to go on strike to get them.” I said to them, “I cannot compel you to eat your food. That’s up to you. If two or more people get together and disobey my order, that is mutiny and I won’t tell you what that’ll

mean to you, but it’ll be pretty severe. You can all break off now. You can go and eat your food or whatever you like, but don’t you disobey any of my orders.” So a few of them that weren’t unionised, a few country lads that came from the bush, they went in and had their breakfast, but the rest, under the orders from this thing.

They also issued orders to their people that they weren’t allowed to go to the canteen to get food because they wouldn’t be under pressure then to. So I went and had my breakfast, same breakfast, and I reckoned it was adequate. So after breakfast, rather than the normal exercise I said,

“Fall in with full kit,” and I took them on a route march then for four hours. Came back at lunchtime, fell them in and said, “Lunch is there.” They wouldn’t, a few of them did. So I said, “Fall in again at 1:30,” and put them on another route march until 5 o’clock. They wouldn’t, some of them broke ranks then. So I fell them in again at 7 o’clock at night, took them on a route

march until 11 o’clock that night. I said, “This will keep going until you eat your food.” It broke the thing up. That was the only problem I had with them.

That was the only one I’d ever heard of.

The point, that’s what I’m saying,

at school in the boarding school, you came up through the discipline. You became a prefect and you had to make certain things were obeyed. That training was good for the army. I never thought about a strike, but this was a matter of who was going to be in command.

So I decided that, as I said I told them that if to or more get together it’s mutiny, and mutiny is a really serious thing in which the army will take charge. As long as they obeyed my orders I couldn’t make them eat. But I made certain they were going to go on marching until they all broke the hold these top union-type

people had over the rest of them. It’s the same in some of these stronger unions. Later on in my life I had to deal with probably some of the strongest unions in Australia, the Barry Industrial Council in Broken Hill. We never had any trouble. As long as you’re honest with them and they know what you’re doing, that’s all right.

That was it, and after that sort of rumpus was over, got on well with the troops, no trouble at all. They respected me because I wasn’t going to give in either. So that’s the way it was.

Lieutenant. We

all made lieutenants after we left the officer training school we went to. That was it.

How do you mean?

Well, that was,

there was no equipment really. What you were doing was making them fit, teaching them how to handle the equipment they had, the rifles, machine guns and starting to understand the coordination required in the army. In other words, orders went

out and everything had to be coordinated. You couldn’t act individually and that was the main training they got. I don’t think the training they had before they ever went to the Middle East or Singapore or anywhere else was really making them fit for really to be soldiers to be fighting a battle with bullets flying around and tanks and all the other.

It was just getting them into a state of mind, which they knew they had to coordinate. You would obey orders and your morale was such that you were going to do it. That’s really what it was about. That’s all you were doing, because you didn’t have anything else to do anyway. You didn’t have equipment, you didn’t have, you were out in a town in the country. That

was it.

Yes, everyone was in uniform. They were all issued. Yeah, everybody had uniforms and the normal equipment. Boots and everything.

I stayed there

for six months. I was informed, just before Christmas at the end of 1940 that I was brought down to Sydney and interviewed and I was then posted as a reinforcement officer to the Middle East to the 2/33rd battalion, who’d been formed in England and came back to the Middle East

to take over with me were reinforcements. So I left Tamworth and came down to Sydney and picked up reinforcements from Ingleburn and we sailed in the early January 1941 I think it was. January I think it was. Somewhere round about there. I have to look it up somewhere,

but on the Aquitania. The Queen Mary was in. Johan der Witt - no. New Zealand was there, there were four rather large troopships and we sailed out of Sydney Harbour.

Just went and saw my parents, which was

about two days. They came up to Newcastle. I had to pick up some troops there. they came up and saw me there. I had about two days pre-embarkation leave. That was all. Took the troops off. We’d all been sort of

waiting for that. We were sick of being in a camp and marching up and really not being into it, so that’s what you joined up for, to go to the war. Another thing I think probably a lot of us thought about was that we’re a long way from the rest of the world and this was one way to get out and perhaps see a bit more of the world. I certainly thought about that.

Not that you understood what it was all about, but at least you weren’t going to be training in a camp in Australia for the rest of your life and not get around.

No, never. I never thought I’d ever be in trouble. You never, I don’t know whether other thought,

but to me I was going to survive. I was better than the opposition and I’d be there in the end. Not that you understood it all, but that’s the way it was.

Yeah, and the Middle East and the rest of it. You learned a couple of things.

The Australian Army was different to the British Army. The troops never came up and saluted me every time they saw me. I was given a nickname. I was called that to my face quite often, but they never disobeyed. They respected me and I respected them. They were

my mates and that was entirely different. I learned over in the Middle East and going over there a few things just on difference from us and the British.

‘Punchy’.

On the troopship on the way over there was a boxing tournament. So I went in it. I’d been boxing since

I was a boy. I went in and my name was Punchy and that stuck. It didn’t worry, it never worried me. The difference in the whole thing was that once you’d been in action with your troops, you were just one of them. You mixed with them, you

ate with them and the rest of it, in the Owen Stanley and the rest of it. You were with them all the time. There was no springing to attention, you were just one, that was Bill and that was Phil and you knew them all and they knew you. You respected one another and that’s all there was to it. That’s how we worked. Didn’t worry you.

You got nicknames and troops did too. I don’t know where half of them came from, but you were, that was just one of the ways things went. No, it was much the same. Even the colonels got nicknames. The first colonel

we had was ‘Hamburger Bill’ was the nickname. The last one we had, Tom Cotton, he was known as ‘Uncle Tom’ by everybody. “Here’s Uncle Tom,” etc.

I don’t know how he got his name. He had that when I got there.

Beerworth was his name, but he was just known as Hamburger Bill. He took them over in England when they were formed. How he got the name I don’t know, but that was it. It happened right through the whole thing. I suppose they got a name, I don’t know

why. I can remember the sort of things, I was walking, after I was retired out of the army and I was walking down George Street near the Australia Hotel, no Pitt Street or Castlereagh? Castlereagh,

that’s right. Trams were coming down. I was walking down the street with a girlfriend I had then and a tram coming along the street stopped halfway between one street and the next, not a tram stop. The tram driver raced out of the tram shook my hand and said, “G’day Punchy, it’s good to see you again.”

Then went back to the tram and went on. He’d been in the unit. That was the sort of thing, that’s how we respected one another. The officers were all the same. You had to have that respect, otherwise you wouldn’t get anywhere.

That was the thing that governed you right through. I had a responsibility for the men I had under me. I had a responsibility to the people above to do the things they

wanted be to do, but I had a responsibility for the lives of all those people. There’s an old saying in the army, ’men are expendable like ammunition’. It’s a very old saying, but the thing is you never wasted ammunition. So you never put a person into a position unless it was absolutely necessary. The other thing as far as

I was concerned, I would never put a person into a position that I wouldn’t put myself. I led them in action, with them all the time and that was the whole thing. We understood one another. I was responsible. If one of them got killed, it was my fault. That was the thing.

It was.

But they accepted that I was in charge, and I accepted that they were my troops. I knew they’d do whatever I wanted them to. If I had to put them into a position where someone will be killed, I have to do it, but I wouldn’t do it unless it was the only thing you could do.

It was quite emotional, not emotional. It was quite a thing. I was thinking, one of the other ships was the Owatia. It had come over from New Zealand with Maori New Zealand troops, full. It was anchored in Rose Bay

or Watson’s Bay or one of those. We got onto, the Queen Mary was in, loading all the troops, that we didn’t know then were going to Singapore. We were on the Aquitania on a bigger, about a 70,000 tonner, four funnels. A bit like the ship that was sunk in the Atlantic. What was the one that

got torpedoed or hit the iceberg? Titanic, that shape. There was a fourth one, I can’t think of the name. As we got on the ship, the Aquitania in Sydney Harbour, then we started down the harbour. The Aquitania was there and as we went, the Aquitania,

the whole of it started to sing. They sang a Maori song. What was it? They sang Now is the hour when we must say goodbye. They could sing those people. As we went passed this great thing, it was quite something. Then we all went out the heads. We

sailed south of Tasmania right down to the Arctic, round, because I think it was Von Luckmau, a German raider was in the area and was putting mines in odd places like Bass Strait, so we didn’t go through Bass Strait. We went round and came up to Perth. Then in the Indian Ocean we suddenly slowed down.

We had no escort. We were doing about 8 knots I think it was. All of a sudden, on the horizon, a cruiser or something appeared and flashed signal light Morse code. The Queen Mary, which had all the troops, we didn’t know they were different to us, she was going to Singapore, the 8th division, and she suddenly put on speed and

went right round us, hotting its thing to say, “Cheerio,” and took off for that cruiser, going about 30 knots. We went on to the Middle East and they went to Singapore. That was on the troop ship. That was my first, on that troopship was my first encounter with the British-type army. They had

onboard the Aquitania British officers and people and British crew. We all got onboard and taking off. I was made officer in charge of the guard that first 48 hours. There were, I’ve forgotten now, about 40 different posts which we, I never found them

all. The first night we were standing down about 10 o’clock at night and the British adjunct or whatever he was, in charge of the ship came to me and said, “I’m having trouble with your troops. They won’t obey me.” I said, “What are they doing?” He said, “They’re all down there in the canteen place and

they’re playing cards and they had all sorts of things going on. They won’t knock off and I’m truing to turn. I’ve told them they must get out. I want you to go down there and arrest them.” I said, “I’ll go down and see what’s what.” So I went down and I walked into the place. There they are, playing Crown and Anchor and the rest of it, drinking and the rest of it.

I pulled out a packet of cigarettes and came up to the first mob playing. I said, “OK, chaps. It’s time to go to bed. You can play tomorrow again.” Some half drunk bloke came up to me and started to argue. I gave him a cigarette and lit it. I said, “Come on now. All right.” I walked around and I said, “Last game. Come on, come on.” Then about 20 minutes I suppose I had the place

cleared and they had all gone to bed etc. Whereas the British wanted me to put them under arrest and thing. That was part of the first time I struck a, when their people that were onboard, when an officer came they sprang to attention and saluted. We never did that sort of thing. That was one of the differences I struck in lots of places. When I was a

prisoner etc. No, that was getting away. We sailed into Colombo harbour. Because they wouldn’t take the big ships into the Red Sea, because the Germans were still coming over and putting bombs, mines in the Red Sea,

so we had to transfer to smaller ships, take us on from there. The fleet of smaller ships were late coming back to Colombo, Bombay rather, sorry, Bombay and we had to be transferred and put into camps there for two weeks. That was my first sort of being in

camps which were run by the British. We went up to Poona etc. Stayed there doing nothing much at all. It’s the first time I’d ever rowed in an eight. I’d never rowed before, but the British that were up there at Poona, they had the Royal Connaught Boating there. They came round

to the officers’ mess where we were and said, “The regatta’s on at the end of this week, would we put a race crew in.”, “We’ll do that,” we said. When we looked round there were only six of us ever rowed before. So we went into this regatta. I was one of the ones that hadn’t rowed. They put me at number seven, just behind stoke. We borrowed a little light British officer Cox Cambridge. Some stages Cox.

The only time we got together, the whole eight together was down to the start. There were only two in each heat and they were 2,000 yards I remember. It was Cox, the English chap, he said, “Look, I can see you haven’t had much training together. We’d better just go flat out from start to finish.”

So when the gun went off he said, “Give it at a dozen.” He kept us going. By the time I’d got about 500 meters we were a length ahead. I didn’t, and we were rowing with oars which were in the old style. Rollick, which you rowed and you had to flatten it to get it back and turn it up again. I didn’t flatten it at one stage,

stood on it and caught a crab and it got me under here. I landed in six’s lap. By the time I got out of it we only lost by half a length. That was the sort of thing that went on in the place. It was quite amusing really. Then we were going back and went by ship into Palestine into camp there where my unit was. I

joined them there. It was interesting. There was nothing to do on the trip, you were crowded and you just had two meals a day and just lay in your bunk or whatever you did the rest of the time. That’s how it went.

I’ve forgotten. Probably played cards or bridge or something like that. There’s nothing much you can you. You’re just there. You can go outside on the rail and watch the ships go by, the others in the convoy, but other than that, not very much. You

couldn’t do anything. There was nothing you really could do. I don’t remember any entertainment onboard or anything. No, I don’t have any recollections really of that. I have recollections of, when we got to Bombay and were told we were going to be offloaded and would have to stay in camps,

I went ashore with a group. NCOs [Non Commissioned Officers], Australian NCOs and myself. I went ashore to liaise with the British there to organise what was happening the next day. When we got ashore,

the NCOs were quartered in a hotel somewhere, British NCOs etc. I was in the officers’ hotel, the Taj Mahal I think it was. We weren’t allowed to sleep in the same thing, officers and NCOs, different places. So I said to my NCOs, “I’ll meet you later and we’ll wander round Bombay and

have a look at it.” I put my things away and I came back with them. We walked around Bombay and had a look at the place. I said, “Where are you staying?” They said, “Down on” whatever it was. So I said, “I’ll come down with you and see it.” So I came down and in this hotel it had a big dance floor thing. There was a great party going on with British NCOs and

women and all sorts of things. I came in and I was an officer. I stood at the entrance of the thing just looking at the scene. My chaps went off. I was just watching what was going on. A British corporal who’d had too much to drink wandered up from the table near me,

came up to me and said, “Excuse me, sir. Would you shake my hand?” I said, “Yeah, I’ll shake your hand.” He wandered back to the table with the other British kids. He said, “I told you he would shake my hand.” That was, I thought, “That’s a funny thing to do.” That was how it went there.

Various other things that cropped up amused me. We got to the Middle East and I joined the unit. They immediately sent me off to another officers’ school in Cairo when they went down to the desert to Mersa Matruh. I did the school in Cairo and then joined them at Mersa Matruh.

I went to a school in Cairo. It was an officers’ school. You were learning tactics, a bit about intelligence of the opposition, but it was

not much different to the school I’d done here to become and officer. You were just learning the basics of army tactics. A bit more about tanks, air force, how they combine etc, coordinated, but not a great deal really. I think they just sent me off, they were told they had to send one officer to the

school. I was the newest officer, the junior officer, so I was shot off. I think that’s roughly what happened.

I had no trouble. I was put in a company with a chap called Tom Cotton. Captain Cotton. He later became my battalion

commander when I was a captain. He was an Englishman who had come out to Australia three or four years before the war started. We got on well. He got married after the war. I was his best man. He became godfather to my oldest child. He was a good mate,

even though he was a colonel and I was a lieutenant. Made no difference. We got on well. He was known as Uncle Tom by all the troops. Had a great moustache, looked fierce. He was soft hearted underneath it all. He really looked after the troops. No, no trouble.

I wasn’t, I don’t know. It was just being in the army and you did as you were told. It opened my eyes to British; they were mainly British officers there at the school. They had a different atmosphere around them than we did, that was all. There were some there that had

just come out of fighting in Abyssinia and various other places. There were interesting things that went on. No, it didn’t worry me. As long as I had a unit I did as I was told.

I’ve forgotten really. I couldn’t tell you many of the characters. There were a few there that to me, they were officers and their troops were there. They didn’t know their troops very well. A couple of them had

almost rebellions in Abyssinia with their troops and really didn’t handle it very well. There was one Scottish officer there from some Scots regiment. He was really angry with the British. He’d had trouble, the same sort of thing. I don’t know what it was, I’ve forgotten. That

was the way it went. I’m not saying they didn’t fight well at all, it’s just their culture was different to our culture. Put it that way. It didn’t mix sometimes.

About three weeks I think. Something like that. I left there and went down to Mersa Matruh and joined the unit, which were in a defensive position because Rommel was starting to come back. We were actually going to go on from there to Tobruk and be one of the rats. We had three battalions, 31st, 32nd and 33rd. The 32nd went on

to Tobruk and we were going to be sent down there. Then they decided they had to go into Syria and stop the Germans coming down through. So we were transferred into the 7th division, not the 9th and we went into Syria to that battle and never went to Tobruk. But that’s where

they were going. We were in the defensive position. My platoon was right out on a flank 4 or 500 yards in front of where the battalion was. We were just dug in, mines all round us, they didn’t know where the Germans would come from, but you just had to stay there till they came or if they didn’t and try and fight them off.

I don’t know what we could do if the mines didn’t stop the tanks. There was nothing we could do to stop a tank. We had one anti-tank rifle, which fired a little round shell about that size. Wouldn’t even pierce the shell of a tank. I don’t know what we could have done if they’d come in force. So that was that.

I joined them in Palestine in Gaza. Nothing was going on, they were just there. They’d come back from the Middle East, from England via South Africa and around. They were there, they were

in the 25th brigade, which is three battalions a brigade. They were doing exercises I suppose. I wasn’t with them very long before I was shot off to the school. But they just arrived there not long before I got there and I delivered the reinforcement, which had come from Australia to bring them

up to strength. I suppose they were doing route marches and rifle shooting and various things. But nothing much else. Then they were shot down, when I was sent to the school, they left before I went to the school. I had to wait there for three or four days before it was time to go down, which was interesting actually because I

went to Jerusalem with a British officer who knew Jerusalem. That was quite an interesting two or three days there. Seeing what was going on there.

Yeah, well I went to Jerusalem. This British officer had been stationed in Jerusalem at some stage. He knew the place well. He took me round and showed me a whole heap of things and

sepulchre and the Wailing Wall and he took me up to the big mosque that was there and introduced me to the Mullah that was in charge of it. He spoke good English. He said to me, “I’ve got to do something else. I’ll leave you here with the Mullah. Have a look around and see what it’s all about and I’ll come back in an hour or two.” I

started to talk to this Mullah about things and he started to talk to me about, he asked me what religion I was and I told him I was a Christian. He started to talk about religion and the fact that their old testament and our old testament are very much the same. They’ve got the same routes and background. He asked me a question which has puzzled me for a long while and I

still think it was the most interesting question. He said, “When did the Israelites learn to read and write? When was the first chapters of the Bible written? How long afterwards?” I had no idea. He said to me, “They came out of Egypt and then they were taken by the Babylonians.”

He intimated that it wasn’t till then that they could read and write at all. He said, “Everything prior to that was by handed down by word of mouth for thousands of years. It was not till they could read and write it was written down.” That interested me. The other thing he said, “What

about Adam and Eve and all that? Moses was the leader of them when they were in Egypt and he had to shift them out. You’re in the army. If you had to shift 100,000 troops from A to B, which was 200 miles apart, you’d give out routine orders

and make certain you had no trouble on the way. Moses was a good general. He wrote the 10 commandments to see he wouldn’t have any trouble. They believed in a God so they came from God.” That’s what he told me. I’ve often wondered that was logical etc.

Only sort of overnight when I was at this officers’ school at Cairo. Other than that, no. Although

I remember while I was there taking a trip down to the pyramids and just looking around, but I don’t remember any long periods there at all.

Can’t really remember. It was interesting, it was a new place. I was seeing things that I’d seen photographs of. You didn’t mix with the Egyptians or the people very much. That was

about the strength of it. No, it was interesting to see and I’ve travelled a lot since and it’s the same sort of thing. It’s mainly people I’m more interested in than sights of buildings and the old things like the pyramids and the rest of it are good.

No, I didn’t. My, how

will I put it? Having been at boarding school, all boys, no mixing with girls at all. Then at the university you start to meet a few. But I’d never had a girlfriend in my life. I’d never had sexual

relations with a girl or anything like that. So that on that side I was completely inexperienced, put it that way. Although the brothels and the rest were there, I never tried it.

So that was my thing right through. In fact, I never really had a girlfriend until well after the war of any sort at all. Never had time to mix. But they were around the place I’ve no doubt.

But I never went into them.

Well, the only, I suppose the soldiers had experiences with them. I don’t remember them telling me anything

about it. I can remember after the Syrian Campaign and having come back from a prisoner, I was on duty with a picket in Beirut, no, north of Beirut. Tripoli. I remember having to go into brothels to

check that things were all right, but that was my only experience that I just had to go in and see what was going on. But the troops did, I have no doubt. I’m not against that at all. It’s just that I was brought up without any experience

at all. Just didn’t get round to it.

Just see there was no trouble anywhere in the streets. No fighting, dunks etc, you had to pick them up and get them back to camp and all that sort of thing. That was your main job. Mainly to see there was no trouble.

That again was a different, this sort of thing, pickets etc. The typical example, I was a junior officer in my unit. Just before we went into Syria we were stationed in northern Palestine, just south of the border of Lebanon.

We had a Bob, ‘Black Bob’ he was known as, that was his nickname, he was the regimental sergeant major. Some of the troops had gone AWL for the night into Haifa. The camp wasn’t too far away.

Bob was in there, Bob Roberts was his name, Sergeant Major Roberts, and he came across three of his unit, the 2/33rd, who’d been arrested by British red caps, the British police, for being drunk or fighting or doing something silly. He decided he wouldn’t let them handle it, he would handle it himself. So he

went up to these red caps and said he was WO1 [Warrant Officer 1st Class] of the unit, he would take these men and deal with them. They refused to release them. They were going to be taken into the British place. So he had a couple of his own people with him, so he said, “That’s not right. I’m going to take them,” and he forcibly took them from these red caps and was immediately

put on a charge sheet ‘under arrest’. He got his own units back home with no trouble. I, as the junior subaltern, when he was under arrest he was being sent back to, actually to Bethlehem, where they were going to try him or whatever it was. He had to have an escort who was equal

in rank. He couldn’t put... So I was the junior subaltern and he was the number 1 NCO or double warrant officer first class. So I was given the job of escorting him from where we were into Bethlehem. I’ll always remember it, I came down and the adjunct told me I was to escort Bob back there and they put us in a little truck and we both got in the tray at the

back. He sat over there and I sat here in front of him. After we started, he reached under the seat, pulled out a bottle of beer and he said, “Let’s have a drink”. So we did. We drank a few beers on the way. When we got to Bethlehem I had to take him into a hospital I think it was. CCS [Casualty Clearing Station] or something. That was where he was going to stay the night.

So I took him in and with his papers and the rest of it. I said, “Where’s he sleeping?” He was in a dormitory place. They said, “Take him down there to the dormitory,” which I did. We got there and we got to the bed. Bob sat on the bed and reach in his sack and pulled out another can of beer. He said, “Let’s have a

final drink.” So we sat there, had our final drink. In this place there were a whole lot of British tommy privates etc. They were…I remember one of them saying, “Look at that. An officer and an NCO drinking together.” I left Bob there and went back. That was the sort of thing that I remember the funny parts about it.

I don’t know where he got it. Probably from the sergeants’ mess. They probably had beer. All those are the funny little things you remember. He was a First World War digger as well. He was

a wonderful sergeant major. But he was discharged from the army when he was in his 40s I think. He was the one in Australia when we all finished who started our reunions. He’s dead now, but he was a wonderful bloke.

I never had any trouble with the troops. Not my own troops or even other ones. Depends how you handle them, that’s the whole thing. The British method of, “Spring to

attention,”, “You’re under arrest,” etc made troops annoyed and angry. But if you treated them as good mates and, “Come on fellows, now stick to it,” just treated reasonably, you found you could get something done, no troubles at all.

Not that I had any trouble, no.

No, I never had any. No, I can’t remember any. They were all good. That isn’t to say they didn’t go AWL and go and do things, but you handled them yourself. I never had any trouble. They were good.

Nothing much because we were at Mersa Matruh and I was in an outpost in this dug out trench with my platoon. We were just waiting for Rommel to come.

Then we were shifted into Syria before he came, so we were just out there in the desert in the wind and sand and all the other. Stayed there till we were shifted. If Rommel had come it would have been a totally different story. But in front of us were mines laid everywhere. We were just an outpost watching the desert, seeing if anyone came through.

In my platoon was about 25-27 men.

In a battalion you had, there were four companies each with five officers. There was a

platoon commander for the three platoons, an OC and a 2IC [Second In Command]. Five officers in a company. There were four companies, so that was 20 officers. Then there was headquarter company, which had mortars and signals and all those specialist things. Each of those had an officer. There were five of those. Then there was the battalion commander, a 2IC an

adjunct and troops anywhere between six and 750.

At the outpost it was just me and probably 25 men. Forgotten now, but roughly that.

Nothing. Not a thing. I’ve learned a lot about it since in my reading and reading these sorts of things give me more again. But no, I didn’t know anything. All we knew that we were going up and we’d been told that the Germans were starting to infiltrate

across to Persia or whatever it was and the oil fields were the things they were after. The Vichy French had started to cooperate a bit with the Germans, allowing them to come through there and that was the reason we were going up to stop it.

Just a trench six feet deep, sandbags. It was zigzagged, which you always did with trenches. So if a bomb went there it wouldn’t go round the corners. Covered up sleeping quarters, not very good. You just sort of crouched in there all together. You had to have people on guard

duty all the time watching. So you were relieving one another and that’s what used to happen. But it wouldn’t be, the total size of it wouldn’t be any bigger than the front of this house in length, but that sort of thing. You had dug holes in which to sleep and covered them.

That was all it was. If the Germans had come you would have had to, I don’t know what you could have done with the tanks. We would have hope they would have been blown up by the mines. If troops had come you just would have had to stay there and fight till they won or you won. One or the other. There was no retreating.

Just slept. I don’t know, you just slept and that was it.

We could wander around during the day when there was no enemy around. So you could get out. My company commander, Tom Cotton, used to come over every morning just after dawn to see if we were awake and doing, which you made certain you were. So that was the sort of thing. He’d say, “What’s happening?” and we just stayed there

all day just watching out over the desert to see if anything happened. But nothing happened at Mersu while I was there. I wasn’t there for too long after the school and I went. I suppose it was only about a couple of weeks or so and then we were shifted into Syria.

We were

put on trucks and taken back through Cairo, up to the Suez Canal at Port Said where we were transferred at midnight across the canal by barges I think it was. On the other side of the canal

there were trains waiting to take us up to Gaza. While we were transferring, German bombers came over and dropped bombs along the canal. So the trains took off, they wouldn’t stay; in case they got hit. We

got over the other side, we were given a feed I remember. They had etc. Then we got on the trains. The trains came back, we had to wait for them. Trains came back, loaded onto the trains and were taken up from there right up to northern Palestine, up to the Lebanon border were we were encamped for 10 days

I suppose, in the hills, getting ready to go in. We just went by trucks to the canal and then by train up from there.

Not really. The desert round Mersa Matruh there’s a bit of a lump

there. That’s why it was fortified I think. Going south there was just nothing until you got to the Qattara Depression. You couldn’t see that, but that was south of us somewhere, which was one of the things which stopped Rommel out of flanking El Alamein.

The canal, there was nothing there as I remember, and there was nothing when you went up into Palestine was just flat desert sort of thing. When you got up towards Syria you were getting into the mountains. Mount Herman and all those things came down into that area near Haifa. It was hilly and

mountainous etc. There was a river or so, the Jordan and Hasbani and various other things. It was a bit different, but I don’t remember much of it. I remember Mount Herman.

It had snow on top of it. When we were up in Syria I

remember it well because it snowed right down to the Mediterranean the year we were there. On the mountains in from Tripoli and through there, there were ski resorts. They sent a lot of our troops up to learn to ski so they would have a ski troop up there in case they wanted. I was very disappointed I wasn’t’ selected. I wanted to learn to ski if I could.

That’s the thing. That’s what went on.

We knew we were going to attack. My company,

9 Company, Tom Cotton was the commander. He’d been given an idea of what we were going to do. His first job over his company was to secure a bridge across the

Hasbani River, came down from Mount Herman and stop it being blown up, and another couple of things to stop them being blown up. He was to send some of his company, two hours before the main attack was to start, to go in there secretly and see if we could stop these things. He gave me the job,

two jobs, I’ve forgotten the second one, but one was to stop this bridge being blown up. So I went with him to a village right on the border, and Israeli village, and climbed a great tree, sighted up where this bridge was. It was about a mile in from the border.

I looked at maps we’d got, French maps they were, of contours and I worked out. So I decided I’d split my platoon into three and I let a group of five to go and stop this bridge being blown up. So we took off. The main

attack was to start at four in the morning I think it was. We took off at 2 am in the morning in the dark on this mountainous country. I’d misread the maps. I’d looked at the contours and I thought they were 50-feet contours and they were 50-meter contours. So all the valleys were a bit steeper that I thought. We eventually got to this bridge at dawn. I’d

hoped to get there in the dark and take them by surprise. It had a small army hut near it and we could hear a lot of troops talking and going on in the hut. On the bridge were sandbag things so that you couldn’t drive straight over it, you had to go round them. It had a long approach to it. The

other side was where the troops were, so I thought we’d walk along thins approach. They didn’t know we were coming. We got half way along and they discovered us and started firing machine guns up the road at us. So I got the troops off and got over to one side. Then decided we’d have to advance on the hut, not up the road because they had this machine gun on it.

They must have decided that things were getting, they didn’t know what was going on. They thought they’d better get out, so they took off and left. So we went over and we got the bridge. Another platoon coming along from another company, they came as well and we had that

captured. Then I was sitting at the bridge, and Tom Cotton, my company commander, came. Also the CO, Mad Monningham. They were talking and then Tom said to me, “Right, Connor. Your next job of your platoon is to attack and take Fort Kiam.”

I said, “Fort Kiam? Where the hell is that?” I didn’t have any maps. He said, “Climb that hill and you’ll see it.” So I led my platoon up this spur and sitting on the top of it was this forts. Ancient crusader type fort. Square. Each corner had a big round bulge in it with things sticking out

for firing. Barbed wire entanglements all round it. So we had to advance. It was ancient volcanic country, which means you’ve got granite boulders everywhere and things to get behind. So I took my platoon

towards the fort on one of the bastions and got the troops to fire into these holes so the people inside it would have ricocheting bullets going round. I had some wire cutters with me. I cut the barbed wire and we got up to this corner and threw a grenade in and more or less had that.

That started the taking of the fort, which that photograph’s all about. I thought, “We’ll work our way along the walls to the next one and do the same. Throw a grenade in etc.” The walls were about 8/9/10 feet high, that thick of stone.

So we started to work our way along to the next one. The French had barbed wire entanglements, but they’d put spikes into the wall all the way up to the top, and the barbed wire was into that so you couldn’t walk along the wall. So this was hampering. I climbed up these spikes

and looked over the wall. Couldn’t see anyone doing anything inside the fort. There was a barrack room just where I was looking over the wall. The barrack ran right along to the one we’d knocked over on that corner. It had a door just there. Another barrack along there and there was things etc. I looked over and I remember looking and that door was open, no one about.

I said to my sergeant, Murray Sweetapple, I said, “I’m going to hop in and see what’s happening. Give us your Tommy gun [Thompson machine gun].” So I took a Tommy gun, it was an automatic. It had a little straight 20-round thing in it. I put another 20-round one in my hip pocket. I jumped in and I thought, “I’ll dive in that doorway and see what’s happening.”

So I dived in the doorway and it’s full of troops. They slammed the door in my face. Now I’m in the fort there with about 70 or 80 Frenchmen. So I raced along the side of the thing and fired into the windows as I went to the one we’d knocked out. Then there was another barrack running that way against the next wall. So I dived into that

and as I entered there was one Senegalese French soldier with his rifle. My magazine was empty. With his rifle and he was just lifting it up to shoot me. So I just charged at him and whacked him over the head with my Tommy gun. He dropped the rifle and put his hands up. I covered him with an

empty gun. I thought, “What do you do now? I’ve got a prisoner and I’m in a fort.” So I thought, “I’ll change the magazine.” On a Tommy gun, normally they have a big round thing, but this straight one you just flick a switch and it’ll fall out. So I got the other one out of my pocket and I’m covering him. So I flicked the switch and pulled it out. I went to put it in and it wouldn’t go.

He saw I was in trouble, dived out the window and off. I was very glad. Soon get rid of me. I’d had the magazine upside down when I tried to put it in. So I went up to the far end and I threw a grenade in the corner there and etc was there. I came back into the one we’d first knocked out in the corner. Murray Sweetapple, my sergeant who was there with some others

said, “Do you want some help in there?” I said, “Too right I want help.” He said, “We’ll come in.” They got up to the wall where I’d got over and they clambered up and just underneath the top and jumped over. There were four of them. The French opened fire at them and one of them got

shot through the fleshy part of the shoulder, not a bad one, as he got over and fell back outside. So he was all right. The others hit the ground and took off to where I was. It was like a relay race really. Jack Waits had his .303 in his hand like a baton. He just took off to where I was.

The machine gun from the far corner was firing at them and the gunner must have been firing at them, because the bullets were hitting behind them as they ran, in other words, he wasn’t aiming in front of them so they’d run into the bullets. In front of the doorway where I was in this bastion, about five feet high was a sandbag erection to stop

shrapnel or anything going into the doorway I suppose. Jack Weight cleared that without touching it with his rifle and everything. The others, Murray Sweetapple and Campbell, in that photo there is the four, came and got in there. We stayed in there for the rest of the day, which I suppose was about

8 hours. We got some of the large rocks out so that we had a passage way. Instead of just a narrow slit, we’d enlarged it. We held onto it. The French officer and another chap came charging in.

He wanted to give himself up actually. He wanted to join in the Free French. So he came in with pistol in hand. I grabbed that and talked to him in broken French for a little bit. Not that I could speak French, but I’d done it for the leaving. Then we decided that when nightfall came, we’d get out. Tom Cotton

pulled us out. He said he’d get the artillery to bombard it and attack it in the morning. The French decided to leave it, so in the morning when we came there the whole place was empty. So that was how we won that fort. I suppose we were lucky.

They weren’t good things really. There was another one over on the next ridge, Marj'ujun which the 2/2nd Pioneers took and the French retook. They retook Kiam too, because the whole operation in Syria, there weren’t enough troops. You’d get up and take something, the French would just come round, get where you just left and

that’s the sort of thing that went on. That’s what happened there. That photo in that book I showed you, that’s the four of us that were in there for the day.

We were on the central front of the Syrian Campaign. There was a

coastal attack, but we were in the centre and there was some coming in from the west, from Damascus. We held onto that area while we attacked next day and took Kiam village, which was behind the fort, a place called the Pimple,

and kept. Some of the other companies went up and took further villages. My platoon was sent over to Marj'ujun, which had been taken, to consolidate there and just hold it there in case the French came back. We were there for a few days and then told to move again. We came back

going east up to a village. I can’t think of the name of it now. We were at this village and the French were further up the mountain under Mount Herman. We were just holding this area and I don’t know what the whole tactics were, but

thinks were so fluid the French were moving in all directions, coming in etc. But I think the tactics changed daily. While we were just holding this place, we suddenly got word that we were to withdraw again back type of thing he bridge I’d first gone out to stop it

being blown up. That’s where the Italian headquarters were. So Tom Cotton, the company commander said, “Right,” we made a rendezvous behind this village we were up in this village up in the hills. He said, “That’s the rendezvous. We’ll all meet there. You withdraw and get there.”

I started to withdraw. I remember before we withdraw the French started to come down from up in the mountain. They went to ground. The platoon on the right was another of our platoons, fired on them so they went to ground. They were hammering us with

machine gun fire, rifle fire, etc. My platoon was rather exposed. Halfway, about 300 yards up, one of the French had gone to ground behind a big round boulder, which had a split in the middle. He was looking through this split with his rifle and firing at my

chaps who were just lying behind stones and things in the village. I got a bit annoyed, I remember, with the people on my right, who’d fired too early I thought and exposed us. I said to Sweetapple, my sergeant, “Look, I’m sick of this. We’ve got this sniper on us. I’ll go

and get him.” So I borrowed a rifle. I went out on a wide flanking angle and got where I could see him and had to shoot him from about 300 yards I suppose. I came back to the troops and I said, “We’ve got to move now. We won’t have that sniper at us.”

I had a rifle.

He was behind a rock. We were there. I did a detour of about 5 or 600 yards through olive trees until I got round to the side of the rock where I could see him. He was firing there and I got out there. That was I had to protect my troops and that was it.

I’d been a rifleman at school and that distance didn’t worry me. Then I came back, and this is where fate’s the thing. I’d got wild a bit, because the troop on the right. The French were coming down and I said, “We’ve got that. Let them come right down here and they can walk into us.” But they opened fire too early and the French realised we were there. So

that’s what made me annoyed, not the trip. But the, what was I going to say? No, I came back and the chap who was next to me said, “You were lucky.” I said, “Why?” He said, “While you were behind this boulder and I was looking over the boulder up. Just after you left a bullet skipped off

that and went right across the top of the boulder.” So getting wild and going away that’s just one of the things that happened. As we were coming out, the French started to fire at us as we got up to get out. I couldn’t go the route up to the rendezvous that we were going to take. So I had to take them round a back way and up over the creek and gradually to get up there. When I arrived up there,

probably half an hour later than I should have been, because I’d taken the troops around to make certain we didn’t get sniped at, I got there and there was not a soul there. I didn’t know what was happening. So I put my troops out to a defensive position and started to wander round myself to see if I could find out what happened. I came across a

battalion 2IC, Major Buttrose. He’d come up to get orders to another company that were further up, to that they couldn’t contact. I told him what was happening. He said, “Where’s your company?” I said, “Well I was coming up to this rendezvous and they’re not here.” He said, “Give me your troops.

I want someone with me while I work up there. You go back to battalion headquarters and tell them what’s happening.” This was at night. So I worked my way back. It took me about two or three hours to get back there. I got there and told them what was happening. They sent me back with another message to Buttrose

to tell him something else had cropped up and they wanted something else done. So I worked my way all the way back to him and I couldn’t find Buttrose at all, or my troops. So I eventually got back to my battalion headquarters again and I’d been going all night and all the day before and I was pretty weary. What had happened at the rendezvous is that Tom Cotton, the company commander had come out and said to the

company sergeant major, “Are they all here?” And he said, “Yes sir, they’re all here.” “Right, off we go,” he said. The company major thought he meant all company headquarters was there, not all the rest of the troops. So that’s why we were left behind. It was just a misunderstanding. I got back to the battalion headquarters about 9 o’clock in the morning I suppose. 8

o’clock, something like that. Very weary. Tim Close, the adjunct, he was a Duntroon trained man, captain. I said, “Where’s my company, Tim?” He said, “They’re up at Kiam again at the fort.” I said, “Tim, I’m too tired to walk up there. Can you give me a truck?”

He said, “I’ll see what I can do.” He gave me a little blitz wagon with a Tommy driver [gunner]. To get the type of thing he thought, I thought we were in command of everything up to Kiam. We’d only taken it some days before. To get to the fort, Kiam fort was there, Marj’ujun was there, there was a valley running up the middle and you had to go up the valley and come back into each one that

way. So we drove up the road, and as we turned the corner in the valley, I was asleep by this time in the car I was so weary. The drover woke me up and said, “What’s this sir?” I woke up and looked and there across the road were a whole lot of crisscrossed railway lines, an anti-tank obstacle, anti-vehicle obstacle. I remember thinking bleary in my mind

“Anti-tank obstacle, got to be covered by fire or it’s useless.” I looked everywhere and couldn’t see anyone anywhere in any place. So I and the driver got out and we rolled this off the road.

Just crisscrossed railway lines welded together about that high, sticked across the road so you

couldn’t drive up the road without getting out and shifting it. You couldn’t drive off the road, there were too many boulders. So it was just an obstacle to stop transports going up and down the road. So we shifted it and drove on. Then as you come up the road to get into Kiam you’ve got to come round on a narrow dirt road and into the back of the village

up to the fort which was there. As we came round this road, which was just one vehicle wide, it was on the side of a hill, had been cut into the hill. It had a drain running along on that side to take any water coming down. As we came round the corner and up to the place ahead of us, called the Pimple, which was just behind Kiam village, we’d

taken that sometime before. The driver said to me, “That’ll be your mob up there will it, sir?” I looked at that time the Pimple and I could see people. I said, “Yeah, that’s probably them.” We got about 200 yards from it and a machine gun opened fire on the truck from the Pimple. The truck stopped very quickly I can tell you, and two people dived out of it very fast

into the gutter in the side. I had a pistol and six rounds and the driver had nothing. He hadn’t had time to get his rifle. So we decided, we didn’t know what was going on, but we were in this gutter, so I said, “We’ll work our way down the gutter, there’s an anti-tank ditch further down. When we get there, maybe we can find out what’s going on.” The gutter was just about that deep I suppose.

Just enough, if you kept flat as you went along it, they couldn’t fire at you. So I was in front of him and I was working my way down the gutter and I came across a boulder which had rolled down the hill and into the thing. Then from my position I couldn’t lift it. So I said to this Tommy driver, “I want you to quickly just poke your head up and down and tell me if anything is going on.

If nothing’s going on, I’ll get up and shift this boulder and get down again.” He put his head up, pulled it down quickly. He said, “Take a look, sir.” So I put my head up and about 40 yards away was six Senegalese soldiers with 6-inch bayonets advancing on us with a Frenchman, I didn’t know he was an NCO, a Frenchman in charge. I said to this Tommy

driver, “It looks like we’re going to be prisoners.” “Now, remember, name rank and number only. That’s all you’re allowed to give. Nothing more.” He said to me, “Will my wife still get my allowance, sir?” I’ll always remember that. So I put my hand up. I wasn’t going to fight six Senegalese with six bayonets.

They came over and we stood up. This French NCO came over. I remember thinking, when I put my hand up, “Bloody hell, I’ve got to speak French now.” Not that I’d ever spoken it much, I could read a bit and I’d passed French in my Leaving and understand it.

He came over and he ripped my equipment off me. He took my wallet and he took everything. He didn’t ask at all, and that made me annoyed. Then, having done that, he said to me in English, and I’m still thinking about having to speak French, “What’s your name?” And I told him. Then he said, “What’s your regiment?” And I’m looking him in the face and I’m thinking, “How the hell in French do I tell him ‘under

international law I am not permitted to tell him what my regiment is’ etc,” and I’m just staring him in the face. Then he said to me, in English, “What’s the matter. Aren’t you English?” I said, “No, I am an Australian.” He walked off then. I don’t know what he thought of Australians. Then I was taken prisoner and

various things went on. We were taken up to northern Syria and flown to Greece where the Germans were and taken by train up through Germany, France, Toulon, etc.

My reaction was, it was impossible to fight them. Therefore it was

logical that we were going to be taken prisoners. If I’d started to fight them with the pistol at that distance I would have been dead in five minutes. There was no way I could hit anyone at that distance with a pistol. You only had six rounds anyway. No, I just accepted the fact. I was weary as anything, tired out. That’s why I said, “I think we’re going to be prisoners,” to the

Tommy driver. They treated us well in the frontline. I was taken back to army headquarters there and a couple of officers came to see the fact that they’d captured an officer. One of them tried to talk to me in English. He said he’d been in Sydney when he was a small boy. They treated…I got

my wallet back. I explained that this NCO had taken it and the officer got that back for me. I had photographs of my family and a few things in it I wanted to keep. While we were there they treated us fairly well. When we were back in Idlib in northern Syria, the French

people treating us there I though were a bit rough. They treated us all right, but not, there wasn’t much between us. But that was different then. There were only three Australians and all the rest were British. It was a different sort of thing. I had a British colonel keeping order.

I was just, we were just obeying orders. We didn’t have, nobody kept us up to date on what was happening in the whole front. I can understand that

you couldn’t do that. We were separated. Here was the battalion; each company was probably half a mile apart. You go up and take something, then you move there and the French would come in and take what you’ve taken. They could move between you without being seen. The hillsides were covered with olive groves and

that sort of thing, so that we really didn’t know what was going on. We didn’t know what was going on at the coast where they were advancing up the coast. We didn’t know what was happening at Damascus or through there. All we knew was what was next door to us, “Right, you go up and take that village,” or whatever it was. From there you just take it and sit there and wait for

your next orders.

Well, on my right, Pansy Andrew was the platoon commander of the platoon on my right. We’d come into this village, I was on the left and the track that came down from Hasbaia I think it was. There we were in a defensive position and

the French appeared and they were coming down this track. If that happens, as far as I was concerned, you stay concealed, you wait till they’re right on you and you’ve got them. You can take them prisoner; you can do what you like. They were half way down, about 250 yards away. I was saying to my chaps, “Keep down, don’t let on we’re here.” All of a sudden

that platoon over on the right opens fire. They were too far away to do any damage and it just told the French we were here. That’s what made me annoyed. I said, “You bloody fools, we had them and now we’re here being fired at.” My platoon was the one that was copping all the fire.

That’s’ when I said, “I’m going to get this sniper

that’s at my troops.” They’re my troops and I’ve got to protect them. You can’t do anything. You’re fighting a battle, you’ve just got to fight it. But we were just in a position and the French were coming down. They wouldn’t have got much further anyway, but this one chap was in a position where he was sniping. Sniping is something which,

there’s another story I can probably tell you later on about one of my troops who was at Imita Ridge in New Guinea. He was trying to snipe the Japs and how we got the Japs to come out so he could do it. But these are just odd little things that went on.

You’re told you’ve got to hold this village and if the French attack you’ve got to hold it and defeat the French, etc. If you’re then told you’ve got to go to another village, you go there. But it wasn’t a uniform front. You couldn’t see where your next mob were. The next company was so far away you didn’t know what they were doing or what the French were doing. It was that

sort of a fight.

They took me back behind their positions and put me in a field with some other prisoners had been taken at Marj’ujun, straight in. We had to lie on the ground.

We had a French guard with a rifle. I can remember lying on the ground there and we were there for best part of a day I suppose. I remember in the night being very uncomfortable. There was a rock underneath me. I couldn’t get comfortable. I went to get up

and the French guard challenged me with the rifle, put it right at me and he said, “Lie down. Couchez.” So I did. So that was where we were. Then we were taken by lorry back to Beirut. I was put with another

Australian officer, Wally Summonds. Got his book there if you want to read it, “Twice prisoner.” Walter Summonds. We were then questioned by the French, or interrogated, which we both

said nothing.

They asked me questions and you say, “You’ve got my name, rank and number. That’s it. Under international law I can’t tell you anymore.” Finished.

Nothing they can do unless they are fighting a war as Iraqis and things are

doing now in which they can torture you or things. They were obeying the law too. I’ve no doubt in the Russian campaign with Germany that other things went on. Torture and the rest of it. But we just stuck to the law and that was it. Then we were taken from

Beirut up to Idlib, a town up in the north of Syria, and put in a barracks there. A lot of prisoners had been put there. It was run by a French major and French troops. One of the things which we had in our favour to some degree,

we had two people who were prisoners who could speak French fluently. We never let on that they could. So they could hear what the French were saying to themselves between them and we knew that they didn’t know we knew. One of them was a squadron leader from the Belgian Congo. He was a British chap.

I don’t know how he was captured, but he spoke French fluently. The other was a Dutchman. Van der Berg, who was a ship’s officer on a Dutch ship that had been sunk some way up near Syria and he was captured. He spoke

every language except one when I was a prisoner. He spoke English, he spoke French, he spoke Greek, he spoke Italian, he spoke Spanish, he spoke German, the lot. I asked him, “How did you learn all the languages?” He said his father was a merchant in Amsterdam and he traded with England, Germany, France, Spain and all the others.

He said, “My father spoke languages.” From a small boy, in his home, on Monday only English was allowed to be spoken, on Tuesday German, on Wednesday French, on Thursday Flemish, etc. He said, “I grew up with languages and then as a ship’s officer, travelling around the Mediterranean I picked up the others without any trouble at all.” So

the only place he couldn’t was up in Croatia somewhere he found he couldn’t quite understand there. That was one of the things we had.

Nothing much, just we learned this that and the other. The thing was that we had a British colonel. The whole regiment had been captured out Damascus

way somewhere. He was the sort of head prisoner. He took charge. He used to go into the French to learn what was going on, taking one of these with him. They didn’t realise they could talk between themselves so he could learn what was going on and that was the main thing. So we didn’t learn

much other than what was going on. We were then moved out of Syria. This happened at night. They came along at night, when I say at night, about 7 o’clock in the evening or 8 o’clock, and said that they were shifting the officers

out of this camp where the prisoners were. There were a lot of privates, Australians, there were all sorts. They were shifting the officers and senior NCOs out. We were to get ready and be ready with any gear we had, which was practically nothing. We were moving at 10 o’clock that night to a more, a

better camp for officers they said. So we got ready. There was one British officer there who had pneumonia or flu or something. He was running a hot temperature and we had him there. He was wrapped up in blankets, keep warm, etc. When we were going to leave, he was one of them. He came out all wrapped up in his

blankets and we were helping him. This French major suddenly burst into French at the guards and I didn’t understand what he was saying, but what he was saying was that those blankets belonged to the prison camp and they weren’t to be taken away. He told the people to go and take them from him. This

squadron leader who spoke French, the one form the Belgian Congo, he couldn’t stand it. I don’t know what he said to that major, but he suddenly burst into French and tore hell into him. This French major was suddenly going back like this. I don’t know what he said. Then the squadron leader walked over to the chap with the blankets and led him into the bus was

taking us away. That was that. That was the only time they realised we had someone who could speak French. I don’t know what he said, but he must have really tore strips off him.

Food was reasonable I suppose for prisoners. Two meals a day. Not much in it. Forgotten now.

We didn’t get much meat at all. We got potatoes and things like that. I don’t think they had to much food anyway probably. We were taken up to Aleppo and flown out of Aleppo that day to Athens. We landed at Athens with a

whole airport covered in German planes with swastikas all over them. We thought we were probably going to be given to the Germans. We were then weren’t in Athens very long and then we were flown from there up to Salonika in northern Greece and imprisoned

on a ship that was tied up at that time in the docks. We were allowed, we were down in the holds of the bottom and we were allowed up on deck a few hours a day. I’ve forgotten how long. Then put down there again. It was, the treatment was all right as far as, I’ve forgotten the food; it wasn’t very good. The French

consul there was quite cooperative. He came onboard and found out what was going on. He couldn’t do much. The Germans were in control of the place. I remember before we were taken from there to France he was able to get us some tobacco and cigarettes and things that people wanted.

We were on the ship for, I’ve forgotten how long.

They were just the officers and NCOs. Amongst them there were mainly British officers, Indian commissioned officers from the regiments from India and

British NCOs, senior ones, warrant officers first class and warrant officers 2nd class. There were only three Australians. Wally Hols who was a warrant officer 3rd class. The only reason he was with us was that a warrant officer 3rd class wears a badge on his

shirt there or there. He was captured and he didn’t have his rank on and he explained he was a warrant officer 3rd class and they didn’t understand it. He pulled up the crown out of his pocket and said, “That’s what I am,” and they thought he was a major. So they put him with the officers. There were only three Australians and the rest were all either Indian,

British senior NCOs or British officers. That’s how we were.

Nothing. I got into trouble. Wally Hulse who was warrant officer 3rd class, 2nd 30th Pioneers he was. We came up, the

officers were all in cabins down there and the NCOs was separated. Wally Hulse, I don’t know where he got it, but he had a miniature chess set. We were up on deck one day on the thing and he said to me, “Do you play chess?” I said, “Yes I’ve played. I haven’t played for a while.” He said, “I’ve got a chess set. I’d love to play

a game. It’s something to do.” So next day he brought it up. He and I sat on the deck and we put the chess set down and were playing chess. We did this for two days. Here again the British-type thing. I was hauled up by the colonel for liaising and playing chess with other ranks. Wally was

hauled up by senior warrant officer for doing the same thing. A sort of liaison and talking and calling him Wally and being, you know. Whenever their NCOs came, colonel, they all sprang to attention, saluted and etc. It was a totally different culture that was happening. So that was what happened there. then

we went right through. It took us seven days I think it was in train from Salonika to France. We went up through Yugoslavia, Austria, southwest Germany, into northern France and then down the south of France to Toulon, the naval base and imprisoned there in a crusader fort. I’m sure it must have been built in those days.

It had a drawbridge and a mote and everything and high vista. So we were there and we had heard that the armistice had been signed and that all prisoners were to be released. I don’t know how we heard it, probably somehow. The French hadn’t released us and all the prisoners in Syria had been. It was then

the British or Australians had found out that prisoners hadn’t been released, we had been sent away. They arrested General Denson, senior officer and said they were going to be kept prisoners until we got back, because under the terms of the armistice they could all be repatriated if they wanted to be. So that’s how we got back. We were away for…I had been prisoner about two months.

We flew from Aleppo in Syria to Athens. Then flew from Athens to Salonika. Then went by train from Salonika up through Yugoslavia, Austria, southwest Germany into France, down to Marseilles and then down to Toulon.

We were in a train from northern Greece all the way through Europe. Took us about seven days.

What, by train? Not really quickly. We used to stop in sightings for hours.

I suppose they were waiting for other transports to come along the line, but seven days from Salonika to France is a fairly long time. We were in dog boxes. Never got out of them.

It was all right. There were four of us. A bit cold going through the Alps.

We didn’t have much. When I was caught I was in khakis. They gave us one coat for the travel and going through Austria and through the alps there it was a bit cold, but other than that all right. But the heating was a bit haphazard, put it that way. We weren’t allowed out of the

train and they used to come along and give you some food at various places. It wasn’t regular. Probably because they couldn’t cook it anyway.

I could see everything. There was a tourist trip. Saw the snow going through Austria and through those places.

That’s all it was really. Lots of transports with troops on them. German etc, going here there and everywhere. Other than that I don’t remember a great deal of it. We went through the black forest, that was quite interesting. Other than that, not a great deal. The fort at

Toulon I thought was quite interesting. It had a mote and a drawbridge. The drawbridge was up. There was no water in the moat, so I couldn’t dive into it. Other than that, no trouble. If you, over there there’s a book somewhere, a green one. What have I done with it? Here.

No. It’s got the map on it. I’ll show it to you after.

I don’t remember a great deal about it. It was solid stone built turrets and all the other things.

The only thing I remember about it was that the caretaker of the, I suppose he was the caretaker of the fort when it wasn’t in use, had a vegetable garden in the moat at the bottom of it, which there were tomatoes growing. I made myself, from I don’t know what, a long string and stuff and a little wire basket and I used to toss it in those tomatoes and try and get the basket on

one and get them. I think I got about two in the week we were there. That was just amusement. Something to do. We weren’t there too long in the fort when they arrested General Denson who was the serious officer in Syria and said until we got back they would be prisoners. It didn’t take them long to shift us. They put us on one of

the transports that was going from France to Syria to repatriate the French troops under the agreement and we went right through the Mediterranean, floodlit every night, so it must have been some arrangement with the French and Allies that these ships weren’t to be touched. Went right through to Beirut.

That was what happened there.

My captors, most of them pretty good. On the trip home on the Mediterranean we got much better food and were looked after and we were in good cabins. No, we weren’t too bad. I think we lost a bit of weight, but other than that came out of it fairly well.

I didn’t know anything about the Vichy. I knew about the Vichy French that France had been partitioned and the north was under German rule and the south was under Vichy. No,

they related to us fairly well I thought. They were still working under international convention and they weren’t friendly. Whereas reading about some of the German prisons and they were quite friendly one to the other, British and German

prisoners, but the French were a bit aloof. I think, I don’t know, probably feeling humiliated a bit by having been forced to surrender to the Germans. I don’t know. That was the only feeling that I have about it. But they treated us fairly well.

Yes. I was posted as missing. When I got captured I was posted missing. No one knew what had happened to me. I’d just driven off in this truck and wasn’t heard of again. Later I was

posted missing believed wounded. Whether, I don’t know why that was done. Whether they found the truck and seen it been fired on a lot. I don’t know. So that was happened and my parents, that was all the news they had for two months and it wasn’t until I got back to Beirut and sent them a telegram that they heard I was

still alive. So that was what happened there.

They put us on the ship and we steamed into Beirut and walked down the gangplank. That was it. We were just received there, were taken to

the pay officer and given some money. We were given I think about a day to ourselves and then back to the unit. When we got to the unit, after a while, we were given a week’s leave to do what we wanted to do. That’s about all that happened.

But why I was reported missing? I didn’t know why I was reported missing, I just disappeared or wounded, I have no idea.

When I got back to the unit I think. I’ve got it in my thing there. I’ve

looked it up the various dates, but I have forgotten when I found out. I just knew I was back and that was it.

Just glad to be back with the mob. Had some days in Haifa just doing nothing.

Living in a hotel and doing things. I had a meal on one of the Australian cruisers or navy ships anyway. With a chap I’d been at school with. He was a lieutenant on it, I met him one day, had a meal on the, it was either the Sydney or the Hobart.

One of those. I’ve forgotten. Didn’t do much. Just lazed around and looked at things. That’s about all. I was glad to get back type of thing he unit. Had something to do.

You didn’t. The

Syrian Campaign was so fluid and things we happening and people were going here and back somewhere else etc that we couldn’t keep up in the front. I’ve no doubt that brigades and divisional headquarters were keeping up that something had happened, you’d get orders and go somewhere else and so something. While you were there you didn’t know.

Why you had to retreat and go back to there we didn’t know other than the fact that we thought the French had broken through or something like that. So we didn’t know what was going on in the front. I have no doubt that in the rear, they knew. But communications weren’t easy. We didn’t have wireless. We were so scattered that you couldn’t send runners up. He’d probably

run into French on the way. It was that sort of thing. It was a scattered action. I don’t think, in the frontline you didn’t know what was going on.

I suppose it was Pearl Harbour, when that happened, the news were spread around the world. We were the first troops to be brought back.

We did not know where we were going. We all anticipated it was probably Burma because the Japs had come into the war. On the way back we learned that Singapore had fallen. There we two ships ahead of us. One was the Orcades, the other one I’ve forgotten.

We were on the American troopship, a 70,000 tonner, the US Mount Vernon. Had an admiral in charge of it. We came into Ceylon, Colombo, and stopped there. The leading ship, the Orcades, landed the troops in

Sumatra or Java, I’ve forgotten which island, one of those, and they were immediately taken prisoner by the Japs. The second ship stayed offshore out on the sea somewhere and didn’t move in awaiting orders. Eventually it was ordered to come back to Colombo I believe. We were in

Colombo and the American admiral in charge of the ship refused to move out into the Indian Ocean unless he had an escort. Eventually an escort arrived. It was the New Zealand frigate, I’ve forgotten now. A New Zealand anyway. So we steamed out of there and we were told to go back

to Australia. That’s where we were going. We went south for quite a while. When we got a fair way south, our escort left us and went off somewhere else. We went way south, came round and into Fremantle. We were the first troops from the Middle East back in Australia. So that was the sort of thing.

We learned at the time we were leaving Palestine that the Japs were really in it. That was the reason we were coming back.

We were in a war. We were fighting a war. We had enemy

in Germany and Syria and all sorts of places. It didn’t really dawn on us whether we wanted to be back. We didn’t know whether Japan was in Australia. Had they been here we probably would have been keen to get back. We didn’t know whether they, we just heard Singapore had fallen. We were going back. Some were there to oppose the Japs. But it didn’t worry us.

It didn’t worry me. Maybe some of them did, but not having a family, no wife or children, for me it was just another part of the battle. That’s how it was.

I felt they must have been frightened to think that way. We hadn’t deserted Australia. We were fighting a battle for Australia. Now we were back. But to say we never should have left them was

probably similar to what’s happening now when people are saying, “Should we have gone to Iraq or not gone to Iraq?” I don’t know, but people were nervous because they had bombed Darwin. When we got round to Brisbane we were putting gup defences in case they landed.

That was it.

We had a week I think it was. They

took us up to Casino in northern NSW and gave us a week off then. Then we went back and up to Brisbane, just north of Brisbane where we did all sorts of training. Beach landings, all sorts of things. This is where, we didn’t do it, we were kept in training, but the engineers and people were putting up

barbed wire entanglements on beaches and that sort of thing. I can tell you a funny incident if you like about those barbed wires. One of the engineer companies that was doing some of this sent out a group with a sergeant in charge I think it was,

to put up barbed wire entanglements along some beach just north of Brisbane. At the end of the day he found he was a couple of bundles of angle iron pickets, which you need to drive in to take the wire, short. Rather than having to go back to his unit and order it from ordnance and wait etc, he thought, “I know where there is a depot, I’ll go and get some.” So he went off in a truck and took a couple of bundles, got caught doing

it and was charged with stealing army property. A charge sheet was made out against him and was sent to his commanding officer, a major, and he got this charge sheet. He put it up in his pigeonhole and didn’t do anything for a day or two. Then about two days later we were all down to

the wharf and embarked for New Guinea. Those engineers as well. So we went up to New Guinea. We got up into the Own Stanleys straight away. His engineer lot was given the job of building bridges across the stream and improving the track and all the other things. After being there for about a month and we got up, everybody was wet, you never took your clothes off and

the rest of it. The wirelesses wouldn’t works so we had a continual line coming up from Moresby up. They went to the forward depot anyway, where any messages used to come. At night you’d get your signallers to hook in and listen to all the messages and relay them further up. Up this line came a message from land headquarters in Brisbane,

the fact that they had a charge sheet against sergeant so and so and they had no record of what action had been taken against him and if action was taken and what action was taken so they could get the records straight. If no action was taken, why was no action taken. This great long thing comes all the way up to this major in charge of the engineers in New Guinea. He got the message and he sent back a

reply, “In reply to your signal so and so,” whatever it was, “the Gospel according to St John, Chapter 11 Verse 35,” signed off. If you look up that verse, all it says, “Jesus wept.” That’s the last we’ve ever heard of it.

You remember these things. As I say, you remember the funny bits. There was another one with General Vasey back to Macarthur. I’ll tell you later on of that some sort of thing, which had a amazing effect.

One night

at Buna Gona out troops were pretty devastated, not all from wounds or things, but malaria, dysentery, all sorts of things, because we had no medicine or anything. But they were still pushing on and the Japs had dug in. We got a full American regiment of troops came in by plane and ship on

the southern flank. They were there; they had a general in charge of them and about 5,000 of them. My battalion, which had started about 600 strong had about 60 left. Every day a situation report goes back to say what had happened that day, to your headquarters. You start with

the left flank and you work round and say, “Japs attack,” etc. The Americans never moved an inch. The Americans, and they’ve always been a bit this way, they’re not good guerrilla fighters. They’re good at blasting things off the face of the Earth and moving in with absolute shattering effect. This lot out on the right flank used to fire these

firearms and mortar things into the Japs and then get up to go forward and the Japs would start firing back, so they’d stop and go back and repeat the thing and that’s what was going on. General Vasey who was in charge of that area and the Americans at the time. He got a bit sick of this, so he said to his ADC [Aide de Camp], Billy Wiggle,

“Let’s go over and see what’s going on there.” One of the ADC’s jobs is to warn anyone the general’s on the way so you can meet him. He said, “We came over there and as we approached it, all hell broke loose. Firing went on. Mortars.” When he got there, General Vasey said to this general in charge of it

“What goes on?” And the general said, “I’ll find out,” issued a few orders and it all stopped. Apparently this was just a demonstration of their firepower for Vasey to give him an idea of what they can do. He went around and looked at the whole lot and talked to the troops etc. When he came back he issued a situation report that night

and the same sort of thing. I can’t remember the exact thing, but I think it’s in the book of Revelations or one of those books at the latter part of the Bible. He quoted this. If you read the verse, it said, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and will be forevermore.” That went back to Blamey [General Thomas Blamey] and Eisenhower,

who was the American general, and when Eisenhower found it, saw what it said, he came over and sacked all the top people in that American force on the coast. They’d been there for days and not got forward a bit. That’s the only other one I know of that sort of thing. I can’t confirm that one. That was told to me by

one of the general’s people. In the book I’ve read somewhere on that thing I know that Eisenhower came over and rearranged all his top men. That’s the same I think in Vietnam with the Americans. They couldn’t

handle the jungle, so that’s why they tried to poison it all. So they could see things.

We

just, one of the things that caught up with me was this ankle I’ve got. We did a bit of beach landings and things around Bribie Island and places like that. We did long route marches I remember. We had a competition once to see which platoon could march the furthest in one day.

I think the winner was 42 miles or something. Marching was one thing. My ankle really played up. So they put me in charge of the Bren gun carriers. So I had them. We just trained north of Brisbane. Just around Caboolture. We left on the Brisbane River for New Guinea.

When we got to New Guinea I was left onboard to unload all the gear for the troops. Out of the holds and onto trucks etc. I was supervising that. Also, because I had the Bren gun carriers there. While I was on the ship the group captain from our brigade came down to check up things and he said to me, “You’ve been

dobbed in.” I said, “What have I done?” He said, “We can’t take the Bren gun carriers, they’re no good up in the jungle so they’re going to be left behind. The other two people in charge of the other two battalions, they’ve dobbed you in and you’re going to be left here in Port Moresby looking after the Bren gun carriers.” I said, “That’s no go, I’m not going to be left behind.”

I left the ship and went up to see the CO, our commanding officer. I said, “I’m going to go with the troops, I’m not going to be left behind.” He said, “No, that’s what’s got to happen.” So I went higher up above him and I went and saw the brigadier in charge of the brigade. He said the same thing. I was very down and out and

disappointed. Just at that time I was there, one of our other officers, Matt Todd the mortar officer, he became sick. He got flu or something, I’ve forgotten now. So they decided he’d be left behind and I could go. The mortars weren’t going anyway, so you were a spare officer.

I went to the CO, Boy Buttrose, his nickname was Boy, I said to Alfie, “I’m going now, but I haven’t got any troops I haven’t got a thing. What’s my job?” He said, “I’m giving you a sub machine gun and I want you to walk 20 paces ahead of me wherever I go. You’re my

bodyguard, runner, everything else. I said, “Okay.” And that’s what I started to do. He sent me on jobs. But the other thing was, our troops had never been in a jungle and we didn’t know how the Japs fought in the jungle. You couldn’t see anywhere, it was just, and they could have crept up on you anywhere. So we put

in a rule at night - anybody that walked got shot. If you wanted to go to the toilet, you crawled. You never got up, because we didn’t know if the Japs came in, how could you tell? It was dark, thick jungle etc. About the fourth or fifth day out, we went up to Imita Ridge, which was the first big ridge

we had to get. We were sent out on the right flank. Alf Buttrose told me as it got near dark what to do. Messages to company commanders, where they went out and did, came back and to Italian headquarters. That night I was sleeping in two big roots from a fig tree or something. It was a good spot I thought.

About 10:30 that night, out in one section, all hell broke loose. Rifles went off, grenades went off. Alf Buttrose, the CO, said, “Connor.” “Yes, sir?” “Go out and stop that rot.” It was the first time I’d told the CO what to do. I’d be shot the moment I moved out. That was happening and we lost an officer and about

five men that night. A pig had gone through the lines. Some of them had got panicky, started shooting and that’s what happened. They were nervous. Later on, after we’d been there some weeks, it wouldn’t have happened, but we’d just come off the ship, we’d gone into a place where we didn’t know what the Japs did or how he fought and everyone was nervous. At night you couldn’t see anything. That’s what happened.

As things got worse I became 2IC of the company because officers got sick and the rest of it. I got wounded myself, halfway between Kokoda and Buna, so I was out of it then. That’s the way things went.

That was the second campaign. I was left behind. The Bren gun carriers, you couldn’t use them in the New Guinea jungles, there was no roads there was no anything. They were tracked vehicles; they just got stuck in the mud.

They were left behind in Moresby as a group to defend Moresby if the Japs got there. They would have been useful around Moresby, but not up in the hills in the jungle. So virtually, you were just sitting there in charge of them. Before the Lae Wau I was left behind in charge of them.

Then that plane landed on one of our companies, wiped out so many and I was given the job, with one other officer, to form a new company and take them straight up into New Guinea. So I missed the first part of that campaign, but went with the second lot. I went up in the Ramu Valley place. No, the Bren gun carriers were just left in Moresby

I suppose for defence of Moresby if the Japs got there.

I don’t know. I assume, and I’m only assuming, I don’t know this, I assume that I was probably

recommended for an award for the Kiam thing. But because I was posted missing and then missing believed wounded, and no one knew whether I was alive or dead, I think it was wiped. I don’t know, but the unit must have complained or something about this because this,

what happens in wars when you have the formation fighting together, that they sometimes award a whole lot of British decorations to give the Russians for things, the Russians give, etc. This was one given by the Russians to the Allies and one came to me. Why? I’ve no idea. Suddenly, this was

not long before I was discharged that it came.

What, the medal? I’ve got it there if you want it. But I’d have to get up.

It was called the Order of Patriotic War First Class. It carried

a few things with it. I was to get 25 roubles a month for five years. It gave me free transport on any Russian ship or train or anything else. As far as getting the money goes, I had a book

of tickets and I had to present one of these to a Russian Savings Bank once a month to get it. So nothing happened about that, for a while anyway. I had these things after when I was back in university. My eldest sister was in the army. She was a driver at Duntroon, used to drive cars and trucks and things.

So she was home one day and I gave her this. I said, “Take this book of tickets to the Russian Embassy and see whether they’re worth anything.” So she took it to the Russian Embassy and they said, “Yes.” I’ve forgotten now, but half of them had just about gone by then. I got the money for it. The first thing I did was

I went to the Commonwealth Bank and I said, “What’s a rouble worth?” They said, “We’ve got no exchange rate with Russia at all,” but they thought it was worth four pence ha’penny. So I thought, “Well, I’m not losing much money.” But the Russians gave me whatever it was worth and turned out to be about 100 pounds or something like that. I’ve never got the rest of it.

As far as the travel goes, Stalin cancelled all those things shortly after the war so that no one would apply. But I’ve got the book in there, written in Russian, with all the bits and pieces.

I was quite, I felt a bit honoured. I thought,

they had a big parade and I came out, I’ve forgotten who did it, General Stephens I think it was, I’ve forgotten, and pinned it on. I felt, “I’ve got something out of the war.” I’ve still got it. It’s worn on this breast and I still use it on Anzac Days and things.

I would have preferred to have an MC [Military Cross] or something like that. If they were going to give me something.

I don’t know. There was no explanation about it.

About two others. It was in the war museum up in Canberra. After the war they had a little history of

the Syrian Campaign and they had one of these medals saying who had been awarded to. I don’t know the detail.

They were very happy to see me back. They were

quite, when my telegram arrived from Beirut, which was before the army even told them, it arrived and I was told the whole house, they was very happy because they didn’t know what had happened. I was just missing and missing believed wounded. It was bearing on them not to know. So they were very happy. My father was and mother, sister, one sister there,

she was still there, another one in the army. So they were very happy about the whole thing. They worried about you the whole time. Then I went up to New Guinea and did things. I never felt worried about getting killed or anything. I suppose if you did, you wouldn’t worry about it anyway.

That’s the way it was.

Don’t know. I think they were a bit amazed some of them when I told them, but no, not really. I don’t know how they’d react. There were quite a few Australia prisoners of the French. I was

one of the three, four actually, one got stranded on Dodecanese Islands off Greece, but we were only a few of us and I’m not certain how they reacted. Because you came back, the war was on, you weren’t talking about things that was going on with the job and that was it.

I think they’ve been given not as much historical treatment as some of the others. There is quite a bit of thing. There’s a book I only read the other day by someone on Syria. It

gives a bit. But it was such a haphazard, haphazard isn’t the word, such a campaign where you went there and the French came here and you came back, it was all over the place. It wasn’t like Montgomery attacking in mass going down the desert. It was bits and pieces all over the place. It was all over in six or eight weeks

so I don’t think it really had much great effect on anybody.

New Guinea was a totally different

concept in that you couldn’t see the enemy, he couldn’t see you very well. You had a muddy track that wide you were advancing over. If you went off it, you might encounter lawyer vines or whatever it was, it was very hard to do any

flanking movements. A couple of things, really I suppose that were keys to it. One was the supply line, which both the Japs and ourselves were equally. When the Japs got nearly to Moresby,

the thing that defeated them was supply line and the rest of it. They couldn’t keep up the ammunitions etc. Same when we were getting on the far end trying to keep food up and the rest of it. They were the hard things. The actual fighting wasn’t massive. Small patrols against small, that sort of thing.

It wasn’t a mass attack where you. You had no artillery, it was just rifle fire or bayonet or whatever you had. That’s all there was. So it was individuals against individuals more than anything else. Trying to keep your morale up. The health of the troops,

I went into the Owen Stanleys at about 15 stone. I came out at 10 stone 10. I was just skin and bone. All the food you got was some bully beef and biscuits and that was it. If sickness came there was no medical supplies. We didn’t have even

for malaria. We didn’t have anything. So those were the things that took the toll, the same with the Japanese. They were really struggling in the end.

It was difficult. The tracks were mud.

It was humid. You never took your clothes off, you wore them continually. Occasionally you might be lucky if you were back behind where the fighting was, to be able to strip off and wash yourself in a cold stream. You had to sleep with all your clothes on in

case a Jap came. It’d rain on you. I used to sleep, get on a slope and put a little trench around me so that the water running down wouldn’t go on me. Put your groundsheet over your head and you just lie there. You weren’t cold. It was humid and hot or warm temperatures. But you were wet all the time.

You can’t see the enemy. The whole time I was there I probably saw 10-15 Japanese. I went out the side of Imita Ridge when I was the runner. I had nothing to do and I could see on the edge of the cliff

about a quarter of a mile away a mango tree with some mangoes on it. So I thought I’d go and have a feed. So I wandered off on my own. Pistol with me. When I got within 100 yards of the mango tree or something about walking through the jungle, I heard Japanese. I sighted them and they were digging in just under the cliff about 100 or so

yards away. No one knew they were there. They’d just come out. In fact, if I hadn’t gone for that mango we wouldn’t have known they were there. That’s the sort of thing that went on.

I came back and told the CO, “There’s Japs out there digging in.” He sent some troops out to deal with them, which they did, but we lost a couple in the same time.

Then those troops worked their way down towards the river on the other side and we lost quite a few there, the Japs were there. The Japs still had a little 25-pounder gun, a little cannon. They used to shell us. We didn’t have any. When we first went in we did, but we couldn’t get the guns up after that. Only

on the first ridge really we had any artillery. That was it. It was just individual fighting. I don’t know, the Japs were probably under pressure because of the supply line and they’d been at it a long while and were getting sickness and the rest of it. So they weren’t

fighting very hard. They’d fight and hold you, then suddenly withdraw and gradually went back. It wasn’t till they got really back to Buna Gona that they really fought then. That was a major place. But on the way over they, the 39th Battalion I think it was, a CMF battalion, who held or

slowed them down all the way. The Japs fought hard, so did the 39th. They lost a lot of men. I can remember up near the top of the Owen Stanleys near Myola Lakes. I was going with my troops following the Japs. They’d withdrawn.

We went out on the right flank because there was some firing going on there in the jungle. We came across an open space there, probably the size of this room. Lying on the ground were 10 to a dozen Australian troops, dead. They’d been dead for months. The Japs had killed them on the way through

and just left them there. A terrible sight. Rotting bodies, maggots, everything. Some of my troops couldn’t face it. They were just sick on the spot. You’ve got to get their identity, bury them, do all those things. That was the sort of thing. They’d been caught. It looked as though they were all lying in

positions where they’d probably been swamped at night or something. They were all just lying around in their uniforms. Bodies. That’s’ the sort of thing that would go on. It was just jungle warfare. You weren’t attacking in mass. You couldn’t. You couldn’t get people together because you’d be walking along and you’d come across

an impenetrable bit of jungle and you’d have to go around it or whatever it was.

I’ve forgotten now. They were buried. I didn’t bury them because I was following the Japs, but that had to be done. You report it to your own medical people and your headquarters and they’d get all the identities and just bury graves on the spot. We couldn’t carry them, we couldn’t do anything. If we

had wounded they gat natives and it’d take eight days to get them back to Moresby at that stage. So transport, all those things were very difficult.

The biscuit bombers as they were termed, the DC3s. They used to fly over. They’d load up the rear doors with

cases of bully beef, biscuits and things. They’d fly over an area where you were and they’d push them out. No parachutes. They’d scatter in the jungle and then you’d have to go and find them. I’d say that 40 percent were found were in condition until we got to Myola Lakes, then it was a bit better because they were big open spaces. You could also

land light planes there, but before that it was just biscuit bombers. One of the things which was hard was to light a fire. There was no dry wood in those jungles. It rotted. To get a fire it was very difficult. The natives knew how to do it.

When we were on Imita Ridge, some natives came through who were being chased by the Japs. We looked after them for a while. I remember there was one there, he could get a fire lit, I don’t know how. He knew which bit of wood to get or which thing and he could do it. The thing was all you

had was a water bottle, tin of bully beef and a packet of biscuits. That was your rations. To get a cup of hot tea or coffee or something if you had any, or even make a stew with your bully beef, to get that fire lit was the thing. Once someone happened to make it light, everybody came in. they gave up their attempts and so it went on. Another funny story, you’re

talking about supplies. When I became 2IC of Don Company my OC at Don Company was Tim Close who had been the adjunct in Syria. Timmy was a permanent soldier, Duntroon graduate. When we were right up on top of the Owen Stanleys the Japs suddenly broke and withdrew quickly.

Buttrose said to Don Company, which was the company I was in, to Tim Close, “Right, you follow them. Keep right on their track. Don’t let them dig in, anything.” So off down the track we went. The only cooking equipment we had left were two camp kettle ovals, which were iron pots about that round

on top, sloping, with an iron lid and an iron handle. The troops just wouldn’t carry anything that was awkward. They’d lose it somehow. So these two, I was given one, and Timmy Close had the other one. He said to me, “Right, we’re going to hang onto these. They’re all we’ve got to make a stew or hot meal if we really want it.”

So we’re off down. They were terrible things. I had mine on a stick over my shoulder and so did Tim. We sent off some troops ahead of us to give warning about the Japs and off we went down the track. We came over the ridge and the track doesn’t go straight down because the ridge went down like that and like that.

As we came over the top of the ridge, Tim slipped in the mud, fell on his back with this camp kettle over between him and the mud. I can see it to this day. He got up, he looked at the camp kettle oval, he looked at me, he looked at the troops round him, he picked up the camp kettle oval,

he looked again, and all of a sudden he went wmmmm wmmmm wmmmm, and he hurled it as far as he could down into the jungle. We were silent and he went on. Nothing, talk about black humour. We went down two zigzags and there it was. He picked it up. These are the things you remember.

Dropping things, we decided we should have mortars again. When we had Myola Lakes they decided to drop the bombs into Myola lakes and were picked up. They were mortar. Mortar is a bomb you slide down a barrel, it hits the thing and up. It’s not till it goes up that it arms itself with the acceleration

up the barrel. We tried these, we got them and compelled and squashed and put our mortar crew in. They fired a couple off and the third one went off in the barrel. Killed the mortar crew. They armed themselves when they were dropped, so we didn’t use mortars. Even some of the ammunition, .303 ammunition that was dropped in

the jungle it would land a case of it. Some of it would get slightly put of round, If you put them in a Bren gun they wouldn’t eject. They just jammed, so you had to look at everything that you had. Dropping wasn’t very good, but it was the only way we had.

It was only a handful of times. That was when the company came in contact with the Japanese. It was mainly, you’d be going and suddenly you’d get rifle fire at you. Then you’d have to go out through the jungle and try and find where it was coming from and deal with it somehow. The Japs, they weren’t en masse. It was just

individuals. That was the thing. They were, as I said, they were in a position where their supplies were bad and they had no more ambition to push over the Owen Stanleys to Moresby. They were being attacked in other places. So really, their desire to wipe us out and get to Moresby had

gone. All they wanted to do was stop us if they could and withdraw, and probably get taken out. I don’t know. But that’s what it appeared to me.

2IC of a company. Look after

the supplies, the sick. In the treks, be in the rear and make certain people didn’t get left behind. All those sorts of things. Your job was administrative really, supposed to be. To distribute things, to

see that food was distributed when we got it, all those sorts of things. That was your job. Nothing really specific in the jungle.

Not easy. They were sick, malaria

and some of them you had all sorts of things. Tinea, you never took your boots off. You had sore feet. You were loaded with ammunition, all sorts of things. You just had to keep up. The thing that

was really hard was, as you went along the track, you came across a tree that had fallen right across the track. You didn’t go round the tree, you climbed over and jumped the other side. It’s like traffic that suddenly comes into a hindrance of some sort. It all banks up and the hindrance taken away

and the front one goes off. So it goes off a chap that’s last off is a heck of a long way behind the front. This used to happen on those trees. They’d bank up, chaps would get over and then the second bloke would get over and he’d hurry a bit to catch up. The next bloke was a bit further and everyone started to try and hurry. The chap on the end, he had a hell of a job. It was your job to try and

keep them up and keep them going. That was no easy sometimes. Most of them were pretty good. There’s one story, I wasn’t there at the moment, but the unit was. That was at Isurava. This is one of the other amusing things I think.

Isurava was a rest house which the New Guinea patrol officers used to use. At this stage, Blamey and Macarthur were saying we weren’t going fast enough. Always messages coming they wanted us to push on. Allan, who was our general kept telling them, “Come up and look at it. We can’t go any faster.”

In the end he got sick of them telling him to go faster and he sent back a message to say, “If you can send someone to do it quicker, send him.” They pulled Allan out and they sent up Vasey. Vasey was a wonderful chap. Everybody liked him. I didn’t know him at all. None of us knew him, he was from a different division.

He was at Isurava rest house apparently when the Japs broke and went back towards Kokoda and we were strung out along this muddy track going down. Vasey I think had flown into Myola and walked down to Kokoda. He was sitting up on the side of the track near the rest house with his ADC and probably

a couple of staff officers. He never took his red cap off. Never wore a steel helmet. He was there. Apparently, one of the troops who was feeling terrible, I believed he had tinea between the crotch and he was staggering along the trail trying to keep everybody. I wasn’t there when this happened, I was told about it. Apparently, he looked

up and there was Vasey sitting up on the side of the track having a cup of tea, they’d made a cup of tea. He looked up and saw Vasey in red cap and all that, and he said to Vasey, “Jesus Christ, a bloody general. When the fucking hell are we going to get out of this?” The bloke in charge said, “I’m going to get someone under arrest now.” He said Vasey put his cup of tea down and looked at him.

He said, “Round about fucking January I think,” and went on drinking his tea. They’re the funny black humour things.

We stopped in places. The Japs would hold us up and we’d be manoeuvring round trying to push him back. You dig yourself a hole and just stay there, but you didn’t rest really.

You were either cooking food or doing something. You were watching or you had patrols to do and that’s the sort of thing that you kept at.

I don’t know about how tired we were. We probably were. I lost, I started out at about 14/10 I think it was and I came back at about under 11 stone. So you lost a lot of weight.

You were thin. I think we were all pretty tired. But under those conditions you just keep going. You can’t. But we did stop at Myola I know for about three days. We had a bit of rest there. I remember I didn’t get much rest, I had top take some troops back and cart out

cases of ammunition that had been left further back. That took two days. No, the troops rested as best you could. That was it. At night, nothing happened at night there anymore. There was no movement at all. So once night came you knew you were pretty safe. The Japs weren’t

attacking by that stage, they were just trying to hold us.

I’ve forgotten. You just lay down and slept.

That was in the early part near Imita Ridge. It used to pour with rain, it was the rainy season. It’d come down

and inches would pour in no time. If you just sort of put yourself down and put your, all we had was a groundsheet and the clothes we were in and a steel helmet. So you’d put your ground sheet down and lie on it and then just go to sleep. But if it really poured with rain, you’d get rain running down this mountain, so

I used to just make a little mound, dig a little trench round your thing and put your head in that so that water that came down would just go round you and not underneath your ground sheet. I can remember it used to start raining in those first few days at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon every day. I used to go out and have my

shave at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, standing there with the water.

I was wounded.

We got Kokoda and we cleared this airstrip there, which made everything much better. The DC3s could land so

we were getting equipment. Then we took off down the track to Buna Gona. The Kumusi River was between us and that. The Japs were there and we got nearly to the Kumusi River and the Japs started to mortar us and attack us and our front troops and firing was going everywhere.

This was not high jungle, this was low scrubby type stuff. I can remember it, Captain Powers, he was OC [Officer Commanding] A Company, I was 2IC Don company at the back. So he was there and I was talking with the captain as we were working down the track to get up to wards the Kumusi River when all this firing broke out.

I got myself, there was a creek bed we were near and there was a tree near the creek bed and it had roots coming out like that and the creek was under had undermined them, so there was a little cabin under the roots. I got in this. I can remember saying to Captain Power, who was lying in the creek

about 20-30 yards up, “I’ll be okay, but you’re going to cop it. You’re in the open.” We were just joking with one another and these sorts of things. All of a sudden there was a loud explosion and a mortar bomb came down on top of the roots above me. I was lucky the roots were there, it would have hit me. It exploded and I got shrapnel in the leg and in the arm.

I went back to the RAP [Regimental Aid Post] and they said, “Walk back to Kokoda,” and that’s what I did. I was flown back to Moresby and in hospital. They didn’t take it out, it’s still there.

Not much at all. They were two bits of shrapnel. When they x-rayed it, the one in the arm here was bout the size of a pea and the one in my knee, left knee here, I don’t know how big

it was, but they decided they wouldn’t do anything. They would probably see what happened. It hasn’t affected me at all. Whether it’s still there or whether it’s been…

It was only about a day’s walk back from where we were to Kokoda. So I, it didn’t worry

me at all. I limped, but you just had to do it. I was, my wounds compared to what some of them had, they were walking back with broken legs and all sorts of things. They had to get back or help with others. No, the wounded were one of the problems. It wasn’t so bad once we got to Kokoda and we could fly them out from there.

But on the Owen Stanleys towards the top there, if you had a bad wounded person you had to have six natives to carry him and it’d take seven days.

On the Owen Stanleys? Nil. We went into, the

army went into that campaign. It had to go in without any preparation for that sort of thing. I got malaria, dengue fever. I had malaria half a dozen times, bouts of it. A lot of the troops were the same. When we did the second show, the Lae to Ramu Valley,

yes, we had Atebrin and all those things. As an officer you had to go round in the morning and get him to put the pill on his hand and see him take it and make certain he did. People were frightened they wouldn’t take it and get malaria and that was it.

Yes.

I didn’t know I had it. I suppose you just keep going. What can you do? You’ve got malaria; six days walk to get to the hospital. You may as well stay with your troops.

I suppose we all were, but no one complained.

We were all in the same boat. That was one of the things that you did. No, didn’t complain. We just had to keep going and that’s what you did. But I have no doubt the fact that we lost a lot of the troops to dysentery and malaria and all those sorts of things. Couldn’t do anything about it.

They got so weak some of them they couldn’t keep going.

They’d either have to, some of them stayed up in Myola, I think, up in the lakes at the top. Others had to go back. Once we had Kokoda that was the place they could go to. They put a hospital in there.

We gradually started to get the medicines that were required, which could quickly damped down the symptoms that you had. In the beginning we didn’t have anything. We had an MO, a medical officer, but, no drugs, he couldn’t do anything. Getting from place to place was really

difficult. On the Owen Stanleys we had, in a brigade you’ve got three battalions and each battalion has a padre. A Roman Catholic, a Church of England and an OPD, other protestant denomination. There were always the there. On Sundays they used to go to one or the other and take services etc. We

always had the Roman Catholic with us. On the Owen Stanleys we had a chap called Jimmy Lynch. He was an Irishman. He looked like a large, Irish gnome. He had a red face. He loved his beer, he was a wonderful fellow. The 2/31st had the Church of England, which was Don Reading. He was a bachelor. He was a Friar Tuck type. He loved his beer too. He and Jimmy Lynch were great mates. They used to travel

together on Sundays and they had drinks etc. Good fun. On the Owen Stanleys they were supposed to bury their own dead, particularly the Roman Catholics, but if someone in the 31st got killed and you get the message across, it would take Jimmy Lynch all day to go from out battalion to where the 31st were. In the meantime

somebody else would get killed and it was just an impossible task. Jimmy Lynch and Don Reading put an agreement between themselves to bury each other’s dead. No way we can really do it. So that happened. Following the campaign I understand that Jimmy Lynch got into trouble with the Roman Catholic bishops

for having allowed a protestant to so the final things on and got himself in trouble. I don’t know what happened about that, but Jimmy Lynch left us and we got another padre. At the end of the war, when there was to be a victory parade in London, and the Australian army sent across

navy, army and air force personnel to take part in it, selected. They selected Don Reading, the Church of England padre to go with them. When Don Reading was chosen, he went to the army and said that his mate Jimmy Lynch had not seen his mother in Ireland for 25 years. He thought it better that he went. They did it. That was the sort of

companionship that they had in the thing. But that was the thing. To get from one place to another might take you all day. So if you were sick it might take you three days to get to anywhere where you could get treatment and no one could go with you. You couldn’t be transported in an ambulance or anything. So it was better to stay where you were if you could.

We always had padres wherever we were. I think it was very important. It depends on how you were brought up. How religious you were. I was brought up in a Church of England school, but I wouldn’t say I was religious. In fact, I’m not now. I’m what’s known as an agnostic, I think. I don’t think we know what God is all about, really.

They used to hold little services. I can remember Don Reading somewhere on the Owen Stanleys, I don’t know where, on a Sunday holding a little service, saying he was going to hold a service. They were very short. He might give a communion if necessary. Always gave a little talk. I can to this day remember

going to one of Don Reading’s. He got up to give his little talk and he started it by saying, “Jesus Christ all-bloody-mighty. Why do you people put that adjective in the middle?” and went on from there. I can always remember it. It’s all I can remember about it. That was the sort of thing they did. There were people that wanted to go to services. Also, people who were dying,

they could get to them and give blessing and things that they wanted. It was necessary and I understand that there were people that felt they wanted it and that’s what it was there for. They also did other things when we were training and the rest of it. They looked after entertainment and all those sorts of things. There was a padre with

each battalion.

I think it probably helped morale. I don’t know how much it helped, but the padres were always liked. They were likable people and got on well with all the troops whether they belonged to their denominational church or not. They were people that

troops felt they could go to and talk about a problem they had or a problem at home or family. In other words they were someone they could go to. So I think it was good for morale.

I never had any trouble with the padre. Only had one good argument.

But that was another thing. He was a Roman Catholic. He won always. After the Owen Stanleys we were training again to go back up to New Guinea. I came in after night exercise at about 11 o’clock and went into the mess, the officers’ mess, have a drink and he was at the bar, Don Reading, not Don Reading, Don Sheehan.

We were talking and he hadn’t been on Owen Stanleys, it was Jimmy Lynch was there. So he was talking about the Owen Stanleys, about it and getting. I said to him, he said, “Is it a terrible thing?” I said, “The worst thing that I ever think I saw was walking into that open space and there were eight-ten Australian troops had been killed

many months before. Terrible sight.” I said, “It was the first time I’d really seen a lot of dead human beings there.” He said to me, “There’s no such thing as a dead human being.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “There’s a dead human, but the being has gone.” I said to him, “What do you mean? There’s a live dog and a dead dog. What’s the difference?” He said, “Dogs don’t have spirits.” I argued

for three hours on that because I had been brought up with dogs and I know they could love and hate and all the other things. That’s the only one time I remember having an argument with a padre. Those are just the odd things I remember.

They were the only way

you had. Had to be able to get them out. They were wonderful and they really looked, you know, care etc and carried them in stretchers if they couldn’t walk. So you made a stretcher out of two poles that you cut from the bush, put some round sheets and put them on it and off they went. There were four carrying and two were relieving.

Up and down in the mountains in the mud, and across the rivers and etc. Without them you couldn’t have done anything.

I didn’t have a great deal of contact at all. They were all organised by the people, the medical people and the rest of it behind us. In other words,

you had someone wounded, you got him to your RAP and from then on you never saw him again. So we never had any contact. The natives certainly weren’t up with us in the front. No, they were good. Without them we wouldn’t have got people out at all. Or, to get them out we would have had to take six or eight of our own troops of fighting

men to carry them back. That meant, if you had 10 wounded, you’d have 60-70 men carrying people back in stead of in the fighting force. So the only thing that could happen.

I was lucky. My wounds weren’t bad at all. I had this bit of shrapnel in there and a bit in the knee. They x-rayed both of it. I was taken into the operating theatre. The operating theatre was a great big marquee, open at the sides.

Everyone could sit and watch the operations going on. You were brought in one end, they gave you an anaesthetic or they examined what, and anaesthesia, they’d pass you through to the surgeon who’d pass you onto people who patched you up. It was just a line like a factory where things were done. That’s how they worked.

I was x-rayed. I got to the second lot who looked at the x-rays. They just discussed things and they said, “No, I don’t think we’ll do anything,” and let me out. I went back and stayed in hospital for, I don’t know how long, some weeks. Everything seemed to be all right so I just went out. In the hospital were all sorts of people. Wounded etc.

I always remember two in the hospital when I was there. There were two Japanese who had been wounded had come in. They were really worried, because the Japs had been told they were never to be taken prisoner. If taken they’d be murdered etc. So you couldn’t’ get them to be prisoners. There was an officer and just an ordinary Japanese soldier.

I was just, it wasn’t his fault, it was how he’d been reared and brought up, but he’d be in bed and if he wanted to go to the loo he’d just hop out of bed and do it on the side on the floor next to the bed and get back in. To try and get him to put his hand out or blow a whistle or something and be taken to the loo,

no way. He thought he’d be murdered etc. I remember that. There were a lot of badly wounded there. When I go to see a mate of mine, a dentist, a retired dentist, in Canada, he’d been shot through the knee, shattered.

He was in the hospital. They couldn’t fix his knee up. They couldn’t make it into a knee again, so they just had to ankelise it, so he had a stiff leg. Couldn’t bend his knee again. He was a good athlete too. He was at school with me. Good cricketer etc. But even with that stiff leg, he lives in Canada still, he’s one of the only cricketers

in Canada that’s made a double century for Canada with a stiff leg. He’s a cricketer. Those are the things. The hospital was full of wounded. That was what was happening.

No trouble. I had tinea and the rest of it, but once you got back here you get it all cleaned up.

I did have some problems. I broke out with boils all over my back. I remember I was on leave at home and I used to get my sister to come in and squeeze them and try and, I couldn’t reach them. They got too bad in the end. I remember she nearly fainted at one stage. So they put me into

Concord into the hospital there. I was in there for about three weeks and they cleaned it up. That was the only time I had problems other than I had yellow jaundice in Syria and went to hospital. I had malaria two or three times and went into hospital. Can’t remember it all.

Yes because the whole unit came back and we were up in North Queensland and we all went on some leave. Then came back to North Queensland, started training again

to go up to New Guinea again.

All right. Mind you, we had a lot of new troops. A lot of the ones that had been sick or wounded, and then you get reinforcements and you’ve got to retrain.

Training for a campaign, when we first got back after the Owen Stanleys up in New Guinea, what were we doing? We were playing football against one another; we were doing all things that kept you fit. They were fun etc. It’s only when you know you’ve got to go back into action that you start

training people. You teach them how to use a bayonet again to get them absolutely confident that they could come up against someone and kill them. You’ve sort of got to lift their fighting instincts. You take them out on exercises, night exercises and all the rest of it. You change their thinking from fun to being, the morale is good again

for fighting and you get them ready. If you don’t go in, you’ve got to unwind that by getting back to playing football and doing things which take the tension out of them. That’s part of the battle. That’s what you do. You’re just training.

The second time I was again, because of this, because I couldn’t do the marching and the rest of it, I was kicked in with the Bren gun carriers and then in stead of each unit having Bren gun carriers, they made a divisional carrier company and all the carriers went into one group. I was sent into that. When I got to New Guinea the second time, all these

were left behind and so was I. I couldn’t go anywhere because it was a new unit. Then that crash came on my battalion before they went in and I and another officer were given the commission to form another company and take it back into the unit. So we got back into the unit because of the crash.

2/33rd. It was not a very good thing. I wasn’t there. I was in Moresby, but I wasn’t at the crash. This liberator bomber, fully loaded with petrol, bombs and everything, clipped a tree, crashed on top of the trucks and burst into flames and

there was a massive fireball. That was what killed a lot of them. They were just burnt with all their webbing, everything was burnt. One of them, Jack Renki was sergeant major of the company. He wandered out of the flames, absolutely black. No clothing left except his boots and webbing, which were burning.

Harold Sadgrove, and officer from another company, was nearby and saw him come out and went over and led him away and sat him down. He couldn’t recognise him. He said to Jack Renki, “Who are you?” “Jack Renki, who are you?” “Harold Sadgrove.” “Oh, Harold. Could you give us a cigarette?” So Harold lit a

cigarette and gave it to him and he took one puff and died. That’s the sort of thing. In the end about 30 or 40 died immediately in the crash, another 30 or so from wounds they’d received, there were about another 60 or 70 who could never go back because of the, they didn’t die from their wounds, but they were burnt. So that was…

There’s a little thing of it somewhere, it’s in that there magazine, which is let out there by the war memorial. There’s a story about that crash. It wasn’t very good. So I and Kev Pow

formed another company, took them up and they didn’t do the Lae show, did the Ramu Valley show etc.

Objective in the Lae Ramu Valley, take Lae. The Japs were in charge of Lae. It was from there they were going up into the

gold fields up in New Guinea and holding that. That was a base of theirs, so it was decided to push them out of New Guinea we had to get them out of there, then out of Madang further north. So the cleared a, they parachuted into Nadzab up the Ramu Valley, made

and airfield and they were going to land there, the 7th Division. The 6th Division were going to be taken round by ship to Finschhafen and come down from the north and we were going to come in from the west. After we’d taken Lae we then had to push up the Ramu Valley where the Japs were still in the hills further. That was done.

It was after that the Japs were really eliminated on New Guinea.

I didn’t go to Lae. I went the other way up. We fought the Japs on Shaggy Ridge and some terrible spots. Shaggy Ridge was a thing like that. Threes on that side and

kunai grass that side and the track ran right along the top of it. This was the track from the Ramu Valley into Madang I think. The Japs were holding all that area. I remember being up there I was in the reserve company. I’d gone up there one day to have a look round and a doc came with me, doc Collins. One of the chaps,

I don’t know what he was doing, but he tripped and he slid down the open side of Shaggy Ridge. He must have gone down 70 or 80 yards I suppose. It was steep. So we clambered down to him and the doc with me. A couple of others. He was just lying there. The doc examined him and

signalled for a stretcher. He got that and got him on a stretcher and was going to carry him further down and out by another route. Just before he left I always remember this chap, he said to Doc Collins, “Gee doc, how am I?” Doc said, “You’ll be pretty good.” “Thank God for that,” he said, “I thought I’d broken my bloody neck.”

Off he went. I said to doc Collins, “What’s he done?” “He’s broken his neck; he’ll die within a few hours.” He did. Those things happen. He just fell down this great slope. It wasn’t too bad the fighting up on the Ramu Valley. There were two or

three tough shows to force the Jap out. Gradually he was forced out of all that area right up to Madang and then he was out of New Guinea altogether. The next show was the Borneo one. My unit went in there, but I wasn’t with them I was out by then. Branded A2, which meant I couldn’t do frontline service. I said, “I want to go back to university,” and they let me.

Well, the Ramu Valley, Ramu River, you come from Lae there’s a great valley that runs from Lae up to where the river from Lae meets the Ramu,

which runs the other way. At one spot there, where the sort of top of the raise in this great valley, the river on that side is running east, the river on that side is running west. One’s one river and one’s the other. Both sides of it there’s the Finisterre Ranges rise 5,000,

6,000 feet and you’ve got this valley that’s in the middle. The Japs had come over from Madang and come down the Ramu and they were at Lae. So to get rid of them you had to take Lae and then you had to get up the Ramu Valley and push them back. Then go up the coast and get Madang. So what we had to do was go up the coast and just push the Japs out.

We lost a few troops. They fought hard in places. It was more fixed positions, it wasn’t jungle. This valley was half a mile wide, flat and sandy with elephant grass, as we termed it, everywhere. The Japs used to be on the edge of it

at various places, fighting. So you had to try and push them out or get rid of them, one or the other. So that was what we were after there. it was just really eliminating the Japanese from New Guinea.

That’s one of the things. In the jungle,

digging in didn’t make any difference. It stopped you perhaps being hit with a bullet, but you couldn’t see anything. Out in the desert we were dug in. If you read that book I’m reading now, they were in a position they could look and see the horizon all around and anyone coming. That was different. There you couldn’t see anyone. These people, they dug

themselves in to some degree in odd spots. On little rivers that came in on the side, and they’d get on a spur coming into the valley and fight from that for a while. Not really too bad in the fighting. The point about all this

New Guinea type campaign is it was man against man. If you read the desert fighting and Russia and the rest of it, the tanks came in and the artillery and the aircraft and the rest of it. We had no tanks, we had no artillery to speak of, aircraft, not many.

So it was a different type. It was man to man warfare. We didn’t have the material to blast people out of their position or crush them. It was just get there, frighten him out or somehow do things. That’s what it was all about.

That’s’ the whole thing. In the desert, Montgomery was after Alexander. Then there came Montgomery. In that area the Americans had come into the war. They were delivering tanks, aircraft, the whole lot

until they had masses of stuff, which meant that if you came across a dug in position, you just turned the tanks. You put artillery on it first, you put dive bombers, then you put the tanks in and it was only after hat the infantry had to fall in. So it’s a totally different fighting. Whereas in New Guinea, it was only the troops had to go in first. There’s nothing else.

You didn’t have any artillery or tanks. As for aircraft, you had Biscuit bombers and that was all. There were no fighter aircraft. They couldn’t’ see what they were trying to fight anyway.

Coming up, firing at them, gradually moving forward

in the jungle until one side decides it’s getting too hot to stay where they were and they’d move. That was, in the beginning that was us. The Japs came, we didn’t have enough troops and had to come all the way back. It was only at Imita Ridge where we came into it, fresh troops and enough troops, to hold the Jap when he was getting near Moresby. Then we had to,

he’d stretch himself too far and then it was the same again. We were gradually pushing him back. When he got to Buna Gone, he dug in, and the flat country it was very difficult. Because we didn’t have tanks, we didn’t have anything else to, and we lost quite a few people there in the open country trying to get the Japs out from their positions and take over.

I think they were getting, I don’t know how the troops were, but their command I think were, I’ve only

just sort of reading books and things, I think they had realised that they no longer commanded the sea, they didn’t command the air anymore and that they were too spread out. They were spread out from Malaya to New Guinea to across the Pacific and

trying to keep all those things going with supplies. That’s the key to anything, supply. Enough trucks to keep your troops going, enough tanks, ammunition, food, aircraft, everything. Until you’ve got enough supplies most of the generals wouldn’t want to attack.

I suppose six weeks. I don’t know. I’ve forgotten. I didn’t get into it right in, I got into it after they’d done the other one, so I suppose about six-eight weeks. Then we came out, flown out

wonderfully. It was good to have airstrips again, because you could put them in on the Valley. You could fly troops in and out. That was good.

Some close fighting. Not a great deal, but quite a bit.

They’d dig in and you just had to attack them and force them out or kill them or whatever it was. That went on. Our troops got much better at it, they weren’t so nervous, they knew what was going on. But the Jap was losing his morale, which was one of the key factors.

We went back to North Queensland, started training again and them the boarded me A2 because of my ankle. Then I asked to get out and they let me out. That was the end of ‘44 or January ‘45 I think.

Went back to university. I was lucky. I went up to New Guinea last year to the opening of the memorial at Sogeri rest house. While I was there I went into the war cemetery in Port Moresby. I took a couple of photographs. One was of Sergeant Renki,

the chap that walked out and took a puff of a cigarette and died. The other was Captain Fergusson. He was killed in the crash. I think if I’d still been in the unit I would have had his job. But they put me out in the thing. He got killed. So fate’s a funny thing.

No. It’s not easy because it’s not massive.

Sorry.

I can remember, we went in, what’s the name of the place? It’s near a river that came in on the side and the Japs had dug in. I took my company up and we were crawling up

this mound, the Japs were up the top of it. Trying to get as close as we could, firing at them. They were firing at us. We lost a couple of our troops. Then A company came in on our right flank and more

or less came up the thing. You were then 50 yards of one another and you could see, if you put your get up they could see you and we could see their position. We only had rifles, we had nothing else, so you’ve really got to fire. If you stand up you’re’ out in the open. So you were crawling up the in the kunai grass, trying to get as near as you can

to them. Eventually they pulled out because we were getting too close so they took off up in the jungle again. That’s’ the sort of close fighting that happened. Other things that went on, talking about snipers. Up on

Shaggy Ridge I was in reserve and company. So I went up to Shaggy Ridge actually to play poker with a couple of the blokes that we used to play poker and we weren’t advancing, we weren’t’ taking on the Japs. While I was up there, there was one chap in C Company I think he was, who was an expert rifle

shot. He was sitting up a tree and watching the Jap position on Shaggy Ridge about 3 or 400 yards away, waiting to get a shot and no Jap would show himself. He came down and said to us, “Hell, I’m sitting up there all day and I’d love to get a shot. I haven’t had a chance.”

So we discussed it and said, “What can we do to make the Jap come out?” So we decided to bombard the place for a little bit. We did that with mortar. Then the Jap got annoyed at this and across the valley was the river

where this was, 2/31st were dug in up on the hill. The Jap couldn’t get at us, but he decided to retaliate by firing at the 31st, which he did. Sure enough, a couple of Japs came out to watch the result of the firing and our sniper got a shot. I don’t know how much ammo we wasted to do that, but that was

what happened in there. I’ll always remember that. We didn’t do much up there. We just held them, really. They were pulling back out of the place. I took a long patrol further up the river, the whole company, where they had been and got out of there. So there wasn’t too much close fighting, but wherever they stopped you had to take them on and so keep going.

They weren’t trying to come forward, so that was the difference.

When I say we were better at it, they weren’t nervous or frightened. They knew how the Jap fought and in other words you were more accustomed to what you were doing.

I suppose it’s something like football team meeting another team they’ve never seen before, having played them a few times you get to know their tricks and you feel more confident you can handle it. That’s the sort of thing I think really was going on. We also had more equipment

and more troops, so I think confidence just came back and they felt more, not at ease, but felt more confident they could handle the situation. That doesn’t say someone wasn’t going to get hurt, but they probably could.

Don’t think they had any particular tricks. No, not really. They were good at camouflage in the jungle. I often wish I’d had taken my binoculars with me but the army pinched them all, wouldn’t let us take them.

Because I think you could have searched through the jungle a bit with the binoculars. It was not easy. They put leaves round where they were and it didn’t look any different. No, not easy. I think it would have been a much tougher

fight in New Guinea if we’d got there when the Japs first came and were convinced they were going to get there and get Moresby and etc. But they’d reached the limit and they’d been stopped at Imita Ridge, short of Moresby. The Coral Sea Battle had gone against them and

various other things. I think their high command was realising probably they were over stretching what they were trying to do.

We were just,

we felt the Japs had been defeated on the Owen Stanleys, but not to the whole war. That was something else. You didn’t have much information anyway. When you were there, all you knew what was going on around you, you didn’t know whether the Russians were in Germany or any of that sort of thing. You didn’t know how the air war was going; you didn’t know what had happened in the Pacific or whether China was,

you didn’t know anything about it. So you were only really concerned with your own little fight. When that was over, if you’d won, you say, “That’s good. We got that one over and we’re one up.” That’s all you could say really.

Probably the Owen Stanleys was the worst time. Everything, the supply line, the food line, ammunition, lack of any weapons, mortars, machine guns, so on.

Wetness, cold, the whole lot. It was a miserable time. I don’t think the morale was as high as it could have been because people were feeling sick and knowing if you were wounded, to get out was long, arduous thing. So I don’t think people felt as confident as they did, but the morale wasn’t

bad at all, really. They weren’t nervous in the jungle anymore or frightened. When we first went in it was some new place and you didn’t know what you could do, but they got used to that. It was just a matter of being able to keep going and get it all done.

It didn’t worry me. They’d made me A2, they’d tried to keep me out of two actions and I’d got there.

There was no way I could worm my way out with this one, because I was in a unit which wasn’t in the action at all. So it was better for me to get out and go back and do my course. Virtually, by that time, we’d cleaned up New Guinea. They still had Borneo to do, I suppose. I wouldn’t have thought of that. I thought, “Well, the war’s nearly over,

so it’s probably a good time for me to go back and do what I was doing before.” So that’s what I did. I was quite happy about it, really.

Yeah.

More mature.

got mixed up in, not university politics, but things within the university. I was treasurer of the university union, which runs all the restaurants and the rest of it there. I was in the engineering SUEA [Sydney University Engineering Association] Council. I was captain of their rugby team.

Just entering into things that were in the university. I played cricket the first year I was back, and then this chap who had the knee shattered, Bruce Lang, he said to me, “Come down to the surf club, it’s much more fun.” So I gave up cricket and went down there and we were all in Palm Beach Surf Club. I’d say that

95 percent or Palm Beach Surf Club were university students. Nobody lived down there. We could stay of the surf club for 8 shillings a week, two bob on Sunday and a shilling a day. The rest of it, you had to buy your own food and cook it. You could use the kitchen and keep it clean and you had to be a lifesaver, so you had to do your swim every morning and keep fit and do your

patrols and all the rest of it. It was a good social life and there was always things going on. I really enjoyed that. I had good fun there. That was good. The university I found was good. I found the professors were considerate to the problems you were facing of coming back with five year gap in the middle and

forgetting a lot of the things you’d done. But the fact that I took mining, which was the easiest probably of all the courses, you didn’t have to be a specialist in anything to any great degree. You had to have a good sound knowledge of a whole heap of things, but that was it.

Not many, really. The army was the best training

I had to be a mining engineer I think. Mining engineering is management. You’ve got to have knowledge of a whole heap of things, how electrical, mechanical all sorts of things, ventilation, the lot, but you’re not an expert in any of them really, but you know enough about it and know the problems and how to get them fixed, and that’s it. Then you’ve got to control

your unions and miners and you’ve got safety and you’ve got all the things to look after. But they trained you well, mines. I had a degree in mining and metallurgy and I went to Broken Hill. First job they say, “You go and join the union, get on the end of a pick and shovel and learn what hard work is.”

So for the first 12 months, you were a miner. That was one of the best trainings. I learned all the lurks miners had, what they were trying to do etc, the safety things. The next job I had was holding a tape for a surveyor for six months. Then I became a surveyor and then I was in the ventilation department. One of the most interesting jobs they gave me, I always remember it and I often wonder how young, married people would do

it, I was married and we had our first child was about eight months old I suppose, Jim Foots, my superintended said, “I want to see you at 5 o’clock.” I went in at 5 o’clock he said, “The next job we want you to do is to go to Nigeria out into the wilderness, take charge of an exploration team. You’ll be there for 12 months. Your wife can’t go. Let me know in the morning.”

So in the morning I let them know I’d go. Wife had to stay here. I was there for nine months actually. Weren’t in a town, we were out in the jungle exploring. You had native and all sorts, but I learned a heck of a lot. I understand a heck of a lot that’s going on now in Iran and South Africa and the rest of it. You can’t change customs overnight.

Never will.

I was at the university. I was living at Roseville, I’ve forgotten whether I was home or where. We heard it there, so I immediately rang up Bruce Lang, he was the chap who’d had his knee shattered.

He was at the university doing dentistry. I said, “The war’s over, let’s go in and celebrate.” I got the family car out and I picked him up at Willoughby and I drove it to North Sydney and I left it here and I parked it, got a tram across the bridge and we went up into Martin Place and everyone was dancing and it was quite a night. I can always remember it because

while we ere there I met a chap, Blondie Kilson, had been at school with us. He was an air force chap. He’d been overseas and such. He’d come back. He’d been celebrating and he’d really drunk too much. He was staggering all over the place. So we decided to get Blondie home. We got him down to Wynyard. I remember walking down the slope into where the trams were in those days.

There was a wind blowing up and he had a cigarette and he dropped it and it was on the thing and the wind was rolling it up the thing. He was trying to pick it up and he couldn’t keep up with it. We got on the tram and took him over to North Sydney and got him in my car and drove him back to Willoughby where he lived. It must have been 11 o’clock at night or something like that. Took him in, holding he by both arms,

one each side., “Where do you sleep?” “Round on the veranda,” he told us. We got him round there and we put him on the bed, took his shoes off and get him semi ready for bed and covered him up. We said, “We’ll leave him now, that’s it.” In walked his mother. She took one look at Blondie and then she tore into us too, “How dare you bring our son home in that condition?” Got stuck into us.

We buzzed off then. I’ll always remember that day, going there the day peace was declared, VJ [Victory over Japan] Day. That was good.

When they got back. Chism, the air force chap, he got shot down over

Germany and got into Warsaw and fought there for quite a while with the army which was there and eventually got back to England, came out here, never did industry again. He became a wool buyer, I’ve forgotten who for and was stationed in New York and he died there about

10 years ago now I suppose. John Fuller, he was the son of Benjamin Fuller and another Fuller who ran the Tivoli and things in those days and that sort of thing. He was a prisoner, came out, he never went back to doing med. He lived in

Rose Bay. I saw him three years ago or so now, something like that. He’s been affected by his prisoner of war days I think. He’s now mentally a bit deranged. He was all right up until a few years ago. But he’s

very sick now. I read, as I say to people when they ask me, “How are you?” I say, “Well, I haven’t read the obituaries yet, I don’t know whether I’m still alive.” I read them in the Herald every day, and every now and then I see somebody that I’ve known in the war somewhere who’s passed on. I often think I’ll see John Fuller’s name in there soon.

Those two, that’s what happened with them. I was the lucky one really; I was only a prisoner for two months.

Yes. No, I didn’t see Keith Chism. When he came home he immediately got a job away from Sydney and then went overseas. I only saw him once. He came back on a trip.

I talked with John Fuller because he played in the rugby team and he came back and played in it at the university after the war. Was selected to go to England with the Wallabies in ‘46 or 7, ‘46. So I knew him quite well and talked to him. But he didn’t come back to finish his med course.

There were quite a few that came back. Keith Watson, he was one of our footballers too before the war. He’d go into the air force. He was doing med. He went to New Guinea, I don’t know what he did there, but he came back to

university, finished his med course and he’s now dead. Died six or seven years ago now. He had multiple sclerosis.

Nothing very much I suppose. The comradeship probably. We still have reunions every year. After the war and I went to Broken Hill and I got conned into going into a unit there that was looking after national servicemen who had to do

time. So I was with them for about four years. 2IC, I became a major. That was interesting, but it was taking you way back to pre war days in the army, the same sort of thing went on. You went into camp and did exercises and all the other things. I

really only kept going because these chaps had to have the training, so three or four of us since war were doing it in Broken Hill to keep it going, that was all. I was really glad when national service was not anymore. I could get out and do some other things.

It was good. Some of those young, the army training was good I think, generally. I later became an underground manager and mine superintendent and a few things, CRA’s [Conzinc Riotinto of Australia Limited] operations. The best people I found to make shift bosses were some of those national servicemen

who’d learned what discipline was about and how to organise things and keep people into. It was amazing. They did. They made better shift bosses than most of them. You just promoted them out of the ranks to make shift bosses. They had a job to organise, see people were safely doing jobs and all the other things. So that was, the army was good.

I felt that, with the army, and boarding at school with a hell of a lot of people, it was probably some of the best training I ever had to be a mining engineer, without any doubt. It was all management. I didn’t have to have technical skills. That was good.

I think the experience I got was wonderful. It’s sad the people that died and have someone shot who was just next to you. There are some who had a terrible time, particularly the prisoners

of war. Some of them never forget and are miserable about it. Not miserable, but never lose their hatred. We had one mining engineer in Broken Hill, Aussie Bow, I went to his 90th birthday six months ago.

He was a prisoner of war in Malaya and I remember, mining is a game in which you have no secrets. Someone came from anywhere to look at your mine you show him how you did everything. Anything that you’d invented, you’d give him. This was round the world. I’ve been round lots of mines round the world.

Two Japanese came down to look at our methods of hydraulic filling in which we were one of the world leaders. They stayed with us for about four or five months. I can remember before that, Frank Estby, the mine superintendent, two top Japanese mining people

came down just to look at the mine and he asked me whether I’d take them underground. I said, “Yes, I’ll do it.” He said, “Thank goodness for that. I’ve asked Aussie Bow and he won’t have anything to do with them. He just hates them.” He was the same with the students that came down. He can’t get over the hatred of what took place while he was a prisoner.

How do I fell about the Japanese? How do I feel about Islam and how do I feel about South Africans? They are all doing what they’ve been taught to do. They’re not doing it out of malice, maybe these people who are blowing up people are, but the normal person in the Japanese army, he didn’t do it

because he wanted to. He was told to do it and he did it how he was instructed. They were instructed never to be taken prisoner, because if you do you’ll be tortured and murdered and it’s a disgrace to the nation. You’ve got, when I was in South Africa with the natives there, I had a whole lot of natives working for me. My head

man, number one head man was Hassan Omorou, who was a Muslim. The north of Nigeria is Muslim, the south is Christian, the middle was still pagan. We were in the middle where the pagans were. The only fresh meat we got was what they could shoot and I was the only one allowed to have a rifle. So if you shot an animal, and the natives loved having meat, you ate it very quickly, we didn’t have much

refrigeration I can tell you. One day I shot a dayak, a little bambi deer. I had three English drillers working for me then. So I said to Hassan the head man, my number one, “There’s not much meat there Hassan. I’ll cut the hind quarters off and I’ll share that with the three English drillers. You can have the rest of the carcass and share it with your head men.” There were five of them. He was number one, Issy Ako was the storeman, he was number five.

Next day I went up to the store to do something and I said to Issy Ako, “Get some meat yesterday Issy Ako?” “Oh, yes master. I’ll show you.” And he showed me a bit about that size. So I got Hassan in and I tore strips off him, “I told you to share that meat.” He went away and sulked for a while and looked very hurt. Anyway, he got over it and at the end of the camp there was another head man there working for a geologist who

used to work out of the camp, another Australian next to him. Musso Kano, Musso from Kano. Musso looked like the head of the seven dwarfs. He was a little wizened-up bloke. He was a very wise bloke, because at one stage, he’d been in the British West African rifle under British command for a couple of years. He understood discipline; he understood how we thought on a whole heap of things. I used to talk to him occasionally about things I didn’t quite understand. At the end of the camp

I was sitting next to him and we were waiting for trucks to come or something. I recounted this about Hassan. I said to him, “Why didn’t Hassan share that meat when I told him to?” He looked me straight in the face and said, “Master, I know how you think, but you’re wrong.” I said, “Why am I wrong?” He said, “Under our custom here, Hassan is number one head man. He’s entitled to half that meat, and if he doesn’t

take his half they’ll laugh at him and say he’s weak and won’t obey you. The next one down takes half the remainder and so it goes on.” That’s still happening in Africa today. The top men get everything and people down the bottom don’t get the same share and it’s custom. How do you alter a custom?

Probably the comradeship that was there within the Australian, I don’t know about the British Army where the officers are separated, but we were all mates.

The comradeship you had there, they knew you were an officer, they’d obey you and do things, but I knew they were thing, but they didn’t have to kowtow at all, and you got on with things together and you really worked together. Looking back, that was really the main thing. It was the same as a mining

engineer. The thing that really impressed you that you got on with all the miners, that you knew them and they knew you and you didn’t have any trouble at all. That was what I say having to do 12 months at the end of a pick. They knew I could handle a pick and shovel as well as anyone else and they couldn’t put it over you. I knew when they weren’t working hard enough and all the other things. They respected you and

you respected them. Those are the main things in my life that I’ve found were good. Family, all good. I’ve got no regrets. My wife and I we got on well, we always had arguments, but that’s nothing. It was very good. I get on well with all my

grandchildren and give them cheek and spank them and they don’t mind. It’s all good fun. I just feel that the training that I got in boarding school, the army, playing sport, having to be teamwork all the time, was probably one of the best things that could happen. If I had my time over again and had a choice of course I think I’d do mining.

I just don’t understand it. Well, when I say I don’t understand it, I don’t know whether I’m right or wrong, but I feel that religion has a heck of a lot to do with what the troubles we

have in the world today. Whether it’s Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Christian, even within the Christian church. I went over to Ireland in 1968 to look at a couple of mines. I went over to

Dublin. I remember the first night after looking at one of the mines I was in the pub and I went down to the bar to have a drink. Started to talk to a few of the Irish there. After a while they found I was an Australian and were talking about things. Then one of them said to me, “What religion are you?” I said, “I’m a Christian.” He said, “What sort of Christian?” I

refused to tell him and I said, “What’s it matter? We’re all supposed to forgive one another, not fight. That’s what Christianity is about, isn’t it?” But that’s the whole thing. You’ve still got it going on. This war you had in Bosnia. 100 years of hatred between Islam and Christians. You can’t do that. That’s just not there. Shouldn’t be there.

Not really, I suppose. The only thing I think

you’ve got to do to make the world work is cut down probably, and this is one of the things that’s worrying a few nations and people now, is a greed that we have in the world for money and etc. And try and

gradually alter customs which we feel are wrong for the future of the world and go, I don’t know, try and help those people who are in dire straits everywhere. How you do it, I don’t know, but to somehow.

What is going to happen to the world if we go on expanding the people in the world. If we double the population of the world in the next 100 years, what’s going to happen? If we double Australia’s population in the next 50 years, where’s the water going to come from? Where’s all those things, we’ve got a whole lot of things you’ve

just got to think about in the future. Everybody’s got to perhaps sacrifice some of those things they call, which are good for themselves. I don’t know where we’ll go. But religion and things have a lot to answer for and somehow we’ve got to get together and do it as one great world. But how you do it, how you alter custom, that’s

a very hard thing.

I hope what I’ve said will be some help in what you’re doing.