Australians at War Film Archive

My name is Vincent Ravese. I was born in Paddington in Sydney. My father and mother were Italian. My father worked at the Woollahra Council for years,

he could speak and write English as good as I could.

My father died when he was 47 and there were 11 children,

eight sisters and two brothers, 11 altogether. In those days there was no widow’s pension and there was no endowments, you either worked or you starved so to speak. We, as kids used to go to Watsons Bay Jetty, the Marinatos used to run it,

I think his name was Michael. He was born overseas too and we worked there and I used to sell stuff out the front of the shop. We never used to get paid but we used to work nearly every day.

It was pretty hard work. I used to go to the markets with the Marinatos. He would buy a box a fish and I would bring them back to Watsons Bay and go around the street and sell them. That paid for my college education. I went to St Joseph College and I was there for about two years

and I had to leave school to go back to work because Mum couldn’t afford to keep all the kids because they were pretty young. It was a pretty hard life but anyway we survived, and when I was at Watsons Bay, Thomas Marinato produced a movie called ‘Sydney’s Darlings’

and believe it or not I acted in it, I was sort of the child star in it. That was interesting. I can remember one scene out there at Rose Bay, right opposite Rose Bay Jetty. There was a mansion and we used to, in those days, light the room up with silver paper. And then I started to learn tap dancing and

I learnt for two years and I was going to do tap dancing for a living but in those days there were no clubs or this, that and the other. The only work you could get would be maybe a birthday party. Anyway my first job was at a 21st birthday party for 10 pound. I did two turns and they gave

me a room to get undressed and I joined the party and when I went to get dressed somebody had pinched my wallet so that was the end of my dancing career. Anyway I was called up to do three months’ compulsory training. That was the age of about 21 and they were calling them up to do training.

We did three months’ compulsory training and a week before we were to go back to civilian life, a few of us decided to join the real army and we trained in the 45th Battalion and we were trained by World War I diggers. They finished

up in the end, they put us in a gas chamber with the respirators which we used to call gas masks and about one minute before we left the gas chamber, we had to take the respirators off and of course you held your breath and a lot of us were coughing our guts up but anyway that was just one of those things. Anyway, they

decided to, they wanted volunteers to drive trucks to Darwin and they got volunteers from Melbourne, Brisbane, South Australia, Victoria and in those days if you came from Queensland you were a ‘banana bender’, if you came from Sydney you were a ‘coat hanger’ and if you came from Victoria you were a ‘Yarra giggler’ and

if you came from South Australia you were a ‘sand groper.’ So on the way up in the train, they said it was an all weather road all the way to Darwin, so all the chaps who were in my unit, it was 23rd World War II Motor Transport,

it was quite good, I thought it was a different way of life, so we were going up and on the train and going up to Darwin and we were at a place called Sunshine in Victoria, I think it was, and we pulled up and stopped overnight

and one of the boys said, “What did you do last night Ravese?” I said, “Went to the pictures.” “What did you see?” I said, “’Bimbo’, I think the name was.” They said, “You don’t mean ‘Bambi’?” I said, “Yes, ‘Bambi’.” Only about five minutes later down the other end of the train a mate sang out, “Hey Bimbo,

what did you do last night?” So from that time on my nickname was Bimbo. Anyway we got to, we finished up in Alice Springs and we were driving trucks from Alice Springs to Darwin on the all weather road and about every five miles we got bogged. Tow ropes to pull the truck out, and it would be tow rope again and so we’d get out of the bog and

off we’d go again about five or six miles. Tow rope. And in the finish we used to call the officers ‘Tow Rope’. Anyway we got to Darwin eventually. We spent two days in Alice Springs and the flies, oh they were shocking. You’d go into the mess hut and you’d go through a hall of mesh to take the flies off your back. You’d close

your mouth and eyes and you’d get into the mess room and even when you were eating your meal there were flies getting onto your dinner. You’d just, oh yuck. So stopping at Alice Springs the next day the same thing happened and instead of pushing the flies away and not eating it, we were that hungry we had to eat it if we liked it or not. Anyway we left Alice Springs and we were off to Darwin and again, bogged.

The roads were all corrugated, right up to the Darwin main street, they were badly corrugated. So when we drove the trucks in the red dust we looked like Red Indians and we had to wash our eyes about every hour to get the dust out. The driving conditions were shocking.

Darwin, what was Darwin like? It took us about 10 days to get there and we thought, ‘This is not Australia, Darwin! This place here,’ I thought, ‘strike me, no it’s not Darwin. I think this could be Dodge City in America; Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, Doc Holiday wouldn’t be out of place.’ This place here was shocking.

Gambling dens were everywhere, drunks laying around on the streets and that was all right. So the food in the army was appalling. We used to live on dehydrated mutton, it looked like

rat dung and it tasted like rat dung and there was bully beef. In the tropics, of all foods, stews, we used to live on stews, and for a change it was a stew and we got sick of it. I can remember one day we drove some supplies to one of the fighter ‘dromes. I got there when they were having breakfast and they were having bacon and eggs,

and I said, “Bacon and eggs, strike me pink! You’ve got to be joking.” And I heard a voice say, “Give that man some bacon and eggs.” And I said, “Thanks Cookie.” So I got bacon and eggs and I said, “That was lovely,” and I walked out and I thanked the cook again. I said, “Thanks Cookie,” and a

chap alongside me said, “That’s not the cook, that’s Killer Caldwell, the ace fighter pilot.” I said, “Is it?” So I went over and I said, “Thanks for the bacon and eggs.” “She’s all right son. You’re welcome, anytime.” So we were camped at Vestey’s Meat Works right on the beach. Vestey’s Meat Works was two storey and

it had concrete floors full of steel girders and that. It had no sides and the mosquitos used to drive us mad. We got mosquito nets and they were useless because we used to wake up in the morning and in your net would be 20 or 30 as big as flies,

and it would be in your blood. You’d be that itchy and it would drive you mad, there was no repellents or anything like that. Even today if I see a fly out the back yard, I’ve got to go and get the Mortein [insecticide] and go and kill it. The mosquito to me is a bad enemy. I get into trouble for making a big fuss over one mosquito.

But that’s how it goes. What was Darwin like? It was like I said. They eventually tarred it right through eventually and they were using the roads for the fighter pilots to land because when the Japs

bombed they destroyed every aerodrome that was around and they used to use the roads as landing strips. What was sad about Darwin? It was very sad. Singapore had fallen and they evacuated all the women and children and they’re to take pets.

In about a month Darwin was full of stray dogs and they were starving and so orders came through that all dogs had to be shot and they were. And of course, us being transport, we used to take them into the bush and just throw them over and cover them over with lime. Another sad thing is you’d

see bombers flying out to go and bomb the Japs and they would come back later, a whole squadron of bombers would go out and about an hour later they’d come back and there would be just three or four and one of them on fire. It used to be very sad because we got to know the pilots by taking supplies there. Sad it

was, very sad. A lot happened up in Darwin. For 60 odd years nothing was said, Anzac Day would come along and the word Darwin was never ever mentioned for 50 years and I thought that was a big insult to

the people who served up there. The big air battles that went on, there was not a mention for 60 odd years about those battles. I know why, because we lost them. The chaps that flew those planes, they were the heroes. Going up with our training planes, we had no chance. The first raid, well the first two raids on the 19th of February,

I think the Japanese commander put it right, he said that the bombing of Darwin was like cracking an egg with a sledge hammer and he was so dead right. The Japanese were so well organised. There were more bombs dropped on Darwin than Pearl Harbour.

Had the cruiser, the [USS] Houston, been in the harbour the casualties probably would have been nearly as bad as Pearl Harbour. Anyway, what happened on that day was we loaded the ship, the Neptuna, with 1800 troops to take reinforcements to Timor.

While they were on their way, Timor fell and they decided to turn back. So they turned back and it was the cruiser the Houston and the [USS] Perry and the other Australian war ships. They landed back in Darwin and I would say that the cruiser the Houston was a powerful ship and I reckon they saved 1800 of our blokes.

The Americans? We used to get on well with the Americans but we used to hate their provos [Provosts], that’s their military police, and they would hate us. And one day, there we were unloading

an American ship and a box fell off the crane onto the jetty and little tins of peaches were scattered all over the wharf. This was about half past two in the morning because we were working day and night. I took some supplies to an American camp and

went back and a couple of my mates were eating peaches out of a tin, they would stab it with a bayonet and were eating these tinned peaches. The sergeant in charge, he had got through two and I said, “Where did you get the peaches?” He said, “On the jetty, they’re laying around.” So up I go and I picked up a tin and I heard a, “Hey you there, guy.”

I never answered and they said, “Hey there, you guy, what you got?” I said, “Nothing.” And he said, “You come over here and give me that nothing.” So I gave him the tin of peaches. “Where’s your sergeant?” I said, “I’ll go and get him.” I said, “Sarge, the provo wants you.” He said, “Put that man on charge for stealing,”

so I went before the major about a week later and the major said, “Guilty or not guilty?” And I said, “Not guilty.” And the major said, “I know you’re not guilty but I’m going to fine you a pound.” A pound then was like 50 bucks today. He said, “I’m going to fine you a pound, not for taking the tinned peaches

because I don’t blame you, you’re not getting any fruit or vegetables from anywhere, and I know that the sergeant that put you on the charge ate two tins and I know that all your mates ate tins too. I’m going to charge you because your belly is bigger than your brains. What you should have done was look around to see if the provos were there instead of picking it up in front of him. So, Ravese, you’re fined a pound because your belly’s bigger than your brain.”

I thought that was funny. Anyway that was all right. One of my mates said, “Do you want to get even with the provos, Vince?” I said, “What are you going to do?” Of course the Australians love their beer and when the orders came through that all the back windows of trucks

had to be taken out because on a moonlight night they shine and give your position away so that was all right, so one of the boys loaded a box of 10 beer right near the window of the back door of the truck. In those days we had a spare driver in case one got knocked over.

So what they did was, they prised, when we were driving along going to the American camp, the provos are on their motorbikes running up and down, so they prised open the box of beer and of course the driver’s only responsible for the number of boxes, not the contents.

So anyway, they finished off knocking off a box of their beer and they would throw them to a tree as they were going along because that would be the opposite side to where the provos were on their motorbikes and then they’d go back the next day and have a few beers and they said, “Righto Ravese, we’re even with them.” Now that was the story of the grog. I never drank one bottle of beer during the whole two years I was in Darwin,

it sounds silly but I used to swap it for an ounce of tobacco. People used to think I was nuts for not drinking beer. Darwin, the main water pipe was a metre above the ground and it was steel. You couldn’t drink water because it was hot enough to make a cup of tea. The water was that hot that you would spend half your wages on soft drinks

or, we used to call it lolly water and we used to drink gallons a day of it. The food in Darwin, as I said, we’re supposed to be one of the richest countries in the world and it was the poorest food in the world. I can remember one day, this was before the bombing, the American troops used to come ashore and

there was a group of them from the Houston and they were right in the middle of Darwin and they said to me, “Hey buddy, how far is Darwin?” And I said, “Mate, you’re right in the middle of it.” He said, “You’re joking.” I said, “This is the middle of Darwin. We call it the arsehole of Australia.” “No buddy, this is the arsehole of the world if this is Darwin.”

That’s how Darwin was. It’s as I said, Billy the Kid wouldn’t have been out of place there, it was a terrible place, the conditions were shocking. In the monsoon rains, like when Singapore fell we had about 100 trucks lined up at Vestey’s

so we decided to put them in the bush, so we lived at Vestey’s but we put the trucks and camouflaged them in the bush because they were a sitting duck. We had a lot of trucks in the unit. And I’m saying today that the 23rd World War II Motor Transport, I’m claiming that it did more than any other transport in World War II,

I’m claiming that and I can prove it. The first raid, you can’t describe the first raid. They said there was 300 odd killed. I can’t believe that. Three hundred? It would be more like 3000 because we were burying bodies on the beach. The sergeant major would come in of a night time and say, “I want six volunteers,

you, you, you and you. Grab your respirators.” And we would go down on the beach and we would dig until we came to water. Then they used to go down and throw a blanket over the bodies, tow them up and bury them. We were a transport company, we weren’t a burial unit, and this used to annoy us.

We’d say, “What’s going on? Transport and doing things like this.” We used to work day and night. You’d go there and we’d fall asleep at the wheel sometimes. We were working day and night. The orders came through that there was a 30 mile an hour speed limit because if you fell asleep at the wheel and you hit something then something would be damaged.

Now I can remember one bloke during a raid, he went off the road and what’s he do? He runs into a land mine and he gets blown up but luckily it struck the back wheel and he got out of it. They never told us where the land mines were or anything. So it’s like I said, the Japanese were so organised. They knew every move we made. We used to take 44 gallon

drums of petrol day and night because if they bombed the oil tanks, there would be no petrol for the planes to use to fly out. We used to take them down about 20 mile out of town and take them in the bush and we used to probably put

about 200 or 300 44 gallon drums, and then the next lot would go down another five or six miles and do the same thing. We’d camouflage them and camouflage our tracks and on the moonlight nights they used to try and bomb them. They knew every move we made, the Japanese. This chap in town who used to develop photos, his name

was Kozimoto I think, they finished up catching him for spying and I believe he was shot. Darwin, for 60-odd years nobody ever mentioned the air battles that went on. The air battles were never ever mentioned once. Why? Because we lost them, and those pilots that went

up, they were about three to one against them. The Japanese Zero was underestimated. It could manoeuvre on a threepenny bit or a one cent piece and it used to out-manoeuvre our planes. Then they woke up. So they woke up and thought, “We’ll go above and come down on them.”

Then one of the units came up to Darwin from overseas and they said that their life was never more in danger than it was in Darwin. For the boys that served up there, I’m telling this story for the boys that served up there,

to let their families know that anybody who served up there, they should be proud of them.

The wanted volunteers to go on a dangerous mission: I volunteered. They wanted six drivers: I volunteered and I was picked. And I thought, “Dangerous mission, you’ve got to be joking.” So I volunteered and our job was to take the commandos to

Broome and Wyndham, that was our job. There were six of our trucks, I drove one of them and the commandos, the 4th Independent Commandos incidentally, they drove charcoal burners because charcoal burners weren’t as powerful as the petrol trucks but they did the job, and

they used to run on charcoal so they could make their own charcoal if they were ever cut off. So when we got to, I think, Katherine, you’re not going to know, they bombed it. I thought, “Oh no. We’re out of Darwin and they bombed it.” I thought, “They’re picking on us. They must be picking on my unit.” Now the Japanese,

I’ve got nothing against Japanese people, the war is over. The Japanese people today are no different to us, only they look different, I want to make that clear and I want to make it clear that we don’t think that we’re heroes either.

We got to the Victoria River Downs cattle station and the Victoria River Downs cattle station was just like a small town. We stopped there for two days just to have a rest, then we took the commandos to Broome and some of the trucks went to Wyndham. I went to Broome and some of my mates went to Wyndham.

We were away about 10 to 12 days and then we were back home at Darwin but when we got to the Victoria River Downs cattle station, the officer in charge of the commandos said, “Now, you don’t know where you’re going so we’re going to tell you. You’re going to Broome and Wyndham and if our job is, if the Japanese land, our job is to

slow them down before the reinforcements come.” That’s what the commandos were there for. Anyway we did our job, the 23rd Transport. So we were on our way back with the six trucks and we arrived back and there was one raid there I would have loved to have seen, I wasn’t there to see it. A squadron of Jap [Japanese] bombers

came over and they weren’t that high. Nobody had a go at them, there wasn’t a shot fired. So they went out and dropped their bombs and coming back, and incidentally they were escorted by Japanese Zero fighters, not a shot was fired when they came over. They came right

over Darwin and naturally they thought, so they came down lower and who’s up there waiting for them was a squadron of Kittyhawks and blew the whole squadron out of the sky. I thought, ‘Gee, I would have loved to have seen that.’ But anyway what happened was the escorting fighter planes shot through,

they didn’t want to get done over. And that was a great moment. Another time there, it was a good moment when ‘Killer’ Caldwell, I think it was, came over one night and went up. We could see these tracer bullets going into a plane. I thought, ‘This is good.’ They were shooting from the south

northward. And you could see these tracer bullets going into the plane and then the plane caught fire. It didn’t sort of come straight down, it glided down. Anyway it glided down and it came down about two kilometres from where we were camped. We went out the next day and I picked up a piece of aluminium

from the plane and I made a ring out of it. We used to make, the only way we could pass the time away was, there were pearl luggers and on the left when you’re going into Darwin there’s mud flats which are chock a block with pearl shells, there’s one of them there.

We used to cut them up in our spare time and we used to make rings, crosses and we used to send them to different people in Sydney. The only way we could amuse ourselves. Of a night time there was a movie about once a week, the mosquitos used to eat you alive and you’d finish up saying, “Bugger the movies,” and you’d go back to camp.

There was another time there when I was tap dancing in tap dancing shoes. I wasn’t too bad. I got a write-up in one of the papers there: ’Driver Ravese Tap Dances’. But one of the officers said, “Ravese, you’ve had a bit of experience with the stage, why don’t you put on a show.”

So I thought I could but I didn’t have any tap dancing shoes, I was tap dancing without them, so they finished up getting me a pair of tap dancing shoes. I’ve got them inside if you want to see them. So I put on a show. We let the tyres down on two trucks and that was our stage and it went over quite well.

So there were a lot of good singers. We had a cook, Tiny we used to call him. He was about 7 feet tall and he was about 100 stone. He had fat flopping all over him. We borrowed some clothes off the nurses and we got dressed up as women

and then I got a little short bloke, he was only about four feet nothing. Then I got a tall skinny bloke and we were all dressed up as women. I taught them how to waltz. We were waltzing on the stage….[singing].

They were dancing around the stage and everybody was yelling wisecracks. I was dressed up as a girl and someone yelled out, “Hey Bimbo, can I sleep in your tent?” “Shut up you mongrel.” And Tiny, that was the cook, “I’ll peel your spuds.” So they were dancing around and throwing wild flowers to the crowd and it went over well.

We had a captain there, Captain Johnson. He was always the last one in the trench during the raids. What’s he do? The Japs arrived and we’ve got the Japs on the run. They wanted doctor volunteers to go to New Guinea and what’s he do, he went down in the Sentinel.

That was very sad, only 30 nautical miles from Coolangatta. Every time I go up to Coolangatta I think of him. He was a good bloke.

The monsoon rains. We eventually moved out of Vestie’s, Vestie’s was bombed a couple of times. We were eventually moved out into the bush but we were in the target area all the time. Drivers were in town. The bombing raids on the planes, I know there were always three or four of our drivers

there and there wasn’t one bombing raid that the 23rd Reserve Motor Transport unit didn’t witness. When the monsoon rains were on we had to build our palliasses up on four sticks like ‘V’ sticks to keep off the ground. For days, as much as six or seven days, in the monsoon rains,

there was water running underneath our tent. It was nothing to see half a dozen snakes in the one night. We used to hate the snakes. We shot a lot but turning the clock back now, I wouldn’t have done that because they were all pythons and I thought that was wrong but we didn’t know at the time. Then we would say, “Oh snakes. There’s no good snakes.

There’s only one good snake and that’s a dead one.” But today if I could turn the clock back we wouldn’t have shot them. I’m not saying there weren’t any dangerous ones there but the ones that used to come through our tent, you’d be asleep at night and you’d see this six or eight foot snake going past and you’d say, “What’s going on?” We called our camp Snake Gully. But the monsoon

rains, it was shocking. You were wet, dengue fever, I had dengue fever twice, prickly heat, you couldn’t wear a shirt during the day. The only time you put a shirt on was to go into the mess room, that was compulsory. You had to put a shirt on to go and have your meals but you came out and your shirts were wringing wet and so you took them off

and you could not wear any clothes because it was so hot. And I’m talking about the wet season, it wasn’t so bad in the dry season. The conditions were shocking. When you go through all these horrible experiences, the war’s over, “Where were you?” “In Darwin.”

“Oh, I believe you had a bombing raid.” “No, you’re wrong, we never had a bombing raid. They used to drop confetti on us. Where were you in the war?” So I went to join the RSL, I suppose about three years after the war. It was at Cogra, the Cogra RSL [Returned and Services League]. It was run by

World War I veterans. “G’day what can I do for you?” There was a little room they had in the main street of Cogra, they’re not there now. “What can I do for you?” “I’d like to join the RSL.” “Oh yeah, where were you?” “I was in Darwin.” “Oh Darwin, what part of Darwin?”

And then the two of them walked out and they were whispering in the next room. I thought, ‘What the hell are they whispering about?’ And I heard one of them say, “I think so.” Then, “Are you a member of the Communist Party?” And, “Why did you take so long to join the RSL?” I stood up and I said, “Listen mate, stick the RSL up your quoit,”

and walked out and I never joined it for years later and I only picked my medal up about five years ago because when you mention the word Darwin, Anzac Day, Darwin was never mentioned. “Where were you in the war?” I would just say north, I wasn’t game to say Darwin. That was a sin, all my mates that passed on before they were even recognised.

One thing I want to say to their families again, you should be proud of the boys that were up there. Darwin? We did our job, we did it well and I’m just disgusted. The censorship was ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. I wrote, you couldn’t get

any writing pads so I just wrote on a piece of newspaper, ‘All well after the bombing.’ My mother never received it. You sent a three or four page letter, they would just send the first few lines and the last few lines. Now why? Why? What was the censorship? All cameras were confiscated.

Me being a villain, I didn’t hand mine in. I wasn’t going to anyway. ‘Why do I have to hand my camera in for? I’m taking photos.’ If I had have handed my camera in, those photos wouldn’t have been for you to look at. Like the censorship, look, it was disgusting. We weren’t recognised for 50 years after the war. You’ve got to be joking.

You’ve got to be joking. Whose fault is it? I know, it’s the wrong people in the wrong job. That’s the whole trouble. The wrong people in the wrong job, and that goes for today too. Wars are stupid. What they should do in wars is recruit all politicians and send them to the front line, then there would be no wars. Wars are stupid, nobody wins them. But the trouble is, the wrong people in the wrong place.

It’s about time the world got together and stopped these stupid wars. The roads are killing more than the wars today and nobody does nothing about it. They’re complaining, marching ‘no war this’. We should be with the Yanks [Americans], they saved our skin in World War II. The Japanese didn’t want America, they wanted Australia and it cost

the Yanks thousands of troops to save Australia. A lot of people don’t know that, John Howard does, I’m not talking about politicians. We have to be on this earth whether we like it or not. Only for the Yanks this country would belong to Japan. No risk. And they were, it’s like I said, I’ve got no animosity against the Japanese people,

but the Japanese in World War II, they were a bad, bad enemy. The rules of war they ignored and they were cruel. The people in Darwin, the brave people, those boats that went around in the harbour picking up men, they’re the blokes with guts.

These fighter pilots, they’re the blokes with guts, and none of them are recognised. And as I keep repeating, Darwin, Darwin’s Australia’s greatest war zone, it was the main base for the Allies in World War II. Darwin

was chock a block with ships with only one jetty. They were building it another one. The government gave Darwin away I think. It was only because of General MacArthur turning around saying, “We’ve got to save Darwin at all costs.” I think the government were going to take Darwin, I don’t know.

Oh, and incidentally, and we were told the Japanese were going to cut Darwin off and land troops in Broome and Wyndham and cut Darwin off. They weren’t going to invade Darwin but we were prepared for it anyway, prepared with nothing. The first raid and second raid, you had to see it to believe it, it was cruel,

the Japanese did what they wanted. The planes in the second raid, down they came, they knew they were safe, they were at tree top laughing their heads off. I shot 100 Japanese planes down myself with my fist. The dive bombers used to dive bomb, there would be five dive bombers at a time,

they’re not like our blokes who used to peel to the left or the right. They would just follow one another down and they dive bombed anything, anything that moved. They were so accurate, why wouldn’t they be? They had the experience. The same pilots bombed Pearl Harbour and they never missed. The Darwin Post Office, that was cruel.

The army should have taken the, when Singapore fell the army should have taken the post office over because the post office were lines of communication. The Ball family, they were the brave people, the family should be awarded something. The post office in Darwin…

Yes, they ran the post office

and volunteered to do it too incidentally and they had one son in South Australia, I think, he was going to school. We got to know the Ball family, they were like friends. We would go there two or three times a week and buy stamps and talk to them. For the life of me I can’t work out why they put the air raid shelter or a slit trench right

alongside the post office when it had a big back yard. I can’t work that one out. They had a big back yard and they could have put slit trenches down the back but they put it right alongside. And I was with an American colonel, I was told to report to American headquarters to pick up this colonel. So I picked him up

and in China Town – that’s one of the streets in Darwin, they used to call it China Town. It was run by Chinese who couldn’t speak English then. You just walked into the shop and pointed to what you wanted and then you paid for it. And the price of stuff was ridiculous. Like in Sydney, apples used to be like one cent and up there they would be ten cents so to speak. He said, “Driver would you like a nice lemon squash?”

and you got a pint of lemon squash and it was beautiful for sixpence. So in we go and we’re drinking it and we come out and we look up and you could hardly see the sky for planes. We thought, ‘Thank Christ we’ve got an air force at last,’ and the colonel said to me, “They’re not our planes driver, let’s take cover.”

And I thought, ‘They are our planes.’ “Let’s take cover, they’re Japs.” So he convinced me then. So take cover – where could we go? There were no trenches. I’m in a utility. Where did we finish up? We go to a place, we’re heading towards the jetty way because there’s a wall there which will give you a bit of protection. We used to call it Gilroy’s Neck.

There was a wall there where you could stand up and it would give you a bit of protection. The colonel must have known this, and as we were driving past, the post office got blown up. I lost the hearing on this one, my ear was bleeding. When the all clear went we were watching them dive bombing everything and bombing in the harbour,

it was shocking you know. The colonel said to me, “Ravese, you’re scared aren’t you?” I said, “Yes sir I am.” He said, “What’s your first name?” I said, “Vince.” He said, “Mine’s Joe,” and he shook my hand. He said, “You’re shitting yourself and you’re showing it.” I said, “Yes sir I am.”

He said, “I’m shitting myself too but I ain’t showing it. I witnessed Pearl Harbour. I was there when Pearl Harbour was getting bombed, and I’m scared to.” There’s only one thing to do when you get scared, I was single at the time and you think of your parents. I had another brother up in Darwin.

He was an ack ack gunner. He was at a place called Fenton, that’s out of Darwin. That was one of the American air force bases, I think it was, and he got bombed a few times. But I never saw him while I was up there. I can’t get over how cruel wars can be. The first raid and then

64 bombing raids. Not four but 64, and when you get out of the army you’re not recognised. I’ll never get over it. In fact the war turned me from a young man into

a grumpy old bugger. So it’s a shame. I don’t know why they weren’t recognised. I really don’t. The word overseas,

overseas. Yes, I went overseas, I went to Manly one day. You know Manly, that’s overseas. I went overseas when I was in the army. I went to Manly. And a funny thing, the day I went I left my pants and wallet on the beach and someone pinched it. And I had to finish up paying a taxi from Manly

to – I think I was living at Dulwich Hill at the time. I never had any money on me so I had to go and borrow some money off the boss. Wars are stupid. What do you do about it, you know? What do you do about it? Wars: ‘We’ve got to take the hill at

at all costs,’ and that sort of thing, that’s crap. You lose 1000 men for a bit of ground. Wars are stupid. I don’t know. I don’t think I can tell you any more. There’s lots that went on up there that I wrote here.

My parents?

My father was on a sailing ship and he came to Australia when he was 18. He came twice and when he went back home he said, “You know, this Australia’s a pretty good place.”

He was from Italy. His grandfather, and I’ve got the coat of arms there, was a Count, Count Paula. So my great-grandfather was royalty. You might say big deal.

I say big deal too because they don’t pay the bills. I’ve got the coat of arms there if you want to see it. My father being of a royal family, his parents didn’t want him to marry a peasant. So he decided to marry my mother and bring her to Australia

and that’s what he did and we lived in Paddington.

A poor family.

Yes, I would say a poor family and they didn’t want my father, my mother wasn’t good enough so to speak. In the

old days the Italians, that was their way of life you know. My brother, my father’s brother came to Australia too and that’s the Raveses in Bondi, they’re well known in Bondi. They had like a block of shops that they owned. They paid 50,000 pound for it in World War I,

and today it’s worth god knows how many million. My childhood was not good. I used to work at Watsons Bay, the Doyles, a well known fish and chips people. I knew the people who opened up the shop as a matter of fact.

I got a penny and a cake off Mrs Doyle to go up and post a letter at Watsons Bay as a kid. I used to work in a fruit shop there. It was a restaurant. I used to sell prawns, ice cream and they had a nice waterfront home.

They didn’t live on the jetty. They had a home along Marine Parade in Watsons Bay. The Marinatos, they were well known down there. As I said, he produced two movies and one was ‘Sydney’s Darlings’, that was interesting.

The Marinatos were lifelong friends of ours and we used to call them ‘comara’ and ‘compara’. That was like saying aunty and uncle but no blood, but as good as. That’s how I came to work down there.

When my father died it was either work or go without and I used to do lots of jobs down there. I never got paid but they kept me. They bought me clothes. Big deal, that’s what I say. I used to say to the old sheila [woman],

“Can I go to the pictures?” And she’d say, “No, dig the garden.” We used to call her comara and I’d say, “Can I go for a swim.” “No you have to go and sell the prawns today. If you want to go swim you go with compara at five o’clock in the morning.” She was a bitch I thought. In the long run she wasn’t. She taught me how to

be a businessman. I was a businessman and I was a successful businessman. I was a builder after World War II. I’ve done well. I moved up here 25 years ago, no regrets. But going back to childhood, what is there?

I was nine.

He died of double pneumonia. In those days you worked or you didn’t eat. He used to go to work with pneumonia and he got double pneumonia and that’s what killed him. So they were bad days, the old days were bad days. There was only one good thing about the old days and that was that you were younger. But my father,

he was a good man. He was my mate. He used to take me fishing. He used to take me to the pictures when he was alive. I was his shadow. Being Vince he used to call me Prince. I didn’t mind that. I had a very hard life as a kid

but I think most kids did in those days. You see, people think, I went through the Depression with 11 children and you’d get off the table and you could eat twice as much as what you ate. I’ve been through that and I decided that that’s not going to happen to my kids

and it didn’t. I spoilt them. I had a son, that’s my son over there, and that’s my daughter there, and that’s us, the wedding photo up the top. And these are my grand kids when they were kids. They’re all men now. And it’s only through them that I’ve picked up my medals and it was only a few years ago. I got a paper there

to say. That’s what I thought. So the Darwin blokes up there during the war, it’s a shame they weren’t recognised. The ack-ack [anti aircraft] gunners, they did a marvellous job. I can’t say much more. As a kid, what else?

It was bad. See in those days, 99% of people rented a house. That was the way of life. Today probably 80% of them own them, it’s different today. And it’s only since World War II that Australia has really picked up. Like

after the war there was a flood of money that was gratuity pay. Things were booming. To own your house, that was a must and it’s a good thing. It’s getting harder to own your house today. When we moved up from Sydney, I thought, ‘If we move back

it’s going to cost me twice as much.’ So I sunk it into land, the money that was over. I sold a house for $100,000 and today it’s worth a million and a half, a waterfront. I had a factory that I built and owned outright. I was leasing. Leasing, I was getting two wages out of it. I was living comfortable so I retired at 53, I think,

which was too young, and I sold the factory too. I moved up here and I bought some land up here for $16,000 a block. I sold them for $80,000 two years ago. They’re now worth $250,000. So what chance have the young people got of owning a house today? It’s ridiculous. Whose fault is it? It’s the government. They’re not releasing enough land. There’s plenty of land, especially up at Tweed.

There’s thousands of acres that could be released. Why don’t they release it and give young people a go. But they’re not. This is not being filmed is it?

Oh no.

Well it was good, we got on well together.

I’ve lost my eldest brother and my eldest sister. They’ve been two died. But all the others, I’ve got a sister who’s 93 I think and she only looks 63, she looks good. I’ve got all my sisters, well half of them are living in Sydney, they’re

all comfortable.

Well that was the way of life then. Nearly everybody had four or five kids. The war, it’s terrible. I used to be a bike rider. I finished up winning the one mile track championship, I wasn’t bad.

The chap that was training me, what happens? He gets killed in the war over in the Pacific. A chap I used to work with, Albert Smith, he was killed. ‘Gaunty’, another bloke, he got killed. Not in Darwin but in Singapore, never made it,

no, and in Darwin a couple of our blokes got a one way ticket. I don’t know. I think the world’s uncivilised, myself. It’s like I said, wrong people in the wrong job. And there should be no wars. What’s the big deal? What do you have wars for?

I don’t know. It makes you wonder. Like your generation. You shouldn’t have kids and send them to war. What’s going on? It’s like I said, politicians. They should send them to the front line.

I was called up to do three months’ compulsory training, then…

Yes, I volunteered and I thought, ‘The war, we’re in it.’ I wasn’t the white feather type of bloke so to speak

and it was my job whether I liked it or not, that’s how I looked at it. Nobody wants to die, you’d be stupid to say you wanted to go to the war to die. Your chances? Well if your number’s up you’re going to go. But I joined up and

I went through a lot of hardships. It wasn’t easy but the worst part was not being recognised. I keep repeating that and I mean in. Now for 50 years, I can’t take that. As long as I live it will always…. I had the bomb, I picked up the bomb that blew the post office up. I was there when they were loading the bodies and

the 1000 pound bomb made a hole in the old measurement about 30 foot wide and about 30 foot deep, like a ice cream. And I witnessed eight bodies and I didn’t know at the time that it was the people from the post office but I guessed it. And

when you know them, it’s very sad. The Darwin Post Office, it looked like just an average house but it had an unusual roof. And there’s about 30 feet and you

walked down the lane or the footpath and at the back there was a verandah with wooden stairs. You stepped up onto the verandah and you went in and that was the post office. It’s the things that happen and the dive bombing that you see. When you

see these planes and they’re not ours and they’re raining bombs and you think, hey I’m not religious but you do the sign of the cross quite a few times you know. It’s like I keep repeating, we’ve never been recognised

and I still reckon we’re not. See what you’re doing today, that should have been done 60 years ago and that’s before your time. Why didn’t they tell the Australian people what was happening? What was the purpose? Panic?

They didn’t want the public to know so they wouldn’t panic. That’s one reason.

But why didn’t they tell the people after the war? That’s what I’m cranky about. Years later, 50 years later, they decide to recognise you but I think we’re still not recognised you know, I have that feeling. The bomb that blew the post office up, I brought it home with me. I’ve got a photo of it there.

I’m looking at it one day and I thought, ‘That’s the bomb that killed ten people. What am I doing with it?’ So against the wishes of my family I donated it to the War Memorial, there’s a photo there, and I’ve donated the two pieces of shrapnel to the War Memorial and that’s where it is.

There’s only one thing I’m a bit cranky with, with the War Memorial, is that I donated these two pieces of shrapnel and that was an historic two pieces of shrapnel and all they’ve done is put it around with all the other little bits of scraps that were dropped on Darwin, and that’s wrong. That piece, if I had known that I wouldn’t have donated it. My family are crooked on me for that.

It went to the War Memorial and they’ve got these two pieces of shrapnel amongst little pieces of shrapnel this big and that big, like from other bombs. The one that I donated was an historic one, I’m claiming it to be the first bomb to drop on Australia and I can prove that, I can prove it without doubt. There’s a photo there in a magazine of

the Japanese that landed in Australia in the Broome and Wyndham area, there’s photos of them there. And the reason why they didn’t do it was because they could have been shot. There’s a lot more Japanese troops landed in Australia than a lot of people think. They landed in Broome and Wyndham and the Gulf of Carpentaria. There were hundreds of them landed in Australia, a lot in civilian clothes, and some of them looked like Australian and were Japanese. You know what I mean.

I reckon that’s what they had up in Darwin because they knew ever move we made. There was a civil aerodrome and they put bombers there with no engines, and fighter planes with no engines. They looked just normal but with no engine. They used to move them around every second day because the Japs used to come over on reconnaissance

and we knew they were on reconnaissance and we never used to worry about them. They never bombed it once, why? They knew they were dummies. They had the pearl luggers there on the mud flats. It was just chock a block with pearl shells that they used to dump there. They dumped them there so they could walk on the mud flats. They were spying

on what happened in Darwin too. We’ll never ever know how many Japanese landed in Australia, never. They landed at Broome and Wyndham, as I said, and the Gulf of Carpentaria. How did they pick it up? The Aboriginals first picked it up. They said, “Him a funny man, long way, funny man long way,

him eat tins.” They couldn’t work it out. “Where, where?” “In ground, down there.” And they dug holes and there was Japanese tin food up at the Gulf of Carpentaria and they reckoned there was a big mob of them, Australian people don’t know that, that’s been proved. So they formed an Aboriginal unit, I don’t know what they called them, I think ‘Curtin’s Cowboys’ or something like that. They were working with the army and they used to tell us everything.

Yes. Singapore had fallen and there were blokes over there getting blown to pieces and the wharf labourers at Darwin they want to go on strike. Of course the Americans heard about this,

“A strike, what’s going on here? There’s a damn war going on you know. What’s going on? One jetty and you’re going to close it down with the harbour full of ships that need unloading, you’ve got to be joking. ‘Sergeant, put those two machine guns up on the wharf. Who’s in charge

of the wharf labourers?” Some blokes came out, “We are.” “Well you either go back to work or we’ll take over and if that’s not the case, sergeant, shoot to kill.” So they did go back to work. They took the machines away and away they went but they went at a snail’s pace and there was nothing they could do

about it. So two days later the ship was blown to pieces and I think there were about 20 or 30 wharf labourers who lost their jobs, lost their lives. Had they unloaded the ship at the right time which it should have been, they probably would have survived. Another thing too, the RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] got a warning,

‘A big flight of planes heading towards Darwin.’ They turned around and said, the air force said, ‘It can’t be.’ “Some Kittyhawks left Darwin an hour ago,” one officer said. “But it was only a squadron, this says huge,

a large amount of planes.” Now had the officer, probably the wrong bloke in the wrong job, turned around and said, “Sound the air raid alarm,” a lot of people could have been saved. So that’s the story about the strike on the wharf.

I’ve never had much time for wharfies since then, I don’t know why. Another thing, the American fleet, Darwin was a major base for the American fleet and Vestie’s Meat Works had a chimney, it could have been 30 or 40 metres high, and the navy said they could see it quite plainly

out to sea and it’s got to go. So they notified the army in Darwin that the chimney at Vestie’s had to go. Anyway two weeks later it’s still standing. With the red tape that was going on, it had to go to Canberra, and what did the Americans do, in they came and ‘boom’,

blew it to pieces. And that’s the story about the chimney at Vestie’s. They blew it to pieces, straight away, no mucking around. I might tell you that what they said was unprintable but what they said was true, “There’s such and such a war going on,” and there’s the story.

Well it could have been because

the trucks used to, this is before the bombing, it was so dusty that the trucks used to drive down the street and the dust used to lay there, like everybody looked like a Red Indian. You have to say that it’s not very healthy is it, copping

this dust. Being young you don’t take any notice of it but one of my mates, we left Darwin in March ’43 and one of my mates had dust on the lungs so he must have got it in Darwin and I never found out if it killed him or not but he had dust on the lungs.

I blame my catarrh and bronchitis for it myself, plus being in the gas chamber for a minute or half a minute without any respirator on. It could have caused it but I don’t know, I can’t prove it. So that’s it.

Mindel Beach? Well we were camped on Mindel Beach at Vestie’s

Meat Works. We lived on, you just walked up about 30 steps and there was a concrete slab and that’s all that was there, no walls. Vestie’s, you couldn’t swim, it was too hot in the wet season. We used to go to Berry Springs, there would be two or three trucks that would go to Berry Springs,

which was about 15 minutes from Darwin, for a swim but by the time we got there we had got rid of the dust but by the time we came home we were just as bad, so the swim didn’t really do us any good. Boredom? There’s no good wars. The looting that went on, there was a little bit of it. Looting goes with wars, there’s not a war in the world

where a bit of looting goes on. Sometimes people overdo it. But looting? Sure. I had all my teeth then, I still have except two. There was a place called Jolly’s, and Jolly’s, a 1000 pound bomb dropped on Jolly’s and blew the roof off and all the stuff that was in Jolly’s…

Jolly’s was a place like Woolworths, it sold everything. I couldn’t buy toothpaste, so what did I do? I took some, I took what I needed and I don’t call that stealing, I call it scrounging maybe, I don’t call it looting. It would be something I wanted and if I didn’t take it the rain would pelt down, the monsoon rains…

none of the stuff would last. I think 90% of the houses were bombed anyway. Another place that was hit with a bomb and we knocked off, we scrounged a wireless. That

used to tell us what to do. We got too a gramophone and played some records. Like I’m saying to the Jollys, if they want me to pay for that toothpaste, well the answer is, ‘You’re not getting paid.’ And that goes for the gramophone and the wireless. It’s still there. We took things, sure we did. You’re thinking you might not be here tomorrow

then ‘bugger them’ you know, and that’s how you felt. To be quite truthful, none of us thought we were going to make it but we did and that’s it. Funny thing, I used to look up into the sky sometimes when I had survived and say, “Thank you Huey.” I’m a Catholic but I’m not religious. But it was ‘thanks Huey’.

That was a natural sort of thought that went through your mind. I thanked Huey a few times. What else can I say? Can I go back for a tick.

Yes, well,

wrong people in the wrong job. I think that the officers in Darwin were the wrong people. Case in point: there’s a warning comes over, ‘A large force of planes heading for Darwin.’ Had it been the wrong man in the right job, the air force, I think they were the wrong people in the wrong job. That was number one in the wrong job,

the people that was, the town clerk or whoever it was shot through. He should have stopped there for the people, I thought he was the wrong man in the wrong job. The post office, there shouldn’t have been civilians, wrong people, they were brave people. Like the post office, the post office lines of communication, that’s got to be the first target

and civilians should not have mounted the post office, yet they did. Like wrong people in the wrong job? One of our officers I thought was a bit slow. One day there, someone there was going up on a minor charge, I forget what it was. An air raid alarm came and,

“Case dismissed!” Wrong people, a little bit of panic, a lot of them panicked a bit. The doctor, Johnson, he was number one, he was the right man in the right place, he was always the last man in the trench, and sadly he goes down in the Sentinel. That’s what I mean about the wrong person in the wrong job.

I thought if they had had more experienced people. But that’s the way I felt about it, the wrong people in the wrong job. Today it goes on too, there’s a lot of people in the wrong job. That’s part of life.

Yes. I think it was in September and I heard that war had been declared and what was I doing? I think I was driving a 3 ton truck then.

I thought, ‘Oh no,’ and I think I was shocked like everybody. I thought World War II was a continuation of World War I you know. Like everybody, how did I feel? How does anybody feel when there’s a war declared? Can you imagine if you’re a married man with two or three kids of service ages, how would you feel?

Like you bring up somebody and the chance of losing them in a war.

Oh terrible, terrible. They knew that my brother was army age and I was army age and they knew we’d be involved sooner or later. Like

my mother wore two, a badge that they give you if you had a serviceman in the family. There was two of us returned and she used to wear that with pride and she used to always say, “My boys are doing their bit for their country.” The Italian background, we never grew up as Italians, we were Australians.

My father could speak English and write better than me, we didn’t consider him to be an Italian. My mother, well she wasn’t very good, she used to keep to herself, they should have had televisions in those days. She had 11 kids, we were a very close family and

when she heard that I had volunteered to go to Darwin she was very upset that I had volunteered. She couldn’t write and she used to get other people to write letters to me. She was very upset but when the bombing, she, when I went back after war my mother had aged 20 years in two or three years. She

had aged through me and my brother being in the war. That’s the story there.

I probably would have been called up, probably would have but I was transport and it had to be transport

because as I said my feet, I could never march, they knew that. In fact I wore steel arches for two years before I joined up and they knew that too but I was hopeless and that was why I had to go into transport whether I liked it or not. That was all I could do.

Yes I joined voluntarily.

The 23rd Reserve.

Yes. And that was chaps from all over Australia and

we were a pretty close mob we were. We …

That was compulsory, the three months, but a week before I was due to go back into civilian life, that’s when I joined up.

I was a mortar man.

Yes, everything. Gas masks, they were expecting gas to be used in World War II. As I said, they sent us in the gas chamber too, so did everybody else. They taught us how to dismantle machine guns and how to put them together. They taught us everything. They taught us about trucks and what to do and what not to do.

I did three months’ schooling to get a semi-trailer licence and I got that. I got a B3 licence that could drive trailers and you name it. I was just a driver and I’ve been driving all my life and, read my lips, I’ve never had an accident in 60-odd years of driving. Do you know why? When I joined the army

and they wanted truck drivers, we went into a hall, “Hands up all the good drivers.” And everybody put their hands up. “Why are you a good driver?” “Sir, I’ve been driving for two or three years and I haven’t had an accident.” “Why are you a good driver?” “Well because I got a licence

and I wouldn’t get a licence if I wasn’t a good driver.” Everybody had an excuse. The sergeant major in charge said, “By the time we’ve finished with you, you will be a good driver.” They taught us everything. He proved beyond doubt that he was right, we weren’t good drivers but we finished up good drivers because they taught us

the do’s and don’ts. When to turn, when to break, when not to break, when to pass, drive as if there’s a policeman behind you all the time. Drive as if there’s a car behind you and there’s one ready to pass you and all this. They taught us properly. So what you do, you drive to conditions. If you’re in a 100 zone and you’re driving

and it’s raining, cut your speed down. If you’re in fog, you don’t have to do 100 because it says 100. If you can’t see in front of you, drive at 10 miles an hour. You’ve got to drive safely, drive to conditions, but people can’t do that, and don’t be impatient. If you’re late for the dentist, don’t try and pick it up on the road. That’s what they were telling us in the army.

If you break down around the corner, get out and put something around the corner to let people know. All these things. They did teach us properly and we did three months’ schooling to get onto a semi-trailer. If you drive a semi-trailer, you’ve got to make sure the load doesn’t move, that’s very important. If you go around a corner and you’re carrying 10 or 15 ton and

that load moves to one side, you’re carrying say 15 ton and you’ve got say 12 ton on one side, you turn the corner and over you go. You drive a loaded car like a loaded car, and a truck or a semi. If it’s empty, drive it like it’s empty. You don’t drive a truck or a semi-trailer like a car, because it’s not a car.

So that’s it and they did teach us and it’s paid dividends.

Yes, that was a militia thing. That was militia. That was ‘M’ numbers. The ‘X’ number was for returned servicemen or to go overseas.

All World War I diggers

and they were strict too, they were hard, hard buggers. You did what they asked you to do or else, you were on guard.

I thought it was different. Here’s me, I had been working hard all my life and I thought, ‘This army life isn’t too bad. You’ve got some good mates.

You’re friendly. You’ve got a lot of friends and it’s, ‘I’ll help you, you help ,’ and so on.’ And I thought, ‘This is better than civilian life.’ Really when it’s all boiled down, it was. They were hard days. Today it might be a different story. See, you take going to Darwin, there’s all

these blokes from every city in Australia going to Darwin, into the tropics, and they’re not used to the hot weather. They told us at Alice Springs, “From now on treat a scratch seriously,” and we did or some of us did. I got dengue fever twice and while I was in hospital I dug

up a poem. Would you like to hear it?

\n[Verse follows]\nLay on sheets and blankets\n Get thinking all the day\n There’s one good thing about it is\n You do not have to pay\n You sleep in pain\n You wake in pain\n There isn’t any jokes\n You know by experience\n And the look on other blokes.\n My hat comes off to the nurses\n Who work by day and by night\n

Who make you happy and

Also make you bright.\n

By Vince Ravese.

It was interesting. It sort of made you more responsible, you know?

Like you felt as if you could do something for your country, and it was my job to do it anyway. There’s one thing I do not like and a lot of people might disagree with this. Women, no woman or girls should go to the war, I don’t believe women should go to the war.

I think it’s wrong. I think it’s very wrong. I’m not saying they can’t do what a man does. I’m saying they do not belong in the war on the front line. Not of any war, and it’s about time it’s changed because women are not like men. Every month, you know what they do, and they get headaches,

the army doesn’t need that. 90% of the average serviceman doesn’t like it either. Like I said, I’m not saying they can’t do it, but this equal rights, this is different. These are women and they’re different to men, they should not be in any war at all. This is my opinion and it’s the opinion of a lot of people and

I think it’s about time they stopped it because to a man a woman is a precious thing. They’ll risk their life to save the woman, are you with me? And it shouldn’t be that way and that’s what I’m trying to say.

Nurses, they’re a must. They should be, a nurse should get an award. They do a wonderful job. We didn’t treat them as women, we treated them as nurses. But they were still women.

They probably see worse than anybody, that’s what I mean. But they’re not in the front line, put it that way. If they’re in the front line, they’re only there temporarily. The nurses are always back from the front line and when I say ‘back’, it could be two or three miles. It’s the same thing with hospitals you know, or hospital wards.

They have a tent for this, that and the other. They should be out of the front line, that goes for women. It’s as I said, they can do the job but they shouldn’t be there. That’s my opinion and the opinion of a lot of servicemen.

It was passable, passable. You know the old saying, you’ll eat so and so if it tastes good.

You know what I mean? If you’re hungry you’ll eat anything. But the food in Darwin, I think probably the transport of it was too costly for the government, that’s the reason I put it.

No, I didn’t eat much. I didn’t eat much, bully beef and biscuits and that dehydrated mutton, they should ban that. I think

they probably have. That tasted just like it looked. Stews in the tropics, I like stews but when you’re sweating away there and you know it’s 100 degrees outside, you don’t feel like hot stews, you feel like a salad or something.

Oh I used to read the newspapers. That’s all I had to go on. I knew, when Singapore fell I said, “It was just a matter of time before Darwin will cop it.” We did. We knew it was going to be on. As a matter of fact I had a feeling, they treated the Japanese, we used to buy stuff off Japanese

like toys and it used to be rubbish. Like we thought their fighter planes were the same and we thought, ‘No the Japs,’ but their Zeros and their fighters they were outmanoeuvring our planes. The Jap Zero would run around our planes.

There was one day there, the Zeros came in and we got planes from Britain, the first squadron of Spitfires, they blew them out of the sky because the Spitfires didn’t, they blamed the hot conditions of the tropics, out of the cold weather into the tropics. The Spitfire didn’t suit.

I don’t know what they did to the planes but after a while they did, and when we got on top, the damage had been top when we got on top, once we got on top the Kittyhawks did a marvellous job

I was a man and it was my job. ‘It’s my job,

this is my country and I’ve got to put my two bob [shillings] in.’ And everyone, nine out of ten people thought that. I thought we did a good job too.

She hugged me for about half an hour, I’m not joking, she wouldn’t let me go for half an hour. I was trying to push her away,

and the same thing with my sisters. But I’ll tell you this though, this is what did happen, coming back from Darwin and we pulled up at the main station in Adelaide, I just forget now what it is, and there was a big crowd there

waiting and they clapped and cheered us and they gave us the key of the town. Hundreds of people were ringing up to take us in for the night, to stop overnight at their house. We had hundreds of calls from people and we felt as if it was the only time in the war that we felt

that we had done something and people appreciated it, but when we came to Sydney, nothing, my mates in Melbourne, nothing, but in Adelaide different. I thought Adelaide was pretty good, so Adelaide out there, good on you.

What do you mean?

Well the Americans used to have the Liberty ships come in and we used to transport to the American camps whereever they were. We supplied them with bombs and food, you name it, medical stores. We supplied

every unit that was close. Some of them, in Darwin it used to be the One Mile, the Two Mile, the Half Mile, the Quarter Mile. Darwin didn’t seem to have any suburbs. They had West Point, East Point, there was an army camp on both. Then they had Fanny Bay. There was Fanny Bay gaol, Ross Smith’s Memorial was out the front and they move it,

I don’t know where they moved it to. There was the Fanny Bay gaol. We were in Darwin all the time.

No never. We operated in Darwin and we stopped there. We were in the target area all the time.

Yes, that’s right, it was mainly from the ships. The ships would pull up, the Perry and the Houston which supported the troops that were going to Timor, I believe the captain laid on his back of the Houston and directed the ship left, right and they reckon the bombs

were dropping and he was timing it. They reckon he was a terrific captain. And I reckon the Japs knew that the Houston was a baddie for them and they were going to come in for it. The Houston came in, loaded and went straight out to sea, but eventually they got it. They got the Perry, the

high altitude bombers damaged it and then the dive bombers came down and blew it to pieces. They were machine gunning the Japs right until the thing sunk, they are the heroes up there.

We knew that sooner or later it would be us.

Well it was a shock. ‘We’re in it for sure.’ There was a doubt but, ‘We’re in it for sure now,’ because the Japanese fleet could have been destroyed in one of the battles you know. But there were so many battles within the navy and they were big battles, aircraft carriers and that. We knew when they sunk one of our

aircraft carriers, we knew there was trouble, we knew for sure and there was nothing we could do about it. ‘We’re there.’

Where was I? What was I doing? I wouldn’t know exactly.

No it just came through that Pearl Harbour was bombed. It got around the camp that Pearl Harbour was bombed with heavy losses and we thought, ‘Oh well.’ But what they did you see, the Japs were a pretty shrewd mob, there’s planes flying overhead every day, this was before the bombing.

What they did, they came in on the left about five kilometres to the left. They came in and they came in from the back and fooled us. We had our guns pointing out this way. It was a long time before they opened fire because it was too late. They had guns pointing out to sea. They came in from the back. That’s why everyone was cheering them.

They were cheering the Japs. I was with this colonel and he said, “They’re not our planes, take cover.” I thought, take cover, where to? There were no slit trenches.

That’s right. Everyone was clapping and then it started to rain bombs and then they knew. So that’s what I’m saying, they should have got a warning early

to give the people a chance.

No. We didn’t have any ammunition. You had to carry your rifle and respirator around, even if you went to the toilet you had to carry it. We had no ammunition, we were issued with five rounds of ammunition

two days after the bombing, you’ve got to be joking. One clip of .303s, you’ve got to be joking. How can you defend yourself against a machine gun?

That’s right, I did too. I can remember there was one pilot there, he had a silk scarf around his neck and he was laughing and I reckon if he walked in here now I’d know him.

He was laughing his head off and I thought, ‘You mongrel,’ and he was shooting at anything he could. The dive bombers in the second raid …

Number one, it was the same pilots that bombed Darwin and like I said they dropped twice as many bombs on Darwin as they did Pearl Harbour. I’ve seen the movie Pearl Harbour and if you take the love story out of the Pearl Harbour movie,

you could say this was Darwin getting bombed, and this is true. As a matter of fact, I went with my son to see it and some of the scenes, I started to shake.

And I don’t know why, with all these writers and movie people, nobody has ever made a movie. Like, you’ve got to involve the Yanks. It would be a picture that the Yanks would certainly see too because they were involved too. I reckon it would be a top movie if

someone, -body, like stupid stories, like me knocking off a tin of peaches and digging a hole under the floor, this would make a good movie, the stupid things that blokes do. I can remember, I produced a show and we got this bloke dancing around. There was one scene there that the chap

wants to get a tooth pulled. We’re up on top of the stage and I said to my assistant, this private, “François, ‘Fred’, de None, ‘o Smith’, he must have a wog [foreign] background does it.” My assistant said, “I don’t know about that but he wants his tooth pulled.”

But he said, “We’ve got nothing to deaden the pain, we’ve got nothing to deaden his mouth, what are you going to do?” “Well gee, I don’t know what to do.” “Well maybe when you go to pull his tooth, stick a pin in his bum.” “Oh, that’s a good idea.”

So we had the root of a tree shaped like a tooth and it’s out of sight. So, “Come on, pull, pull, pull…now!” And ‘now’, means stab him with the needle. “Oh Jesus, I didn’t think the root was so far down.”

A lot of jokes were funny. There were blokes telling jokes and some of them were very good. There was one joke there, a bloke comes to Australia and said, “I’m from the United States of America. My colleague was in Australia during the war and he thought the Australian people were good

and I want to leave lots of money to you and it’s to go towards the unfortunate people, the disabled.” So they went here and there and they went out to the mental asylum and he introduces himself. “My name is Mr Jones. I’m from the United States and I would

like to give you some money to build a cricket pitch. My colleague said you people have been very good and that’s what he would like to do. He died and I’m in Australia to do this.” The bloke said, “Well we’ve got a cricket pitch.” So he said, “What about if we build you a dance hall?” He said, “We’ve got a dance hall.” “Well what if we build you a swimming pool?”

“Oh that’s something we haven’t got.” “Well how much do you want for the swimming pool?” He said, “Oh $100,000 should do it, a cheque for $100,000.” “Look, I’m going to Melbourne and I’m going to go to some of the places in Melbourne, and I’m coming back to Sydney in six months’ time and then I’ll come out

to see you.” Six months is up and out he goes. “Good morning Mr Jones how are you?” Mr Jones said, “How are the swimming baths going?” “Oh wonderful, they’re diving off the spring board, they’re taking double somersaults off the tower. Christ knows what we’ll do when we put the water in.” And there were jokes like that

and they went over. Some of them I can’t tell you.

I thought, ‘This is not Australia. No way. There’s nothing of Australia. This is not Australia.’ And taking nearly two weeks to get there,

I thought I could travel around the world in that time, but it was Australia and it was Darwin. Like I said it was … out of control, it was lawless. I thought I was in America making a western movie you know.

There were corrugated roads right up to the main town.

The main street was tarred but right up to the main street…just before you go into…there’s three main streets. There’s Covener Street, Smith Street and I just forget the other street. They used to call it ‘China Town’.

The Darwin…had springing doors…the Gordon Don Hotel, springing doors. We felt, not just me, but we felt that this was not Australia. This is the A- of the world and it was. A young bloke

and you go into a place like that and as I said before, there’s no good wars and there’s no, we didn’t expect anything but it was worse than hell.

What industries? I don’t think there were any.

What did they make up there? Well all the food was transported. I don’t think they made anything. It was just a port for ships. Australia’s backdoor. What industry?

I wouldn’t have a clue.

There were quite a few for such a small town. There were a lot there that shouldn’t have been there, that’s what I say, bodies for weeks and weeks after the first raid they would be at Mendel Beach on the mudflats. There were loads of bodies. They were burning them and a load out to sea and dumping them. There was a war on.

What do you do. What was it like? For a young man it was boring, period.

No. There were a few, like a handful. But

then they came through and there was quite a few in the long run. But we got on very well with the Americans, very well. But we didn’t get on well with their provos. I can remember one night one of my mates was coming home from town. He could hardly see the road so he put his lights on. He drove past the American provos’ camp and ‘bang, bang, bang’, they had shot his lights out.

There was nothing they could do about it. He told the officers when he came home and he said he, “Shouldn’t have had his bloody lights on in the first place. You only put them on to try and pick the road up.” The moonlight bombings were very stressful because you couldn’t see the planes. One night there they bombed us with

‘daisy cutters’ and you could hear the planes and it was just like they had turned the planes off, dropped their bombs and then started them again. I think the noise of them coming down is the thing that you feel…hey!

Yes you could hear them. That was the worst part of the bombing, the noise.

They were a bomb, I think about that big. I think they were about 10 pound, give or take, and they used to explode on the top of the ground and they would call them daisy cutters. They wouldn’t make a hole. One day there we couldn’t dig a hole

for the toilet and we were bombed with about a 500 pound bomb and we thanked the Japs because it dug the toilet for us. And there were parts there where you couldn’t dig a trench because you would come to rocks and all you had to do when there was a raid on, you’d just lay down. You’d use the trees for a shelter for your head

and if they were coming this way you’d get this side of the trees and if that way then you’d go to the other side. You couldn’t dig the hole. It would be just enough for one person because it was rocky. That’s why the water was on top of the ground in Darwin because it would have been too costly because it was all rocky. I think that’s why the main,

and I believe it’s still on top of the ground, the main supply in Darwin, I think. We used to…what? Spend a lot on lolly water we used to call it, we couldn’t drink the water.

I couldn’t tell you. There were a lot.

There was every race in the world up there. Chinese, a lot of Chinese, a lot of Italians too. There was, I don’t know if there were many Germans but there was a lot from those islands, Indonesia and all those places. I think there were a lot of Indonesians there. But there were a lot there that shouldn’t have been there too.

There’s no doubt about that. Three hundred and fifty, that is a joke. That is a joke, that is a big joke, and the people who were up there know. With all those ships that were sunk in the harbour. The air forces getting blown to pieces.

When I say ‘blown to pieces’, that’s why they evacuated and went in the bush, there was nothing there. The only thing that was left of the aerodrome was the slit trenches and a lot of them got a direct hit. I had some of my mates there and they were in one of the slit trenches and they survived. But about 50 feet from where they were there was a direct hit on one. These are the things that

make you mad to think you’re not recognised. Not for my sake but for a lot of the other blokes who went through it.

Well how do you count dead bodies? There’s mud flats there for kilometres on the left hand side, nobody goes along there looking for bodies and there would be just as many bodies on those mud flats,

the tides would bring them in and then take them out. Right opposite Darwin there would be bodies over there where nobody lived. The death toll, I’d say over a thousand for sure, and everybody agrees.

That’s right, they didn’t either.

Look, the Chinese used to do what the Italians used to do, they used to bring people out from China, pay their fare, work for peanuts … the Chinese did it and the Italians did it and a lot of people did it. Do you follow what I mean? The 350 killed is a joke.

Sometimes you have to give way to common sense. The book of rules, you have to give way to common sense. You can bet your life there were a lot of people there who weren’t even registered and they copped it.

Reclaimed? No, not reclaimed.

The sergeant major came in and wanted volunteers to bury them and we dug the holes and some of my mates threw a blanket over them and dragged them and threw them in and there could have been … and this happened three or four times. Then they got scarcer and scarcer and there would only be the odd one then.

Then they would come and take it away, where they took it I don’t know but the first two lots were buried on Mendel Beach. Now Cyclone Tracey unearthed a lot of bones and the Aboriginals claimed that it was an Aboriginal burial ground so I don’t know. They could have

moved the bodies later on, I don’t know, I couldn’t say for sure. They possibly did, I don’t know.

Well I took the wrong turn, I went past the tip and I thought, ‘What’s going on here?’ There’s a truck load and they’re throwing them in a furnace. That’s what it appeared to be, a furnace.

At the tip. I thought, the early hours of the morning, they probably didn’t want anyone to know about it. I took the turn by mistake, I was half asleep and instead of turning left I turned right or vice versa and the next minute I’m driving past the tip. Going back to Vestie’s Meat Works you didn’t go past the tip. I thought, ‘Oh my God.’

That’s it. These are the sights that haunt you. I must be pretty strong because what I saw, not what I did but what I saw, would horrify you.

Oh no, get the bible.

No way.

What we did, they checked them to see identification discs. The first time they picked up about eight or nine identification discs and the second time, I’m not sure. But that’s the first thing they did and then they would just cover them over with a blanket. That’s all the blankets were good for up there because it was too hot to use them.

I don’t know whether they removed them or not, I don’t know. But the tip, what I seen, on a bible for sure.

From here to the front gate or from here to the road.

Oh yes.

No, no. I just drove and I slowed up and thought, ‘Oh God, what’s going on?’

I couldn’t have recognised the blokes, they had respirators on. That’s on a bible that one. You read my lips.

Yes, I told them and they said they wouldn’t doubt it. A few people shot through …

A few of the air force shot through but then when I look back and see how they flattened it, you’d say, ‘Jesus, there’s nothing there,’ and go bush. Some took advantage of that and a few of them did shoot through. But you still can’t blame the air force and the blokes who did it. I don’t think there was that many. We lost one. One deserted – he was a batman [officer’s assistant]. Do you know what a batman is?

The officer’s maid or whatever you like to call him, he shot through. That was only one out of nearly 1000 people so…wars, there’s always a deserter, it don’t matter what war it is, Japs, Italians or what, you always get that.

I’d say

we outnumbered them three to one. I’d say three to one, there were more Aussies there, I don’t know how many thousand were there, and there were a lot of Yanks there and the Yankee air force did a mighty job. So did our blokes. Those who flew those planes, they don’t

deserve a Victoria Cross, they deserve two Victoria Crosses. There were a lot of blokes who didn’t get recognised and they should have for sure.

There was anti-aircraft guns, the three point seven. They did a good job.

When they bombed all the aerodromes and when I saw all, I mean the civil ones and all, there was nothing for the fighter planes to land and they would use the roads. By this time they had tarred them and they were pretty long. They had two Bofors guns and I suppose they were apart about the length of an airfield and they were useless.

They would be pointing this way and that way and the fighter planes were at tree top level and we never used them, you couldn’t use them because they were too quick. They’re flying at 200 miles an hour and by the time you went over and turned the thing round … it was the same thing when the high altitude bombers came over, it was so sudden

and it took them a minute to find the height to send the charges up. The second raid, I thought, for my unit, was worse than the first. The first one was the harbour, the dive bombers, they’re the ones that did the finishing off. They came right down to tree top level and dropped their eggs. And

then the fighters, nobody was shooting at them. They could have landed and taken Australia without firing a shot. That’s how we were prepared.

Crocodiles? I never saw one. I never saw a crocodile. I’ve seen photos of one. I took a photo of a kid and a crocodile and it was just out of Darwin. There were no crocs, they could have been there but I never saw one. When I went on the Victoria River Downs cattle station and passed the river there

and there was a crocodile there and I shot at it with a .303 and the bullet just bounced off it. That was an experience that I will never forget with the 4th Independent Commandos going to Broome.

Well it was, that’s where the danger came in. You see, our trucks

were two down and we took the short cut and went over a mountain. There was a drop of 1000 metres and just enough for a truck. You were travelling at a half a mile an hour and the wheel where the drop is was only about a foot away from the drop.

What they did there, one area was about, in metres, about 200 metres, so what they did, the driver had a rope around his stomach and there was four chaps holding a rope and four chaps this end. And if the truck went over they could save the driver. And that was very scary. And that went on,

I’d say, for, from here to the jetty.

Oh no, they were all tracks and we went over this mountain because to go there by road the other way, where it had tracks, it was about 100 miles out of their way.

Put it this way. From here to there is a hundred mile but the tracks were like that and you sort of went half way around the world so they took the short cut off this mountain. It wasn’t a big mountain but it used to scare you when you were driving. But when the rope was around your belly you felt safe, you knew that if the truck went over you wouldn’t.

Yes.

What sort of trucks? Fords, Ford trucks mainly, three ton trucks. There were semi trailers, utilities, cars, there were all sorts. The army got some of the trucks that were there at the museum.

The corrugated roads, we used to take the mudguards off because they used to fall off with the vibration. Then 90% of trucks did not have mudguards. That’s why we used to cop the dust, it made the dust worse but as I say, being dust, ‘That’s only

dust, that’s not going to hurt you.’ But you realise now that it could have.

We thought the Japs were trying to knock the 23rd Motor Transport out, that’s what we thought, ‘They’re following us.’

I didn’t do nothing.

There was no … I think a couple of Aboriginals were killed but there was no damage done, not to the service facilities. To my knowledge there was no damage, I don’t know, there could have been a little bit of damage. I know there were a couple of Aboriginals killed.

Yes, try and camouflage your truck, if you could, if there was a tree there big enough. We found out there, if you were in town, don’t drive back into it because we didn’t know where the land mines were. If you got the back wheels blown off then you had a chance.

My mate that got blown up, it was his back wheel that got blown up and he survived. What was his name? Frank Orchard, that was his name, ‘Troppo’ [crazy] Orchard we used to call him. We had that many nicknames for our unit, ‘The Troppo Unit’, ‘The Bomb Happy Unit’. The 23rd Reserve Motor Transport, we never

heard that, very seldom. But the point is, they dissolved it halfway through 1942. They were getting, they couldn’t get the drivers because the original ones, and I’m talking about my mates, we were the original ones who went up there before the bombing, and one by one we

joined the volunteers for the air force, volunteers for the water transport, volunteers for parachuting and volunteers for this that and the other, and eventually the original…. Then they started to get reinforcements from the militia. Do you know what I mean? They changed it that many times,

the name, from the 123rd it went to the 140th Transport and the 122nd. They changed it that many times. I don’t know why because the Japs knew every move when the unit was there. Why? Why change

it? To me, the 23rd Motor Transport is a nothing and nobody’s heard of it. It’s not like a unit overseas and comes back to Australia and is famous. What annoys me is today there’s a navy ship goes to the Middle- East on a pleasure cruise, don’t see a shot fired, and I’m not blaming the blokes, good luck to them, and they come back

heroes. This doesn’t disgust me but it makes me think, ‘God strike me.’ I feel good luck to them. I wish I was one of them. They can’t help it and they go over there and the Prime Minister’s there to greet them and greet them when they come back. Hey, let’s be realistic. What do you do? Good luck to them. I

wish I was one of them.

Don’t you learn by mistakes? You learn by mistakes. Like when I was going to St Joseph College, I was a minute late and I got two cuts of the cane and brother it hurt. I was never late again. I learnt.

It’s the same thing. You learn every day. An old bloke said to me, “I’m 90 years of age and I’m still learning, and some of these kids can teach me a few things.” As a matter of fact my grandson taught me something about a month ago that I didn’t know. So you learn every day. It’s the same thing with wars. War, nobody wins them. The Japanese lost the last war and they’re one of the most powerful nations in the world now

because they weren’t spending money on rockets and warships and aeroplanes. We’re spending too much money. They world should get together, I keep saying that, and say, “Hey, wars, nobody wins them so why? The roads are killing more than the war, let’s do something about that.”

What? Well I would say,

number one, we had to do it, we were fighting for freedom and democracy. It seemed that I wasn’t in the German one, I never fought the Germans, they weren’t my enemy, but some of my mates lost their lives. It was a war and as I keep saying, there’s no good wars.

Have you got a say you know. If the Prime Minister says that from now on anybody over 25 years of age doesn’t pay any income tax, you’re going to vote for him aren’t you. Life’s funny and it’s short too. You know how old I am and I don’t feel that age but

I look in the mirror and I say I am. That’s life. Sure I’ve got a good family. Look at those four monsters there, four grandkids, have a look at them. They’re spoilt monsters too, if they turn around and say, “Grandfather will you give us $1000?” I would. “Grandfather, today’s Sunday.” “No it’s Monday.”

They’re always right but they’re good kids and that’s what you live for, your kids and your family. Like losing a member of your family in a war, that’s shocking, or on the road for that matter. What’s the difference if you die on the road or in a war? There’s just as many young people getting killed on the road today, innocent people, kids, and it’s not their fault. So it’s no different to a war. Do something about it you people in parliament, get out of office if you can’t.

Wrong people in the wrong job if you don’t. Well I reckon I’ve had enough, don’t you reckon?

I went to a Catholic school at Watsons Bay. Then when I was there for a couple of years they said, “It’s time

you had a better schooling and we want you to go to St Joseph’s School in Edgecliff.” I went to St Joseph’s College at Edgecliff, that’s where I stopped till I was 15. Things were tough then and I was forced to leave school because Mum couldn’t afford

to pay the fees. My father had died and there was no income coming into the family. That was the schooling I had. From there I went to work in a greengrocer, there was something like about

15 shillings a week, 15 shillings a week would be only about 50 bucks today, that’s what I did. I used to give Mum all my wages, that’s what I did. I think I told you, after that I learned the tap dancing and

I started to do that and that was short lived ‘cause they pinched the wallet and the money they paid me, as I told you before. Then I was called up to do my training in the army, three months’ compulsory training. That’s where I started. Actually I’ve had five years of the war.

That’s it.

At school? Pretty good, brothers. I was late for school and got two cuts of the cane and I was never late again, Brother Gaffney was his name. I was very good at algebra and geometry, I used to get top marks. Spelling I was hopeless, wasn’t hopeless, but I wasn’t a good speller.

I’m still not a good speller. I write something down and, ‘That’s’ not right,’ so I make sure that it is right. So I get the dictionary out and nine times out of ten it’s right and I’m not sure. When I was in business I used to do a lot of writing, quoting for different people. It was bookwork, bookwork, bookwork and I got better with my spelling.

I was always one of those blokes that if you’re gonna do it, do it properly or not at all. It was the simple words that I couldn’t spell, words that a kid could spell. The big words I could, but the little words I’d think, ‘That’s not right,’ and I’d look it up and, ‘Yes, it is right,’ and that’s how it is. I had a good education. It was as good as the average bloke. I always felt

I was a businessman, even as a kid because I was selling things in the street to make a few dollars. I was always selling things at the Watsons Bay shops. I was always a businessman, I thought, ‘I’m gonna go into business.’ When the war finished I went into the building game and I was a builder and I was very successful,

I did very well out of it. I had a waterfront home that was very valuable, I had a factory and I owned everything. I had a factory that I leased out. So I retired when I was in my early 50s. I shouldn’t have because I was too bored because I used to love fishing, I did that much fishing after I retired I got sick of it and I wouldn’t go fishing. So if I could turn the clock

back I’d still be working. That’s about it.

Very, very. If they said, “No talking in class,” it was no talking in class. Today at school, and it should be like yesteryear,

I’ve got a grandson goes to school. He got punched in the back, this is not long ago, so my son went to the teacher and the teacher says, “There’s nothing we can do, you’d better got and see the police.” So we went to the police and the police said, “There’s nothing we can do, you’ve gotta go and see the headmaster.” So we got

him X-rayed and he had broken ribs. These sorts of things wouldn’t happen in my time. You take today, the filthy language. Everybody swears, but there’s a time and place. What they’re telling our kids today is, you can go and tell your teacher to go and, or you can go and tell your mother and father, and they’re doing it. There’s no discipline today like there used to be yesteryear.

If the teacher canes somebody you can sue him. This is wrong. I think they should bring the cane back and I don’t mean maybe. There’s nothing wrong with the cane. I got the cane for being late, I wasn’t late again. So what they’re doing is, the teachers are scared of the gangs that are at school now. This is wrong. What’s the system coming to? Used

to be the best country in the world. Now we’re the best of a bad bunch. Like the filthy language on television, that should not be. I’m not talking about the swearing, it’s there’s no discipline. Kids today, the language they use to their parents, and they’re only six and seven years of age, the language the kids today use you wouldn’t hear in a pub 20 years ago.

This is wrong. It’s not the swearing as I say, it’s there’s no discipline. If there’s no discipline, that’s bad news.

It was English, mathematics, algebra, geometry,

history, who discovered so and so and all this. I was pretty good. I was average there. The algebra and geometry, I wouldn’t know the first thing about it now, but I was very good at that. I was pretty good at school. But my spelling, still it didn’t affect me in any way because

you could understand what I’m talking about or writing about, even if the spelling was a little, I spell the way I pronounce, sometimes that’s wrong – sometimes. That’s where it throws you out. My parents couldn’t help me with the spelling because my mother was Italian and she was hopeless. My father could have if

he was alive, he died when I was about nine, that was the biggest loss in my life, he was my mate.

Only once. It only happened once in the army.

There’s a bloke that nobody liked. He was working in the cookhouse and he was dishing out the food on a plate. He said to me one day, “How are you going, Musso?” See? That means ‘Mussolini’, he was the dictator of Italy. I got so

annoyed I king hitted him and he went down on the ground, blood coming out of his mouth and he said, “What did you do that for?” I said, “I didn’t do it, Musso did it.” All the boys said, “Hey, Bimbo, what you did I’ve been trying to do for 12 months.” So that was the only incident I had. Other than that, if talking Italian, I wouldn’t know

how to talk in Italian. I’m Italian descent, nine out of ten people knew this. I didn’t consider myself as Italian descent, but I was and you are what you are, but I never really had much trouble in that department. Once when I was going to school

there was a kid called me a wog. It was after school and I got stuck into him. I’m not a goody-goody. I’m not a baddie either, I’ve always been a villain. We started fighting and we were fighting there for about half an hour. We were throwing punches. He was disliked too, the same bloke. A car pulled up and he watched us. “Right-o boys,” he said,

“here’s 10 shillings. Share it. Go and buy some lollies. Shake hands.” So we shook hands, “Or you won’t get the 10 shillings,” so we shook hands and we were mates ever since. You know what I mean? I’ve never had any problems whatsoever.

No, she never mentioned wars or anything, my mother, never mentioned anything. She used to be scared, frightened. The two of us were in the army, me and my brother. No, never mentioned it. My mother kept to herself, she just lived for her kids and nobody else. She didn’t wanna be friendly with anybody. My

father was the opposite. He was very friendly. He was a villain. He was a very good bloke. He spoke English and wrote better than I could. I don't know where he learned, I think he learned from, I don't know. He came out here pretty young.

That’s it.

Bread and dripping was beautiful.

My mother was a good cook. You know the Kentucky Fried Chicken you buy? She used to cook it exactly like that, she did, even before Kentucky

Chicken came out. She was a good cook and she lived for cooking. She made beautiful meatballs and they tasted beautiful. She knew when to put the garlic in and when not to, parsley and that. She was a very good cook. But she lived for her family and family only. When my father died, her heart died with him.

She was a good lady. Any more questions?

I don't know. I think because the American provos were very strict, the average Australian wasn’t. They were very strict. There was quite a few Americans up there, the things that the Australians used to call them, unprintable words,

mainly to the provos, because they used to give us a hard time. Why? I don't know what they gave us a hard time, but then we used to give them a hard time too. I suppose they had a job and I suppose they treated Australian troops like the American troops. It could have been a lot stricter. Maybe we didn’t like their attitude

or the way they went around. It’s like I told you the story about the tinned peaches on the jetty. Why didn’t they pick the tinned peaches up instead of leaving them there? Why didn't they say, “Pick them up and put them in the box?” They left them there laying around. It’s just like, to us, if you was walking along the street and you see 10

shillings or 10 dollars on the ground you pick it up and you put it in your pocket. If you found a wallet with 200 dollars in it and it’s got a pensioner’s name and address, you take it to the police station and say, “I found this, would you like to hand it back to them?”

So there’s a difference. It’s the same thing with these tinned peaches. To me, taking them, what are they doing, why didn’t they pick them up? The Americans were there. Why didn’t the provos pick them up? Why didn’t the provos turn around and say, ‘Because they knew the Australians were villains and they’d pick them up and eat them.’ That’s the way I see it and we did. Shooting our lights out, the American provos did that.

The Australian police wouldn’t do that, they wouldn’t shoot the Americans’ lights out, they’d say, “Put your lights out, mate.” We got on very well with the Americans but not the provos ‘cause I don't know what it is. Maybe we used to give them a hard time and they’d give us a hard time back. That’s it.

We used to come over and we used to treat the padre or the priest just like anybody else. The Salvation Army chap would come over and we’d treat him as, you know. Padre or priest, we just treated them the same. We just talked sensible things. First of all, “Do you write home to your mother?” If you didn’t they’d say,

“Why don’t you write home?” They used to give us advice. We didn’t really need it because we used to write home because I used to write at least a half a dozen letters a week. The censorship was ridiculous. You got to a stage there when, ‘What’s the point in writing home?’

The

padres? No, they just said, “Look after yourself and make sure that you hop into a slit trench.” We didn’t have to be told that.

They never really mentioned what happened. They knew the troops were going through a hard time, but they didn’t have to

talk about it, ‘cause we knew we were going through a hard time. Then hard time, there’s no good wars. So we didn’t expect to go to a picnic. That’s about it.

Yes. Quite often.

“You boys should be home with your family.”

“You survived the last raid but you might not survive the next one,” and words to that effect. “The food is not the best, is it, in the army?” I thought, “Hey, hey.” “Your country should do better than you.” “What you’re doing

is not right, you know. You people should be back home with your family.” They kept repeating that. There was lots of things they said that, “We’re coming over in another couple of days’ time. So why don’t you throw the towel in,” they’d say. We used to

listen to it and put a deaf ear to it most of the time because it was all propaganda. These things happen in war, propaganda, and that’s what she was. She used to knock the Americans too. As far as I’m concerned that was wrong, but they did. Tokyo Rose, in the finish we never bothered to listen to her because it was all, in

plain English it was crap. It was only propaganda. What else would she tell us? What’s the reason? The Japs knew every move we made. Every move we made. They had so many spies. They were well organised the Japs, well organised.

We used to call it the Three Fs Pub. I can assure you you’re gonna get two Fs there, That was a ‘Feed’ and a ‘Fight’. The Gordon Don. If you said out a word you’d be in a fight, the troops were so bored

that mates were fighting mates. It was nothing to see two units having a box up or a fight, it used to break the boredom. One day there, this’ll make you laugh, I’ve been a bit of a villain. I got up on the main street, this was before the bombing. “Step up,

step up, ladies and gentlemen.” I’m standing on a box. My mates are on the side there. “Come and see Rasey Froo, the tropical frog. The show’s going on all the time. At sixpence we’ll admit you. If you’re a married man with kids, the children can get in for free. Step up and see Rasey Froo, the tropical frog.” In about 10 minutes I had about 100 blokes around me. My mate says, “Come on Bimbo, let’s beat it.” We’d do stupid things like that.

We used to think it was funny, but was it? I don't know.

We didn’t know a policeman until somebody pointed them out, they just wore a pair of pants, no gun. We didn’t know. People used to say, “That’s the local copper.” That’s how they used to dress.

It was an unusual town, a lot of unusual things happened. Gambling, there was nothing else to do but gamble. I lost my best mate. We were playing two-up. He’s winning 500 pound. He said to me, “Hey, Bimbo.

Are you going back to the tent?” I said, “Yes.” I put in a few dollars. “Are you going back to the tent?” “Yes, I’m going back now.” He said, “Take this 400 pound. If I come and ask you for it, don’t give it to me. OK?”

About half an hour later down he comes. “Bimbo, can I have 100 dollars?” I said “No. You told me not to give it to you and I’m not.” He said, “Give me 50 pounds.” I said, “No, I'm not giving you a penny.” See? He said, “That’s my bloody money, give it to me.” I said, “You’re not getting it.” “If you

don’t give it to me, I’ll take it.” At that I threw his money on the ground and I said, “Here you are. Stick it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” He walked out. An hour later he comes back and he’s broke. I never spoke to him ever since. He was my best mate and I never spoke to him from that day to this. So that’s what happened. This is what happens up there, your best mates, you’re fighting with them, you’re bored,

there’s nothing to do.

Women, what are they? A boatload of women pulled up in Darwin Harbour and they turned it back. If there was a dance on in town, officers only. For a young bloke that’s young and likes dancing,

nine out of ten my age dance, in those days there was a ballroom dance on in every town hall in every town in Australia, officers only and women. Nurses up there, we never went to a dance, we never went out with a woman. I think the army knew that because they used to

put bromide in the coffee and I think it worked because it took the urge. Yes. We used to like our coffee and biscuits. There was bromide in it for sure.

I don't know. Not in the Darwin area. They turned the boat back and the boat went back to wherever it came from. They never let them ashore.

You tell me. They could have been prostitutes, I don't know. There was enough sickness up there. There was a lot of people in hospital at the time.

You’d go for a swim in the dry season where you could swim after dark and you’d get conjunctivitis swimming. So there was always something to stop you from doing something, living conditions were shocking. What can I say?

Would I do it again? I suppose I would. I’d say no, but you seem to think, ‘It’s your job, somebody’s gotta do it.’ Yes, I probably would. I keep whingeing. I went to the war happy-go-lucky and came out a

cranky old bugger. I’ve been that ever since.

That didn’t worry me. I thought after being in Darwin and going overseas, well there was a unit was overseas for 12 months and never seen a shot fired and their life was in danger. So yes, I would have went overseas if I was picked. Incidentally,

we came back to train to go back overseas. We came from Darwin, after two years in Darwin we went to the Melbourne winter, that was just like going form the oven into a freezer. The Melbourne weather, we used to go on parade of a morning and it was too cold to shave.

“Did you shave this morning, Mr Ravese?” “Yes, sir.” “Well, stand closer to the razorblade next time. Jonesy, did you shave this morning?” “Yes, sir.” “You too, stand closer to the razorblade.” This went on, it was too cold to shave. We used to get into trouble, but the officers didn’t mind. They knew we didn’t shave, but the law is you have to shave every day

in the army. So that’s how it was.

We were troppo. You know what that means? Half nuts. They all were. It was boredom. Is this the war? OK, well there’s no good wars. Yes, this

is not Australia. No, boredom. What do you do when you’re bored if there’s nothing to do? We used to make things. A Japanese plane would get shot down and we’d go get some aluminium off it and make things. We used to make pearl earrings and crosses with the things. That’s all we could do. There was nothing

to do, there was no entertainment. You’re not supposed to be entertained much, but at least a little bit to break the boredom down. When you’re in the tropics, especially in the wet season, it’s a hellish of a life. I suppose the people in New Guinea probably went through the same things. A lot of them didn’t spend two years.

This is the part that angers us, to think we were there for two years, not just two months. That seemed like a lifetime. No wars.

Yeah, I did compose a song.

I’m not gonna tell you.

That’s a sort of a private song. I can’t tell you. I’m married now.

Nothing much.

[…]

Yes, I did compose a song. But I never, it was finished and it wasn’t finished.

I composed half a song. I’ll tell you a case. I went to a dance in Melbourne. We used to all go dancing. I was dancing with a girl.

I took her home. In those days men used to treat women, they used to respect women and do the right thing. I let her in and then I rang up to take her out to the pictures and her father said, “Would you come out, I’d like to meet you?” So when I go I rang the bell and the girl came to the

door, I think her name was Amy, I said, “Where’s Amy?” She said, “Vince, I’m Amy.” I looked at her in her school uniform, she was only about 13. I thought, I was late 20s, About 25, I was so embarrassed.

I think that’s why the father wanted to meet me. He knew that I was embarrassed too. She’s in her school uniform. I think he must have said, “Keep your school uniform on.” I was very embarrassed. That’s a story. That happens to a lot of blokes. You go to a dance and you’re dancing with a girl only 14 or 15, they’re school kids. They only look school kids when they go to school. When they go to the dance they look as if they’re

the same age as you, what make-up does. That’s it. Everybody goes through that in the army, that sort of experience. The Melbourne weather, oh, brother, you had to have six blankets and it wasn’t enough. We used to go to bed with our uniforms on too. They were putting us

from the oven into the freezer, that’s what happened. So what do you do? That’s about it.

No, I only wrote the one, ‘High on Sheets and Blankets’, there was only one of that. It was published in an army paper.

I tap danced, in those days there was no television, it was on the air at Bathurst in 1944. They got all the talent from all over the units and it went over as a good show. I did a tap dance on

the Bathurst Town Hall. It went over the air but it wasn’t filmed.

It started where evidently

the Japanese troops landed in the Gulf of Carpentaria. There’s a river there, I just forget the name of the river, one of them raped an Aboriginal girl.

Yeah, raped an Aboriginal girl and threw her overboard on the boat they were in.

She probably went and told her father and he turned around and he told the Australian servicemen that were in that area what had happened. We knew that the Japanese had landed up that way.

We wanted the Aboriginals to prove what they said was right. They said, “Him long way man. Funny face. Him eat tin in the ground.” They started to, “What do you mean?” he turned around and says, “Where eat tin in the ground,” and they took them to different places where the Japs had opened up their tin food and buried it,

the Aboriginals knew and they told us. So they went there and then they formed up and Aboriginal, they swore them into the army. I think they called them Curtin’s Cowboys, I think. That’s how they came in to do a little bit and they used to give us information on what went on. That happened.

Information of what they were doing. What were they doing? I don’t really know. I knew they were giving the army information, but I never got to make any inquiries as to what they told them. It wasn’t in my area.

No. No contact at all. I got it from mates that told a

mate. They don’t say these things unless they’re true. They were fair dinkum. I believe them. The way they told it they were right so I believed every word they said. I don't know how big this Aboriginal unit was, they could have been a couple of dozen, I don't know. But the government know about that I think, if they don’t they should.

Being in the army, especially when we went to the Victoria River Downs Cattle Station in the Broome and Wyndham area, there was nowhere to sleep, we’d sleep on the ground. One day there, there was a single bed there and I slept on it without a mattress. In the morning I woke up and I think for three days I had the print of the bed on my back.

Sleeping on a hard palliasse, on the ground. After the war I went home and Mum made my bed and I said, “I’m sorry, but.” She came in and said, “What are you doing on the floor?” I said, “I can’t sleep in the bed.” So for two years I never slept in a bed. I couldn’t. And I just couldn’t settle down,

I was cranky with the world, not anybody in particular, just cranky with the world. I was cranky and I know why, because we weren’t recognised. That’s the part that hurts, I keep repeating that. Your life, 50 years and you’re recognised, 50 years. You’ve got to be joking, 50 years.

Yeah, after I got my discharge out of the army. Yes, what I’ve been through, I still can’t believe what we went through, not accepted. 19th February, about five years after the war I rang up the open line, there was the open line and you could talk, it was the

19th of February. I thought I’d have a few words to say. I think it was about 5 to 12. So I rang up, I gave my full name first, they asked for my full name. Then they call you by your first name once you’re on the air. “Right-o Vince, what have you got to say?” I said, “You know

Darwin was bombed on the 19th of February? There’s nothing printed in the papers. You’d think somebody’d have something to say.” I was talking for about 5 minutes. They said, “Were you in Darwin?” I said, “Yes, and we had quite a lot of raids.”

Before I got on the air I put a tape on in another room, see? So I played it back after I’d hung up and this is what I got: “Oh, I’m sorry, but I’ll have to cut you off now ‘cause the news is coming on,” and that’s all I got.

They never said anything. They never mentioned one word and I was talking for at least four minutes. They said, “The news is coming on, thanks for ringing,” and they hung up. So these are the things that really make you sour. Can you understand that? You’re trying to let people know. I’m not saying I was a hero, I wasn’t.

I’m just saying, ‘This is what happened and a lot of people should know. This is what’s happening.’ This went on for years, years. “Where were you in the war?” “Up north.” “Where?” “North of Australia.” I wasn’t in Darwin, you know.

We didn’t get them for about 12 months, I don't know why. The 23rd Motor Transport was an AIF [Australian Imperial Force] unit and they were getting reinforcements from the militia, which was ‘N’ numbers. Then we finished up we got our numbers, the ‘X’ numbers.

This was happening a lot up there. As far as the servicemen were concerned, it didn’t matter whether you was an AIF or militia. You treated everybody as, “What’s the big deal?” The number didn't mean a thing, whether you had no number at all, never meant a thing. We used to fight

with one another but that was just for something to do. There was none of this, you know in the cities, “You’re a choco [chocolate soldier],” or, “You’re AIF.” That never went on. We were there, we were doing the same job. What’s the difference with the number? We come back to train to go back and I told

the officers in charge that, “I will not go back to Darwin, I’d rather be court-martialled.” I said, “Send me anywhere else, but not Darwin.” I refused to go back. I mean, I refused. In the meantime it finished.

They had them on like platforms with wheels. You know, a platform with nothing on it, just bare. The trucks were on that and they were anchored down with chains.

There’d be about four or five on a truck. There would be several trucks. Then we’d take them off and we’d drive them when they were bogged. From the train from Alice Springs and a place called Burdon

they were on a train, we put them on a train at Burdon and we drove to Darwin in the train in what we called – was it dog carriages? – we used to call them something. We went up in carriages.

Oh, the Bimbo thing? Yes. “Hey Ravese, what did you do last night?”

Oh. We’re in Terowie. Everybody wants to go to the dance. Every second house was a church,

all the women wouldn’t let their daughters out. We went to the dance and there’s nobody there. We didn’t know what to do. We were bored again. There was a bloke there, we used to call him Troppo Orchard. We came to a church and he says, “I’ll go back to camp and get an axe.” He got it and he climbed up the steeple. I thought, ‘You’re mad. If he falls

over he’ll kill himself.’ He’s up there. He was sawing for about five minutes and he sawed through something as thick as your finger and the bell came down, ‘boom’. It was too heavy to carry, so we walked up the street and there was a carriage with no horses in it, we knocked that off, we didn’t steal it, we only borrowed it. We put

the bell on it and took it back to camp. Nobody knew this. When the train pulled up in Terowie to take us north, ‘Ding-ding, ding-ding.’ They stopped at Maryborough, which we wasn’t supposed to stop and the police were there and they took the bell back to Terowie. That’s the story of the bell. These are things

that blokes do when they’re in numbers, I don't know why, maybe something to do, something that’s silly, stupid. I don't know. It happens in just about every army sort of thing like that.

No.

When we got to Darwin the bitumen corrugated right up to the main streets of the town. Then they eventually started. I don't know, there was probably thousands of workers up there. They were tarring the road. I think in about six months they reached Darwin. There was no

corrugated roads any more and the only part that was dusty was the tracks that we used to go, it was pretty dusty then. They had potholes that looked about 10 centimetres, but they were about 50 centimetres deep ‘cause they were full of dust and nine times out of ten they nearly pulled the wheel out of your hand when

you went in them. We eventually knew what to look for and we used to swerve a little to meet these things. I can remember one day I said to one of my mates that goes out to pick the milk up, we used to get, what would you call those milk, not cartons.

Milk drums? They’re about this high and about that big on the top, …to get the milk, so I said, “What about giving me a go? I love milk.” They said, “All right, Bimbo. You can go.” So I took it. I got this thing and I pulled over the side of the road and I

had like a tin that I used to drink out of. I’m having a, enjoying it. I went back down a week later, the same thing. I said to the chap, I went up the hill where the milk was, you looked down a valley and I said, “Where’s all the cows?” He said,

“There are no cows.” I said, “The milk.” He said, “It’s goat milk.” That was it. I wouldn’t go there any more and drink, ‘cause I hated goat milk, I used to enjoy it, just because I knew it was goat milk. My mate says, “Do you want to?” I said, “No, no, no, that’s bloody goat milk. I thought it was cow’s milk.” I used to enjoy it, when he said it was goat milk I said “Oh, yuck.”

Perfect road. Good roads. You could travel any speed. There wasn’t a bad mile. There was straight road for 100 miles, just straight, bushes on the side. There were some ant hills there, 15

foot high. If you drove through of a night time you think you were driving through a cemetery with the ant hills, they looked like tombs, graves. We used to kill a lot of kangaroos too unfortunately, that’s the way it was, sometimes they used to jump in front of the truck and there was nothing you could do.

No, never.

Never had roos. We went and shot a wild pig one day and we enjoyed that. One of the boys went and shot a pig. No, Adelaide they did give us a good welcome. That was about the only welcome we got, in Adelaide.

It’s a long way,

but they had a lot of people working on it. They would tar it down. They had so many, I couldn’t tell you, but I know it was built in 12 months because it could have taken them 12 months to build it. I don't know, I thought when they tarred the road right to Darwin, I thought it only went for about 10 miles but it went all

the way. It was a nice, we enjoyed the trip back, enjoyed that.

Where they went? No, it was one mile, two mile, there was no names. They could have went to the 5 mile. They went into the bush,

there was a lot of bush.

We didn’t. They weren’t there, they shot through. Supplies, well, I didn’t personally. Some of my mates could have, but they never told me or I didn’t know about it. That could have happened or somebody else could have supplied them, I don't know. They could

have had their own transport like a truck, every unit had a truck or two. Our main supplies was the ships, we carted everything that came off the ship to the unit, transported it. So if a unit wanted something that didn’t come by boat, where could they buy it? They couldn’t buy it in town, there was nobody open, everything was shut.

Vestey’s was, you walked up 20 or 30 steps, it had no walls, there were steel girders laying around. There was a corporal there everybody hated.

He goes into town and it took about six to eight blokes to lift one of these girders up, we put it on his bed. We woke up in the morning, there he was, sitting on top of the girder. He never had a sleep ‘cause the girder was right across the bed. From that day to this he was a different bloke.

He knew that everybody, he knew it’d take half a dozen, if he’d have turned around and said to half a dozen blokes, “Will you give me a lift so I can go to sleep?” they wouldn’t have done it. After that he was a good bloke. The couple of stripes went to his head. We didn’t appreciate it. He used to do stupid,

making out, ‘I’m your boss, do as I say,’ so to speak.

After the first bombing raid they went out in droves. You name it, the streets were clogged up, bikes, trucks, rubbish trucks,

anything that could, I’m talking about the civilians. Yes, they went out, for days they walked for miles. They had one problem, the food, they used to scrounge some food from different towns that they’d pass. They just

kept, they had the roads blocked up for the first couple of days with people walking.

I’m not sure. I couldn’t answer that one ‘cause I don't know. They could have. I didn’t know about it if they did. I suppose they might have because they had to eat.

I’m not sure about that so that’s a question I can’t answer.

Not in my unit. Nobody in my unit supplied them with food. Could have been some other trucks, I don't know. That’s one question I can’t answer.

No, we was the only one there. We was a big one. Every unit had their transport.

might have been two or three trucks or two or three cars. After the bombing raids you’d go back to camp, “How many trucks did we lose?” not, “How many men?” That used to get us a bit annoyed. “How many trucks did we lose?” We got a few damaged.

It was never if there was any casualties, it was trucks. You know what their reason was? We can fly one bloke up, we can’t fly a truck up. So trucks were very, very valuable. I think there wasn’t enough because all those ships in the harbour had to be unloaded

and there was a lot. We worked day and night. You’d go home at the early hours of the morning, have a sleep and about 10 or 11 o'clock, “Come on, wake up. You’ve gotta go into town.” “I’ll be buggered. I’ve worked all night.” “Yes, so did your mates. Come on, up you get,” and you’d be in. “You’ve gotta go and unload petrol drums, you’ve gotta take them in the bush

because if they bomb the tanks there’s no petrol.” We used to take 44 gallon drums into the bush. We used to work day and night. When I say day and night, I mean day and night. We were exhausted.

Yes. A lot of them used to take supplies out on barges too,

‘cause there was only one wharf. Yes, it was, I wouldn’t say it was a good war base because there was no wharves, no jetties. They were building another one, but I think it took them two years to build it.

We did that. They taught us all this.

They sent us to a school and we did three months’ schooling. They would take something off the truck and you went through. First thing you had to do was they’d empty the tank. You knew it was full, but they’d empty the tank.

Or they’d take the rotor out. They taught us the first thing to do is check the petrol if it doesn’t start, the second is see if the rotor is in there. Check to see if the points, the plugs are into the points. They taught us all this. If a car didn’t start with the knowledge with

what they taught us, we learned how to do it. If it broke down, what to do. If it broke down and you wanted to get it off the road, you put it in first gear and press the starter button and the battery will help to push the truck onto the side of the road. They taught us everything. They taught us a

lot about, we had to know it, otherwise they wouldn’t give us a licence.

Just ordinary fuel.

No, just petrol. The only ones that run on that was the charcoal that the commandos had on the way to Broome and Wyndham because nobody can supply them with petrol. We did think they were gonna land in Broome

and Wyndham and cut us off, we thought that. That was a good experience.

I think it was about 10 or 12 days, I don't know. We’d stop a couple of days here and a day there, I think about 12 days, a couple of days more. In those days I didn’t take any notice. It was a good experience.

Oh wasn’t it

ever! I thought, “This is a picnic. I’m seeing the country.” Before the war, the furthest I’d been was Gosford. I thought, “Hey, I’m seeing it.” It was a good experience. The

Victoria River Downs Cattle Station, I think they had some trouble with some other troops and they were knocking off the Aboriginal girls before us, I don't know when, something like that. When we went through there was no staff there. The reason was that they went bush, the owners of the Victoria River Downs, ‘ “Because

you blokes are here.” We just went straight through. We stopped a couple of days on the way back. The Aboriginal girls were back from the bush, they used to go bush. I’m sorry, you’d have to be hard up because, the Aboriginals, they taught us about the Aboriginals.

Yeah.

They said, “Look, the Aboriginals are not stupid people, when a woman gets her periods the mother takes her down the river and she stops there till her periods are over and

then she comes back. They make sure the water’s not running towards where they’re camped, that the water’s running that way.” They taught us a lot about the Aboriginals. Aboriginals don’t pass food to one another, here’s a loaf of bread or here’s a piece of steak, they throw it on the ground and they pick it up from the ground.

They give us a book on Pidgin English. I’ve still got the book. What they mean. ‘Him a go along the way’, means ‘he’s going for a long walk’. ‘Him a soldier boy’, ‘him eat good tucker’, and there’s all these sayings that the Aboriginals did, these are all wild ones. We went through some wild

country and they’d do anything to get a cigarette, the Aboriginals. You give him three or four cigarettes, they’ll give you a nulla-nulla and a spear and give you anything, all for a cigarette. They’d do anything for a smoke. We learned a lot of their way of life, this is the wild aboriginals. If you wanna have sex

with somebody’s wife, that’s OK because that means that you like his wife. They feel good about it. Whether that’s true or not, I don't know, today you’d get shot. They were wild. We went through a canyon, I just forget the name of it. It’s the only place in the world

that you get police protection if you want to. In the old days the Aboriginals used to get on top of the canyon and spear the white men that used to walk through it. We had to go through it and they were still wild at the time. We’d sleep underneath a rock and we’d have

our bed made as if we’re asleep. You’re not gonna know, there was two spears on one of those beds. So it was true. When we came back we didn’t stop, we went straight through the canyon. We didn’t stop in it. This did happen. They were wild and they used to spear white people, that’s where you could get police protection to go through and that law still stands today, not that they

use it. One of the drivers told me that. […]

We were driving through, which was very deserty, sandy. They trucks were getting hot. It was in 100 -110 degrees.

We had to stop and cool them off. We had to travel about a mile and they were that hot we’d stop and give them a rest. We stopped at a place there and just went walkabout. I was by myself and some of my mates walked to the left and some went to the right. I went to the

right and I came across this water hole. ‘Gee that’d good.’ I tasted it. It was hot and it was drinkable, it was nice so I had a bit of a drink of it. There’s this shiny thing in the water. I thought ‘What’s that? That looks nice, I’ll take that as a souvenir.’ I picked it up and I brought it home.

That was it, I never seen it again. When we came back I didn’t call in ‘cause I don't know where it was. I never find it in a million years because if you’re in the Sahara Desert and there’s a water hole that’s not there permanently, where is it? You don’t know. I picked up this stone. It was twice as big as what it was. I broke it a bit off to give to my mate,

he was in Darwin too. He was fascinated with it and he started to make enquiries. He sent a bit of it overseas. They said, “This is interesting.” It was caused by a meteor hitting the ground. It’s formed into glass.

We made enquiries and they said that if I can prove that’s where it came from it’d be worth a lot of money, but I couldn’t prove it. We made enquiries and they said, “It could be a water hole today and it could be full of sand the next day. If there was a cyclone that would fill it up with sand and there’d be no water hole.” The aboriginals used to use it, they knew, but it wasn’t

there all the time. We got this information that it’d be hard to find. So what do you do? If I said, “I’m in the middle of Botany Bay and I dropped a house brick, go back and find it.” Where are you gonna look? Same thing.

Scorched earth?

No, I didn’t even know they had that.

Yes they did that.

I never seen nothing. There was a lot of cattle stations up there. Rather than the Japs taking over, there’d be food there for as long as they wanted to stay if they invaded, so they shipped them south.

Yes, that did happen. They lost a lot of sheep, but they saved a lot too. They shipped them south. That did happen, but I couldn’t tell you that story.

Fights with your mates?

All blokes fights, just something to do. If somebody said something to you and you didn’t like it you’d throw a punch at him. I’ll take a case in point, when I was in the 45th Battalion training, me and my best mate

were sparring. So we’re sparring away and we’re pulling our punches and he would hit me a bit hard and I’d hit him a bit hard. In the finish it was a fist fight, you follow what I mean? This thing happens with blokes. All it started off with was sparring and this does happen. That’s how blokes fight one another. Sparring. You hit

him too hard or you hit him accidentally and he hits you accidentally. Then it goes on and it gets harder and harder till there’s a bit of blood around.

Yes, you can’t sit on the beach, you had to sit on a towel, the sand is that hot. When I say hot, it’s too hot to sit on, you had to put a blanket down to sit on the beach.

We used to muck around on the beach, we used to make pyramids with one another and things like that ‘cause it’s too hot to swim. We used to go to Berry Springs or Howard Springs for a swim but you had to drive 50 odd miles to go for a swim and you were no better and you’d say, “Forget about it.”

The rain, it used

to rain 10 inches in 10 seconds. It rained. It was just like this, it wasn’t rain, I don't know what you’d call it.

There was no rain drops, it was just water. It was nothing. It used to flood. I’m not joking, you’d get

10 inches or 20 inches of water in five minutes. It used to flood, it didn’t matter whether you was on the top of the ground or the bottom of the ground or high or low, it used to flood. Monsoon rains, they were, it used to rain, for sure.

We knew we were gonna cop a lot of rain and we sort of didn’t like it but we got used to it. I can remember one day, when it rains at Alice Springs, the

Rock, Ayers Rock, when it rains thick, Ayers Rock is just white, looks beautiful. It only lasts for two or three seconds, but the whole Ayers Rock is white and it looks beautiful.

You’d be drenched watching it.

We played the Navy, hockey, at the ground in Darwin, and the football ground was just a piece of ground with a little fence around it, and nothing. Anyway, we played the Navy hockey, and they beat us... I was on the wing, and they invited us to go and have dinner

on their ship which was anchored in the harbour. It was a warship that was ... did all the maintenance, I forget the name of it.1:09 And when you go on a warship you're supposed to salute. Of course, Bimbo ... there's an officer there, and I walked on from the ship, you know. And one of the blokes said, "Bimbo, you're supposed to salute".

I got into trouble for not saluting. I didn't know that. You're supposed to salute when to go onto a warship and I didn't know that. I got into trouble over it. That's about it.

Well,

we eventually moved out of Vestey's, and we ... when we got organised, and got all the trucks organised, we slept in the bush, and ... the ... we had trucks camouflaged with the bush

and when the monsoon rains used to come, we couldn't sleep on the floor. We got four sticks and we slept above the ground, and we put the paliasses on the two forks, and that's the way we slept.

Under tents, they were tents.

Six. Six men. And ... like ... we all ... you know ... camped here, there and everywhere, wherever we could ... wherever we could use a shrub or tree to sort of camouflage the tents. We had ... we were experts at camouflage, you know. They taught us

... the airforce were pretty good at it too. The fighter bombers ... the fighters ... they had their strip alongside of the road. Once the road ... and they had a strip there and they used to camouflage all the fighters, and they were here, there and everywhere and nobody could see 'em,

they were camouflaged so good.

We camouflaged them with bushes. We used to get ... go and get some some shrubs and chop them down and when they got a bit dry, we used to chop ... put some ... like they were green and we used to camouflage them pretty good. And it was with the bushes that were around, and

we camouflaged them perfect, that you couldn't see 'em. As a matter of fact, there's a photo there of one of the trucks there in the bush and you can only just see the ... what the front of it, you know. That's how we used to camouflage 'em. We were experts at it.

Hot, hot period you know, how hot is it? You wouldn't wear a shirt, because

it was wringing wet with sweat. You only put your shirt on when you went into the mess hut to eat. The mess hut was like a big tent and we used to eat in that.

Writing home to girls? Well, like, we used to get ...

addresses, you know. Somebody would like to write to somebody, you know. So we'd write. It was interesting, it was something to do. It was good. You know, girls in those days, men ... for some unknown ... well they used to look up to 'em, and they treated 'em and respected 'em. They'd do the right thing.

That was the way a life in those days ... We used to write to different ones. I was writing to one girl and ... for about twelve months, and we got to sorta like one another, by what we were sayin' and that. Nothing lovely lovely or anything like that, and I got a letter from her boyfriend. He says, Vince, I would like you

to stop writing to my girlfriend, we're getting married. So I stopped writing to her. And then two years after the war I'm still single, and she lived down Nowra way, and I thought I wonder if she's still alive. You know, curiosity. So I went down the south coast, was down that way, and I went and I found her address, I had it. And a chap came to the door ...

and I said ... I think her name was Amy ... I think... And I said, oh, look, I said, Amy, is she about? Oh, she said, that's my sister. I said, look, I said, I used to write to her when I was in Darwin, and I was just wondering how she's going. Oh, sorry fella, she said, she got killed in a car accident. And I thought .... so that was it.

Then I used to write to other girls and we just write letters, and there was nothing in it, you know. We used to write to 'em in Melbourne and Adelaide ... and what do you talk about? But the trouble is, you'd write, and in the finish you'd say .. look ... they weren't ... they'd write back and say "I got your last letter, and there was only the first few lines, and the last few." They were doing it to everybody. And the cameraman

weren't allowed to take any photos up there. The journalists weren't allowed to do anything. And it was restricted by everybody, the newspapers, it was a no-no, you know. Anybody with ... wanted a story, and that's how it went on. This is the part that bugged us, it was too strict, you know. And that's it.

No. No. No. We were just, just friends, you know. And they were single, they were all single, but they just liked to write too. And we enjoyed it, but the point is, there was no point in it, because the letters they were getting, there was nothing there to read, you know, which I thought was wrong, you know. We're not talking about the war,

we're talking about ... we're talking about what's happening, but nothing. They just ... I don't know why ... what was the reason?

Yes, they were very welcome.

What was in 'em? Biscuits, cakes. A few lollies. But there's only one problem. You got it,

you got it, you had to share it with all your mates, you know. That was fair enough too. Yes, I got a, I got a Christmas cake came from me mother, and I only had a mouthful of it, you know. One of the officers said, "Hey, Ravvy, you got a cake from yer mother, did ya?" I said, "Yes sir". He said "Did ya now?

Can I have a little bit?". This was officers. I said, "Sir, there's only a little bit left.". They said, "I only want a little bit", you know. This what the blokes were like. We didn't treat 'em like officers, they were just blokes, you know. I used to tell officers to go to buggery. He'd say, "Yeah, the same to you", you know. You did that in the American army, they'd shoot ya, you know, if you spoke ... We spoke just like as if it's just one of the boys.

Yes sir, yes sir, my word, yes there was. Oh yes. We respected one another and it was when there's people around, yes sir, no, you know, Joe, Bill or whatever it is. Yes sir, you know ... and saluted them too, you know. But when we talkin' in the bush, or when by ourselves you know we used to tell dirty yarns or, you know,

have a few words. I'll tell you another story. There was an officer, an American officer ... and I had to take him to one of the hospitals that was down south ... ten or fifteen mile, and he said

"Driver, I'll drive," I said "Sorry, sir, but I have to drive you, that's the orders that I've got." "Bugger the orders" he said "I'm driving." He was a Yank. Anyway, he drove, and I tell you what, I was almost sayin' prayers. He was goin' round the corners on two wheels. I think he's drivin' like a maniac.

So anyway ... It was a utility, and I'm laying in the back waitin' for him, so what's he do, he doesn't know I'm there, and he comes in with a bird, one of the nurses. And he's in the back, you know. They're talkin' there, you know, and lovey dovey, and this, that and the other. I could hear every word they're sayin', and there's nothing I can do. And I thought,

I gotta get out. Gotta get out of this thing, you know. So anyway, 'cause he couldn't see me, I was layin' down. Anyway, after a while, I sneaked open the door, you know and slowly ... and I coughed, see, to let him know I was around. And I sat in the utility, and the next minute, him and his bird went for a walk.

What's the attack ... I thought of me mother a lot. I thought, yeah, I'm not gonna make this. It was ... you had to see it to believe it. Two hundred

bombers, escorted by fighters, dive bombers. The sky was full of 'em. What chance got, you're sayin' to yourself, you know. You're scared, and so was everybody else. What do you do? There's nothing you can do. You just sit there and take it. What I used to do sometimes,

if I was by meself, I try to move to a safer place, you know, than what I was. And I'd look around and I used to pick on where it was rocky ... and I used to lay in between the rocks as a protection because there's no slit trenches, there's no air raid shelters, there was nothing, you know. You did the best you could and you move around a lot

and when you see 'em dive bombing the ships, you know, you think, god, dammit, and you know. And then you see these boats pickin' up blokes, bringin' 'em ashore. And goin' out and pickin' 'em up, and you're sayin' bloody hell, these are things in the sticks on. God. What's it like? It's like hell let loose, and you can't describe it, you got to see it.

Nobody ... the Japs ... down ... especially the second raid, they came down to treetop level. Machine gun, anything that moved, no opposition, there was nothing to shoot at them. Nobody had anything. There was gun emplacements that had no guns because they had no bullets. It was disgraceful. You felt that it

wasn't safe. If you felt you were safe a little bit you'd to feel better, but you didn't feel safe. And I thought maybe, you know, now or in five minutes ... that's how it was, that's how you felt. And you were scared, and when I say scared, I mean bloody scared, you know. And everybody was in the same boat. What was it like? It was terrible. I keep saying wars are stupid.

Wars they are stupid. There's no good wars. The first raid, no, I'd say the first two raids on the one day, I would never want to go through that again, never in a million years, never, or anybody else. Not the first two.

I seen the Perry was hit with a bomb from a high altitude, and it was

damaged. And then the dive bombers come down, and finished it off. I watched that because I was in the ... I was only a stone throw from the jetty. And I had ... the Colonel was with me. And we witnessed the bombs coming down. We witnessed just about everything,

and everything that was damaged was finished off by the dive bombers. And the the dive bombers were coming ... they were operating in fives. And they weren't even ... they were coming down almost, you know, within twenty foot of ... of the target, and they never missed. They were so accurate, everything they bombed, they got, you know. And what was it like? Well, I think that just the first raid

on Darwin was enough to send anybody nuts, not to mention the other raids. The other raids you felt a little safer because you see 'em coming in, and they're coming in on the right, and you're here, and you'll say, well, I feel half safe, you know. This is some of the raids, you felt safe. And the American Colonel taught me a lot. He said,

"Vince", he said, "when the enemy is coming at you this way and they drop their bombs about there, that's when you got to be scared." Because if they drop their bombs there, they're dropping ... they're allowing that you drop them here and it could be ahundred metres from the target when they drop them because they're coming in on an angle.

But he says, once they're overhead, forget about it, you're safe. And there was a lot of times there I felt safe, and then when we got the reinforcements ... young blokes were coming up, you know, we were in our middle twenties ... eighteen and nineteen year old kids, you know. During the bombing raids, "Hey, Bimbo, what'll I do?". And I used to tell 'em what to do, and they enjoyed it, and I used to enjoy telling them. First of all,

if you're near a target, beat it. I said, run to ... run away from any target. And they used to ... and so did I. There was this place called . the National Park, there were just coconut trees, we used to just head for that. And we knew they were safe there because they wouldn't bomb just coconut trees ... they needed a target. I used to have

blokes that used to hang around me like a bad smell. And I rather enjoyed it. I think they like it ... you know, help them. Thanks Bimbo. I felt good after that, but these were the young blokes, y'know. They'd only seen maybe a couple of raids, you know, and the Japs were on the run anyway, and they still ... they

still enjoyed .. we'd still get the air raid warnings, and they used to follow Bimbo around.

They were ... there's only a few planes and only be five or six bombers would come over. And you knew you were safe because they'd be coming in from the left or the right and you was in the middle.

You sort of ... I'll survive this one for sure, you know. You sort of knew, after a while, you were safe, because they were on the run, and there was less planes coming over, instead of two or three squadrons or twenty or thirty bombers they'd only send one or two. It was like they were nuisance, nuisance raids.

The night bombing it was a bit worrying, because you couldn't see the planes. But they were a bit scary, but ... how do you feel?. Well you know, when your life's in danger, how do you feel? I didn't feel frightened meself really. I just ... I was frightened of me family. That's what

happens and ...

That's what I mean. Cos sisters, eight sisters and three brothers, you know, and they used to sort of ... we

used to get on well with them, you know. The sisters probably argued with one another but they never argued with Vince much you know. I used to get on well with my sisters, but no ...

Most of them were aboriginals or half castes. Fanny Bay jail was a jail ... there was no servicemen there, they were all civilians. On the day of the bombing,

they let 'em loose. They were free. They went wherever they had to go. It was probably the best thing. But mainly, Fanny Bay was a civilian jail. We didn't have any jails - if there was a naughty boy they used to lock them in a room, you know, if you did something wrong. Put you in a room or

closed in cage, and that was it. And you'd probably be there for one day or whatever but there was no serviceman in the jail, they were all civilians, and I'm sure they shot through with the other people, or they went south, and they were free. But a lot of them were half castes and full blooded aboriginals, and they used to work in the

camps. And one day, they went to the officers and, "More money, we want a more money. We workim too hard, not enough money. We want more money." And whether they got it or not, I don't know. We want more money - so they weren't silly. They were only getting paid peanuts - "We want more money". And before the bombing

raids, just about everybody that was in the Army, and was an officer, they had aboriginals working for 'em, just for a few cigarettes, you know, they'd do anything for cigarettes

Ahhh, I got that off jollies.Yes I got that off jollies,

yeah, and so did my mates. But I kept mine, they handed theirs in. I kept mine. I was the only one out of the lot. I said, "I'm not handing it in."

Yeah, cameras were confiscated. Oh yes, all cameras were confiscated once the bombing started, and all cameras had to be handed in. But V.R. didn't and I didn't intend to. That's why

some of those photos are taken inside the truck of the car, you know. Anybody around I can take a photo. Yes, they handed theirs in.

A box camera ... box camera.

It's still just another day, as far as I'm concerned.

It's just another day. I have been on a couple of marches. I took my grandson, you see that bloke there, that kid on the top, that was about the age I used to .... I marched and he'd march with me, and he enjoyed it, when he was about seven or eight. And he enjoyed it, and I think I marched about two or three times ... now I don't, because I can't walk very far now.

And Anzac Day to me is just another day, and that applies to me mates too, and that's wrong. So, Anzac Day, yes, just another day, and it shouldn't be, but I march because my grandkids wanted me to march, you know. So I marched. But other than that ...

I never marched in Sydney once.

No, it's just another day now. You pick the paper up and ... "Darwin was bombed" ... two or three words and that's it. You know. Big deal, you know. What did they put it in the paper for? No, the word Darwin,

Anzac Day, for fifty years was a no-no. And that's wrong. Whose fault is it? Who? Who do you blame? The government? The authorities? Who?

No, they can't. It's like they say in Italian - finito. "Finito" means "finished". What can they do? There's nothing they can do, and how many of us are

left, you know. Eighty five, you know, that's not young. And there's not many of us left to get any stories out of anyway, now. The young blokes that went up there and got the same privileges as us, only seen four or five raids, and they got the same privileges as me. They probably would march, but

not after the first ... the first raid on Darwin. That was the one, the big one, and that was the one that ... that was the killer, that one. No ... Anzac Day is just another day, as I said.

No, all my mates lived in ... close mates lived in Melbourne, and

I lost touch with them, I shouldn't have. I was in business after the war, and I was to busy to write, or ring, or what. Today you can, if you knew their address, you know. You don't know whether they are still alive, or not. Now I've got all those photos of those blokes. I've got the photo of my ... of B Company, and

I don't know how many of them are still alive. I don't know.

Newsletter, where from?

Yes, that we do, but there are so many different stories. There was one woman there, she said her husband died and he was in the twenty third reserve motor transport. If I only knew where she lived, I would write to her, if I knew her

address. And he died about twelve months to two years ago. He'd be about the same age as me. As a matter of fact, the last words I had with him, we were arguing, but only a friendly argument. He was in the next tent, and ... the ...

what was his name? I've forgotten half of their names. His mother wrote a letter to the Darwin Defenders, and I thought, God, I knew ... what's his name, I'll think of it in a minute ... and... Fred, Fred, Fred. Anyway, his wife

wrote in and I thought, I know your old man. If I could ring her up, I would have. I know your old man, he was a villain like me too, he was a good bloke. We used to play ... what's that game ... dominoes a lot. Dominoes, to pass the time away. Draughts, we use to play draughts, sometimes.

Yes, being from every state in Australia, you sort of, you don't know, and over the years, who are they? Are they still alive? You don't know where they live. If you knew where they lived, you'd look the phone book up, you know. But no, yeah, some of my mates.

But they all came from Melbourne.

Where was I ... I think I was at ... I think I was at Cowra ... I think. I think I was at Cowra when that

happened.

Oh ... why didn't they do it two years ago. You see, it's like I said, I got nothing against Japanese people. The Japanese ... the servicemen, they were ... I used to hate their guts, you know. They weren't ... they weren't enemy, they were just murderers, you know.

The book of rules. And when they dropped the bomb, I said, God, thank God for that. But I felt sorry for the civilians. They shouldn't have paid the price. I think they should have dropped the bomb on something in the harbour first, to let them know just how powerful it is. And if that didn't happen, drop another bomb, where there was no civilians, or say we're going to bomb such and such

a town. Get out. Or something. ... for civilians to get out. I think they could've went around it a different way. But look at all the innocent Japanese that got killed too, they're human beings too, but I was all for it. And it saved thousands of troops too. Even though the cost of some of the civilians. Had they not dropped the bomb,

the war would have went on on for probably another twelve months or two years, who knows. Can you imagine invading Japan? It'd be just like trying to take the hill on Gallipoli, you know, they'd be there in force, you know. No, so it had its bad things, but it shortened the war and suppose that was the best thing I can say about it.

We left March ... we went up in March '41. It was March '43. There was a couple or raids after us, but when I said raids, it might have been one or two bombers come over, but you wouldn't say they were bombing raids, you know, one plane, or it was only just sort of I think only just letting them know they were still

around, I think.

Oh, we went to Melbourne and we camped in Melbourne. We camped at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Then we used to sleep on the seats, and we used to go and

sit on the seat. We'd go across the road and get a meat pie for dinner, you know. And we was enjoyin' it until they told me it was horse flesh, then I didn't enjoy 'em any more. Then we went to the Dandenong Ranges and trained.

Oh, infantry training and ...

It was disbanded, yeah. And

if I'd gone away again, I'd probably been ... the driver of an ... of an infantry battalion. We were training to go away again. And then the war finished, and that was the best news I could have had. The best news Australia had, you know. But, no ... Melbourne was shockingly cold. The Dandenong Ranges, that was cold up there.

I'll tell you a story. Up the Dandenong Ranges, it's a fair way from Melbourne, and when we'd go on leave, they'd hand out ... French letters ... for the time the train got to Melbourne, there was balloons, about fifty balloons hanging

up in the train. You know, we thought it was funny. This is what blokes do. Yeah, we just blew 'em up and threw 'em out, and they were hanging in the train - some of them went that long. The stupid things blokes do, you know, this was just one of those things.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. She hugged me, and hugged me, and hugged me, and

kissed me and hugged me, and I was hoping she'd let go after ten minutes. Me sisters were the same. They were pleased.

Brother got out all right. Yes, he copped the same, you know, from the family. And the war was over, and thank God for that. But sleep, as I say, I slept on the floor for two years, I couldn't sleep in a bed.

You ask the wife, she'll tell ya. When I get bloody cranky, I get cranky easy, and you sort of take it out on, you know. She's a, the wife's one in a million, there's times there that she could shoot me, and there's times there I could shoot her, but she's a good lady.

That's why I didn't get married until I was 35. I couldn't settle down. I married the white girl ... the right girl. She goes crook at me from time to time, but that breaks the monotony. Yeah, I get cranky, and I do, and I blame the war for it. Yes, I am bitter, and these things you don't get over, and

you don't get over it period. And that'd apply to anybody, you know ... wars... god ..

Civilian life took a long time to settle down. I got engaged a couple of times and couldn't settle down, I had to break the engagement off. I couldn't settle down. Nothing wrong with the

girls, you know. There's ... I was engaged to a girl in Melbourne and I broke it off, and she wanted to sue me. I'd bought an engagement ring, cost me fifty pounds, and she wrote to the Colonel. But she said she was going to sue me.

I went in front of the Colonel, "Ravese, man to man, is this girl pregnant?" I said "Definitely not sir, definitely not". I says, "Nothing ever happened. There was no sex involved. I was just engaged to her.

I couldn't settle down, and that was it." He says, "Ravese", he says, "I believe ya." I says, well, I said, "I'll swear on a bible, sir, I never touched her, and I don't know why she's suing", but, he says, "I'll transfer you to another unit". And he did. He said, "I'll transfer you

so they won't sue ya", which you could in those days, if you broke an engagement. You could sue. Sue ... what money did ... I had fifty pound in the bank.