Australians at War Film Archive

My parents lived in a little country town in north-eastern Victoria, Kiewa. I was born in Albury. My mother travelled 16 miles in a horse and sulky to go from Kiewa to

the hospital in Albury. That was on the 7th of February 1920. As a very young bloke I moved from Kiewa down to Wangaratta. My father worked in the baker. From Wangaratta we moved out, my father took a soldier settlement block at a place called Peechelba

between Wangaratta and Yarrawonga. He was no farmer, so after 4 years he had to leave the property. We moved from there back into Wangaratta, and from Wangaratta we went to Yarran in the Riverina where he was a baker. We lived in Barwick, from Yarran to Barwick Creek where he had his own bakery and I went to Wagga high school in Barwick Creek.

From Barwick Creek we moved back down to Rutherglen where my Dad bought a bakery. It was in Rutherglen that I enlisted to go to the war in 1939. I went down to Puckapunyal, one of the original people to move into Puckapunyal in those days. It was a new camp. From Puckapunyal we was taken to,

we left Australia on the 14th of April 1940 and we went to Palestine. We did training in the desert in Palestine. That was quite interesting. We came across a lot of battlefields from the First World War around Beersheba, where the Australians made a good name for themselves. From Palestine we went across to Egypt. Did more training in the desert

west of Cairo. Then we was taken up into Libya, the first active service that we did was in Libya at Bardia. From there we fought our way through to Benghazi. The night before my 21st birthday Benghazi was

captured and we drove on. About 2 o'clock in the morning we stopped about 80 mile west of Benghazi. That was the morning of my 21st birthday. Don’t ask me where the boys got it from, but there was bottles for vino [wine] and what have you, came around to, I was a driver at the time, and

came round to my truck and we celebrated my 21st birthday about 3 o'clock in the morning. Then we returned back to a place called Bardia. I was involved in taking the new 8th Division that was formed in the desert by road up to

where we was relieved. Then we came back from there and went to Mersa Matruh. Just out of Tobruk on our way back we got a terrific sandstorm. Everything had to stop. There was no way in the world you could see anything. We was there pulled up about two or three hours waiting for this sandstorm to go. Then we went back to Mersa Matruh and

we got word to say we had to re-equip and get up and go to Greece. So I arrived in Greece on the 1st April 1941 and Greece was a very quick disastrous campaign. We had nothing, the Germans had everything. We contacted the Germans right up on

the Yugoslav border at a place called Veve Pass. From there on we was forced right back down to Kalamata. We evacuated at Kalamata on the night of the 26th of April. We had to embark on destroyers because ships couldn't pull in at Kalamata at that stage. We was taken out

into the deep water in the Mediterranean and transferred onto a troopship. My battalion got split in half. Half went onto the City of London which was a troopship that was out on the water and the other half was put on the Costa Rica. We were heading back to Alexandria. We was well on our way back to Alexandria when we got hit by and aerial

torpedo and the ship was sunk. We was picked up by destroyers and taken back to Crete because the destroyers were going back to help with the evacuation of Greece. We arrived in Crete with what we stood up in. No rifle, nothing. The senior officers that were there, General Weston and General Freyberg, one was a Pommy, the other a Kiwi, they volunteered for us to fight for the island

and we did sentry duty and we had one weapon to a platoon. When two chaps went on sentry duty, one carried the Owen sub machinegun, and one carried the weapon, the other carried the ammunition. When we was relieved we handed it over to somebody else until the parachutes landed. Then they came out with

a British weapon carrier and they issued weapons. I was in the lucky dip to get a Thomson sub machinegun. I had no equipment to carry any ammunition and after a while we lost the island.

I was taken prisoner of war. I was taken from there to Salonika. In Salonika we were losing 10 a day to starvation, contrary to what the federal government think. Then we was put in cattle trucks. We did seven days going from Salonika up to a place called Moosberg, Stalag 7A. We went

to work in Munich for a while and from there taken up to Stalag 8B, which was Lanmsdorff. We had one of the chaps that was made famous by not his having any legs, Douglas Bader, he was in the camp, and nobody liked him. Then we were sent out to Poland down the coalmines. I worked

in the coalmines. I hated the coalmines. Something I’d never ever seen and 350 metres down that big, black hole is something I’ll never forget. I couldn’t get out of the mine. I thought I might try all different ways, but no hope. One day I got hit with a fall of coal, which

damaged my leg a bit. Coming out of the mine I was more determined to get out of the mine and they had a sign up that they wanted a bricklayer. I’d never laid a brick in my life, but I was a bricklayer. So I got out of the mine and worked as a bricklayer. My leg went bad and I finished up I was in the sick bay. I had to have my leg

opened up. Three blokes held me down while the doctor opened me up in three places. Then they started the 700 kilometre march from the east across to the west. I was on crutches in the snow. That was in January. I did one very long day on crutches from about 7:30 in the morning to two o'clock the next morning.

Nobody was worried too much about me, so I got out and I hid in a basement under a building from the 21st January to the 28th January. By that time I was really, really, really sick. I couldn’t do anything for myself. I was in a mess. The Russians came and they didn't want me. They took me out and put me in the snow and left me. I was there

for about 10 hours. I’m not one to give up, but boy I thought I was getting onto my last legs there. But two Poles come along and recognised, because I had a British battledress uniform on, recognised me as a Britisher and one went away. I didn't know what they were talking about. One went away and the other stayed with me

and the other chap came back with a stretcher. There was a sled as well. They put me on this stretcher and towed me about three or four kilometres into the township of Boynton [?]. They took me into a convent school where the nuns looked after me. Saved my life. Actually, I’ve dedicated in front of my book. Then the Russians ordered me out of

the convent and I had to make my, two South Africans and myself, I may as well tell you. In the coalmines, people got so distressed that they couldn’t get out of it. It was from four o'clock in the morning till eight o'clock at night in the mine, that was a day. You had to do 20 days straight

and you got one day off, which, with the food we was getting, was pretty disastrous I can tell you. I’ve seen chaps put their hand at the end of the table and get a mate with a stick to smash all their fingers to get time off. Chaps scratched their arm, put salt in the hair in it and tied it up to make it go sceptic. The worst one I seen was a chap scratched his arm and another

bloke had a boil and squeezed the core out of it and laid it on his arm and tied it up and he was really, really sick he was. I don’t know whether he lived. One of these South Africans to get a day off, he put his foot in a bucket with his boot and sock on and got his mate to fill it with boiling water. He had a really bad foot. When he took his sock off the skin and everything came off.

He came into the convent. The other South African, I don’t know how it happened, but he had a broken ankle. The three of us teamed up. I had a gammy knee, these two had gammy feet, and we got ordered out of the convent and we had to make our own way to Krakow. We got lined up in Sosnevic up against the wall with three sub machineguns and a pistol trained on us.

We was there for some time. Maybe it felt longer than what it really was. But it seemed a very long time. From there we got out of that. We were saved by some Poles and was told to get on a train and go to Krakow. No help in any way. So at midnight we jumped on a goods train with all factory equipment, lathes and all that sort of stuff they’d

taken out of the factories and taking back into Russia. We eventually got to Krakow and got put in prison in Krakow. We were put in cattle trucks in Krakow. Took 17 days to go from Krakow to Odessa. In that time they gave us nothing to eat. We sold our meagre clothing to peasants when

the train stopped. We used to get a little wedge of stale bread and a hardboiled egg for your boots or your trousers or whatever. That’s how we survived for 17 days going into Odessa. We were in Odessa until a British ship came. Then I was taken from there to England. I met my little air force girl and we finished up we got married. We’re still married

today. I started a bakery when I came home in Rutherglen. It was quite a funny situation. People of Rutherglen weren’t happy with the treatment they’d got during the war by the bakers there. Maybe it wasn’t their fault, but it was pretty well restricted but the people didn’t

believe that. When I got home they put everybody started saying, “When Charlie Parrott gets home he’ll start a bakery and we’ll get back to some good service.” At any rate, I did. I went to buy one of the chaps out, who agreed to sell. I arranged for some finance from the flour mill.

I was to take over on the 1st January 1946. Just before Christmas I went down to make sure everything was going and he told me he wasn’t going to sell. He said, “You can’t open up so I’m not going to sell.” I had no intentions at that time of opening. So I decided that well if that’s the case I’ll see about opening. I walked down the street and I was telling a chap and he said, “You want a shop?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “I’ll sell you that on down there at the state electricity

commission” so I bought a shop, my brother and I, we bought it. Then we got a chap up from Melbourne to build an oven. Then the bread manufacturers of Victoria blackballed us and we couldn’t buy any flour in Victoria, couldn’t buy any yeast in Victoria, so just across the river from Rutherglen was a place called Corowa and I had a friend there that I’d known before the war had a bakery. He said,

“I’ll get you flour. All you’ve got to do is cart it 6 mile across the river.” I said, “That’ll do me.” So that’s how I carried on until another chap had a bakery who we was quite friendly with. He was an elderly man and he wanted to get out. So he wanted the other chap and myself to buy him out. The other bloke said, “No, I’m not going to buy

him out. If they buy it I’ll still get half the business for nothing.” So eventually we negotiated a price and we bought him out. The bread manufacturers sent word up to say that we was eligible to be a member and I told them what they could do with their membership. Funny thing they sent me up a fully paid certificate of the bread manufacturer’s association.

We started too hard a work and we both got a bit sick, coming straight out of prison camp. We had no machines. Everything was done by hand. I used to mix 450 pound of flour by hand. It was pretty hard work. So we eventually sold out. I went up to the I went up to the Kiewa hydro electric scheme.

I was there until 1958. The last job went just a bit over 12 months, they got me to open a bakery there and I opened a bakery in Mount Beauty, the first one that was every operating in Mount Beauty and I sold it when I got the job with the Commonwealth government to come to Alice Springs. I’ve been in the Territory

pretty well ever since. I’ve had a few breaks away. The last break I had was I got pretty sick and Veteran’s Affairs in South Australia was the hardest people that you could even get any treatment out. Jack Larkin will tell you the same thing when you meet him. So I went to Queensland to get medical treatment and I was there for 3 years.

They told me I got Barrett’s oesophagus. They reckoned there was nothing wrong with me here. The doctor they sent me to here, she said that there was nothing wrong. There’s the report in the back of the book from the doctor telling me that there was absolutely nothing wrong with me.

So I appealed against it with Vet Affairs and Vet Affairs decided that they’d knock some of the pensions I already had off. I couldn’t do any good with them. I lodged my appeal in January 1986 and by January 88 there was nothing done about it. I was getting really concerned

so I went to Queensland and they told me I should have been on TPI [Totally and Permanently Incapacitated Pension]. But by that time it was too late, I was over 65 and our politicians decided that once you turned 65, no returned soldier should be on a TPI Pension,so I never got TPI. But I have to go and

do what I call ‘Swallow the snake’, every 6 months. They have photographs taken and they do biopsies of me, and you know that endoscopy, put a camera, it takes photographs too, I’m pretty good at photography. So now I’m on treatment and I feel as though I can keep on going now. But I was very, very worried.

I’m involved with the justices of the peace in the Northern Territory. I’ve been president of the Northern Territory Justices’ Association for about 5 years. This year I’m president of the Australian Council of Justices’ Association. Is that near enough for?

In Albury. On the seventh of the second 1920. I’m only a youngster.

At that time there was 6 other brothers and sisters and myself. Two more came after me. There was 9 in the family. They

didn’t have TV in those days you know.

Dad was a baker and Mum was just a housewife.

I was a bit of a bugger of a kid, I believe. When we was on the farm in Victoria,

that’s mainly where my memories come in when we was out on the farm. Dad had a dairy farm. I used to play around the cattle yards. We used to go out rounding up the cattle when I was a young bloke. I used to go out with my brothers and sisters. We only had one pair of shoes and that was the best, so you run around the farm with bare feet.

Real frosty mornings we’d go out in the early morning to round up the cows barefooted. Wait for the cow to do her job and run up and put your feet in it and warm them up. It was good, didn’t get chilblains with that. That was the way things were in those days. They didn’t have a lot of money, but we had a lot of fun.

Then from Peechelba we went back into Wangaratta for a while. Dad was just working in a place called Howlong, not far from Albury. We was just, he’d come home weekends to Wangaratta and then they had a friend that had a farm. He’d sold

his farm and he wanted to go into a bakery. He said to Dad “I’ll put up the money to buy the bakery, you put up the expertise, and we’ll be 50-50 partners.” So they went to Yarran and bought a bakery in Yarran. That’s where my Dad got his real start. Then after 3 years Dad thought he’d like to get out on his own, so they, on a friendly basis,

they settled up at the place in Yarran and Dad bought a bakery in Barwick Creek. That’s where I started baking when I left high school. I left high school to go into the ES&A Bank [English, Scottish and Australian]. The bank was next-door to our baker shop.

I went, did everything, all the examinations and everything else and I was set to go into the bank. I was just waiting for word to say when to start. The bank manager, a chap by the name of Harold Waites, he came in and said, “Charlie I want to see you.” I thought “Here we go, must be something to do with the job at the bank.” He said, “You’ve got a bantam rooster, haven’t you?” I said, “Yeah.”

He said, “If you go down to my place” which was a couple of hundred metres down the back of our place “If you go down there you’ll find a head on one side and the body on the other side of a log.” His fowls used to come up into our yard all the time. I think my bantam rooster got out of his pen and went down with these other fowls.

So I wasn’t’ very happy about this as a young bloke. Next morning I got up very early and I knew his WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s would be up in our yard. There was 6 of them came up into the yard. So I rounded them into the bantam pen and I start wringing their necks. I got 3 done when my father heard the commotion and came out. He stopped me.

When the bank opened I went into the bank and I said, “Mr Waites?” He said, “Yup.” I said, “You’ve got some WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s up in our yard this morning.” He said, “Oh.” I said, “If you go round the back you’ll find three of them. Their necks are a bit longer than what they were when they came in.” The funny thing, I didn't get a job in the bank.

My Dad was a bit crooked on me. He said, “Into the bakehouse” so I started off being a baker. I played a lot of tennis in those days. I won a few tournaments round Riverina. When I went to Wagga high school I got to the semi-finals of the Riverina junior championships, so I was quite happy with my efforts.

Tennis is a thing of the past now. I go and have a hit it off every now and again. But they haven’t got a handicap big enough for me.

Terrific. It was. I know there’s a lot of them missing, but we’re all still great friends. We were right up until

my first brother was killed in 1938 on a motorbike. He used to play the piano. He had his own orchestra and go out and play for dances and we used to love dancing. It used to be a great turnout. But he got killed in 1938 and that was a great loss to the family. I think the

next loss we had was my father in 1961. He died and that was the next one. Then my mother lived another 11 years. She was 91 when she died. Dad was 82 when he died. My eldest sister passed away a couple of years ago. She was 94.

I’ve got a sister in Melbourne at the moment. She’s 95 this year. So we’re all getting long in the tooth.

That was quite hard times, the Depression. I worked with me Dad in

a place called Lockhart in the bakery. The amount of people that used to carry their swags was unbelievable. We was in the bakehouse and our batch of bread was 300 loaves, 2 pound loaves of bread. Believe it or not, I’ve seen my Dad give a full batch of bread away. He had a heart of gold.

It would never happen today, but I’d say a good 70% of those blokes got a job and came back and paid Dad for the bread. It wasn’t immediately, it would be within 12 months or so. It wouldn’t happen today. I think today it’s more what you should do. No, the Depression was really hard.

My Dad wasn’t a rich man, but he helped a lot of people. A couple of instances, one of my brothers, he died a couple of years ago, he’s second up from me. We used to act the goat in Yarran, playing around as kids. Had big wood heaps and that for the fires for the oven.

He got knocked over and hurt his hip. He had a limp. It didn’t go away. One day there was a chap come in, carrying this swag and he came to the bakehouse and he asked Dad if he could have a loaf of bread. He said, “I’ll do anything to get a loaf of bread.” Dad said, “No, I’ll give it to you.” This chap saw my

brother walking and he said, “Hey, what’s wrong with his leg?” Dad said, “He fell over some time ago.” He said, “Do you mind if I have a look at it?” This bloke was a doctor carrying his swag. What he told Dad to do, was absolutely right. He sent my brother to Sydney and he had a cracked hip bone. That’s the sort of people that were

really genuine people, but fell by the wayside during the Depression. I’ve seen so many people, well educated, that come before bad times during the Depression. It was a shocking time. My Mum and Dad, they weathered it. As I say, they were never wealthy, but they weathered it and they brought up 9 children and

I think we’ve all done pretty well.

Well, Dad had 2 businesses at that stage. He had one at Barwick Creek and one at Lockhart and I went into Lockhart with him to work in the bakery there.

Dad and I did all the baking. My eldest brother did the town round with the horse and cart. There was never any machinery in my Dad’s bakery. It was, that’s your machines. It was hard work, but it was healthy work I reckon.

It gave me a good strong chest. When I joined the army they did the medical and did a chest measurement and I think I was 32 round the chest at the time. They asked me to expand my chest and I could put it out to 37 inches. My shoulders was always big and strong. Hard work

never hurt anybody.

I had several. I started school at Peechelba as a young bloke. I went to school in Wangaratta. I went to school in Yarrana. I got detention in Yarrana as a young bloke. I was only about 7 years old or something like that. I can’t recall what I did,

but the teacher’s name was Miss Leas. She kept me in after school and then decided that she forgot all about me. She went home and I couldn’t get anybody around so I climbed out through the window and went home. Then from Yarrana I went to Barwick Creek. I went from Barwick Creek to

Wagga high school. I left the high school to go into the bank, but it never eventuated.

Tennis, everything, tennis, cricket, football. I used to ride a pushbike a lot. We’d ride a pushbike from Wagga to Barwick Creek, which one way was 58 miles

on heavy sandy roads. The first time we did it there was 2 of us and we dropped one chap off at his farm on the way. His sister met us with some hot soup and everything else. I still think that this mate of mine was Michael Bevan’s grandfather. To see Michael and knowing my mate was Cyril Bevan,

I’d love to find out whether he was really Michael’s grandfather. Cyril Bevan and I, and a chap by the name of Alan Carrick, we rode from Wagga out on the Narrandera road because it wasn’t a built road it was sandy track. We rode for 8 hours and still didn’t get home. My brother

came out in the ute [utility truck] and met us on the road, picked us up and took us home. The next year I rode straight from Wagga to Lockhart, which was still a dirt road, but we did that easy, it was not as far. We used to ride 28 mile, go over in the morning and back in the afternoon, we’d go to Narrandera, which was about 28 mile away. We’d ride to Yarrana, which was about

28 mile away, just for a day’s ride. That and tennis and cricket and football. We had a go at everything.

My father was in the Boer War. He went away, he put his age up actually in

1899 to go to the Boer War. He was one of the last to leave. Came back to England in 1903. He came to Australia in 1911. He worked on a ship, he’s an illegal immigrant actually. He jumped ship in Sydney and went out to the Riverina. He worked on the Tumbarumba railway line when they first started that.

Then he went all over the place. Wagga and he got a job in the bakery at Wagga. Then he got my mother and two brothers and two sisters out from England and they finished up in Kiewa. He was in Kiewa in 1914 when the war broke out

and he got an urgent message from the British war office to say that he was still on the British army reserve, “Report back to England.” He wanted to join the Australian army and he wasn’t allowed. So he went back to England and was in the First World War. In 1940 he put his age down some years and he did 4 1/2 years with the Australian army in World War 11.

I’ll show you his medals.

Not much. All I used to know was that he didn’t even go to an

Anzac service for many, many years. Then, to my knowledge, when we was in Barwick Creek, there was a special Anzac celebration on in Sydney and he decided he'd go down there to go to that. He came back all thrilled because the singer, Gladys Moncrieff, was there entertaining and he

thought that was really wonderful. He’d never been to anything like that before so it was great. So from then on he used to go to a few RSLs [Returned and Services League], but when we came home he used to like to go with his sons. We used to go to the Anzac Day services together and it was great. Dad, being in the same war as us as well

and the two prior ones, it was really something, We felt really proud of my old Dad.

I’m still a little bit of a royalist. When they talk about a republic here,

the way they’re talking I don’t think it’s going to change anything. I can’t see any necessity for the enormous cost to go back to exactly what we’ve got, other than delete the Queen. To me that’s an entire waste of money. If they got something entirely different, then it’d be worth considering. I voted against it for that reason they wasn’t’ going to change anything. The President was going to be

exactly the same as a governor general. Why do we have to go to all that cost? That’s the reason. Until they come up with something better, stick with what we’ve got.

Those day we saw all, the British Empire was exactly that, we was part of the

British Empire and they used to sing “God Save the King” or “God save the Queen.” In those days it was “God Save the King.” I served pre-war with the militia battalion and it was all to serve the King and Country. When I enlisted in the AIF [Australian Imperial Force] it was

for King and Country. So I’ve been brought up, it’s something that I can’t see any sense in changing unless it’s something better. If it’s going to improve things. I can’t see how we’re going to create more jobs for the unemployed by being a republic. What are we going to benefit out of it? Answer your question?

Not a great deal. He was very proud of us when we enlisted. Because I put my age up, my Mum didn’t’ want me to go, but Dad talked her out of that. He was real proud that we was going. When three sons enlisted in the AIF I think that got the better of him and decided

he wanted to be part of it too. He put his age down something like 7 years I think.

I don’t think there was any particular reason. It was something that was formed in Rutherglen and a lot of my mates were there and

we used to go to weekend camps and a little bit adventurous for a young bloke. Go out and play around with rifles and do all sorts of silly things. It was a great experience.

I didn’t think of it in that light, but it’s possibly could have. But

I joined in early 1938. Then when one of my brothers came down and wanted to enlist in the AIF with me, he was only down there in Rutherglen a short while and he joined up with us. We was together in the militia and we joined up together in the AIF. My number, which I noticed the registration on my car,

is VX6586, that’s my army number. My brother was VX6587. My prisoner of war number was 92280 and my brother was 92281. We were together in the prison camp until December 44. He got pleurisy and pneumonia and was taken

away to another camp because the camp doctor didn’t have facilities for him. I was in the sick bay there he had a scalpel, and that was all he needed with me. But, we stuck doing then when we got to England we married sisters.

We both went together.

Always very, very close knit family. Before we went overseas everybody in the family came to see us off. When we came home, first thing they all did was to, I was the last one to come home, my brother came home earlier. I worked with the Australian army in England

until they closed the camp down. All the blokes had been sent home and I was on the last lot to come home. I was married, I didn’t want to come home. Then I arrived home in September. Makes me smile, you know. People go to East Timor for four months, ah it’s

terrible. They get $127 a day danger money. We got fifty cents a day, equivalent, which included danger money. Good luck to them, but they didn’t see any hard fighting like we had to go through. You have your mates drop off alongside you quite regularly and being sunk at sea is

not a pleasant thing to be through. But we survived. The reason I was taken prisoner was because I got permission from the officer to go back and help my brother. Quite a few other 2/8th Battalion blokes with him and I went back and I had to hand over my automatic weapon because I was the only one

in the section that had an automatic weapon and I had to hand that over to go back. I went back into the hills and I eventually found my brother. I got about 60 of the rest of the battalion and we got down to the water to see the last barge pull out. There was no more coming in. So we was taken prisoner. That’s the way things happen. That’s war.

Nothing. It wasn’t until, I was first enlisted with the 58th Essendon rifles. It was a Melbourne unit and the militia was pretty small at that stage.

In early 1959 there must have been something expected because they changed over and they formed a new unit in north eastern Victoria, which was the 59th Hume regiment. I was automatically transferred from the 58th Essendon rifles over to the Hume regiment. Most of us that went into the AIF in 1939

came out of the 59th Hume regiment. We had to be discharged and went into the. We got our discharge and were sent home waiting on our call. I think we was home about 2 or 3 weeks and we got called up. On the 6th November 1939 I signed up all my papers and went into Puckapunyal.

That was quite funny. We was in the 59th Hume regiment. On the Saturday we all got told to have all our gear together and meet at the pictures. The Town Hall used to be where they held the pictures. We all had to be there with all our gear and everything, so we stayed there. After the pictures was

finished we stayed there. it was early hours of the morning that somebody decided that nothing had come through, go home, but keep your gear altogether. Then on the 3rd of September, that was on the Sunday, here, that war was declared. We told ‘Hang fire’ we’d be told what to do. So it was about another week or so that we got word we had to go to

Albury and we was camped at the ammunition dump just out of Albury. We had to do security duty on the bridge over the Hume weir, the railway bridge going from Albury to Wodonga. We had a little, we used to call it the Lover’s Nest. Right out around the back over the

Hume weir on the water’s edge. We had a little tent there and we had to go over there for 24 hours. It was quite funny at the Hume weir - it was nothing over 25 mile an hour to go across the weir. We’d get old ladies. They’d come along and we’d say “Not under 25 mile and hour.” You could see their UNCLEAR with their

little old car truck. It was quite a bit of fun we had there. One of the funny things, it’s in my book as well, a friend of mine, he was a sergeant, and we enlisted together. He died a couple of years ago. We were real close friends right through. Cole Diffy. We was out on the Hume weir this Sunday morning, I

decided I’d do some washing. I got some of those square 4 gallon petrol tins and put the water in it and boiled it up as my copper. I was doing my washing and Cole said to me “Hey, when you finish that, Charlie, I’ll borrow it, I’ll do mine.” I said, “Right-o.” So he got it and he said, “There won’t be anybody about today.” So he took his britches off. He only had one pair of britches. He took his britches off. We used to wear britches and putties in those days.

So he took his britches off. He got them all in the wash and he’s getting around with virtually nothing on and I saw a staff car coming down the road. I said, “Cole, what’s this coming?” “Christ,” he said, “Inspection.” So we had no britches. So what he did, he wrapped his putties around his legs and put his overcoat on. He called out the guard, hah It’s all in the book.

Cole Diffy must have bought 10 or 20 of those books because he was so thrilled. Things that he’d forgotten about you know. He died a little over 12 months ago.

Didn't have much of a reaction about it. The 6th division was 100% volunteers. The first 20,000 people was all volunteers. People say “What did you volunteer for? Do you want to go to war?” It was a marvellous experience. It doesn’t come in every lifetime. I think that

mainly it was just the adventure that we all went in. We weren't war mongers, we wanted adventure. Although I did 4 years in a prisoner of war camp it was a great adventure. I saw a lot of the world I’d never ever seen if I hadn't. I’ve been all over Europe and right down through back down through the Dardanelles.

If you can stick it out, that’s the main thing. I even say to people today, once you give up, there’s no hope. If you give up you can’t make it back again. Never give up. I’ve been through a bit and that’s what’s kept me going. I’m not

one to give up very easy.

We got it mainly through the militia camps. When we was at Albury ammunition dump we got asked for volunteers if an expeditionary force was formed.

Cole Diffy, myself and a couple of others, we put our name down. Then we went home for a while and we went down and we started a new camp out on the Nagambie Road out from Seymour as a militia unit. We started this new camp. It was there that they decided they were going to form an expeditionary force.

We all get out on parade and our names got called out that put our name in before and anybody else. My brother walked out alongside me and we stood together. But I wasn’t old enough. I wasn’t old enough to join. We had to be 21 by the end of March 1940. I could only make 20

and they was pretty strict on the age because quite a few of the blokes was turned back because they wasn’t old enough. Prior to that in Rutherglen when I first went down, I was driving a vehicle. I was delivering bread for my Dad. I wasn’t’ old enough to get a licence in Victoria. My mother was the one that everything had to be done properly.

She was telling Dad that I wasn’t allowed to drive the vehicle because I didn’t have a licence and I couldn’t get a licence. I used to drive past the police station and the policeman would say “Hey”, pull me up and “Drive me down to town.” It’d only be 200 or 300 metres down to town. He never, ever asked me for a licence. So I done this some numerous occasions. But Mum was getting on my

back a bit. So I went up and went into this chap. He said, “What do you want?” I said, “I want my driver’s licence.” He said, “You little bugger. You haven’t got a licence?” I said, “No.” “And you’ve been driving me around.” “You never asked me. That’s why I’ve come to get one now.” So I put my age up 12 months to get my licence. I got it then.

No worries. He told me I didn’t have to do a test because I’d driven him around. When I joined the army, they wanted proof of age, so I produced my driver’s licence and that got me in. Mum wasn’t very happy about this. But Dad talked her out of it. “Be a good experience for him, let him go.” So that’s how I got into the AIF.

He told me not to do anything stupid. My Dad was in the service corps. He wasn’t really in the front. He was carting stuff backwards and forwards to the front. Ammunition and all that sort of stuff

to the frontline blokes, which is just as important as anything else. I was in an infantry battalion and we was on the sharp end. It’s a bit of a different experience. You get to take it. It’s a very weird experience when you’re going into action.

I’ve met several people, discussed it with them, and I think everybody goes through the same. Where people run away, I can understand that, because as you’re going in, your nerves are building up to a terrible feeling. Until you’re nerve, people get to VC [Victoria Cross] because their nerves are right up to the top and they’ll do anything. Something’s got to be done you do it, which

under normal circumstances you would never even dream of doing it. When you come out, to wind down is nearly as bad because. People really find a great difficulty in doing that. It’s a sensation that you’ll never, ever forget. The way your nerves build up to a real

tight pitch and once you get there you’re right. You can do all sorts of silly things. You've heard of people getting the VC that are really quiet and it’s quite unexpected that they’d do such things. Well, that’s how it’s done. Once your nerves are up there to the pitch, you do things that you’d never, ever expect yourself to do.

Yeah, because they can’t stand the build-up

Different personality altogether. You’ve got people that can’t take some little things and others take it in their stride. It’s different personalities. In the

Boer War, in the First World War they were treated as cowards, but I think in a lot of cases in the Second World War people realised there was plenty they can do without putting them through that situation. I was lucky enough that my nerves could stand it.

It’s a similar type of sensation winding down as what it is building up. When you get out and back you think “My God, thank God that’s over.” But you go back in again it’s the same thing. You’ve got to build up to a pitch where you can do those things.

I don’t think, I think it goes through the same thing. But you know what to expect. Maybe that makes it a bit easier. You know what is going to happen, A lot of people, at the same time, a bullet with their name on and they cop it. I got that, that’s a bit of shrapnel I got there. I was lucky enough that it had lost

its force, but the heat got me and burnt me. You can see it. That’s the luck of the draw.

My brother wasn't with me. We was in the same battalion, but he was in a different company. He was a cook in the kitchens.

So we never ever went through. I hadn't seen him on Crete because I was a sub machine gunner. He didn't even have a rifle on Crete. They was what we call B echelon. They were the ones that are behind doing mostly organisation of what goes

on and keeping ammunition and food and everything else supplied to the ones in front. There was nothing like that operating on Crete. We were just on hard rations. The amazing part about, we fought a rear guard across Crete and we got one tin of bully beef between two a day, and a packet of biscuits each. That was a day’s

ration. Because they reckoned they were short of rations. Yet, when the Germans took over, they found the food dumps and that’s what we was given, British food. They didn’t have it to give to us. It’s a lot of funny things happen. The generals, I’m not very happy about them.

They came and told us, once we was dropped on Crete that they’d volunteered for us all to fight for the island and not to worry. They would be with us. The last person to leave the island, as General Freyberg said to us, because General Weston was doing the other part of the island, General Freyberg said to us “The last person to leave the island

will be me.” That didn’t work out to be quite true. Him and General Weston got on a Sunderland aircraft on the Saturday night and flew back to Alexandria and sent word back, early hours Sunday morning, on the 1st June to say that the island was capitulated, every man for himself. So we was left high

and dry. All through the whole campaign was the hierarchy didn’t know what was, and after that. At one stage, when I went over in 2001, we had a young chap, a historian. We was travelling to Melanie aerodrome [?]. He got up

and he was telling everybody in the bus that this is where the Germans got the first foothold. I was in that campaign. I said to him “That book you got this information out of” I was a bit sarcastic “Does it tell you why the Germans got a foothold there?” “No,” he said, “They just overpowered the Australians.” I said, “That’s not quite true.”

So he said, “Well, what did happen?” I said, “We was the Second Anzacs on Crete. We had a Maori infantry battalion, we had the Australian 2/7th Battalion and what was left of the 2/8th Battalion” because half got back to

Alexandria and the other half got sunk. So we were on Crete and the orders came through that the Maoris would do a bayonet charge, because the Germans had landed there and they was well secured. You can only do 100 at the outside in a bayonet charge. Then the 2/7th Battalion was to go through and take it on and then we

was to go through and do the mopping up. Well, it’s the most blood curdling thing I’ve ever experienced to hear the Maoris do a bayonet charge. As true as I’m sitting here, the Germans dropped everything and run. They literally dropped everything and run. By the time the Maoris had finished their charge, the 2/7th Battalion was

moving through to carry on and we got orders to withdraw. This is what I told the bloke. “Oh,” he said, “I know nothing about that.” There was two 2/7th Battalion blokes that were there and they were saying to him “That’s bloody true. That’s exactly what happened.” So one of them said, “You’d better get back and get that history book rewritten.” This is what happened on Crete.

It’s annoying to us blokes when you get historians come and say that you weren’t good enough.

They do like a Haka [Maori war dance]. They do the war cry. It’s blood curdling, I tell you. It’s an experience I wouldn’t like to be fronting up against anyway. They’re fantastic. Boy, are they fantastic.

When they come running with that bayonet on, the Germans did they run? They dropped everything and run. We thought “Oh, you beauty. We got this one” and we got orders to withdraw. The hierarchy didn’t know what was going on. Everybody will tell you, we could have won Crete. But that’s history.

Puckapunyal was just being in the throes of being built. All the off cuts of timber and stumps and everything they dug out to put the barracks up. Our job was to clear them up

and we’d take it behind a hill, which later, I believe it’s still today, called Mount Certainty. We carted all this timber and stuff up the back of the hill. All our fires was wood burners. Trench fires and we had all really primitive stuff. So to get the fire for the kitchen we had to go

back up round the hill and bring all the wood back again. The first night we got in we got in about 10 o'clock or so at night. Dark as billy-o. They’d just dug all the trenches and just filled them in. They weren't tamped down or anything, just filled in and it rained like hell. We had our britches and putties on because we had no other uniform. We were walking

through in the dark and you tread on one of these drains and you go up to your thigh in mud. So we really loved Puckapunyal in the initial stages.

Nothing different, only more advanced that’s all. We still did a lot of route marches to keep you fit. We did a lot of bayonet drill, we did a lot of

we used to march from Puckapunyal across to site 17, which is about 17 mile on the other side of Seymour. We’d march to where the rifle range was and we’d march out there and stay there for a few, maybe a week, doing rifle range shooting and all that sort of stuff. Then you’d march back to Pucka again. I loved marching, I did. Marching was something I really

enjoyed.

It was something about even Anzac Day today, when you’ve got a band going, it’d great to get out and march, although you’ve got a lot of people can’t march now too. Which is very difficult. To get a group of men together, women it’s the same,

and they all march in step, it’s got something about it. It’s got that swing about it. It’s great to get out and march. I love marching.

Top. I was really fit those days. I had a 5 inch chest expansion and I was

strong. Only little, but I was very, very strong. My young son that’s here now is very similar. He’s 43 this year I think. He’s our baby. The strength that man’s got amazes me now. He tightens up things with his fingers and I can’t even move them.

The general thing was that we were going to Europe somewhere. But we finished up in Palestine, which was another experience because I went to the Dead Sea. We got a lot of sandflies over there and we used to get what they called sandfly fever. Similar to malaria it is. But it’s

not recurring like malaria. It’s a shocking thing to have. Where the sandflies bite you, well, they don’t bite you. They turn into sores a bit like the old school sores, impetigo they call it. Similar to that only much deeper. I

had them on the backs of my hand, I had them over my leg. On the inside of my leg here I had a big wart. I got put into hospital with sandfly fever in Palestine. While I was there I asked if they could take the wart out. They reckoned it was a big thing in those days to take a wart out. Today they can, nothing.

It was alright while I had shorts on, but at night time we had to wear long trousers. Trousers rubbing on the wart, it used to come out like a big cauliflower and running on it, it would bleed and I’d get blood running down my leg. So I come into hospital. It was a big thing. I had to do something special. I put in for leave to go to Jerusalem, which I got. I went down to the Dead Sea.

I had all these wog sores over me, we called the sandfly bites wog sores, over me. I had bandages around my leg. I went into the Dead Sea. Oh, the pain. I had to get out. Then I’d go back in again. The first one wouldn’t be so bad, but the second lot, and I had to get out again until I got. Once they’d all got into that salt it was all right

and I could lay there. I had photographs of myself laying in the water with my hands behind my head like that and one knee up, foot resting on the other knee. I could lay there like that. When I came back out, 4 or 5 days later, the wart fell off. I had to watch other things too, I was afraid.

The wart went black and fell off and all the wog sores disappeared. Because I was on treatment from the doctor, when I went back off leave, he was amazed. He said, “What did you do?” I said, “I went for a swim in the Dead Sea.” “Oh.” So anybody that had wog sores, he

ordered them to the Dead Sea. They hated me because of the pain. They reckoned they’d rather have the wog sores than go into. It was fantastic. I had all these wog sores all over me. Good cure it was. I lost all my photographs in Cyclone Tracy, which was one of the things that brought a lump to my throat because that was

everything was in photographs there. All our camps in Palestine. I had photographs of action in Libya, which I shouldn’t have had, but I did have. I had photographs of Crete, all in one album. When I was in the POW [prisoners of war] camp, the Germans just pure bastardisation, they knew you had these, they’d

take them off you and tear them up. So I had them out of the album and into tins and buried. All this. A pommy bloke was a really good artist. He did the front page of my album with a poem “Memories of Crete” was on the front of it. I always remember one bit of the poem was “If on Crete the air force

be, where in the bloody hell were we?” This is one of the stanzas on the poem. We had no air support in Greece or Crete.

Leave Australia?

Excited. Wonderful. I thought it was, we was all young, maybe silly,

but it was a wonderful experience. Although, just out of the heads in Melbourne, the sea got very rough and most the boys were seasick, including myself. I thought it was silly, blokes getting seasick, until I went up on deck and saw all the others feeding the fish and I was over alongside them. No troubles at all. It was very rough. It’s the

roughest I’ve ever been in. Once we got across the Bight and we got into Perth we had half a day in Perth from Fremantle. They give us a civic reception in the city of Perth. It was great. On our way over we called into Colombo. We had a bit of leave at Colombo.

A mate and I went down all the backstreets and all over the place in Colombo. Even went into an undertaker’s place. Had a look at all the coffins. They had a place up on the hill out of Colombo. It was put on where all the boys on leave could go and they got free tea and all that.

Wonderful place. I met a girl there. Her name was Pat Griffiths. She was part of the Griffiths tea people in Australia. She couldn’t do enough for the Australian boys. Run around, make sure they got everything that was going for them. I had a photograph of her, which was in my album. But Cyclone Tracy got that. From there

we went up into the Bitter Lakes and we had to wait in the Bitter Lakes because there was another ship in the Canal. Had to wait for it to come through before you could go up in. So we waited a couple of days in the Bitter Lakes and it was quite funny. The wogs as we called them, the natives, used

to come out in their boats and try and flog stuff to all the boys. They used to send stuff up onto the ropes and if somebody sent their money down they didn’t get the stuff up. The blokes said, “You send it up first and I’ll send the money down” which they did. But then there was a few that they sent the stuff up and somebody said, “Let’s have a look at that” and they handed it over and they don’t know where it went.

Finished up that nobody got paid so the wogs didn’t bother handing up anything. They caught us in the first stage so the boys reckoned they’d get back on them. Once we went up into the Canal, actually I didn’t tell you what ship we was on, it was the Dunera, which was a British Indian troop ship pre-war, sending troops from England to India. We got

up to the Canal to a place called El Kantara. The railhead was there and we unloaded and went across to Palestine by train. We went to a place called Qastina. Everybody’s unloading tents and striking tents, putting them up. We just about had all the tents up and we got word

to say it was in the wrong place. We had to pull them all down. So we had to go down to Gaza, which is well known today in the news. We went to what they call Kilo 89 at Gaza and we camped there. We did all our training from there at Palestine. Through all the little places we used to march out

all over the place. We was at Beersheba and that was around Beersheba we came across all the 1914-1918 war, army trenches that the Australian had. Actually my eldest brother was with the 2/3rd Battalion and he was out there and he picked up a little mounted machinegun buried in the sand. Dug it out and took it back and they had

it mounted in front of their camp. All the trenches and that, you could still see where they were. The war cemetery at Beersheba is fantastic. I’ve not seen many war cemeteries, but it always amazed me how immaculate it was kept. Then, me being a truck driver at the time,

all out battalion trucks they used to pull people out of the line that could drive to do transport work. When they wasn’t using trucks you went back as an infantry soldier. I drove a truck from Kilo 89 right across to Isma’iliyyah on the Suez Canal and we followed along where the Turks was building

a railway line in World War 1, but they never finished it. they got driven out and it was still there. The road followed parallel with this railway line. It was so much history over there. Another thing, before we left Palestine, I said I went on leave to Jerusalem; I went to the Dead Sea. I went through all these

biblical places. The church of the Holy Sepulchre they call it, in there they had a big room, about as big as what this is, and all around the walls was name plaques of different people. One of the chaps, Georgie Hides was his name, he said, “Hey Charlie, is this Rutherglen in Scotland or Rutherglen in Australia?”

I went over and it was the catholic priest in my hometown. He’d been over earlier and he paid them. So I wrote home and told my mother. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t belong to the Catholic Church, but I had a lot to do as far as my father’s business, the bakery goes, with the Catholic Church. Father Lawless always looked on me as one

of his flock. He never missed going to my mother every Sunday to see how I was. She was able to tell him that I’d seen his name. He never knew, he paid for it, he never ever knew that his name was up there. He thought it was marvellous that I should be able to write back and tell him I had seen it. All these sort of things you see. You go on leave and

you take the good with the bad. There was a lot of good wherever you go. On the way it Isma’iliyyah we had to cross the Suez Canal by pontoon and we stayed the night at Isma’iliyyah. From there on, that’s the first time I’d ever danced on cobblestones. They had a dance going there and it was all

cobblestones that you danced on. You had army boots on anyway, so it didn’t make much difference. We danced there this night and then we went from there through to Cairo. On the outskirts of Cairo is the pyramids. We camped the night there. It was my turn to do picquet duty on all our trucks. Pitch black,

you couldn’t see a thing. I thought I was going to have heart failure. All I felt was a hand touching around my neck. It was a Ghurkha. They was doing training too. You can’t hear them blokes; you don’t know what they’re doing. Under normal circumstances, if it was an enemy, you’d have your throat cut before you

could do anything about it. He put his hand round, he felt my collar and we had a small rising sun badge on our collar. He said, “All right Aussie, you’re OK.” Jesus, I’ll tell you. It a queer feeling, especially when you have been dark and you’ve been standing there guarding something and a damned Ghurkha comes over. At any rate, we got over that and we went from there to a

place called Burg el Arab. I believe that it’s only a very short distance from where the big battle was in Egypt, El Alamein. I didn't know anything about that at the time. We was camped at Burg el Arab and we did a lot of guard duty on different things around the place.

We went on leave to Alexandria from there. I went in on 3 days leave, I think it was. I went through the King’s palace in Alexandria because he had two places, one in Alexandria and one in Cairo. He was living in Cairo at the time and we had escorted tour through it. Amazing place.

Then we was in Burg el Arab for Christmas 1940. We had to have Christmas early because they had word to say that our brigade had to do an amphibious landing at Tobruk. They had it all planned, how it was going to go

and get off the boat and how deep the water was and you had to carry your firearms above your head. We had to go out and do all this sort of stuff. None of us was really keen about this, like everybody else. If you’ve got to do it, you’ve got to do it. But we were very pleased when they decided to scrap that idea. We went by road. So I was driving

by road. Our first action was at Bardia. Prior to that the English tanks had wiped out everything that was going. We had a recognisance unit that had Bren gun carriers. They was running through, but they finished up the Bren gun carriers was too light for the

work that was required that they re equipped themselves with Italian tanks that was captured. They used tanks to go through the rest. With the British tank corps as well. We had an English unit, the KRRs, King’s Royal Rifles. We nicknamed them different in Greece, King’s Royal Runners

because they pulled out and we got surrounded in Greece because the Greeks on one side and the KRRs gave them orders to withdraw before we got any word to say we had to withdraw. We kept Bardia and I

got a little Fiat motorcar at Bardia. There was bits and pieces missing off it. It was boxed in with big rocks so I had to pull all the rocks down to get it out. It must have been an officer’s car, it was in that stage a late model. A little Fiat. I had to go round some other cars

and grab some bits and pieces and they fitted and eventually got it going. Major MacDonald, who was the company commander I was with said, “That’s great. You and I’ll use it as a Don R [dispatch rider]. We’ll run up and down the column of transport to make sure everything’s going all right.” They’d normally use motorbikes and our blokes was using Italian motorbikes. I had an Italian motorbike at one

time too. When we stopped there we rode them all over the place until they ran out of petrol, then leave then and get another one. This little Fiat, we went from Bardia to Tobruk and they arranged for somebody else to drive my truck. I had to leave it out , Major MacDonald told me where to leave it and I pulled the distributor out

so that nobody would pinch it. When we kept at Tobruk, Major MacDonald went out to see where the vehicle was and the Australian LAD [Light Aid Detachment] there, the mechanical group, they saw it, put in another distributor and it went over the wayside. I missed out on it. I lost that one. Then we went right through. We did a bit of

at Basia I think it was, we did the police work. Immediately after the place is captured you’ve got to have a unit to go and do the police work to make sure it’s secure. We did that at Basia. Then we went right through Bardia, right through to Benghazi. Benghazi fell the day before

my 21st birthday. Then we came back and we camped on the beach.

We came back and we camped on the beach as a rest camp for a while. We had no tents, all we had was tent flies.

So I got a brainwave. I don’t know if you remember we used to get petrol in two, 4 gallon, square tins in a wooden box. I went over to where the Italians had a camp and everywhere you went where they had camped it was full of fleas. Fleas was shocking. We just had to strip off everything

out, right out in the open in the desert and get rid of all the fleas out of our clothes. We got these wooden boxes and I filled them with sand. I built a wall around to use them like bricks. Built a wall around and then we just had a tarpaulin we put up over the top and that was our quarters for the duration of the camp. We used to cook up a bit of stuff

right on the seafront. Boys used to go down and catch fish. Besides the kitchens operating we used to do a bit for ourselves. Out of one of these 4 gallon drums I cut the top out and I made me a cooking stove. I filled it with sand and we used to pour petrol on it and just stir the sand up and let fire to it. The petrol in the sand used to burn and we could cook on it, boil water. We did a lot

of funny things. I had a primus stove as well. We used to cook fish, whatever the boys caught down there. It was a rest camp so we had time to go down. From there all the transports got called out to take the 8th divvy chaps right up to Benghazi and

that was the job we had to do to take them up and then come back. Then we got orders to say we had to pull out. We moved back right down through Tobruk I think, where we hit the sandstorm. My truck wouldn’t go after the sandstorm. I couldn’t get it into gear to move.

I could get the motor started. The rest of them pulled off. I played around with this damned thing for a while and I got underneath and I fully took off all the adjustment on the clutch and I put it back again and I wobbled it around and eventually I got it to go and I got sand in the mechanism and it jammed. It wouldn’t let it go. Eventually, once I got it going, it came good and I had to go like blazes. It took me another day

to catch up with the unit. We went from there down to Mersa Matruh. That’s where we got orders to say we was going to go to Greece. So we drove down to Alexandria and all the transport went on a ship for the advance party. We

got on the ship at Alexandria. We arrived in Greece on the 1st April. The German ambassador, because Greece wasn’t at war with Germany at this stage, and the German ambassador was on the wharf watching us unload. That was a real, hairy experience when we were unloading the vehicles. What they did,

they put a net along the bottom of the ship, you drove your vehicle onto this net and the cranes lifted up and you’re still in the vehicle. They’d swing you over and drop you down onto the wharf and then you drove your vehicle away. It was a bit hairy at times. Some of the blokes was really, really scared. Actually, it was one bloke, he just couldn’t do it. Somebody else had to go and take his truck off for

him. You don’t blame him, because everybody’s not the same. Then we went out to what they call Daphne No 2 [?] on the outskirts of Athens in an olive grove. We went out there and the Greek people were fantastic to us. They had all little coffee shops on the corners of the olive groves.

There was 4 or 5 of us blokes every night used to go up to have our coffee with the Greeks and the women insisted that they did our washing for us. If we didn’t take it over somebody would come over and get it and make sure that they did our washing for us. It was fantastic. Then the

rest of the troops came. We had to go in and pick them up off the ship. Brought them out. The first night the troops were out there, we were doing our rounds and we get to one place and they saw us coming and they pulled down the roller shutters and the women were squealing inside and it was 3 Australians trying to rape the women and belted the husbands. So I,

between the 4 or 5 of us, I forget now what it was, we decided that we’d have to do something about this. It was decided that I’d go back to see if I could get an officer to make an official picquet. So I went back and the first one I saw was the colonel, the commander of the battalion. He knew me very well. I told him what had happened.

There was 4 of us. He said, “How many of yous are there?” I said, “Four.” He said, “I can’t make a picquet out of that. We’ll have to get two more blokes. We have to be 6.” So they got two more chaps to make up six and give us an officer and we went back, picked up the rest of them and we got these three blokes out. Funny thing, there was one from our battalion, one from the 2/4th Battalion and one from the 2/11th.

We got them and we marched them around to the 2/11th Battalion headquarters and our officer handed it over to their orderly officer with a pretty strong statement of what had happened and what they’d been doing. Then I don’t know what happened there. We went to the 2/4th Battalion and did likewise. On our way back to our camp

the bloke out of our, he was a reo, they was all reinforcements, they hadn't been into any action. I think they wanted to do something to get sent back so they wouldn’t have to go into action. At any rate, one our way back, this chap took a swing at our officer. The funny part about it, a mate of mine, he’s still in Melbourne, Arthur Willett, he used to go on leave, used to love his grog, he’d

get drunk and he’d go out. So long as it wasn’t one from our battalion, any officer he saw he’d go off the job. And he reckoned all these blokes. When this bloke took a swing at our officer, Arthur punched him. “Don’t you hit our officer.” It’s all in the book. Arthur got a book.

We got him back to ours and told the colonel what had happened and the colonel had nowhere to put him. He told us to spreadeagle in between two olive trees. I’ve never ever seen it done before and to be involved in it, I wasn’t happy about it, but I was under orders. So was the rest of the boys. We tied this bloke between two olive trees.

Another mate of mine, a chap by the name of Kai Goodall, he’d gone off without leave. When he got back home again he wasn’t caught. He saw this bloke and thought what a terrible thing to do to a bloke, not knowing what had happened. He let him loose. But the bloke wasn’t’ going to move. He stayed there. The colonel put him on a charge the next day and the

penalty was he had to be in the first section regardless of what company, to front the Germans. He got killed up at Veve Pass. We was so disgusted, for all the things that the women had done for us, to have that mob come out and put our name down, it was shocking. It’s all in my book. This Arthur Willett,

of all things, his son is now a brigadier in the army. I see him an awful lot, I keep in touch with him. “Fancy you having a son an officer.” Then we went up to

Well, I don’t think they’d raped them at that stage. We got there in time. But they’d

knocked out the man because he was trying to protect them. I think we got there in time. Although they knew it was happening, they were squealing their heads off. That’s why we wanted to know what was going on. It’s something I’ve never ever seen done before and I was involved in it. Arthur Willett in Melbourne was another one

that was in the same group.

I can’t remember their names.

I don’t know. I’ve never heard. I know the bloke that we got was killed up in Veve Pass. What happened to the other battalions I wouldn’t have a clue. Never heard. I’ve heard people talk about

these sorts of things happening, and I know now it does. Then we were pushed out of Veve Pass and we drove right down to Kalamata. There was a terrific experience. Greece is a fantastic historical country. I didn't

know at the time, but we held up the Germans at a place called Brallos Pass to allow the medical and all the non combatant people to get away. I didn’t know until I went back in 2001, it’s exactly the same place where the Greeks held up the Turks. They spoke about the

historical side of it when the Greeks held up the Turks at the same place and the Australians held up the Germans at this very same spot. I didn’t know, but to hear them talking there it was really something.

Germans lot a lot of people there. They was

walking over dead at Veve Pass. Their equipment and their air was too much. We had no air force you see. The Germans had everything. That was just too much. But the cost, same on Crete, the Germans never used another paratrooper during World War 11. The Americans and the Brits did later, the Germans

never used another paratrooper. The cost was horrendous on the Germans.

It’s very frightening because it doesn’t matter what you do. I had

a mate driving that was coming back to Brallos Pass. The air cover that the Germans had, and us in transport convoys trying to get back. We was pulling off the road so many times because of air raids, tearing across the open fields and people

getting shot. I had a mate, Dick Savage, he was a driver and he said to me, “I’m fed up with running across the paddock. The bloke next to me got wounded with air fire. Next time we have to go I’m stopping my truck.” That’s exactly what he did and he got killed in his truck. His name’s

at the War Memorial in Canberra. Dick and I were good mates and I’d say I was the last person that Dick spoke to. Funny thing, about eight years ago I suppose it was, I went down to my old battalion reunion and they had a day at Pucka because

at the old Pucka gates they’ve got a memorial up there and all the chaps’ original names are on that memorial and I went down for the unveiling of it. I had one lady come over to me and did I know this bloke Jack Wales and I said, “Yeah, he was a corporal, that’s right.”

She said, “He’s dead now. He was with the battalion and he would have loved to have been here.” I said, “I’ll tell you something, that photograph you’ve got, I took that.” I used to do a lot of photography in Palestine and my eldest brother used to do his own developing and printing. I used to take the photographs and my eldest brother, the

tow of them, the eldest brother was the one we got from the 2/3rd Battalion to come back with us and he joined the 2/8th Battalion. I used to take the photographs and we’d go down at night to the kitchen and we’d do the developing and printing of it. We used to stick the actual photograph on the windows to dry to give them the polish. So that particular photograph I took,

it was amazing. Another chap came up to me and said, “My name’s Savage. I’m looking to see if anybody knew my brother.” I said, “It wasn’t Dick was it?” He said, “Yeah.” And I had to happen at his brother just at the gates there. It was fantastic. I told you we got back to Greece and what happened after we got out of Greece

on the Costa Rica.

It was unexpected. Our information was that it wasn’t as strong as what it was supposed to be. Although I will say the Germans lost a lot more and

it wasn’t the ground troops that defeated us, it was the air. You’re getting blasted, bombs and rifle fire or machinegun fire from the air and bombing on top of what you’re fronting up to. It’s pretty hectic. But all the same,

we didn’t lose that many. I had a sergeant major friend, Cliff Williams, he was with another chap, a corporal, a bloke by the name of Dermoty, they was taken prisoner by the Germans up at Veve Pass. We didn’t know that, we thought they was killed. Once we got back down and I got taken prisoner on Crete,

I was taken to Salonika and one of the first blokes I met was this Cliff Williams, sergeant major. It sounded as though he had bad laryngitis or something like that because of his voice. I said, “You’ve got laryngitis?” He said, “No. Have a look there.” He pointed to the back of his neck and this Dermoty and him was taken for a walk by

the German officer and they were shot from behind. Dermoty was killed and Cliff Williams was dropped and they thought he was dead. He came to later on. The bullet had gone through the back of his neck and come through and just nicked his voice box, which gave him a, he came out with a hole in this side of his neck. He got taken again by some Germans and he was put in Salonika and

that’s all in my book too. I wouldn’t have put it in if it hadn't been for Cliff Williams had told me. A lot of things, there was a bloke by the name of Tom Heenan in Greece. We got word to say that Tom had copped it. He was killed. Everybody saw this happen, three days later, Tom Heenan walked into camp.

I was always very, very sceptical about saying somebody had been killed or what have you, because of that. That’s always stuck into my mind. While I was on Crete, a chap from my home town, Toby Blouse, he got killed on Crete, but I didn’t see him get killed. His father used to go to my parents and say

“I want to ask Charlie what happened to Toby.” I couldn’t say he got killed, he was missing, but I didn't see him get killed. If I said he was killed and he turned up later on I’d feel terrible. After Tommy Heenan, I wouldn’t, unless I knew for a fact that they’d had it happen, I wouldn’t say they was killed.

To this day I haven’t, the old man’s dead and everything now, but I wouldn’t tell Toby Blouse’s father he was killed until I knew he was killed.

I don’t know. It got me. He wasn’t wounded, nothing. But somebody said he was killed. We had that much bombing. Maybe he was around close where there was a bomb dropped. We used to say we played ring-a-

ring-a-rosy around the trees because you could see the Stukas go over and you see the bombs come down and if they’re on that side you jump on the other side of the tree. Wherever they was going. The amount of bombing that the Germans put down on us was phenomenal.

All day. Continuous. Same on Crete. Continuous day and night on Crete before the

paratroops landed.

It’s an experience I don’t want to go through again. You can take the normal thing on the ground. You’d fighting people on the ground and they come from up top as well and you’ve got nobody up there to help you. We had no aircraft. If they had a few dogfights to

take your mind off it, that would have been all right. We had no aircraft.

We drove right down to Kalamata where you get all your good olives from. They’d brought destroyers in because the water was pretty shallow there and the troopships couldn’t come in. They brought in destroyers and the troopships was anchored out in the deep

water. My battalion, I don’t know how, we got split up into two. Some went on to what we call the Black Ship, it was black, The City of London and we was on the Cost Rica. We were well on our way to Alexandria when

the Costa Rica got hit. It didn’t sink immediately. A lot of chaps jumped overboard. The ship was sinking, there was too much water there for me. I didn’t. A British destroyer, Defender, pulled in alongside the ship. If you can imagine the destroyer down there and the ship deck there like that. As

they rock they go like that and then they go, and you wait until it gets to the shallowest point and you jump from one ship to the other. This is what happened. I don’t know why, but maybe the chap alongside me copped it on the way down and he broke his ankle. I got down all right.

It’s a fair drop. Then so many of them jumped overboard before the destroyers got there and they were swimming around in the water. I couldn’t see any sense in that.

I was a bit stupid. I had all my gear in the cabin. I’d been driving for days,

not days, I was driving all night. Under cover of darkness we had to drive, in the day time we had to service our vehicles. The other chaps were right, as soon as the vehicle stopped they could jump out, dig a foxhole and sleep for the rest of the day, but we couldn't. We had to service our vehicles and camouflage our vehicles before we did anything else. We got very little sleep. Then you drive

from it was dark enough to cover until the light the next morning, to be safe driving. I was what you call buggered by the time we got down to the ship. Like many others. When we got unloaded off the destroyer onto the troopship, onto the Costa Rica, I got up and I found a little foyer. I think it was leading down into the kitchen

somewhere. I thought “This is good enough for me.” So I dropped my gear on the deck and I was going to have a sleep. I hadn't been down there very long when one of the ship’s crew, he was on the gun crew, he came up and, “Come on, you can’t stay there. We’ve got a spare bunk in our cabin. Come down.” He helped me take my gear down to their cabin. So I went to sleep.

This was about four o'clock in the morning. I woke up at about 12 o'clock and one of the gunners, the Pommies, came down at seven o'clock in the morning to wake me because they thought the ship had been hit. I knew nothing about it and they couldn't wake me. So they found out the ship was all right so they didn’t worry anymore. I woke up at 12 o'clock

and one of them come down to see how I was going. I was awake. They said, “Look, here’s my pannikin, take your own pannikin, go up to the galley now before the mob get in. You haven’t had anything to eat since you’ve been on the boat. Get a mug of soup and a mug of tea and some bread and butter.” I said, “Right-o.” So I went up to the galley. I got my mug of soup and my mug of tea

and a couple of slices of buttered bread and I wandered back to this little bench-type thing inside the cabin. I put them on there and I never ever tasted the soup or the tea. Whoompah. The ship got hit, everything went on the floor. So I still didn’t get anything to eat. So I went up onto deck to see what was happening and the

bloke says, “She’s been hit. She’s slowly sinking.” So I said, “Oh hell.” So I went down to dive down because I wanted to get my gear and bring it out. The service police that was on there wouldn’t let me down. So I went up to the other entrance where I’d been in the morning and I went down through the kitchen and down the

gangway and into the cabin. I just got in there and I had a little suitcase that I’d bought gifts to send home. I never ever had a chance to send them home. I got that in my hand and all the lights went out. Pitch dark. I couldn’t get anything else. So I dived up with my little suitcase. The service police that wouldn’t let me come down those stairs wondered how the hell I got

there because I dived past him and went out on top. So I went over. By this time the destroyer was alongside and they were jumping over. So I took my turn and jumped over onto the destroyer and all my gear’s still down the bottom.

All my army. My rifle, everything. All my clothes. I had what I stood up in. I still had that same clothing,

and that was on 27th April 1941, I still had that same clothing in January 1942. Couldn't wash it, couldn’t do nothing.

My army uniform. Army tunic and trousers. I wore the pockets out when

we got all our weapons on Crete I got a Thomson sub machinegun, but I had no equipment. It was all on the ship. I couldn’t carry any ammunition or equipment or anything like that, magazines, I had nowhere to carry them. So with the Thomson sub machinegun I got five long magazines and I got two drum magazines that fit on the Thomson.

I got boxes of ammunition. So I had to load the magazines first and make sure I did it the right way. If you don’t load a magazine - magazines vary a little bit. so I had to load my magazines and I got five long magazines full and I put two in each of my trouser pockets, and I put one long one on the gun and I loaded the drum

magazines and they just fitted in my tunic pocket. It tore hell out of my pockets, the weight of them. All the time I was on Crete, that’s how I travelled. I marched all across Crete fighting the rearguard and I had one box of ammunition left of 100 rounds. I shoved it down my shirt and trusted my belt and my trousers to hold my shirt in.

No, not for there. It was gifts, brochures and gifts I had bought to send home, but when we was taken prisoner we didn’t get much to eat. They used British rations and that’s all we got. When we got onboard ship there was no food, so I traded

these things to the German ship crew to get a bit of bread and jam and stuff like that. There was about four or five of us in a little group. We managed to live on my bits and pieces I had.

It was just on the top deck, that’s all. Just on the deck and she whipped us across to Suda Bay and everybody just went out and we said, “Where do we go?” and they said, “Just down the road.” So we go down the road and we see somebody on the corner. They said, “Just go round the corner and round the road a bit and” it was about 10 bloody kilometres we had to

walk. When we got down there it was quite funny, they had no tents. All they had was the tent flies; you know the one that goes over the top of the tent. They was all laying on the ground. We was cold on Crete that night, so we all lay with our feet in towards the middle of the, with our heads poking out the outside of the tent fire.

I never, well, from the time I left Athens until end of December; I never knew what a bed was. Just laying on the ground or on the concrete or

wherever you were you just lay down. Then, in Salonika our hips used to be sort of bruised from laying on concrete. The old federal government reckon we got a Cook’s Tour [an easy time]. We never had any hardship. But they don’t know, they wasn’t there.

Organisation was very, very lax. Most of us went there because for some reason or other we couldn't make Egypt. Others got little boats and came from Greece and finished up in Crete. There was one or two units I think, that was sent to Crete, but

other than that we was all misfits.

We had some of out officers with us because they was with us. We had our immediate officers. We had our own lieutenant and we had our 2IC [second in command] of the battalion was with us and the colonel

was on the other ship. So they whacked the officers up between the two groups. So we had our officers and they took the orders from the generals and passed it on that we had to do what they told us. That’s the army, if you don’t do as you’re told you’re in a bit of a mess.

Nothing at that stage, we didn’t know where we were or where we was going. We knew nothing. That was the only night we camped at that spot. The next day they started to get a few orders through and we started to form up, but we had no rifles. We was just living there, that’s all.

Until later on we had to go out and do picquet duty around different things. We got one Owen machinegun and a sub machinegun and rounds of ammunition between about 30 men. When you went on guard duty you handed over to the next one that came

along. The rest of the time you were unarmed, until the parachutes landed. It was a lucky dip what you got. Some of the blokes got American semi automatic rifles, we’d never seen those. I got a Thompson sub machinegun. I’d never seen a Thompson sub machinegun before.

No, I

didn’t get any machineguns from the parachutes. We were machine gunned by the parachutes.

From the British who brought them in. The British brought in this weapon carrier. Where they got it from, I don’t know. They didn’t have any till the parachutes landed and then they came running around with all this sort of stuff. It was a real hotchpotch of fire arms.

Once we got our rifles and we could do something, we would have won the island other than the hierarchy who didn’t know what was going on. When we were having a winning run and was ordered to withdraw, that kind of knocks the wind out of your sails a bit.

We just pulled back and then we had to

go back. We fought a rearguard from there right back to the other side of the island. Moving by night, keeping them back by day. There was no sleep because you moved all night.

They anticipated the Germans we going to land there before we got there.

Then after we got there the Germans tried to do a landing by ship, but the British Navy stopped that. I think they lost a lot of men where the British Navy sunk ships that the troops was coming on. I think I’ve mentioned in my book, after we were taken prisoner,

the Germans told us that we capitulated on early Sunday morning, they were given orders that if things didn’t improve they were to capitulate on the Sunday night. There’s a certain amount of respect amongst enemy and troops.

The people that’s in the frontline show a great more respect to a prisoner taken, and they’re more friendly towards a prisoner taken. When you get back and you’ve got somebody that’s never been in action and they’re the ones that give the rough treatment out. But normally, the

frontline troops treat their prisoners with respect. They told us that we was dead unlucky, so it could have been the other foot. They would have been the prisoners and we would have been the victors. But our hierarchy shot through to Alexandria and instead we went back to save the island, it capitulated.

None of us was very happy about that.

You’ve got to move at night, because you take cover of darkness to move. When it’s too late you’ve got to take up a position and hold the Germans from advancing any further.

When it comes night time you’ve got to carry on. When we got down to Sfakia there was a group that was kept behind to hold the Germans at bay while the rest of them got away. The destroyers couldn’t get into shore at Sfakia because the water wasn’t deep enough.

So they had barges. Put men on and take them out to the ships, unload, come back, get some more and take out to the ship. This had to be done under the cover of darkness. We got down there at two o'clock in the morning and the last barge had gone out and there wasn’t any more. There was no more room on the ship so they didn’t.

As I mentioned in my book, nobody can explain the feeling of being taken a prisoner. It’s such a dreadful feeling that you’re useless. You can’t do anything. All your ego’s gone. There’s nothing left. It’s a shocking feeling. You know that

nothing can be done. Some people escape, but if everybody tries to do it, they’re not going to succeed. If somebody’s got an idea and they want to escape, you’ve got to let them do it. Everybody wants to do it, nobody’s going to succeed. We had an experience in Salonika.

Everybody hoped to escape. In Salonika there was a big sewerage pipe went right through the camp and they had inspection pits. We used to put a blanket over the top of the inspection pit and we’d play two up [gambling game]. When the coast was clear and there was no Germans around, lift the blanket, lift the cover off the pit and a couple

of blokes could go down and go through the sewerage pipe, which was organised out the other end by the Greeks. When you got out the other end they’d look after you. A few got through. I understand it was arranged getting them through to Turkey. Not being down there I don’t know. I was helping people get in and I was in line to go, but

you’ve got to use common sense and not everybody try to go. We had a lot of Cypriots there and they were highly strung. When this was happening they all wanted to go down. They finished up one bloke collapsed in the sewerage tunnel and blocked it off. Of course the Germans knew what was going on. We couldn’t put the shutter down because we had blokes down there. Then the Germans woke up

what was going on and it couldn’t be used anymore. A tunnel was being dug from under one of the barracks to get into the sewerage tunnel but it was never finished. I’d love to go back. I was in Greece in 1987 and I found this place. It had been a Greek Army camp.

When I was over there it was Greek Army headquarters. Not being able to speak Greek, and I had Kaye with me, if I was on my own it wouldn’t matter, but you can’t do it with a woman with you who was nervous anyway. I’d love to have gone in there to find the places and see if anybody ever found where the tunnel

had been dug underneath the barrack. We had a bloke there with a fixed bayonet and I don’t like blokes with fixed bayonets. He didn’t speak English so I didn’t bother trying to push. I’d have loved to go in there. Now it’s a Greek military museum. If ever I went over again it’d be a piece

of cake.

Nobody, and even today, they don’t tell you what you should do if you’re taken prisoner. I’m honorary member of the officers’ mess in at Larrakia and I still talk to officers in there. They still don’t teach you

serial number and name. They still, there’s no, I don’t know what you could teach them to do. It’s got to be played by ear once you’re in there.

I’ve never been told that

by the army, but we all agreed that it’s your duty to escape. We had a lot of blokes that just decided they were going to escape and they’d be back the next day because it was a half-hearted attempt. That’s the worst thing you could do. Everybody left in the camp was punished when somebody is missing. Everybody else has got to take the blame.

I’m always one that if I’m going to go, it’s going to be a real genuine attempt. In Munich I had one case come up where actually I bought a watch off this bloke for some little two ounce packets of tea we got in Red Cross parcels. He used to get the watches from Switzerland. He had a way of getting in and out of

Switzerland. It was for so many packets of tea and coffee he was going to get my brother and I across to Switzerland, which, as far as I was concerned a real genuine attempt. All the British prisoners from Munich got transferred up to, the week before this was to take place. Not that they knew it was going on. It had been planned for some time before that they were going to move us all out

of Munich, unfortunately. One of our chaps escaped from Munich. What’s his name? He was only about 15 when he joined the army. Put his age up. Him and another chap worked in Munich on the

railway yards. They got on the platform over the wheel bogies and they went right through to Switzerland in winter. They got away. He got, what the hell’s his name? I’ve got a letter. He got DCM [Distinguished Conduct Medal] for his efforts

of getting away. I did hear then that he came back home and he went to New Guinea and got killed. We got a letter a couple of weeks ago from a friend of mine to say no, he got back to Australia and discharged. He did go to New Guinea, but he came out of New Guinea and got discharged. He was with a different unit.

No. Although the Germans I think have told our government that they abided by the Geneva Convention, I can assure you they didn’t. But the government, the only ones that didn’t abide by it as far as the government is concerned is the Japanese. So they compensated them and we're not recognised, which is a great disappointment for us blokes that went through

coalmines and starvation. Since Salonika we were losing 10 a day to starvation. It’s terrible to see your mates. I’ve got a mate, Jimmy Greer, he died in Salonika of starvation. The thing is that things get a bit tough and blokes chuck in the towel, they give up.

You can’t pull them back out again. This is why I say to anybody today that if things are not going the way you would like them to go, don’t give up. If you give up you never come back.

You can usually read them. They’ll sit down in the corner and don’t want to do anything.

Just waste away. This mate of mine used to sit on his right ankle. He could sit on his right ankle all day. Had his foot bent underneath him, he’d sit down on it. He’d sit there all day like that. In stead of getting up. I was always one to do exercises. Even the administrator today, when I first come up to the Territory

I could put my hands together and swing around on my thumb, put my legs around each arm and go down and pick up a match off the ground with my mouth. I could always do that sort of thing. This Ted Egan, the administrator now, he tells everybody what I used to do. He said, “He used to do all these things and all the rest of us would be half pissed. We tried to do it and fell on our nose.”

Used to be quite funny.

Oh yes. Jimmy was older than me and he was once he decided he didn’t want to go, there was nothing anybody could do. I had another mate, Mark Turner, who I thought he was going to

give in. When we left Salonika we did seven days in cattle trucks and the cattle truck I was in, the boys was going to escape. So we had to cut a hole in the big thick wood doors on the cattle truck. We used the army jack knife. We broke, I don’t know how many cutting a hole through just enough to get your hand through to pull the bolt out.

My brother and I was all planning what to do, but at the last minute Mark wouldn't come with us so we wouldn’t leave him. The rest of them got out. I don’t know whether they got away, whether they were killed. I’ve never heard of anybody that got out of that carriage whether they really got

away or whether they were recaptured or whether they got killed. I don’t know. We got Mark into Stalag 7A and he went into hospital there and Mark came out of it all right. When I first came home, Mark was married before he went away. And this is what I say, people go crook about four months away, terrible your husband’s gone. Mark was away five and a half years from his

wife. My other mate, Bill Parker, he’s in a nursing home in Sydney now, he was married. He was away five and a half years in one hit from their wives. They both waited for them to come back. I know a lot of others didn’t wait and they got the Dear John letters [letter signifying a relationship is over] in the prisoner of war camp. Both Mark and Bill Parker, their

wives waited for them to come back. Five and a half years is a long time in married life. But when I came home, Mark came from Lockhart in NSW. He took me round to introduce me to his wife, because I’d never met her before. She come up and hugged me and said Mark had told her that if it hadn't been for me he’d never have come back home.

It was a really funny feeling. She hugged me and she said, “Mark said if it hadn't been for you he’d never have come back home.” I was pleased that he made it. We met up again in England. Mark used to come to Kaye’s place on weekends.

Bill Parker, he used to come there too. Bill and I, he’s mentioned a lot in the book. He was in the same unit as Mark Turner. They were in the 2/8th Battalion engineers. Mark Turner told him if ever he met up with us, they were good mates to join.

So when we was in Stalag 8B at Lanmsdorff I met Bill and he told me about Mark Turner and he said, “Can I join you?” I said, “For sure.” So it was my brother and I and Bill Parker. I made an oven out of biscuit tins at Lanmsdorff. I opened them all up; all I had was the little scissors out of my sewing kit that the army give

you. That was my tin opener and I opened these tins. I did 86 biscuit tins and I joined them all together and made an oven to bake in and a top that you could boil on. I did this because nobody was allowed a fire of any description. We used to get Red Cross parcels with steak & kidney or meat & veg.

Nothing worse than having tinned stuff, stone cold. The boys used to get an empty tin and they’d put a little fire and stand another tin on top trying to heat it. The guards would come in and stick their boot into it and you’d lose the whole lot. I decided I’d make this oven and see how I feel. I got it all made. I packed the oven with mud.

I found a place to hook it up and I just get it going. Bill Parker was with me and my brother and a chap by the name of Roy Fury, I believe he’s dead now, but he was a sergeant major. He got repatriated to England. When he got to England he was a lieutenant and he was our adjutant, which I’ll tell you about later. My wife wasn’t very happy.

So I made this thing and we set a fire in it. I said to my brother about the Yorkshire mixture we used to get in the parcel “You can’t do nothing with that if you haven’t got something to cook it on.” Everybody had Yorkshire pudding mixtures, they chucked them away. So I said to Laurie my brother “Go and

mix up a Yorkshire pudding and we’ll put it in the oven and see if it works.” So he did and Bill Parker put water on top of the stove and it boiled. Everybody could make tea or coffee or whatever. While we’re doing this, the guard walks in. What’s going to happen? He stopped about from here to the opening there away. He stood there looking.

I said to Roy Fury “You reckon this is the end before we even know whether it’s going to work?” “We’ll wait and see.” So at any rate, after a few minutes the guard turned around and walked out. So I said, “You reckon he’ll be back?” “He’ll have reinforcements.” he said. So he came back and he’s got the commandant and two other officers with him and they stand about the same place, they’re

looking at this thing. I said to Laurie “How’s the Yorkshire pudding?” He said, “It cooked beautiful.” I said, “Good.” So we had all tin plates and dixies. So I said, “Cut three bits off it.” They were only small bits and put it on a tin plate.” He said, “Right-o.” and he passed the bowl over to these officers

and asked them to try it. They did. They finished up they called Roy Fury over because he was in charge of the hut. They’re talking to Roy Fury. They went out and Roy came back. I was always known as Cheeky Charlie, my mother named me that. So Roy Fury said to me “You young bastard. No wonder

they call you Cheeky Charlie.” They told him it was the only fire that was allowed in any of the barracks. True as I’m sitting here. “No wonder they call you Cheeky Charlie,” he said, “Nobody else would be game to take it.” So that worked out all right. We got shifted out. I said to Roy “This won’t last long before I’m moved” because your own blokes are your

own worst enemy. If you’ve got something that’s going to work you’ve always got somebody that’ll muck it up. Happened everywhere. Roy said, “No, I’ll personally look after this Charlie. I’ll absolutely.” So he goes out to Brislow, we was there for a while. It was Christmas 1943.

I always tried to do something for the rest of the boys at Christmas time. This time I found a sheet of metal, flat iron, up at the workshops where I was working.

Yeah, the Dunera.

Played a lot of two up. But we had no money, so we used to play for pennies. The first time in my life I did 19 pair

of heads, spinner, I had pennies from here, all lines up against. Nobody else had any money, I had it all. One of the blokes came over and said, “Bugger you!” and he bumped my arm and we all went and picked up pennies and we could all play again. That was two up that we played. I worked in the bakehouse on the

ship because anybody that was a baker, they put them in the. That was quite funny. The ship’s baker was a bloke, we called him Bagger, a Pommy bloke. He was quite a heavy drunk. Once we got going with rolling up the dough for tins and everything, he used to clear out and leave us.

After we’d been going a couple of days, the scales to weigh the dough with, was terrible. They were worn and they would stick and you couldn’t weigh properly. So a chap by the name of Tom Williams, he used to be a baker back home too. He’s in there and we wouldn’t use the scales because once you get used to it you could cut out pretty close to what you need. Old Bagger came in and went crook

and told us to use the scales. So Tom said, “The scales are no bloody good. This is all they’re good for.” and he chucked them out the porthole. They reckoned they didn’t have any more scales, but it’s marvellous how quick they picked up a new set of scales and brought round to us. Threw the whole lot out the porthole.

Firstly it was feeling terrible. I was horribly seasick. I fed the fish pretty well.

Everybody was happy. Other than being seasick everybody was happy. It was great. Most of us it was first time we’d been on a ship anyway. We played a lot of two up and worked in the bakehouse. We had lackies and washing deck blokes on the ship. If you didn’t get up, we used to sleep up on the deck because it was

pretty hot. Up around Equator it got quite warm and there was no air conditioning or anything like that. We used to sleep up on the deck. They’d come along and wash the deck. If you didn’t get up they’d hose you and everything. No, it was a wonderful experience the first time I was on a ship. Great.

My mates that I enlisted with and most of us stuck together. We met others too. We had artillery units onboard too, and they used to do quite a lot of boxing onboard too. All of us had a go at putting the gloves on and getting your nose knocked around.

See I’ve got my flattened nose. But I did all right. I could look after myself. My brother was better than me. He was a good boxer.

In Palestine and Egypt.

Marching through the sand to keep you fit.

We had mock battles and we had mock air raids dropping flour bombs on us and all that sort of stuff. As much as can be realistic we used to go out and aircraft used to fly over to see how good your camouflage was. They’d send word down if they could see what you were doing. So somebody could come along and pick out who wasn’t’ doing the right

thing. You had to camouflage yourself better out in the desert.

Mainly playing two up in the camp. two up was the big thing in the camp. Crown and Anchor [card game] and all those sorts of things. And we had pictures [movies]. We had better pictures in the static camps.

I got into trouble nearly because the pictures used to break down. It was pretty old equipment. They used to break down a lot. We had an officer enlisted. What was the question?

The pictures, that’s right. They used to break down. We had to be in our tents by 10 o'clock at night. This officer, the orderly officer of the day, he knew my brother and I very well. The pictures broke down and usually they used to know when the pictures broke down and

if you was at the pictures you was excused. This bloke, he came round to my tent and I wasn’t in the bed. So he used my name and my brother’s number because our numbers, mine was 6586 and his was 6587. This bloke knew both of us. He thought

my number was 6587. That’s what he put on the charge paper. So they charged my brother because they go on the number, not the name, and when my brother went up he said, “But I was on duty that night in the kitchen.” He gave the sergeant’s name that was the sergeant of the guard.

When he came back out of it, they didn’t charge him at the time because they wanted to get it sorted out. So he come back and he told me what had happened. I said, “You know why that is?” He said, “Why?” I said, “That was me.” So I went to the orderly room and I told him so somebody had made a boo-boo and it was me that should have been charged and not my brother. So the next

day we were both up and normally when you go in on a charge, you go in without a hat on. We was the last two to go in and they told us to leave our hats on and we knew that we wasn’t on charge. They wanted to enquire what it was all about. So when I told the major what it was, and why I was late, “Ridiculous!” he said and he called in this officer and gave him a blast.

He had a couple of goes at me, but he got what he deserved. He got killed in Libya. That was the only charge I think that was ever put on me. Those pictures was…

Normal movies. Cowboys

and all that sort of thing that was in during those days. Just normal picture shows they had. Used to go down and watch them. A lot of cases you make your own entertainment. Not much when you’re right out in the desert somewhere and Gaza in those days was nothing. It was nothing much in

Gaza at all. Just a little wog [Arab] village.

Not a great deal. We had some of them working in the camp on hygiene and rouseabouts at the kitchen and all that sort of thing. You wasn’t allowed to have too much to do with them outside the camp. They were treacherous anyway. They used to come and case the camp and that night,

get them to come in and they’d pinch your rifles and do all sorts of things. We had to finish up we had to chain our rifles to the tent pole and put locks in. The thing that always amazed me over there in Palestine, they issued you with a palliasse that you filled with straw for a mattress. They was white canvas in the shape of a coffin. If

you died there they’d empty the straw out and dump you in it.

7th February 1941.

Well, it’s not much to describe. We just arrived early hours of a morning and the boys came round with vino and

we all had a drink to celebrate my birthday and that was about all there was. We had to be ready to move again the next, eight o'clock in the morning we had to be ready to move again. So that birthday was just like any other day.

Out in the desert? Very cold at night. Very cold. They issued us with

leather jackets. No sleeves, just leather. Mussolini reckoned we was uneducated, barbaric Australians I think he, and we had bullet-proof jackets. This was these leather jackets we had to keep the cold out.

You’re not in it all the time. When it’s your turn to go in, well, you’re in it. You get relieved. Somebody else comes in and you can. Then in a lot of cases you take a town and you isolate that town and another group will go past that and head off onto the next one. Chase them while you’ve got them on the run to keep them running.

That’s what happened. Actually, as far as I can make out, the hierarchy, not General Wavell, but the ones above him, reckoned we’d gone to far in the desert. Then we had to stop in a hurry. Wavell wanted to go right through to Tripoli, but we wasn’t allowed. Once we had them on the run it was easy. Then the Germans came in and they had plenty

of ground to get established on. Stupid.

Crete was the worst I experienced as far as hierarchy. It was completely unnecessary as far as I was concerned. When you’ve got the enemy on the run you don’t withdraw.

Only they would know. They were not up with what’s going on. If you strike any of the other 2/7th Battalion in Western Australia if you’re over there, they’ll tell them the same story if they was in the action on Crete. It was just one of those unfortunate things.

I suppose we were expendable. It’s not hard to make troops expendable at times. I had a book on the history of Greece and Crete and I loaned it to somebody 5 or 6 years ago and I never ever got it back and I don’t know who I loaned it to.

I got it in England in 1987 when I was over there. It states that they didn’t anticipate anybody getting out of Greece. It was a token political gesture that we were sent over to Greece.

Well, every soldier is expendable.

Everybody is. Send you in to action, if you come out you’re lucky. You can’t have infantry soldiers especially and say they’re not expendable. If they’re not expendable they’re not in it.

We were sent over to Greece because we was the

most experienced battle experience. That’s why the 6th divvy was sent over to Greece, because it was campaign that they’d dreamt up. They didn’t expect anybody to get out of it. We had no air force. There had been air force, but

what was there was knocked off on the ground by the Germans. We had no combat air force with us while we was fighting in Greece and Crete.

That was a fantastic view. To give

you some idea, when we was over in 2001 on Crete, at Malame they put on a mock parachute landing. They had half a dozen parachutes coming down and this is what commemorate them shooting on the ground. One of the women from Canberra that was there, she said, “Is that how it was?” I said, “Well,

if you put 1,000 paratroops up there like that, that’d be more realistic.” She said, “That many?” I said, “Sure. Put 1,000 up there in one hit.” They had full regiments come down. The sky, I had photographs of it, and the sky was just covered with paratroops up in the sky.

Fantastic seeing it.

What can you do about it? They’re coming down. They’re shooting at you, so you shoot at them. They reckon it’s unfair to shoot a paratrooper when he’s in the air, but he’s shooting at you. War is fair game anyway. If you don’t shoot them they’ll shoot you. I’ve heard people say, “I was terribly

upset I had to shoot blokes when I was in the army.” and all this sort of business. To me, that doesn’t worry me because that’s a different environment altogether to what it is now. That’s what you’re there for. If you don’t get them, they’ll get you. That’s my philosophy on it. Anybody that feels upset because of it, maybe they would have preferred to get shot.

It is.

The amount of rifle fire that’s going on around you, coming from, some going some coming, it’s. When we come out of the place on Crete, before we pulled back to take up another position, before we did that bayonet charge was coming up,

I was on a built-up area about so high off the ground. It was a big area. There was a laneway going down it was so far down below to ground level. I was on top. When we had to pull out the Germans had machineguns on us. Along the edge of the laneway there was trees. All I could do was to crawl over to get a tree behind me and crawl down

to the next one and crawl down till I got far enough down to get my feet and run like buggery. When you hear them things whistling over your head it’s real funny. It’s serious.

“Get out of here quick.” I was lucky. That’s the only one I got, that shrapnel under

my chin.

I was in a foxhole and a bit of mortar shrapnel came in. It was just hot enough to go there and burn me. If it had had any force I wouldn’t have had any chin. But it gets terribly, terribly hot the shrapnel when it explodes and going through the air. It just burnt me. But that’s my souvenir.

Just like somebody shoved a red hot knife through my chin. I didn't know how bad it was. Then I had a big blister come hanging down. Once of the boys said, “We’ll have to get rid of that” so they pulled out the knife and just jabbed it in the end of it and let the fluid out and I carried on fighting. For years I couldn’t, every time I

shave, this thing came off.

Just put on one of our local first aid could put on, that’s all. Nothing much you could do with a burn except wash it with water or something. No, it’s nothing real serious.

Well, somebody said to me “You’re bloody lucky!” and I said,

“I think I might be, too.” It’s nothing serious. Like Peter Philips said in his report that he did “Minor wounds didn’t stop me from carrying on.” Those little things, you forget about them when you’re being chased.

On foot. We had nothing else but foot all the time I was on Crete. There was no transports. The only thing we had was Bren gun carriers, but they only had a few of those. I wore out my boots and when I was taken prisoner I walked all the way back across the island again with one

boot. The one on my right foot just had the upper. The boys, as soon as they found any rags or putties or anything like that, they used to grab it and give it to me and wind it around my foot. Having only gravel tracks over there then and by gee, your foot gets sore travelling over gravel.

Well, what happened was, we was all down on the waterfront and Colonel Walker was the CO of the 2/7th Battalion. He was a senior officer there and he got the message to say that the island had capitulated and every man for himself. So my brother and myself and Jimmy Greer and Herbie Island,

we decided we was going to make for the hills. We was heading up to the hills and we came to a little house and they had some chicks. My brother said, “We’d better get a couple of chicks, we might need something to eat later on.” So we wrung a couple of chicks’ necks. He had a white pillowcase and he shoved them in that.

He got it over his shoulder and we’re going and we couldn’t get through. There was no track going up the hill. So we turned around to come back and we’re right out in the open hill, not a tree anywhere and they come over bombing. That’s where this, I think this Toby Blouse was killed. He was down a wadi [dry rocky watercourse] and they bombed right along down. I think he might have been killed there,

which turned out he was killed there. I’ll never forget my brother. He’s lying on the ground on top of the hill and he just had this white pillowcase on his back. He’s trying to crawl underneath little pebbles of stone and God knows what. Anyway, they didn’t bomb us; they went down to where the majority were. Then we moved down a little bit further and blow me down there was a German come from the other way.

He spoke a little bit of English and he says, “For you, Aussie, the war is over.” We got rounded up, put into a churchyard and we was held there. The German bomber planes came over and bombed there and bombed their own men and they were running around putting swastikas out to let them know.

Then we immediately started to march back over the island. It’s a shocking feeling. I don’t think anybody can really put it in words, the feeling it is to be taken prisoner. It’s so deflating. We marched back to the other side of the island and we went into

the middle of the island. We went from Suda Bay back into the centre of the island to a place called Skeins [?]. There was no fence, there was no roof, there was nothing and that’s where we was kept in prison there. The Italians had been there before us. They had all open toilets and the boys got dysentery and it was a shocking thing.

My feet? My right foot was very sore.

I had that much rag all around the top, but the underneath was worn out. I finished up I didn’t have anything for my feet, I was in Salonika. I was in Moosberg and I got a pair of second-hand French boots, I got a French overcoat, which you could shell peas

through, it was pretty old, and I got a change of French uniform I got, an old one. I was like that until February 1942 when the Red Cross stuff came through and I got a pair of boots. I didn’t get a pair of boots, I got a pair of clogs. Dutch clogs.

We was working in Munich. Jesus, that’s right. Dutch clogs I had. If you had the bare wood on the bottom, the ice used to snow, you used to stick to it. The sole of your clog would be like that. You’d take another step and the heat from your foot would melt it off. You step and you think you’ve gone down a hole. So we used to get a lump of wood and as we went, every couple of steps we went we’d hit our clogs with the stick to knock the

snow off the bottom of them. We found out, if you put a bit of motor tyre tube underneath, the ice didn’t stick to the rubber. We scrounged motor tyre tubes. We was wonderful scroungers, you’ve got no idea. If somebody wanted something, he got it somewhere.

I didn’t have any socks, we wrapped paper round our feet. I didn't have a pair of socks until I got a parcel from

my aunt in England, my mother’s sister, and she sent out two pairs of socks and bits and pieces. I just got a new pair of boots through the Red Cross and I thought, ‘I won’t have cold feet anymore.’ so I put two pairs of socks on. That’s the worst thing you can do. Made my boots too tight and that’s worse than not having any socks. I sat down in the middle of the snow and took my boots off, massaged my feet

with snow and put one pair of socks on and the other pair in my pocket and put my boots on and away I went. Funny experiences.

It was a part of the deal that Red Cross was allowed to go to the Germans that was in England or if there was any out here, and

they had Red Cross stuff to come through, heavily censored, same as our mail. You could get a letter and you wouldn’t be able to read anything of it, because they didn't scratch it out, they cut it out. You could get a letter that’d be like a bloody pianola [player piano] tape, full of holes.

We had no idea. Some blokes reckoned we wouldn’t have made it, some blokes reckoned we’d be shot. It was just a matter of playing by ear. Take what was coming. When I got to Salonika and found out that my mates had

been shot by German officers I thought we was damned lucky to get there. But it’s like everywhere else, everybody’s not the same. Some German officers would be really crooked on somebody for doing that and others would do it no trouble at all. I suppose we got people like that in our own society.

The main thing I remember was the German bloke was telling us that if we hadn't capitulated on the Saturday night, they was ordered to capitulate on the Sunday night. We just thought how stupid our own senior officers were because they got a Sunderland when they told us they’d be the

last man to leave the island. In my book, you might read there on Crete where I’ve said that the generals just made one little mistake in their remarks, they meant they would be the last ones to leave the island before they capitulated. And that’s exactly what they did.

We went by ship to Salonika. Very little to eat. That’s why I sold all my presents that I bought to send home.

Other than that we were just down in the holds lying on the steel deck, no bunks, nothing. Just lay on the steel deck. We become used to that, either on concrete or steel or out in the dirt. Even when I got a bed in Germany, you might as well sleep on the bed boards. We used to have triple-decker or double-decker bunks, whichever place you went to

and the bed boards. Going back to Lanmsdorff, Stalag 8B, we had no wood, so the boys got to getting their bed boards and chopping them up and burning their bed boards. I finished up from having bed boards; the other blokes would come and pinch your bed boards, no worries. So I

finished up I had two pieces about that wide, bed boards, and put it through each end of my palliasse, I didn't need any straw, and hook it over the ends of the bed. It’s the same as a hammock. That was my bed at Lanmsdorff because all the buggers burnt my bed boards. But I suppose it was more comfortable than lying on bed boards.

The only thing is with it like that it gets terribly cold if you haven’t got something underneath you, even if you’re camping out here in Australia in a winter’s night. If you’ve got one of those stretchers a lot of people use, if you haven’t got something good underneath to keep the cold out, it gets very, very cold.

Salonika camp was a hell hole. It’s very little food, the main dish we got was hard tack Italian biscuits that was boiled in water

with a bit of pork fat or something put in for flavour and that was your meal. After being in Salonika six weeks or so, we started to lose 10 blokes a day dying of starvation. I’ve actually witnessed

blokes fighting over the leftovers in the pots of this boiled biscuit. The Greeks, I think they must have changed officers at the camp, because at one time the Greeks used to be allowed to bring in some bread and olive oil. We had ersatz coffee, that’s imitation coffee, not real coffee.

I think it’s made out of burnt maize or something like that. The dregs of that coffee we used to get and put it on bread, pour some olive oil over it, sprinkle a bit of salt on that, it was a delicacy. Then the Germans wouldn’t allow the Greeks to bring in the olive oil and the bread so we were just left with coffee dregs and

a bit of sour bread that the Germans gave us when they felt like it. It was a terrible place. We had no beds or anything like that. Just laying on concrete. Our hips used to have like a blue bruise on each of our hips from laying on the concrete because we didn’t have much flesh to protect it.

Salonika’s a place I hate to think anybody had to put up with.

Health wise it started to deteriorate in Salonika, but we were pretty fit. We

were really fit and we could, that’s what saved us a lot. When I say 10 a day died, that was not just Australians. We had Cypriots, we had Greeks, we had New Zealanders, we had all sorts in the place. The Cypriots were the worst. I suppose more of them died than anybody else because

if they couldn’t pinch something they’d sit down and mope about it. I had one experience where my brother played two up. You’ve got to stop? My brother played two up and I played Crown and Anchor. We was told to smoke by the doctors and that takes the edge off your appetite, which

is true. So we had one cigarette left between five of us, and that’s what we used to do. Four of us used to have a few puffs out of the cigarette and this Jimmy Greer, the chap that died, had a clip-on cigarette holder. When we got to the butt he’d clip that on and we could have a smoke at the end of it. So my brother went out with one cigarette to try and build up the cigarette supply and

I went out with 10 drachmae, Greek money to the Crown and Anchor to see if I could build up some money so we could buy some biscuits off the Cypriots, they had biscuits and that. I don’t know where they got the from, but they always had a black market going somewhere. My brother went out and he built his one cigarette

to 20 cigarettes and I built up my 10 drachmae to 580 drachmae at the Crown and Anchor. So I come back and I’ve got this money and one of the blokes said, “We’ll go out and get some hard tack biscuits.” I said, “Right-o.” So I’ve still got the money in my hand. I go out to get the biscuits and I asked the bloke how much it cost. I opened my hand and not a bloody zip, went whoop and took the lot out of my hand. So I took after him and I chased him

it must have been 100 metres. He went to what was the medical centre and he run up one flight, where the stairs go halfway to the next floor. He went up to one landing and he was halfway up the next one and he was buggered. He couldn’t go any further. I went up and I was going to club him. I took the money, but I didn't have strength enough to hit him. I staggered back to the boys and I flopped on the ground and told them what happened.

They sent one of the others out to buy the biscuits.

I never met any of the German senior officers. We only met the guards that came around. Like everything else, some would talk to you, others was very officious.

That goes in all societies. We even got our own policemen like that. Some guards were very frightened of their own comrades. Not only in Salonika, especially in the coalmines where I was, they

always put an SS [Schutz staffel German guard] soldier in amongst the guard and nobody knew which one was the SS soldiers. If the SS soldier caught the guard being too friendly to us guys, he was in serious trouble. They was all scared stiff, they’d look at one another wondering who’s the one. It was pathetic to see the fear in their eyes.

If they want to talk to you they wondered whether that bloke was an SS or whether he wasn’t. There was definitely one SS in every camp. The guards were very scared stiff they’d get caught, especially if they thought they were being too friendly towards us.

No, not in Salonika. We were made to work on Crete. That’s what Kaye was saying a while ago. I was transplanting Germans that had been dead a fortnight and it was really blowing. We was putting them in coffins and building a cemetery.

Crete was a stench from one end of the island to the other of dead, there was dead everywhere. The Germans that we were what’s called transplanting were only half covered and we had to get them out and we weren’t permitted to leave that particular area, not even to have lunch.

So you couldn’t eat lunch. We’d save that meal and take it home. It was tin food and you’d take it back to the camp and that’d be a bonus for some other time. We had picks, rakes, all sorts of things to turn the coffins on the side and roll them in. You had to be very careful; if they exploded it was, oh.

It’s one of the things that still turn me over. My brother was putting one bloke in and he was too long for the coffin. He was a tall fellow. Called the guard over and showed him. So the guard got a pick and bashed him in the shins and doubled his legs up and told him, “He’ll fit now.”

We had spare legs there, we’d chuck an extra leg in with some of them. We had to make a joke of everything, otherwise you’d go mad. Bloke went in with one leg and another one went in with three legs.

That kind of work? I got out of it because I think it would have

really knocked me about. They called for a carpenter and I said I was a carpenter. I’ve been all sorts of things over there. Bricklayers, carpenters. I said I was a carpenter and they had me digging ditches for putting up, a funny job for a carpenter, but it was better than transplanting these other blokes so I stuck to it. I didn’t smoke at the time, but

some of the blokes smoked. The German I worked with there, he used to offer me a cigarette every now and again. So I had to light it, then I’d butt it and stick it in the puggaree in my hat. Then I’d take it back to the boys and they could have a smoke. I’ve always had my mates in

mind if there was anything I’d do it was as if I could help my mates. I’ve always been like that. I started smoking in POW camp because when I got to Salonika they told us the cigarettes would help the hunger feeling. So I started smoking then when cigarettes was so hard to get. I smoked on and

off all through. I give it away in January 1965 I gave up smoking.

Sometimes it gets a bit monotonous, but you’ve got to make the best of a bad lot.

There’s nothing you can do about it. You can make your life miserable, or you can make it better than being miserable. You can’t make it happy, but you can make it better than being miserable. It’s up to yourself whether you do that or whether you don’t.

Funny you should mention that. Food was the main thing they used to talk about. What they’d like

to eat. You’d be amazed.

My brother used to say he’d like lamb fry and bacon. Others wanted a good feed of steak; I think that was the most popular in the feed was the steak. Others would say, “I couldn’t give a bugger, a good feed of sausages or mash or anything would do.” That’s one of the most things that were spoken about.

When I was in Munich I used to get a little bit of meat. Did you see the girl in there that helped me in Munich? Photograph of her in there. Her father had a butcher shop. She used to ride a bike. I didn’t know who she was or

anything. She was the only girl of 16. She was a very nice looking girl and she seemed to be very friendly towards the Brits. Whenever we walked around she’d be on a pushbike and walk alongside us. I had a theory that if I let the guards think I was

a little bit crackers I could get away with a lot more. This girl used to ride the bike along the footpath and I’d say “Isn’t she lovely?” Always making nice comments. One day we’re walking through the workshop ,the new railway

workshops and we did the beautification like the rose gardens. I’m walking through the workshop and this German bloke he beckons me. He was scared stiff somebody was going to see him and he was looking all directions and beckons me over. He was a lathe operator. I went over to this fellow and he handed me a note written in English.

When I say English it was not good English, but you could understand it. I went out and read it and it’s this girl. She’s learning English at school. Her father owned the butcher shop that we used to walk passed all the time. A sentence that she wrote I’ll always remember, “When you will a sausage tell me now.” So if I

wanted any sausage, I had to let her know. But the way she put it “When you will a sausage, tell me now.” She used to send me in meat ration tickets. This is how we corresponded, I told, what’s her name, wrote a book about Gallipoli. What’s her name [Patsy Adam-Smith]? I’ll think of it after.

She came up here to do something about ex POWs or POWs. They put her onto me from the RSL in Darwin. I told her exactly what I told you. In the book, I’ll show it to you after, I’ve got the book there. In the book she reckons it developed into a romance. I hate talking to journalists or anything like that because

you can tell them something and they’ll put their own interpretation to it. This is what she put in her book. This girl, she used to send me in these meat ration tickets. There was an Italian bloke working there who I got quite friendly with. He used to take these ration tickets out to the butcher shop because he could go where he liked and they’d give

him the meat for me. I used to get little bits of beef , lots of little --enough for my brother and I. She knew I had a brother in there with me. I used to drop a note back to her and give it to this bloke. It came Christmas 1942 and she’d told me that she was giving

me a bottle of wine and some meat ration tickets for Christmas in a little note she sent me. So I didn’t hear anything from her for about 3 weeks, into the New Year I hadn't heard anything from her. This particular morning we’re going, when we walked into this job, there was big long string of flats and

there was a roadway went under the flats each way you went through. It was dark in the morning and the chap in the front of our column, a German, walked along the street “For Charlie” and give it to this bloke in the front of the column. So when we got into the workplace he knew who it was for, he come and give it to me. It was from this girl. This bloke

that was one of my mates, his son was in the German navy, he came home on leave and he must have found out that he was taking notes to me, and he told his father he was going to report him to the Gestapo [German Secret Police]. So the old man hung himself in the bedroom. That’s in the book. He drank the bottle of wine first and he destroyed all the

evidence that he had. This girl and his wife went through everything to make sure there was nothing in it to incriminate the girl or the wife. That’s in the book too. It’s a shocking thing that they did over there. Everybody was so scared. So then her father used to come through of a morning and drop the notes.

I nearly had her name then. I’ll wait until this tape’s finished. Patsy Adam Smith. That’s right. You can have a look at that after, it’s in the book that it developed into a romance.

I wasn’t very amused about that because people will believe it and it puts completely the wrong slant on things, as though I was able to get out and have honky tonky with the German girls.

It did.

It was great to think there was somebody, Her father must have been all our way too. It was great to think that we had some people that was friendly towards us. You couldn’t boast about it. You couldn’t let any Germans know, because she would have been in. She was brave that girl, there’s no doubt about that. She was brave. The penalty she would have suffered if she was caught, it

would have been Dachau [concentration camp].

Yeah, I used to act stupid and I could get away with more.

Just do stupid things and the Germans would laugh at me and say. Suited me fine.

I did a bit of interpreting over there for a while. I still do a bit, but I’ve forgotten a lot. When my daughter had the lakes resort there was a lot of German tourists come there. There were some young blokes who didn’t have a lot of English and she’d ring me up to go down there and I could help them out.

Yeah, I told them where I learned it too. They couldn't believe it. Everybody's told me, even now, they reckon I speak good German. I forget a lot. I’ve got to use other words to get around things. I forget that word so you’ve got to get around it the long was around to explain what you want. I like to get out and have a

talk with Germans.

No. I’ve got no bad memories now. They’re all gone now. I was the interpreter, many years ago in Rutherglen, the vineyard people. They couldn't get local grape pickers and they got them just after Bonegilla

started [migrant hostel], the migrants when they came out. They used to get me to go to Bonegilla and get 30 or 40 migrants and they all spoke German because they came from German displaced persons camps. A lot of them were Poles and spoke Polish. I knew a few words of Polish because I worked in Poland. Not a lot.

I finished up I used to get these workers and I went out to the vineyards and I was their interpreter ganger, father confessor, you name it. I was everything for them. It was good because a lot of German came back then. I was out there one day and one of the, he was a Czech. He thought he was much better than the others and I was so annoyed because I’d helped him a lot. He wanted a

motorbike. I took him up to Wodonga to a motorbike yard and made arrangements for him to be able to get his motorbike. Then we were out picking grapes one day and I heard him talking to some of the blokes in Polish. I was sure he was telling them not to work, they’d been working too hard and, “You shouldn’t do this.”

So I went to one of the other chaps and in German I asked him what he said. He said, “Why? He’s talking Polish.” I said, “Yeah, I know he was. He’s telling them not to work too hard, not to do this.” The bloke “How do you know?” I said, “I’ve worked in Poland too you know,” and that’s exactly what he was doing. So I went in to the office and I rang the employment officer in Wangaratta and told him. They was under the impression

that they couldn’t be sacked. A bloke by the name of Maurie Tate was the employment officer in Wangaratta. I told him what had happened and his name was Muz. So Maurie said to me, “Charlie, I think you’d better tell Muz to buzz.” So I said, “It’s OK to shoot him off?” He said, “He can find his own way back to Bonegilla.” So that's exactly what I did.

Boy, did it make a difference to the others. You can’t have people doing that. That's apart from my war experience. Well, I suppose it brings it back. I helped the vineyards out a lot in that. I’ll tell you a funny story. The next year I couldn’t get out there, but I told them if they had any problems I would quite happily help them.

Billy Graham, she’s a hard case girl, she come running in one day and she said to Kaye “Where’s Charlie?” She said, “He’s out the back.” “Oh, I’ve got a problem.” Kaye said, “What’s wrong?” “Oh, I’ve got this German out there who’s cooking. I want Charlie to tell me what he wants. He wants

a fanny for his sausage.” I started to laugh. I said, “He wants a farny for his sausage.” “Yes, that’s right.” “He wants a frying pan to cook the sausages in.

I was able to help her out. She went out with a smile on her face - not a worried look.

We went to Stalag 7A in Moosberg. That was after Salonika. We did seven days in

cattle trucks to get there. We cut a hole in the door and some of them escaped. The remainder of that, we had 32 in a cattle truck. I think there was only about 12 or so that got out. The remainder was put into the next one, which made 52 in a cattle truck. We was there for

five and a half or six days. 52 to a cattle truck. You couldn’t lay down. If you did, you had to take it in turns. You can imagine a cattle truck with 52 people in it. Eventually, when the boys wanted to go to the toilet, all we could use, there was no facilities, was little biscuit tins. I’ll tell you, very difficult trying to balance on two

biscuit tins. Very difficult. Then you had nowhere to get rid of them. You could stack them up in the corner and hope they don’t fall over. That’s true, that’s exactly how it was. We eventually got to Moosberg and the German commandant apologised for our atrocious condition. We were very, very… When we got to Budapest on our way

there, all on the platform at the big station at Budapest. All on the platform the Hungarians had put tables with food and everything out for prisoners. The commandant on the train refused to allow us to have any. All we could do was look through the little things on the top of the cattle trucks and see all the food. We were drooling out the mouth. That’s as much as we saw of it. When we got to Moosberg the

commandant apologised for our condition. The only thing he didn’t like about the Australians was we wouldn’t salute him. He put officers at every 20 metres around the big parade ground at Moosberg. He made us march around the parade ground to salute all the officers. He was teaching us how to salute. We were buggers. We weren’t there to

make him happy.

Everybody, I think, had sense enough to know that it had to be that way. It was completely out of our control. One funny thing happened when we was getting out of the other cattle truck. We had a bloke named Bob Johnson.

Bob was a lot older than us. I had no boots. He had boots, but he had them off in the cattle truck. When they ordered us out of that truck to go into the next one, I had a sugarbag, like a sugarbag, and it had bread and that in for Mark Turner, Laurie and I. That was our bread and I couldn’t leave that behind. So I went over to get this at

the end of the cattle truck and the German he didn’t like that. He didn’t like - expected me to go out and leave it behind. He took a swing at me with the rifle butt. I dived on the floor and poor old Bob Johnson leaned over putting his boots on, he got it across the backside. Bob went onto the floor and it didn’t do him too much damage. He got out and

he went and told all the other blokes in the other carriage what I’d done and they reckoned I was a bastard. I wasn’t allowed to get into the carriage. I had to be the last one. The guard wouldn’t let me in. With all the people in the carriage, I get up onto the top of the cattle truck and he give a swing with the rifle butt and he got me right across the back and shoved me straight through, knocking other blokes over as I went through into the cattle truck.

Just because I went onto the floor and missed his butt the first time. He didn’t like that. That’s one of seven days in cattle trucks. That was my first experience. I did a lot of travelling in cattle trucks in Germany. Everywhere was cattle trucks. From Moosberg into Munich,

cattle truck. That was only a short distance. That was a day or so. From Munich to Moosberg, cattle trucks, that was two or three days. From Lanmsdorff to Breslau was cattle trucks. From Breslau to Dabrova in the coalfield, that was cattle trucks. That took about four or five days.

Then I had the pièce de resistance. When the Russians got me I got from Krakow to Odessa, 17 days in cattle trucks. That’s travelling. I’m still here, and I’ve still got a smile on my face.

No, that’s only a holding camp. That was where people went if they were seriously ill or a holding camp like us. They give us a bit of food and make sure we was healthy enough to go out to work. Then they sent us to Munich to go to work. That's where this little girl was, in Munich.

We was in a workers camp

in Munich, a place called Langwid [?]. The contractor was Polinski and Zollmer. They used to do beautifications round like at the railway workshop and they did the concreting under the bridge. They did a lot of work for the government.

They’re still going, so they must have work going. We had one funny little bloke worked with Polinski and Zollmer. He’d been a prisoner of war in England in the First World War. He used to come up to us and say “Churchill bloody bastard.” He had a big smile on his face.

He was a funny little bloke. He was quite happy with us but that’s his sense of humour. I hated the cold weather. Gee it was cold. Your breath used to freeze on your collar. All your collar would be covered in hard

ice from your breath. Blokes used to have a moustache - I tried to grow a moustache. The first winter I cut it off because in the cold your nose runs and the whole lot freezes to your moustache. Shocking. I worked in the canal at Munich, just coming on to the winter. They can’t work when the real winter gets there.

We used to work in this canal and you’d splash and the water droplets from the splash would land on you like jelly and then ice. Cold. We managed to get through it somehow or other. I’d hate to

do it again.

Nothing much. The only time that if you had to go somewhere where the only was to go was through the street, you never stopped. It was straight through and before too much traffic. It might have to be four o'clock in the morning. They’d take

you out to a job. I’ve never been round through Munich during, when public people was around. It was always before the people started. It was nothing to get out at four o'clock in the morning. It must have suited them. Then the coalmines was the worst. Leave camp at four o'clock,

get back at eight o'clock at night and you had to work 20 days. That was what they called the Hitler week in the coalfield. Again, our federal government said we had a picnic. I wish some of them had been with us. I’d really like to see some of them blokes be in it.

No. We was all split up. Mark Turner, our mate, I didn’t see him again until he got to England from the time we left him at Moosberg. I didn’t see him again till we got to England. I heard that he was in another camp in Munich, a place called Walfriedof [?] and that’s where this Bill Parker was with him. Mark said to him, “If ever you get up with Charlie and Laurie Parrott, be with them because…”

When we got to Lanmsdorff I met Bill Parker and he told us what Mark had said. “Can I be with you?” he said and I said, “For sure.” So we was together in Breslau, but Bill got sick with malaria and he got sent back. He had malaria a few times and he got sent back to camp and I didn’t see him until

we got to England again. They’re the sorts of things that you wonder about, “Did he make it?” When we got back to England, see my brother didn’t know I’d made it because he started a 700 kilometre march from the east across to the west of all prisoners. They took me out of the sick bay at the mining camp.

I was on crutches. This was on 20th January 1945. Heavy snow on the ground. I started the 700 kilometre march in the snow on a pair of crutches. I couldn’t make it. I did a long day. I went from

about 7.30 in the morning I think roughly that’s the time we left camp and we marched or walked or whatever you like to call it. I hoppety-clicked with my crutches and it’s amazing how many steps you take with crutches. You can easy take two forward and one backwards in the snow.

I suppose it was about two o'clock the next morning. We left on the Saturday and on two o'clock on the Sunday morning and I got out in the moonlight and I saw a building that had a basement underneath and I got out into that. It turned out it had been a school. The school was closed because of the war at the time. I stayed there from the 21st January to the 28th of

January. My leg was rotten by that time. I couldn’t do anything, I was absolutely a mess. The Russians came and they didn’t want me either. They took me out and they put me in the snow and left me. I was there in the snow from about 7 .30 in the morning until about 4.30 or five o'clock in the afternoon.

I’m not one to give up, but I was still conscious that I couldn’t do anything and that annoyed me. I thought I might have to give up. About five o'clock in the afternoon a couple of Poles was walking down the road and saw me, knew I was British because I had a British battledress uniform on, and one went away and the other stayed behind and

the next thing the other bloke came back and he’s got a stretcher. Their stretchers are a stretcher sled type of thing. They put me on that and they towed me about I’d say four kilometres in the snow into the township to Beuten and they took me to the convent. The nuns in the convent saved my life. They was fantastic. In the front of the book you might have seen the dedication

where I dedicated the convent and Sister Marcella and the German doctor. He opened me up 13 times without any deadening. The first time it was done was in the prison camp by a South African doctor. He had no deadening either and he had three blokes holding me down while he cut me there and there and up the top there. He run skewers all the way around

through my leg. Then he put plugs in, one from here and one from here up to, they needed to be changed every two hours. No deadening at all. I lost every bit of skin off my body. I didn’t know it was happening. I was on crutches going out, we didn’t have laundry facilities, you had to do your own laundry. Not even my own brother could do it for me because he’d been sent away

somewhere else. I went out and I’m doing a little bit of my washing in the wash trough and I’m putting my hands down, pushing it through the clothes and I lifted my hand up and I couldn’t get my hands to come up. This part came up, but my palms were down here. True as I’m sitting here. There was a bloke come in and I said, “What can I do with this?” He looked at me and said, “Christ and buggery!”

He didn’t know what was going on. I asked him to go into the doc. He came out and he just cut the skin off and my whole palm dropped off. From then on it was just like sunburned skin peeling off from my back and all over my body. The last part to peel was the soles of my feet. You wouldn’t believe how thick that skin is when it’s dry, on the soles of your feet. That took months and months to. I’d walk around with

socks on and the skin would come off and it was like walking on gravel. It was, my skin was that hard it was sharp.

Nobody can tell me. I’ve asked doctors since I’ve been home and I was just lacking something. What? That was after I’d. You see I

think shock set in after they’d done me. I don’t remember three days afterwards. I was told that this South African doctor sat over me for three nights because I think it must have been shock with the pain of that and where my eyes watered it scolded all round my eyes. But I’ve

still got a leg. I’m very lucky. I consider myself very lucky I’m still around.

Yes, you read that in the book. I don’t think I mentioned it. You read that in the book.

When we were getting rid of the shovels?

Initially I went there. It’s the first job I ever had in Germany. I had no German whatsoever. They were getting the levels for the bottom of this canal and the German engineer always wore a green hat. So we called him Green Hat. He gets onto me; they’ve got the boning rods to sight on

a fixed on down there and he’s got one up his end. In between we had another one that I had to lift up and down so he could get the levels. He says “Up” so I lifted it up. “Up” up a bit higher, I thought “Jesus there’s something wrong with this.” He kept saying “Up” and up I went. Finished up he took his hat off and he jumped on it and

he came up to me and he pushed it down like that. I didn’t know “Up” meant “down.” So “Auf” is “up” and “Up” is “down.” I think he was saying “Up” and “Up” and I’m lifting this damned boning. He put somebody else on the job. I wasn’t good enough to do that. All the boys thought that was quite hilarious. Then they used to have what they called ‘Sheeny beanies’ along the edge of the canal.

We used to go out and get all the little scrub and we used to roll them all together in long things and then tie them up and put posts in along the edge along the canal and these used to go behind the posts and then you fill the dirt up against them. That was the edge of the canal. They’ve got a big mechanical shovel that

digs all this stuff out. We used to have competitions through the day, when they put all this dirt in up against the sheeny beanies, who could chuck the most shovels and things in when they put the, cause the bloke on the machine couldn't see us. He’d just upend the bucket and tip all the dirt in and

we used to. There must be hundreds of shovels in the edge of that canal. We used to chuck in and bury. Then it came onto wintertime and the winter there was horrible. The first winter I put in Munich was the worst winter they’d had in 40 years. If you spilt water from the canal

onto your clothes the splash droplets used to go through the air and turn into a jelly and then when it hit your clothes and stick on like a block of ice. Cold. My God it was freezing cold. We had to carry on doing it until it got too bad that you couldn’t even get near the water. There used to be ice on the water for about that far

from the edge on both sides and there was a little trickle in the middle that wasn’t frozen that used to run down. The jobs they gave us as prisoners, boy oh boy it was shocking. We got through it. We did it.

German life was a pretty staid life in those

days. Everything had to be for the war effort. They had very little leisure. People always looked miserable. Very few people you could say was happy in life. That was because of the powers that be and the

controls that they put over everybody. That young girl in Munich, she was outstanding, no doubt about that. So brave, because if she’d been caught, she’d be in really serious trouble. That’s normal for most of the German people I think.

We knew what was going on. I worked alongside Dachau. If they didn’t sing before a meal they didn’t get anything to eat. It’s a funny thing, they used to have big pneumatic tyred, like trailers with being pulled behind a truck.

They had the tow pole on the front of it and on that had two long poles. Four chaps used to handle that. Then they had another three on each side and that meant 10 used to take this out under their steam, fill it with whatever it had to be filled with and take it back into camp under their steam. This happened

all the time. We used to see it happening. If we used to hear them singing at mealtime, if they didn't sing they didn’t get anything to eat, to let everybody think they was happy. When I went over there in 1987 I said to my wife “We’ve got to go to Dachau.” That was completely different to what I knew Dachau. Where we used to go down the road to the canal, that’s all houses now.

The houses back up to the wall of Dachau. The gate’s not where I knew the gate to be. We went in and I said to Kaye “This is not where the gate was. This is not.” So we went inside and there was a couple of German tourist blokes

there to explain to everybody. I went over to this bloke and I said, “That’s not the original gate.” “Yeah, yeah, that’s where they used.” “No,” I said, “There’s another gate.” “No there’s no more gates.” I said, “Right-o.” So I said to Kaye “Wait here.” So I went around the fence and I found the bloody gate all right. Overgrown, but it’s still there, It hadn't been opened in years. So I went back and said to this bloke “The gate’s over there. That’s’ the one I know of.”

He said, “It’s all houses.” I said, “There wasn’t any houses when I was here.” He wanted to know, I wouldn’t tell him anyway. He thought I’d been a prisoner in there. I didn’t tell him any different. That’s where they used to pull their trucks in, manhandling all the time. It was cruel what they went through there, it’s shocking.

Amongst our own blokes? Everybody knew, but even today people say they didn’t know what was going on. That’s a lot of garbage. They knew what was going on in Belsen, they knew what was going in Auschwitz, everybody knew. But they just didn’t want to admit it. It was all good initially.

When the war started turning the other way it was different. They didn’t want to know about it.

Jewish people? I never got a chance to speak to any of the prisoners. It was strictly taboo. We weren’t allowed to converse with them in any way at all. We could see them, but that was…

They was shocking. You could

see the depressed look in their face and their unfed, their body looked terrible. I remember one time in Munich. We was working out, I’m not sure where it was, and there was a group of little Jewish girls with German women as guards.

These poor little girls were working and two or three of us had a cut lunch with us. We didn’t have our lunch. I waited and I let the girls see me, but I couldn’t let the guards see. I went over as close as I could and I put our sandwiches, or whatever we had, at the bottom of a

tree and walked away. It was close enough that these girls that was working, they’d think they were still working when they walked over to the tree to get it. These poor little kids, who wouldn’t have been more than 12 years old, there they were out working in the fields and they had a big star on their back. Everything they had, had to have the Star of David on it. These poor little kids, gee I felt sorry for those little kids.

That’s the only time I was out there, I didn't see them again. If they got caught I suppose they would have been in serious trouble anyway. I just felt that we could go without. They was worse off than us.

Yes. We was told about it, but that’s as much as we was told about that’s all. We

had some of the boys that escaped, and they was put in Auschwitz. They all got compensated $10,000 for being in a concentration camp. I’ve got a mate on Bribie Island. I was talking to him only a week or so ago on the phone. He was one of them that escaped. He got $10,000 compensation. That’s from the Germans.

That’s the only way we could know of anything that was going on from different people escaped and been caught, put in these places for holding until they got them back to one of the stalags. Other than that we had no way of knowing.

Worked on the railway line. Tick tocking on the railway line. My brother worked on the railway line all the time in Munich. Packing up sleepers, what they call tick tocking, knocking the ballast in under the sleepers. Yes, they used to be a fulltime job on that. We used to go shovelling snow off the top of

big briquette stacks. Funny thing happened to me one day. We used to act the goat a lot. Anything brighten up the day. We had to shovel snow off, three foot deep I suppose, had to shovel the snow off the briquettes. Everybody get a shovel full of snow and throw over the other bloke. I did it one day and three of them copped.

So they all took to me and I ran. I couldn’t see where the end of the stack of briquettes was and I ran over and I went down about 8-10 feet. I dropped into the snow. The only way I could get out was to burrow through until I was over to where the track was. They thought it was a great joke. We used to do stupid things like that because it broke the monotony. Anything to cause a laugh.

Even if you wasn’t laughing, somebody else was.

Well, I think that helps you to cope with the monotony. It was a terrible monotonous life even if you go to work it’s a monotonous like being a prisoner. You do these stupid things. I did the things,

the Germans thought I was a bit crackers. I was happy as I was, because I could get away with things nobody else could. “He’s verruck.”

I used to run the black market in Munich for our camp when I was working at the railway workshops. A little two ounce packet of tea was worth

seven kilos of bread. In another place in Munich, where I wasn’t at but I know the boys were, in the heart of Munich, a two ounce packet of tea they’d go to a brothel. Have a beer, what they went for and five marks change for a two ounce packet of tea. That’s only

when you were in the heart of Munich. There wasn’t many blokes there. I know they used to do it because I used to have a lot of tea for dealing with the black market. Blokes used to come along and get me to get bread or whatever I could. Again, at Freimann, with the black market, I used to get sticks

of German sausage, which was very hard to get. The German guards, they’d let me in with bread, but if they caught me with a lump of sausage they’d take that. They’d have that for themselves. I didn’t like losing this sausage, so we had a lot of parachute cord that we brought. Everybody brought parachute cord from Crete. I used to do that

macramé work with making belts and everything from parachute cord. So I made myself a belt and I made a couple of little things drop down the inside of my leg. When I got the sausage I used to hook it onto the inside of my leg and I’d walk into camp, they’d search me, go through everything else. I’d get into the camp, I had my sausage. That was the hardest thing to bring into camp. Bread they could get plenty of.

Mainly, the most of my black market dealing was women that worked in the canteens at the jobs. They was the ones that waned tea or coffee or chocolate. We didn’t have a lot of it. We were supposed to get a Red Cross parcel once a week. I’d say we averaged

during my time as a prisoner, if I averaged a parcel every six weeks I’d be pretty lucky. Because it’s one of the things that the Germans used as punishment. Two major things “keine paketen” or “keine post.” “No parcel” or “no mail.” That’s what they used to hold back

as punishment. Coffee was very valuable in the German black market currency and a two ounce packet of tea was, because they couldn’t get any of that stuff.

Out of our Red Cross parcels. Just little two ounce packets of tea and a tin of coffee about so big.

The Red Cross were under Red Cross rules; they weren’t allowed to touch our parcels. But I wouldn’t know. I would say they did take parcels. I’d definitely say. There was a Red Cross parcel for every British prisoner, which we were classed as British prisoners, we didn’t get Australian Red Cross parcels, we got

American, we got Canadian, we got British. There was always one thing that amazes me was beautiful Canadian powdered milk. It was Klim, K-L-I-M, milk spelt backwards. Klim Milk. It was beautiful powdered milk. It was really top class. We used to get one of those in a parcel. Used

to get some cigarettes, couple of tins of meat, either steak & kidney or meat &veg, which we used to call M&V or bully beef or something like that. But it was a good substitute when we got it. But unfortunately we didn’t get the one a week

was supposed to be for prisoners.

In the heart of Munich they used to go, they was pretty free there because the mayor of Munich accepted all responsibility for British prisoners.

The German military wanted to shift them and the mayor of Munich accepted until eventually the military won their way and we was gone within a fortnight. They used to sneak up. Look, there’s always a way. The things that the blokes used to do, it’s amazing to see. It’s the same with radios.

I’ve seen radios, you know the ordinary hair broom with the wooden back, not the plastic ones you’ve got now, they cut that in half and hollow it out and build a radio in that and still sweep the floor. Another camp I was in they put a false back in the coal box. All you needed was a space that big and they built a radio in it. The

Germans used to come around, they knew they had them. They’d come around with radio detectors and everything. But we had too many cockatoos out. As soon as you saw the van coming there was no radio on was there. They’d come in and they’d hunt for them, but the coal box was full of coal, the broom we swept the floor with the broom. There’s some clever people in prisoner of war camp, believe me. I take my hat

off to them. They’re clever people.

There was no profit to it, you do it for the boys. If you could come home with, you’d have to get people to help you. I used to get eggs. Down the coalmine we used to get the carbide lamps that we used down the mine, at the end of your shift you’d ship all the dead

carbide out and you could fit two eggs in that hole. Close your lamp up and come into camp with two eggs in it. If I got a dozen eggs I’d have to get another five blokes to carry eggs for me. They’re the worst enemy, your own blokes. One fellow I trusted to bring them up and he gets into camp and, “Oh, the silly bugger didn’t know I had eggs in this.” and it opened up. So

next thing we know, every lamp was inspected before you come into camp. Your own people do stupid things. When I was up top I used to get eggs up top. Everybody that worked what you called (GERMAN UNCLEAR) on top of the mine, we had like tram conductors’ caps. That distinguished us as prisoners. But you could fit a dozen eggs around in that top of that hat.

We were at the gate waiting to get in, and we were searched and everything. One of the guys said, “Good on you mate.” Bloody egg running everywhere. It was really annoying, your own blokes’ stupidity. It wasn’t laughable in those days, because it meant a bit better than what

you were getting. I found our own blokes; you had to be very, very careful of what you did with some of the blokes. They didn’t mean to do it, just stupidity.

It wasn’t a big

black market turnout. I’d know who gave me the tea for bread. You could only bring in one lot at a time. I’d bring in Joe Blow’s today, I’d bring in somebody else’s tomorrow. Then if I got caught at the gate and they decided they’d take it off you, they just dipped out on it. There was nothing I could do about it. This chap that I was going to make a break with in Munich, he

was getting watches across from Switzerland himself and I was going to give him so many packets of tea and coffee and he was going to take. So we would have to save that up from the camp and he was going to take my brother and I over to Switzerland. We were shifted before it happened. I would never go unless it was something certain. I didn't believe

in blokes taking punishment just for me to, mine had to be a genuine. We were all set. We were saving up our tea and coffee and didn’t happen. But them’s the breaks.

Because we got shifted, the whole British from in Munich got shifted up north.

That happened a week before I was supposed to go. It was a snap decision. Took a fortnight from the time they made up their mind to the time we was moved.

In Germany we was only Brits, South Africans,

Kiwis, Australian, English, I don’t recall any Canadians in the camp with us. Maybe they was an American, because the Americans weren’t with us, they were somewhere else. We didn’t have to cope with too many; The French were funny in Moosberg when I first went to Moosberg,

that had hundreds and hundreds of French in there. I got terribly sick being hungry. The French used to get a lot of parcels and they had these cushion biscuits. They had that many they couldn’t eat them all. When we got there they were handing them out. But they blow up inside you. Oh my God did I get into trouble. I finished up I was going to the

sick bay and I asked them what they could do. I said to the bloke “Have you got any castor oil?” He said, “I’ve got castor oil. Why?” I said, “Give us a bloody good dose of castor oil, I’ll drop the bloody biscuits out of me.” That’s the only thing that fixed me. People reckoned I’m mad, castor oil is shocking stuff, but it was better than having the pains I was having anyway. Those French biscuits, they

were shockers. They swell up inside you.

I had a few bouts of bronchitis, which wasn’t too good. I used to get, in the coalmines, eight months of the year I wouldn’t be able to talk. My throat used to go, laryngitis or pharyngitis or whatever it was.

Being down in the coalmines in the damp it used to affect my throat. Other than that.

I used to do a lot of exercise. Stupid things I used to do. It paid dividends.

Bending down picking up a matchbox, matches off the floor.

Put my hands on the floor with my thumb and taking a spin, then wrap my legs around my arms and down inside and bending down. I used to do all those contortionist things I used to do. I could still do them up till a few years ago, but now I’m passed it.

In the coalmines we didn’t have

any time for any of that. We did try to have a concert party, but by the time you’re going from four o'clock in the morning till eight o'clock at night every day for 20 days straight and one day off, you had to do all your own washing, you had to do everything for yourself. There wasn't much time for entertainment.

In

Munich when I first went to Munich in the wintertime we used to challenge the Brits to snow fights. We challenged them. We hadn't been in Munich very long the first winter. The snow was thick. We challenged the Brits to a snow fight. I don’t know who won, I think we both won.

I think everybody was all right except you had people do stupid things like that. You couldn’t allow to upset the camp morality. You couldn’t let that happen. A lot of people,

I suppose it’s like everywhere else, there’s certain people you don’t want to have much to do with , but that’s the same thing. We couldn’t allow it to ruin the camp morality.

Other than with the beaut radios the boys used to build, we used to find out what was going on, we knew when the

landing was taking place in France and all that. We thought that was a wonderful thing when they was going to do a landing in France. The first one was a flop, but the second one came off all right.

Didn't exist. Christmas I tried to do something special for the boys

in Breslau. The boys pinched sheets; we used them for tablecloths, and beg, borrow or steal whatever they could get. I made the oven to make up the stuff and I put everything out on this table Christmas Day for the boys. I gave them all a cup of tea or coffee, whatever they wanted in bed, they gave me their tea and their coffee

and Bill Parker, a mate of mine, and I would give them all a cup of tea or whatever we could for breakfast in bed on Christmas morning. It was quite funny the night before we was doing the baking. We got mail. My brother got a parcel from his girlfriend

that had a sleeveless black pullover in it. He opened it up and he just hung it on the end of his bunk and Bill and I were working at night, getting ready for the next day for Christmas. The guards are yelling out we had to put the lights out. So Bill had a bright idea. He saw this pullover of Laurie’s and he wrapped it around the globe.

It worked well until the heat of the globe burned the pullover. Every Christmas I say to him “Do you remember what happened on Christmas morning 1943?” “Yeah, you bugger, burnt my pullover.”

Turned out excellent. Really good. Very funny, the German commandant and two

guards, I don’t’ know whether they came in to wish us a merry Christmas or to see if we was playing up or what it was, but they came to the door. I had a table right down the centre of the hut with white tablecloths on, with the sheets that we’d pinched. All set out. The commandant just opened the door and he looked and he never paid any comment or anything. He just turned around, shut the door

and walked away. I don’t think he knew what the hell was happening. I used to get a lot of enjoyment out of doing things to make the boys happy.

I don’t know. I think he was so surprised that we had everything set up. He didn’t even realise they were their sheets that we had as tablecloths, because the boys used to pinch them.

We had different things we got out of the Red Cross parcels. I made up some pastry things in the oven I built. They was all amazed what we had for Christmas dinner. Everybody put in what they had and I put it together and made it up for Christmas

dinner. I had elderberry wine. I made some elderberry wine. So that went on the table too. That was funny making that. I thought it had fermented long enough and I got some bottles and I bottled it, put the corks in and the next thing, one night “Pop”, bloody still fermenting, blew the corks out. But the boys reckoned it was good to drink.

No me, because I didn’t drink. There’s 32 in a hut. Take a lot of bottles of elderberry wine to make them all drunk. They reckoned it was good.

Yeah, very much.

The commandant of the train, he was in charge of the 125 German Regiment that wouldn’t let us have the meal the Hungarians put on at the railway station at Budapest. I don’t know his name, but he was commander of the 125 Regiment. I know that.

I don’t want to meet up with him.

I forget now. Just another German.

I wouldn’t say so. I wasn’t very fond of any German officer. There was a civilian that I worked with in Breslau, Maxi Reiner, I did,

I liked him, he was a German civilian. He finished up they made him wear a uniform, but he wasn’t a soldier. They made him wear a uniform, because they could distinguish what he was about. He wasn’t a soldier. He didn’t believe in Hitler, he didn’t believe in the Nazi Party or any of that.

They’re few and far between.

I was in Poland when the big thing started. The Poles used to talk about it. That’s as much as we knew. We knew something

was happening, because on the little radios they used to get a bit of news. But we didn't know of anybody outside that could give us real information. All the Poles were frightened because the Germans were there. The German guards were scared stiff because there was an SS in amongst them, frightened, especially at that time. If they

knew anything, they made sure the guards didn’t tell us. I don’t think the average German had a good time during the war either.

In the coalmines? It was shovelling coal. What else do you think I’d be doing?

We was 350 metres down. Actually they had three levels.

The deepest was 350 metres, that’s where I, my brother was on the middle level. I just don’t know how far that was. It scared me every time I got into the crates to go down, because it was built two-decker cages and in peacetime each cage was to take 12 men. There was arcmesh walls

and you could see everything going. The cable was about so big round and I think there was about four or something and you could see them flopping about. It scared the hell out of me seeing these cables flopping around. I thought, ‘What happens if they break?’ I was paranoid about these cables. You couldn’t get me to go on the outside where they was flopping, not after the first time. I used to

get inside in the middle where I couldn’t see these cables. We’d go down; I found out that a person who wore glasses didn’t have to work on the coal front, which was on the coal front side of the conveyer belt. I could work on the other side. How

they worked these mines was they blast the coal and then you had these coal shovels, which was about that wide at the mouth and they used to come around like that with sides about that high. That’s what you used to get to shovel the coal onto the conveyer belt. It used to go down to a T section conveyer belt that’s take it away and put it into skips so they could take it up

through the top. The Germans gave me glasses when I was in Munich, because I used to get a lot of headaches so they decided I should have glasses, which I didn’t like wearing them until I went down the coalmine and I found out that if you wore glasses you didn’t work on the coal face. So I wore glasses down the coalmine. I was given the job

of all the coal that was the overflow from the blast, I had to pick up and put on the conveyer belt. I suppose I antagonised them a bit, what they call the steiger is the foreman down the mine. I’ve got this massive big shovel and I go over with a little bit of coal about that big and I get this big shovel and I put it on and I walk over to the conveyer. It drove him crackers.

But I was working. He put me on a job away from there. With the mines you’ve got green poles about so big round and you cut a V in the top of them and they go up the side of the shaft and depending, sometimes it’s widened up you have to put another one in the

middle and another one on the other side. Overnight these poles would condense down into themselves with the pressure. I’ll tell you, it’s very scary because the coal was moving and it’s falling down and the weight of it was… So the thing that you have to do is to replace these poles virtually every day. I

had a Pole working with me. I used to call him Pig’s Trotter because both his thumbs was in two pieces, perfect nails and everything. Just like a pig’s trotter. When he touched anything it used to spread and from this joint down it was double, both of them. I don’t know whether he knew what I was calling him Pig’s Trotter or not. He wasn’t very

happy with me. We used to cut the Vs in the poles, put them up and then one would put it up on the other side, one would go up the ladder and hold it on his shoulder while he put the middle one in and then you could put the other outside one in. This day I’m up the pole and one of his mates come along and he’s talking to him and I’m up the pole

holding this bloody great log on my shoulder. So eventually he decided he’d put the centre pole in and I could get down. So the next time I told him to go up. I wasn’t going up again; we had to take it in turns. So he went up the pole and there was nobody there for me to talk to, so I got this middle one and I kept missing. I kept him up the pole and he’s squealing like buggery.

I got him back. I eventually put it in and he’s going crook and he spoke a bit of German. I told him in German if he keeps me up the pole again, I’ll keep him up the pole. He was gold after that. We worked all right together. But we used to have to replace this timber all the time.

One day the German steiger got me to go down on my own down another dead shaft where there’d been a fall of coal. This was the last day I was down the mine. I had to break up what was on the ground, big lumps of coal, otherwise you couldn’t lift them. I had to break it up with a sledgehammer. While I’m doing it, another lot from up top decided

it’d come down as well. As it came down it hit me on the back. Didn't hurt my back at all, but it threw me over the top of the other lot and it cut my finger. Oh Jesus. I don’t know whether you can see it now. There’s a little black mark goes across there. It was a big one, coal dust, and I’ve still got the faint bit of coaldust in my finger after all these years. It hit my knee, but didn’t break any

skin. I didn’t take any notice of it. That really scared me. So when we finished work that night we get up top and I’m trying, how in the hell am I going to get out of this coalmine? We gets up to the gate, goes inside the gate and there’s a big noticeboard. I went over to have a look to see what was going on. They’re calling for a

bricklayer. I’m a bloody bricklayer from now on. That’s up top, not down the mine. So I went and told them I was a bricklayer and I got the job up top. When I got out there I had a couple of decent Poles. Not all Poles was good. Some would do anything to keep in favour with the Germans, others was pretty good. They knew I wasn’t a bricklayer,

but they helped me a lot. I learned to lay bricks pretty well. I was only out about a month I suppose and my right leg went bad. I finished, and you couldn’t get any time off unless you was absolutely couldn’t work.

It just went rotten.

What doctors tell me, I must have bruised it inside and my health wasn’t the best and that was the weakest spot. I worked until blokes had to help me back into the camp that night. I couldn’t walk. I went to bed that night.

The pain in my leg was horrific. I couldn’t go to work. All the rest of them had gone to work. One of the boys that was on night shift had come off and he saw me and I’m trying to get down the hallway to a toilet. I’ve got my hands on the wall and this is the only leg that could move and I’m trying to get down the wall. I couldn’t use this at all. He spotted me and he said, “Jesus,

what the hell are you trying to do?” I said, “I’ve got to get to the toilet. What about going down to the medic centre and tell them I need to get down there, but I’ll never get down there under me own steam.” So I goes to the toilet and they come down and they find me, I’m still trying to get out of the toilet. They’d brought a stretcher down and they put me on the stretcher and took me down to the medic centre. We had a South African doctor there. He was fantastic.

he looked at my leg and he said, “I’ve got to open it. I’ve got to get that muck out of your leg. It’s going to hurt. I have no deadening. Nothing.” So he put me on his table and he had two blokes holding my legs and one bloke holding my shoulders while he went to town.

He cut me in three places. One was up here, one was down there and one up top. Then he run skewers through it and broke up the muck to allow it to come out easy. Then he poked gores plugs through from the top and they both come out through the same hole in the top. Oh, it was terrible. Oh my God. I don’t know how

I’d lasted with it. He took me up, put the plugs through, tied me up and he couldn’t even give me anything to deaden pain or anything. He had nothing. All my eyes was scalded by the moisture that come out of my eye.

I must have had a reaction or something with that because I think I must have passed out for three days. All they told me was the South African doctor sat over me for three nights. He was very worried.

I think it might have been shock or something. Eventually I came to and all the time I was out of it they were shoving fresh plugs through my legs and I didn’t feel nothing. When I came to I felt him pushing the plugs through every two hours. He just stopped putting the plugs through and just tying my leg up, he through it would drain on

its own. The Germans decided they’re going to, prior to that I went out to do some washing and all the palms of my hand hung down about a foot below my hand. On both hands that was. I asked them to get the doctor to come out and he just cut the skin off. Over a period of six months I lost every bit of skin off my body. The

soles of my feet was the last to come off. That’s thick. I wouldn’t believe the skin on the sole of my feet was so thick. Then the Germans started a 700 kilometre march from the east across to the west in January in the snow. I’m on crutches with a leg that’s hurting like billy-o. I’d lasted from about 7.30

in the morning until two o'clock the next morning, that was Saturday morning till two o'clock Sunday morning. I got out into a basement under a building which turned out it was a school. I didn’t know at that time. The school was closed because the war was in that zone. I was there from the 21st of January to the 28th of January with no treatment and no food or anything.

I was in a pretty bad way. When the Russians came they didn’t want me. They took me out and put me in the snow and left me. I was there from about 7. 30 in the morning till 5 o'clock in the afternoon. A couple of Poles came along and saw me there and one went away and the other stayed with me. I didn’t know what they was talking about.

The other bloke came back with a stretcher sledge. They put me on and they towed me about four kilometres on this little sledge into the township or Beuten and took me to a convent. It had been a convent school and the Germans had used them as a casualty receiving station. So one particular nun knew a bit about nursing, although she was a teacher the Germans taught her. The reverend mother assigned her to look after

me. Sister Marcella did a fantastic job.

She was a lovely lady. Polish lady. Had no time for the Russians although she had to. They took a Russian soldier in to help him. They had a cart and he got drunk and he got run over his foot, one of the trucks or something run over his foot. They looked after him.

They actually got onto an old German doctor who had a stiff leg. He was a man well in his 60s. He came along and he looked at my leg and he said, “Digit de mischen dash neiden” “I think I’ll have to cut that.” All he had was a pocket scalpel.

He was so good. You’d never know he had the scalpel in his hand and before you knew where it was it was in and out. I was bouncing on the bed and the muck came out of my leg. Poor old sister Marcella come up with tears in her eyes and cleaned me up. It went on, well, 13 continuous days. It used to be like a pimple of a night and tomorrow it’d be

up like a great purple abscess. He came in one day and he said to the sister, “I’ve got the right thing.” Everything he had the Germans took before they left. What they didn’t want, when the Russians came in they took it. But he found this course of injections, 21 injections and I had to have them in

my backside. Poor old sister Marcella didn’t uncover any more of my backside than where the needle went. I’ll tell you, after 21 of them I felt every one. It did the trick. He had my leg tied at about that angle with a splint. He said if he did it like that it’d force all the muck to come out of where the cuts were.

After 21 injections my leg started to come good. Well, I was still on crutches, but it was a lot better. And the Russians ordered me out with a couple of South Africans and we had to make our own way to Krakow. They wouldn’t help us in any way at all.

Because that’s where they was having reception of all the British

soldiers to go to Odessa.

I was very much surprised. I thought that they were on our side, but they was on their side. At one stage we was on a train and it was a Russian troop train alongside us and it’s a funny thing. We had a

Polish, only a girl, she was a lieutenant in the Polish Army. She spoke German. With the Polish Army, they was with the Russians. She was an interpreter between a Russian officer and us on the trains. He asked her what we were and

she told them we was English. We couldn’t say we was Australian because the Russians thought you was Austrian. Their intelligence was pretty low grade as far as we was concerned. Their whole attitude was they’d shoot you as quick as anything. This girl told him who we were and she said, “That’s no good.”

I said, “What’s no good?” She said, “He reckons you’re a pig Englishman.” And that was the thought the Russians had of us. Twice I had that happen. Two South Africans and myself was in Sosnevik and we had to make our way to Krakow but our first stop from Beuten was Sosnevik. We walked down the street and

there was like a little country town hall. There was music going and we thought we’d go in and have a look. The Poles was living it up because the Germans had left. We walked in there and was only there two or three minutes. These Russians must have been following us and we got in there and was up against a wall. I was up there for quite some time with my hands in the air. Three sub machineguns and one pistol

trained on us. Before we left the convent Sister Marcella had got a paper explaining what we were and it had the three names on the one bit of paper. I’m the guineapig, I’ve got the bit of paper and I’m up against the wall with my hands up. I’m looking at this Russian officer in the eye thinking, ‘How in the hell do I get this bit of paper out?’ Eventually I plucked up enough courage and I got two fingers like that and I came over,

put it down inside jacket pocket, pulled out the bit of paper and gave it to the Russian officer, all written in Russian. He just read it, threw it on the floor and, “Pig Englander!” So that happened twice. That was what they really thought about the English.

I didn't witness any bad atrocities, no. I can’t say that. But I did meet up with an English girl and her mother. I don’t know what they was doing over there. The mother told us that the Russians raped her daughter in front of her. That’s what she told us. I didn’t see that. She was on the same train coming down to Odessa as what we was on. What happened to her

from Odessa I would not know. I didn’t see her on our ship. What they was doing over there I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea. I don’t know. She told us what the Russians had done. Other than that I can’t say that I saw anything. It was quite funny, we wasn’t

allowed to leave the train for any toilet facilities and the Russian soldiers was the same. Where our train pulled up we had great difficulty in stepping out of our cattle truck because of what the Russians had left behind. That’s where we were supposed to go to the toilet ourselves. I walked just down to the end of the train, I looked over the other side and it was quite clear over the other side.

So I said to one of the other chaps, “It’s pretty good over the other side. We’ll try that.” So the Russian’s standing there with his rifle and bayonet. So we just walked to the end of the train round to the other side. We sit down to do our business. We’re about from here to the corner of that table away from each other. We must have been highly concentrating because I looked

up afterwards to speak to him and we had two Ukraine women in between us doing the same thing. Life is funny. At any rate, we get to Limburg and we’re starting to get lice again because we couldn’t wash. We get to Limburg and the Russians decide to put us in the delousing unit and we could have a shower.

So we goes into the unit and we’ve got Russian girls 13, 14 maybe 15 year olds. They’re there; we’ve got to strip off our clothes down to nothing. They take our clothes away and put them in the delouser. We have a shower; they come back with a towel for us to dry. I’ll tell you.

All your shyness and everything else goes out the window. Dear me.

When I got in there, there was two other chaps with

me. They couldn’t make the grade either. We didn’t know the basement was there. We stopped on the first floor the first night, but we wanted to get out of sight, so we found this basement. It had been like a dormitory room. There was a stove and water down there. That’s where we stayed. But eventually there was about another

I’d say half a dozen strays, English, Australians, found their way down there at the same time over a period of a couple of days. But they was all fit enough to get out. I was the only one left. A couple of them said they wanted to stay with me and I said, “Don’t worry. You get, because I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. You get if you can.” I was the only one down in the basement because I

couldn’t get out anyway, when the Russians came. Prior to the Russians coming there was an Englishman there who was supposed to be a medical orderly. He tried to cut my leg. He had a scalpel down there and some of that freeze stuff that they put on. He found some of that down in the basement. He’s squirting this stuff on my knee and he’s scratching away at it. Eventually I couldn’t hack it anymore. I told him to leave it. It was too painful.

He left with the others. When the Russians came they just put me out in the snow and left me there.

Couldn’t do anything. Just lay there. I couldn’t move.

I was wondering whether I was ever going to get out at different times. It crosses your mind. I’m not one to give

up, but it crosses your mind whether you’re going to make it or whether you’re not.

Well, I hadn't seen my parents or any of my family for five years by that time.

You wonder if you’re ever going to see them again, definitely. I can’t recall every saying that, “I’m not going to make it.” I had my doubts but I still had the will to make it, let’s put it that way. I couldn’t get out of the basement. The Russians took me out and they put me out in the snow. I was in the snow for about the best part of

10 hours I suppose.

Just a British battledress uniform. It was five o'clock in the afternoon when two Poles come along and found me. One went away and come back and put me into the convent.

Yeah, I think I said a few prayers. I think I did. I said a few prayers. I think everybody goes through that. It’s just a normal thing for anybody under those conditions to say a few Holy Marys or something.

That is the worst thing. It makes me smile when you hear people talk about they haven’t got their family with them and all this sort of business. I was in a strange country and didn’t know the language or anything and you’ve got to put up with it. You’ve got to make the best of a bad deal and that’s all I can say. That’s what I did. If it hadn't been for

the Poles taking me to the convent maybe I would have had the bad deal. I wouldn’t have been able to put the best. They took me into the convent and I’m so amazed with what the convent did for me. It’s unbelievable that anybody would do that for me.

Yes, they had a few others there.

They had a few there. Here’s my daughter coming. It was an Englishman, he was pretty sick. The German doctor did a test, he had an abscess deep inside here. He used his last

anaesthetic injection on him and he cut him here and cut him down there and run a tube through to drain him. I did meet him later on, but I don’t know whether he’d make it or not. I met him on the train. That was one of the funny things that really made me hate the Russians. When I was in the convent

girls 12 years old was coming into the convent for treatment. Blood was running down their legs. Been raped by six to eight Russian soldiers. To me that’s not human. When we was on the train going to Odessa and this chap was on the train, they found out I was on, he asked

if I could go down to be with him because I helped him a lot in the convent. I went down there and I was only there for half a day and I got kicked out. There was two Russian girls was like stewards for the Russian officers in this carriage. There was no troops. All these officers wanted these girls for was sex. One was

obliging, the other one had lost her husband on the Russian Front. That didn’t make any difference to the Russians. Russian/German Front I mean. She would not cooperate. While I was down in that carriage, they come and got her. The other girl told her she had to go up. I heard her squealing and I heard thumping and what they done to her was

get her by the head and hit her head up against the wall because she wouldn’t cooperate. Her nose was bleeding and she was in a shocking mess. I used the water out of my water bottle to clean her and the Russians ordered me out of the carriage. I had to go back up to the cattle trucks. I know that for a fact. I was there. That’s the sort of animals they are. One girl, while I was at the

convent, I forgot to tell you. These girls coming in. One girl was 12 years old. There were six Russians in the street and they was after her and she was running for her own safety. They shot her dead in the street and I saw that happen. Because she wouldn’t cooperate. They’re animals. They wasn’t animals, even animals don’t do that to their own. I’ve had no time whatsoever for the Russians. People think “You should forgive and forget.” I can’t forgive and

forget that. That was something that’s in my mind forever. I can’t forget that. When I saw these little girls with blood running down their legs, what else can you do? The nun, she come and got me to show me what the Russians were doing. She had tears in her eyes. These things I haven’t told a great deal although I put it in

my book. They are things that don’t make me feel good to know that people do that. It’s shocking what they do.

First of all two South Africans and myself we had to make our way to Sosnevic because there was no train in Beuten. There was a tram that went from Beuten to Sosnevic. We was put up against the wall in Sosnevic. We was ordered

out and we jumped a train at midnight from Sosnevic. It was open platform trucks. They had all equipment on they’d taken out of factories back in Germany and taking them across to Russia. The flat tops, which was cold night, we’re sitting on it and there was a lot of Ukraine refugees

on it. We went along the line and then it pulled off on a loop line and another one came along. Then the refugees got onto the other train so we jumped onto the other train that was going past. We go down a bit further and it would pull onto a loop - I think we jumped from one train to the other, same trains. We eventually got

out in the middle of nowhere the train stopped and the Ukraines said the train didn’t go into Krakow, we had to follow the road. So we got off the train. There was a main road going over the hill. There was one of the South Africans had a crook foot, the other one had a crook ankle and I had a crook knee. We’re hoppety clicketing along the road and

Russian trucks are going past and we’re all giving the ahoy asking them for a lift and they all went past. So one of these Russians said, “It’s no good. These bastards will never give us a ride.” His mate said, “You never know, we might find a good bastard.” We’re still hailing these trucks. There was one truck came along and the sides of it was about five foot high. It was like a big tip truck.

We hailed him and he went up the yard about 100 odd metres and pulled up and beckoned us up there. So we went up and he said something. I don’t know what he said. We said, “Da, Krakowa.” Told us to get up onto the back of the truck. So we got back onto the back of the truck and there's two Russian soldiers paralytic drunk on the floor. So we are heading away

one said, “I told you we’d find a good bastard.” So we get along the road and a fair way we went. The truck pulled up. The Russian officer gets out, looks over the top, standing on the running board. Said something. We said, “Da, Krakowa” and he pulled out his gun and said something else. We said, “We’ve got to get out.” So we did. We got out.

The truck drove off and we thought he was just being a mongrel. We walked for 200 or 300 metres and we come to a roadblock. It was manned by Russian policemen and you’ve never seen anybody like those. Didn't matter what staff car, anything. While we was waiting there a Russian policewoman jumped in front of the sub machinegun in front of a Russian staff car. He pulled up.

They’re the toughest I’ve ever seen. We’re trying to find out how we can get into Krakow. One of the police girls, she’d been a prisoner of the Germans. She spoke a bit of German. We could converse with her. When she found out she bent over backwards to help us. She had a lot of opposition. The rest of them didn’t want to help us.

Eventually she told us that there was a truck coming and she’d let us know what it was and we’d have to get on that. Well, you wouldn’t believe it. It was like a real old Chevvy [Chevrolet] thirteen hundred weight truck. Little sides about that high and about that wide fold up. It had wire netting and barbed wire stuff to take to their tip. That was their pride

and joy. The three of us was told that’s the one we had to get on. All we could do was stand on this narrow side, two South Africans on the right hand side of the vehicle, I’m on the left hand and we’re holding hands across this wire netting and rubbish. That’s how we went into the outskirts of Krakow and when we got there, there was six Russians with six bayonets ready to meet the three of us.

they marched us round and I got put in prison by the Russians in Krakow.

Six Russians took us around to somewhere, I don’t know where it was, in Krakow somewhere. I got put in prison, but they didn’t put the South Africans and me together, they took the South Africans somewhere else. I’ve never seen them from that day to this. Then they decided

we were going to go to Odessa, so they put us in cattle trucks and we travelled for two days in cattle trucks without food. Then we went to bed at night and we were travelling away. Two days later we finished up back at Krakow. Organisation fantastic. Then we

get on the way again and what we went back for, maybe we went to pick up some refugees, I don’t know for sure. We head off again and we do another two or three days in the train. This time they let us all out for toilet stop, which I’ve mentioned. We had to share the open air toilets with

Ukraine women. Then we head off a bit further and still nothing to eat. So when the train stopped, the Ukraine peasants used to come down there and they’d have a wedge of stale bread and a hardboiled egg. So we’d give our shirt or boots or trousers or whatever we had. I was a bit lucky because when I left the convent Sister Marcella had given

me some extra underclothes. German winter singlets and that sort of thing. That was worth the same price. So I could trade them before I got down to the nitty gritty. We did it every three days, that’s how we lived. We got to a place called Limburg, that’s where we

had to go through the delouser and the young Russian girls took our clothes away, brought it back and handed us our bits and pieces to put on. The whole trip took 17 days and we eventually got to Odessa. They took us out to the goods yards because we was in cattle trucks anyway. We needed to go to the railway station.

We lined up along the railway line and we’re inspected by a British colonel who was there with what they called the British Commission. He come along inspecting everybody. About three or four blokes up from me was an Aussie. All he had on was a pair of really tattered

trousers, shorts. When this British colonel got to him he said, “Goodness gracious sir, is that all the clothes you’ve got?” This bloke said, “Yes Sir, and if I was on this bloody train tomorrow I wouldn’t have these.” Typical Aussie humour. We got taken from there and it’s been believed that it had been a big school in Odessa,

multi storeyed place, and we was taken around there. That was our prison. I was never one to sit around doing nothing, because it got terribly boring. They asked for somebody to go and sort out Red Cross clothing, so I volunteered to do that, and I finished up I was the only one that volunteered. Then I got

detailed 10 men to come and help me. I was made a corporal by an Australian major and a British officer. I was in charge of the 10 men to go and sort out the clothing. They got in a big lot of Red Cross clothing. I had to have 20 odd men and I got promoted to sergeant to do the job.

I was quite happy. I was doing the job and I was happy with what I was doing. Some of the boys found a way out. They’d get down onto the street. For a pullover they had all night with a woman in Odessa. So you can imagine quite a few pullovers went. There

was no check on any of the Red Cross stuff. It all came in all bundled in. Nobody knew what was in it. That’s why I had to sort it out into different lots of clothing, different sizes. When men come in he might take the same size shirt, but he wanted longer trousers, so all you had to do was change the trousers or whatever over. From them on I never had any trouble

in getting my party filled every morning. I used to get too many. I had to knock blokes back. I couldn’t understand this. It wasn’t that I was such a good bloke or, we had work pretty well unloading bulk clothing bundles and all that sort of thing. So I said to a bloke one day, he came out and he didn’t have a pullover on.

When he was coming home he had a pullover on, and when he was coming home, I said, “What gives? You didn’t have a pullover on this morning.” He said, “I'm sprung.” I said, “Why? What’s going on?” He said, “Don’t you know? How do you think you get your party filled up so easy every morning?” He told me what was going on. They go out all night, come home the next morning in time to get onto the work

party. So I thought, “Good luck to you. There’s no check on it, no skin off my nose. What the hell.” A bit later than that the British colonel got onto me and he said, “What’s happening with the clothing?” I said, “What do you mean? We’re sorting it out and issuing it out to the blokes.” He said, “The Russians are complaining about

British clothing on the black market.” I said, “I know nothing about that.” He said, “Check out and see what you can find out.” So a few days later he comes to me and he said, “Have you found out anything?” I said, “No, the only thing I can think of, when I came down there was a lot of Ukraine refugees on the train with me. You know what the British are like with all the DID dumps[?]. Their clothing, their food and everything,

when they leave they leave everything behind. It’s possible that the Ukraine refugees have found some dumps and brought the clothing back with them.” He said, “Fair enough.” and he told the Russians and he accepted that. That’s how it got on the black market. So not long after that we get on the ship to

go to England. There was an Australian airman. He was a flying officer, but we had no insignia for an airman, so we did the equivalent with army and we gave him two grips, made him a lieutenant in the army. Him and I got to know one another pretty well. We gets out on the Black Sea

and he said to me, “Come on, what did happen with the clothing?” When I told him he laughed like blazes. He said, “Thank God somebody was able to put it over the Russians.” I was made in charge of hygiene when I first got on the ship. Still a sergeant. We got out into the Mediterranean. They had difficulty with the chap that was looking

after, a sergeant, that was looking after the 10 blokes that was helping the ship’s gun crew on the Bofors guns. I got called up to the ship’s adjutant and told me I was going to relieve his job on the hygiene. He wanted me to take over responsibility of the gun crew. So I said, “What’s wrong? You’ve got one.” and he was a

Pommy. They were all Pommies on the gun crew. They didn’t like him. So I went up there and found out what the complaint was. It was all over the ship. Wake one up to go on duty; they’d like to be together. So I went back to the adjutant, and I said, “This is their complaint. They want to be together so they can wake one another easily without disturbing other people. Is there somewhere that they can go?”

“Well,” he said, “We’ve got plenty of room, but I don’t think they’d like it. It’s the lower deck.” I said, “All I can do is ask them.” He said, “There’s nothing else.” So I went up and told them there was nothing else other than the lower deck, but they could have the whole deck if they wanted it. They was rapt. It’s the worst place on the ship. They was rapt. They went up there and I had no trouble whatsoever and I had a great recommendation from these

ship’s adjutant. When I got to England and I got down to the Australian Army, I was brought back to a buck private because the British Army was not to promote me. So I did it all for nothing. It was an experience. I come back to a buck private.

It was

marvellous. The funny part about it was they had Russian policewomen on the wharf with fixed bayonets and sub machineguns to make sure that we got on the ship. We thought that was hilarious. Who in the hell would want to step off a British ship to stay there in that godforsaken place?

We didn’t pass them as allies. We couldn't. We were still in enemy territory and they’d treated us as such. We had to accept it as such. They was allies on paper so they’d get a lot of equipment. Even the boys that was on the ships going up to the North Sea taking stuff into Russia were not allowed off the ship for any

leave when they got in there. They had to stay onboard ship, get the stuff off and shoot through. No hospitality whatsoever. I’ve spoken to chaps that was on that run in the North Sea, because we exchanged experiences and they reckon they weren’t allowed. All the work they did for them, but they weren’t allowed

any shore.

That was a funny thing, that. We got to Glasgow. We arrived there on a Saturday. Saturday before VE [Victory in Europe] Day. One of the blokes that was on the

ship, his father had a hotel and you could see it off the deck of the ship. Nobody was allowed off the ship before Monday. Had to stay onboard ship all weekend. Another thing, while we was in Naples, we picked up a British concert party, and there was two sisters

in the concert party. I had been in charge of the gun watch crew, I had free leg to go anywhere, which normally I wouldn’t be allowed to go up over the decks where the women were. These two sisters was in the British concert party. They used to come yakking [talking] to me. When they were setting off they said to me, “I think we might have a problem.” I said,

“Why?” They said, “We’ll have to go through customs and we’ve bought some stuff in Naples to take home and we don’t know how we’ll go.” I said, “How much are you up?” She told me and I said, “I’ve got a mate here.” We had a kitbag but nothing in it. So we said, “We’ll put your stuff in our kitbags and we’ll take it off.” Nobody looked at us. We just took the gear off and I had to take it to them

at Covent Garden when we got down on leave in London. I went down to Eastbourne, stayed there for a few days to be checked in and everything else, before I got leave to go up to London. These girls thought it was terrific. They took the kitbags in and they got all their souvenirs that they’d bought. Nobody checked us coming off the boat. It was only them they were going to check.

Fantastic.

It was really, really, I was still a bit of a bugger then. When I was going on leave I said, “What’s the furthest you can go?” They said, “Inverness in Scotland.” I said, “That’ll do me. I’ll get a rail pass to Inverness.” which meant that if I didn’t go to Inverness and cancel my outward

rail pass, I could travel up and down the line as much as I wanted for nothing. So long as I didn’t go to Inverness and I didn't go back to Eastbourne, I could travel in between as much as I wanted. I went down to London and my aunt, my mother’s sister, was there. We met her. She took me down to meet Kaye’s parents. That’s’ where we met.

She come home on leave from the air force. We met on the Thursday. I used to get leave whenever I wanted because, a chap I mentioned earlier, the name’s gone now, but he became a lieutenant when he got to England. He was the adjutant there and when I went and saw him Roy Fury,

Lieutenant Fury. I’d go down and have a weekend leave and come Sunday night I’d give Roy a ring and say, “I’ve got such and such I want to do tomorrow and Tuesday, is it OK?” He said, “Yeah, right” and he’d fix it up. Kaye used to get really hostile about it because when we got married, she was only allowed a week’s leave

and then when we got married I had to send them a telegram to tell them that I had so much leave and requested my wife to be granted the same. Before that they wouldn’t give her fortnight’s leave. With all the red tape she had to go through, I rang up and said, “Look, I’ve got this to do and I’ve got that to do. Is it OK if I don’t come back till Tuesday?” “Yes, you’ll be right.”

Long distance. Actually we are distantly related. Her parents and my parents was all very thick. Actually, my Dad used to drive Kaye’s mother around on a baker’s cart when she was a kid.

Here’s my number three son. At any rate, Roy Fury would say to me “That’s OK. When you’re ready, come back, I’ll cover you.” Kaye being in the air force, she didn’t like that. That’s why I said earlier she’s crooked on me about the air force and the army.

I don’t know. It’s one of those things that just happened I think. She reckons she couldn’t stand me the first week. I don’t know because I was always playing jokes or doing something. I’d come home and we’d go to the pictures and one thing led to another. We did talk about her coming

out to Australia and we get married out here. But that didn’t work too well because if I got married in England she got a free passage out to Australia, which made a lot of difference. So that’s what happened. We got married. My brother got married too, but he had to leave England a lot sooner than me. So we married two sisters.

No, I’ve got no regrets after 59 years this year.

When I got home?

I had to take things very quietly because when I was married I weighed seven stone.

There’s a picture over there. I’ll show you after with my uniform on hanging like, worse than a coat hanger. It was just a matter of common sense, not overdoing anything, especially with food. I had a lot of trouble with my stomach when I came home. I’ve had

quite a bit since.

VE Day, yes, I went down, no, I wasn’t there for VE Day. I was in Eastbourne, because I’d still be going through all the red tape and everything in Eastbourne. I went down on the Thursday after VE Day and they were still partying. They used to block of the

street where Kaye lives and have a party there. They had a party and they’d set a fire in the middle of the street. Bonfire they put in the middle of the street and it burnt all the asphalt. They went haywire. I got down there on the Thursday and met up with them. They were still partying.

Everything.

We had to go through answering all their questions on what about the Germans and everything else. We was told to put down everything about the Germans and what they did and everything else. We said, “What about the Russians?” They said, “No, you can’t

mention the Russians.” The group that I was in said, “Well, we won’t mention the Germans either.” So we refused to fill in that bit of paper because as far as we were concerned, the Russians was right at the end of our stay had hurt us more by the Russians than what it did the four years in Germany. We weren’t allowed to say anything about the Russians. So we didn’t fill in anything about

the Germans either.

Not only me, we was all really annoyed because what the Russians and the way they treated us and everything else, but allies, they should have known about it. Then they cowered out to the Russians all the time anyway. Look where it got them.

I don’t act as though I’m silly anymore. No, I think I come out of it all right. I’ve got a sane bill of health.

It was a long time getting used to it, but

as far as I was concerned I was determined to get on top. There was a lot of our boys that didn’t do that and they hit the grog [alcohol]. It killed them. If I’d hit the grog I’d have been dead too. I had more willpower I think. I didn’t let that happen.

I went to work as soon as I got home.

I had only been home a short while. I was discharged on the 26th of October 1945 and I was out stooping hay before Christmas out in the farm. They wanted people to go out, so I went out. I was stooping hay and what have you. Then I started getting things ready for a bakery.

So virtually I went to work straight away and that was the best thing that ever happened.

Not much at all. My Dad used to ask me a few questions. I used to tell him that, I don’t think anybody spoke much about it when they first come home.

Rough things. The

truth. What we went through and that. He’s an old soldier and you could talk to him where I couldn’t talk to my Mum. I could talk to Dad about it. My Mum used to see me limping around and ask what had happened to my leg and I’d say, “Nah, it just got hurt.”

We couldn’t

say anything about being in a prison camp because it’d be deleted before she got it. So you just had to be very careful. I’ll tell you how stupid the Germans were. There’s a lady in Queensland, she’s still there. Her name was Davis, but she married a Peacock from Queensland, a pretty famous name over in Queensland. I used to write to her. On the bottom

I’d sign “Birdie greetings from Parrott to Peacock.” And the Germans wouldn’t let that through. She never got one of those letters. A very good friend of mine I used to write to. She died a few years ago now. I went to school with her and we was great pals. When she was a kid, a bit younger than me,

her father owned a hotel and he used to get me to go down and sit with his two children while they went out to different places. We’d get into the kitchen of the hotel and we’d make pancakes. We used to call ourselves pancake pals. If I put that on a letter that I wrote from Germany on a card “Your old pancake pal” it wouldn’t get through.

There’s one in the book that I wrote to that girl, a card from Germany. I know that one because I told her “It has been pretty cold over here this winter at only 54 degrees below freezing point.” I think that’s in the book there. That was the coldest winter they had in Munich for many years.

The one that we was together, we often laugh about different things. We talk about it and laugh.

Doesn’t make any difference today, but I suppose in those days we used to talk to one another and sympathise with one another.

I don’t think either of us was well enough to even worry

about it. But we were concerned at the end when I got to England. I know my brother was very concerned. He got to England after me. He did the 700 kilometre march and soon as I had people in Eastbourne letting me know, as soon as they let me know I whipped down to Eastbourne to see my brother and organise

what to do when he came to London and we met up with him and made it easier for him than what it was for me. We met up in Eastbourne. He was really down the dumps. He was sitting on the curb because he didn’t know where I was. Soon as he saw me he brightened up you wouldn’t believe. It was just unbelievable.

That was brothers have been through hardship and we eventually got back home. We still keep in touch.

He was sitting on the curb with his hands on his head like this. I went over and I tapped him on the shoulder and I said, “What’s wrong mate?” He looked “Oh

my God, you’re here!” he said. Made all the difference. We were pretty close and it was going through all that together and then the last part was my worst time anyway. I don’t think he had too much fun on the 700 kilometre march either. He was able to do it and it’s great that he did.

I still dream. Still happens. I had to go to a psychiatrist he asked me about it and I told him about some dreams. He said, “That’s normal. You’ll have them for the rest of your days.” Not as bad

as it used to be, but I had a terrible experience in Albury. When I came home my parents was at the Albury railway station to see me. I was to go through to Melbourne. When my parents was there I didn’t go to Melbourne. I jumped the train

in Albury and I went to Rutherglen with them on the Saturday morning. On the Monday I went down to Melbourne and reported in. They told me I was in trouble because I should have been there on Saturday. I said, “Didn’t the officer of the train tell you?” He said, “What?” I said, “He gave me permission to leave the train because my parents were there.” “What was his name?” I said, “I wouldn’t have a clue what his name is, I’ve only just met him.”

He never gave me any permission, but it worked. All these sorts of things. Most of the blokes that was in Royal Park at that time were what we called “Clean skin.” They’d never been outside Australia and hadn't seen anything. They thought that came back that had been back for years thought they were going to have some fun and games. It didn’t work with us. We was

told when we got to Royal Park that all ex POWs was exempt all duties. We had a sergeant there that reckons that we was put on duty to do hygiene around the camp, which we refused to do. So he said he was going to have us put on a charge. I said, “Don’t worry, the three of us will go down to the orderly room. If we’re going to be charged we’ll have ourselves put on a charge.”

So we went into the orderly room and the sergeant was there. I said, “We’ve been told we’re on hygiene duty.” He said, “Yeah, that’s right. You haven’t been here for a couple of days. You’ve got to take your turn.” I said, “We don’t you know.” There was an officer behind the barricade in the other end of the tent. He put his head around the corner and he said, “Is there some problem?”

I said, “Not as far as I’m concerned sir, but I think there’s some problem with the sergeant.” He said, “What is it?” I said, “We’re ex POWs. Weren’t all ex POWs exempt duties?” He said, “That’s right.” I said, “Please tell the people in the orderly room.” We walked out and he gave these people a blasting. Was never asked to come back again. You got these people that do these things and it’s annoying.

Really gets on my goat when people start to do things like that.

I suppose yes. I’d have enough after being a prisoner. A couple of years after that I went back into the CMF [Citizen’s Military Force] and did another 10 years with them. I was a warrant officer and I did

most of my exams for a commission, but I took up a job with the Commonwealth Government and moved to Alice Springs before I had the opportunity to get the commission. When I came to Darwin I did another five years with the CMF unit up there. I enjoyed it.

I was saying in Albury. When I went down to Melbourne I got leave. I came back and I had to go to Albury on the train. I was to catch the border morning mail car the next morning to come to Rutherglen. I left word for them to give me a call the next morning because it was

early morning border mail run. It was even half past five or something in the morning. I asked them to give me a call. They rang the phone and I didn’t hear it, or the phone didn’t ring. I didn’t know. The bloke come up to call me and all I could see was this bloke at the foot of the bed and I thought “Oh, another bloody dream. I’m still in prison camp.” This bloke came

rushing over to me. I must have lost all the colour out of me. He thought I was going to pass out. He took me down and give me a cup of tea and got me set to go onto the border morning mail car. These were the sorts of things that happened, but that’s one of the worst. Just another bloody dream. I thought he was a German guard at the end of my bed. We had dreams that we was home in prison camp, but that’s

the only time I dreamt that I was, at that stage. I’ve dreamt since, but it hasn’t been as bad, in prison camp. But that one, being so new, it really knocked the daylights out of me.

Patience.

Patience is, we had to have patience for four years. Put up with everything and just see it through. It takes a lot of patience to do it.

Yes.

I’m very annoyed with the federal government. They seem to think that we had a picnic while we was in prison camp and that the only people that was prisoners was the ones that was in Japan. To give them $25,000 in 2001 for compensation and we were exempt any consideration I think stinks.

I’d love to have the people concerned go through a little bit of what we went through and see how they like it. None of them have experienced it. All they’re doing is hearsay from somebody that wasn’t there or the Germans have pleaded that they treated us under the Geneva Convention. If you read my book, 10 a day dying of

starvation. I’m sure the Geneva Convention doesn’t. Working down a coalmine from four o'clock in the morning until eight o'clock at night and 20 days for a working week would not pass Geneva Conventions. But the federal government seem to think that’s OK.