Australians at War Film Archive

My wife, she was born in Grafton and I came there after I got out of the army in 1957, and we’ve been here ever since, about 45 years.

Around Lismore and the Richmond area, Lismore and Casino. We were on dairy farms up there all the time. We were born and reared on a farm.

Yes.

He used to do the farm, shifted from one farm to another farm. He had a bad temper. He couldn’t agree with the bosses but we were on dairy farms until I was 17. Then I went out on my own, well not on my own. I went out working for other people on farms. Then I got a job on a banana plantation doing banana work and then I decided to join the army when I was 19.

Originally he was a timber cutter and in the era the rain, and the wet weather meant they couldn’t log too much, so he had to get another. He had a few in the family. There was ten of us all told. He had to get somewhere where there was constant money coming in and the farm seemed best in those days back in the 1930s.

They used to own the farms and Dad would come in, and share farm. Sometimes he’d get a third. The boss would have two thirds but then he woke up to himself later on and he used to have 50/50. They used to share farm 50/50. The boss was still on a better wicket but it was survival, a way of

getting a living that’s all, a good way of getting a living in those days because you had plenty of meat. You could come along and kill a beef, have a steer or something, and that would last you a month or so in meat. In those days you could hang it up in the bush and not worry about the flies but now? It’s a bit different nowadays.

I think it was at a country dance actually. They went to a country dance and in those

days there was plenty of them. They had dances everywhere about once a fortnight. They’d have a country dance somewhere and they’d end up meeting that way.

Nine. I had four brothers and five sisters.

I was number four. I was the fourth boy and then they had four girls, and a boy and a girl, so they spread them out pretty

well.

Very interesting. It’s what you make of it. You can make it bad. You can make it good. You make your own fun. School days, one farm where I was we had to ride five mile on horses to school and I don’t think the kids nowadays would even think of that! They get correspondence.

Weekends we’d go out with the old shanghai on the hip chasing birds and anything that was in front of us with a shanghai. No, it was quite good actually.

Now what do they call them? I can’t even think of the modern name for them. It’s a…

Yes. You had a little fork with a rubber band on it. I used to be good with them,

especially when we started fighting one another with them behind drums until my father spotted us. That put a finish to that one, a big strap.

Yeah. They weren’t real generous sometimes in what they done to me but that’s just growing up with a family and bigger brothers. You’re the gofer like, you and get this,

and go and fetch that until you jack up on it. One thing saved me, I could run a bit when I was young and only the eldest brother, he was the only bloke that could catch me. The other two couldn’t! We used to have a bit of fun that way.

Not actually, my memory is sort of going backwards! No I can’t think of

anything that would be worthwhile reporting.

We had plenty to do. We’d get up in the morning time before daylight and round the cows up, bring them in, and then we had to milk, wash up everything, clean the dairy up before we went home, and had breakfast, and then off to school. We had to be home straight after school, which

took us about half an hour or three quarters of an hour to ride to one farm there. If we were a bit late we had to explain why or otherwise the strap came out again. We had to milk and go and feed all the calves, and the pigs. It would be dark by the time you finished. Then on weekends when the corn was on, we had to go and pick the corn. We had a three acre Lucerne bed.

One paddock had one and a half acre, and that was mowed very three weeks. We had to round that up every weekend loading hay, so we had things to do. It kept us out of mischief.

Well in those days not too many people here raised beef cattle. It was all dairy. There was no beef cattle on the

coast. They were all out west, all the beef cattle and there was only dairy along the coast around Lismore. They had stacks of butter factories, milk factories but they’ve all closed down now. I think there is only one left in Lismore. They used to have them everywhere, cream factories to make the butter but now big industry just came in, and all the little blokes have closed down.

It was mainly the feed. We had plenty of grass for the cattle. You go out west and it was all dry, and there is no milk producing feed out there. That was the best part here, the amount of feed for the cattle.

Yes, just different types.

Sometimes you’d get a weed that would grow in the grass, like there used to be carrot weed and you couldn’t put the cattle in the paddock until the carrot weed died because otherwise the milk just tasted like carrots. It was a funny thing. It would just come right through the milk, bloody carrot weed. It was very strange that little stuff but it only grew for about a month and then it just disappeared. It would come from nowhere. No one knew where it came from.

It would just come up for about a month and then she was gone but you couldn’t use that paddock while it was in there.

Yes. You had to

work out different areas and different times when to plant stuff for the feed, for the cattle, like oats or anything like that, winter feed. You had to be spot on with the certain time to plant it. Corn had to be planted at a certain time because there was a little beetle that would get in and you’d end up with no corn but if you planted in the right month the beetle wasn’t there. That was just nature, a battle of nature that one.

No it was just something you learned. I don’t know how to explain that. I suppose it was more or less general knowledge to a lot of people and as you carried on with it you got to know which was the best way to do it, and then you’d

just carry on like that. My father used to tell us a lot about when he was going to plant and why he was going to plant. That helped a lot but then you had to wait like all farmers, all vegetable growers, you had to wait on that weather. That was the deciding factor.

Well it is because

you’ve got to battle floods and you’ve got to battle drought, and all that goes everywhere, especially in the floods. If you’ve got any paddocks with a gully running through there you’d be sure to get the flash flood and the next thing you find out is that you’re up there fixing fences, and knocking down the logs. No, it’s an interesting life I think but I’d never go back to it. Once I left it I’d never go back to it because you’re

up every morning. You have to get up at a certain time. You have to be there all the time, every day, seven days a week. You had to milk the cows. It’s not fun. I think that’s why a lot of people went out of farming and they just went into beef cattle because the beef cattle prices were good too, another reason but mainly because of the consistency. You had to be there all the time. You had no break,

especially wintertime. That was not fun. You had to get out there of a morning time and in those days we had no shoes. We had to go along with the cows in frost, inches deep on the ground, round the cows up with bare feet walking on the frost. As soon as you’d hear a cow hop up, as soon as they’d hopped up and done their business, you’d race over straight, and put your feet on it, warm your feet up. That used to be fun.

Fairly flat country. One farm we were on just out of Lismore, Boat Harbour it was on the bend of a river, about 150 acres and 100 acres was on the flat country

around the bend of this river, which had plenty of water, and the other part, 50 acres was on hill country. That used to mean when the flood came in the low country the cows would be up on the hill, so it balanced out. That was quite a good farm. The other one we had was in a big valley and we had the spur of the mountain come down, and the two valleys came up that way,

that was part of the farm. We had two little creeks running through it giving constant water all the time. We had no worry there with those two. It was quite good but the droughts still played up on the feed, on the grass itself. The majority of farms, they are all flat country with probably a little hill in somewhere for flood time when they just put the cows up on the hills.

One farm we were on we used to milk 92 cows by hand. They were Durhams. Have you ever seen a Durham cow? They are a monstrous big red one, teats on them about that long, and we were kids about 12 years old with the size of our hands trying to get around them. We’d sit up there milking those, but the old Guernsey is the best one of the lot.

They were a very quiet cow, gave plenty of milk and cream. They were the best dairy cow of the lot. A lot say the Jersey but the old Guernsey was the best one I reckon anyway, in my opinion.

No. The best way to feed them or keep the grass going was to subdivide your paddock into about 10 acre,

don’t know what that is in metric. We used to have them and you’d put one in there for about three days in the one paddock, and every time you rotated into the next one the old cows thought it was Christmas because they were going at the new fodder. They used to have the time of their lives with it. That was the best way of doing it. A lot of people had just a big paddock. They had a night paddock and a day paddock, and that’s all they had but with the rotation of the paddock I think the cows

were more contented by thinking that they were getting new fodder all the time instead of the same stuff divided by a fence. I don’t know whether it tricks the cows or what.

Yes you’d pick one out. I can’t say the size in metric but they were mainly round about three acre paddocks and

you’d just go and put your corn in. In summertime the corn season would be out and then they’d give it a break for about a month or so. Then we’d plough it all up and put the oats in for the winter crops. They were all about 3 acre sized.

That was only for feed, for winter

feed for the cows. We had a shed and that’s where they used to store the corn and everything. We had to go and thrash the corn of a night- time with this old thrasher. Nowadays machinery does it, but this one we had to turn by hand, put the corncobs in and turn it by hand. Then after we’d finished that, that was the best part during the night, we used to have a bonfire to burn the cobs to get rid of them. They stored

all the stuff in the shed and then the hay, we used to put it in a haystack. It was built with a big cover over it, an iron roof over the top. It was put out in the paddock, out in the middle of the paddock somewhere with this iron roof over the top and we’d stack all the hay in there but now they’re all baled off with machines. We had to do it all by hand with a pitchfork. It was good fun.

I don’t think you’d ever find a needle in it!

No, I know what you’re saying!

Oh yes, we did that. We used to have a little garden down the back, down on a little flat piece and we used to grow them there. They were quite good too! We used to do that, the kids. My father never involved himself in that but that was our job in the garden.

You were flat out as a kid because in those days we never had much homework to do for school, very little actually and it gave you more time to work on the farm. My father never liked to see anyone sitting around idle and he’d keep you going. He was a bit tough on some things but it might have been good for us. I don’t think it hurt us actually.

Yes. Well we used to cheat a bit during the war by killing a beast or a pig. During the war there we had the coupons and if we went into town you had to use the coupons to get your food. They used to do that once a month.

You can just imagine. I think by that time there was seven of us at the farm, so you’ve got seven kids and two adults for a month. We’d go in and buy a bag of flour, 60 pound or something I think they were, and a bag of sugar. Kellogg’s and Weetbix, you’d get by the carton. You’d go in the old ute [utility truck] and pack the ute up for a month. If you told the kids nowadays or if they saw you doing it, they’d think, “Gawd they’re

mad.”

They used to drink the spare milk and also bring in some money because you’d fatten them up on certain things, then take them into town for sale, and get a bit of cash from them that way.

It used to vary. We had

six breeding sows and a boar. I think that was what the start off was and then when they all produced the piglets, say anything up to 12 pigs or 10 anyway, they all come within a month of one another, and you’d have a bloody lot of pigs.

After we used to separate the milk and send the cream away, you had to dispose of the milk and we always had about half a dozen calves that we were rearing up, they were all fed with milk, and the majority went to the pigs, which was good for them. They used to fatten up on it.

Yes we used to rotate them. You’d come up and have a certain amount of calves.

The cattle, when the old ones used to die, well you’d have the younger ones coming up and you just had the same continual string of cows, the same amount of cattle all the time that way.

That was just nature. Sometimes with a cow she might have trouble with a calf and

my father used to do it nearly as good as a vet he’d done it that many times. You’d bring the cow into the bales and he’d fix her up, take the calf away from her. Only very occasionally one would have trouble, mainly the young ones with their first calf. They’d have trouble and the old man would just take her out no trouble. He was good at it but that was just something he learned himself,

that’s all, nature again.

Foxes, dingos with the young calves when they were out in the back paddocks. They used to take the calves. Foxes, we had one episode with them because

we used to look after the fowls. That was another one of the kids’ jobs and we woke up one morning, and all of these feathers were everywhere around the fowl pen, and all these dead WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s. There were only two alive out of about 30 we had there. All the rest were dead and not a mark on them. The fox used to hit them in the neck and suck the blood out of them. That’s all they did, never bit them or anything but just sucked the blood out of them.

These buggers were all dead. He just dug himself under but he got trapped. Within a week we got that bugger, ended up trapping him but you get little problems like that. That’s just one of the joys of farming. You have to put up with it.

We had 22s [.22 calibre] but

we never used to use them on foxes, mainly we’d go out sometimes and if you wanted a bit of a change in your diet, we’d go out, and knock over a wallaby or something like that, for wallaby soup. They were quite good or kangaroo. The old kangaroo tail soup is quite good but the dingos, we had…I know they are banned now but the old steel rabbit traps. We used to go out if a cow died and put a ring of traps around them, and

you’d be up the next morning, and there would be a dingo there, probably two. In those days we used to get three pounds for the scalp of a dingo. That was back in 1942 or 1943. That was big money in those days. We used to scalp them and take them in to the…they were always near the Police Station. They’d pay you the money

for the scalp. There was a levy the government had on dingos.

They were a menace yes. They used to knock the young calves over, especially anyone that had properties in the bush in the hilly country where they mainly lived. You’d see them sometimes down in the valley. You’d ride along on a horse, on the hill and look down,

and there’d be anything up round 10, probably 12 dingos in a pack. Once they started chasing something, they were good hunters. We watched four of them one day and they were chasing this kangaroo, one bloke was right alongside him or behind him, and he was the chaser, and other three were just trotting along 50 yards behind. They had no interest but they were still keeping up with him, and this other bloke would tire a bit, so the next

one would come up. He’d take over and they ending up by running it into this lagoon, and the kangaroo went out as far as he could in the water, he was up to chest height, and these dingos started swimming out to him. As they came out they used to get their paws and push him under the water. I would have loved to have that on a movie. It was unreal just to sit and watch it. That was just nature. It was really unreal.

Anything like that, that’s what used to make the country life interesting more or less, break the monotony of milking cows.

Koalas, they were in the bush, possums, ringtails, glider possums, all little fruit possums…no they were

squirrels, glider squirrels. That’s about it I think.

Birds? There were hundreds of different types of birds. I couldn’t even start to name them. There were butcherbirds, magpies, the old squeakers, the soldier birds. Grey miners or something I think they call the little

squeaker birds, the bloke with a yellow ring around his eyes. There were stacks of them, wedge tailed eagles, chicken hawks, you name them. It was just unreal out in the bush. You come into town and you don’t see them. That’s the beauty of the bush.

Pretty good. I wouldn’t say I was an expert but I was pretty good. I used to take a bit if shifting off the saddle sometimes. A few tried and a few won! I lost a couple, yes. We used to do that when I was…a good thing my father’s dead. We used to come along when he went to town, my brother and I would go up, and round up the young calves about six months old,

put a little rope on them, and hop on them, buck jump in the yard. We made a mistake one day. We tried to put a rope around this little one and my brother was on it. She threw him and took off. Of course not thinking she was going to take off in fright with the rope, she kept going threw three fences. We had to try and fix the fence up before the father came home! That was quite a rush but we never done anything wrong though. We were all good kids.

Oh he knew! He knew! He found out, never said nothing. The only thing he was worried about was the young heifer but she wasn’t hurt thank God! That’s all he was worried about. If she’d been cut with the wire or anything like that we would have copped it but she was right, so when we told him what happened he said, “Well that’ll teach ya! You want to learn to ride them properly.” That’s all he said.

No, I was…when did it start? 1939, you’re right! I was eight years old.

In those days the only information

we got was through the radio or wireless and that’s the only thing we heard, that England had declared war on Germany. That’s when we knew it was on and never knew much else about it until I had two uncles join up. They used to tell us a fair bit, what was going on but otherwise there was not much communication about it. Sometimes we’d go and see a movie, and they

used to have these Cinetone newsreels. You’d get a bit of information there how things were going and what have you.

I think my father sort of swore a bit about the silly buggers doing it. No I can’t actually.

No. I was a bit too young for that. I don’t think any of my relations of that era, I don’t think they even went to the war. They were all on the farms and they never took the farmers. That’s what happened to my father. He wanted to join up, wanted to enlist but they wouldn’t take him because he was on the farm.

He joined the VDC, the Voluntary Defence Corps in those days and he ended up in charge around Casino. He was in charge of all the…if Japan invaded Australia he had to make sure all the cattle around the north coast area, Richmond area near the Richmond river here, he had to get them all rounded up and take them up to the Tablelands, and he up that way. I could never work that out because the Japs were coming down from the north

and he had to take the cattle north. I could never work that out when I was a kid. Some blokes somewhere down south had a good idea about it but didn’t know much about how to do it. He had crates of 303 [.303 calibre] rifles in the shed. They gave them to him because he was the big sergeant in charge and he was in charge of all these rifles. We tried to get in there one day, couldn’t.

He had no ammo. He had the rifles and another bloke had the ammunition, so they kept them separate. If anything happened they just had all the VDC blokes come in and they would issue all these rifles out to them.

He joined the VDC and they had regular army blokes there that trained them

and apparently from what I could work out later he must have picked everything up very quick because he was promoted to a sergeant quite quickly. Then they put him in charge of everything and he was the head sharang [person in charge]. I didn’t know about the old 303s in those days…try her out and she’d probably break my shoulder.

He used to train at night time and from we were on the farm he had to travel about 25 kilometres to where this hall was where they used to train, so he was a bit fortunate that way.

Oh yes! Yes, we used to line up and

have the old bread and dripping, that’s fat. Do you know what it means, dripping? We used to use that instead of butter on the bread and sprinkle a bit of pepper and salt on it. That would be your lunch on the weekend, so that was one thing I remember. No, otherwise

you get used to it. That’s the thing. You sort of put your mind to it. You know you’re not going to get anything else and you just put your mind to it, and that’s it. You sort of adjust to it because there was no good going the other way, because you were not going to get any more. They were hard days during the war but you just had to put up with it

and live with it, put it that way. You had to live with it that’s all.

No, we were in a country school and the majority were all farmers. They all had to stay, because the government in their wisdom said that they were essential and that’s why they didn’t want them in the army.

They had to stay and look after the land, and supply the cream for the butter, and all the essentials. They were all farmers and all the kids were in the same position, same boats. No one had shoes. We were all bare footed at school. We used to all ride horses to school.

One school we were at there was 32 I think and one teacher. He used to teach from first class to sixth class. They can’t do it nowadays. There were two rooms in the school and one teacher but he was a cranky bugger. We used to watch him. He lived in a house just outside the school grounds and we’d watch him of a morning time

about ten past nine. As soon as he’d come out through the gate if he’d have a brown suit on, brown shoes, look out! It would be a bad day but if he had a black suit on, black shoes, it was going to be a good day. It used to affect his mood.

No, we never worked out why but maybe because we used to play up more when he had the brown suits. He used to wield the old stick though!

Plenty of caning, he used to like it. We never played up at school though. In the old days, the old pen and ink days with the old nibs, we used to get a piece of paper, and stick the nib in it, rubber band, straight into the ceiling. It used to stick up there. There’d be little dots of paper hanging all over the ceiling. “Who done that?” “Not me sir!” He never found out who done it but he knew.

No, we used to angle it to make sure it wasn’t above ours! That’s how he knew.

All the desks had inkwells, little holes with porcelain little well, a white fella that used to have ink in it.

You had a pen with a nib on it. It was like a piece of wood and a little metal piece on the end of it, and you’d dip the nib in the ink. The nib was split and had a hole just about half way up the nib about so long, and you couldn’t go past that hole with the ink because if you did

when you started to write, she’d just run everywhere. You’d have a big splotch of ink. You had to go just to the hole and then it would write out nice and neat. You had to be very careful with them because like I say too much ink and you’d have a mess, too little ink, and you’d having nothing to write with, so you had to be spot on with your little dip all the time.

I’d like to have one just to show the camera what they were really like.

Yes. There were two brothers, two sisters who used to go there. There were five of us at the school altogether. We had different classes of course. The teacher himself

was quite good at his job but I don’t know whether it was the kids or his temper. I’ve never worked it out but he did a good job with it. As far as sport went he was quite good at getting the best out of the kids, foot running and high jumps. We used to go to the Casino end of District Schools at Casino and

we ended up doing quite well with the school at Stratheden when we used to go there. We used to come out pretty well. We’d always bring a cup back to the school for the most points that we’d won. He was quite good like that but it was just his suits! We couldn’t work out the suits, the brown one or the black one, or the navy.

Well at the school they never did any cricket, football. We never used to play that at the country schools in those days. It was mainly foot racing, high jumps, long jumps, all that. That was all they did as far as sport, which I used to like. I used to love it. We never got into

football until after I left school I think, until I joined the army actually. That was the first game of football I played. I used to always enjoy the athletics.

Every morning at each school that we went to the first program was twenty minutes to half an hour of religious

teaching.

They were all together. There was Protestant, Christian, Catholic. He used to just hop up there and say prayers, and sing a little hymn, and that was the first half hour of the school teaching. That was every teacher at the country schools because all the schools we went to had one teacher. There was only one teacher in the school and being all little country ones,

everyone did the same thing. It must have been on their curriculum.

Mum yes, father not so. He wasn’t a real religious man but Mum yes! She was very religious. She used to make sure we said our prayers every night and make us do the right things because we were too far

away from church, and you’d probably get to a church service…the minister used to come out to a hall, and everyone would congregate at the hall about once every three months if we were lucky. In those days the ministers used to always hop on a horse and ride around the properties. They’d come and stay with you overnight or a couple of days if you wanted him to. They were quite good that way.

I couldn’t see them doing that now even though they have vehicles. They were quite good the old country ministers.

My mother was our medical supplier. She was as good as any nurse or doctor as far as wounds. Out in the bush

you’d only have cuts or probably run a nail through your foot. She’d put the old iodine on it and bathe it in iodine. That was the best thing in the world. That fixed it all up, clean all the cuts up and put the old stinging iodine. You’d end up with a purple foot.

Oh mate there were quite a few. The main lot was the bloody busted big toe. You’d be kicking something with your big toe, which wasn’t real

good. Like I said there earlier we had no shoes. We’d run around bare footed all the time. My feet were hard as leather. No, Mum was quite good on that. She never used to panic, wouldn’t matter what happened. I split my head open one day. We were playing cricket and someone threw a stick at my brother, a piece of stick about so long, and he got it fair in the middle of the bat. It went straight through my head,

just opened her up. She was right, went in to Mum, got the hot water and salt, bathed it, got the blood out of it, no trouble. That might be why I’m so silly now! No, she was quite good like that.

Yes, everyday. That was an everyday occurrence.

You never worried about it, no good crying about it because you still had to go, still had to work. The old man would make sure of that. Sometimes it was a bit tough but you had to be tough. You just had to put up with a crook foot or a split head.

They used to have a dance. About once a month they had a get together dance, old time dance and that’s what we used to enjoy. We used to always look forward to that because that afternoon, straight after lunch you’d hop in the old ute, the old Dodge truck we had and go down to the hall.

Three bags of sawdust filled with soaked…the sawdust was soaked in kerosene and our job as the kids, the families right around the area, all the kids used to come up there, and that was our job, to pull that up and down the hall, to make the floor slippery for the dance that night. That was the part we used to enjoy. I used to always look forward to that. That was good fun too pulling the, someone up and down the hall trying to throw them off the bag.

In those days we used to float around on the floor. There was no standing up and [indicates dancing on his own], they used to dance. They used to glide around on their feet, a bit different to nowadays mate with the old stand there with the BO [body odour] dance and don’t touch anyone. We used to get up there and do the old waltzes and foxtrots, and the gypsy taps.

You had to have a fast floor to do it. To do a waltz properly you need a very fast floor to make it look good. My mother was a beautiful dancer and she taught all of us how to dance. You wouldn’t know, she’s only a very frail…well frail, she’s a strong little bugger. There wasn’t much of here but she was very light on her feet when she danced. She taught all of us how to dance. No,

you’ve got to have a very fast floor to dance. When we grew up a bit we moved into Lismore and they used to have dances there every Saturday night. We used to go there in these pumps. You’ve probably never heard of them? They’re a very soft shoe, soft leather with a leather sole, very soft upper in it and they’re

like a moccasin only nowhere near as heavy. You’d fold them up and put them in your pocket, and when you got to the dance floor you took your shoes off and put these on. They were beautiful to dance in, unreal. Never heard of the old pumps? See, education!

Good. He was a good dancer too. The majority of them in those days were, the old farmers and that because they used to go to these country dances,

and get a few turps [alcohol] into them, and they used to float around the floor.

The old time dancing went out when…when was the first one that came in? The Twist wasn’t it? I think years ago they called it the Twist or some bloody thing. That’s when I used to call it the BO dance because no one ever touched each other. They kept away from them!

There is a band in town here that plays at the Servicemen’s Club. They play about every fortnight I think. On Friday nights they have an old time dance on. Years ago in my younger days before I joined the army we used to go to a dance every Saturday night, never missed. We’d catch a bus to go to a country dance.

When I first came here to Grafton we used to do the same thing. They had dances every Saturday night in different areas. Swan Creek, Coppenhurst, Fine Flower, all had terrific dance floors, all fast, fast floors but now…I was talking to a bloke in the Service’s Club the other day about why they don’t polish their floors. They put non-skid polish on their

dance floor. I said, “What do you do that for?” He said, “Insurance. If anyone walks out there and slips, and falls down…” like we used to do before we learned to dance, all the time, “They can sue.” So insurance has buggered everything up. They shouldn’t have brought that in.

That what I said there earlier about Mum and Dad meeting at the dance. That was for the majority of the country people how they met. They used to meet at a dance and that was a good thing about a country get together. That’s what they were, a get together and for the people around there to have a talk. The men used to get in the corner and have a

yarn about how the farm was going, and how everything was going financial-wise. The women would get up there and talk about their kids like all women, their knitting and something else they were making. It was a get together and a good night. As kids we used to love it.

No! I wouldn’t do such a thing like that! Dear oh dear!

Oh yes!

All the women would bring a plate and I mean a plate, and they’d come up there, and they used to knock off around ten thirty. Everyone would go out and have a sandwich, and a cup of tea. All the halls had another room on the side, a big room where they used to hold functions and that was all set up, and they’d go out there, and have a sandwich and a cup of tea, and a yarn. That used to go for about

20 minutes and they’d be back on the dance floor. Many a chap was out the back with a little bottle of wine in those days, very seldom they had beer. It was wine.

Oh live, yes. Well one band used to be comprised of a piano, an accordion and a violin. That was your music and it was terrific

music to dance to. Then they came along and got a bloke with a drum. He only had the bass drum and one kettle or two. He might have had two kettledrums. No, he had one kettledrum and a cymbal. That was his drum. Nowadays they’ve got about eight across the front! I reckon he could play just as good music as the blokes with the big drums. It mightn’t be sound-wise but he

used to have the beat to it.

Yes. The two older blokes left and went working on banana plantations. They used to go to country dances and that’s how they met their wives. The other bloke,

he left home and went working in a sawmill. He still used to go to country dances and that’s how he met his wife. Now you’re wondering how I met my wife! Well, she was a nurse and she was from here as I said earlier. She was born here. She went down to Wollongong Hospital nursing and I got transferred. When I came back from Korea

I was up in Lismore and I got transferred from there down to Wollongong where she was. Movement Control from Sydney was down in the barracks where we were staying and they didn’t know what they were going to do with us because they were all sergeants and above, and we were only corporals. We were staying in there and they said they can’t kick us out because we were regular army and they were National Service, so they came up, and they said, “Can you pull a

beer?” I said, “Yeah, I’ve pulled a beer before.” He said, “Right your job is behind the bar.” So I was the barman for the night they put this big ball on for the finalisation of their fortnight camp and they invited these nurses from the hospital over, and Margaret was amongst them. I sort of spotted her and I thought, “I’ll make a date with that girl!” So a week or so later I rang the hospital and I asked for her, and wanted to know if she wanted to go out. She ummed and aahed. She said, “I’ve got two

mates. Can you get partners?” I said, “Yep, no trouble.” So I got two other blokes, mates of mine and we went out, and 45 years later we’re still here! I think it’s 45? Spot on yeah, 45 years in March. That was a good guess. Margaret,

gee I’m good!

Around my age group they all finished around sixth grade but later on they started to travel to Lismore, to the High School. My father wouldn’t let us go to High School because he wanted us on the farm, to help him on the farm.

That’s why the elder brother and the second eldest brother, they went out as soon as they got over 16. They went out working on their own.

When we finished?

No, I was 15.

Yes.

They move quicker somehow.

Actually we finished up, there was two of us in the school we were at, the last school I was at and the last 12 months we had correspondence because the teacher had other kids and he was sort of overloaded. We used to do the correspondence and then go and help him teach the little ones. We were teaching the first grade to help him out.

The only thing I loved was mathematics, the only subject. History I hated. Geography I hated. I used to love maths, the only thing I excelled in.

Yes, all that World War 1, all the old episodes, the old Drake and all those fellas

of years gone by.

It was yes, in those days yes because we were only a young country and just part of them. Yes they used to teach that a lot. We used to know every country that belonged to it and we could show them on the map, “That one there.” Go and ask me nowadays and I’d be flat out picking out two

because they’ve changed so much.

That was a good day at school, yes. Empire Day yes, a big sports day because as I said, athletics I used to love them, a turn to get away from school on athletics day. They were terrific because all the fathers used to arrange the programs and they would work out different things. There’d be blokes bringing corn bags there for sack races and

women producing old stockings, worn out stockings for the three-legged races. It used to be great.

A good question.

In those days they were more or less controlled by the Commonwealth and what the hierarchy said the people sort of were compelled to do. That’s the only way I can put it because I don’t know whether he wanted to do it but when they said to do something, he’d do it.

Well, it used to be. I would say yes in those days. There was a strong feeling for it because I know the kids…I could say myself that I used to go for the King and Country. Nowadays I don’t. I’ve changed around. I shouldn’t but

it is something that has just gone my way I think.

Oh yes! As I got older I was more Australian than anything else in the British Commonwealth.

Mainly sporting events with the cricket and the football,

not so much the Union in those days because you never heard of it, but the football, and the cricket, and the Olympic Games with the athletes in that. We used to always go for the Australians, never liked to see the Pommies or the Yanks win! No, I was pleased when I saw old Dawn Fraser win those gold medals in Japan, in Tokyo. That’s where I showed my Australianship. She really come to the fore.

15.

I stayed with my father then until I was about seventeen and a half I think. Then I went out working for another chap on the farm. I went from one farm to another farm. I stayed with him about four months and then another job come up. The blokes said,

“Do you want to work on the bananas?” I said, “What’s the wage?” He said, “Oh so and so.” I said, “Good God! That’s twice as much as I’m getting here, so yep.” I gave my boss a week’s notice and went and started on the bananas.

Oh no, they were well established. One section of the farm that we went to on the plantation, the boss, he was

bank manager in Lismore. He had just purchased five acres and it was 25 years old, so they were well established. We had 25 acres in the plantation to look after. That’s a bloody lot of bananas.

We had to keep the weeds down, chip them.

We had to keep the weeds down, de-leaf them. Have you seen the bananas with the dead leaves hanging down? Every so often you’ve got to take them off with a knife, cut the bananas when they were ripe or not when they’re ripe, when they’re ready to cut, pack them and then after a while you go back with the ones you’ve cut off the bush, you have to go back with a cane knife, you cut them off or half

off, you lift them up, and you’ve got to sprinkle them with this powder, and that kills the borers that get into the bananas. There’s a lot involved with it and you never stop working on a banana plantation. Even in the rain you’ve got to keep going. That’s mainly when they go and cut out the dead leaves, de-leaf them. It’s hard work and I used to enjoy it. I used to love it.

The other side of Lismore, Rock Valley. We were the only Australians there in the whole valley. The rest were all Italians, a nice mob of blokes, a good lot to be in the same environment as them. They used to often put on parties and invite us down, which was quite good. The only one thing wrong with it was all they drank was wine, “Vino!”

By then yes. The Italians weren’t so bad. The blokes they had out here as prisoners of war, a lot of them had been in Australia prior to the war and as soon as the war broke out, when Italy came into the war, they confined all the fellas in Australia but they used to go round, they had these…

I don’t know what you call it…orangey suits they used to wear, trousers and shirt to distinguish them. Everyone knew they were prisoners of war and they’d go round different farms helping them out. They were very friendly that way but after the war, when I started…when did I go there? 1948 or 1949 they come up and the government let them get their own plantation to

buy, and they started to grow the plantation, and worked in with some of the blokes that were still going, that had been out here a long time before the war. They were Australian citizens and they got them going, and they were quite good.

Up here? Yes. Lismore, round Rock Valley, all that area, it’s all bananas, no cane but

down towards the coast more, in down towards Ballina and Evans Head, that’s all cane down there, and no bananas, so the bananas were on the hills in the early part of the coast, and the cane was on the flat part of the coast. That goes right down to Coffs Harbour, all bananas. She’s really strong in Coffs Harbour the bananas. They’re Indians, so you’ve got

Indians down there, that’s from here and round the Richmond is Italian.

Oh yes. They are stronger now down there than what they are in the Richmond I think with the banana plantations. They had to stop them replanting because they were getting too big for the

Banana Federation. You’re only allowed so many acres or so many hectares in each area and they were surpassing the quantity. No, they’re really strong down there in Coffs Harbour and Woolgoolga, Coffs Harbour, the Indians.

It was a good change, yes.

Like I said there earlier, I’d never go back on a dairy farm. No, once you get up there and you’re working, like we used to work eight hours a day. In the bean season we’d come up there and the Italians around us, that’s what was good about it, if they’d want pickers they’d come and see us, and we’d go and pick for them Saturday, Sunday. They used to pay good money. That was quite good.

Social life was…

in the bananas?

Sometimes they’d have a party, someone’s birthday the Italians would basically invite you to it or they’d go and have a card game, card night. They used to be normally a Wednesday night. I don’t know why but they always picked a Wednesday. They used to play penny poker. You could lose money. You could win money. Sometimes they’d go all night

and you’d leave there at daylight, go home and work chipping bananas all day. It used to be good for the body! It really tried the stamina out.

I wouldn’t call it gambling, only a penny at a time, like a cent a bet. I wouldn’t call that gambling.

I never used to worry about horses but

they were strong, racing was strong in Lismore, the horse racing, dogs in those days. I never used to worry. I was never a gambler that way. I loved to watch them but I wouldn’t back them.

Yes.

Sometimes we used to go and

depending on the season, if there was plenty of bananas the boss we had, being a bank manager was a bit tight with money, and if we had a good season on bananas, we used to come up there, and after we knocked off at the plantation, we’d come back to the shed, and probably spend an hour and a half, two hours making cases up ready for the influx of the packing. That was one way of spending an afternoon.

The other way was we’d come in and half showers, clean up, probably get the cards out, have a card game of uchre or something like that, spend the time away. It was a very quiet week but we used to make up for it on weekends, on Friday night.

Into Lismore, yes. There were five of us around the area, there was three of us on the plantation and two blokes down on the farm

below about three mile down from where we were. We used to pick them up on a Friday afternoon, into Lismore and have a couple of rounds of beer. It was six o’clock closing in those days. You had to move in, drink them quick and be out by half past six.

Yep.

They used to call it the six o’clock swill because everyone knocked off at five o’clock in the shops and they converged on the hotels, and it was

schmozzle. They used to scoff these bloody beers down. You’d go up and order two beers at a time for yourself. There was five of us and we’d go and order ten, bring them back, sit them on the little shelf they had along the back of the wall. We’d go up there and as soon as we started the second one, the other bloke would go up, and he’d get another ten, bring them back. That’s what we used to do. The six o’clock swill they called it, get stuck into them. I don’t know whether we

enjoyed the beer or not! It was just a matter of drinking fast.

Oh no, they had to close at six o’clock but then they gave you the extra time. It would depend what sergeant was on. If he had a bad day, he’d come up there and if you weren’t out by five past six, he’d start taking your name. They’d book ya but some blokes if he had a good day, twenty past six

you were right, all out. We were there one day, it was just…I don’t know what happened. I must have had a premonition or something but we’d all finished our beers and we were just walking towards the door, and he walked in. “Righto! What’s your name?” We said, “We’re going sergeant.” “Don’t give a damn!” Another bloke walked over to him and said something to him, and he turned his head. As soon as he turned his head we were off! We were out!

That was

the government. They opened at 10 o’clock, closed at six o’clock. That was the licensing hours of the hotel. There was no hotels…like we’ve got one in Grafton here that opens at five o’clock in the morning for the shift workers, the Wallace Hotel. They shut at 12 o’clock or something. That’s their licensing hours but in those days every hotel, ten o’clock open, six o’clock closed.

That’s where they used to get the big rush because all the people knocked off at five o’clock from the shops and just straight into the hotels but then you could leave there if you wanted to, and go up to the RSL Club, which shut at about one o’clock in the morning, which we often done.

They used to have dances Friday night. They had two different ones.

The Federalette had old time dancing. That was Saturday night and the Trocadero had jazz, so Friday night you’d go up to the Trocadero and have jazz, and Saturday night you had the old time dancing, which was very good. You had the two varieties of dancing on the weekend.

The old time, the old ballroom dancing.

I didn’t go much on the jazz but my sister used to love it and I always used to have to take them to the dance, so I was controlled by women!

To a certain thing, yes but very lenient in other ways. Sometimes she’d let you off with

different things, with a warning. Other times if you stepped out of line…she had a very strong hand too for a little woman! She’s still alive, still kicking, 96 next month, looking after herself. That shows you how strong she is.

No, not actually because probably be…might have been through my father wanting us to do so much, keep it going. When we got away from the farm we were our own boss more or less. We done things we wanted to do and the way we wanted to do it. It was different. It might have been freedom I suppose. You could look at it that way.

Yes.

They just came up on the radio and said that North Korea had invaded South Korea blah, blah, blah, and they’d pushed them off the peninsular, and America had come into the war.

We’d heard about the Australians over in BCOF [British Commonwealth Occupation Forces] in Japan and they said that they were asking for volunteers. What kicked it off was that there were three of us, my second oldest brother, myself and a mate. We were in the pub in Lismore one Saturday morning. Now I don’t know why the

employment office was open on a Saturday morning in those days but they were. We were having a few beers and my mate said, “My brother joined the army for a joke.” I’d been contemplating joining the army because with the father being in the VDC and the war, the Second World War, I’d always wondered with my uncles being in the army and that, always looked good. I thought, “I’ll join the army one day.” When they mentioned this, I just said, “Righto! We’ll go around

and enlist”, which we did, so he gets around there and the brother, he was born with one eye black. He was blind in one eye, so he gets up there and he cheated, opened his hands up. He read the chart. Everything passed. So away we go to fill in all the forms we had to Sydney. My brother pulled out. He said, “No good me going down there” because he found out what they do. They give you a card to put over your eyes, so he won’t be able to look through that.

So he chickened out and the other bloke, the other mate, we went down to Sydney and we got nearly right through, and they found out he had high blood pressure, so they knocked him back, and ended up in the army myself.

Well, they’re made of steel, steel traps and they’ve got a chain about so long, and a spike you drive into the ground. They have a spring. It’s a spring loaded type of thing and they’ve got a plate, which is the trigger plate.

The spring that comes along, the spring loaded, you have to two jaws of your teeth and you’ve got the plate in the middle, and there’s a little bar comes down either end of it, and the spring has a ring there that fits down. When you push that down the two jaws open up and the plate hooks onto a little…something like a rattrap. It hooks there to hold that plate down and you just cover that over with dirt or

leaves or something. When they hit the plate the jaws just clamp on their feet.

Oh no, it’s covered. They were rabbit traps. That’s what the old blokes used them for in years gone by to catch rabbits but we used to use them to catch dingos. We found it more efficient than trying to shoot them. Well, they’re banned. The RSPCA [Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals] has

banned them now or years ago they banned them. You can’t use them because they were too cruel because when the jaws hit they used to mangle their leg, sometimes they’d break the bone and everything in their leg. One dingo we caught with it, that’s how apparently painful they are, it was a female and she ended up chewing her leg off where the trap cut into her bone, broke her bone.

She ended up chewing it because we ended up with her foot and we seen her getting away. That’s how we knew it was a female. We ended up with a foot in the trap and nothing else. That’s sometimes how a dingo will work, just to escape. They are something like…you’ve seen the bear traps in the movies? Well it’s that in miniature and the plate is square. The bear traps are round.

That’s what a rabbit trap is.

Oh yes! I’ve done it myself. Yes they hurt. We forgot where we planted it. It’s such a surprise when they go off. That spring is very strong but it broke the skin of my foot. That was all. That’s just every day living on the farm.

It was a rabbit burrow and we had half a dozen…I forget now the number but say half a dozen set in different holes in the rabbit warren, and the brother shifted one because he reckoned the other hole was better, and never told me. I just walked past to go and get this other one because the holes are only two foot, so far apart,

and he never told me he shifted this bloody thing, and “Bang!” It hurt and I never even swore. I’ll never forget that. You don’t believe me not swearing hey?

Well, I couldn’t actually say we got up to pranks

in those days because there was nothing you could sort of get a prank on anyone. We were just on the farm ourselves and we were brothers and sisters, and that’s how we lived because I suppose if you did play a prank on someone, the others would combine, and really get you back. That maybe why we never done it. We

weren’t good kids, I know that!

We were close to all. We were a very a close-knit family and we still are. That was one good thing about the family. We were very close knitted and even after all these years we still are close knitted.

Luckily they are all still alive.

As I say, he drove us hard but we knew nothing else. That’s the way we were brought up and to us that was just normal. It was natural. We had to do it. We never fought against it, although I got a few floggings once for it!

To us it was just part of growing up on a farm. That’s the way we took it and the way it was. I think if you rebelled you’d make life miserable actually. The old father was going to get cranky and the other blokes would get cranky because you were not doing your work, so I reckon that’d be it.

What mealtimes or…?

He used to use his belt. He was the best bloke I’ve ever seen taking the belt off. He was quick, a big leather one. He used to undo it and “Schoo bang!” You couldn’t get away from him. He was too good. They had one hanging up in the dairy.

There was a leather belt off a small motor about so long. It had a D connection on the end of it where they used to join the two leather pieces together and that was still on it. That’s what he used to hang it on the nail in the dairy. If we played up in the dairy, straight for the leather strap “Whack”, a couple of hits with that. It bloody used to hurt too. He got cranky there one day. We really stirred him up and he give me a couple.

Then Gordon the next brother up, he was playing up with me. My father by this time, his temper was raised a bit, blood pressure. He grabbed the belt at the wrong end, pulled it off the nail and wack across the brother’s leg. I think he was about 25, 26 or something and he still had the imprint of the D on his leg, so you didn’t mess him. He was a big man too,

about five foot 11 and probably 17 stone with a bit of muscle, not much fat on him.

Normal old things, squirting milking at the cow next to you. Instead of milking it just squeezing it underneath on the bloke next to you milking the cow. It used to torment him but like I said, I was a good kid, never played up!

Not if we were quick enough. In those days a snake had to be killed. They were enemy to the public, so as soon as we seen one, we’d end up killing it. Nowadays they’re protected.

I can tell you a good story about my youngest brother, Barry. He was about four year old and we were on a farm at Stratheden , just outside Casino. We don’t know where he got it from but he was inside the old dairy where they used to separate the milk. It was away from the bales where we milked the cows.

He walked out the door, a Bandy Bandy snake in his hand. Lucky it was dead. We don’t know whether he killed it or whether it had been killed and picked up, and he walked out in the dairy. “Look what I got here Mum!” About three weeks later, this Saturday we were heading down to the river to have a swim and he was walking past…in those days all the farms had a rubbish pit where you used to dump all the tins and stuff.

He was walking past that and next thing he’s squealing. He had a black snake, a red-belly black snake wrapped around his leg with the head jammed in a jam tin. We used to cut the tins off in those days but wouldn’t take them right off with the old tin opener and the snake had gone inside apparently. There must have been some jam or something left in the tin and the lid had closed on his head. He couldn’t get it out and he was wrapped around the brother’s leg. So,

that was two episodes with snakes! I had one, the old father, he was ploughing the paddock and it was the season for snakes to produce the young ones. He was ploughing this paddock and he looked around, and here was this Tiger snake chasing him down the furrow, and he was on the plough. He was telling us later on. We never seen it but he was telling us later.

“What’d ya do?” He said, “I just pulled the horses up, got off the plough and took off!” The ruddy snake followed him. It wasn’t worried about the plough. It was chasing the father across the paddock. Luckily he was going across the ploughed paddock and the snake couldn’t get a grip, so he ended up, he got over the fence, got a stick, and there was no more snake. It was chasing him down the furrow, a bloody Tiger snake, so they’re very vicious sometimes

but now you can’t touch them.

Oh yes! Yes they’ll come inside. We’ve had them inside the kitchen but Mum like she was, a country girl, never panicked. She’d just get the broom and put him outside, never used to worry about it. If it had been one of us we’d have been looking for something to bloody bash it on the head. No, she used to get the old broom and just

push it outside.

Well, I don’t know. Actually I can’t tell you that because every morning we used to get a fresh lot of milk and we’d have the right amount

to what we’d use that day. If there was any left we’d just take it back to the bales and tip it in for the pigs that afternoon when we were separating and that. No, I couldn’t tell you how long it last because we had fresh milk every morning.

No. All we done was got the milk for cream. We used to separate the

cream and the milk was used for the pigs, and the calves we had.

Now, how do I explain this one? You get…I forget what they call them now. You’ve got a bowl that has

a certain amount of disk in it. It’s got little holes in it and that all fits inside this bowl. That fits on top of a shaft and you’ve got a handle. As you turn the handle up you have to get this bowl suspended at a certain revolution, so you’ve got to keep going and as you turn it there is a gadget inside it. I don’t know where it was but it used to ring. You’d hear this “Ding,

ding” every time and you’d have to keep going with this thing, and wind it, wind it, wind it until that “Ding” stopped. Then you knew that was the right revolution for the cream, to separate the cream from the milk. Then you turned the milk on, the cream would come out one spout and the milk came out the other spout.

It was a bugger of a job I can tell you that. You’d stand up there and especially when you had about 100 gallons of

milk to separate. You’d stand up there just turning and it had to keep the same revolutions because if you went too fast the milk would be too thick, and if you didn’t go fast enough you’re not extracting all the cream. You’d end up with a bit of milk in your cream, so you had that happy medium in between, which you had to get all the time. That was interesting sometimes.

Some of the kids, if they go to some of these antique shows they’ve got all these separating machines there. They’re worthwhile to have a look at. No, that used to be really good, to get that right rhythm going. Once you get used to it, it was good because you knew

just what to do. You had a big handle. The wooden part was about that long that you used to turn around on your hand or you had to turn on your shaft. Then the arm part was about that long, so you were up and down.

No. You’ve got

the cream in the can, every second day because the cream lorry used to come down and take it to the cream box out in the main road, and the cream lorry would come down, and pick it up. They’d take it to the factory and they’d put it through a test. If you had too much milk in it you got less money that what you would for the pure cream, so they would have to extract that milk out of it before they made the butter out of it.

That was time for them, time consuming, so they took that off your payment.

Sometimes it would

because the cows going at the one paddock all the time, that seemed to affect them in a way. If you put them in a subdivided paddock like I said there earlier, they think they’re going into new fodder. It’s actually the same but there’s a fence separating it. As they go in the same spot all the time, all day after day, they sort of get…I don’t know. I don’t know how to explain that

but it does affect the milk supply because with the cows going into a new paddock every third day, they seemed to…I don’t know what it is but they made more milk than by just going in the one paddock all the time. So whether they go in and eat more grass or I don’t know. I can’t answer that.

Sometimes if there was too much carrot weed, if the cows have eaten too much, they will reject the cream at the cream factory. They’ll reject the cream. That’s why you had to be careful.

As soon as you started to milk the cow or the cows you could smell the carrot weed in the milk it was that strong.

We used to sell the calves yes, the ones they didn’t want, mainly the bull calves.

One farm we were on the boss owned three farms and one was for show purposes. They were real purebreds and the next one was 50/50. They used to supply the show cattle and ours, the farm we were on, we used to supply them with anything they wanted. What was left over they used to send to the calf sales in

Lismore and that was mainly the bull calves. He liked to keep the heifers this boss, to build his stock up. I don’t know why because you can overstock the place if you keep too many.

For the grass yes, for the paddock. I think we had about 70, round the 70 mark

on that and there was only 150 acres but it was a good producing paddock for the grass. Sometimes you could overstock and it just buggers your grass up.

No. They were lucky. They had about one to 30

I think. I think it was one to 30 they had with the bull to the cow.

Yeah I’ll tell you about one. It was not long before I left school. We were competing in a Interschool District Sports Day and we had a little school day at Goonellabah. The ones who won their event went into the Inter-District Big Sports at Lismore.

I was fortunate enough to be lucky in the 220 and the high jump, so we come up there, and all the races go, and they start off with the different age groups. Like the 50 yards, 100 yards, they just start off at half past nine in the morning. They just keep going on all day. Both of mine come up in the afternoon and

I don’t know I might have been feeling better in the afternoon. I ended up I won the 220 yards, that was 200 yards. 220 metres I think it is now. I ended up winning the high jump and broke a record. I jumped five foot two and I was only 15. That was the old scissors jump, you know crossed your bloody legs. That was one good day of sport. Then we ended

up winning the fight. These kids came along and they picked on the baker’s son and he was real white. The blokes that picked on him were coloured skinned. That’s all I can say. There was about four of them and three of us, and they said, “Righto! Come on down.” So I hopped down the back of the steps and she was on fair dinkum. Two of our mates turned up and

we ended up winning the fight, so that was three wins I had that day. I went home feeling really good.

Well you just run in from the side. You’ve got the sticks sitting up and you come in from the angle here, and if you’re on this side of the sticks you lift your left leg over, then the other one.

You just lean your body forwards over your legs and jump over that way. Why they call it the scissors I don’t know but it might be because the two legs go like that. You can come in from either side, right legged or left legged and just jump over.

Yes.

Bare feet, all bare feet. No one had shoes in those days unless they were really

rich! No they were all bare feet and it was on an ant bed track. It was a cycle track in Lismore and they had an ant bed. We used to train on the gravel road though. We were used to it. It didn’t hurt us. I often would have liked to have a go at spikes but I never got around to it.

We just stood up and a bloke was there with a…no gun though, just “Ready, set, go.” Away you went.

It was a sort of staggered start but then it was all for everyone. There were no lanes, no lanes mate, just straight into her. If you were big enough to push them out of the way you were right! I was lucky I was big enough.

Oh yes! One of the heats we had this mate of mine, he was smaller than I was and he was faster than me where we used to train at the school on the gravel road because it was straight. He come up and he was going pretty well until the next bloke came along and shouldered him, put him off the track, otherwise

he’d have won it. Definitely a free for all, only 15 year old kids you know, supposed to be nice little gentlemen! No gentlemen in sport!

Oh yes! That was part of the dance!

Once when I came back from Korea…sorry, it was before I went over to Korea, we went to a dance out between Lismore and Casino, and a mob at Casino hired a bus to come to the dance, to fight this mob from Lismore. That’s all they came for! Country dances, they were country fights! Shocking some of them but that’s all this mob done. They were a mob. You could call them a mob. They

got this bus from Casino and it was just two rival gangs. That’s all it was, just two gangs. They wanted to fight.

They had their fight, had their fisticuff. They went and had a drink together, come in and had a dance. A few of them were cut, black eyes and whatever. They were stupid. They used to just love to have a fight. It was part of the weekend

to them. They were queer but they’d do that probably once every four months. It was nothing to them. They were just two gangs that wanted to fight, that didn’t like one another. You know you talk about bikie gangs nowadays? That was two country blokes, one from the town of Casino and the whatsernames at Lismore

but they were two gangs that used to fight. It made good entertainment!

Sometimes there were women involved in it, their girlfriends. I tell you what some of them were as good as men throwing the knuckle, rough as…I can’t say that! They were rough!

Never over a girl! I had a couple over a drink. Someone reckoned I took their wine one night. I never did. It was another bloke but I copped it. I reckon I’m about 50/50 on a win and lose basis. Give and take I’d be 50/50 I think!

No knives, all fists and if someone went down there was none of this putting the boot in. No, they were all clean stand up fistfights. If you went down you lost. That was it unless you were silly enough to get back up again and get knocked down again!

No, there was no knives. During the war there used to be when the different blokes used to come to Casino and Lismore, not the Americans but…I can’t think of the country they came from. They used to produced knives and that in the fights. As soon as they did that was the worst thing they could have done because four or five blokes would

jump on them and the next thing they’d ring the police, and they’d end up in jail for bloody producing the knife. No these fights, they were clean, if a fight is clean. There were no knives, no knives, no boots just stand up and be silly.

There used to be a lot of Americans around Casino, a lot of Americans there. I don’t think there was any influence around Lismore because the area didn’t suit them for training. They were more or less in Casino with the mountains round the back. That’s where they used to train. I don’t think there was many Americans around Lismore.

No. We had a lot to do with the Australian army. At Stratheden there they came up to see my father and wanted to know if they could bivouac on one of the properties. Lucky it was what we used to call the dry paddock where all the dry cattle went. We only had a few there so he took them out and put them in this other paddock, and this whole battalion moved in

to bivouac there over the weekend. They come from Western Australia and half of them, they were all…well say two thirds were city reared, never been on a farm. We used to get down there of the afternoon milking and we used to laugh at them being country reared and everything. These city slickers were sitting up there on the rails around the yard watching us milk. They were like little cockatoos all round the yard, never seen cows milked before!

Bloody unreal! No, he used to always be involved. Well being in the VDC, he more or less had to be involved with them. No, that was quite interesting. That’s part what started to help me think about joining the army in those days. They used to be very funny. We’d start milking there at five in the

morning and these blokes were there sitting around the fence to watch us! Of course being country kids you think, “No one’s ever seen a cow milked before? Gawd what’s going on?” No, they were a nice mob, nice mob of blokes.

We used to go with them but at a distance. We had the privilege of riding in the jeeps mate!

They used to take us along in the jeeps. No, we were very privileged children.

They used to have blokes go up…we had this big hill and they used to go and take the hill. They’d put half a dozen blokes on the hill and they asked the old man if they could dig in, and they’d dig the trenches in

These blokes used to have to manoeuvre round so they could go up and take the hill off them. They were firing blanks all the time. That was the part I used to like, these blanks going off. Bloody stupid kids! That was very interesting that and that started me off wanting to be in the army or it helped anyway I think.

No, we weren’t allowed to touch them. Father ended up locking the door on the garage so we couldn’t get into the shed, so no one could get in there. There was only him and this other chap that had the ammunition, he had a key to his shed and that bloke had a key to my father’s shed, and that was it. No one else had any keys.

They never

seemed to trust anyone, strangers. They had very suspicious minds in those days. I don’t know why but that’s when Japan was getting very close to coming down through New Guinea up there. Things were getting very tense. You could say…I don’t know whether it was the good old days. It wasn’t for a lot of people but it was for the kids to enjoy the

exercises and the company of the soldiers. The majority of those blokes, they were only 19, some 18.

How old? What now?

About five and a half

years.

I wasn’t actually thinking about getting involved actually. It was in the back of me mind about joining up but I was only 15 and a half when the war ended, or 16.

No, I wasn’t thinking seriously but it was in the back of my mind about joining the Army, with all these soldier blokes floating about.

I don’t know what happened there. He never intended being in the army.

I don’t know whether he got exempt or what. He could have had something wrong with him medically-wise but I don’t think so. They used to work on the bananas and that, and they used to grow a lot of small crops, tomatoes, peas, and beans. Whether that had something to do with him not being called up? He could have been on the produce side

in the country and earlier there the dairy farmers were all exempt, so he may have been on the same category. I don’t know. I can’t answer that one for you.

No

because the government sort of made jobs for them. They had them employed in different places. During the war it was a funny thing, the women used to do all the manual work around the place and I think when the fellas come home after they had their leave, after they settled down, they

took over from the women. The majority of the women, some were married, some were engaged. Whether they all got married I don’t know. I can’t give you a direct answer on that one but a lot of army blokes when they come back, they put them in a ballot and the government owned a lot of

property, and they had them in a ballot for different properties they gave to them. They had to kick them off, like if they wanted to do dairy farming or something like that, they had to start off and after a certain time they had to make that viable otherwise they took them off them, and they give it to someone else. Some were lucky that way. The other blokes,

I think some may have gone back to the old jobs they left. A lot of them were apprenticed when they left the army. They may have went back to their original jobs. I don’t know.

We had to go down there to Anzac House and go through a medical. We had to go through a form of an education process to point out what grade as far as the education process went. We had to do exams more or less and then we done a medical. After that they come and told us we were “Yes” or

“No”. I happened to be a “Yes” and there was 20 of us out of it. We were put on a bus and taken out to Ingleburn. From then on we just process through the army rigmarole. No, we got hit with needles first. We had to go through the medical side and get five different lots of needles. You want those too? There was Tab 1,

Tab 2, a vacc. There was four. There was another one. I forget what it was for but we had four needles and then we went up, and they issued us with our clothing, and a rifle. Come back and they allocated us our huts, the beds and where we had to go, and our wardrobes to put our gear away nice and neat

army style. Then we proceeded outside with the rifles doing rifle drill and half the blokes had never handled a rifle before. I was fortunate with my father in the VDC. I knew how to do the slope of arms and everything. I got up there and there’s a tradition apparently with Army blokes when they enlist that after they get the needles, the vaccination starts to take affect about three hours after.

I was the duty man to carry them back in and put them on the bed when they collapsed. They used to pass out through having the vaccination. There was an old sergeant there come up and he said, “We’re gonna need you” as soon as he found out I could slope arms. He said, “You’ve done it before, so we’ll give you a job.” He come up to me with clasped hands. He said, “Pump as hard as you can.” Only with this arm, pump as hard as you can, which I done with him

for about five minutes and that got all the fluid and that from the vaccinations circulating through me arm. That’s the only reason I think I never passed out with the rest of them. We had 20 of us and we had two standing. I was one and another bloke at the finish, after the drill was finished. That was our initiation into the army actually but then the next day everything was OK. We just carried on, normal army training and all the

hike that goes with your basic training in the army. Like I said, I was fortunate being with the father in the VDC and knew a portion of the army…what was expected. I think I was fortunate that way, so I sort of got ahead of the other blokes, and ended up helping the corporal do the instructions on them. Never done me any good cause I never got no extra pay.

In Sydney.

It’s a normal physical whatsernames, a physical test. They just test your eyes, your blood, your hearing, see whether you’re flat footed or your heart, your lungs. It’s a

physical…just an ordinary physical check up. That’s all they do but thorough. I will admit that. It was thorough.

No, I went straight into Ingleburn and we stayed there for three months training.

They just said to bring a change of clothes, underwear. They supplied the towel, soap.

You had your own toothbrush and all that. You had just all the everyday things you need, clothing gear, toothpaste. They supplied the towels and soap. It was like hospital soap, no good, so you had to buy your own soaps if you wanted a decent shower.

All they told us, to bring enough as if you were going away for the weekend because as soon as we got down there, after we arrived, after we had the whatsername in Sydney, we got there and they hit us with the needles, and then they issued us with our clothing, and that was it. So from the next day on you wore army clothing.

How to march, left turns, right turns, quick march and backwards, about turns. You got about a week of that. That always amazes me because why they gave us the rifles the first day after we got the needles. I think that was just to get the old arm going with the needles, get the fluid going through them I think because we never seen them for another week, never used them. After we done

the basic training on the foot drill, then we started doing the slope arms and shoulder arms with the rifle.

Oh yes. They had the drill there to give you an idea or to tell you more or less what discipline was all about and how to take orders from different blokes, which you learnt later on in life,

and it pays dividends. If you get into action someone will give you an order what to do and you carry it out to the fullest extent. That was where your basic training comes in.

Well you do.

As soon as you get in there, we had 20 in the enlisted group with me and 4 of them, including myself, were from the country, and the rest were from city, from Sydney. The country four sort of fell into a little group together and as we being country boys, we knew all about country life, and a couple of city blokes sort of wanted to know. One bloke had never been out of Sydney

all his life because there wasn’t much transport in those days and he was born, and reared in Sydney. He used to get with us of a night-time and ask us what the country life was all about. We used to tell him and he would sit there for an hour and a half, two hours just listening. We used to turn a bit of bull sometimes but it didn’t matter. That was all about joining up, making friends and starting off a good

life because the army life is what you make it. You can make it hard and you can make it easy. It’s up to the individual. It depends how they go.

To make it hard you disobey orders. That’s simple. To make it hard you go along, if you think they’re wrong, the old army saying is you obey the last order, so you do. You obey it and go along with it.

That makes life easy in the army but disobey it and they can make it hard, oooh they can make it hard mate, put you out on extra duties, and extra work. They’ll pick on you and the least little thing you do, they’ll say that’s wrong. “You shouldn’t be doing that!” You could end up with a couple of day’s CB [Confined to Barracks], what they called chasing the bugle and you have to go along there, and every hour the bugler blows

the bugle at Battalion Head Quarters. That goes for all companies and as soon as you hear the bugle whatever the officer in charge of the night tells you what to wear to report to him, you have to wear it, and the bugle goes, and he gave you about two minutes. If you’ve got a full gear he’ll say, “Righto! Come up full pack next hour.” The bugles goes, you’ve got to be up there at the time two minutes after bugle, otherwise you get extra time. Oh she’s a good one!

I was on it once. Yep I know all about it.

I was late getting back from leave. The trains were late and they didn’t take that into consideration because not knowing the procedure of the army in those days, I just being a new recruit, this was about after the first six weeks I think. I think they gave us a weekend off. I come home to Lismore and the trains played up. They played up in those days too like they are now.

Because I never rang the office up to tell them I’d be late I was booked AWL [Absent Without Leave], had to front the office and the officer, and he gave me three days CB for being late on the train!

It’s after you do your daily training. This is only night time they do this chasing the bugle and you could be

anywhere. It all depends on the bugler. They say, “Right! Every hour he’s supposed to blow the bugle.” Sometimes if you get an officer on duty that can be nasty sometimes, he might blow it ten minutes under the hour. He might go ten minutes over the hour. You think, “This is good. He hasn’t blown it yet! He might miss this one.” That’s what they used to do. They tried to trap you all the time. You had to be on the ball otherwise you got extra CB.

When I got the train late we had two other blokes with me come up to…one bloke come to Coffs Harbour. Two of us went to Lismore. We caught the same train back, the old mail train. It used to run anytime and we had three of us were late. Three of us were on the same CB but the other blokes there, well it’s mainly AWL, absent without leave and if you

go on a parade with your shirt, your collar not ironed properly or something like that, they’d just pick you to pieces on everything, but that’s learning discipline all the time. You have to take it otherwise if you don’t take it, it makes it hard for you and you don’t enjoy your army life.

The majority. I’d say 95% of blokes that enlisted followed the discipline. They wanted to be in the army but you got the odd character that was a rebel and didn’t want to do it. He used to cop all the flak and of course that made the old officers unhappy, and they used to pass the flak over onto the next bloke,

and we used to cop it sometimes. The army life is what you make of it. It’s entirely up to the individual. I’ve always said to the young blokes here that were out of work here a few years ago, quite a few years ago when I was in the CMF [Citizens Military Force] here, the quarter master sergeant down there of 41 Battalion, and I used to tell them. They’d say, “What’s it like in the army?” I said, “Well if you go in the army mate you can make it hard or make it easy.

It’s entirely up to you. You can make it the way you want it to be. If you want to get in there and make it easy, you take all the directions, all orders, study, go for promotion and you’ve got everything at your feet.” I know a couple of blokes went down there and one fella now, he’s over at South Australia somewhere, and he’s a captain. He’s a

drill instructor and that’s all he does. He just goes along to all the recruits that come in. He directs the sergeants and the corporals what to do with them, how to drill them and all that. He’s sitting on top of the world. He’s got the creamy life.

Army life, how to look after yourself in the field. Well in those days because the Korean War was started up and they trained us how to kill and not be killed. That was one aspect of the training towards the finish of it. Mainly the other section for the first two months was how to behave yourself on a parade ground

how to look spick and span, and do everything to the book. That was the main first two months. The next one then, it was more or less the real hard army training, how to fight and how to look after yourself, and like I said, kill and don’t be killed.

Actually I can’t because at that time the Australian hierarchy part of it, the Canberra and Sydney, they didn’t know what the war in Korea was all about and they had no way of teaching the soldiers here what to do or what to expect, or anything but all they done was taught us on what they done in World War

11, like camouflage, and how to hide yourself behind little trees, make yourself inconspicuous. That’s the only way they could teach us because they didn’t know what the Korea War was all about. At that time it had only just started and it had only been going 12 months, and they hadn’t worked out what was going on because at that time they were just moving up and down the peninsular in Korea. The North Koreans were coming down and the United Nations used to push them back up, and then they come

down again. She was a jigsaw or see-saw but they didn’t know much about it, so they just taught us what they done in the Second World War, how to camouflage and how to hide, and how to shoot from different areas, and how to be fit, and run like buggery…towards the enemy, not away from them!

We only had the old .303 rifle. That’s all we had. The corporals had an Owen gun. We had the old Owen gun and then we had the old Bren gun, .303 Bren gun, which was a terrific old weapon. She’d fire anytime, never stopped, hardly stopped unless the barrel overheated, about the only time they stopped.

That was the only three weapons we had. The .303s were all vintage. They were all Second World War, towards the end of the First World War I think some of them were, the old things but they were a terrific rifle, used to kick a bit but you got used to them if you got the right one. I’ve always maintained that a good rifle

has to be tailor-made to you, for the length of your arms and that. I fluked it once and they issued this rifle out, and it had a terrific little short butt on it. I used to be able to fire it and hardly get a kick because she just suited me arm, the length of me arm on the shoulder. We were over in Japan at the time and we were out on the range firing. This sergeant happened to walk along behind me and he said,

“McClymont what’s wrong with that rifle?” I said, “Nothing sir, it’s beautiful.” I was hitting the bullseye and he come up, and he hopped down. He said, “Pull the trigger. Have another shot.” So I got up and I tried to make out I pulled the first pressure. You’ve got your first pressure and the second pressure. There was no first pressure and I used to try and make out I was doing it. He said, “Give us that rifle here. You can’t have that. That was a snipers rifle during the war.” Oh it was

a beautiful rifle. That’s what it was, a sniper’s. The first pressure on the trigger was filed off and it was just a “Schoo”, just one pull on her but they wouldn’t let me have it. It was a bloody beautiful rifle, unreal. That’s what I say, it used to mould, it was part of me. There was no backfire and no kick or anything. She was really good.

I didn’t like him

after that, no. He was a good bloke but I didn’t like him after that. The worst part was all the rifles over there were Second World War and they’d all been put into dead storage, and they had this rifle grease and oil. They’d blend the grease and oil together, and they’d pack it all over the rifle when they put them into storage. That’ll keep for years and every time someone gets a rifle, a new one you had to

clean all this off I’d already done it with the first one but I had to line up and do it again with the second one. It’s not a real good job, so that didn’t make me happy with him and the damn rifle wasn’t any good anyway. Then again it might have been me! I don’t know. No that sniper’s rifle, it was beautiful.

Owen.

The Bren gun is a point 303 ammunition, same as the .303 rifle, exactly the same ammunition. It’s a semi-machine gun and the Owen gun is an automatic weapon.

A lot of people used to call them an enlarged pistol but they were bigger than that. They were for short range, anything close up, anything up to about 25 yards, 30 yards killing range, whereas the Bren gun you could set the sight anything up to 900 yards on the Bren gun. That was pretty accurate. After that it was hit and hope

because they used to spray around so much. On the bipod, when you fire an automatic with them they move about. When they first made the Bren gun they used to be stable. The tripod never moved and they used to line up with a target a 100 yards, and put four bullets rapid fire through the same hole. They were that accurate, so that’s why they made the bipod moveable

and when they fired she used to work around. That’s how you got your spray radius to enlarge when you fired it, which made it more successful in a group of people. Only shooting at one bloke you were going through the same hole all the time. This way it used to…I don’t know what the radius of the spread was now.

No, not the Bren gun. They wanted it to cover a large area because if you got a group, say

a group of three or four blokes standing down amongst the trees somewhere and you fired it in the middle, it will spray out and cover the lot normally. That was the idea of it. When they first made them they were too accurate and it was a waste of time but then they loosened it up and she wobbled about.

That’s what it was

for, just a bigger radius, a bigger hitting radius and more success.

Yes.

The bloke that invented the Owen gun there’s a story to it. They used to use a Sten gun that was British made and this bloke named Owen made the Owen gun out of a piece of two inch pipe,

a piece of…I don’t know what the barrel was then, and bit of wood for the butt, and he patented it, and because it was an automatic weapon he ended up in jail. The government put him in jail for having this automatic weapons. It wasn’t licensed. He got out of jail anyway and they ended up patenting it, and they modified it.

They put it through all the tests. This English intelligence came out. I don’t know whether they came out here. They were still over in England but they put it through all the tests. They buried it in sand, in mud, even in water, pick it up and she still fired, nothing would stop it. That was the beauty of it and it was used for short range, house to house fighting, and all that close range stuff, which was very good. They were very successful with it.

While we were doing our rookie training we had to qualify on all the three weapons. We had to go out on the range and shoot them, had to qualify. That was part of the training procedure. You had to qualify. If you didn’t qualify on that you had to go and do extra time until you did because that was part of giving you

the OK to say that you were a soldier, to use the three weapons.

On the range when you went to do your rifle test or your

range shoot on the Bren gun they only shot one round at a time at different ranges. They started off at 200 and you’d go back about 700 yards. Then they’d bring you up to 300 yards. That was your last shoot. They’d give you 15 rounds in your magazine and you had to do three bursts of fire. The best you held it, the more you held it or

the closer you got to the bullseye of the target was the better score for you but they allowed so much for the spray. The first lot of the shoot was only single rounds and that’s where you used to qualify on the bullseye.

None in my time, in our

training lot but a few close ones with the Owen gun. This was over in Japan. We were up doing a fire, doing a shoot over there and this bloke, he froze, and he had a full magazine with 21 rounds I think it was, 19 rounds or something, a full magazine, and he froze. Everyone standing on the range, only a 50 yard range, 25

yard range it was, he let it go, and he froze on the trigger. It started to waver about and this sergeant bloke that took my rifle off me just walked up behind him, and pushed him forward with his hand casually as you like, never panicked, no thing, just pushed him. By then the magazine was empty. He just froze and that’s what can happen. It’ll happen to you, just freeze on the trigger.

No, it’s just panic. I put it down to panic, just panic and the finger will freeze on the trigger, and you can’t move, and that’s it. You just pull the trigger. He doesn’t take it off. An Owen gun will swing you to the left for some reason and that’s what he done. There was about four blokes that side of him hitting the deck.

The old sarge just came up and pushed him forward casual as you like. He’d seen it before but they can be dangerous. As I say, you have to be careful at all times with any weapon, no matter what it is, even the old shanghai!

Shanghai!

That was the one I said earlier. It’s a slingshot.

Then we were transferred to a full battalion. We were three months in a rookie training company. We done three months rookie training and that’s the basic training. Then they transfer you to a battalion and you carry on the training,

the route marches. That’s the worst part and they extend them because you’ve got to carry a full pack sometimes, which is…I forget now the weight. I think it was about 45 pounds. What’s that in kilos? A fair bit. Well you’ve got to put that on your back with a rifle and away you go on a route march about 40 mile,

no trouble at all mate. You get used to it. That was only fitness that’s all, to make sure you were still fit. Then they do jungle training out racing through the trees. The good part of it with the battalion training was the exercise. You go out on an exercise and

that was simulating actual warfare. We’d go out at night time and do patrols of a night time. That’s what they’d teach you so you were prepared for the bigger ones. It was mainly just normal army training, which I don’t think will ever change.

They

call them a compass march. You have a certain time. They put you in groups, probably two or three and they’ll give you a map, a plan of the route you have to take. At a certain point they’ll have something there. They won’t tell you what it is but there’s something at a certain point at a compass bearing and you have to go and pick that up. It’s normally about four or five of these compass

bearings of different things. You’ve got a certain time to do it in, first back. They were very interesting at night time because you don’t know the terrain. You go through this strange terrain in sometimes dark. It’s all right on a moonlit night but dark time and your trying to read the compass, and work out where the landmarks are, it’s a little bit hard but interesting, very good, good night training.

This was all privates. We were only privates at the time and they used to give us the compass bearing, and a compass, and three blokes, and away we go. They had the map of the territory and that. We were fortunate the group that I had, the three blokes that I was with.

One bloke was an expert on reading maps. He was really good. Every time we’d go out we used to always be the first ones back through this bloke. He was that good at reading them. I think he knew the country meself. I think he cheated.

No or probably to a certain extent but not that much. We’d have found our way back. See we

were fortunate that way that they used to let us sort of pick the group that we wanted together. This fella, we were sort of mates together and he come with us. I was really thankful and the other bloke was an Aborigine and bushcraft, he was good. I used to just trot along behind like a little pup. I didn’t have nothing to do. I was very fortunate. Yeah they were two good blokes on a night patrol.

Just the same. There was no colour. It didn’t matter what colour your skin was, it was all the same. They were mates.

Yes, one comes to mind. We were put against this B company and they always seemed to be the top company. Everyone had instructions if we were out for a week I think it was, away from camp on bivouac. Everyone had these plans and what the whole weekend was about.

We come up and this Aborigine bloke that was on patrol with us, him and I, and another chap, a different bloke, not the map reader, another fella, we come up there, and He said, “We’ll get right into B company’s head quarters tonight.” “We’re not allowed to do that!” He said, “Bugger it! It’s on. We’re going to take prisoners and all that.” Away we go about two o’clock in the morning, in to the head quarters, right into the officer’s bloody tent

and it ended up he got the plans of what the exercise was all about on the weekend. This’ll do! We go into our captain. “Where’d ya get these from? These are bloody secret, supposed to be secret for the weekend.” We said, “We got them out of B company head quarters.” “Holy Christ! You’re not allowed to do that! You’re not supposed to do that!” So anyway, after he sort of cooled down, he come up, he said, “Good on ya boys! Now we’ve got some bargaining to do here!” The next day there was a hell of a stink. B company’s

commanding officer come up, “You bastards inside our camp doing this and that!” “No! None of us went over there!” He said, “We’ve lost our instructions.” Our captain said, “That’s bad luck mate! You won’t know what to do tomorrow will ya!” That was one exercise company against company. That paid dividends. Things like that happen though. There’s always competitiveness against company to company,

inter-company competitiveness but you work things out. They turn out. It comes back to what I said earlier, you make it the way you want it to be. That type of thing, it made it interesting and made it fun, just to do something like that.

You had

umpires. They had white armbands. They used to go along with you and if you lined a bloke up, and fired a blank, he’d just say, “Right you’re dead. Seek medical treatment.” That was all they’d do. That was the only way you could tell someone was wounded. We had no other way.

No, per section. For every seven men there was

one umpire. He was always a sergeant or a lieutenant or something like that. They were the good days towards the finish there. June come along and they asked for volunteers to reinforce Korea. We were the silly ones that done it.

They didn’t ask for volunteers

to join. You joined yourself. It was just your own decision to join but when they wanted to send the reinforcements to Korea, they asked for volunteers then because all Korea was volunteers. There was no conscription or nothing. Everyone in Korea was a volunteer. Yes, they come along and said who wants to go to Korea as reinforcements, so young and silly

I put the hand up.

No, the whole lot volunteered but some went to different parts, different units, like RAEME [Royal Australian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers] and transport, and to infantry, RAEME transport. One bloke went to the MPs [military police] , the RPs, regimental police. He wasn’t very liked after that either.

He wanted to get promotion and that was the only way he could get promoted, was to join the RPs because you couldn’t have anyone below corporal, because they tell everyone what to do. They had to be a corporal or above. That’s how he got promoted.

Once with the American Military Police and once with the RPs.

One was Maryang San when they were copping a bit of flack from the Chinese and they wanted to get in our trenches when they started to send the mortars in. I said, “No way mate! You go and dig your own bloody trench. We dug these.” That was one little incident. The other one was in Tokyo. We were on leave in Haramura,

not Haramura, bloody Ibisu Beer Hall. There was a fight started for some reason and we were blamed for it. The MPs picked us up at the railway station and took us back to their little lockup, and kept us there for a couple of hours. That was the little incident we had with them and they took us back to camp. The old major bloke said, “These blokes are on leave from Korea mate.

They’re going straight out on the streets.” “They can’t. They’ve been down there fighting!” “Let them start another fight” he said. “They’re enjoying themselves!” That was only twice I’ve had involvement with the MPs and the RPs.

They were Australian RPs. They were battalion police, the regimental police. They come up on the hill with our CO [Commanding Officer],

Colonel Hassett and this was a couple of days after we took the hill to see how things were going because the Chinese were still a bit fresh out the front, and they threw a bit of rubbish in at us, and these blokes dove in holes which belonged to us, and we were out stranded, and we said, “You fellas get your own bloody holes.” That’s the only time we told an RP what to do and they done it too, they got out.

Well, the RP looks after the battalion and the Provosts look after the whole Army. They can go through a division, the RAEME, the whole works, whereas the RP, he’s only that one battalion. The Provosts, they do the whole brigade. They can do three battalions

plus the RAEME and all that.

I didn’t dislike any of them. They were good but some had funny ideas. You know they were blokes like they wanted to be promoted and they went in there, they wanted to get stripes. That was the only way they could get the stripes because they didn’t qualify for them and so they went to join the

Provosts, the MPs. As soon as they go in there they give them two stripes straight away. That’s why people don’t like Provosts because they’re bludgers. I hope no one sees that.

Most of me mates

took on the infantry. So I just…go with your mates like, you know. So that’s the way I went.

We were kept together in Japan. We went over there in June and done three months toughening up training, running up and down hills all day. After that when we got to Korea they allocated us to different companies because every

which one was needing reinforcements that’s where we went to. I ended up going to C company and most of me mates went to B. One went to B and two went D company, and I don’t know where the rest end up.

Oh no! No, well actually it was entirely up to the individual.

If he wanted to stay with someone he could make a request for them to stay in the same section or something like that but otherwise the army says you’re going to C company, you’re going to B bompany. You had no option. That was it. You went.

They gave us…

I don’t know which one it was…disembarkment leave? I think it was disembarkment leave. They gave us a fortnight leave to organise things at home before we went over and then we come back to Ingleburn. They took us by bus to Sydney, caught a Qantas flight from Sydney through Darwin,

Manila. We got to Manila and we couldn’t get off the plane because they were playing up. Outside the air force they were shooting one another. That’s when Manila was playing up badly in 1951 and so we stayed on the tarmac until the plane was refuelled, and what they have to do with planes. We got back on and they had a storm, so we went over to Kowloon, stayed overnight at Kowloon, and then from there

to Kure or somewhere near Kure it was where the airport is there, the army airport. Then we got on a train then. We went by train to…no that’s right…we went by train to Kure. That’s when we started to find out what life was all about.

My father didn’t worry much about it. He wasn’t in the least concerned but my mother was a bit worried because she had two brothers in the Second World War and one of them got shot up a bit. They both came back alive but one was shot up, one of the uncles.

She was a bit worried about that but otherwise I think me brothers were more concerned than anyone else. They didn’t want me to go. “You’re not gonna come back!” One second eldest brother, can I tell you this one? I took a lottery ticket. It used to cost six shillings in those days, six thousand pounds. Before I went away I said, “Mum you look after this

ticket.” This was the day before I left home. She said, “Righto son, yes.” I gets over there and I was over there about a month, and I get a letter from Mum. This was after we’d tell them where we were. She said, “Oh you had a bit of luck on that lottery you gave me.” I said, “Yeah what happened?” She said, “You won five pounds.” I said, “Beauty put it in the bank for me.” She said, “Oh no, Claude reckoned you wouldn’t need it. You mightn’t come home and

you wouldn’t be able to spend it, so he took it.” That’s brotherly love see? He took it home and spent it.

Still waiting. I told him I would charge him. I was only talking about it here last Christmas. I said, “I’ll charge you for that five pound mate, all the interest. Be worth a bit now.”

What’s that? Bloody 51 years!

Oh yes, we had a big party two nights before I left, a really good one. All the family were there. It was only mainly family, just a few close friends but it was a really good one, one to remember.

I had a girlfriend. I could say it that way. She was not a sweetheart but we were close,

but not as sweethearts. We were friends.

No. She said more when I was overseas in letters. She never stopped writing, poor old Audrey. Poor bugger died of cancer.

Nothing like it, nothing like it. The hills in Japan were steeper than the ones we run up here and they were all little studded pine trees, undergrowth, and you’ve got to try and run through them.

They’re fairly hard, especially when you’ve got a full pack of rifles or a Bren gun but that was the idea of it. It was a toughening up exercise. That’s what they called it. By the time we finished that three months we were fit lads.

It was. It was easy even the 40 mile route marches. They were nothing.

We used to go over there and we left one morning, left the depot one morning, and we had one stop, a half hour stop for lunch. That was out of a tin, tinned bully beef and biscuits, and we got back at seven o’clock that night. On the way back they had this medical bloke come along with us. He caught up just after lunch and as

the blokes were pulling out with blistered feet and that, he used to doctor them up, fix them up, put back in the march again. There was a few blokes went to hospital over it. She was a hard one. That was the hardest march I ever done. We started…I think it was six in the morning, got back at seven with a half hour break. I tell a lie. They used to pull up every hour on the hour for five minutes. You had a five minute break every hour.

There was a lot of hill attacks and night patrols, night attacks on hills because right up on top of the hill they used to have cardboard images of people. With these that was the difference to Australia and over there, we used to use live ammunition

shooting at these targets on top of the hill. That was one training we had that was pretty dicey sometimes because we used to go up, we used to move a…I can’t think of the name of it now but one section would go forward and hit the ground. The next section while they’re going forward, like about five metres between each bloke, the blokes behind them would be firing between

them at the targets on top of the hill, live ammunition. That was a bit hairy but it made you think. It kept you on your toes, I’ll put it that way even though you was lying down when you were firing.

What the idea of it was to get confidence in your mates, in the blokes in the section with you. That’s all the training was for because if you couldn’t rely on the

bloke behind you firing between you there was no good going over to Korea. That’s all it amounted to.

There was none.

No one got shot or anything. One attack we done on a hill doing the same thing and I was the Bren gunner, and the damn Bren gun stuck. Wasn’t my fault. It just

stuck and fired the full magazine. The bloke, the number two was quick enough to race over and I don’t know, a kit bag or something he had, and he threw it over the muzzle of the Bren gun, and held it with me, and both of us, we kept it going straight. I was saying earlier about them wobbling and he raced over, and he was quick enough when he seen what happened. I said, “She’s gone.” In other words it’s a runaway Bren gun and number two knows what it is.

You say it’s gone and he just raced over. I don’t know what he put on the barrel but it was pretty hot and he just held it straight, and between the two of us we kept it going straight up in between them. We never told anyone until we got on top of the hill and number two come up, and he walked over to the RSM [Regimental Sergeant Major], and he said, Sir that Bren gun had to go back to army.” He said, “Why?” He said, “It’s faulty. We just put a full magazine right through her. It won’t stop.” He said, “When?”

He said, “Halfway down the hill about the third loop we done.” “Holy God! Righto!” Straight down, she went straight to the army. Things like that happen but everything, the training is to make you confident of the bloke alongside you. That’s all it is.

No they very seldom…that’s the first one I ever seen happen, first

time. Even the armourer said he’s never seen one jam like that before. Sometimes you get the magazine will jam and it can hold the return spring down but not the mechanism itself like that one did.

No, the armourer.

Yeah the armourer looks after all the weapons. He repairs all the damaged

rifles and Bren guns and all that, machine guns.

That was only racing up the hills and they have these blokes in trenches on top of the hill. They were stupid because he used to have a torch and every now and again they put a flare up,

and these blokes as soon as the fare went up, they’d stand down in the trench, and shine the torch on the figure eight. That’s what you had to shoot at and at a certain time the torch would go out, and it was all black. You couldn’t see a thing because by the time the flare went out they’d switch the torch off, so the next thing you’d move up again, do another bound up, and another flare would go up, and the torch would come on.

Yeah! I

don’t know what was over the back of the hill but they must have known because that’s what we were firing on, straight up over the hill. No, that was just to get you used to it and get the feel of live ammo firing, and confidence in the mate alongside you. That’s all about it.

Not

doing the training but right at the finish because all the English, Canadians, French Canadians, they were training too but they were in a different area to us, a different area. On the final day they had this all the hierarchy from America and Korea, they all come to watch it, and we put this display on. Each battalion done their bit they way they’d been

trained and we sat back, and we’re sitting down in a big gully back down the hill. We didn’t know what was going on up front and we were the last ones to do it. This mad major we had that used to be at the Haramura, he kept us till last because he reckoned we’d out do the lot of them and he had full confidence in us. The next thing when they started there was a bit of a “Boom” went off.

That was the starting gun for the first battalion to do their exercise and the next thing you hear this “Crack, crack, crack, crack” going over the top of us. The machine guns were behind us firing live ammunition over the top of the blokes that were going up the hill. You wondered what this damn cracking was. You could hear it going “Crack, crack, crack”. That’s what they were doing, just to keep their heads down. He was mad. He was definitely mad that bloody major

but we were the last ones to do it and we come up there, and the silly animal, he stood up on the top of the hill while we come up it firing live ammunition at these targets. He come up, this brigadier from England, an English brigadier come up and he chastised you about it. He said, “Mate I’ve got that much confidence in these Australians. I was not worried one little iota.”

Why stand up there? Anything could have happened. The Bren gun could have seized. Oh you’re mad! He couldn’t get discharged because he had to sign the certificate from the doctor to say that he was mad. He wouldn’t sign it but no, we went up and got all the accolades off all the different hierarchies around the place from all the countries.

Yes, not skiting or nothing but according to our major. We got the accolades. Then he

put an exhibition on, took us down to the rifle range and he said to these American dignitaries, and the colonels, field marshals, all that was there, more brass than bloody Selby’s Depot, he come up, and he said, “I’ve got that much confidence in these blokes. I’ll show ya what I think of them.” So we got down 100 yards on the range with rifle 303s, targets up, started shooting, this old major casually walked

along in front of the targets while we were shooting. One bloke there was a fair dinkum shot and he had these baggy trousers. When he walked forward they used to come about that far away from his leg behind him when he strided up and this blokes come up, and “Schoo” put a hole straight through the leg of the pants. He come up there and after it was all over this major come up, can he was congratulating us on the shooting. He only picked out the better group,

better shooters and this bloke walked up, and he said, “You’ve got a hole in your pants sir!” “No. Where?” He said, “Down there. It looks like a bullet hole.” He come up and he said, “Who done that?” He said, “I just mistimed.” He walked over and he said, “Good shooting lad, good shooting!” I would have never went to war with him! He was mad, definitely mad. I can’t think of his name.

Him? First night we arrived he come up there and we just come up. We were tired and hungry, come in by train. We were really buggered. He comes in there. We were under English rations. This is nighttime. We got a piece of steak about that size, one egg cold.

That was our evening meal. We’d just arrived and had no lunch, travelled on the train all bloody day and he walks up there, he come in with no shirt, swagger stick, and alongside me was this big Maori. He was a big boy, only a young fella and he hit this cane alongside him. He said, “What’s the meal like tonight young fella?” This Kiwi jumped to his feet. He said, “You bloody do that again mate and you’re down. I’ll deck ya!” This old blokes says,

“Don’t you know who I am?” He said, “ Mate I don’t give a stuff who you are. Without that shirt you’re no better than I am. Do it again and I’ll deck ya!” He wheeled around, out to the Mess hut he went. Next thing he come back with all his regalia, his major stripes and everything on. He walked up and he said, “And how was the meal tonight young fella?” [laughs] A different attitude altogether! He was mad though! He was mad. I don’t know how he got in the army. He should have been out of it.

That’s just a few funny sides that happened.

Yes. Yes, he was World War 11. He had a couple of rows of ribbons on him, three rows of ribbons on him. He was well decorated. I think he might have been shell shocked, something happened to him!

Same thing. Within a couple of days you buddy up with the blokes because I think mainly why you do it so quickly is because you’re doing the same thing every day. You do the same training and your eating the same time, you go to bed the same time. It’s just more or less like one bloke doing a day’s work.

No, you soon pally up with blokes, no trouble at all.

We used to get occasionally in three months the odd weekend where we’d go into town and mix with the locals, as you say. Yes!

I can’t put that on tape! No, we used to go down to the beer halls but they used to bring us in by truck into Kure and one of the beer halls there we knew the girls from when we used to be camping in Kure. We used to go to the same beer hall all the time and they used to come along. You’d walk in and as soon as they spotted you, they knew you straight away, even though we’d been up there for a month before we come back.

Straight up to the table where we used to always sit, same amount of bottles of beer they put on there, have a beer ready there for you. They were good, used to look after us. They were good times in the old beer halls.

Yes. I’ll say yes but they weren’t brothels. They were locals in houses.

In Tokyo, around Tokyo in the bigger cities they had them but in the little country ones they were just normal sort of people that done it for a living. They were making it tough in Japan at that time just after the war and they were getting money. Their fathers used to hire the girls out for a night and get the money that way.

The girls in the beer halls you couldn’t touch. That was taboo. If they were seen fraternising with a digger, they’d lose their job. That was the ruling and if course the majority of the beer halls were run by the American army. That was the ruling they had on it but in Tokyo

or in Ibisu, we used to go down there to a couple of beer halls there, you’d go in there and you’d sit at the table, and the girls would come up just like down in Sydney. They’d come up and they’d talk to you, sit on your lap, and have a yarn, “You buy me a drink?” One thing lead to another thing and when you got home the next morning your clothes were all starched, and ironed. They used to do that for you of a night time

while you was in bed with the daughter. They just had the right amount of starch in your uniform. It used to be immaculate, boots polished! We were spoilt.

They did. When we were going over they did, yes. Before we left here and when we got over to Japan they gave us all the information about it.

No, they didn’t actually tell us. They just…word of mouth, told us and gave us a little booklet on venereal disease, and that was it. It was up to yourself from there on.

A fair bit of it but it was only mainly gonorrheae and that type of stuff,

no syphilis or anything like that. No, the officers had gonorrheae didn’t they. The soldiers had syphilis and the officers had gonorrheae, that’s right! That’s what the doctor used to tell us anyway!

I don’t know what the process was but they tell me it wasn’t real good!

I was lucky. I was fortunate. I never had it. No, they tell me it wasn’t real pleasant what they used to do to them. Anyone that had it never spoke about it. All they said was it wasn’t real pleasant.

When we first left Korea that was the first one we had. After three months we got five days leave

in Japan and they had a short arm parade. When we arrived back from Japan we had another short arm parade. That’s the only time they’d do it, when you went on holidays or went on leave and come back off leave. Outside that there was none.

All you do is flash it, drop your tweeds down and just flash the old

fella. The old Doc comes along and has a look at the head of it. If it hasn’t got a tear in the eye he says, “You’re right son.” If you’ve got a tear in the eye he says, “I’ll see you later.” That’s a short arm parade in all the details! It’s quick and fast unless you have the tear in the eye.

You want the good ones? Mainly socialising, telling good stories, good yarns of things that happened in Korea, trying to hook up with a girl,

trying to keep out of fights and playing cards I suppose. There was only really socialising. It would be just like going to a club here in Australia with a mob of blokes, that’s all.

I can tell this one now. The American Air Force, they’re very touchy about their uniform. You don’t touch any part of their uniform and this particular beer hall we went to this night there was Americans, Canadians, which the Yanks didn’t like too much, New Zealanders, Australians, and a couple of

French Canadians. They were real bad tempered, all quick tempered they were. So we come along in the beer hall and all the beer halls in Japan are very dull. The lighting is not too good. I don’t know what reason it was but we walked in the door and spotted, “Ah haa” American Air Force! They had their caps sitting on the whatsername on the chair, so we just walked past. There was six of us, grabbed

a cap each, transferred them to another chair. They didn’t ask how they got there or why they got there. She was on and we were over in the corner of the beer hall, six of us sitting at the table drinking our little bottle of beer, and watching all the fun! They were into it, bloody French Canadians. As soon as they accused the French Canadians with their fiery temper, they just flew up and “Bang!” Then she was on and we were sitting back watching it. It was a good show!

But we never started any trouble! We were docile little Australians! See my halo?

But this other one, that was one club. This one I got involved with the American police. We come up there and these Yanks, this big burlyYank, lard, big lard, full of lard he was, and he picked on this little one behind the bar, a little barmaid.

Everyone like her. She was a terrific little kid. She could speak English and she used to love us coming in. We were number one the Australians and the Kiwis. So this American bloke come on and he gives her a slap across the face, of course that started things. This Kiwi fella come up there, no questions, “What’d ya hit her for?” That was the first question. I said none but that was it. He started to blow and he went “Wack”, a big left-hander, down he went. Two of his mates jumped in to the Kiwi,

a couple of Kiwis come in, a couple of Australians, a couple of Americans. She was on! Bloody nearly wrecked the place. The tables were broken. There was glass shattered everywhere. We were sitting back in the corner again watching this one, always seemed to be sitting in the corner but anyway, they finally ended up down in the street. Someone rang the provosts, American ones, in they come, a big Negro bloke and two white fellas, and they grabbed this American

Negro. I don’t know who pointed him out to them but they grabbed him, put the handcuffs on, put him in the wagon. They grabbed the Kiwi, put the handcuffs on him, put him in the wagon. Then this bloke come in. He said, “Come on! We’ll head back to camp. Can’t do much here if the beer hall’s wrecked.” They closed it. So anyway, he gets up there and by this time there’s a thousand odd Japanese people there, and when the provost wagon drove off they were opening

up at the front because they had the wagon, and the other blokes were in the jeep, the Provost jeep. They used to open up and the wagon drove through like that, and they just closed in behind the wagon, and the jeep couldn’t follow them. They never locked the bloody back door of the wagon because the Japanese people undone the door. These two blokes come out and they shepherded them away because this was how we got picked up. The Yanks were looking for these two blokes in the handcuffs. That’s what happened. We got down to the railway

station, the three of them come round and said, “You blokes better come with us.” So they bundled us in the jeep, took us back to the depot and we stayed for an hour and a half or something there while they were interrogating everyone. Then they took us back to camp and our CO said, “They’re going on leave here mate! They’re going back out on the street.” We had no intention but as soon as he said yes, we knew this other little beer hall down the street up a little back alley, so down we go to that, stayed there all night with them,

a couple of girls. Yeah, that was two fights, two good ones. The other ones were only little ones. That was the two best ones but being the angels we were, we only started one! We didn’t start the big one.

A certain group of the Americans. There were some. The

Marines were in a country on their own. They thought they were better than everyone else, the American Marines but the ordinary everyday low soldier, he was like us, so he made life like it was. The Marines, they thought they were top of the world, they were the only army blokes around the place but they weren’t.

What in Japan? I can’t answer that one actually because they were over there before we got there,

the BCOF. They were there straight after the war and going on what you hear from them, they treated them like ordinary civilians, ordinary people.

Yes, with them yes. I struck them to be a very polite race. They couldn’t…

I don’t know how to put it. They couldn’t please you enough. If they wanted to do something for you, they couldn’t do enough for you. They were that type. I don’t know whether it was because they were defeated in the war. It might have just been their culture to why they carried on like that. A lot of the blokes went over there in BCOF after the war to re-establish Japan, they had the time of their lives apparently.

They got organised in black marketeering and all that jazz but they were the quick ones.

No. No, not while I was there. I think

myself anyway, it’s just the way that people in those days were brought up. You had to respect women. I know we were. I can’t speak for the rest of them. No, I never heard anything about them being mistreated or anything.

No. The Americans used to be the worst

with them, just on hearsay. As far as the Australian blokes go…but then again I didn’t know all the fellas that were there. There were a lot there besides me.

Yes. I went to both.

Not very much. Hiroshima, there wasn’t much left. Everything was flattened.

When I got there there was nothing. There wasn’t much to smell but there was nothing to see because it was flattened. There was just rubble everywhere and the amazing thing that I seen was this concrete bridge over the river. I don’t know what river it is. It was broken at one end as if someone cut it with a knife it was that clean and it was about 18 inches,

it moved. The whole bridge had moved to one side and it was still touching the other part of the bridge but the whole lot had just been…as if someone cut it with a knife, the reinforcement, the whole lot. It just moved the bridge 18 inches to one side, about that far. Both the parts of the bridge were still flush together. That was the power of the bomb but there was nothing there. It was just all rubble. Everything

was flattened. Nagasaki, we only drove through that on a bus. There were a few houses standing but they didn’t stop because there was a lot of beggars there and they didn’t want to hop out, the ones from the aftermath of the bomb, legs off, and arms missing. They were a bloody mess poor buggers. They must have some power in them. In don’t know what’ll happen if some

silly dickhead gets another one and lets it go.

You call it Hiroshima. I call it Hiro-sheema. There was no one at Hiroshima. There were no people, no bodies at all but Nagasaki there was a few, a few people. We just drove through, never stopped in the bus.

They just took a tour, took us for a tour around there, just to show the aftermath of it. It wasn’t a good sight. It was not a good sight. No wonder there were so many killed but then again it had to be done. It was one of those things in war. It stopped the war anyway but I hope to never see the results of another one. That’s

how bad it was.

No we knew the day we were going because they told us. Once we started the training they said, “You’re going to do three months. That’s it. Then after that you’ll have a day to get everything organised and then you’re

catching the plane over.” That’s what happened. We knew the day we were leaving Japan.

We flew over in a bloody old DC3, two props, no jet, two old props on her and rough! We struck a storm going over. She was rough. He was trying to get above it and he couldn’t.

It was all right. We got there. Then we had a nice trip up to the battalion. These American negroes were driving the GMC [General Motors Corporation] six wheel drive, six wheel vehicle, no tops on, all open. We crawls in the back. There was 16 I think in each one, eight up each side, gravel road, dry,

dusty and all you could see was the little red light of the truck in front of you through the dust, and we’re sitting in the back. They weren’t worried about the passengers. So we got up to the battalion, lucky they were back in reserve and the old CO comes up, and he says, “You fellas need a bit a clean up.” Lucky they had these mobile showers, so we went over, cleaned up, had a shower,

changed our clothes. That’s all we had. That’s the last we seen of them. The dusty ones, they took them and they issued us with the ones we were going to wear on the frontline. That was it. We didn’t see our clothes again. They just took them off us but then we got allocated to the companies, from the companies to the platoons and from the platoons to the section, and that was it, and everything was settling in nicely.

Being back in reserve you wouldn’t expect anyone to fire a shot and no one told us but we’re sitting up, “Right! Stand to!” Six o’clock comes, “Stand to!” Everyone is up the front in the holes looking out over the valley and next thing this ungodly noise, rifle shots! The first night at the bloody frontline, it was a proper mess. We’re looking, “Where are they? Where are they?” The bloke there says, “She’s right mate! You new?” I says, “I only come in today.” He says, “She’s right. That’s the Yanks.

They’re over on the next hill showing their firepower.” Every night they used to open up with their bloody weapons to show how good the firepower was. Five minutes of wasted ammunition! Oh God! That frightened the life out of me! I was only 19 and the first night on the bloody frontline, a good initiation I can tell ya!

No

they were different. They were a lot different. Have you seen on the movies when they go along and somebody fires, and they hit the ground altogether, and they’re always in a little bunch, about eight of them? One good grenade and they’re all gone. We were told never to get within so many yards of one another, given the chance of a grenade thrown in or a mortar, it has to spread to get to it. They’re all in a little group, one in the middle, got the whole lot.

They were stupid. I tell you what, one thing about the Australian’s army training, it was the best thing in the world for combat. I don’t know what they’re like in jungle warfare because we had no jungle warfare. As far as open warfare goes the Australian Army is just the best training I reckon, in my opinion.

No, this was night time.

Six o’clock the whole frontline would stand to at six o’clock and that was just the procedure because that was the time they reckoned the enemy would attack, just on dusk. That’s when these bloody Yanks used to open up with this fire. I’ll never forget that night. That one will sit in my memory for years! The bloody noise, especially when you’re not

used to it, looking down over the valley expecting the enemy to be coming down at you, even though you’re back in reserve. Silly buggers!

Yes.

We never seen any, only a few helpers running around the airfield because we landed,

unloaded and went straight on the trucks. That was it. We never went off the field at all and the only ones we seen there was the few of the workers around the airport, all the South Korean blokes.

No, that’s all we could see but I don’t know whether they had them on so the bloke behind could see the taillight. That’s all it was, just a taillight through the dust. That’s all

you could see in front of you but whether they had the lights on for that reason for the bloke behind to see, I don’t know. I remember that’s all we could see through the dust was this bloody red taillight, covered in dust.

Sort of yes and no. We didn’t know what to expect or what was going on but when they told us, they pulled up,

after about an hour out of Seoul they pulled up for a wee break and they got us together, and the captain bloke in charge said the battalion was back in reserve. He hadn’t told us before and that sort of eased the tension. We didn’t know whether we were going straight into the frontline or what would happen but when he said we were back in reserve. That was good news because that way we sort of sneak up on it

until the Yanks opened up!

They weren’t allowed. We weren’t allowed to take anything, home value, home-wise or anything. All we had to do was take our uniforms and what we were issued with, and nothing else.

Oh they’d take an old photo occasionally, your wife’s photo if you were married and you mother’s photo. I had Mum’s photo in my wallet but that was all, nothing bulky or anything like that. They wouldn’t let you carry it on the plane anyway. As soon as you got on the plane they weighed everything that you had. You only had a certain amount.

Army gear, everyone is round about the same weight with what they have. They just put it on and that was it. Anyone that was a bit over they used to query it because they knew the weight of your kitbag. We never had rifles. They took them off us and we got them in Japan, and your basic webbing and that. Everything weighs about the same. If your gear was a bit over they gonna query it. They knew you had something in there that shouldn’t have been.

That’s why they were tough. I reckon they were tougher checking you on the plane, getting on the plane as you were going off than what they are nowadays, as far as security goes. God it was bloody hard to get anything through. I know. I tried to bring some stuff home from Japan but they wouldn’t let me. They went through the kitbag and found it.

It was a Yankee bayonet. I wasn’t allowed to bring it in. I had it down the side of me kitbag but this bloke just went down with his hand. He must have known. He just put his hand down like that and said, “Aaaah! What have you got here? You haven’t declared that.” I said, “Yes I have. You have a look there, long knife.” “No.” He said, “American bayonet, you can’t have that.” So he took it off me.

In Korea? We lined up. I went to C company. There was a couple went to D company. There was about four, five, five I think went with us.

The other blokes, a couple went to head quarters, a couple went to artillery. They were spread all over the place and our company commander came up, and introduced himself, Major Hassett. He come up and then he handed us over to the platoon commanders. He introduced them.

They just read out the names, so and so company goes to section so and so. He come over and introduced us to the corporal, section corporal, and he went around, and introduced all the blokes. Then we sort of got allocated to a hole, a little trench with another bloke and that was it.

So we sort of made ourself comfortable and had a cup of tea. It was about three o’clock in the afternoon or something, had a cup of tea and then we just stood around. “What’s the go?” He said, “We stand to in a minute. Don’t worry about doing anything.” So that minute lasted a couple of hours because at six o’clock we stood to and then all the funny stuff started again but then that was it. Then they had listening posts on the night-time,

one bloke standing to in the section all night, took it in turns, a couple of hours on, a couple of hours off and then the next day come up, we made our breakfast out of tins, the tin ration, and lined up, and started going on patrols up to check the enemy, see how close they were. That went on for

a week, a bit over a week because we were there about nine days before we started to move up to the big front and away we went. We started hopping in the trucks and they took us up the Indian River. There was only a pontoon bridge, one track and there was a hell of a commotion going on because one of the trucks had

jumped off the two tracks they had. It was straddled on the pontoon bridge right in the middle. All they had to do was bring a truck from our side and pull him back on, and I reckon he would have come back on, a six wheel drive but nup, not the Yanks. They had a big wrecker on the other side of the river, on the bridge, straight across, chains around it, off the bridge, straight in the water. Yep, no mucking about! It would have

taken them too long to reverse it back off the bridge they reckoned, so they brought this big wrecker out. Money was no object. Everything was on lend lease with the Americans and they didn’t worry. No, they just lifted it straight off. We went across the Indian up to where we had to go and of course I meant to tell you…did I tell you what time we left? It was four o’clock in the morning. It was dark. It was a surprise attack, so we got up

to where we had to start off, where the operation started off from and she was just breaking day when we started to make the move. That’s when the Maryang San started, Operation Commando. It went on for a whole week of lots of fun and games.

Yes.

Anyone that came through because everyone was stationed on a hill. In valleys there was nothing but of a night time they used to have the artillery fire on those valleys with phosphorous mortars and that would spread all over. That would make that safe and they had a lot of barbed wire through there too

but we used to have to go and patrol every morning to see that no one had come through that night.

Too many paddy fields. The only thing there was in between the paddy fields a little walkway about that wide.

All the rest was growing rice.

Only the section corp. He give us a rundown to what was going on.

No. As I said, we were split up. I was the only one that come into our platoon

and other blokes went to B company, two went to B company, one went to A company. They were dispersed all around the whole battalion.

The reason for that being because we were reinforcements and we were filling in

where the battalion was weak. If we’d have come over there as a group of six or seven, which is a section we could have went to one company, which had nearly their quota in the company but no one had it and they just split us up to try and balance out the amount because they were very thin on the lines. They never had a full contingent in the battalion.

No, no, no! As soon as you got there you were one of them. That was the beauty of it. There was no standoff about it because they knew more than we did. We were told that they were back in reserve and that’s the only thing we knew but they knew that this Operation Commando was coming up in a fortnight or so,

and they were all getting prepared for it but we sort of got there, and we were hit with it a day after we got there. You learnt to live with things like that.

We took a rifle, 150 rounds of ammo, a day and a half’s rations,

and I think that was it, travel light because we had a lot of walking ahead of us, a bloody lot. That morning was foggy to make it worse, well it made it all right for us to get up close to them.

I’m sorry.

Sorry about that.

I just seen me mate there behind that bloody tree.

B company was the first to go through and they got hit with mortars, and every bloody thing. We had to go through them because we were a reserve company and we were called up because B company got the hell hit out of them.

We were called up to bloody go through and move up the hill again, see if we could get up on top as far as they went. We had to go further or try to and we come past this bloody tree, and there was one of me mates that I joined up in Ingleburn with lying up against this tree with his just his bloody legs all shot. That was the first time

I’d seen him since we left bloody Japan, a bloody good way to see him but anyway, not to worry. Things had to keep going, so we did and we ended up finally taking the hill. B company went back in reserve and A company came up around another hill, and they took it. Then this

Pommy battalion the Argyles, they came up the next day and relieved us. That’s right we come back down, went back in reserve, only there for half a day and we had to choof off again. Then we went up to 317, which was the main objective of the whole exercise. That was out target to take that. By this time we had…the section I was in, that was

the Bren gunner, I had to go number two because he got wounded. He was off the hill. We had four blokes in the section plus a corporal and there was supposed to be nine. The whole company was only half there but we went up and took the hill anyway, but we had a lot of fun. Then we got up there and of course they counterattacked. After

they stopped that B company came up and went through us, and went out onto the spur. I can’t think of it now. I’ve lost all the numbers now. That night they came up and hit a hell of a bloody counterattack, and the Oc [Officer Commanding] of B company ended up calling the artillery in on them, on their own troops because the Chinese were jumping in the trenches with them.

They had all their bayonets fixed and you know what happens there. They had a great night. We were just up from them on top of this high range, high hill because it was sitting out in a prominent bloody position and they weren’t missing it either with their bloody mortars. The next morning they had to go out there. That was the worst thing I ever done.

He was a half-Chinese bloke this fella, Yeo. We were going out to get the wounded from B company, helping the stretcher-bearers and I looked in this bloody big hole from the mortar, and here’s me mate sitting in there, this little corporal Chinese bloke, right through the forehead. So that was the worst thing, I had to help carry him out. We got back the next day and that afternoon you could

hear this “Boom, boom, boom”, and they sang out, “Incoming.” One of me mates in the trench next to me, he was a bit slow moving and never made it back to the trench, got right alongside him, concussion killed him. The next day is when the RPs come up and that’s why I wouldn’t let them in the bloody holes. Yes, so we sat there for another…I think we were there seven days

before we got relieved and the old Major Perkins at that time, because Hassett left, and he was out company commander, he was wounded, and wouldn’t go off the hill. He said, “Nope I’m not leaving my troops.” The bloody doctor…they got word back, someone got ward back to the battalion and they got the doctor up there. He come up and he said, “Perkins you’re going back. I’m the only one that can order you off this hill.” He said, “If I go back me troops are going back.”

“No! You’re going back.” He had a blast in the back somewhere, so they got him off the hill but no, we were up there for seven days. We used to have little tin containers about that big, about that high, that was our daily water ration. They couldn’t get water up to us because the Chinese were pounding over the top of the hill. So, that was a good little stand up there.

I feel better.

Yes, 255, 225. What they had was a winter line

and they were working on these peace talks that we knew nothing about. No one told us they were having peace talks but they had to make a deal and that was their winter line because of the 38th Parallel. That was the whole front right across Korea. Every unit together on the same night right across Korea but they ended up, they

maintained it. But the poor old Yanks at Heartbreak Ridge, we sat up there and because we were on such a high dominant hill, the lookout for the tanks come up there. He got these bloody binoculars, oh God you could see for miles with them. He used to sit up there and he said, “Have a look at this.” We’d sit up and watch across the valleys, and these Yanks, you could see them going up the hill, and they’d get up on top. There’d be no dust and all of a sudden

the dust, and then you’d see them come back down the hill. The Chinese would come up. They done that for two days. There were nearly 1000 troops that America lost when they were taking that hill. We just sat there and watched the poor buggers but they used to hit them. No, we were fortunate actually. Once we took the hill and sat there for a couple of days, they went quiet. They never mortared us or nothing.

Wasn’t that good to get back down that river in reserve and have a wash! We’d been there for seven days, no wash, very strong!

No it was…I forget now. It was either 225 or…

if I had my little book here I could tell you the whole lot. 225 I think it was because it was around the side. It was around that way. 317 was there. The Hook was out the front. I can’t think, sorry mate.

Yes, I was talking to him. I was talking to him. He was actually joking about it because a piece of shrapnel had landed in his penis and he reckoned he’d got one of the best ticklers going but all the muscles were just gone off his leg.

Jesus, there were a few others worse than that though but that was only just because he was me mate. I bloody joined up with him and done our training in Ingleburn and everything before we went over.

Yeah, he come from Cessnock. Yes.

No, we couldn’t. We couldn’t stop. They had the medical crew come behind us. You’d call out at the top of your voice, “Medic! Man needing help!” You go out and just keep going, didn’t have time to stop. If one bloke in the line would have stopped it made that hole there and you can’t have a hole in that line. That’s the weakest link.

No. It was only one company but we were down nearly half a company in strength. That was after the initial hit on that 225.

Mainly mortars, mortars and rifle fire, grenades, mortars,

rifle fire but they had the advantage. They were on top of the hill looking down on us. It was bloody steep. That made it worse but that’s where the fitness came into it. If we hadn’t have been so fit we’d have never made it. We just wouldn’t have climbed up the hill.

B Company, they were coming back and we went through them like this thing we trained at Haramura, going through the line of fire. That’s what we done. Once we got in front of B Company they retreated back to the reserve. That’s where that training in Japan come to the fore, going through firing live ammo because they kept their heads down and we got closer and closer to it.

After we got too close they just took off, thank God.

No. You couldn’t charge. The bloody hill was like that. You’d be flat out charging up it. No, there was no fixed bayonets. We had them, had them at the ready but I reckon if we’d got up hand to hand it would have been, but by the time we got up there they’d all chuffed

off. They left, which was a good thing.

The enemy running down the other side, down the spur. They called a fire on them but as soon as you fired they’d just go low like ducks, they went to the ground, hop up and run, fired, down to the ground. They only fired to scare them, didn’t fire to him them. They were just firing over their heads because that was the order, just to frighten them.

They probably thought we were bad shots. Then we had to go round and clean the trenches out, and dig a few more on the other side of the hill. Then the…I can’t think of it. Was it the Argyles? It was an English battalions took over from us two days after and then we went up round 317, took that, and

had a few days there stay. Then we went back on reserve and the next thing we hear was the 225 was taken. The Pommies were knocked off it. They put a counterattack on, pushed them back. I don’t know who went back up there, another battalion out of the United Nations went up. They sent them up on it and they took the hill back, and they stayed there.

No, that was vital ground. That’s why there was so much fighting there. Both sides wanted it because it gave an advantage. It was high hills looking out over the valleys. The valleys would only be about…the widest part would be about 500 yards wide I suppose, just down and straight back up again.

There was a few dead. I think they may have taken the wounded with them. There was no wounded, a few dead there but, which they send up the engineers. They come up and bury them. They just buried them and took off again. They weren’t there very long.

The quickest bit of digging I’ve ever seen.

That’s part of their job to save the infantry doing it. They’re the hole diggers and the ridge builders.

No, they hadn’t been dead long enough. There

was only the Chinese smell, the rice and what have you. It’s a very distinct smell they have. No, as far as the human smell, the ones there weren’t dead long enough. It was only a couple of days. Apparently the ones they hit when they shelled it, many got killed then. They must have taken them away. The only ones there were rifles shots, the ones that were dead. There was no shrapnel or nothing

in them.

Well you get used to that and it seems to be one hill after another. You take no notice to it. It’s there all the time. It’s only the cordite and stuff from the shells or whatever they put in them to make them explode. There was plenty of that around but that’s there all the time. You get used to it, just an everyday thing.

No. We stayed there the rest of the day. Like I said earlier, we started at daylight and we stayed there the rest

of the day, and that night the English battalion came up from reserve. They relieved us and we came back down. We were supposed to go in reserve but B company were shot up pretty well. They sent B company, they were the forward company. They went down to the base of 317. They settled down there and then we had to go through them again but instead of going up the face

of the hill where they were, we done a smart manoeuvre they called it. We went around the paddy fields, walking through the paddy fields, which the enemy reckoned we wouldn’t do. We come up the back of 317 and flanked them. They got the shock of their lives and they just took off. There was about I’d say no more than half a dozen shots fired and everyone was saying, “What a good job

we done.” But the enemy just panicked. They just took off. We had B company down here but they didn’t know the strength of B company. They were shot to pieces and we were half a company, and just practically walked up the hill. I think there were about half a dozen shots fired. That was it.

I couldn’t’ tell you.

I couldn’t tell you. I have a book here about Korea and Maryang San. That’s got all the casualties of each company and how many was killed, and everything in it but my fault. I should have dug it out and I could have produced it here today.

We

were more or less expecting it because our platoon commander said, “We’re going back to reserve but it could be only for half an hour.” That’s the way he put it, so we did. We went back and just replenished our ammunition, our food, another day and a half, and that was it, away we went. That was our reserve spell but to take that hill like that, especially after the

225 one, the way they shot that one. They just didn’t want the hill for some reason but they did actually by the way they counter-attacked , but just that initial take of it. Funny things happen in war. You don’t know that their orders were or whether they panicked and just went out themselves. I know that we had prisoners and they

said that they didn’t like fighting the men with the big hats because we used to wear the slouch hat. They didn’t like fighting the man with the big hat because they were bloody only kids. When I say kids I was only 19 meself or 20 at that time and we had some there 16 or 17, prisoners we took. That’s the way the oriental bloody

people go though. They put the kids into fighting. Before we done that, when we first left in the morning, he come up there and he gave us, the whole battalion a bit of a lecture what was going on, and they said, “You got no problems blah, blah, blah. Up in front of us there’s a full battalion of Chinese on the ridges we have to take.”

“Oh yeah. That’s all right.” We’ve got about half a battalion in strength, all the wounded and that. So anyway, we gets up there and he’s yakking away, and he said, “Behind them they have their workers, which is another battalion full strength.” They dig all the trenches for the soldier. The soldier doesn’t do a thing. The battalion workers, they dig all the trenches for them and they

go back. “Behind them, the trenches that have already been dug by these workers, there’s another full strength battalion. So if you knock this first lot off the hill…”, which we luckily done, “…and chase them, you go through.” By this time the workers have gone but the battalion you fought goes through the next ridge and then you’re confronted with this fresh battalion. That’s what we had.

By that time this other mob have gone back and the workers have dug them in another hill behind. By the time you get through this first one, you’ve got another nearly fresh battalion behind that again. They said that with the strength we had, what was left of the battalion, this was after everything was taken, all the hills, the intelligence, that the Chinese were ten to one against us. There were ten of them to one of us. That was the strength we

had. So I reckon we didn’t do too bad.

Yeah but I wish we had the bloody diggers to dig the trench for us!

Actually you don’t actually see anything because you’re thinking of different things. You’re thinking of this bloke in front with a rifle at you and will I get shot or won’t I get shot. That’s running through your mind all the time. All you’re doing

is looking up the hill where you take a point where you’re going to head for because like we were trained in Haramura, we had to go straight with that up in fire and down in fire business. That’s about all you think of and whether your mate’s alongside you or not but far as looking at the countryside, you don’t see any of that.

No. By then it was too late to think of that! We had been initiated and we knew what we were going in for. The worst part was when they told us which way we were going up the hill through these paddy fields. Oh Christ! Through that! Because do you know how rice is grown? In

Japan and Korea at the back of the houses, a group of say six houses, all their toilets are run into a well and that well, once a month a bloke with a cart comes along, gets it out in these big barrels, and they take it along, and tip it in their paddy fields, in the rice. The rice is grown in it, so next time you have some rice think of that! That’s what we had to walk

through but it’s all…they mix it, break it all down. It’s only fluid they put out but still the thought of it! I thought I’d put that one in!

No. We’d be 400 yards or more from the base of it and there was

a little knoll. We went around the back of this little knoll. It wasn’t very high but it was just enough to cover our movement from the hill. They couldn’t see behind it. Someone apparently had worked it out that the top of 317 couldn’t see the reverse side of this little knoll and that’s the way we went. We went up around that through the paddy fields and got up behind, come up the back, up the back spur.

No.

They never fired a shot but no one can work it out why after the trouble we had the day before or two days before. No one could work out why there were no shots fired but we weren’t worrying about that. We were very happy but that night they made up for it though when they done the counter attack. I reckon they’ve had things worked out that they’d do that and we’d think to ourselves

we’d drop our keenness or think they’ve gone, they won’t come. They’d think we’d let our guard down a bit but when they came back they made a mistake. Yeah, she was fun and games for a few hours.

They were just doing the normal thing as if we were being attacked. They were still doing one lot forward, down, the next lot up. We were waiting to be fired on and we just kept doing the hopscotch up the hill just in case.

If you seen an enemy

You had to shoot him because like I say, kill or be killed but there was no one there. They just bunked out.

They were gone, running down this ridge about 400 yards away. There was a heap of them. There was bloody hundreds of them, thousands or hundreds running down the ridge.

If they’d known they would have, had they

known our strength but they didn’t, which was very good, very lucky!

That’s when they were running down the spur yeah, not to shoot to kill, only shoot to frighten. As soon as we fired on them running down that spur 225, as soon as you fired one shot they’d all hit the ground together. You’d let it go for about five minutes,

no fire and away they’d go again. Fire a couple, another dive.

Well, in my opinion even though it was a war, had you done it, it would have been murder because they had their backs to you, they were running down a hill, they’re not attempting to attack you or fire on you. That’s only my own opinion but I’m hoping the officer thought

the same way when he said to fire to frighten. No, it would have been just murder because it was just like shooting clay pigeons. They were two or three deep running down this little narrow track and you could have hit them with a Bren gun, would have been murder, been slaughter. Thank heavens they didn’t do it.

There was none. All the trees were blasted away from the shelling because North Korea went down, the United Nations pushed them back up, the Chines came down, United Nations pushed them back up and all the time both sides were shelling the hell out of the mountains, out of the hills. There was no

trees, just little blasted stumps. They tell me over there now she’s all regrowthed and there’s pine trees everywhere on the hills but that’s all they were. They were only pine trees. That’s their national tree.

We had to dig in, secure the hill and then B Company come up through us, what was left of them. They went out along this ridge out in front of 317. This is where all the Chinese and that ran down. They dug in on the spur and then we just had to stand to then. Once they got established they stood to. We were standing to on top of the Hill 317 and

just waited until about half past seven, eight o’clock that night, no moon, dark, and the yelling and screaming started, and the mortars started, and the whole of hell broke loose, bang into it. That was the big counterattack, shells, machine guns. I’ve never seen fireflies

coming at me like they did. That’s what they looked like, incendiary bullets, not incendiary…someone watching this will know! Tracer! Every so often in a belt in a machine gun they put a tracer to let them night find where they’re aiming at, where the shot is going and they’re like little fireflies coming towards you.

You hear this, “Zip, zip, zip” past your ear, of course straight in the trench, wait for a break. No, we stood up watching it. We could have been killed, could have been shot because they were going close. You could hear them going past, this bloody “Zip, zip, zip.”

Oh yes. We knew we’d get it but we didn’t think it would be so forceful.

We didn’t think there would be so many.

Seven thirty, eight o’clock, about eight o’clock.

When the Chinese attack they blow trumpets and whistle, and yahoo, and Cooee. They do it to try and frighten the enemy. It’s an old tradition apparently but we knew they were coming just by the noise they made.

They went backwards. What they should have done was send the mortars in first but when they started this whistle blowing and trumpet blowing, and yahooing singing out, ringing bells and goodness knows what, then they started letting the mortars come in. By this time we knew the counterattack was on and we were prepared for it because you could hear them in the distance. When they

fired them you could hear this “Boom, boom, boom” going off and if you give it a certain time, about a minute and a half or probably a minute then you’d know they would probably hit close to you, so you just went down the hole. It was good, good fun but they come up the ridge where B Company was, they come up our ridge too but in front of 317 was hellish and steep.

You could hear them coming up and when they got to a certain thing they’d just prepare grenades or what the order was and waited for about five minutes, and everyone around the top of the hill just lobbed these grenades in over the top of the hill. There was no more movement after that.

No, you couldn’t have because to use your rifle you would have had to stand up straight and look down the hill. We were sitting up

here and the hill would be like that in front of us. The main force come up through B company and jumped in with them. They were jumping in the trenches when the commander of B company…I can’t think of his name. He called the artillery in on his position and ordered everyone in the trench, and that’s when the shells started hitting, and the Chinese were jumping in the trenches. These

blokes had the bayonets, like I said there earlier. They had their bayonets and you’ve got a fair idea what happens after that. He got the MM [Military Medal] for that, calling the artillery in on top of him otherwise they’d have been overrun. They’d have been through them and hit us.

Yes.

A few tried to come up the front but we heard them and that’s when the officer give the order for the grenades. I don’t know whether it got the lot or frightened them or what. We never went down to have a look the next day. We didn’t intend to either. It was too steep.

Oh no, we were watching. That’s what I was saying about the tracer bullets when they started the machine gun fire

on the hills. We were standing there watching them coming. I said to the bloke in the next hole to me, I said, “Don’t they look like fireflies coming at you? Zip, zip, zip. Fireflies! Heads down boys!” That’s when we got down in the trench. They used to do it in bursts. They’d let it go for about five minutes and then they’d stop. Then probably ten minutes, a quarter of an hour they’d hit you with another burst. In between that they’d hit you with mortars.

Thinking of it now it was good fun. I don’t think so.

The Chinese? They were still coming through up to B company. We could hear them because they were still blowing whistles and trumpets. They must have had special blokes doing it, blowing these whistles and trumpets. Then all hell broke loose in B company

and next thing the shells started to come in, six inch shells. That quietened things.

Yes. That was the easiest access to the top of the hill, up that spur B company was on but they just hit the wrong blokes. I don’t know how many B company lost there.

I’d have to look at that little book I’ve got.

They couldn’t. It was too dark. There was no moon or nothing. All you got to know where your bloke was…the next trench to me would have been probably five yards away and I couldn’t see him.

That’s how dark it was. When the explosion with the shells down the front, they come up and if a drop short hit the front of a hill, it would light up and you could see all the blokes around there, and say, “All right. They’re still there.” You could see all the heads. You never knew if anyone got hit or nothing unless they called out but no one got hit thanks heavens, no that night. The next day they got hit. The bloke next to me got hit with a mortar.

He was too slow getting in his hole, copped it, another mate.

He got concussion, hit him in the head, just burst his brain. He didn’t know what hit him. He never had a mark on him. It was just the concussion, the explosion right alongside him, this mortar

landed alongside him and all the shrapnel must have went over the top of him but it just exploded his brain, just killed him that way.

About two o’clock in the morning I suppose, half past two. We had no sleep that night or

actually we had no sleep for bloody about two or three nights, yeah about two-ish in the morning.

We just stood to and waited until daylight so that we could see what was going on.

A lot of movement over in B cmpany across from us. Nothing out the front.

Then the stretcher-bearers came up and we ordered them to go, and assist the B cmpany boys, help them carry the wounded. That took a while plus me old mate Yeo. Yes.

We were labourers more or less. We just carried the stretchers. They done all the patch up work with the field dressing and that. A few of the Korean navvies [labourers]we used to call them, the carriers, they came up. That amazed me because two days before even the day before they were flat out. They couldn’t bring water up to us. They wouldn’t bring food

up to us because the Chinese were dropping the mortars over the back of the hill where we first came up and they couldn’t get the carriers up. So that’s why we never had much water or much food. No, they were pretty good the South Koreans in that way. They used to come up and help carry the stretcher down. We’d give them a hand to a certain point and then they had another group there that took over, and they took them back to the

RAP [Regimental Aid Post], from there down to the MASH [Mobile Army Surgical Hospital] Hospital. I never found out whether bloody Hawkeye was down there!

No. No, we stayed there for three days and then the other

Canadian mob, the Canadian…oh they’ve got a pretty name…don’t worry about it. A Canadian battalion come up and a battalion took over from two companies or two half companies, the whatsername Lancers, Patricia, Patricia Lancers [Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry ] ,

a Canadian mob. They took over from us.

Yes because there was no stand down. We were on stand to all the time. They were expecting a big counterattack actually but it came about three weeks later when they hit.

They were repelled again and everything quietened down then. I think…when was the first treaty signed? July wasn’t it? July 27th, yes. Just prior to that they had another counterattack and they reclaimed the Hook I think it was. I wasn’t there. I was back

on a cushy job driving the liaison officer around for the three battalions, our battalion, an English battalion and an American battalion. I was staying with the Americans living the life of luxury. I should have been there from the start! I had sheets on the beds, three course meals, Ah!

They come up there and they wanted a driver

back at battalion. All the other blokes had done their terms and they’d moved out then. This platoon commander come along and he said, “Being from the bush you’d be able to drive a vehicle wouldn’t ya?” I said, “Yes sir! Yes.” He said, “Would you like to drive an army vehicle?” “I would love to sir.” He said, “Righto, get your gear.” By this time we were back on reserve.

He said, “Get your gear. See the driver down there in the jeep and he’ll take you down to RAEME workshop. You can book in down there.” So I went down to RAEME workshop. “Oh yeah righto” he said. “Starting tomorrow we’re having a week’s course to see who can drive a vehicle.” “Righto.” I hops in the vehicle. He showed me all the works, the army way of checking everything before starting this machine up. I hopped in, down the road and I’m pushed up

around 25, and he said, “You’re not out in the open country now.” 20 miles an hour was the speed limit on the roads over there and I was doing 25 miles an hour. He said, “Stay at 20 miles per hour.” I said, “Righto!” So I dropped her down. I went well all that day and he said, “You have driven a vehicle before!” I said, “Yeah! I driven them out on the farm picking up corn and driving

around town and everything.” “Oh righto! Just what we need!” So he said, “Hop in there.” This is the next day. “Do your service. Do your check.” “Yeah righto!” He said, “Now we’re going down the road 20 miles. We’re heading towards Seoul.” “Righto! That sounds good!” That’s right, I said, “That sound good.” “No” he said. “We’re not going to Seoul. We’re going down towards Seoul 20 miles. You’re the first driver

and I want you to stay on 20.” She’s a very undulated road. “I want you to stay on 20. This is your first test.” I goes along and I watched the speedo, watched the road, spot all the way. He said, “OK! You’re my co-pilot. You’re the co-instructor.” So I ended up with a cushy job for the rest of the week. I got me licence and I got the job driving around for a fortnight in RAEME doing little

delivery things. This liaison officer driver come up. He said, “Right there Snow!” I said, “Yeah mate, interesting.” He said, “What ya going to do?” I said, “Just driving the officer around between the three battalions, liaison.” I hopped in the bloody jeep with the officer. I goes over to this Yankee battalion. “Righto! That’s your bunk there Snow!” Bloody sheets and pillowcases on the bad and a bunk about that high.

Well this is going to be a change to sleeping on the ground! Anyway, I gets up there and me liaison officer says, “Righto! You settled in?” “Yep!” “Righto! We’ll go around and see what these other battalions are doing.” So I drove him round to the back of our battalion, back to the English battalion, a day’s work, come back home, on the bloody bunk, six packets of cigarettes, Marlboro, Lucky Strike, Camel, two of each. I said to the Yank next to me. “What are these for?” He said,

“Oh they’re yours guy. That’s the weekly issue. They just come through, doesn’t matter who it is. Half a dozen on each bed whether you smoke or not. If you’re a heavy smoker go and check with some of the other guys. They’ll want a smoke. They’ll let them off you for a little price you know? She’ll be right!” So anyway, I goes to the evening meal, bloody dixie [dish] and everything, fancy dixie the Yanks have got. I’m expecting one meal, hot meal, so I get a

choice of two steaks. They had four vegetables, that was one meal. They had soups, a choice of two soups, a choice of two steaks, plus four vegies and ice cream and fruit salad to come after that if you went back for it. They were doing it hard mate! They were doing it hard! So, anyway a couple of stories short we goes over and

done the liaison about four days later, and things were getting stirred up at the front. They were starting to throw a bit of rubbish back at us. We goes over and the Yanks, right on lunchtime and this bloke comes up, and he says, “Guy you need a hard hat. Get a helmet.” “No mate! We don’t wear it!” “You gotta wear it.” They had a sign up, “Hard hats and helmets to be worn past this point.” So he goes and gets this bloody Yankee helmet and this little officer,

I must have looked funny because he started laughing his bloody head off with this bloody Yankee helmet on me. He put an officer’s one on, which was better. We lined up for this bloody meal and right in front of me was this big Yank, a Negro. He was about six foot four if not taller, shoulders on him that wide and he hands out his dixie in front, puts his soup in his mug, choice of steak for meat. This was the frontline. They came down off the frontline.

Don’t forget that! Our boys were up there cooking little tender bully beef and these blokes come down off the line, and he gets his mug of soup, choice of two steaks, two meats, plus three vegies that day, potato, carrot and something else, and he goes along for his sweets. He gets out the other part of the dixie out and this sergeant behind me says, “Sorry mate! There’s no ice cream today.” This Yank stood up and he says, “What? No ice cream?

Two days without ice cream! Man this ain’t war! This ain’t combat! This is total war!” Because there was no bloody ice cream for two days and our poor buggers up there, bloody canned meat! Oh God! That done me! “No ice cream for two whole days!” That wasn’t combat. Gees they used to get it hard. They used to leave a skeleton crew up on the hill and come down

for a hot meal. What a time for an enemy to attack? That’s what I say, they’re mad the Yanks. They’ve got no thought of anything. Those Yankee fellas, especially those negroes, they’ve got some stories they could tell. They’re real comedians. We had a bloke, before I got that job I was on escort duty with the trucks bringing…

we had to sneak up through the Indian River to bring rations up to the battalion. We were on escort duty, had to go and ride with them in case they were attacked. There was four of us riding this army truck and she was all loaded up with the rations and everything. Two negroes, one bloke is driving and the other bloke is sitting up as his helper reading this book. The next thing he burst out bloody laughing. I don’t know what sort of book it was. He burst out laughing and he was telling

this bloke what it was all about. I didn’t know the book or what the subject or anything was about but they way he told it, the four of us were down the back. It was just the way the bugger told it. It was just that funny! They’re real comedians those yankee negroes! Real funny boys! Good drivers, gee they can drive vehicle. They are really good.

Get them behind that wheel and all you can see behind them is big white teeth, smiles on the face of the [UNCLEAR]

No! That was strange. That surprised me. The American whites and the negroes, they intermingled at the frontline and everything but the majority of the negro were more mechanical

minded than the white American were. That’s why they used to be the truck drivers. They used to look after all the machinery and that, the negroes. A bloke was telling me a story about one. They’ve got no fighting spirit as far as shooting goes. This was before Kapyong or not long after it started. They were evacuating the battalion

in these trucks and the mortars come in, shelling the mortars. Of course everything stopped. Everyone was out of the truck and they were looking for cover. This driver crawls under the truck, a big negro crawls under the truck, the worst thing he could have done, petrol and everything. Anyway, everything quietened down. All back in the truck. This negro is still under the truck. The sergeant walks up,

he says, “Hey guy! You gonna drive this truck?” The bloke says, “Nope!” He says, “We wanta drive. We’re evacuating. We’re getting out! They’re coming over the hill.” “Too bad! I’m not driving the truck, not when they’re shelling like that!” The way these American blokes talk…I can’t tell the story! Anyway, he gets up and he had the Owen gun, cocked the Owen gun. He says, “Get up there you black bastard and drive this truck or I’ll shoot your guts out.” “Shoot away man! I got no guts!” He wasn’t getting out!

Those types of things were a break to the seriousness of it. Yeah, shoot away man! I’ve run out of thought!

When we could get it they had American c-rations, which weren’t bad. They had been tried and tested for value quality for energy, minerals and all that stuff. They were quite good

but when we were on 317, like I said there, they couldn’t get…the carriers couldn’t get the stuff up to us. The main thing we had was that little tin of water and we were lucky if we had a tin about that big for the three meals. That was our rations that we had for about four days. We done it tough.

End of tape

After we’d established the frontline before the winter, each battalion would stay in their position for around seven or eight days and then another battalion from the UN would relieve them. We had a…cause the little fella’s out the front were still playing up they weren’t sleeping. They were still shooting at anything that moved.

We had to changeover in the middle of the night and it was January, the middle of winter in Japan. Someone reckoned it used to get down to around thirty degrees, so that’s why we used to sleep with our rifles alongside our bodies so the metal on them wouldn’t stick to your hands in the morning. We moved in about 12 o’clock in the night to take over from this mob and we had to be nice and quiet, no noise, cause the enemy was on 217,

which was a hill adjacent to it and they were looking down on us because it was a higher position to what this was. Anyway it ended up we successfully done the change over but I don’t know how because they had barbed wire all around this feature that we took over from, and you had to negotiate your way between the wire, which zigzagged through it, and it was all razor sharp, so we done that successfully, and once we got up there,

and hopped into the holes we found out that the Canadians weren’t real good on their hygiene, and they used to do all their business in the corner of the trench, which wasn’t smelling too good even though it was frozen like you know. Our little officer in his wisdom said, “ Righto boys, we’ll make this as quiet as we can, we’ll dig new trenches”. If you’ve ever tried digging ground frozen at thirty

degrees mate, it’s hard. So we started, had to be nice and quiet, with picks that the engineers had had up there, distributed to us. Every time you hit the ground, sparks used to fly. We done this for about half an hour when the blokes from 217 said, “Ah, we’ve got visitors”. So we hopped in the trenches that the French Canadians were in. We had no option, either that or take a chance of little piece of lead going through you or something.

No, that was a good experience on that one but it turned out pretty good because the Artillery, the Kiwis, we used to call them the six inch snipers, and they were really good. They used to come up there and as soon as their listening post, which they had very close, heard the rifle fire from 217, a barrage of bloody artillery would come in, and that would quieten them. So we ended having a good night sleep after

our take over. It went quiet the next day but then we had parcels from the Red Cross come up that afternoon and in it was the Sydney Morning Herald but that day was a Friday and that was a Sunday paper. It had been flown over from Sydney. It was only a couple days late and I was sitting on the edge of the trench that we had re-dug by this time. We’d filled in all the corners and I’m sitting on the edge of the trench

Friday morning in the sun, reading the late news in the Sydney Morning Herald, which was a bloody good target for 217. The only thing wrong was he missed me but he ruined me bloody paper. He landed her short and all the dirt flew up, straight through me paper, couldn’t read it. That was part I was cranky about, wasn’t worried about him missing me but no news! That was a bit of excitement too.

Oh unreal, they were unreal. The Red Cross used to send the little ones over, should of mentioned it earlier I suppose. We’d get one, like we were over there for 12 months. We went over there for 12 months duration, three stints of three months. Every three months you’d get a little parcel from the Red Cross. You wouldn’t know what was in it but it could be a little cake or a jam, or some

IXL [brand name] jam or something like that, some little luxury. They were good, very good to get but the old Red Cross used to do that, Red Cross and the Sallies [Salvation Army]. Speaking of the Sallies, I cannot go without mentioning them. We had a bloke over there, a captain…bummer! I should know that man’s name, sorry about this.

Anyway, he was in the Salvation Army and he had this jeep that was rigged up on the front, and held a 50 gallon urn rigged on the front of the jeep, hot tea. It was an insulated urn and he used to come up there. This hill I’m talking about now we relieved from the French Canadians because the Canadians, the French Canadians, they have a jeep road nearly to the top of the hill.

He used to come up there every second morning with this big urn on the front of the bloody doover, hot cups of tea. Oh lovely! The same bloke, he signed on for an extra year over there but before I left, after my 12 months was up, he had been there 18 months the Salvation Army bloke and he lost three jeeps, direct hits

with shells, and never got hurt. He was nowhere near the jeep when they hit them but one bloke was telling me there one morning, the morning he come up to us on that hill…I can’t think of the name. He got the direct hit and this bloke was watching it and he said you’ve never see tea like it. I apparently must have hit right on the engine part of the jeep and it just blew the urn to pieces, and the jeep to pieces. Three of them he lost in 18

months while he was there. I don’t know what he done in that last six but God he was a terrific old bloke, drive up there, wouldn’t matter if they were shelling or not, he would still come up, bring up the morning tea for the boys. No, you can’t get away from the old Sallies. They are worth a mention on anything! So if anyone watching this tape later on, Salvation comes up, wants you to help them, give!

A very good one, a very good morale booster. The mail people or the echelon mob, they used to do their best to get the mail to you when they received it. There was nothing held. If anything come in, like this morning, they’d have it up to you

that afternoon, wouldn’t matter what was happening. The mail was a very big morale booster to everyone because nothing happening and you’d sit down there, and you’d read a letter from your mother or some bloke would be talking about his girlfriend, what she’s doing back home. It was just you were corresponding to one another about Australia and they were good, real boosters, real good.

My mother, sisters and my little girlfriend, never wrote to the brothers because they wouldn’t write back. I’ll tell them that too!

Ha ! Give me my five pound! Yeah! No, I’ll never see that.

That’s what they told us, minus 30.

A good question. When the first Australian army went over to Korea it was in wintertime I think but they went over in our winter

uniforms, which as you know the Australia winter is cold, but not freezing cold. They went over there and had to put up with that in Korea because they had no uniforms to wear. Then the British army issued the Australian army with winter clothing because the British had the clothing and after that all the British Commonwealth,

which the Australian army ended up forming with the British army lot, and they supplied all the clothing, which was very adequate in winter because they had thermal singlets. They were terrific things, like a fishing net but keep the cold out! Oh they were terrific! They had parkas and the silly part that

they had was gloves, big thick woollen gloves, leather but wool that thick on the inside. How ya gonna pull the trigger? They thought of it. They put one little finger there but you had to take the trigger guard off to use your trigger. It was too big. That was a good thought but…because if you take the trigger guard off and you’re standing to, all you’ve got to do is

touch the trigger, “Spchooo!” That was a good thought but we couldn’t use them, used the left hand and not the right hand!

They were sort of but they were white. They were fur lined and they were white to camouflage in with the snow, so you could walk around and lay in the snow, and no one could see you.

About seven inches I suppose in places but this hill I was talking about where we took over from the French Canadians, this bloke, he come from down south. He was a skier in his young school days and that, so we used to walk down early in the morning, daylight to pick the rations up to bring them back up, the daily rations. He thought,

“Bugger this walking!” So he got up and he started sliding down the hill in his boots and he made this nice smooth track down there, so in morning time we used to hop up, and slide down. He taught us how to stand up properly on it. We used to get down the bottom real quick! Our problem was walking back up again loaded up with the rations! So that’s where I learnt to ski, sliding down a hill in Korea with boots on.

Well, Christmas time we were back in reserve and we had a brigadier or someone was coming over there, a big…I forget his name. I’m shocking on names but he was coming over there for Christmas to see how we were going and he was one of the heads in the army, the Australian army. So our CO said, “Righto! We’ll get the workers, Korean workers together.

We’ll build a big hall.” So they went out and got poles. I don’t know where from, must have been down around Seoul or somewhere, came back with all these big poles, truckloads, dug them in, got the cross arms and everything up. Then the next thing away they went and they come back with all this hay, and they thatched it, put a thatched roof up, all up the sides, all on the roof. It was bloody terrific! They put these tables up the middle. Come Christmas Day, they set her all up

very elaborate, Christmas cakes, a bottle of Suntory whiskey, a bottle of Johnny Walker whiskey but that was up the top end where the hierarchy was going to be. We come up there and we were helping the Korea blokes with this. We were handing it up to them, this bloody thatch stuff and next thing this officer comes out, and says, “Who knocked off the whiskey?” “Not us sir! We haven’t been inside.” “Some bastard’s knocked the whiskey

off! So and so will be here in a minute. He’ll be here in half an hour.” So anyway, we carried on. We couldn’t do anything, so we carried on helping the Korean blokes. They ended up…they finished the roof and everything. She looked really good and about two hours after they found the whiskey gone up the hill was this “Yahoo” and “Cooee” going on. This blokes coming down, “Where are they?” He got the bloody rifle. Lucky he had no ammo. Someone else had took it off him. He’s coming

down the hill with a .303, “Where are the bastards! I’ll shoot the lot of them! Where are they?” He was flying down the hill staggering everywhere. We found out who took the whiskey! The Suntory whiskey though was Korean. South Korea made it and because this bloke went off his head…we he come down we tackled him. There was four of us. I was the smallest one of the four. I was bloody fit in those days and we were flat out holding him down. God he was

strong! Just through the bloody…he’d gone off his head. So they took it back and they analysed this Suntory whiskey and it’s five percent urine in it! So she was a good drink! Yeah, made in Korea. That was a nice little episode. That’s right, I got off the story, the snow. Why they built this, we were going to have a white Christmas. We didn’t.

Boxing Day down she come. Everyone was looking to have this white Christmas. No, we missed out by one day and then she never stopped them for a couple of months, and cold! The old Indian River, it’s a flowing river and it’s fairly wide, and the blokes had…I don’t know where they got these skates from, got them from somewhere, used to go out and skate.

It was frozen and it was about that thick this ice, and the water underneath was still running, so it froze the running water. That’d give you an idea of how chilly it was.

No, probably because my hands might have been tough working on the bananas and that. They had plenty of corns on them, could have been. We had quite a few of out blokes over there

got frostbite. We had one bloke his name was Schmidt. He was a German and we used to call him Smithy. A big bloke he was! It really upset him but we used to do it to torment him. “My name is Schmidt not Smith! Schmidt!” “OK John, yes! You’re right.” So he goes out on listening post one night and she’s snowing. We had army boots, old leather, all leather

in those days, good leather. The blokes on the listening post at the time, there used to be four of us, one hour on, three hours off I think it was. When you was on the listening post you left your boots on because you were moving around all the time when you was out watching. While you was in the little tent that we had, you’d take them off because you had the thick army socks, a spare and you’d put them on, so you’ve got two socks on.

Smithy wouldn’t. He left his on and he was about six foot four. The hoochie [tent] was not long enough for his feet out in the snow. We had trouble getting that big bugger back into the post. We had to call for assistance. He got frostbite, first time I’ve ever seen it. It’s awful looking stuff. Your feet go black and swell up, shocking. That was an

experience, a new one I’ve never done before.

Not actually trench foot. What do you class trench foot as? Tinea?

We had a lot of blokes had tinea really bad because that’s caused through wet socks, perspiration. A lot of blokes had that real bad. I had that myself, had a couple of doses of that. No trench foot? I never run across that one but a lot of tinea, especially in summertime with the feet sweating and wet socks.

You couldn’t help it. It was part of the experience.

Only what they told us, like when you go back on reserve, they take you back to Battalion head quarters and they sit you out on a big ground. The CO gets up there and he tells you what good fellas you are, and what good jobs your doing, bloody goes on with a lot of bull. Then they come up and tell us why we

were there. All they told us was it was to stop the Communists taking over Korea and moving onto Japan because that’s what they were going to do. They were going to take the peninsular of Korea and use that as a steppingstone onto Japan. Japan was their next target. They found that out. That’s why they had to stop them.

No. We were just helping a country.

That’s all plus being young and silly I suppose, wanting a bit of excitement, something along those lines.

Only what I heard on the radio and read in the paper, which wasn’t very much because in the country no one seemed to talk about it. They actually never worried about it.

More or less. It’s like World War 11 blokes, they joined up to fight for Australia in England. Well, we joined up to fight for Australia because Australia was involved and England was there at the same time, Canada.

I can’t name them. There was 21 I think, different countries.

They were the same. You could not tell the difference. The only time you could tell the difference between the North Koreans, Chinese and South

Koreans was in the summertime. The North Koreans were darker. They have a darker skin. In wintertime they were both the same. The Chinese had a slight difference. They weren’t as dark skinned as the Koreans but the same facial features.

They had the same. They had the same because China supplied the

uniforms. China supplied all their guns and everything. That’s why the Korean, North Korean bloke…what’s his name? He wanted China to bring Russia into it and China wouldn’t do it. Russia didn’t want to come in anyway but they wanted to make it a real Communist fight, Communist party having a go. The

old Russians didn’t want to come into it thank heavens. The only reason the Chinese come into it was when the United Nations pushed them right up back to the Manchurian border. They were going to go right through and push them back into China, and take the whole of Korea. That’s when China came into it, “No you’re not. You’re not coming up here boys! We’ll push you back.” So that’s when she started to seesaw backwards and forwards,

more civilians.

Only what they told us, only what the intelligence told us. When they said they were ten to one against us, I thought, “That’s pretty good!” I wished I had that book here because it shows the number of the Chinese

army, our forces, how many was killed on both sides, civilians the whole lot. Well over a million was killed. Yeah, she was a nasty little war.

The ROK [Republic of Korea] Armies? Yes.

No. They were in a different sector

to us. They were over more or less towards the American sector because we had the Commonwealth Brigade on our sector and the French Canadians but apparently they came into the Commonwealth sector too. No, there was us, English, French Canadians, Canadians…who was the other two? There was six in the

whole sector that used to work along.

I never had much to do with them but we had a bloke with us, he was an interpreter and he used to come along, and he’d walk through, and find out how you were going. He’d go through the whole lot. He’d mainly talk with the digger, how they were going and what

they thought of it, and all that jazz. He was the interpreter for the battalion but some of them reckon he was going both sides, that he was on the North Korean side and our side. I don’t know whether he was or not. No, he spoke very fluent English. He was a good bloke. He shouted me a drink down at the officer’s mess one day and we liaisoned off. We had to go in there. “Oh come in here Snow. I’ll give you a drink.” It was that bloody Suntory

whiskey, a very dubious…

Well, on frontline and reserve.

Infantry, yes.

You go over there and you do three months.

That’s frontline and reserve. Then you have five days off R&R back in Japan. Then you come back and you have another three months, same thing. Then you get three weeks off back in Japan. By then you need it, so you come back and then they say you do another three months but that four weeks is taken out of your three months, so you only have two months to go. That’s when I got transferred to drive

the liaison officer about, which I wished I’d one earlier! She was a real bludge! Then they come up and they said, “Do you want to sign on again for another 12 months?” By this time I had arranged with my second eldest brother to be best man at his wedding, so I had to come home otherwise I would have probably signed on for another 12 months and made money out of the Yanks. Our canteen

had stuff the Americans wanted and their canteen whatsernames, they didn’t have it. That Kiora Fruit Cup, have you ever seen that? Fruit juice and Cottee’s used to make it. You add water to it to make the cordial orange drink and it used to

cost 60 Yen because we traded in Yen, Japanese money. 60 Yen and the American dollar was 100 Yen I think, might have been more. So anyway, when I started going down to the canteen this sergeant come up and he said, “Listen guy! Can ya get that Kiora Fruit Cup? I love it.” I said,

“Yeah! How many do you want?” He said, “Can you get a dozen?” “No trouble mate.” He give me the bloody money, 12 American dollars. I said, “I dunno how much it is.” A couple of other blokes come up there and they wanted stuff. This was the first week I’m with this bloody troop. He comes up, down I goes to the canteen and said to the officer, “I’m going to go in and get an order for the Yanks.” “OK!” “I won’t be long.” I goes in and It’s bloody…I think it was 60

Yen a bloody for litre and a half. That’s all right, back I go, come back that afternoon and the boys come round to get their order. I said to this Yank, “Listen mate…” “Don’t say a word guy! I give you 12 bucks and that’s what it cost. That’s what these guys are going to pay, a dollar a bottle.” So that’ll do me! I’m right! Making money out of them and once a week they used to do an order,

and they used to get a dozen bottles of Kiora fruit juice every time. I was making good money there, a good little racket going. That’s what I said to my brother, “You know I’ve come over here to be the best man at your wedding and I’m losing money!” I said, “Also me five pound!”

They had good entertainment because we used to go to them. They used to bring them over and their sector and our sector were side by side, and they used to work it over so when they were back on reserve, we used to be back in reserve, and they had this big amphitheatre on the side of a bank, a stage. They built a stage and everything down there. We had Bob Hope, Bing

Crosby, Marilyn Monroe, all that. Oh mate, you name them they used to get them over there, for nothing just free, free entertainment, and the place would be packed. So, I went down there one night and we were travelling there, and Marilyn Monroe was there, and I rode with her in the jeep. Blokes won’t believe me but I have. She gave us a lift back to the battalion in her jeep. I jumped in and I looked at her,

introduced…the blokes there introduced us. She was going around shaking hands with all the blokes and I said, “Anyone here got a lift back to the battalion?” She said, “We’re going back. How many of you?” It’s only me.” “OK hop in.” Her face from the hot lights and the make up was all wrinkled, old when you were close up to her, and I sort of stared at her. I said, “I’m sorry Miss Monroe.” She said, “Don’t worry about that. Everyone does that.” That’s the make up and the grease they used to use in those days,

and the hot lights for the cameras. It sort of cracked her skin. I had a ride in a jeep with Marilyn and no one would believe me.

Honest! Honest mate!

It normally went for about

three hours. The number of people there you would never estimate it because…say it would be a battalion of Yanks, close to around 800 to 1000 in a battalion. There’d be half a battalion of Australians, English, Kiwis, the artillery mob used to be there.

Where they picked it they built the stage and the hill come right around it in a horseshoe. It was a terrific place they picked and the sound carried with the mikes they had in those days. It was unreal. I was there for 12 months and they had two shows like that on but that was the biggest one, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Marilyn Monroe. I forget who the others were. There was about five

entertainers. That Bob Hope mate, he’s unreal! The things he comes out with! Of course with all the blokes there! Oh they had nurses too, that’s right. He told a couple and then he found out the nurses were there and he said, “I’ll have to ease up a bit on this won’t I!”

No. They put a skit

on about the golf, him and Bob. Bing and Bob put a skit on about the golf. They told a story about them out playing. I forget what the final of it was now. No, they were good entertainment. I forget the other one they brought over. They were big names that used to come over. They were voluntary.

Gave me a ride, a ride in her jeep because

there was her, her driver and no one else.

No I had to go to the battalion and report in to the battalion. They just dropped me off and I thanked her very much.

Then I shook her hand. That’s one thing I’ve got on a lot of blokes! I’ve talked to Marilyn Monroe face to face and I rode in her jeep!

No one knew about it.

All the Americans, they had their vehicles. They had the trucks. They loaded in the trucks when they finished. The English had their trucks. Actually I don’t know how it happened that I was there standing around on me own. I don’t know but as it happened it turned out good.

Oh yes! They just yahooed and cooeed. You couldn’t stamp your feet, a bit hard on grass. No they were really good, the entertainment. That broke the monotony. Yes that was really good.

Mmm.

No.

My colleagues I went over there with, when they done their 12 months they left and I was waiting to go down to meet them at the boat because we were going back over by boat to Japan, and this sergeant come up. He said, “McClymont! You can stay here. You’re not going.” I said, “Why?” He said, “You’ve got a day to go on your 12 months tour.”

“What’s going on?” I said, “I come over with these blokes. They’re all going home. Why can’t I?” He said, “You’ve got one more day to go.” I worked it out later where it happened and I’ve checked with the…after I came back from Korea I checked with the army when we were established here in Lismore. I thought it over and I got them to ring records in Melbourne, and they’ve got me down for

the 12 months and one day in Korea, and it’s on me discharge paper, 12 months and one day active service. 317, the Bren gunner and I were sent down around the side of the 317, and looking down this little gully in between where B company was and we were, they said someone might try to sneak up there, and that was out possie. So that was

seven o’clock in the morning, round we goes, we sit there and this hole dug in the side of the hill had enough food in there to last us two blokes I reckon a month, all Korean. It was all American stuff, a lot of Korean stuff in there but the majority, say 80% was American tinned food in this hole. We sat down there. We were sitting there all day looking out, a sort of lookout post we were.

Anyway, comes along dinnertime, midday, no relief, afternoon, no more relief, coming on dark and I said, “Listen Tom, what about the password? We’ve got to get past that blood frontline up there. We don’t know the password. It would be changed by now.” “Oh good God!” He said, “Right stuff them. We’re going up now!” We loaded

our bloody haversacks that we had there with all this tucker. The boys up there thought we were Christmas when we took it back to them. So we gets up there and next thing the platoon commander comes along. He said, “Where have you blokes been?” He said, “We had you down missing.” I said, “We’ve been down there, where the bloody platoon commander sent us this morning!” I can’t think of there names but I’ll just tell you their bloody rank. “Where?” I said, “Down that hole. We were doing a listening post down that little gully

there.” “Oh!” He called the sergeant over. He said, “Yeah! Weren’t you blokes relieved?” We said, “No! We just come back. We had to come back because we didn’t know the password. Wasn’t going to get shot getting near night!” “Oh!” So it ended up he comes up and he says, “Righto!” So that was all it was and that’s the day I reckon that I missed in Korea. That’s why I got 12 months and one day because they had us missing while we were down doing that where they sent us. They never relieved us! That’s the only thing I know of.

No, otherwise I went down the next day, hopped on the boat and I had a lovely, leisurely trip over with a few English blokes that were finished, and made a bit of money on a game of cards. I played a bit of poker on the way over. Some of them couldn’t play but they had money! I took it off them, made cheap beers in Japan when I got there.

It was because

I had nothing to do and I had to go back to the unit, back to RAEME because by then the driving liaison officer , another bloke had had it, had the job, and I was back in RAEME down in the workshop, and I had to go back there. They took me back there and the next morning they took me back down to the boat again, another boat, hopped on that, and that was a day and a half trip across in the boat. After that

they started demobbing us and issuing for new clothing, and everything. We got all our old clothes or new clothes, all new clothes issued to us, a complete issue.

No and I never intend to go back again. A lot of the blokes have gone back to have a look at it but I never intend to go back. I don’t want to see it again,

seen enough, barren country, God’s forgotten country. No, we said over there and I reckon we could stop all wars if you get all the leaders of every country, all the top dogs, one leader from each country, put them in a big corral, give them a bloody stick each, don’t give them a gun, give them a stick each and whoever comes out alive runs the world.

We were there for …with demobbing and everything, medical checks, what have you

I think about seven days we were in Japan. Yes it would be, about a week.

We were flown back to Australia as a civilian with Qantas. We were treated as civilians on the airplane, which was good because we could have the same as what the civilians had, like a drink now and

again. It was quite good.

Yes we landed in Sydney at the airport.

Well, we arrived home. There was myself, a navy bloke, two air force blokes and a nurse. There was five of us.

We arrived in Mascot. They had a minibus there, an army bus to pick us up. We were loaded on the bus and straight out to Moorebank, and that’s where we stayed then until we were more or less demobbed, and transferred. I was transferred to Lismore, 41 Battalion. The other blokes were transferred. The air force blokes, they went to Newcastle I think.

I don’t know where the nurses went but we were down there about 10 days I think at Moorebank before we got moved out.

After I got home there was a good one. Can I tell you a little story at Moorebank? When we were down there every morning they come up, parade call.

They’d allocate each bloke a job. One bloke come up there and he was mumbling about this wood, cutting the wood. I just said to the sergeant, “What’s it involve sergeant?” He said, “We’ve got a load of wood over there, about a tonne. You’ve got to split it up and stack it. That’s your day’s work.” I said, “Have they got a blockbuster?” He said, “What’s that?” I said, “To split the wood with.” “Buggered if

I know. What are you volunteering?” I said, “Yeah! What happens when I finish?” He said, “Come and see me and I’ll give you a leave pass. You can do what you like for the rest of the day.” So anyway, I went down to see the sergeant cook and I said, “Have you got a blockbuster?” He said, “Nup! I know what they are but we haven’t got one. Go over to the Q [Quartermaster] store and draw one out, tell them it’s for us.” “OK!” So I goes over and seen the bloke in the Q Store. “I’ve come over from the kitchen to get a blockbuster.” “Blockbuster? We

haven’t got one. What’s that? We haven’t got one.” I looked over and I said, “There! Right behind you. That.” “He said, “That’s what that bloody thing is!” In the Q Store and he didn’t know what it was! So anyway, I took it over there and this beautiful red gum wood, away into her. I took my shirt off and away into her. About an hour and a half I walked into the sergeant and I said, “That all the wood that’s out there mate?” He said “Yes. What? Are you finished?” I said, “Yeah.” “Holy

Christ! You didn’t break any axes?” I said, “No! I used the blockbuster.” “Oh!” He said, “Every time they come here to use it they normally break about two handles chopping it up.” Anyway, I goes over, gets me leave pass. He had to sign a little chit to say that I’d finished. I went over to the sergeant in the orderly Room, got my leave pass and away I went to Sydney into town, into the main part of Sydney. The next morning comes up. “Wood detail?” [puts hand up] “OK McClymont!

You’re on.” The third morning, “Wood detail?” [puts hand up] This bloke alongside me says, “How come you’re volunteering for the wood detail for? It’s a shit of a job.” “Only if you know what you’re doing.” I said, “It’s all right”… or if you don’t know what your doing. I said, “If you know what you’re doing it’s OK.” “Righto!” He said, “I might do it tomorrow morning.” I said, “You can have it. What are you doing?” He said, “I’m peeling potatoes.” So anyway, four mornings I done it and then he took over. He volunteered. He beat me to it.

The old sergeant, he come in the next morning, the cook…the sixth day, that’s right. He come up and he said…the sergeant calling out the details, he said, “McClymont is on the wood detail.” I said, “Why?” He said, “He’s the only bloke that cuts the bloody wood properly!” So I ended up with that as me job! I could do it in about an hour and a half, two hours was about the longest I done it, go over and get my leave

pass into town. All these other poor buggers were there peeling spuds, big barrels of them.

The only thing we seen when I

come back to Sydney, I went to a newsreel theatre and watched the news one afternoon, and they had a little bit in it about Korea. I say a little bit, it lasted about two minutes if that. That’s all I ever seen about Korea. No one knew it was on. No one in Australia knew the war was on, only the people of the soldiers, families of the soldiers. When I got up home because

I used to work out at Rock Valley before I joined the army on the bananas and everyone around there knew me. They knew I joined the army and went over to Korea, so they put on a big welcome home party out at Rock Valley hall. It was one of the best nights I’ve ever had I think. I hardly stopped dancing and drinking. As soon as the dances finished these blokes said, “Come here Snow! We’ve got a little drink for you.” Out you go

and have a bit of wine or a bottle of beer, or something. I kept dancing all night. While you kept moving, you keep drinking and you don’t get drunk. That’s what I done, ended up a good night and still pretty sober at the end of it. That was me welcome home. It would be a fortnight, three weeks after I got home when they put that on.

Well it’s the same. No one knew about it when we left to go over and no one knew much about it when we come back. It never changed. There was nothing to worry about, you know?

No. No, it never worried me.

I thought to myself, “No one is interested in it.” That’s why it’s always been known as ‘The Forgotten War’ because no one knew about it, no one worried about it, only the families of the soldiers that were there.

No! No I just went over. I got paid for it. It’s like doing a job, you

get paid for it, so you have to do it. That’s all it amounts to.

Oh yes!

What we done is something that had to be done. If it wasn’t we’d have been in trouble.

The whole world would have been in trouble because Communism would have just flowed through like a volcano, lava out of a volcano, everywhere. I know they had Japan lined up after Korea and the islands just south of Japan, and they were heading towards Australia because Australia being so isolated, they were going to hit that quick. We would have been looking after little

blokes running around in thongs mate by now! No, it was a war that had to be fought. You can’t get away from that. As far as accolades go and that, we done it, we survived, we arrived home in one piece. What more could you want? I seen countries that I’d never seen had I not joined the army. That’s the way I look at it.

No, it was a great experience, something that would never have happened if I hadn’t have been in the army, hadn’t volunteered. If I’d have sat back and just waited to be conscripted, like a lot of the blokes did…I got back from over there and I

got posted to Lismore, to 41 Battalion and I was up there 18 months. The acting RSM [Regimental Sergeant Major] and I didn’t see eye to eye one day. I told him to get out the back and take his shirt off but he never. The next thing I knew I ended up with malaria in hospital and he come up there, and he said, “Can you sign this” knowing I’m half there. I was bloody delirious. I signed it. When I got out of hospital and

recuperated he come up, and said, “You’ve got to pack your gear mate! You’re going to Wollongong.” He had me posted to Wollongong just because I had a dispute with him, which was a good thing because that’s where I met my wife! That’s where I met Margaret down there. She was a nurse and I was in the army but that’s early on the tape.

Oh yes! The RSL,

as soon as I went and filled the form in here in Grafton, they accepted me straight away. No hassle there.

1957 yes.

National

Service come in in 1952 I think and a lot of the CMF blokes, regular Army CMF were looking after the National Service blokes after they done their rookie training. I was posted to Lismore to 41 Battalion and after about three months I was transferred over to Casino to look after the National Service blokes there, in the Q store [Quartermaster’s store]and what have you.

Then after a while we had the little dispute with the acting RSM and I ended up down in Wollongong with 34 Battalion, and I was there for four and a half years I think in the Q store. I got ranked to corporal and had another disagreement with the RSM down there. I don’t like RSMs! Then next thing I was posted back to

3 Battalion, which was at Ingleburn and I spent the last five months with 3 Battalion before I was discharged. That’s me life history in the regular Army. I come up here to Grafton. My wife lived here so we moved back here and I started on the City Council. I was talking to a chap one day and he said there was no one in the Q store in the company here at Grafton, so I said, “Well

what’s it like?” He said, “There are a few blokes down there, a parade every Thursday night. Every fortnight you have a bivouac weekend and blah, blah, blah.” He said, “You’ll come in as a sergeant in the Q store.” I said, “Yeah? OK! What about the crown?” He said, “You’ll have to work for that.” So anyway, I goes in as a sergeant in the Q store and done eleven and a half years with them. I had a disagreement with the little pipsqueak

bloody lieutenant and I said, “That’s it! You can stick it in your bum!” So I left after eleven and a half years with the CMF. So I got out of my Army career and have been a civilian ever since.

No. I didn’t want to. You seen what happened today.

Shouldn’t but these things happen. It’s only 51 years ago too. I’ve got a bad memory haven’t I! It’s something you’ll never forget.

Comradeship, relying on your fellow men, don’t let the weather beat you!

I don’t know. I can’t think of anything much else. That’s the main thing in the Army, the comradeship and looking after your fellow men, and they’ll look after you, and make it what you want it to. If you want it hard, you make it hard. If you want it to go easy, you can make it easy. So really it’s all up to the individual.

That’s what I found. It is entirely his make of it.

To a certain thing I reckon it would, it would have had to. It made me tougher

to different things. It definitely changed your lifestyle or your life, how you feel and everything but it’s hard to say for different individuals I suppose because it affects different blokes different ways.

Where it stems from, how it affects anyone is from their childhood. If they’ve had a good childhood like I have, you can live with things and sort of just flow with the tide but I think if you had a bad childhood, and a hard one, well you’re going to be grump against other people. That way you’ll get yourself into trouble, which I’ve see a lot of blokes do.

The old army life is still what you want to make it. That’s the bottom line. If you want to enjoy it you can but if you want to make it hard, they can make it hard for you, even your mates. They’ll make it hard for you too. I would advise any young chap

of 18 years that hasn’t got a job or a hobby, not a hobby…I have a blank I’m sorry. I can’t think of the word but I would advise any young chap that is unemployed to try and join the services, even 17. I think they’ll take them at 17 now and they get taken to apprenticeship.

16 year olds can move into apprenticeships if it’s there and they do six years, and they’re fully fledged officers on big money now in the army. I advise any young chap that wanted to, to go straight into the service, either one of the three of them because it’s a great life for an unmarried man, put it that way.

What I said earlier! Put all the big hierarchy fellas in a ring and let them fight it out. That’s the only way to stop wars.

All you have to do…it’s the only way to stop war. You get all the leaders of every country, put them in a big corral, cover it over, give them a piece of stick each and whoever comes out is the bloke that rules the world for 12 months. Every 12 months do the same thing and I’ll guarantee there’ll be no wars! There wouldn’t even be a drop of blood spilled in that corral because all they’d do is talk, put

a couple of bottles of Scotch in there and they’ll be right. They’ll talk and drink. No, these bloody leaders of countries, they are shocking. But why do people let them do it? The people are just as bad. Look at the ones overseas, these bombers and that, the suicide bombers. How stupid is that for a person to hop in a loaded bloody vehicle and drive it just to kill someone,

and himself. They have to be brainwashed. No, that’s the only way to stop wars mate, put all those leaders together and their 2ICs [second in command] because they’re just as bad. Let them all go and have a fight! [laughs] That was our solution in Korea anyway but it will never succeed because they won’t do it.

Thanks a lot! Thanks for doing it.