Australians at War Film Archive

Oh well

thanks for coming along, Christopher [interviewer], and I look forward to our encounter.

Yeah, well my, I was born here in this very house in Darling Point in 1921. My father was a naval

officer in the First World War and he was in charge of, command of the guns, the first guns fired for Australia in the navy I believe, he became a captain in the navy. And we lived here and I went to school across the road and then to Sydney Grammar, where I distinguished myself mainly in sport and not in academics, and but I eventually

got through. I was actually practising for the school boxing tournament on the third of September 1939 when the war was declared and my mother called me up from, and my school friend who was practising with me

to hear the radio, and it was the announcement from the British Prime Minister that we were at war with Germany. The next day, well my friend and I went up to Victoria Barracks to volunteer, and we were still school boys of course, and a sergeant was very polite, but said, “Come back when you’re twenty-one.” Later on we learned that we could go to Duntroon Military College,

Royal Military College and I went to Duntroon with three friends of mine from school and from other, and made lots of great friends there. After graduating from Duntroon, I played my last game of rugby against Sydney University and we, a couple of weeks later I was in New Guinea.

I was, I reported to my brigadier who said, “Oh good, I want you as my intelligence officer on brigade.” And like a rather silly fellow I said, “But excuse me, Sir, I haven’t commanded a platoon yet.” He said, “Do you want a platoon? All right then, you can have a platoon,” and he sent me down to the most untrained, most undisciplined

group that could ever be found, they were mostly conscripts who had been shanghaied into Port Moresby. And after some time there we suddenly got an order in the middle of the night, we were going up over the Owen Stanleys to defend Kokoda.

That was with the 53rd Battalion, yeah. And who were, turned out

to be a lot of fine boys, but terribly untrained and inexperienced, mostly straight from school.

The first engagement was at Isurava, just short of Kokoda.

I arrived up there when the 39th Battalion had just been taken over by a new officer, commander officer and they had with, had attempted to hold the mission there but they were finally had to, the plantation I mean,

and they finally withdrew to the mountains where they held up the Japanese for an expectedly long time. We, the 39th Battalion had, when the new CO [Commanding Officer] took over the 39th Battalion,

there was a company on the left flank which had been running into trouble and having a tough time and the acting CO wanted to pull that, the, one of the platoons out that had made a bit of a mess or things. And the new commander officer, Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Honner, said, “No, we mustn’t pull them out, we must, or

we’ll lose them forever.” And he called them together and he said, “Boys, I want you to hang on here,” and they did and they did a good job. And that taught us a lesson that if at first you don’t succeed, hang on and keep going. After some time, the 53rd Battalion was transferred across the Eora Creek

to the right flank where the Japanese had been building up, and we lined up at one side of a kunai patch and tried to advance against, across that patch. But in the mean time the commanding officer and his

adjutant had gone on a patrol by themselves virtually and they and their small party were wiped out by the Japanese so the 53rd Battalion was left without a commanding officer and rather in disarray. But eventually, well actually right at the beginning, one of my boys was shot right beside me and very badly shot through the

head and he was carried out, was wounded. But eventually what was left of my platoon, we were on the left flank and we manoeuvred through the kunai and found ourselves eventually by our, completely by ourselves behind the Japanese lines. And we moved up thinking we could possibly

capture at least some of, one of these, or destroy one of these Japanese heavy machine guns which were causing havoc amongst our troops. But on the way up, we ran into a Japanese patrol and after a short skirmish we withdrew from, as quickly as

we could and went back to the main force. So that was my first adventure in campaigning.

Yeah, after the withdrawal,

my last job on the last day of withdrawal was to command the rear most platoon of the retreating Australian Forces and while the AIF [Australian Imperial Force] who were still attacking, still fighting, the Japanese pulled back through us. That happened to be my twenty-first birthday that particular

day that we were there. And we celebrated my birthday, we’d actually had no food whatsoever, no supplies, no connection, no contact, we weren’t , it was radio silence, there was contact with any superior force. And the boys drank my health in a bottle of

or a can of powdered milk was mixed up with water and spread amongst the platoon and they drank my twenty-first birthday health. And the next day we were pulled out, the whole of the 39th Battalion and the 53rd were pulled out and the AIF took over. And that was the beginning of, and the artillery came in at that stage

and held up the Japanese and the Japanese had run out of steam and that was the beginning, end of their attack.

Well, we went back to Port Moresby and the 39th Battalion were pretty short of men and they

requisitioned about a hundred troops from the 53rd and I was one of those to go across, I was made a platoon commander with the 39th Battalion, and we trained and regrouped and were actually put in defensive positions around Port Moresby for a while.

And then we were sent back by air this time over the Owen Stanleys to take part in the then, what was then the Gona Mission campaign.

Well in the Gona Mission we had some, bit of fun there because the AIF had been

attacking up the beach and getting nowhere against this very heavily fortified Japanese defence at Gona Mission. And a couple of the officers from my company in the 39th decided to climb the trees beside the creek and to take snap shots at the Japanese, the snipers. On a couple of occasions I went up and joined them. And I can tell

you I was pretty scared, but it was, the Japanese were firing, couldn’t see us but they were firing through the trees, and but fortunately none of us got hit. And we went back and when we assembled, the 39th put in an attack up the side of the creek, was on the left flank virtually of Kokoda Mission, whereas the AIF had been attacking

from the right flank. And the first attack was repulsed and a couple of days were spent retrieving wounded and others from the kunai. But a funny incident happened then, I was

standing with a group having a cigarette behind the kunai in a bit of an open patch and suddenly someone saw a movement in the kunai, and it was some of the Japanese trying to escape. There, once again

a soldier beside me was shot by a stray bullet from the Japanese, but also beside me was a box of grenades. So I picked up a couple of grenades and let fly with them and apparently these and other efforts by the troops at that stage wiped out this Japanese group.

When we captured them, one of the officer, had a sword tied to his rifle and I commandeered that and, but a couple of days later we were ordered to move to, further up the coast to take over, to attack Gona, Gona Village

that was, we knew it then. And I left the sword behind and the quartermaster sergeant somehow or other got hold of it and got it back to Australia so when I arrived back in Australia it was there waiting for me. But the next campaign was, we went, was to do a

march through the jungle to outflank the Japanese and when we got to a position near where the Japanese were, my platoon was the forward platoon of the forward company and we had to go ahead and manoeuvre what was, where the Japanese were. And just at that stage we had to

cross a creek, and down the creek strode two Japanese officers quite casually and after, my forward patrol could see no other solution but to shoot them which they did. And when they were captured they had on them papers which indicated a lot about

where their positions were and was very useful information. Unfortunately it also alerted the Japanese to our being there so we had to fight forward from there. I spent, well most of the day going, taking over, taking Japanese posts and we went forward slowly and captured a number of posts

and that was my first day of real war experience. And ...

Well at the end of that day I was wound, shot and wounded in the shoulder and

according to the records I kept on for a while until we took the next post and then I was taken out and taken back to a military aid post where I collapsed, I think I must have lost a fair bit of blood. And we spent the night in the rain

and were actually slept the night sleeping in, more or less sleeping in water and the next day we were carried out by the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels [indigenous Papua and New Guineans], back to the nearest field hospital which was three days away. So then eventually that, went back to Australia.

Well I was evacuated back, they operated on me in Port Moresby and extracted the bullet and the, and cleaned up my back, which I got shot through the left shoulder and it came out my back and just missed my spine. And I was evacuated back to Australia and we,

took several weeks of being evacuated from one hospital to another down through Queensland and finally back to Sydney. And when I was in hospital in Sydney I complained about a pain in my leg and discovered that I’d injured it in the campaign and

kept on when I shouldn’t have I suppose. And finally the specialist looked at it and x-rayed it said it was the worst osteoarthritis he’d ever seen in a young man and they then wanted to board me out of the, medically board me out of the army. But a friend of mine came to visit me and he was an army

officer and he was a son of a general, and when the general heard that I was gonna be boarded out, he started to pull a few strings. And he said, and he called to see me and he said, “You can’t get out of the army, we’ll need you fellows,” you know, “you properly trained soldiers.” And so I then got re-boarded and I said to the inspecting officers,

“It’s no good boarding me B Class, I can’t do any good, can I get back to A Class and get back to my unit?” And the doctor said, “Okay, we’ll do that,” and they graded me A2 which is not quite A1, but I got back to my unit, which was the 39th, and by that time the 39th had been pulled out of action and they were training on the, in

the mountain area in from Cairns. And...

I was appointed assistant adjutant I think of the 39th Battalion, and my CO who, Colonel Honner, who was one of nature’s gentlemen,

sent me on a few courses which were held at, on the Tablelands, in the Atherton Tablelands. And I can remember one of them, I was in map reading and field sketching which I knew a hell of a lot about having been through Duntroon.

And I can remember my report went back to the CO, “This officer could have done better if he’d tried.” But we, it was hard to try because there was a nice pub there at that, where the school was and we used to gather there. And also, not far away, there were beautiful lakes where you could swim in this beautiful clear, very deep water.

So after that I took whatever opportunity I could to go beck there and have a weekend off whenever it might be. I know my company commander wasn’t very pleased when I missed church parade to go to, on these things but it was well worth it.

Well, then the

terrible thing happened. For some reason the army decided to concentrate their forces and the brigade, the 39th Battalion, the brigade the 39th Battalion was in, was part of the, then part of the 6th Division and the powers that be decided to break up the 39th Battalion.

The CO was appointed commander of another AIF battalion but the officers and men were spread out amongst different units of the 6th Division. I went to the 2/2nd Battalion and I was there a short time when I was requisitioned to go to the 2/4th Battalion. And I

took over a platoon which had been commanded strangely enough by an old surfing friend of mine, who had been shot through the knee and he was out of the war at that stage and, or just getting out of it, and I took over his platoon and I served then with the 2/4th. But my leg was giving

me a hell of a lot of trouble and my commanding officer who was Joe Gullett who was, later became an MP [Member of Parliament] and was a very fine officer, he later served with the British Forces in the attack on Europe. And Joe said, “Look here Ron, you can’t keep going like this, you’ve gotta get boarded again.” And so I was sent to

hospital and somehow or the other the army then lost me, somehow or other and I was sort of unappointed for a while. And then I got a job as adjutant I think it was on a troop ship and was back in Cairns and carrying troops from,

from Cairns and northern Australia to New Guinea. And there are quite a, there were a few interesting trips on that, sometimes we took Australian nurses which was very nice and occasionally American nurses were among the crowd that went up. And there was a little bit of competition there for, amongst the men,

but eventually they didn’t last very long and off they went to their jobs in New Guinea.

After the troop ship I was sent down to the School of Infantry in Victoria where I was an instructor and strangely enough it was supposed to be teaching

warrant officers in the regular army how to be officers after the war, and the war was still on of course. And most of these officers, warrant officers knew a damn sight more about what their job than I did, and I was supposed to be instructing them. But after a while things changed over and I became chief

instructor and I was there when I was once again sent to hospital with my leg, and eventually that lead to my medical discharge just at the end of the war from the regular army.

Pardon?

1945, yeah.

Oh, might have been late 1944, but it was ’45 by the time I got out.

Well my first

memory is something I was told but not... we had a big garden here and I was a toddler about three or four or something like that when I went missing, and great panic and everyone in the family looking for me. And eventually they found me down at Rushcutters Bay Park which was about a mile down the road, and

that was my first big adventure I suppose. And after that I went to a local school and my mother thought I was a lovely little boy and I had long hair which wasn’t the thing in those days. And so I got into, I got teased pretty tremendously when I got to

this school with long hair. And my brother was at the same school, he was my older brother, and he was one of the senior boys there. And he came down when this was happening and, one day, and I’d been crying probably and he called the boys together and said, “Listen, if any more of this goes on you’ll hear from me and there’ll be big trouble,” and he was a

big boy. And of course from then on everything was okay. And finally my mother gave in and let me get my hair cut. So I went on there at school and I, one day I was down at the football ground watching my brother captain the school team, primary school team. And

someone got hurt or some such thing and I was told to come on and play and I hadn’t the faintest idea what to do. And so that was a chaos when I got hold of the ball started running in the wrong direction, and that was my introduction to rugby.

Just one brother and one sister, and my sister was the eldest and she was absolutely wonderful. She sort of, my sister

was born in London when my mother was an opera singer at Covent Garden and my father was an officer on a liner of trans-Atlantic liners. And some, my mother used to have to leave the opera pretty, after the baby was, after the little baby girl was born, my mother used to get away from the opera as soon as she could,

to go back and feed the baby. And so my sister, who’s name was Brenda, got the nick name of Bunty because there was a play on in London called Bunty Pulls the Strings. And she was known as Bunty for the rest of her life. She was a wonderful person. My brother, well we were good pals, he was older than I was, and he

had a heavy romance with a girl that he later married and they had, used to have parties here, and I can remember that as a teenager I was allowed to attend on condition that I did what I was told. And every now and then I was told to go out and tell all the youngsters in the garden it was time to come in, there was going to be supper or some such thing. So I used to break up a few little, a fair bit of necking in those days,

but I didn’t get much of a chance to do it myself.

My brother was five years older than me, and my sister was maybe seven or eight years older, yeah. My brother was born during the war, must have been the result of my father being back in Sydney. But he spent most of the war away on, in the navy.

I was born just after the war and I think my mother must have said that’s quits then, at that stage.

Not very much, he never used to say very much about his war service but I found a book, or a diary of his and he had quite an adventurous war. And he was,

he, when he was in England he was trained with the Royal Navy in gunnery and so he was snapped up by the Australian Navy just before the war, the First World War, and became a gunnery lieutenant. And the result of that, he went off to the first ships to New Guinea and I believe he was in command of the guns they fired over Rabaul to capture German New Guinea.

But after the war, the army – the Australian Navy asked him to stay on and he stayed on in the Australian Navy until the Depression when everyone was, pretty well everyone was retrenched. And he then served in various capacities and he became a Torres Strait pilot, he was a wonderful pilot, he was the

only officer at that stage, I believe, who was in the Navy who could bring his own ship in to the Sydney Harbour Heads without a pilot. And so he then became a Torres Strait pilot and after that he got various jobs including going to England and navigating the Macdhui out to Australia. I think it

was the Macdhui that was sunk in Port Moresby Harbour at the beginning of 1942, but my father of course was retired by that stage. While I was on the troop ship in, from up in northern Australia I got news that my father was very ill and my CO, who was a great guy, organised for me to go on a flying boat and fly down to Sydney to

see him. And so I had the adventure of a flying boat and got, landed at Rose Bay but it was too late, he’d died a couple of days before I arrived down. But I was always very, very... very fond of my father. He was a great guy and we were good

pals. But funny enough he and my mother never came to see me play sport or football, in those days the parents didn’t worry about it. Whereas when I was a father, a young father, I’d go to every blinking football match and everything with the kids were involved in.

He was away a lot, yes, he was. He was, everywhere the fleet went, he went, you know, and he became the

captain of the naval oil tanker so he would go with the fleet and refuel and on various exercises. But I think the exercises they enjoyed most were the Melbourne Cup. In those days the fleet used to always have assignments, some assignment down in Victoria at the Melbourne Cup time. And I can remember my mother was very keen on horse racing and she’d have a small bet

and she’d get to know all the bookies and she’s got good tips and so forth. And she’d go down with him on the ship, and down to the Melbourne Cup. So they had a good, happy life together.

Well my father was

a very even tempered fellow, he’d spend as much time as possible at home. Often had, after he left the navy he had lots of former sailors come to visit him and every now and then there’d be someone who’d been, served under him would come to see him. And

he was a great pal of mine and he took a lot of interest in what I was doing but not so much interest in the sport for, strangely enough. But my elder brother was very sick when he was very young and I think he might have been a little bit spoilt. And he had, went into a conflict with my father because he defied

him terrifically so there was a bit of a conflict there between them, but otherwise we were a very happy family.

I think we played tennis, we had a tennis court out the front here

at that stage and he’d go surfing with me at the beach quite a lot, that was a very popular thing. And we’d oh, I’d talk about my problems to him I suppose, talking about what’s happening at school. He’d say, “Work a bit harder,” you know, and I’d say, “Yes Dad.”

No, we, I, actually what happened was that...

I learned to swim in Victoria when we were down there on a holiday one time, I was only about, I

was six or so before I learned to swim actually. But, so I learned to swim down there, and after, and then we’d swim during the school, the holidays and so forth. But of course there was rowing, took up a lot of my time. And

I can remember later my son was a very good swimmer but he was a rower too and he wasn’t allowed to swim because it apparently conflicted with the muscles used in the different sports. But we...

We’d mostly go to Bondi Beach but often down to Red Leaf Pool which was quite a, it’s down near the Council Chambers at Rush – at Double Bay. And there was a lot of opportunities for swimming around here, so we didn’t, so we did a lot of that.

Yeah well actually this was a, more or less a, the last remnants of a huge estate which stretched along Darling Point right up to St Mark’s Church, and it was gradually split up. And there were some big houses, over the fence was another big

property and Jim Cohen was a pal of mine, he lived there and they, I think they had a swimming pool so that was a bit popular. And then along the front of the street, which is now Ranelagh Gardens, there are about ten houses which the developers purchased

in order to get bigger area so they could build the thirty storey block of units over the way. But New South Wales was much, I’m sorry, New South Head Road was much the same as it is now and also Darling Point Road was much the same. We had a big stone wall in the front which is still there, although it’s been moved back a little bit I think. And I can remember when as a boy, they, instead of taxis

they used to have coaches with, horse driven coaches and that was great to get a ride on one of them every now and then, sort of thing. And eventually motor vehicles came in and I can remember we had a Perry, which I think there were only about three or four imported from England, they were like little old fashioned

Fords, you know, like the early Fords, and we had that for years and finally we got a more modern car just before the war. And that Perry was kept here right through the war and unfortunately my mother gave it away to a neighbour and I think eventually the motor finished up running an air-conditioning system or something but that was the end of that.

But...

I think we might have driven out mainly I think, because we had a car for most of the time when I was young, and otherwise I think there were tram, we get trams some or ah, forget how we get there now, yeah.

Oh no, the train line didn’t come until years and years, they talked about it for many, many years and finally the State Government introduced the Eastern Suburbs line and it was supposed to go all the way to Bondi Beach but as you know it finished up at Bondi Junction.

Oh, my mother was wonderful.

She was a full time mother, except that she spent a lot of, she used to go to the races every weekend and she often had, played cards with her lady friends. And I can remember coming in to this room after coming back from school and be full of little tables and women playing mah-jong or bridge, some such thing. And they had, she had some wonderful

friends and she was, but unfortunately she came back to Australia as you know at the beginning of the war, and she sang a number of concerts but she didn’t sing in any operas here and then she had some trouble with her teeth and she virtually gave up professional singing. But we used to have a piano in

here and my father used to play and my mother used to sing, and it was delightful.

My mother?

No my mother was Australian and Australian, on my mother’s side the Australian family goes way back to the early nineteenth century. But she met my father several times when he came out here on the sailing

ships when he was a cadet midshipman, I suppose you’d call it. And they had met a few times and they met up again when she went to London as a singer and the romance proceeded I suppose. They were, in some way, distance cousins, about fifth removed or something like that.

Oh they used to have dinner parties, people used to come in for dinner and they’d go out for dinner and I think obviously they’d go to the opera together quite often but, and we as children’d go to bed. But there was quite a party house, we had a lot of parties here, especially as my brother was

growing up, and my sister too. My sister was a very good tennis player and they had a lot of tennis parties here.

I don’t think there was any such thing as strict discipline, I think we just, as long as we did what we were told I suppose but we were reasonably independent.

That’s a good question, I can’t remember. In fact one of my aunties used to call me Goodie-Goodie Ronnie, but I suppose I got into trouble every now and then but I can’t remember.

No I don’t think I had any fight, oh I did have a fight when I, yes I did, I had a fight when we were at... my school used to practise down at the oval down at Rushcutters Bay and Trumpet Park they call it now, and the local boys used the resent us,

the local boys from Paddington used to pick on us. And I was a sort of a leader of our kids I suppose so I had to fight the leader of their kids and we had a ding dong boxing match behind the grand stand, and I can remember that was a really good one and I became keen on boxing after that.

Oh it was basically because we, I was, I think at that stage I was captain of the rugby team at my primary school and so I suppose I was supposed to be the leader and take on any combat.

Rather than sport,

I was never a very good tennis player, I used to play a bit of tennis but I wasn’t very good at it. And I played cricket, I was, for some reason I was captain of cricket at my primary school but I was no good and as soon as I could get out of it I took up rowing. But we used to do a lot of tree climbing and we used to keep locusts, we had the locusts our here

in what was then the conservatory. And we had a big tree which grew the leaves that locusts feed on and we used to be very popular here, because everyone used to come up to get the leaves off this tree. And it’s been replaced now by a magnificent, oh, it was a mulberry tree, that’s right a mulberry tree, and it was a bit of a nuisance because the mulberries used to fall all over

the ground and if you climbed it you’d get mulberries all over you. But now we’ve got a magnolia tree out there, which is beautiful.

Well we used to imagine we could make silk, we could sell our silk from silkworms but of course we never got round to unravelling the silk,

and so they, the moths’d eat their way through that and then be another round of locusts coming up. But it was a very popular thing in the thirties, or the twenties and thirties.

Oh well she,

she had a life insurance policy and she encouraged me, cause I was always wanted to be a journalist and she said that to be a journalist you need to speak foreign languages. And so when she got this, when she was able to cash in this life insurance policy she took my sister and I, my sister and myself to Europe. And we spent about

seven or eight months in Germany, mostly in Munich, studying German, and then later on we went to Paris and spent a bit of time there trying to speak French which was terribly difficult. And but in Germany it was very interesting because it was then Hitler was in complete control of

Germany. And we had a teacher, a tutor in German, a German aristocrat who’d come, who didn’t have much money, and she was so anti Hitler that we got quite worried about it because she was so outspoken against the Nazis, and anyway nothing happened while we were there. And strangely enough

my sister made a friend with one of the German SS [Schutzstaffel, secret police] men, a young soldier who was a very nice fellow. And we’d go, I was only sixteen or something and we’d go to the beer halls and drink wolfbrau you know, the big things of beer. And it was, he,

our German wasn’t too good and so eventually, as we spoke to him our voices got louder and louder and we were trying to make him understand what we were saying and so forth. And one day an officer came up and spoke to him and he said, “What are you doing talking to these Englishes? Englishes?” And so he then said to this fellow, “You can say goodbye to them and you won’t see them again.” And that happened, he had to come back and say,

“I’m sorry, I’ve just got to say goodbye,” and that’s the last we saw of him. And but in, when, afterwards we went to Austria for, and we stayed with an Austrian family and they were wonderful people and they taught me to say Liechtenstein which was not easy. And a team of

young boys, but they just couldn’t wait for Hitler to come and take over Austria, they couldn’t, they wanted Hitler to take over Austria, so that happened after we came back to Australia.

People would just, may I say it, typically German and they did what they were told and they conformed. Much as, most of them conformed, they had no alternative virtually. And even some of the Jewish tried to conform but it was very difficult, it was impossible for them. And we made a number of friends amongst the Jewish people there and

as a result of that, after we returned to Australia, my mother arranged to get some of them, to nominate some of them to come to live in Australia. But it was, I used to write back to my history teacher at school, at Grammar, and he used to read my letters to the boys in the

class apparently. And apparently I used to write quite good letters in those days and I really thought I was going to be a journalist. And then when war broke out I, a group of us got together and decided the only way we could get in to the army was by going to Duntroon, through them.

No we didn’t really see it, we didn’t actually see them actually cap, taken away or escorted into trains together, camps and that kind of thing. But we were I suppose tourists and we lived in a, we didn’t live in a hotel, we lived in a pension, you know, and we lived in a, amongst, with a German family. And

I don’t think they ever talked about the situation, you know, I don’t remember them ever talking about it.

Oh I think that the, Paris was the most wonderful thing. We lived in a little flat near the

Grand Avenues and the Eiffel Tower wasn’t very far away from us and with, and the river running through Paris was fantastic. And we didn’t go to the big, expensive restaurants but we – certainly

the food was good and much better than in Germany and we went to the Folies Bergère and a few things like that which was quite a revelation for me. And then we went, on the way back we went to Monte Carlo and I was tall and I had a dinner suit and I was sixteen and my mother took me to the casino.

And I think I even managed to lose a bit of money there, but no-one picked that I was under age.

Oh very exotic to us in those days, they were quite fantastic. They were you know, they had the well-dressed couriers, ah couturiers and so forth. And

the atmosphere was very intense, I don’t think we got into the big gambling areas but we, even when the roulette wheel’s going around and so forth, it was quite an experience, yeah. And it’s also a beautiful city and right near the coast and so forth, it’s very beautiful.

Oh yeah, well, I can remember my first day at Sydney Grammar I was put into, for some reason I went into the 2A I think it was, which was the top academic class of the junior year, that first year. And one of my friends from school

was also, from prep school was also there, and he, the master made it very tough on him and the poor bloke burst into tears at one stage. He really, you know, it was tough, it began a lot tougher than it had been at the primary school. But eventually we got to know the masters and there were some wonderful people amongst them. It was

mainly the influence of the teachers there that influenced more than what we learned really, there was good, very good fellowship. The headmaster was Mr Dettman, Professor Dettman and a famous scholar and he’s really a scholarly type of person and he was not a disciplinarian.

But I remember one day at the rowing camp, some of us had got into the habit of going up to the local pub and having a beer. And one of the senior people who was a bit of a wowser I suppose, reported us to the head and the whole of the rowing camp got called in to

be, confront the headmaster. And he said, “I’ve got you here because I understand some of you have been drinking beer,” and he said, “in the belief that it’s good for you, it’ll strengthen you up for your rowing.” “Well,” he says, “I can assure you that it’s not good for you and it’s not gonna help your rowing and I don’t want to see any more of it, and that’s enough, out.” And no-one got into trouble or anything, you know, and that was the kind of headmaster

he was, and it worked too. After I left, after I joined the army, he retired and unfortunately he died almost immediately, HS Dettman, wonderful fellow.

Oh yes, there were,

I forget the names of some of them now but I can remember my history master was at, oh, there was, who was the one I wrote to who was, you know, he was also the sports master. So that every now and then you’d get the history lesson and you’d be able to get him distracted on talking about sport, and that was

a great occasion, cause we still did quite well, you know, we did, I think I got an A in history in the certificate. And then I went onto, it was in the senior school I was in the, when I was doing the leaving, the history Master was a – he wasn’t really a teacher he was – well he was a teacher but he wasn’t

an academic teacher but he was very good. And he got us really interested in things and I also became very interested in ancient history which was taught by the headmaster, and that was, that led me on to doing ancient history at the university later on and it was a tremendous education

Yes well English was my subject I liked, I liked reading and writing and history was the other main one I think. Mathematics I couldn’t stand, science I wasn’t too keen about. And then when I went to Duntroon I had to do mathematics and science and in the first year we had to do quite a lot of civil

subjects at Duntroon. And I can remember in, I wasn’t doing too well in physics and the exams were coming up and we had to pass them so I swotted like mad for about a week or so before the exam. And I came I think second in physics and the teacher nearly fell over and I did too,

and a week later I wouldn’t have passed you know, it was just a cram. But it got me through and I went on and graduated eventually.

Oh I was always determined that I’d be a journalist, always wanted to be a journalist. And

you know, that’s why my mother took me to Europe and that kind of thing. And...

Well there was no-one in my family to get it from, I just got that desire. And I’ve got four children and my second daughter, Diana Plater, is a, became quite a

well known journalist and foreign correspondent and she’s written a couple of books since then, so it’s somewhere in us, somewhere in the family.

Well, I think it was mainly the radio at Duntroon, because I don’t think we got, I don’t think we had a surfeit of newspapers there, we might have had the

Canberra Times which was pretty scrappy in those days.

Mmm?

Oh yes, they read the paper regularly in the family and they’d have a radio and you know, later on when TV came in that was... But before we got a radio I used to go next door to our,

a friend next door, and we watched the children’s programs on their radio, or listened to children’s programs and listened to the ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation]. And that was our big excitement every week night, we’d go up there about four o'clock or whatever it was and listen to the radio.

No, I’m afraid not, no.

Oh yeah, usually typical family,

go to the cinema, to the flicks as we used to call it, every now and then. And also before I became a, in the period before I became a rower I used to go to Saturday afternoon to the local flicks, and mainly to meet the girls there you know.

Girls? Oh that was about the time, I think I became interested in girls when I was,

that sort of early teens and up until I went to Duntroon, and there wasn’t much chance to do much about it for the next five years.

No, I don’t think he ever did, I think he kept it to himself, kept it to himself I think.

Oh yes, I was in the cadets at school, I was a sergeant in the cadets and I was in the rifle shooting, I think I was captain of the second rifle team or something like that. And I was interested in the army because

my mother, even then and then when the war started, said, “Whatever you do, none of my sons are to join the navy.” Actually my brother finished up in the armoured division and got out of that to join the small ships in the army small ships.

Well she hardly ever saw her husband for years, you know.

And there’s a story goes down that my mother used to go down to meet the ship when he came in every now and then and right at the end of the war he came back with a beard. And my mother refused to go ashore with him until he shaved the beard off, and so she’s a strong man – a strong woman.

Well it might’ve been possibly my mother’s influence or, but I think the main reason I joined the army was because that was the quickest way in. I didn’t want to be a permanent navy, I didn’t want to go, leave school at fourteen and go to navy school.

I was interested in being at school and sport at school and so forth. And I never thought about joining up until the war broke out and then the solution came through to go to Duntroon.

Oh he was interested in the returned soldiers and he took part

in various Anzac parades and things like that. But he didn’t really talk much about the war, you know, it’s only that by discovering this book of his that I found out a lot of things that he did.

Probably, I’m sure we did, but I don’t clearly remember. I remember, definitely remember going to Anzac Day so I suppose it was

Anzac marches, yeah.

Oh I’ve always been very patriotic, very much a believer in the, in Royalty for instance. I believe in, that we should

retain a connection with England or Britain, stay in the British League of Nations. You know, I’m certainly not a republican, I don’t see any point in it, I think we’ve got the ideal set up at the moment and no problems, why change it?

Well I suppose it’s my background that my father was English and my, you know, I’ve got a lot of family connections in England and Scotland and Ireland and I think it’s nice to be able to keep those up, you know, or at least to have them anyway.

Of course I’m also an admirer of America, because after winning the Nieman Fellowship in Journalism and going to Harvard for a year I made a lot of friends in, among the young journalists in America, and we, I’m very impressed with the attitude of the American people I met. They were, their,

my impression was that the Americans are good citizens. I know they get very, they got a bad reputation as tourists and so forth because they don’t believe and don’t understand the rest of the world, but a lot of them do. The ones I met were very well aware of their place in the world and importance of, well Australia too. I mean

I can, you know, almost remember the days when I first went to Europe when people couldn’t get the difference between Australia and Austria, and so forth. But now, you go to America and they, they’re well aware of the Australians I think, the people that I met. And my daughter was born, my daughter Diana was born in Boston and she’s got American citizenship,

dual citizenship, and she’s worked in New York and got, you know, made good friends over there.

Oh even at my age I could see a war was inevitable, there, I couldn’t see

how they could allow a dictator to dominate Europe. And I was fairly politically alert as a teenager and particularly after that time in Germany when I said who’d want to run a, live a life like that any, you know, anywhere, and even though the beer halls are very good. But, the...

I didn’t see any anti Germany sentiment here in Sydney because I was away most of the time in the army you know, so I mean, Germany was the enemy and that was it, you know. But against the German civilians, I didn’t see any evidence of anti you know, of animosity.

No, well before the war we had these German Jews that were friends of ours. And I’ve got a very good friend today who’s Australian but was a part German and she’s still alive in her nineties. And she was a German sports coach for the German Olympic, Moscow

Olympics, you know. So, and she lives down here in Rushcutters Bay and she’s a good friend.

I was right in this house when war was declared. I was practising boxing at the, with a friend of mine down below and my mother called me up, called us up and it was the British Prime Minister announcing that war had been declared on September the third 1939.

And I think I mentioned earlier that a couple of days later or the day later we went up to Victoria Barracks to try to join up.

I don’t think so.

Well he was already in the militia, you know, the voluntary militia in those days and

he more or less automatically joined up as soon as he could. And he was in the Eighth Division, which went to Malaya, but he was called out of it just before they left to help form the Armoured Division because he was specialist in mobile area. And he got a commission in the

Armoured Division in, they were stuck in Western Australia for many years, and eventually he managed to get out. And strangely enough he got into the water transport, even though my mother wasn’t very keen about that.

About war? Oh, they were devastated, absolutely

devastated, yeah. But my mother of course had been in Germany with me and she knew that it was inevitable. I mean anyone that’d been into Germany and seen what happened there could, and was British, and couldn’t believe that anyone could possibly permit it you know.

Oh yeah, I certainly, I tried to look older and do a bit, you know, bit of all right, but I was pretty well in, under control. But sure, I’d like to dress up like an older person because I was fairly tall, I was pretty, very tall and I used to try to look like a man, you know.

No, I don’t think there was any call to do that at that stage, no. But, oh I did, yes I did, as I mentioned earlier, I did put my age up for, to go to Monte Carlo, to the casino at Monte Carlo, got dressed up in a tuxedo, I was sixteen and looked twenty-one.

Only after war broke out and after we’d been to Victoria Barracks to try to enlist they, someone at school said, “Why don’t you try for Duntroon?” And then the three of us got together, there was the captain of rowing

Johnny Runge, there was myself, I was captain of football, and there was Bob Delorey who was vice captain of cricket, so we weren’t academics, but we all got in. There was one or two others who applied, some reason, I can’t understand why, missed out. But there was one other that was particularly good all rounder who, some reason, didn’t get

in. But we got in and I was a second senior in the new group, I was, and the number one of our group was a chap named Mick Lloyd who was from Scotch College whose father was a general. But poor old Mick, he suffered like mad from his father being a general and everyone was down on him, and he’s a brilliant person, he’s a really

fine guy, but he used to be, keep, run into trouble all the time.

No, he wasn’t, no he was just, he was absolutely good at everything he did. He could play the piano like a professional and we’d have sing songs with him playing the piano and he was a good citizen, but every time he stepped out of line someone picked him up and bang.

It’s quite thorough, you had, I remember I had to go to hospital and have my tonsils removed or something before they’d consider me. Then I went, then we went before a selection committee, a pretty high powered selection committee and got quite a grilling, and then we found out, we got notified eventually if we were selected or not.

Oh yeah, actually I hadn’t done too badly in the Intermediate, and of course the Leaving Certificate results hadn’t come out, at that stage, at that stage. Later on I found I actually did pass the Leaving, but only just. And I think they were looking for leadership qualities and obviously we three had demonstrated them at school.

Well we thought it’d be a very short course because of the war and it was, but they condensed it, it was a four year course and they condensed it. And we, when the Japanese came in we were just done two years, and we said, “Oh hooray, we’ll be out tomorrow,” you know, but it was another six months later they graduated us, that was two

and a half years we did before we, before graduating.

Yes we thought we’d go to the Middle East for sure, yeah.

I liked it very much, there was some, lots of problems, there were set backs and so forth but I fitted in

quite well. I was, I became a lance corporal in my first year and my second year I became a corporal which was a platoon commander. And then I ran into trouble and, I didn’t do anything but one of the fellows in my platoon deserted and he’d gone to join the AIF, and he did. He joined the AIF

and finished up as a prisoner of war of the Japanese. But I had nothing to do with it but apparently my CO thought I was involved in it, because he was in my platoon. And so that was, that dented my career there a bit but it didn’t make any difference in the end because I was the first one to get a – first one in my class to get a decoration which...

Oh well, I mean first year there was a fair bit of back to school kind of stuff, you know, English, French, science and things like that. And but that finished, at

the end of the first year that finished and we went straight on to, only on to military subjects and we did every possible thing you could do in the military. Went through all the different weapons, we did riding, in those days they still had horses and we did cavalry work, and then we had tank, or at least we had Bren carriers and so we did that type of thing. And

machine guns, the latest machine guns and we did, you know, lot of rifle, lot of small weapons training, and tactics, tactics were a very important part of the operation, we used to have military exercises up in the mountains and so forth, quite often. And it was a pretty, a very thorough course, we really were completely trained officers by the time we came out.

And, but the funny thing was that later on in, oh, this is jumping ahead like mad, but in the Owen Stanleys campaign, I’d been out on patrols and I think I, I thought I could see a way through,

around the Japanese instead of a frontal attack, which was pretty desperate, hopeless. And then the AIF arrived and I, the first company of the AIF I saw the company commander and said, you know, told him what I thought and he just sort of looked at me and said, “Who the hell’s this twenty-year-old lieutenant, militia lieutenant,” you know, he didn’t realise I was a Duntroon graduate. And

whatever happened, they took no notice of me and they went straight up the front and got mowed down. And so that was, you know just, the kind of experience that should’ve been used, it wasn’t, you know.

Oh we did,

we had a mock enemy, encircling attacks and that kind of thing. Field living, living on the land and so forth, it was pretty comprehensive yeah. And we had actually, we went to some wonderful parts of country around Canberra you know, magnificent

beautiful country, but also pretty heavy timber too so we had good experience.

Oh yes we were watching what was happening in the Middle East as much as we could you know, because a lot of it was security, under security in those days. But yes we got quite a lot of, well quite, we got some of the officers that were came back from the Middle East

were training us and they told us all about what was happening. And we were pretty up to date with what was going on in jungle war, you know, in open warfare but there wasn’t much known about jungle warfare, and they didn’t really think of New Guinea as a place where we’re gonna have to beg a tough fight.

Yes it was, yes, yeah. We had to learn pretty fast up in New Guinea. And later on of course they introduced the jungle training courses for the Australian troops up in Queensland which were very comprehensive and the fellas who went in the later actions were much better trained for that.

Oh well, you did everything from cavalry to artillery to engineering, you got a rounding in everything but you, towards the end you’d specialise in a field that you want to nominate. And I nominated

infantry which I thought was the only, you know, sensible thing. I wasn’t, I didn’t want to be sitting behind, shooting big guns and so forth, I wanted to be in it I suppose. And I got into the infantry sure enough, and much to my surprise, horror.

Oh he took it as inevitable I suppose. He was an old veteran himself, and he’d been a member of the RSL [Returned and Services League] for years and that kind of thing and he expected, took it as a natural thing for us to do.

Well we were, yes, we were in at Duntroon at the Military College when the word came through, and we all said, “Hooray, we’ll be in the war tomorrow,” but we weren’t.

I think it wasn’t talked about very much. It might have become a surprise to the senior

people there. But, well it was a surprise, really, because they thought that the strength of America would stop the Japanese coming in but of course the Japanese went straight into it and they were fools, no mucking about.

Very much so, yes, yes we had a lot of sport at Duntroon, it was considered part

of the course. And I played in the rugby, the first rugby team right from the day I started. And in fact I got a write up the first match I played so I thought that was quite amazing and I think the senior blokes weren’t very pleased about that. But oh yes we had a

lot of sport. And I think that rugby, of course a lot of them were from interstate, they played Australian Rules and that kind of thing, but rugby was the only, at that time was the only football there. And a lot of the Australian Rules players became very good rugby players too.

Be wonderful today if they could all be rugby players.

I was but I didn’t actually play, I was kept as a reserve and the other bloke, the other fellow they put in was about twice my weight. And...

They played the New Zealand team, which I think won everything they played.

Very disciplined, very much disciplined. I mean I, while you’re on parade, the officer of the day might come round and inspect your room, and if there’s something out of place you’re put on a charge and you get yourself a pack drill, or you know, just even for leaving your toothbrush in the wrong place or something like that you know.

They were very strict.

Well not very much I don’t suppose, but yes they did. I think if someone stepped out of line they tended to get into trouble. I mean they had this cold bath thing which was, if one of the

cadets was, did something that was not good for the group they would, some of the fellows might get together and get them out of bed in the middle of the night and put them in a cold bath, and they were bloody cold too in those. I don’t think I was involved in one of those, but I could’ve been, I just, I think I slept in or something.

Oh, the accommodation was very good. Everyone had their own room or pretty well everyone, and the, so that everyone’s responsible for their own room. But I can remember the first day I arrived, we arrived by train in the morning

we had to spend the whole morning picking up equipment, rifles, uniforms, all that, and take them back to our rooms and they had to be ready by meals parade at night. But then the word came round we all had to go to sport, and we’d got these, so here was my room full of junk and clothes and Lord knows what, and we had to leave ’em like that and go to sport and then the

idea was you came back and tidied it up in half an hour before going to parade. Well when I came back my room was in immaculate order and my platoon commander who was a corporal and my section commander had worked together to do the boys’ rooms, the new boys’ rooms. They’d put them all in the correct shape and everything so when we came back from

sport we discovered our rooms were immaculate. And my CO, my platoon commander later became a commando lieutenant colonel in the war and after the war he was on MacArthur’s staff in

Japan. And he got married to an American girl up there and they commandeered the Emperor’s carriage for their wedding parade and he was a real character, but a wonderful fellow. The section commander left the army after the war and later became a Supreme Court judge, so it was,

so there were pretty fine people there.

Oh it was a tradition I think, a tradition yeah, but you know, no-one knew about it, it was never spoken about. But that was one of, a tradition that you know, they, you give them hell but you do, you show them you’re all part of the same team you know.

Well you always had to salute, every time you saw an officer, even if it was miles away you always had to salute him. And they had pack drill every morning at reveille so if you were officer of the day or whatever it was, you had to be on parade and have the flag and be there for the flag raising ceremony. And then take the

pack drill and make the blokes march, the offenders march up and down with their full packs on and do their various parade and so forth, so it was pretty tough. Also for meals you could, there was an opportunity for bullies sometimes that, if you didn’t like your meal, you might leave part of it and some bully there’d say, “Eat that,

eat that or else,” you know, and you had to eat the meal whether you liked it or not you know. But it was all part of the discipline system. Then also they had for new cadets, soon after you got there you’d be called out to a manoeuvre even though you’re not properly trained or anything. And it was really put on by the cadets as an indoctrination

ceremony, and they really made it tough, you had to climb up a hill with your full kit on and so forth, you know. But on the whole it was, there wasn’t much bullying, there was a bit of bullying but not much.

Oh I think it was about,

I think Japan came into the war about Christmas time, I think, then it was about March or April that we were told we’d graduate in June, at the end of June, and great joy then that our class would graduate. And from then on they started graduating the classes in six monthly intervals instead of every year, and I think they still do, yeah.

Well actually I, we all volunteered for the, even though you had to be twenty-one to join the AIF, we all volunteered for the AIF as soon as we entered Duntroon. And we finally got our AIF numbers just before graduating and I, my number at Duntroon was M-P-1-0-1-0-, no, my regular army

number was M-P-1-0-1-0-9 and my cadet number was 7-6-6. So in all the time that Duntroon had been running, up to the beginning of the war, the first class entered in the war, 7-6-5 was the first, was the, as many as there’d been through, 7-6-4 actually because the bloke ahead of me was 7-6-5. And now it’s in thousands of course but,

so in all those years there’d only been seven hundred-odd cadets through Duntroon from World War I to World War II.

After graduation we got a bit of leave and then we were sent to a staging camp waiting for our next appointment. And during that

period I played my last game of rugby for Duntroon and I’d graduated by that time and Rosey Dunsmore was a star player in my team, took, had taken over as captain and we played Sydney University and I think as I mentioned earlier, we had a victory. It might have been the fumes but after our first night of

celebration, or our night of celebration before hand that knocked out the university guys, I don’t know.

Puckapunyal, oh no, no, it was up at Penrith, you know, up near Penrith yeah. And I was only there for a short time and I got, I got an order to go to New Guinea.

And I don’t, I’ve got an idea we, yeah, we went up by train through Queensland and then got a ship from one of the northern ports in Queensland to Port Moresby.

Oh yes, I had a bit of leave, I think we must’ve had a bit of leave or

if we’re, we didn’t have full time leave, at least we had daily leave occasionally to... and we had just back to a normal life for a while with the family.

No, I don’t think I did, I don’t think, they just knew I was going to, you know, I was going to war somewhere or other, they didn’t know where. But by that time,

by that time the Japanese had come in, so they expected I’d be fighting the Japanese I suppose.

Oh yes, quite a lot did, yes. I think I was one of the first to go but eventually most of them did, yeah. And actually Johnny Runge who was stroke of the eight at Grammar and also, actually

he was a wonderful fellow, Johnny Runge, great pal of mine, and he was a forward, he played with us quite, not a very big person but he was stoke of the eight and he was a forward in the school. And we ran out of half backs at Duntroon, we didn’t have, it was very hard to get a rugby team together and we had to make him half back, and he played half back in the rugby team which actually

beat GPS for the first time in some years.

I can’t remember much about it, it was pretty routine and then we got on the troop ship and in a few days we were in Port

Moresby. And I can remember seeing the wrecks in the harbour, not realising at the time that one of the ships wrecked there, my father had brought out from England when he was a naval, when he was a seaman. And then we, I think I mentioned, I reported to the brigade and foolishly said I wanted

a platoon, I finished up with this terrible platoon, nice guys but knew nothing at all about soldiering. And unfortunately there was very little time for them to train, it was a shocking situation there because the, they’re all militia troops, there were no AIF there at all virtually, except a few officers. And these boys

were supposed to learn, do a bit of military training, and also unload ships, so night after night we would be going, unloading ships and then what time you could find during the day we’d try and train them. And we eventually got some Bren guns and another officer and I who knew a bit about Bren guns had to try and train the whole of the 53rd Battalion in the use of Bren guns in

spare time really, in between unloading ships. Then on the night of, one particular night, we’re unloading this ship and we’re due to finish at midnight. And the officers were called together and said, “This is very confidential and you’re not to mention it to the men, but we’re breaking camp first thing in the morning, and we’re going over the Owen Stanleys

to Kokoda.” And, well we just couldn’t, we weren’t allowed to talk to the men about it, so the poor fellows finished their shift, went back, got back to camp and said, “Get some sleep if you can but you gotta pack your things away, you gotta put away anything you can’t take and just get anything you can carry and get ready to move at dawn.”

So you know, one of the problems was that the, the authorities didn’t trust these young fellows, they thought they’d go AWOL [AWL – Absent Without Leave] if they heard they were gonna go into action, which could’ve been the case too, but, some of them anyhow. Anyway we went by buses as far as we could and then the road became completely bogged with the rain

and we had to march to the, virtually to the end of the, to the beginning of the mountains, where we struck camp for the night. And we had, I don’t think there were any tents, they just had to sleep where they could. Supplies took several days to catch up with us.

We didn’t have any breakfast, well breakfast was a cigarette and a pee I suppose, that’s about, that was it. And then we had to go marching over the Owen Stanleys and took us about five or six days to march. You’d get up one hill and you’d, someone, some engineer somehow constructed some kind of steps

on some of the hills, but often you were walking through just mud, slugging through mud. And then you had to go down the other side which is nearly, which is more difficult sometimes, you’re slipping and sliding in the mud and this is, hill after hill after hill. And I think it was about the third day we came to a,

a more or less flat area where there was a Salvation Army set-up and we had our first reasonable meal there, and the Salvation Army guys had set up there and were providing food for the troops going through, you know, the army wasn’t supplying proper food or anything. And so eventually we, when we got up to

Isurava which was just short of Kokoda and where the 39th Battalion had been holding the Japanese for several days, and had actually recaptured Kokoda and they’d been forced out again. And they were in a pretty

desperate situation because they were the same kind of troops, they hadn’t been trained very much but they probably got a little bit more training than we had. And they’d lost their CO and then just about the time we arrived Colonel Ralph Honner arrived as CO of the 39th and started to pull them together, a fantastic leader. And there was one,

there’s one story that stands out is that on the left hand, on the left front was being held by one company and one platoon there had been, hadn’t been very good up to that stage, and they’d had a, and the acting CO wanted to pull them out. And

Colonel Honner said, “That’s no good, we can’t do that, that’d absolutely spoil their morale forever.” So he went up and talked to them and said, “You boys have gotta stay here, you’ve got the – your job is to hold this position,” and they did and they turned out to be good soldiers, as all the 39th blokes did. And...

All right.

They had .303s and Bren guns which was a World War I weapon of, not being used in Australia for years. And they had Tommy guns, not even the latest

submachine guns, and Tommy guns were a World War I weapon as you might remember. And anyway they were quite, you know, comparatively heavy, bit cumbersome compared with the later models of submachine guns. And, but then only had one per platoon, so in modern warfare you probably got

every man in the platoon’s got an automatic weapon. But the, they, some of them couldn’t even, hadn’t even had rifle training with a .303 rifle, they

didn’t have any shooting ranges there, they just had to be instructed on how to use it and no chance to practise with them.

Some of these men had had no training, they were just grabbed in the street more or less and said, “You’re, righto boys, you’re in.” And I don’t know if I’m exaggerating but that,

that’s the picture I always had that they might have been in the army but they had no training, they were just raw recruits and they were suddenly shipped up to New Guinea. And the powers that be must have know there was going to be fighting up there. And it was that stage that the government stood up to the Americans and to the British

and managed to start getting the AIF back from the Middle East and from Europe. But...

I didn’t know a thing about them. I just was told to report to the battalion, which I

did and I was allotted a platoon, I had to try and find out their names first of all, what they knew, and they didn’t know much. And I had to see who were the NCOs [non commissioned officers] and what they knew, which was just about a tiny little bit more.

And we’re in a camp quite near the airport if I remember correctly and so we’re pretty close to being bombed most nights or days. And because the Japanese by that time were bombing pretty thoroughly there, they’d already sunk

the Macdhui and other ships in the harbour. And then, despite the bombing, we had to go and unload these, the ships to help unload the ships. I don’t remember seeing anything of any senior officers near our, near us at any time. I dare say the brigadier came around,

but anyone else above that, I doubt, don’t think there was anything like it. The men were sort of revolutionary, you know, they had, their attitude was ‘What are they doing to us?’ you know. And you had to just try and say that, you know, we’re gonna try and make, help you to

become soldiers, and but unfortunately most of our time gotta spend unloading supplies. And one thing was that every now and then our load would come through of presents from the families and there’d be cakes and chocolates and things like that, and that was of course a great occasion.

And I think that just the night, the day before we actually left I got quite a big load of chocolates and some Christmas cake and a few things like that, and of course I never saw them again. I had, I’d, funnily enough we had these, at Duntroon I had these middle eastern

type sun shade cap, hat, and I had one, I’d taken one with me to New Guinea. And of course I had to leave that behind when we went over the mountains and I never saw that again. In fact I never saw anything again that I left behind, the greatest lot of thieves in the store

rooms that you could ever imagine. And...

I don’t think there were any particular charges laid against them for ill, for rudeness or ill-discipline or anything like that. But they

you could, they were disgruntled, they just didn’t know what was happening to ’em, they were lost, completely lost, and you just had to do what you could to help them. And it wasn’t much good putting them on a charge, it didn’t do them any, they’d finish up doing pack drill which was no help, you wanted them, learning them how to be soldiers rather than that. And,

so generally speaking the troops were well behaved but they didn’t know much, they didn’t know what the war was all about, they were just knew that they were there and they were gonna be called on, that’s all.

Well I’d say that they were mainly between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two or twenty-three. And there might have been some older ones, there were, some of the officers were,

some of the officers were actually World War I veterans, you know. And there were a number of AIF officers who’d been sent back to try and bolster up these units but there weren’t many at that stage. But later on they, I think the 39th got quite a lot of former AIF officers but the 53rd didn’t get many, and

so they were a pretty rugged mob.

Well you were trying to treat them as human beings, trying to make them understand that they were at war and that they needed, that their best defence was to know how to use their weapons. And

trying to get them confident in their weapons really and their, and try to get a bit of unity amongst the, in the platoon or the company or whatever it was, I think that was the main thing you could do.

As far as the government was concerned, I don’t think they had the faintest idea what troops were there. I think the government was completely hopeless and they did what Mac, looking back I’d say they did what MacArthur told them

to, and MacArthur’s only interest was himself and his, the glory of the American Forces. And I think he must have been devastated when he found out that the American troops were pretty hopeless at that stage in New Guinea, and he wouldn’t believe that the Australians were any good. That’s the impression I get that MacArthur said you couldn’t rely on the Australians,

he thought you could, he must have been terribly disappointed when he found you couldn’t rely on the Americans either. Cause later on I found that some of the American troops just didn’t move from their prepared positions when they were supposed to attack the Japanese. And that’s why the AIF took such a terrible

pounding going along the beaches later on in the war.

They couldn’t have had, because after we went into action we, they were still sending up

completely untrained reinforcements. Blokes who, you know, and even at Gona I got troops who had never even fired a rifle, as reinforcements, you know, never fired a .303, that’s an ancient old rifle we had. So I don’t think the, I mean the army just had to try and take what they were given and the politicians didn’t know what they were doing. They were

absolutely hopeless. And we talk about the heroic politicians of the war years but they just did what MacArthur said, until finally they had the courage to insist on the troops coming back from the Middle East and from Europe.

Well they got their positions mainly from character I think, they really, they didn’t have any more training than the other as far as I can make out. Some of them might have had some, bit more training but there were people who stood out because they had a bit more leadership quality.

And I don’t know how they got their appointments because by the time I joined them they were all appointed and there they were. And most of them, you know, actually I must say that the NCOs on the whole did a good job, in my opinion.

I must have been but I don’t know who it was that was there before me, I don’t know.

Just about everything from ammunition to food to even weapons, you know, that were packed in boxes and so forth. Everything was, you know, everything it was all big boxes, they didn’t have big cranes and things that you, these days to lift them

out, they had to be man-handled in many cases. And they, no, people really didn’t know what they were handling, cause they were packed away, they might have been marked but no-one bothered to try and see what they were. They were too desperately tired and fed up to worry about what they were doing, they just got, to get ’em out, that

was all.

No, not altogether, I don’t think so, I don’t think, I think that there was a break every now and then but there was quite, but most of the time was unloading ships, yeah.

It’s really not part of my recollection, I know that their bombs were pretty close

to us and we had to have, we had to dig slit trenches and so forth. But I can’t remember any casualties in our actual camp from their bombs, but I don’t know, it’s a bit vague that period of my exercise.

Oh yes, the food was typical army rations, you know, stew and stew and stew. And I don’t think they had to open their spare kits, they had enough to eat from, came through from

the kitchens.

Yeah, well even then there was a lot of malaria amongst them, cause they hadn’t been properly, there was, I mean tropical diseases, dengue and malaria, they were always going down with it. A lot of the fellas that went over the mountains with me had malaria at the time, you know, they might have been they just got over malaria attack or some

such thing. It was impossible to escape the mosquitoes, you know, you had nets but they weren’t, the mosquitoes would get in the nets somehow or other, you know. I would say that there wasn’t, I don’t know what the statistics are, but I’d say there was hardly anyone that didn’t get malaria or some kind of tropical disease while they were there.

Well yes, there was trying to teach them the use of a .303 rifle, Lee Enfield rifle. When we got the Bren guns, most of our time was spent

trying to get, to instruct them on the use of Bren guns which were a very good weapon. I don’t remember getting any submachine guns other than the old Tommy guns at that stage, we might’ve got ’em later on. But what happened, when we went over the mountains we didn’t have any Bren guns at all, they were carried up by native carriers after we, after us, following us up.

So then we had to try and allocate our Bren guns after we got to, up towards Kokoda.

I don’t think so, I don’t know of anyone, see we only had about two or three weapons per

battalion so they were pretty well under control, I don’t think there were anyone. I mean there might have been a lot of stoppages and that, and a terrific job teaching people how to fix stoppage when you get a stoppage in a machine gun or a Bren gun. It’s an expert’s job to find a stoppage and

do what, know what to do. We found that in action several times a stop, people with the Bren guns got stoppages and couldn’t fix them so we didn’t have the support of the Bren guns.

Well there was nowhere for them to go, I mean they could, if they knew they were threatened with going into action they could’ve gone anywhere you know, there were plenty of places you could hide. But what would be the advantage of doing that if you weren’t threatened, because otherwise you wouldn’t have any food supply and you’d be caught, you’d be stuck in

some isolated position somewhere at the mercy of the natives, who might be friendly or might not.

I’m sorry?

Not that I know of, no, no. I mean there were plenty of people going sick and hoping to be sent back home, I suppose some were too.

Oh pretty well nil I’d say. They said, “What…?” You know, the attitude was, “What the hell are we doing here?” You know, “Why are we here?” No-one thought, “Gosh, we want to get up and get at those enemy,” no-one, I can’t imagine anyone wanted that, except amongst the officers. Perhaps some of the

NCOs but on the whole no-one wanted to go up and fight a war.

Oh no, I got the surprise of my life, I couldn’t believe that the army was in such bad shape. Because I mean at Duntroon even the old soldiers from World War I were better

trained and we often, we, together with the old and bold, Duntroon cadets were supposed to defend the whole of the south coast of New South Wales. So we did have some training with the old and bold and they were good, they understood, they did know what they were doing, but these boys had never been given a chance.

Oh no we told them, I think we told them when we got back to camp that we were going up over the mountains and that they had to take what they could carry, nothing else, you know. And they were sort of, you know, they were just,

I suppose just did what they were told I suppose, the poor fellows, they didn’t have any, I mean I don’t, I can’t remember anyone trying to run away or anything like that.

Well,

I can’t remember anyone having a serious malaria attack on our first few days going over the mountains. Perhaps some did afterwards in the second half but most of them had had malaria and had been treated for it you know.

Mostly, fortunately was the kind of malaria that you, which I had myself, you, kind of malaria that was treatable and I had one or two attacks and that was it, I never had it again.

Oh pretty basic material, probably

pretty basic I think, you know. I think most of the food that, you know, if you got any meat it was stew and what made the stew, I don’t know, God, I hate to think. But I suppose there was some kind of bread, they might have made the bread or something up there, I don’t know. But it was pretty, very basic, but it was filling whatever they gave us, you know, gave the boys a bit of a,

a bit of a chance to get going again.

Well the one I remember most was myself. Somewhere or other, somewhere pretty soon they discovered that I could go without a cigarette, that I didn’t, I wasn’t

a committed smoker and so I was made the custodian of the platoon’s cigarettes. And I had them stacked away in my kit bag and I wasn’t, and I’d only produce one at breakfast and one at dinner for the boys. But we had to cross a lot of rivers and mostly they didn’t have bridges and sometimes you had to cross a fallen, a big log they’d have fallen

across a river. And of course clumsy old Plater managed to fall in on one occasion and the river was running pretty fast and I didn’t feel too good. But before I had much chance to worry about it, half the platoon had jumped in and pulled me out because I had, before the cigarettes got wet, that’s what I found out afterwards. So that was the cigarettes saved me, or saved me from a bad ducking, if not even saving my life.

And then we found the cigarettes weren’t too bad and dried ’em out and the boys continued on.

Well that’s all we had enough for, we didn’t have any further supplies, we didn’t know when we’d see any more so we decided we’d ration them out and that was it. I mean you couldn’t, if you’re

tramping up and down a hill or up and down these hills all day you wouldn’t have much chance to have a cigarette anyhow you know.

I’m not clear but somehow or other they were brought up by the native carriers, we got some supplies through cause we did actually get fed each

most, after the first couple of days we got some food, but I think it was probably native carriers, yeah.

Not at that stage. Later on they opened up the biscuit bombers and they dropped it, they dropped in a

sort of a lake, open area which was part lake, lot of them got lost in the water but they did get quite a bit through. One of my pals who’d been in the Middle East and was my, actually later at my wedding he was my groomsman. He’d been in most of the campaigns from the Middle East and he came back and he got himself a job as a, on one of these biscuit

bombers, and he had to, he said they just had to open the door and push the things out, you know, just push the kit, the food out. So it was pretty lucky if they got the right spot, quite often the pilots didn’t get, the American pilots they weren’t too good at getting in the right spot either.

I don’t know. I think

there were probably three or four hundred.

Oh I think I had about, a normal platoon’s thirty, about thirty men, I think I had about fifteen or sixteen at that stage, yeah.

No, no, it was about another three days past where the Salvation Army and we got up, and we got up there and joined the 39th and we were allocated a position on the left flank, I don’t know about the whole battalion but my company was anyhow. And we got a

position in a native garden which had been deserted so we were pretty pleased because they had these little tomatoes about the size of a golf ball and growing like mad and we had these, we feasted on these tomatoes. And also they had paw paws but they mostly weren’t ripe, so we used to cook them up as a vegetable,

you know. But that was a great help for our diet, towards our diet.

Nothing at all, nothing, we got no news from the front that I know of. Perhaps battalion headquarters did, but I certainly don’t know of any.

Actually we sent out some patrols, we took out some patrols but we didn’t really, apart from the patrols, coming in contact with the Japanese, we didn’t really have much action at that stage. And the 39th was still taking the brunt of it and we were suddenly pulled over

across Eora Creek which was quite a river running, but down the middle of the valley to the other side, to the, I suppose you’d say it’d be the eastern side of the creek, because we heard the Japanese were pushing up that side too. And if you want me to go on with that, the story is that the, I think the whole of the 53rd Battalion eventually went over there, and

the CO and the adjutant and a couple of others, and a few others supporting them went on a reconnaissance and they were shot by the Japanese and so we were virtually leadership at that stage, without leaders at that stage.

I tell you what, I can’t remember, I haven’t looked it up, I haven’t tried to remember,

because I didn’t really know him. I didn’t know him, hardly knew him at all because I didn’t see much of him in Port Moresby when we were unloading ships most of the time. And then of course he was killed right in the beginning of things, yeah.

Well as far as I was concerned, yes.

I reported to my company commander who I can’t remember who it was. I mean we’re, it’s a pretty vague kind of situation there

We didn’t have much chance for the officers to come together because it was mainly a working, as a working group.

We did on the ships, on the ships we were together a bit you know, but there was no sort of officers’ mess kind of situation, just in camps around the place, and so we didn’t have a very close working relationship with the officers of the battalion.

And we, I don’t even know who took over when the CO was killed.

That’s right, they hadn’t had a chance to function as a battalion, no. I don’t remember any battalion exercises when we were at Port Moresby.

I don’t know whether my memory’s got a blockage or something, I don’t know, but I can’t remember any. I can’t even remember company exercises really, it all seemed to be just trying to train your platoon and unloading ships.

Oh yes, I was absolutely amazed at the whole situation, I couldn’t understand what was going on. But I really, I don’t, I suppose I was so inexperienced too at that

stage that I didn’t quite know what to do about trying to get the place together. All I could do was concentrate on my own platoon and that was it.

I’ve got no idea why he did that except that it, because there was very little known about what the Japanese were up to at that stage so he probably thought

that they hadn’t got that far forward. I think he wanted to see what the land, the terrain was like I suppose, but they were well established there in the foothills on the other side of the kunai at that stage.

Well then the main

problem came from the heavy machine, Japanese heavy machine guns, they had a weapon, a bullet which is about that size about six inches long and pretty powerful, and caused terrific devastation to, if it hit anyone.

Main thing I can remember is we getting, we lined up the battalion virtually across the kunai, one side of the kunai, just outside the forest and said, “Right, we’ve got to advance through here and take the Japanese positions on the other side of the kunai.” But getting through the kunai

was pretty well impossible because of the Japanese defences were well established there. And it was only by some chance that I managed to break through behind the Japanese lines with my platoon, but I don’t think many others did.

I don’t know, I’ve read a couple of histories and it’s not quite clear, but I think they had at least two battalion strength up forward at that stage with other reinforcements coming up. And when I got behind the lines I could see there was a pretty definite

track and there were carriers pouring up along that track with supplies, ammunition, food or whatever it was, within about twenty metres of us. And I don’t know whether someone saw us or what but somehow or other we were suddenly surprised by a Japanese patrol coming

down, when we had to get out.

Well we just, yeah we went through the kunai and there was nothing stopping us, and we had absolute, obviously we were on the left flank and we had got through the Japanese and the Japanese hadn’t got it covered at that area.

And there was absolutely nothing, there was absolutely no Japanese defence on that side of the track, cause we got right up to the track without any intrusion, you know, at all really. And I was thinking great courageous things about we get through, we get through the track and go and wipe

out these machine guns. Which wasn’t to be.

No we spotted them first and unfortunately I had to fire a rifle, a shot, the bloke was right on us and he’d seen us, so I had to fire the first shot. And then that started a little bit of activity and,

and well I suppose there were, there wasn’t anything to stop my blokes getting back, some of them pulled back and got lost in the jungle. So I mean they were undisciplined and they didn’t have anyone behind them to stop them, so I had to finally get back and try and assemble the group together. And some of them disappeared for several days, they turned up several days later, and they’d been lost in the jungle.

So I just, probably, because I didn’t have a strong NCO at the back I suppose, we didn’t have a – we got disorganised.

I think a few shots were fired but I was right in the front so I didn’t think they wanted to shoot me as well, so I don’t think there was much fire play from our blokes. Because, I mean we were more or less in single file and I was in the front and I don’t suppose they wanted to shoot me at that stage. They might have wanted to later on, but...

Yeah they did, yeah and so we had to withdraw as orderly as possibly, but wasn’t too easy.

Well by the time I got back and I found that some of them weren’t there and fortunately I had a core group who stuck with me and we managed to pull back to our own defence. And then

we, as far as I can make out that the, whoever was commanding the 53rd called off the attack and we were spread out along the front and along the track that we’d come up. And I can remember that was about night time by then and

we were stuck on the track and had no food. But suddenly out of the darkness, a great big pillica, pellica, or saucer of food came up and the instructions were one mouthful each and pass it on, and that’s what happened. I think, I

I believe later on I found out that by the time it got to the front of the line there was still a bit of food left in it, which showed they had a bit more discipline than I thought.

He would’ve been right behind

me, yeah.

Yes, yes, I, I think he was one of those that tried to do something, but you know.

We’re at the stage where we pulled back, after putting in the first attack.

Yeah.

Well, I suppose murder’s not quite the right word because it’s probably just incompetence.

But how any government could’ve allowed untrained troops to go in to the front line of battle, I think is, could be classed as murder, really, ‘cause they did die. I mean those guys were killed, there was one bloke standing beside me who got shot right through the head, twice. Two times it happened. I mean they were, they’d had,

they were just, I mean, I suppose it was murder really by the government, by the Australian Government and the so called leadership of our – of the Americans.

Oh, I think there was a great deal of resentment, terrific resentment,

particularly among the officers who had been, you know, had put in time as, trained at, in the militia or before the war or were ex-AIF from the Middle East. There was terrific resentment at the fact that these untrained troops were sent up there and expected to fight a Japanese Force which has been trained through many years of warfare in China and so forth.

I couldn’t reconcile it, I just had to do my job. I was trained to be an officer and I tried to be the best I could.

Oh, I think probably seeing them get killed beside me because they didn’t know how to take cover properly, you know. That’s,

was, until I joined the 39th it was dismay at the lack of leadership which was, didn’t seem to be existing. And well it was difficult for, even the brigade commander had a terrific

time, he was as close as he could get to the troops. But I mean I’ve got nothing against him, he, whoever our brigade officers were, they were good soldiers, they did their best but they didn’t have the resources. I mean we had no air support whatsoever, when we did get a bit there were Wirraways trying to dive bomb, Wirraways dive bombing,

so that they were more likely to hit us than the enemy. Am I on air?

What was the question again?

Yeah the worst, I think the worst thing was trying to keep the

morale of the troops reasonably up. There was, I don’t know, I can’t compare what happened with the 39th Battalion but somehow or other they must have had good, very good leadership and they managed to maintain their discipline. But it was terribly difficult with the 53rd who had a shortage of

officers and no top leadership and completely untrained troops so it was very frustrating.

Well as far as I can remember I was getting no orders, just basically said that we gotta have a go at the Japanese over there, and that was it. I didn’t see any, I didn’t see any plan of who was to be, who was to go ahead and who was to stay behind or any, at that stage. I mean whereas reading the history of the 39th Battalion

they had their platoons and their companies planned out and so that they had a reserve company and that kind of thing. But with the 53rd there didn’t seem to be any such thing, everyone was there sort of, as far as I can make out. But I was only a cog in the wheel really. But I, actually, if I may go on to that first day of action.

We got that, back that night and that, as I said that food supply came forward and then the next day we sort of got our bit more organised. And I took a patrol out on the right flank and that was leading up to a, there was a big creek running down the middle where this kunai was and that took

up to the waterfall up on the right flank. And I took a patrol up there and as far as I could see we could get, there was a way through there to outflank the Japanese. I crossed the valley, I could see the Japanese sitting in a native garden, I suppose,

yeah, it was an open area, a native garden, actually sitting there just as if they’re sitting in the sun having afternoon tea sort of thing. And they were too far away to shoot at, that wouldn’t have done any good anyhow. So I reckoned there was a way up through, over the waterfall, that we could get round them. And by that stage we were still, the 53rd were still holding this position, the Japanese

had not attacked, they’d just held the defensive position. And then the first company of the 2/14th arrived, I think the 2/14th, and I’d just come back on this, from this patrol and I saw the company commander. I said, “I’ve just been out on a patrol and I think there’s a way through over the right flank.”

I said, “I don’t think there’s much chance of getting through that, with those, up across that kunai with those wood peckers,” as they called the Japanese Herring machine gun, they went bang, bip, bip, bang, bang, bang. “The woodpeckers there have just got the thing covered completely.” And he said, “Oh yes, thanks, good idea,” and that was it. And I think

he had no idea that I had military training of any significance, he just thought I was a very young platoon commander, militia platoon commander. And they, the next day they went up the front and they got mowed down, they never got any further over. And no, they were heroic, they went in and fought like mad to get through but it was impossible. And so that was one of the most,

biggest disappointments of my time that I, that, you know, that people had no, the AIF at that stage had no respect for the militia and didn’t think anything we said, would mean any, was any sense. Later on they had a lot of respect, mainly because of the 39th Battalion, but that was the way it was.

Well it’s not understandable, because they were Australian troops and they were there doing a job and the AIF regarded them as nothing and even thought they hadn’t even fought with them. And I’m sure there was a lot of goodwill there but they made no effort to try and understand what they tried

to do, and they gave the 53rd a terrible reputation which I don’t think was deserved, and that was it.

Well we vaguely heard that the AIF was coming up behind us. But we heard stories that the AIF had been sent

on leave when they got home and that they’d taken their time coming up over the mountains which they actually did actually for some reason or other. And maybe if they’d arrived a few days earlier they might have made a difference, I don’t know. But it wasn’t the fault of the AIF soldiers, I mean, they were great guys. But the whole command was, I don’t know. I don’t know what was wrong with

the command, but they didn’t seem to get it right.

Oh no, I think the militia looking forward to the AIF, they said, “God these are good fresh troops coming up to help us,” there was no resentment against the AIF. Except, that they tried to recruit, they tried to get all the militia boys to join the AIF and there were, they,

and their attitude was, ‘We’ve fought as militia, we’re gonna stay militia.’ And a lot of them didn’t join, didn’t transfer to the AIF when it got... all it would have meant would’ve been a change of number, that’s about all. And there was a lot of resentment against this effort to make them join the AIF, there certainly was. Although I don’t think that was against the AIF personnel, was just, everything the government or the top leadership did seemed

to be wrong.

Well I think once they’d been in action, they had a different attitude. I think they, they said, “Blast it, oh, we can do it,” you know, “even if we don’t make, make a bit of a bloody mess of it, we can go in there and get killed, just

as well as anyone else can.” I think there was that feeling amongst them that, ‘Well we went into action as militia troops, we’ll stay militia.’ A lot of them did eventually join the AIF afterwards.

Well it’s a terrible thing about war but people get

killed and it happens and that’s something that’s gone, that’s finished, he’s gone that poor bugger. I mean some people lost tremendously great pals, they lost their brothers beside them and things like that. That must have been terrible. There’s some

heroic stories about brothers who went in and fought together and one got killed and one didn’t and that kind of thing, and both got killed.

Probably the older ones, probably the older ones were the ones that had, you know, but you can’t blame the young eighteen year olds, they didn’t know a damn thing. And, I mean, I was only nineteen myself or twenty or something and I didn’t, I thought I knew all about it but I didn’t, I found out

I learned a new thing every minute, you know. And I think, I think the older ones, the ones who were just a bit older had a bit more sensitivity or sensibility, whatever it is yeah.

After, well after I did that patrol, the AIF took over 2/14th and another company turned up I think and they strengthened their position there, but they ran into a lot of trouble.

And I think the 53rd were virtually pulled out of action at that stage. I don’t remember receiving any order or anything, but just pull back. And I remember at one stage we were used as carriers, we, they used, when the retreat started after the

defeat at Isurava. At one stage I found myself with a group of 53rd guys carrying supplies from Myola back further, as far back as we could carry them. And eventually we got back, almost to Moresby

and we were pulled together as a battalion again somehow or other. And my next experience of, after having carted, been amongst these rather browned off young soldiers, carrying supplies back, we got pulled into position again and we took up a defensive

position just short of Port Moresby. And there was radio silence, there was no wired communications, no communication whatsoever. I, my platoon was put right on the top of a cliff and said, “Hold that,” and I never heard another word from company headquarters or anyone. And we

had no supplies, no supplies came through, and that was the day I had my birthday, I don’t know if I remember mentioning that before. And all we had was a tin of powdered milk and water from the local stream and we celebrated my birthday. And we waited there for the AIF to start pulling back behind us. But a

day or so later the whole of that, of the 39th and the 53rd and any other militia units that were pulled out of action, and started to walk back to New – to Port Moresby. And on the way there were stacks of AIF troops lining the route, ready to move up. And I can remember one incident when the

AIF kept, as soon as they saw our blokes had submachine guns, they said, “Oh let me have that, I need that,” you know. And I, the boys started giving them away to them, I said, “For God’s sake,” I had to pull them up and I said, “A soldier never gives away his weapons ever, to anyone,” and finally they caught on. But the AIF were, knew the importance of having small

submachine guns, ‘cause no that was what we were so deprived of, we didn’t have them, we only had old rifles up there. And if we’d had some submachine guns I’m sure we would have been able to equip ourselves better. And those we did have we, I wanted them to carry back, in case we needed them again, which we did eventually. And when we got back to Port Moresby, about a hundred of us

were sorted out from the 53rd and transferred to the 39th, and that was that.

I don’t know how you describe a general feeling of up-tightness, resentment, a resentment, there’s a certain resentment that they are sent in to action to fight for the country and without any training and were not even, were treated as dirt when the AIF arrived. I think that was a terrific

reaction from this AIF pressure, and, you know, that’s why a lot of them didn’t want to join the AIF, even though they’d been in action. And it was a very typical Australian finish of attitude of, “I’m the underdog, I’m gonna stay that way, ’em. No-one’s…” You know, “Bugger the up-tops,” you know. And

I admired that in the boys, I think they had, I understood it.

Well there was a camaraderie there, they tried to help each other, they did, you know, they didn’t all just run away, they, they pulled as

a team, they tried to pull as a team. They didn’t know how to, they didn’t know very much about it but they tried to and they stood by their fellows. I mean if someone got shot, there’d be someone there trying to put a field bandage on them or something like that. They were good, normal Australian boys.

Well I, ‘cause I turned twenty-one just as we were pulling out, and the next thing I knew I was with the 39th and the tremendous relief. But in the meantime the 39th and the 53rd and God knows who else had been paraded before Blamey, had called them a lot of bunnies. And I wasn’t, I don’t think I was on that parade somehow, I

don’t know why. But I can understand the resentment, the terrific resentment that they’d been treated like dirt by the commanders of their own forces, and yet they’d actually held up the Japanese for four or five vital days. And even though they hadn’t distinguished themselves in battle, the 53rd were part of that. And I think it, they stopped the advance across that kunai for at lease two days, before the AIF arrived.

And I don’t know why they’ve been so criticised. I think it was an action, I think the, well I don’t know, it might have been the attitude of the AIF that they weren’t heroic enough or something.

I can say it now, but I had no respect for him,

and especially after that incident. And later on when I was with the 2/4th on the Tablelands, Lady Blamey came to have dinner with us, it was an invitation from the CO or something, but she

was quite charming. But it didn’t alter, I think everyone felt Blamey, wished they’d get rid of him, you know, no-one had any respect for him. And because, and really because, really I don’t suppose you can altogether blame him because he was a good officer and particularly in World War I. And he had to be subjected to the control

of MacArthur, which I think would’ve demoralised anyone, you know. That’s all I’m, I’m pretty low in the ranks to make those decisions, but still that’s it

Well, we felt that

even without thinking of personalities, we thought that we were the fall guys put in by the, our bad leadership, somehow or other. Whether it was political or military, we all had this feeling, I’m pretty sure everyone did, that well...

let’s hope it never happens again, hope the governments always know that Australia’s defence has got to be prepared, and second best won’t do.

When the...

Yeah. I don’t know what happened to the other militia battalions really except that some of them went back into the Owen Stanleys. My, the 53rd spent as much time as it could training, but they also, we also had certain jobs we had to do. There was a threat of the Japanese coming along the coast, we had to set up a coast defence.

And we were kept pretty active for that couple of months we waited until finally we were sent back over the Owen Stanleys to the Gona campaign. And I think Ralph Honner did a tremendous amount to consolidate the unit and make them feel as if they were, you know, that they were the 39th and proud of it, sort of thing.

Well I think, from my, from what I, I wasn’t with them long enough, in the area long enough to know what was happening. But looking back, I feel that the 39th was just

about to crack when Ralph Honner arrived and they, he gave them the leadership they needed. And that’s, and they’d had the experience, they’d lost their mates, they knew what it was all, war was all about and they had a good leader and he had some good officers too. And I think that’s what pulled the, made the 39th have it’s

glory day in that wonderful defence of the track, Kokoda Track.

I found myself in command of a platoon with the 39th and we started to, I started to get to know the

other people and the troops and by that, pretty soon we were up, over again, going to the Kokoda Campaign. Which was also a pretty buggered up situation too because it was...

people didn’t realise how strong the Japanese Force was holding Kokoda Mission, ah, Gona Mission. And

those battered, AIF battered and battered along the beaches to try and get in, and couldn’t get through.

Yes, there would have been, yes, I can’t remember now. Yeah, I’m pretty sure, I’m pretty sure it would’ve. I think my platoon

sergeant was with me on that last birthday of mine. I think he came through, he was with us, he was a good chap, he’s still around I think.

No, I can’t help you there.

Personalities were very much subjected to discipline and just doing the job. And I can’t remember, except that when we got to Gona the personalities came out and some of the officers I was with. The, for instance, the 39th Battalion were placed on

the left flank of Gona Village and beside the creek that ran up beside the village. And we got some, two of the officers there, who both survived the war I believe, climbed a couple of trees and started taking pot shots at the Japanese, and they were doing very well.

I went up and joined them a couple of times but I was scared stiff, and I think I might have hit some, one or two. Anyway it was amazing that the bullets came, the Japanese didn’t know where they were, the bullets came whistling through the trees and didn’t hit anyone fortunately. Then we were pulled out of that and they, the first attack was made on Gona

Mission.

Yes, there was a, some kind of an officers’ mess

formed so the officers got to know each other which was quite a difference from the 53rd. The, and there was more chance to get to know your troops too, because they, you had your fixed platoon or company, whatever it was. And you were able to build a camaraderie that hadn’t existed before, well there hadn’t been a chance for it before. They didn’t

get stuck with unloading ships, as far as I can remember, because we had to go to various defensive positions because of the threat of the Japanese coming along the coast. And we had a, we were pretty busy couple of months there before being sent across again, and but we did have a chance to get to know each other and work together.

I don’t know how it happened but somehow we became sort personal friends, I don’t know, maybe he was like that with everyone, but you felt as if he was a friend of yours, you knew him. And

well I’ll tell you a story about, later on, when the 39th were broken up which will really interest you. But he was a, he didn’t drink or smoke, but he was always a good mixer with everyone you know, that kind of thing. And I only found out years later that he was a Catholic, know one knew, he didn’t do, go about religion

he just concentrated on his job. And he, yeah I suppose he sort of inspired people, he picked the right people for the right job, you know, he gave the people the opportunities. And I can tell you more about that later in the story but that’s...

Oh straight away, as soon as I joined the 39th, there was no resentment whatsoever, it was just a welcome, you know, good.

Well we didn’t know what we were supposed to do, you know, we were just told we were going up to the coastal campaign, that’s all we, you know. And we flew over and got to the air field which was about three days march from Gona and we took off to Gona.

Right, they’d been forced,

the AIF had forced them right back to the coast but they were very strongly entrenched on the coast, much more than people realised. And you know, even, the, MacArthur’s command must have known that they were being reinforced all the time, and he put forward the story there were only two hundred Japanese there, you know, well there were hundreds, probably more than

that, and they were very well entrenched. It was complete lack of leadership from the top that killed all these Australians and Americans and others and in that campaign.

What we expected to be there? Well we just thought there was a Japanese

strong hold hanging out on the coast and it was the last of the Japanese in that part of the area, and that they were spread out along the New Guinea coast. But we carried out a certain amount of reconnaissance and there was a big kunai patch between the mission and where we were. And it was very hard to, you couldn’t get through because the Japanese had it covered, so it was very little,

we knew very little about the approach. And so it was just a learning situation for about a week or so while we waited to try and find out what was gonna happen next.

Right.

I can’t remember, I

don’t know, but not many I don’t think.

No. But they continued on as the 53rd and I suppose they got reinforcements and had some further action, I don’t know. I think it was very unfair that they were taken out of action before they

had a chance to prove themselves because they had the capacity to get together as a group. And I think it was, as Ralph Honner showed when he tried not to pull out that platoon, it was a very unfair thing to do, to pull them out of action.

Yes I think they should’ve, yes they should have had a chance to re-group, re-train a bit and go back in.

Well their morale was destroyed by them being pulled out of action, I think, but it was there the next day, they were ready for action and ready for go and I took ’em out on patrol and so forth, so

they had the capacity there to do a job and they weren’t given a chance. And course the AIF arrived up and they didn’t know anything more than they were a team of choccos [‘Chocolate Soldiers’, a term for the militia] and that was it.

Well yes, we flew up

to Popondetta and then marched the next few days through to the coast and we’re put on the left flank alongside the creek that runs down to the sea from beside Gona Mission. And in the meantime the AIF were attacking from the right hand flank along the beaches and running into a lot of flak.

Our orders were to stay there ready for action and it was then that the boys started to do a bit of pot-shotting from the trees. And then we were, then we put in an attack along the left flank which was unsuccessful. But a couple of days later

we reassembled and we went in again and took Gona Mission.

I think there was only one company was sent forward, I had to get through the kunai to get on to the, get up to close,

close battle which was the only way you could fight the Japanese in those days. And they couldn’t get through the kunai, their machine gun fire was so intense, and they got a lot of casualties and had to, were told to withdraw.

No I wasn’t, I was in the reserve for that first attack.

Oh, a lot, I don’t know

how many, but we spent about two days bringing bodies in, from the kunai, through the kunai, sneaking through the kunai to get the bodies and bring them back.

Oh he was very well trained and very courageous and course they’d had many years of war before and they were top troops. We sent up the weakest troops we had

against the pick of the Japanese Army.

How they, well they were very accurate with their machine guns, they mowed down any attack that came at them. They had enough nous to be able to reinforce their unit from the sea, they got

submarines to bring them in and they managed to get through because the Australian Force couldn’t get to them, get to their beach, that part of the beach so they had constant reinforcements coming through. And I read somewhere that it was estimated that the supreme headquarters reckoned there were only two hundred Japanese there when it was at least battalion strength. Possibly more.

The second attack was right up the creek on the left flank and it was successful. And our boys got in there amongst the Japanese in their slit trenches and their dug outs and managed to pretty well annihilate them.

But some escaped, but at the end of the day, Colonel Honner sent a message through to brigade headquarters and simply said, “Gona’s gone.” And that was it.

No, the first attack was across the kunai but much the same

kind of position, but there must have been something a bit more subtle about the second attack, I don’t know what, but they managed to get through.

Oh incidentally, the, we had some air support at that stage. The Wirraways came in and dive bombed the Japanese, unfortunately there were a lot fell short and they were pretty close to our troops, cause they had to

drop their bombs way back because of the slope, they couldn’t dive bomb in like the Japs could. And the Wirraways were an Australian made aircraft not made for that kind of warfare. And they did, they probably demoralised the Japanese anyhow, and they also demoralised us.

Yes, yes, oh yes, definitely.

That was a big factor I think.

I was in the reserve platoon for the attacking company and we didn’t get into the attack at all at that stage. So we, they went through and they got their objective. But later

some of the Japanese trying to escape came at us through the kunai and we managed to finish them off too.

Yeah they came around the back of the, and they were trying to get out, I don’t know where they were hoping to go. But they, and then when they were spotted and fired on, they returned the fire and they killed a chap

standing next to me, and a couple of us grabbed grenades and managed to demolish the Japanese by the grenades. And that’s when I picked up the Japanese sword.

Oh yes we were most surprised, cause we were quite relaxed, we thought we were under control you know, we were

even standing up and had a box of grenades there, open grenade box right beside us, you know. We weren’t expecting anything to happen.

I don’t know, perhaps twenty or twenty-five, something like that. But they were spread out, we were spread out because we were in a, sort of post attack position, we were

spread out across the kunai.

Only one, yeah. That was just by, that was a surprise and a fluke probably.

Well I think I threw two or three and a couple of others threw some, probably four or five altogether.

No, because they fired on us, they didn’t try to surrender, they actually set fire, opened fire on us.

Oh, there were only about, I suppose there were only about a dozen or so, perhaps less than a dozen, yeah, led by one officer.

Yes that’s true.

No, I think mainly because he wanted to keep his sword, I think he just had it there. A Japanese officer without his sword is nobody, you know. Or was.

Well after that particular engagement, I think we felt pretty sure that it wouldn’t be any more break through but course we kept our security going, but that was the end of it I think.

I can’t say. But we know that soon afterwards

the CO called the officers together and said, “We’ve gotta be ready to move on, we’ve got another project and so get your troops ready.” And we then set off on an encircling movement through the jungle to try and get round the next Japanese post, we were trying to take it by surprise. And that was what we probably, what

I call Gona Village was just the next, just past Gona Mission, and that was fairly well strongly held by the Japanese. And on that occasion my platoon was the advance platoon and we unfortunately, to some extent, we, two Japanese officers came forward

unsuspecting and unfortunately they had to be shot and they carried a number of papers which gave us indications of where their positions were. And we went on from there, spent the whole, a pretty, a very torrid day fighting, we took about five or six Japanese posts during the day, that was just my platoon, the others, other platoons were doing all right too. And

one post we took had about ten people in it but we, unfortunately had to shoot the lot, we couldn’t take prisoners and they wouldn’t surrender. And it was after that that we ran into a fairly strong machine gun post, Japanese machine

gun post which was obviously manned by some very brave people. And one of my corporal, my corporal got shot through the shoulder, or got shot through the hand, chest I think, and I was trying to bandage him up behind a rock when I got hit myself. And we finally got that post and

then I was, I just managed to get out somehow. I don’t know, I lost a fair bit of blood and I was unconscious by the time they got me to the aid post. And so another platoon, the reserve platoon came forward and took over as far as I know.

They were just going for a swim in the creek, that’s all they were doing. Although they had their papers and things with them, which was maybe for security or something like that, and they had no idea there was anyone there, ‘cause we completely encircled them. And we were ready for a surprise attack on them and that sort of wrecked it a bit.

Oh, I

suppose it’s about two miles or something, but we had to go quite a long way round to do an encircling movement, so we had to go through quite heavy jungle, had to cut our way through in some cases. And somehow or other we realised we’d reached a position behind them and we were ready to go.

Oh I

don’t know because they were sent back to intelligence immediately, but I presume they did tell quite a bit about what they, where they were in that area. And we were given pinpoints to go for so they must have disclosed some of their positions.

Not that many, probably twenty.

It gave away our surprise effect.

Well our decisions were then to just cross the creek and get going. And that was our command from headquarters, from battalion headquarters, ‘Keep going,’ and so we did. And we kept going

all day, and it was a long day.

Oh I don’t think I could do that but just that, all I know is that because of the inexperience of our troops, I had to lead each section forward into their, into position, personally,

and I think that’s what got me a bit of commendation. And so I led every, I think I led every attack into a Japanese post, or and my corporals were very good chaps and they did a very good job, and so we had a good team working at that stage, yeah and we just kept going. And...

No, no emotions at all, just get on, and get on. You have to shoot the enemy, and that was just like shooting birds or something, you know, and which I don’t like shooting birds either, but it was just something that had to be done.

Very much so, very different, very different troops because they had a core of people had been through the Owen Stanleys, two of my corporals were decorated with Distinguished Conduct Medals, and

pretty high decorations, and you know, I had a very good team. But unfortunately, well fortunate, I had to, I really, they didn’t have enough experience so I had to take ’em forward each platoon at a time, each section at a time. It was one of those, it kept me very active for the day.

On my toes, yes.

Actually, when some of the covering fire was not adequate, didn’t come, because the boy didn’t know how to pull the trigger, a couple of reinforcements were asked to give covering fire and they couldn’t because they didn’t know how to use their rifles. See they’d just joined us a couple of days before we took off and no-one had a chance to talk to them and even know what stage they were at. So there was still that kind of situation where there were troops there that

had no experience whatsoever.

Oh, you just had to sit up beside them and say, “This is what you do,” and, or get the corporal to, or whatever. And eventually they realised how to reload the rifle and so forth, but they were only World War I rifles, you know, very few of them had any automatic

weapons. I think we had about two in the platoon, I think, something like that.

I don’t, I can’t analyse that but I would think it’s because they didn’t know what to do, they didn’t know where to shoot, what to shot at, or how to shoot, how to use the rifle. I mean it might be that some of them panicked, some of them I think were in a position to give

covering fire and didn’t do so. But generally they did, generally must have worked because we took quite a lot of posts that day.

I don’t know really except that I expect they do what they can to help them. I mean the corporals, I had very good corporals as I

said, and I’m sure they did their best to show them what to do. But there was so little time, you know, it was just time, it takes months to train a soldier really, people don’t realise. You just don’t, it takes see, even years to train a good officer and months to train a soldier, and so these boys that came in with no training whatsoever, so it was hell.

We were attacking this quite strong machine gun post which was holding us up and he got hit and we were right next to a big rock and we got behind that rock, and I tried to put a field dressing on him, but then I must have stuck my

head up too high or something and I got one myself. And fortunately I must have been, I was bent over him completely so that it went through my shoulder and out by back and didn’t actually hit my spine, missed my spine by a fraction. And so I was just able to, you know, I was able to carry on until I ran out of blood I suppose.

Oh yes, quite a number of our fellas were wounded. And I can’t recollect whether anyone was killed, I’m, probably yes, probably. But I think we maintained our strength mainly, pretty well up to the end, except people who were wounded.

Well the, usually a couple of their fellas took them back as far as they could and then they were picked up by stretcher bearers or whatever but there weren’t many stretcher bearers around so mainly a matter of, it’s dragging them out. I mean someone had to take them, put his arm round their shoulder and march them out somehow or other. Generally speaking there weren’t, very few were carried out, even after they were badly wounded, some of them, many had to walk out for days,

from all those New Guinea campaigns, just no way of getting them back until you got to a track. And then I was carried out by the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels and they were fantastic, they, I got, they put me on the stretcher and everything went well for a few, several hours and then they began to feel, get in towards home and they started to celebrate.

And they used to jump, bounce around like mad, so I had to say, “Slow down, slow down.”

No, I just, I think I got the word across to the boys to keep firing on this, in that area, you could see where it was coming from, the machine gun, the light. But this Japanese was a very brave person apparently, or people, and they stuck on there, and right until the last minute and then they pulled up their gun and ran out, and they got away as far as I know.

But they were very brave, and they were obviously good soldiers.

“Let’s get that bloody post and that machine gun.” I think that’s about it.

And then I thought, “Oh hell, I’m gonna bleed like mad.” And so, cause I was worried about bleeding but I knew I had to keep going for a while anyhow. And so I then left the corporal

behind the rock, went on and then finally pulled back to the reserve platoon, towards the general reserve platoon. And they screamed out, “Who’s that?” and I said, “Ron, friend,” you know, otherwise they would’ve shot me. And they came forward and took up the post. But that was

a bit touch and go, I think I might have collapsed at that stage and I was finally carried out to the regimental aid post.

No, I remember the water and the water was, and we were right near a creek I remember, and it rained like mad and that night the regimental aid post was flooded out. And I can remember

what kind of sleep, I must have slept somehow or other or passed out because it, I was under water when I woke up in the morning.

Oh I’d been pretty well dressed up by the, whoever the regimental aid post people. And they were probably soaking wet but that was immaterial.

Can’t remember. If I, I might’ve, I could’ve been, might be why I slept during the night, you know, I don’t know, but I don’t remember.

I think it took three days. Cause I remember

each night they speeded up and I remember three times they were speeding up like mad, so I think it must have been three days. And then I was a couple of days in the field hospital and then I was flown back to Port Moresby.

And all the time I kept my pistol with me, I never let anyone take my pistol. And

I took it right through hospital and right back to Australia.

Yeah, but it wasn’t so, wasn’t so bad, cause it was fairly flat country back from, after you got through the jungle around the combat area, you got down to a fairly flat track that lead back to the main hospital and the air field which was about half way between Kokoda and the coast.

So it wasn’t as if you were being dragged up and down, but I can’t imagine how they managed to do that during the, in the Owen Stanleys, that’s why so many terribly wounded people walked, because they just weren’t enough carriers probably and also it was a hell of a problem getting a, carrying a body up a hill and down a hill, you know.

So that was terrible, I missed out on that, fortunately.

Frankly I can’t remember, I can’t remember, I must have had something, they must have given me. Maybe there were, I probably had a field, I probably had an emergency ration kit and no doubt when they

sent me off from the hospital they provided me with a kind of, another one of the, couple of kits or something. But the carriers somehow managed to get some food, they must have stopped at villages or something that, where there was some food available because I think the same carriers stuck with me all the time.

Oh not that I, no care that I can remember, their job was to carry me and they did that, very well. They did, they weren’t medically trained or anything like that and so if you were badly wounded, your only hope was striking a medical aid post on the way or something like that. It was pretty rugged.

I wouldn’t know, I wouldn’t know, but I think they kept the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels pretty busy carrying out wounded people and carrying back food. They had a flat, they really worked their guts out.

I was flown

from Popondetta to Port Moresby and into the hospital in Port Moresby where they operated on me and extracted whatever was left in my body and patched up my back, I’ve still got big scars on my back where they opened me up. And told me how lucky I was that I just missed out, just missed, just pulled through. And

it was serious enough for me to be sent back to Australia. And from then on I was, I had quite a holiday going down through all the different hospitals down through Queensland, stepping a hospital at a time virtually. And very wonderful nurses and doctors that looked after us on the

way.

Oh it was quite a full hospital at Port, it was, so far as I can remember. I had a normal bed and they must have had an operating theatre because I was taken in to it. And I think they had a reasonable hospital set up there. They must have been working

like bloody slaves, the doctors must have been flat out you know. And they, I mean I don’t think the operating room was ever empty, you know. I don’t know but that’s what I surmise.

Oh yes, the nurses were there and they were very helpful. They got better as you, as I

got better, as I got better they got better. And some very nice ones on the way down.

Oh yes the 39th Battalion had a wonderful chaplain, I forget his name, he was Father, I

forget. God he was, but he was right in there, he didn’t miss, he was right up there in the front all the time and he was a magnificent man. There were other chaplains from time to time, they all did a conscientious job, but this fellow was outstanding. And he was quite a hero, probably in the company history, the battalion history about what a wonderful fellow he was. And

but church parades and things we just didn’t have, I mean it was not on, you know. I don’t know, some of them might have had some kind of mass or something privately but on the whole they, there was no way you could get people together for a church parade.

Because he was always up the front, he was always up there when the blokes were wounded, doing what he could to help and not just administering the last rites or whatever it was, but you know, doing everything he could as a human being to help, anywhere, anywhere at all. And he had a – he was a manly person, you know, really,

he got on with the blokes, everyone knew him as a friend and yet he was there to do his job.

Not much afterwards, I think the Salvation Army kept going right through somehow or other, I don’t know how they did it. But when they started the food drop at Eora,

they probably passed by the Salvation Army posts and, you know, got whatever they could to get the supplies up front. But as I said before there were tons and tons of food dropped and lost and never recovered, food and ammunition and

so forth.

Well I hardly had a chance to find out, because I don’t think the chaplain came across the mountains with us, but there must have been with one of the other companies or something, but there must have been a chaplain there. But he must’ve had a

terribly busy job with all the casualties, and I don’t remember meeting him.

Probably, but I can’t particularly remember anyone in particular that was, stood out, you know. I’m sure the chaplains

cane round and did the usual thing, but it’s the ones that were in the front lines that you remember, you know. They’re the ones that, no matter how brave the ones back at hospital were, they didn’t have the opportunity to show their courage.

Well they did, they fight, they had the Papuan Infantry

Battalion, they had the Fuzzy Wuzzies fighting, but not in my experience. I wasn’t, they were involved in the Kokoda area but I can’t remember them in action, all I can remember them being used as carriers. But I’m sure, but I know there were, definitely Fuzzy Wuzzies in the Papuan, fighting with the Australian Forces.

Yes, that’s a good description because there were so many mountains and valley’s that you were continually climbing up stairs or paths of some description, and often sinking in mud. And it rained, not every morning but certainly every

night it rained, so you were never dry. And that was an extra load to carry trying to climb up a hill in wet clothes is more difficult than in dry. And you had to carry your soaking pack and weapon, try to keep your weapons dry. It was,

but it wasn’t, in my memory it wasn’t as tough as when you’re in action, you know. It was, we managed to cope with it, we managed to cope with it, even the untrained fellows, and some had had malaria managed to cope with it all the time, yeah.

Oh we were carrying a full pack with everything you could possibly cram into it, that you wanted. You had your ammunition, you had two or three pouches, you had a water bottle, ammunition, whatever you could cram it, you had your, everyone had at least one weapon. The ones that had to carry, I don’t know how they carried, I’ve forgotten

how they carried Bren guns, but that was a pretty difficult one, it needed two people to carry a Bren gun in different parts, had to be split up. It was the absolute limit of what you could carry up that particular trail.

Ah,

not in my experience but they must have carried, had to carry mortars through, they must have had mortars up there.

Well as near as possible we stopped overnight at some place that’d been formed as some kind of a

camp. And sometimes it was a bit of cover, sometimes you had to sleep in the open, or try to. There were, I don’t think, I can’t remember going into any native huts or anything like that, but there were no, all the locals had left the area by then, there were empty places there that people might have slept in.

But usually you managed to get to a place that was designated as an overnight stop and there was some kind of protection there for you.

You,

well I don’t know, it’s like coming out of a swimming pool and being wet and not being able to get dry. And if you’ve experienced that you get a fair idea of what it was like. It’s, usually, just the heat of walking, if it wasn’t raining, the heat of walking would dry your things out, or dry you out to a certain extent. But on the whole

by the time evening came, the rain was falling and you had to struggle through.

Well there were lots of creeks. I dare say we, every now and then we took our clothes off and had a dip in the creek. But I can’t remember particular instances, but that was possible, and

especially at overnight places we usually near a creek, you know, or river. And it was, or a pond, and you could keep yourself, you know, wash yourself but you couldn’t really dry yourself, that was the problem. And so a lot of people didn’t go to too much bother.

I think you fell asleep wherever you could, no matter what the conditions were, you’d sleep. I think you couldn’t have gone on if you hadn’t been able to sleep somehow or other, you couldn’t have handled it. And anyone that has insomnia would’ve been a cot case in a short time.

Yes, but I’ve cast all of those out of my mind, I can’t think of any, but I’m sure there were.

I don’t know, I must have a very thick brain or something

because I can’t remember any agony in connection with it you know, I just remember you slugged on and on and on. And I don’t remember ever getting to cracking point where you felt you couldn’t go any more. So presuming the others weren’t – cause I was very, very, physically fit myself when I started. And some of the others who’d been

through illness and so forth must have been, had a hell of a time, yeah.

How...?

There was a lot of sickness, a lot of sickness, but there was no way, nothing they could do about it. You had to leave some behind at the stage,

ah, night posts, stage posts I suppose but, on the whole they kept going, they were very courageous.

Well I was only with a comparatively small group carrying supplies,

and they stood up to it very well. They, I do expect they must have dipped in to supplies occasionally but it was pretty good, they got most of them through I think. And I think that was almost a relief compared with fighting a battle against a well armed force.

Well I certainly felt completely, just completely demoralised myself, but for some of the boys it might have been a relief, yeah. I thought it was a shocking thing to do to a battalion. I mean Ralph Honner, when he found there was a weak platoon, he put it back into action and that’s what they should have done with the 53rd, they did the wrong, they pulled them out of action when they had, when they could’ve

built up a good morale.

I was back in Sydney in Concord Military

Hospital and I was pretty well on the recovery road. And as far as I can remember I went in and met some of my mates in the Australia Bar, the bar at the Australian Hotel, the Long Bar as it used to be known, and someone said, “Oh let’s drink to Ron, he’s just got the MC,” and I didn’t,

I didn’t think I knew about it at the time. And so someone went away and got some kind of a bit of a cross or something and the barmaid pinned it on to my uniform and we had a few more beers. And, I don’t know, it was later on that I was, must have

been before I went back to the battalion, I was called to Government House and the Governor General pinned the medal on at a parade there. I can’t remember much about it but I think it was the Duke of Gloucester, the Governor-General at that stage. I don’t know whether that was during the war or after the war, I forget. But course the family turned up

and were very proud of young Ron and so on, it wasn’t much ceremony about it.

Well I was, first of all I was surprised because I didn’t see why I got it. Then I thought, “Well that’s great. That really shows the bastards at Duntroon that I’m better than they thought.” And

I don’t know if anyone noticed it otherwise.

Well when I was at Duntroon I wasn’t actually reduced to the ranks, I just wasn’t re-appointed as a platoon commander, so, which I couldn’t understand

and which the CO refused to explain to me, and so I was a bit disgruntled. And then of course an even further disgrace at Duntroon was that instead of having my own room I had to share it with another cadet. And we had an old, one of the old fashioned rooms at Duntroon in those days, and it was a big room and we shared it and we had to keep it tidy between

us which was very difficult. The other bloke was Des McSweeney who was a great, a wonderful character and a great pal for the rest of my life, rest of his life. We had a wonderful time there, we really enjoyed each other’s company. We, but I felt pretty bitter about, you know, I don’t think anyone else was ever reduced to ranks without any reason

being given, you know. And one of my great pals was a New Zealander and he was also a platoon commander and one day he was invited out riding with some local people. And he wanted, he looked forward to it and he missed the last hour of the Saturday parade in order to go there, and he got caught and he got reduced to the ranks and finally he got chucked out of

Duntroon. And he turned out to be a brilliant officer in the New Zealand Army afterwards and in fact he was a hero in New Zealand. And he was a hero saving a number of people in a fire and later on he became governor of one of the Pacific Islands and then he became a judge. And he was kicked out of Duntroon because he

missed one parade, kind of silly situation you know. And, but obviously, probably the system is right, the system works but there were anomalies like that, that happened.

No, the only thing that I can think of is that one of the boys in my platoon

deserted and I was officer of the day, officer of the week that week and I had to take the parade and he was supposed to be on parade and he wasn’t there. And I reported that to the officer command, officer as duty officer. And they sent out a search party and never found him and finally he turned up, he was a prisoner of war in Malaya. And later on he came

back, he survived, and he was a very capable master at the King’s School, he went back as a school master. And, you know, it was one of those things, because he disappeared from my platoon I was held responsible, and I think that was one of the things that went against me, but no-one ever told me that, no-one ever said any reason why I was reduced.

My citation?

Sorry I don’t think I have a copy of it readily available, the thing they say on the medal is for valour.

And what it must have been is because I led my platoon with some distinction and success and must have impressed the CO that I’d done a good job, that’s about all I can think of.

Yeah, yeah. And you know, it says I think in the citation,

‘That he carried on after being wounded,’ and a lot of rot like that. But it was a great honour, but I don’t know that I was any better than anyone else that I should have got it.

Yes, the 39th Battalion got quite a number of MCs, a couple of DSOs [Distinguished Service Order],

not nearly as many as they deserved. But especially when Ralph Honner got there, he began to put people forward for decorations and they, you know, quite a lot of them came through. And some of his junior officers did tremendous jobs and got MCs and they went on, you know, for months, you know, for weeks and weeks for dense fighting. And I got mine

after a day’s fighting, I can’t understand it, you know.

Oh mentally I was, oh I was distraught, I thought, “This is the end.” You know, “This is a pretty bad situation in my war, that here I am a professional soldier and I’ve

spent, you know, short time in battle and I finish up wounded.” And but I suppose I was also thankful that I wasn’t killed and I just thought, “Well, let life go on.” That’s the way it was. And when I was, went back to Australia I tried to make as much, get as much enjoyment out of life as I could.

Oh well they had to open up my back and, cause the bullet had gone right through my back, through my shoulder and down in through my back and they had to open up the whole back and clean it out where the bullet had gone. As far as I know it came out just short of the spine and came right out of the body so they didn’t have to get the,

I don’t think they had to get the bullet out. And that was a fairly straight forward operation and I recovered from it reasonably well so it, but they thought that I had to go back home and they sent me back on a troop ship.

No, in the Port Moresby hospital, which was

a major hospital.

Oh I was very restricted, I was unable to get around for some weeks and then when I was, I can remember I was back in a hospital in Queensland on Christmas Day in 1942 and

quite a number of the fellows in the ward were given leave to go out to the local town but I wasn’t allowed to go out. And but I was well enough because one of the sisters had a bottle of Scotch [whisky] hidden in the cupboard, and she was good enough to invite the poor old wounded soldiers to have one with her, which was very pleasant.

Oh top rate, absolute, they were wonderful, completely, they couldn’t do enough for you. And, well before I got back to Sydney, I had one little romance, which was very nice, and we kept in touch for a while afterwards but those things pass by. And

then I went back to Concord Hospital and one of the physios [physiotherapists] I think it was, was particularly friendly and she, they had an officers’ mess night, and she said, “Put your uniform on and come down and join us for the party and have a grog.” So I went down and had a good time and unfortunately,

towards the end I knocked against one of the colonels down there and I knocked his glass out of his hand, or something like that. And that was all right and we apologised and carried on, you know, no problem, but the next morning I was in my pyjamas and going to the bathroom and who should I run into but this doctor. Anyway he looked the other direction, never looked, took any notice of me. And another time while I was there, my

friend Mick Lloyd who was the son of a general and was a marvellous fellow, terrific all rounder, and he wanted me to be his best man, he was getting married towards the end of the war. And I was still in hospital so I fixed up with the sisters that I’d disappear and I went out through the hole in the wall, which was a common thing, and there was the general’s staff car waiting for me, and drove me

to the wedding. And after the wedding we, the whole bridal party went off to Princes, which was a chief night club in those days. And eventually the colonel’s, general’s car was there and drove me back to hospital.

Yes, it was, it was actually a wire wall in

which someone had made a hole through the wire, so you could go to the local pub and so forth, you know.

Yeah.

Oh well it was as intense as it could be in those days. You had to, you couldn’t go very far but it was a very, we were very, became great friends.

And we used to go out, I’d get a leave pass or go out somehow and we’d go out to dance or something at night. And but it was quite intense but I knew I was in no position to get anything serious and I think she did too. And we kept in touch for some time and it faded out eventually as usual, as these things do.

It’s a funny thing, it really didn’t, didn’t affect most of, I don’t think it affected us at all, you know, we just, knew there were no women around and that was it. And course when we got out we went a bit, consciousness came back and you enjoyed female company as

much as possible. But in New Guinea, in action, it just didn’t occur to you, yeah.

Well I suppose it was mostly grogging on with the boys. We had a,

a favourite waitress or whatever you call it at the Australia, at the pub, and they had an officers’ club in King’s Cross and various nice young ladies came in there to host it, including my sister strangely enough. And I remember one night we all got a bit full and we said to this

barmaid, “Come on out to the club with us.” And so we took her out to the club and course we couldn’t take her inside so we all sat out the back grogging on you know, which was quite an incident really. But they were very nice, these polite young ladies. And after the war it became a, this particular building became a

restaurant and after I was married I took my wife there. And it was six o'clock closing in those days and we arrived at seven o'clock or something like that and ordered a bottle of wine and they wouldn’t serve it to us, so, you know, it was complete prohibition in those days. Cause I was pretty tall and they could’ve thought I was a policeman or something, you know, but anyway we didn’t get our wine.

Just up at Kings Cross, just opposite where the park is now in Darlinghurst Road I think, yeah.

Oh yes the American servicemen were sort of dominating the place, yeah, yeah. But I don’t know that they were particularly invited

to this officers’ club, I think it was mainly for Australians, there weren’t many Americans there. But of course they were having the time of their life in various other ways, yeah.

Well I don’t, I think there was a certain resentment against the, especially some of the AIF blokes coming back and finding their girlfriends going out with Yanks, that was pretty torrid. But there was a lot of friendship also, you

know, you see a man in uniform you said, “Hello.” And actually I was a groomsman to, at the wedding of a cousin of mine when she married an American serviceman. I’ve got pictures somewhere there of us dressed up in uniform. She was so proud to have an Australian officer as her, one of the groomsmen, and the other one was an American. And that was a great occasion and so forth. But so and later on when

I went to Harvard University it was, you know, I had a greater friendship with the Americans, very fine people.

Well I don’t know much about what happened in the Australian media at that time, ‘cause I was participating, but...

But afterwards, yes, I think they covered it, I think they covered it very well, because I think there were, they had some brilliant war correspondents amongst the Australians, some tremendous

people. And actually later when I became a cadet and then I became a sub-editor on The Sun and most of the sub-editors were ex war correspondents, and they were really top notch journalists, they really knew their game. So I think that the Australian press were very well covered by the war correspondents they had.

No not really, they didn’t, no it didn’t mean much in those days, no. I mean, I don’t know, perhaps there was war time security or something, that there wasn’t publicised as much, of course afterwards they made a lot of it. But no I don’t, George

Johnston was a columnist for The Sun in those days, after the war and I was an ex army officer and oldest cadet on The Sun. And I used to be sent out to George Johnston’s house at Bondi Beach to pick up his column each day. And it really annoys me that I just went there as a cadet

and I had other things on my mind, I was at university doing course and so forth. And I didn’t have, take the opportunity to make friends with George Johnston whom I’ve always admired as a wonderful journalist. And of course he’s Jewish. Charmian Clift, clearly his wife, Charmian Clift, is also wonderful too. So, but

do you want me to talk about army, I can...

It must have been about three months after I was wounded that I was boarded out of the army,

and, on medical board. And I got in touch with my friend Mick Lloyd who immediately told his father they were gonna kick me out. And his father, who was a lieutenant general at the time, blew his top and came in and said to me. “You can’t get out of the army, we need you young fellas.” And he put the pressure on the doctors and they re-boarded me. And

I said, “Look whatever you do, I don’t want to be B Class, I’ve gotta be A Class, I’ve gotta get back to my battalion.” And they did, they made me A2 which meant I could go back to my battalion. And I went back and joined the 39th Battalion again when I was on the Tablelands at that time. And so they made me assistant adjutant, and I was due to take over as adjutant.

And soon after that the army forces that run the army decided to dissolve the 39th Battalion and so my CO went off to command another battalion, an AIF Battalion. And we were part of the 6th Division, we were a brigade, a militia brigade at that stage, it was part of the 6th

Division. And so I was transferred to another 6th Division but 2/2ndBattalion. And after I’d been there a while I was transferred to the 2/4th which I think I mentioned earlier that I took over from an old friend of mine who was wounded in the leg.

My knee wasn’t too good then.

I played a couple of games of Australian Rules [football] with them which was not very, I wasn’t very good. And but I was getting, I was able to get around very well and I went to a few courses and things and my leg was standing up very, fairly well at that stage, yeah.

Well they were various military subjects, I know that one of them was field, map reading and field sketching, I knew quite a lot about, and that was at a little township which had a nice pub, I mentioned. And

a couple of others were there, they had some kind of training centre there that I went to, they weren’t very significant courses, I think I did, I managed to get through them. But they were mainly regarded as, I think the CO did too, regard it as a bit of a holiday for me. And...

Ralph Honner was still CO, yeah. He was CO until the unit, the battalion was disbanded.

Oh we were very close friends, became even closer friends after the war. Because he stayed, he was a West Australian but he settled in New South, in Sydney after the war and I was one of the few of the officers from the battalion in Sydney, most of them in Melbourne, so we saw quite a lot of each other. And we did a few, we conducted a few courses for the regular army over at

the defence area on the harbour side there. And we worked together on various things for the army. And he, the last one I saw

him at, he was I think he was eighty-nine and he said, “A couple of, a few week’s time I’m going to be ninety,” and he never made it, he didn’t make it. And next thing I knew I went to his funeral, which was very impressive. Run by his family, who were marvellous, family funeral, and I’ve seen a bit of

his family since then. But one of his daughters is a nun and another one, another, one son’s a doctor I think, another one’s a priest or something like that. But as far as he was concerned, you wouldn’t know what religion he belonged to, he was very much a ‘down the middle man,’ yeah.

Well I’ve told you the story about how he pulled together this disorganised platoon. He was a marvellous speaker, he

could talk for an hour or two without a note or anything in the most intriguing subjects. And I discovered this when we both did sessions to help train the regular army after the war. And he was very, he had a considered, an interest in politics and I think he was a state president of the

Liberal Party at one stage, for a couple of years. And he had a lot of interest in other people. I can remember that he, at our battalion reunions down in Victoria, he’d, you know, his words would absolutely inspire everybody, the wives and widows and Lord knows what. And

he had a tremendous flowing personality and he showed that with his troops, because he got to a stage where he knew they were in trouble and he, and they fell in love with him, really, because he was such a fine leader. And he

was right up there in the middle, I mean at one stage he over took in the, over took the headquarters of our, of the 39th Battalion in the Owen Stanleys and he was in there fighting back, and survived thank heaven. And he’d get out amongst the troops and he was, you know,

he wasn’t a back room commander, he was a front, front, up front man. And I think he got to know his people, got to know personally many of his troops, and from all ranks. And he was the kind of man that we need a lot more of.

He was able to inspire people, he had his own definite personal ideas but he didn’t inflict them on people, he lived his own life. And he lived next door to my friend Ian Moffat who wrote some of the books up there, Ian was an ex journalist and a friend of mine who wrote several best sellers. And

he lived next door to Ian and Ian was so impressed with him, he thought what a wonderful man he was, you know. And he used to get up every morning at dawn and raise the Australian flag in front of his house, you know. And it was only right at the end that someone noticed that he hadn’t raised the flag,

they discovered he’d died in his sleep. And that’s the kind of person he was, you know, yeah. Inspirational.

Not that I could speak about, no, I don’t think so, no. No, he’s a very modest person he never, talked very little about what he’d

done himself, but he did speak a lot about tactics and ideas and things like training young soldiers, young officers, but he didn’t talk much about himself.

Well I think I first damaged my leg in the Owen Stanleys campaign, I probably running like hell and fell down and twisted my leg or something. But whatever it was, I must have knocked it against a rock or something and it was pretty swollen but I didn’t do anything about it, I just carried on.

And then we had the, after the Kokoda Campaign as you know we had the Gona Campaign and it was after I was wounded that they just, I said, “I’ve got a bit of a problem in my leg.” And they x-rayed my knee and the specialist said, “My God, that’s the worst osteoarthritis I’ve ever seen

in a young man.” And they tried to do what they could, there wasn’t much they could do in those days and eventually I won a scholarship to America. And I had to, and while I was there at Harvard I had to wear a calliper on my leg and it was terribly painful and unpleasant. And when I got back to Brisbane afterwards, I

saw a doctor and he said, “The only solution is to stiffen your leg.” And so they did what they call an arthrodesis on my right knee so that it’s completely knitted there so that, and I can’t bend that knee at all. The other one, knee, took the strain quite a lot and several years ago I got an artificial knee inserted there too, so I’m a bit wonky on the legs.

But I can still get along to rugby matches.

It was painful, but I was able to get around, I was, you know I, didn’t interfere in what I was doing, it was just that I had quite a lot of pain in my leg, and that was

just one of those things you know. And it was really only after I got back to Concord that they picked it up.

Yeah, I can remember having a sore leg when I was carrying gear out from the, after

the, at the end of the Owen Stanleys campaign but it wasn’t enough to make me, seriously worry me, I just carried on.

I went back to the 39th Battalion and I was appointed assistant adjutant, and I was due to take over as adjutant when the battalion was broken up and we were all distributed around the various 6th Division units at that stage.

It was on the

Atherton Tablelands, we were on the Atherton Tablelands when we got disbanded.

Yeah, we were training, we were part of the 6th Division, we took part in the various exercises that were going on, ready to go back to New Guinea, and suddenly the powers that be said, “That’s it.”

Well, as assistant adjutant I was looking after the administrative side. The adjutant is a chief administrative officer of a battalion and as his assistant I was doing various things to keep the records, maintain

contact between the companies and various, or act as a staff officer to the CO virtually, that’s what it is, yeah.

Oh yes I liked it, I would’ve love to have gone on to brig – at that stage, I would’ve love to have gone to brigade. And they’re the key jobs, you know, a brigade major or that kind of thing, are pretty important jobs in the

army. And but that’s the best I could do, until I became an instructor at the School of Infantry later on.

I forget, it must have been mid 1943 I think, or something like that, might have been ’44 but probably ’43,

I can’t remember the actual date, it was just came out of the blue in the middle of the year.

No, no, just an order from above, there was no, but I’ll tell you something on the break up. We had a break up dinner in the officers’ mess and

Ralph Honner, who never drank, had a whale of a night and we had our mess in a great big marquee, and he climbed up the marquee, right up to the top of the marquee and swung up there and, you know, and he really let his head go. And that was the human man that he was, you know, he said, “This is it boys, we’ll, let’s crack up with a,

with a bit of a muck up,” you know.

Oh, he was absolutely just, he was absolutely distraught, distraught. I mean he knew his career would go on and so forth but he’d built up a wonderful spirit, there was no reason they should’ve cut that battalion off or the others ones in that brigade either. But

that’s the way, the army was run in a very strange way in World War II. I think, I don’t know whether MacArthur had anything to do with it or what, I don’t know.

Oh about that

time, that very time, yeah, didn’t get any advance news, just, “Okay, your next post is to the 2/2nd,” and so forth, yeah. And I was just sort of getting into the way with the 2/2nd who actually had a number of Platers in it, actually from the north, Platers from the north coast, and, but the next thing

I knew I was 2/4th which was another Victorian battalion, and that was it.

Oh they probably had a vacancy in the 2/4th, they needed someone in there with experience I suppose. I think I went, I paraded myself to the CO of 2/4th and said, “Thank you for giving me a platoon but

I think I’m at the stage where I’m ready for something more,” but nothing happened.

No.

But I had a great time there because I was a friend with the transport officer and I used to borrow a motorbike from him at weekends. And I’d take off back to this little village where, in,

and stay at the pub there for the weekend and have a whale of a time, and go swimming in the lakes, the wonderful lakes up there. And so the only trouble was that one day coming back on the bike I was riding across a paddock and my toe hit a stump, it was sticking up, someone had cut a tree down and left the stump there. And I went head over heels

and the bike went everywhere and I got up and walked away, so life was, you know, I was, there was something protecting me in my life somehow or other. But my company commander wasn’t very pleased that I missed church parade but I think he forgave me in the end.

Well on the Tablelands, the 2/4th had just come back from New Guinea so there wasn’t much prospect of another, going back to a campaign for a few, quite some months so I knew I was stuck there. And my leg was getting, giving me a lot of trouble and my company commander

who was a great guy said, “Oh look, I think you ought to give it away.” And so I went for a medical board and I was, went back to hospital and finished up as an instructor.

Just as a

platoon commander, just an ordinary platoon commander. The only exception was that I must’ve damaged my, I think I broke my arm or something stupid and so they sent, they were just about to do exercises on the coast, landing on beaches and so forth,

and I wasn’t fit to do it. And so the CO sent me down as officer in command of the brigade rest camp which was down in Cairns, and that was great fun, you know, that was terrific, we’d go to dances at night and that kind of thing. And I had to face up to the problems of the troops down there, and one day the boys came to me,

some of the boys came to me and said, “There’s a real problem with Bill Brown,” or that, “He’s got entangled with this woman who wants him to marry her and he doesn’t want to get married.” And I said, “That’s not surprising but still, what do you want me to do about it?” And they said, “Can you stop him getting married?” I said, “You sure he wants to be?” And they said, “Yes he does, and I saw him and he said, ‘Yes, I want to be, I don’t want to get married.’” So I got in touch with

his CO and went to see his CO and said, “This fellow, got himself entangled and wants to get out of it, what can we do?” And the CO said, “Bugger all.” And so he finished up getting married to the girl. That was the kind of thing, the kind of responsibility you take on when you run a rest camp.

I can’t remember what, how I broke it, I must have been in some exercise that we were doing, I must’ve fallen over. Might’ve, it wasn’t a terribly bad break but it was enough to break, must’ve been some field exercise or something, I forget.

Oh well there, we had, down at, they had these, quite a big community and quite a lot of girls and they wanted to have a party, cause a few troops around and other men and so forth. So they organised these things in the town, in the city hall or something and anyone could go along and

join in the party. And I met up with some of the girls and they wanted to go along and so we’d along so. But that was just a little, one of those funny little episodes in your life.

No, I wasn’t, no I just went along as a thing, yeah. I didn’t start my public relations activities until

many years later.

Oh it was mainly keeping check of the guys, making sure they got back on time, went to bed, that kind of thing. And if, you know, if someone, you know, the fellas some of them were sick they needed to go to a doctor and so forth, and had, you know, just administrator really, yeah.

In Cairns,

in a suburb of Cairns.

Oh probably be twenty or thirty. Some of them were there because they’d been sick, some were there because the COs thought they deserved a bit of a break or something like that so there’s a bit of a mixture. But it was very interesting meeting the chaps and knowing their stories and so forth, and quite,

quite interesting.

Yes they did and we got, they did, they’d come to me with their problems and try and discuss them and work ’em out, and some of them didn’t and some did, you know.

Oh I think it’s too far back now, I think they’re only minor things.

Having trouble with their wives or something like that, or wondering what their wife was doing back in Melbourne or whatever it might have been. I think that was a lot to do with it, what was happening with their wives and families, I think they were very concerned. It’s pretty tough, you know, when you’re a young married man with a young family and he hasn’t seen them for years and they wanted some counselling and someone to talk to.

Not that I can remember, there must have been a local church, chaplain or the local churches provided a chaplain come in from time to time, you know, different churches and so forth, yeah. But there was no definite, there was no permanent chaplain there that I can remember.

Yeah, when the battalion went back to the Tablelands, my arm was better and I went back to action but I was really struggling on the campaign exercises. And my company commander was a guy named Joe Gullett who was a former journalist and turned out to be a very distinguished soldier and a member of the

Federal Parliament eventually. And he said, “Why don’t you get out of the army, I’ll get you a job in the newspapers,” which I’d always wanted, I said, “Great!” you know. So then I went for a medical board and instead of getting out of the army this time I got myself posted as an instructor, as a, actually I think I was, my next job was adjutant on a troop ship, I think that’s when I got that job. And after

I’d been with that for a time I got, the army found me again and they made me an instructor at the School of Infantry. It’s amazing how easy you get lost in the army, during the war.

Well mainly, it was mainly between northern Australia and New Guinea and taking troops up and bringing troops, sick back. And

quite a lot of, as I mentioned I think earlier, quite a lot of nurses and females went up, which made it very competitive among the men, for a while, for a few days. But I remember on one occasion I had a very good relationship going

and we were up on the troop deck, it was after lights out, there were no lights anywhere. And things were getting a bit heavy and we were having a, as far as you could go in those days. And along came the night watch man and nearly blew the top of our heads off, oh God he was angry. But he didn’t have any light, we hadn’t shone any light or anything like

that, but my God he was wild. He said, “You get back below decks immediately.” So I didn’t have many adventures like that.

Oh no I think that was, we sort of might have, no, I think she went to New Guinea and she went off to New Guinea and that was the last we saw of each other I think, yeah, and I continued on the troop ship, until the army

rediscovered me.

Well I suppose an adjutant is more or less a chief administrator, you know, had to look after the arrivals and departures of the crew, ah, of the passengers and administer between the commanding officer and the other people. And it’s really the go between the

CO and the other people, the chief administrative officer of the group, yeah. And so I had quite a bit of training in that, Duntroon training was, you know, it’s the kind of thing that sets you off to be an adjutant or a brigade commander or something like that, yeah.

Oh no, the ship had its own captain and crew, you know, a ship has, the ship was run by the seamen, but I was, our responsibility was looking after the passengers and keeping, trying to keep control where possible.

No we never, we

never got a scare in that time, strangely enough, no. It was after the Battle of the Coral Sea and I think the area was reasonably clear of Japanese at that stage. Although of course in the meantime they’d been down to Sydney and so forth, but I think they, the Battle of the Coral Sea cleaned out the Japanese to a great extent.

Well I never got sea sick in my life, I’ve been in terrible storms, I’ve never been sea

sick, I must be because of my naval ancestry or something but, so it never worried me. I’ve been up to the north of Norway up to north of, south, North Pole virtually, and I’ve never, through terrible seas there and never been sea sick.

No, the army suddenly discovered I was there and someone sent me an order to go and report to the School of Infantry. And so the next thing I knew I was an instructor at the School of Infantry. And I finished up there as chief instructor but I don’t think I taught the troops anything.

Well yes, I mean the warrant officers, the regular army warrant officers were a highly trained soldiers and most of them were commissioned officers by that stage, they’d served in the AIF and various parts of the world, and they were really seasoned men. And here was I, a bit of a youngster trying to tell them what to do, it was a joke, but, and especially when I had to lead a parade and I limped up in front of them and kept losing the mark, the step on,

getting out of step.

Oh I think there was a bit of tension. I think they, I think I was reasonably popular because I think I got on with them all right, but I think there was a bit of tension there that, ‘Who the hell’s this guy trying to tell us what to do?’ you know.

Oh yeah, I think that was a factor in my favour, I think that was lucky in that respect, yeah. I think I got, you know, I got a reasonable response for them. But there was another instructor there who was a commissioned officer who’d been a warrant officer and he knew about three times as much as I did and he was really the back bone of the instruction course there.

And he was a great guy and he helped me a lot, yeah. But then for some stupid reason I was promoted above him, to take command when the major went, was promoted somewhere else or something. And a, so I found myself as a captain without trying to teach people who were

quite capable of being better than I was.

How does that?

Well as far as I know they didn’t mind, they treated me as a reasonable fellow I think, yeah, and they were a bit sorry for me when I couldn’t keep my step I think. But a terrible place down there at Puckapunyal because it was absolutely riddled with rabbits, and it was an awful,

it was almost a desert in those days, and we had to do exercises in this area. And early on or when the, there was a major there, he said, “Let’s go and do some reconnoitreing,” to do some, have a look at some of the country round about where we might do exercises.” And usually we’d finish up at one of the homesteads, with a big grazier’s homesteads around there. And

so we had more than reconnoitreing, we had quite nice female company and a few beers and so forth. He was a character that fella. But...

Yes it was a, the main street up the centre, administrative block, if I can remember, on the right and the barracks on the left.

And there was an officers’ block somewhere on the left of the road, probably quite near the administrative centre, but it was a pretty bare kind of village, you know, it’s just a one street up the middle, and that was our parade ground. The rest of it were rabbit holes, was rabbit holes.

Well, we had to retrain, well the idea, it was towards the end of the war and I think the idea was that they were being retrained to go, become warrant officers again in the post war army. Which was pretty crazy because some of them were majors and so forth, you know, and I don’t think they’d want to go back as warrant officers. Pretty, not very well thought out program, but it was, probably the basic idea was right,

you needed trained people to instruct a future army, and that was the idea.

It was a re, like going back to school, it was a retraining course for experienced warrant officers. And I mean there were

some that were new, that they hadn’t come across before, you know, they had, there were new weapons and it was mainly to do with small arms, warrant officers. I don’t think it was, there was no artillery situation there, and I don’t think they even had tanks. And so it was just really getting them back into the routine of being regular soldiers again.

Oh yeah I was supposed to, I gave lectures and I was supposed to correct their exam papers and so forth, but not very effectively.

Well all I wanted to do was get out of the army and get in to journalism at that stage. I mean there was no, I could see

there was no future for me in the army, I mean I hadn’t been sent to any of the major staff colleges or staff courses or you know, I was just sort of more or less a, a forgotten item really. This was a job that, you know, someone had to do and I suppose they decided I was someone without a home and they’d give me that one.

Well, I probably could’ve if I’d battled for it, but I wanted to stay in the army ‘till the end of the war, you know, and which I pretty well did. But then I finally got boarded out, just towards the end of the war, I think it was. And then I got out in time to,

to go to Sydney University at the beginning of the year after the war and that was what, 1945. And the end of ’45 I got a job as a journalist with the Sydney Sun and that started my second career. And after I’d been a journalist for fourteen or so years I started my third career which was as a public

relations consultant, and I did very successfully at that. I had a very successful company, we had very pleased clients, some of them stayed twenty years or so with us, and they paid us, which was very interesting. And that was the story.

I might have mentioned that while I was a journalist I won the Nieman

Fellowship to Harvard University, and in those days that was the top award for Australian journalists in Australia, or actually there are twelve Americans get it each year and at the time I went, there was an Australian, a New Zealander and a Canadian. Since then they’ve made it even broader to people from all over the world go there to do this very senior course in journalism. You

don’t do a course, you just do anything you like. For instance, one of the fellows in my year did a year’s medicine, he was a medical writer, he did a year’s medical course, and so I concentrated on foreign affairs about Russian and American relations. And when I got back to my,

well I worked in New York for a while for Australian Associated Press and then I was forced to go back to my Queensland Company, the Courier Mail. And I was appointed foreign editor of the Sunday Mail and page one editor of the Courier Mail, so I had a pretty busy life there. And then I was offered the job in public relations back in Sydney and I couldn’t refuse

it. And that was the rest of my career.

Ah, that was a special occasion. When I, my first year at Sydney University I met this girl, oh no, I went to, with a friend to watch this drama unit at the Sydney University, the Dramatic Society and my,

my future wife was acting the part, the lead part in the play that was on that year. And I went with a girlfriend and her mother, so I said, “Who’s that?” And that was, then we met again later casually and I sort of assumed that she came from the North Shore. And one day coming home in the tram I noticed her and a friend

sitting in the tram. Well at that stage I was one of the few people that had a funny little old motor car, and I had that parked at King’s Cross, so I got out of the tram and got into the car and followed the tram. Blow me down, she got out at the stop right down here, and so I called, I pulled up and I said, “Oh hello girls, would you like a lift home?” Of course they accepted and that was it. And she was the most wonderful woman,

we had four beautiful children and she died from cancer about ten years ago.

Actually

I think they had the board at Concord Hospital and while they were making up their mind I was sent to a convalescent home out here at Clovelly. And then I think I got notice that I, they would, got my

discharge papers, whatever they were, yeah. And that must have been about Christmas time I suppose, 1945.

Well I knew that my army career was finished, I was very disappointed to miss the companionship that I had with some of my fellow Duntrooners and others I’d met during the army. But I thought, this is wonderful, I’ve now

got a chance to get into journalism, you know, which took a while. Which is I always wanted to be, a journalist.

I think I was home here, yeah I was home here after coming out of the convalescent home, yeah. I’ll think about that, I think so. I’m a bit vague about that actually, yeah. But I remember there was great joy in the streets in Sydney and I didn’t go in, I didn’t go in to Sydney, I sort of watched it on, or

listened to it on the radio and just took it pretty quietly I think.

Yeah was, my brother joined up, well he was actually in the real army long before I was and he was in the militia with a Scottish battalion

before the war and he just continued on when the war broke out, and as soon as he could he joined the AIF. And then at the end of the war he was on one of the small ships which were carrying supplies of, along the coast of New Guinea and I’m told that

every port they went to they picked up their grog rations. But after the war he eventually got himself a job as a sales manager introducing sticky tape to Australia. And he finished up with a sales force who were mostly blokes who’d been in the Army with him, and they were all terrifically, all eventually went on as managing directors and so forth of various companies, they all did very well.

So they were a good team.

Well no, my poor sister got stuck because of my parents’ health. First of all my father was pretty sick right through the war and then towards the end of the war my mother became ill too, and so Bunty had to more or less

continue home duties. She was, but she did voluntary work in various ways but I think she was always very upset about that, but still, she eventually married an ex serviceman and they had a pretty happy life I think although, but they didn’t have any children.

Oh it was fantastic, it was the most wonderful thing. First of all there were great pals that all, I assume, you know, amongst the ex servicemen there, there was a wonderful camaraderie and the place was full of young girls who’d just left school. And there was one group of girls who, a bit, pretty, the socialites,

and we knew them fairly well but we didn’t socialise with them I suppose. Because they used to go, they used to leave the place every, the university at lunch time and go down to Princes for lunch, all these girls, and we’d sit up there eating a sandwich or something. And, but one of my best friends there was a Roger Cornforth who played, who had been a prisoner of war

in, of the Japanese and he played rugby for Australia afterwards, and a couple of others were in the same situation. But Roger had his hearing affected as a result of being a prisoner of war, so we used to sit down the front of our, when we had common classes, one of them was this

ancient history class which was a fantastic course and we used to sit down the front there. And later on I discovered that my future wife Erica used to sit up the back with the girls, so that was an opportunity missed.

Yeah, twenty-three I think.

Many, many, returned service men, yeah, there were a lot of returned service men. And we were well treated by the lecturers because they knew we were serious you know, we wanted to do whatever we could. Pretty well every ex servicemen that went to the university absolutely put everything he had into it, cause that was it you know. And so I did,

I did four courses in my first year and that got me well on the way and then I got a job and I did the rest as a part, evening student.

Well no,

I think we put the war, most of us put the war down as an experience we had to have. And we sort of, I think, all of us benefited from it in later life but, because we knew where we wanted to go and we wanted to make up for lost time and we were able to do it, I think so.

Well at the university I knew some of the younger students including a chap that wrote the history of the Sydney Morning Herald, great friend, I’ve forgotten his, can’t remember his name. But,

and but then among the cadets when I got onto The Sun, there were a number of people who’d got into the army towards the middle or end of the war, and so there were a number of people, ex service men, they made them serve out their cadetships, or partly, and they became good pals. Stuart Endo was

one of them who later became the head of the, editor-in-chief of the Pacific Newspapers and, oh, several other outstanding people, Ian Moffat, who later became editor in chief of the Mirror Group, and they were great pals. And

so there was a good camaraderie amongst the journalists, even though some of them, like, chap like Michael Batton went up, he was a copy boy and he went up to, and got a cadetship and he came, was one of us. And he later on, was in public relations and did very well. There were some, it was a great experience and

I was soon, I got some good jobs pretty soon. I was, after doing the routine thing such as covering courts and so, and state parliament and so forth as a ordinary journalist, I got myself as round, city rounds-man, which was covering the town hall and the federal politics

station that lived in Sydney. And I can remember in those years that Billy McMahon was great for the journalists because he was always accessible, he’d always have some, something that made a bit of news. Whereas some of the others at the old Menzies team were just, you wouldn’t, they wouldn’t talk to you at all, you know. But on the whole there were a few of them, and we got some good stories

and course Town Hall was full of stories and fantastic. And after that I became aviation correspondent, I took over from Johnny Ulm, who was the son of Charles Ulm, and John got promoted and I became aviation correspondent for some years and that was quite fantastic because the new people arriving in Australia from all over the world

and there was, every day there was a good, human interest story. And I can remember after a while I did a little story about, tears and laughter mingled when these people came ashore, aground, and it got on to page one of the paper. And

the chief sub editor who later became the managing editor of the ABC called me in and said, “At last you’ve made it Ron, I reckon you’re going to be a journalist.” And that was, that was my greatest, you know, it was really made me feel I was there at last you know. And so I had a lot of very interesting jobs in

journalism. And then The Sun was taken over by the Sydney Morning Herald and I was not very happy in The Sun and was being down-graded, in my opinion, and I got offered a job, a very big promotion to go to the Courier Mail in Queensland so I went in there as a senior sub editor. And I’d been a sub editor in The Sun for a short time and I went

to Queensland then and while I was there I was awarded the Nieman Fellowship to Harvard University. And so I had some, and then I went back to the Courier Mail after having worked in New York as a journalist, and so I was very happy in journalism. But...

Well my children were growing up, or they were only babies really but, and my wife was very lonely in Queensland because I worked at night and she wasn’t able to get into very many friends and activities at night with the children and not knowing

the people. And I had a, was offered a job by Eric White who ran the biggest PR [public relations] firm in Australia and he wanted me to start a Brisbane office for him. And I said, “Well look I’ll accept a job with you but only if I can come to Sydney,” so I went to Sydney and became a public relations consultant with Eric White Associates. And after a while I eventually became, I was transferred,

Eric White took over Hill & Knowlton, which was a small American, a big American Company had a small office in Sydney, and I was sent down there to run that. And I, as it turned out eventually, Hill & Knowlton took over Eric White’s and it’s now well

known as a big public relations firm. But that stage I was a bit frustrated down there and I decided to start my own PR business and that took off like a rocket and went very well, so I continued the rest of my life until I was in my seventies as a, running a PR firm.

Yes I’ve got a son, my eldest, he’s

an accountant and he’s now running a business consultancy. I’ve got three daughters. The eldest is a, has got a, lives in Brisbane with a large family and she’s a school teacher, my, that’s Lyndal. My second daughter is Diana who’s quite a well known journalist and has two children. And my youngest daughter

Antoinette who was born when we came back to Sydney is with, was with Rothchilds, she now with West – quite a good job in Westpac, and she’s a bachelor of economics. And so they’ve all done, I’m very proud of my family.

Quite a bit, not like my father who had nothing to say, never wanted to talk about it. I’ve talked to various people about it, I have, I keep up with the Duntroon Society and we have regular meetings.

And I talk to ex serving soldiers and talk to my family about things. I’m not inhibited about it at all, no.

Well I’ve dropped out of Anzac Day because I can’t march and I don’t really think much point in going in a taxi or

something. So I, but I often go in the crowd and watch them, and as I also do for when big rugby, successful rugby teams come back and so forth. I like going into town to watching the parades, but I don’t take, don’t generally take part in the Anzac Day parades. But I do go to reunions, the RSL had a

Rose Bay and places like that. I keep up my contacts with the platoon service people.

Oh just how stupid war is and completely unnecessary.

All those wonderful people who died or terribly, badly mangled for no reason whatsoever, I mean it achieved nothing, no war has ever achieved anything. I think that this, these stupid little wars that are going on around the world today, they must be absolute maniacs that are taking part in them. I think the Middle East situation is a disaster.

I must say I’m not highly critical of the American action in the Middle East, I think that had to be done, but I think on the whole any kind of war is pretty damn stupid, yeah.

My own family?

Oh what can you learn from it. Well you can learn the importance of sacrifice and friendship. How important it is to trust other people and to be able to risk your life helping other people or being helped by other people.

The commonness, the common humanity, I believe in humanity is one unit and we, and these, any kind of strife and war is ridiculous. And that I think most of us learned from being in the war that it didn’t achieve anything.

I don’t think it changed me very much, I think I, even as a boy I had this experience in Germany and saw the stupidity of a dictatorship and so forth. The war just confirmed my view of the stupidity of mankind in, when it should be enjoying the benefits of the marvellous world.

Oh I think there’ve been a lot of books written about the Kokoda campaign and they’ve all been pretty accurate. I’ve read quite a number of them and

I quite enjoy, strangely enough, I quite enjoy reading war books and going back to the Napoleonic Wars I suppose, and I enjoy history and I think that’s part of history.

Yes I do, I do agree. I think that the, I think the attack on the Vietnam War veterans was very unfair. One of my Duntroon friends was a commander of the officer training corps for the, of conscripts

that went to Vietnam and he said, “They turned out wonderful officers, they were great people and they learned a lot from it.” The, I think these, if wars are going to happen, I believe in pacifism, but I don’t believe in criticism of the people that took part. And I think that,

I don’t, it sounds a bit stupid I suppose, I suppose anyone that took part in a war was some kind of hero and I think they should be respected for it.

Ah, well, the 39th certainly has and

they’ve built the Kokoda tradition around the 39th which has made it even more, made out it achieved even more than it actually did because the AIF did a tremendous job in the campaign too. As I’ve mentioned before I think the 53rd has been unfairly treated by history and by contemporary

reporting, I think it’s awful that the former 53rd Battalion people have to more or less shrink into the background because of the criticism they get. And I think the 2/14th and the 2/16th

members have been unfair to it, I think, you know. I mean they went up there critical of the choccos and they found the 39th had what it takes and they didn’t have a chance to, the 53rd didn’t have a chance to pick up and show its ability.

I’m not sure that it should be remembered alongside the 39th, I think the 39th is a unique story, a completely unique story, a wonderfully story. But I think it should be recognised as a

force that was sent there to do a job, and to some extent tried but failed. And many, many forces have failed in history, in war, in battle, in history, and that’s just one of them.

Yeah, I think that the, I think although I admire what the 39th achieved, I think that that part of the campaign is over done, because the tremendous effort that the Australian forces put in to stopping the Japanese and

pushing them back. They were helped by the Japanese, by the Japanese lack of hygiene, and things like that. But the fact is that the Australian forces, not just the 39th stopped the Japanese getting to Malay, to Port Moresby and pushed them back, right out of New Guinea. And I think the whole of the Australian Army particularly, and those Americans that took part

should be congratulated on what they did, and I don’t think there’s any room for criticism.

Well my most painful

experience was after the war when some of my best friends died from wounds, after being wounded in the war. Churchill Avon, who was at Duntroon the year after me was really, (Churchill...UNCLEAR) but he was a fine soldier and he

was badly wounded. And he was in the, when he, at one stage he was in the bed next to me in Concord Hospital and I went out on my first day’s leave, and wearing a calliper and not being quite used to it, I put the wrong step forward and fell down the steps at the railway station. And the next thing I knew I was back in bed

beside him and he said, “What, have you been in a football match?” But he got married, they didn’t have any children and he, he died. But those are the things, the people I remember that went

through hell and didn’t survive.

Well first of all the absolute hate of war and the thing is so stupid but also the, that the wonderful comradeship that’s available for men and women, given the right circum-

stance, in any circumstance, and we don’t pull together enough in life, in peace time. Sometimes the wars make us pull together when in peace time we often don’t, and I think that’s a great tragedy.

That’s a hard one.

I hope that the people of the future have got past having wars

and that the different religions can live together without animosity and misunderstanding. And I hope that the people a hundred years now can look back on the nineteenth and twentieth century and see the folly of war and of conflict and

the irresponsible use of lethal weapons. And let’s hope that in a hundred years they don’t know what a gun is. That’s all.

Well just thanks to the ABC for putting together this program and this,

this feature, this set of features and I’m sure they’ll be a great help to the future.

Glad to meet you.