Australians at War Film Archive

My parents came to be in Australia because my grandparents came from Northern Ireland and England. They settled in Launceston, Tasmania and that was where I was born.

Yes,

my parents were from Launceston. I lost my mother when I was fifteen. My father remarried again and had three children in the first family and three in the second.

11.10.1915.

It was quite a pleasant life, I did well at school, and I stayed dux at the Primary School and went on.

It was East Launceston State School. Then I went to Melbourne High School. I made a bad decision and I sat for a

entrance to the Scotch College and I was there for three years and I was picked from all the schools in Launceston and I was beaten by just a couple of points, and the chap who won didn’t want to take the scholarship and it was offered to me

and I was very silly and I regret it ever since, I knocked it back because I thought that I would learn more in the State High School.

Yes.

Yes I went to state high school in Launceston.

Yes. I didn’t want it to be a certificate and I was planning to

go to the university and do a course, but it was in the Depression in the big Depression days in 1938/39 and even people who had their degrees couldn’t get a job,

they had to go and do pick and shovel work or whatever. It was very hard times.

Yes. I had an elder brother, three and a half years older than I, and a younger sister, ten years younger.

He was fortunate, he was in the insurance business

and he always had a car, from what I can remember.

Yes, it was.

He worked for Victoria Insurance Company in Tasmania. The company supplied him with a car for his own use as well as for business. He retired from the company, when he was due to retire,

he had been with them for all his working life. We had no problems during the Depression because of the work he was doing.

My mother died when I was fifteen, that was 20.4.1931 she had had what was called “Vipers

disease,” which was a disease of the kidneys and in those days they couldn’t do anything for her, and in 1944 she passed away and she was a lovely lady and well liked in Launceston. The cemetery that she is buried in, after the service I looked back,

the cemetery was up on a bit of a rise and I looked back and there were forty five private cars behind, fully loaded private cars and that was how well known she was.

Yes. She was involved with church and other groups and she was

a very wonderful lady.

That’s right.

I did miss her very much. Looking back, losing her was a great blow to me, I was very fond of her. The morning she died

I got called into the headmaster of the school and he said, “You’ve got to go home straight away,” and I knew what it was, that she had passed away. That upset me for years afterwards, to the extent that I couldn’t face going back to the school. My father managed to get me a job, even in the Depression

days. I hated the job I had, for nine years I lasted.

Engineering supplies at a wholesale warehouse in Launceston.

I can’t remember.

I’ve just forgotten. Oh yes, WG Gems Pty Ltd.

Yes.

No. The trouble was I wanted to be an accountant, and no accountants were being taken on. Actually I thought the job was

an accountant, because out of about eight or nine boys they selected me out to be the one. I didn’t like it from the very day that I started. Then in 1940 I moved to Melbourne,

I applied for a position in Melbourne and I realised I would be much better off in Melbourne. I got a position in Melbourne.

Yes it is. The possibilities weren’t there; it’s such a small state, a lovely state but such a small state.

In Trevallyn, that’s looking over the Tamar River.

Yes.

We used to play cricket and the usual things.

Quite happy. I wasn’t much good at sport, unfortunately, so I missed out on that.

Mainly interested in, I wanted to be an accountant and interested in things like that and that wasn’t possible but in the end when I moved

to Melbourne, I moved over to a company where I was representing English manufacturers of engineering equipment because we didn’t have any manufacturing done in Australia. I was representing a number of companies in Australia and that was the job I got.

He was in the bank. He was in Launceston (UNCLEAR) Branch and wanted to go over to Melbourne, a type of branch over in Melbourne. We were very close the two of us, because the second family arrived in the, my father married a second time and the house wasn’t big enough for

when the other family came along and we had to go out and board, and we had some pretty awful boarding places.

About five years after he lost his first wife and in the second family there were two daughters and one son.

They were in their early sixties and the son was just over fifty.

Yes. We always got on well together as though we were all from the one family, which we were even though we were half sisters and half brothers.

Yes. They were the two girls and the boy.

No, she wasn’t married and she hadn’t been married before.

Yes we did. We just had to control that, in interest of my father and we did get on all right with our stepmother.

No,

I still thought the world of him. It is fortunate, I’m the last one left of the first family, so I still have two brothers and a sister.

Yes, there is a photo

over there of my mother’s brother who was a lovely fellow. He volunteered, he was living as an articled clerk in Melbourne but he moved over from Tasmania because his parents, my grandfather and grandmother they had a farming

property in Tasmania. He moved over to Melbourne and he enlisted in Tasmania because he had all these friends. He enlisted and he was such a bright fellow that he was accepted, once they got over there and they asked him to

do a job as a sergeant major and train fellows from England. All his other mates from Tasmania went over to the war, the Western Front and he tried to join them to get permission to leave and he wanted something to do and they said, “Yes,” and he went over

and within six weeks he was killed, at the Battle of Passchendaele, it was a hard place and he was hit by a bomb; he was in a bomb hole or shell hold in the rain for twenty-four hours before they found him. They put him in a

Scottish hospital in France, everyone loved him and he was such a wonderful fellow. They had two good brain surgeons and he had shrapnel on the brain. They thought the second operation was going to be successful but he passed away. I had seen so many of them and he was such a marvellous fellow of what I could learn of him.

The only problem is I have got some records there and they say he was a corporal but he was a sergeant major, and that is something I have to take up to the record people.

No, the family was just coming on at that time and he couldn’t get away

or get a job having a new family.

They were Tasmanian born and they had a farming property at Boat Harbour,

It was a lovely spot and they had a farming property there.

Yes, it’s hard to beat, I know it well.

Yes.

I was very into church groups and we used to have singing and the piano

and often in the evening we had some very good times, different from today, with singing and going on tours and trips together. We really had quite an enjoyable time.

Down to the east coast and stay there for

two or three days. Even the west coast and we travelled Tasmania very.

No, I was thinking of our own private things. We were with a church group and they used to go out to singing at various churches and they had a great affinity with

people over there, anyone who had someone sick in hospital, if they wanted a hymn to be sung to them over there they would race in. As a group we for twenty-five years, was the only thing on the radio which was (UNCLEAR), then on Sunday

nights we used to sing, three quarters of an hour would be sung by, none of that had to be edited before we went onto air; it was a record for twenty-five years.

It was yes.

Down the west coast the roads were pretty rough and we had to be careful coming into Queenstown, they had the copper mine there and that destroyed all the growth and the bush around. We even had a football ground in Queenstown, where the copper mine was

and that’s the only non-grass football ground that we knew of.

No. The east coast was nice and we had motorbikes my brother and I, we used to go down the east coast to Swansea and that area, a lovely spot there. We had a quite enjoyable time.

I was with them for nine years.

Yes, I can remember that it was on the 3rd September at 9.00pm at night,

the Prime Minister Menzies still inside my head said, “We are at war with Germany,” that would have been the 3rd September 1939.

Yes. I should mention this. I joined up to a field artillery battery

based in Launceston, the 16th Field Battery different from (UNCLEAR) Battery and we used to have, every year we’d have about a fortnight down the Midlands on a big property there, light shell practice (UNCLEAR) but it was horse drawn, that’s the interesting part of it.

I did four years of service there and then when I moved over to Melbourne I had to hand in the gear.

I thought I should and my uncle Herb was killed in the First World War and I felt I should

join up and get some training. Then I moved to Melbourne and I met a young lady on a holiday when I went over there to Melbourne about 1939/38 and we got to know each other quite well but corresponding by letter wasn’t particularly good

and that’s another reason why I left the southern company in Tasmania. I used to spend most of my money flying over on the DC2.

The DC2s used to fly across the strait, about two hours it took. The first trip I did

I found my girlfriend who was waiting at Western Airport, the only airport in Melbourne, we ran into a severe electrical storm about half-way across Bass Strait and we were just bouncing up and down, it was like a motor boat on the rough sea, and we arrived there safely, sometimes I would stay for the weekend and I would fly over and back.

Often I would go over on the Taroona, that was a lovely ship. I used to go over on the Taroona for holidays and I enjoyed that.

It was, I was spending all my pocket money in travelling across to Melbourne. My girlfriend and I decided it would be best if I took a job in Melbourne

and I thought that was the answer because I wasn’t happy where I was in Tasmania, so I took this job in Melbourne.

1940 yes. I had been through the 16th Field Battery in Tasmania, and I mentioned that.

Yes.

The 16th Field Battery it was. That was the place when I was called up. I had feelings that the AIF [Australian Imperial Force] and I felt if anything happened

to Japan or any other countries we would be needed and that’s why they called me up because that’s when they realised I had artillery practice, on a voluntary basis. I was called up at the end of June

for full-time service and thought, “I think I’ve done the right thing.” If I joined up I would be overseas, I had the feeling we may be needed and it turned out that we were because the AIF was in the Middle East or Britain.

That was why I was called up and they appointed me to the 10th Anti-Aircraft Battery which was based in Williamstown and we had our guns throughout Melbourne, all sections of guns to defend Melbourne in case any anti-aircraft

and that’s how I became a militiaman.

It was then, yes; I was surprised how easy it was, I just had to ring the managing director of this company.

I lived in

East Melbourne, I boarded with an elderly couple and they took one boarder in and I was the one they took in, and the other reason was so my girlfriend and I could get to know each other better.

Well, we were engaged

and I was in the army then because I was appointed to the anti-aircraft battery in June and I was called up on the 5th November and I popped the question and we became engaged. It worked out well as we had planned.

That was only at home. It was different from some of these boarding houses being in Tasmania.

I loved them, a lot of boarding housing in Wellington Street I think in Launceston and there were four of us men

and there used to be cockroaches crawling around in the kitchen. There was a lady, an elderly lady who had the run of the thing back then. We got a bit sick of these cockroaches and so one morning, there were four of us, and we made a little poem and I can remember this. “Merle,” he said, “There’s this little boarding in Launceston

where all the boarders are protesting, for when cockroach stew comes on the menu they all have indigestion.” This annoyed the lady very much. She wouldn’t talk to us after a couple of days and she was standing outside the front gate one morning when we went off to work, and he said, “Are you still niggly Mrs Penman?” That was her name,

and she just ignored us, anyhow it blew over and that’s the sort of thing that we had to put up with. This boarding in Melbourne, they were an elderly couple and he was retired and I was just waiting for my family, my wife, no my fiancé, no my girlfriend as she was then

just down in East Melbourne it was quite handy.

I was working in the city right in the centre of Melbourne, that was where the office was. When I was called up and they said, “Oh yes, we’ll look after you,” and all this sort of thing, I was the only one who was in the service

and I was told “They would look after me and pay all sorts of payments to help while I was away.” When I was eventually discharged in November 1945 I went back, and they said, “Your job’s gone now, we had to protect

the industry while you were away.” I didn’t get a penny out of them. They said, “If you want to go to Sydney there is an assistant manager and it is all we can offer you.” Here we were hoping to live in Melbourne. I had to take that job or look for another one. We decided we would have to go to Sydney

and they didn’t give us any housing arrangement or anything like that. The war was over and everyone was looking for homes and fortunately some friends were going away for three months and they said, “You can have our home.” I spent nearly all my pocket money I had on advertisements in the Sydney Morning Herald

and I decided the company wouldn’t pay for any of that and I was the last one to put in an advertisement and I went in and something told me to go in early that morning and I went in about 10.00 o’clock and there was a reply there and it was in the area we were looking for, housing, a new area,

and I got on the train and arrived five minutes after the owner had gone home, after putting the advertisement in, he couldn’t believe it. I had a look through and I said, “Yes, I’ll take it, subject to my wife seeing it tonight.” I think that solved their problem there.

After two years I couldn’t stand the Manager there and he was ripping-off the company and I couldn’t say anything and I decided to move back to Melbourne and get another job.

Quite often, yes.

Yes.

We had trams and not many people had a car and I used to go to work,

I used to walk to work because it was such a small city. We had quite a pleasant way of life. If I’m putting too much into this.

Going back to the war,

we were engaged on the 5th November and on the 7th December Japan bombed Pearl Harbour and that brought America into the war straight away. They were supplying ammunition to the allies but they didn’t decide until then

that they would join the Allies then. That was on the 7th December and I used to go home every weekend and the battery job was to protect the Melbourne area and there was another battery protecting the power generators, electrical generator wall.

I was at home with her parents that weekend and when I got back at about 10.00pm at night, some of the others said, “Have a look at the noticeboard in the audio room.” I said, “Why?” They said, “Just go and have a look.” “The following personnel be prepared to move at twenty-four hours’ notice,” and we just

became engaged about seven weeks ago. I was selected to be the quartermaster of the new unit that was to be formed called 23rd Heavy Anti-Aircraft Battery. Some of us were drawn from the 10th Battery, which I was in, and others from the 11th Battery,

the 23rd Heavy Battery. That was a pretty traumatic time that I had to be sent straight away to Royal Park, that was the transit depot for the army then. We had to go through getting all our tropical gear and all our injections for tropical and I knew

because I was a senior officer, or I was to be one, I was only a bombardier at that stage, but I was to be the quartermaster of the unit and we were going to Port Moresby. It was supposed to be hush, hush and I said goodbye to my fiancée on six occasions

and all I said was, “Final leave,” every time and the next night or the next day I’d be back on leave again. Six times, on the sixth time, “This is really your final leave.” Christmas Day 1941, we were allowed home for Christmas dinner with our relations

and we had to be back by Boxing Day, no it was Christmas Day, we were allowed on Christmas Eve, so we were able to have Christmas Day with our relations and we had to report back by two o’clock in the afternoon and it was Christmas Eve, we found out in Melbourne they had a blackout then.

Within another day, the next day we had to be back on Boxing Day so no one had to be back on Christmas Day. Then on Boxing Day we were all sitting there ready to go and they put us all in a train straight to Darling Harbour

and five thousand of us were embarked on the His Majesty’s ship Aquitania, which was a cruise ship before the war.

We left on the 29th December, we sailed out of Sydney Harbour.

1941, there were I think; I don’t think I’m sure we were the most heavily escorted convoy that had ever left Australia,

because we had four battle cruisers and two destroyers.

The Australian navy, Australia, Canberra and Perth I think, the Achilles from New Zealand, over four cruisers and I don’t remember the names of the two destroyers. We sailed south

for about five hours and then they turned and sailed north because we had to go through the Coral Sea to get to Port Moresby. It was the Aquitania, which was a 40,000 tonner; there was the 39th Battalion Infantry from Victoria, 53rd Battalion

from Sydney, from New South Wales and our battery were the only three and we were classed as the Emu Corps. I don’t know whether if that was just expeditionary units or just Emu, I have often wondered.

Yes, we were the Emu Force. The Japanese knew that there were 5,000 officers on that ship and they vowed and declared that they would sink the ship.

We heard this, because somehow their knowledge,

they found out through somehow that we were on the Aquitania. We were on the way up and had to zigzag for six days, through the Coral Sea and there were Japanese submarines operating. We had one spare, a submarine,

we’d drop a few depth charges and off it went but we had to zigzag for weeks to get to Port Moresby. When we got there the ship was too big to birth at the wharf at Port Moresby and we had to disembark by walking across the decks of the four cruises.

The food was terrible and we couldn’t have proper baths or showers, we had to wash in saltwater with special soap that they supplied, the food was just.

I was fortunate because I was still a bombardier, and as I mentioned I was to be the quartermaster sergeant which is three stripes,

and the sergeants’ had deck cabins with portholes, but some were full infantry men, they were below the waterline and they were hot temperature and I don’t know how they got on, that was what it was like.

We had bunks on the deck cabins. There was a problem and this was a big problem when we arrived and I forgot to mention two cargo ships and the Aquitania and that was the convoy, so only three ships out of all these cruisers. It was very reassuring in the daytime you wouldn’t see them,

they would be out ahead, scouring the sea for any submarines. At evening the whole four would come in, the two cruises in the front of the bow to the stern and the two destroyers just going backwards and forwards. By morning, the time we got up they had gone,

they were just working like that the whole six days. They did a marvellous job. You were asking about beds. The tents and all that equipment was in the hull of the two cargo vessels, and because the tents of all things

are right at the bottom of the hull. Our men had to march straight from off the ship, seven miles to the airstrip and they had machine-guns and they had to make a defence at the airstrip if the Japanese tried to bomb

it or tried to fight us there, they had to march seven miles in the wet season, humid, 930 Fahrenheit, all the way and all I could do was lie down at night in the jungle, because we didn’t have any beds, or any tents even for about a fortnight.

Yes it was, it was. Quite a few of our fellows, there was no hospital in Port Moresby and I forgot to mention that there were some army nurses on the Aquitania came up with us, but the Japanese had advanced so far and what they were doing to women was shocking

so they sent the nurses straight back on the Aquitania to Australia. All we had was a marquee and I’d seen fellows with malaria, dysentery lying on the ground, but no hospital. That was how unprepared we were.

No. We were

the first there, there was a battery there, it was a coastal battery called [(UNCLEAR)] battery at the entrance to Fairfax Harbour there. Paga Battery had coastal guns, for defence if enemy ships tried to get in.

No, we were the first ones there.

I better tell you the story of what it was like being their quartermaster, it was part of my job to get all the weaponry and the instruments because we were told before we left Melbourne that the guns and all the equipment was shipped out

four weeks before we left. I went to ordnance and asked them and they didn’t know anything about them. We arrived there in about February and I had to commandeer a vehicle to get to the

ordnance people and they said, “There was a big crate that came up here about a month ago, we didn’t know what they were so we pushed it off the road into the jungle,” “Oh,” I said, “We better go and have a look.”

There they were on each side of the road right in the jungle were these big crates and they weighed tons. Eventually after about a fortnight I found all the pieces for the gun 3.7 heavy gun, they were good, an excellent gun, they were manufactured by a ammunitions

group in Australia. That was what we were up against, we weren’t prepared for anything like that. The next problem was we had to get those guns up a bump, Port Moresby was a very steep hill and at the top of the hill it overlooked Port Moresby.

Touaguba,

that means big wind, big wind and the coastal winds in the afternoon were pretty strong. There was no road up there, there’s only a track. The Australian engineers, the army engineers did a great job and they got some of the native boys to help and managed to get all

those parts right to the top of the hill. The objective with the anti-aircraft defence is you had to get on the hill if you can, because the bomber has a much smaller pinpoint to work to and if you want a hit you have a much better chance to. Anyhow, within two or three weeks we got

all those guns up there. The next problem was we needed instruments to work them.

The first is the main one is the predictor, we didn’t have any

radar, which came later on. We had this predictor, it was quite a big heavy instrument, a very heavy instrument, run by a big battery, a wet battery, it must have been about four feet long and that battery worked the predictor and the height finder

and the screw setter and everything. To make the anti-aircraft battery you had to have the height finder, a predictor and a fused setter. The bomber aimer, he has to fly at a constant height, course and speed so he can aim his bombs by the same token the anti-aircraft gunner has to

work out the predictor works out the height, course and this battery that puts the fused setter on the shell that automatically turns that to how many seconds before it goes off. So that will meet that bomber at that one particular point,

it’s not easy. It wasn’t then, it’s not modern.

It’s a pretty big shell, it’s a 3.7, and the barrel is nearly 4 inches inside diameter.

Yes.

The shell cap, or the fused cap that’s only about that big but the shell would probably be about that long. The danger as far as the ground is concerned is if the fused cap, once they fire they just drop to the earth, and you have got to be careful and get out of the way or you get cracked on the head. Men have been killed by fused caps dropping on their heads.

I can hear the fused caps coming down into the ground through the trees.

Wasn’t easy, no.

The main thing is it’s designed to hit the aircraft itself but sometimes it might be a near-miss, and other times it might be spot on, I’m getting ahead a bit, but the first time we went into action, I will have to go back in a minute. The first time we went into action we scored a direct hit

and there were no other anti-aircraft weapons anywhere in the whole of New Guinea, we were the first ones there. We were only a quarter strength. A battery has four sections of four guns each and we only had one

section to start off with.

They were back in Australia and after a couple of months we got another section come up in about three or four months, by about four or five months we had a full complete four gun section, and we were full strength.

Yes, they were the 39th Infantry Battalion, and the 53rd. The 39th, you’ve heard a lot about them, they paid their dues and because they have had a lot of publicity and those poor fellows had a shocking time. I’ve seen them leaving Port Moresby to go off to the Kokoda Trail

in shorts, in khaki shorts and khaki shirts. The Japanese could have been in the jungle warfare and they had been doing it for, and they have been training them and training them and they were all in green time, and our men couldn’t see them,

because of the jungle. It took by the end of 1941 before they sent us up jungle greens. I have a pair that I use in the garden, a pair of the trousers still with the tin buttons, which are rusted.

I saw them.

No, because we didn’t see many of them because they were so bad, I think they needed some leave. The 39th Battalion had been trained,

the way they were trained, the 53rd didn’t have any training and the 53rd Battalion hadn’t even fired a gun that was a weakness. There is a book there, over there and I will show it to you before you go and it’s from 1942-44

but it’s out of print now, and you might want to have a look before you go, it’s amazing and it’s shocking. To get back to our battery, we were unique and we were the first ones to fire the anti-aircraft defence. We didn’t have any planes

to protect us. We arrived on the 3rd January and they said, “Oh yes, the Squadron Kitty Hawk.” The Kitty Hawk fighters were coming up and day after day they didn’t arrive and we went into action on the 15th February, it was our first action.

Yes, that’s right. That was a black day. That was the first bombing raid.

I will tell you an interesting thing and you will appreciate this.

A gun has to be covered by or proofed before a new gun can be fired, in other words they have to fire a number of shells to check to see if the predictor and the height finder and to see if everything is working properly. On the 14th February

they dropped a few bombs right on Port Moresby. I think it was a single plane. Then on the 15th February we knew the bombing raid was on the way. We had three of the guns had been proofed

or calibrated but the fourth hadn’t. I will have to tell you a bit more about this. One of our coast watchers, our coast watchers they used to work with the natives and move every night in the jungle, and some had headquarters right on the other side of the Owen Stanley Range and that was in Japanese

hands and this was marvellous. The first message we got was that so many Japanese Betty Bombers were, they gave them and were identified had left Salamaua, at such and such a time, etc. Moresby an hour and a half after.

It was a wireless. They had the wireless, these were the coast watchers. We got this message, so we read it and the AOC [Artillery Ordnance Corps] said, “What are we going to do?” Number four gun hadn’t been proofed. “We’ll proof it in action,” so it was all right. We got told that was the first anti-aircraft gun that was proofed in action. That was interesting,

a lot of interesting things. This wave was the first one and apparently we didn’t have our bomb aimer in the bomb and the Japanese didn’t have any safety belts and the first guy did a direct hit and this fellow dropped

onto the street in Port Moresby.

The plane did.

Yes. You can see how it was a very difficult time for Australia because we were so unprepared.

They were bombing every day, day after day, they would come over and the bombers were flying at about 20,000 feet and our anti-aircraft gun could go up 40,000 feet, but they would come in

at 20,000 feet and they would have all the Zero fighters patrolling underneath, and the Zero fighters were very light and flimsy and they would be going up and down. We didn’t have any fighters, to fight against them. We were told that No. 75 Squadron of Kitty Hawks were coming any day

and this was early February and day after day, we called them Tomorrow Hawks by that stage. On the 27th March, a Saturday afternoon and I still have it in my mind, these planes arrived, came over, flew around, flew around,

over the airstrip in Port Moresby and landed. The machine-gunners, our machine-gunners weren’t told and about three of them, and they left flying three of the Kitty Hawks and the rest out of action by the time they had landed. That was a bad mistake.

They looked

much the same apparently, we knew they were coming and we had been waiting so long we thought, “It must be Zeros, must be Zeros.”

They had to be repaired before.

No fortunately. That 75th Squadron, I hold my

hand out to them, they did a marvellous job.

Australia, from different states and apparently the story we heard, was the Kitty Hawks was to go from America to somewhere else and then they changed it and the Kitty Hawks had to be assembled and ready to fly in a very short

time and they had never done it before and they got them here all right. 75 Squadron, I would always take my hat off to them and to the chap who was overlooking Salamaua, a coast watcher, Japanese caught him eventually and they were just beheaded,

can you believe that, that’s what they did? A number of them in New Guinea lost their lives because the Japanese caught them and executed them.

No, we were a static battery

and that means, I will go back a bit. To get the guns up they have to be set up on a concrete slab right on top of this hill, that’s unique, and I’ve got it in there, and also in Canberra, that this

battery and the Japanese tried their hardest to hit the guns and they never did once. One day they dropped a sticker bomb and it came over the hill and down the other side and they dropped their bombs and missed every one of the four guns.

That was amazing because they never got a direct hit on our guns fired.

Yes. I hope I’m not saying too much.

It was very interesting.

Yes, well that’s…

They had ammunition sent up, later on during the Coral Sea Battle, later on we nearly ran out of shells at one stage, but we got through.

Day after day, every day, week after week, we would have these bombers come over, drop their bombs. The 75 Squadron fell over, they would say, “Oh they crashed bombers on the other side of the Owen Stanley Ranges,”

they crashed because we hit them, we used to watch them going over smoking, they would leave the area smoking and they had to get over the Owen Stanley Ranges which is a pretty high range and a lot of them couldn’t get over them and they just went into the mountain and they said, “Oh, look at all the wrecks there are.” We have created a record,

there are forty-three bombers up there. We only had the one battery until the AIF was withdrawn from the Middle East and that was an anti-aircraft battery and they didn’t arrive till late in 1942 and

we were on our own all that time.

The Japanese dropped a five pound bomb and

we had machine-gun protection for low-flying aircraft and two of our fellows were manning their machine-guns and they dropped this bomb about, three metres of a bomb, that far away from them and they were just shell-shocked,

it’s a wonder they lived. We had to send them back to Australia. I couldn’t believe I wasn’t there that day, I was there the day after and they showed me where they were, and I couldn’t believe it.

Fortunately, we didn’t have many, and I thank God every day

I wasn’t a member of an infantry battalion because they had a terrible time and we were fortunate and we were well trained. That was called an (UNCLEAR) quite a number of the sergeants were permanent army men and two or three

of the officers and they were permanent men at Queenscliff, they were trained at Queenscliff and that was mixed battery. Full-time army, army men, militiamen, but still

we got on well and I forgot to mention that on the 31st December, I think the 31st or the 29th December on the way up my promotion from bombardier to staff sergeant was gazetted, so I’ve come from a bombardier

in the middle of November to the end of December I was.

I was one rank higher than the sergeants who were permanent army fellows, that’s just interesting.

When I look back I think how totally unprepared Australia was. It wasn’t until about April before the Americans arrived and that made a big difference to the war, their planes. I’ve seen

landing strips throughout the Moresby area, jungle one day and two days after, because they have all the equipment to do this.

We were the only battery there. We were definitely the only battery there.

Gradually yes, and up to about when we landed in January till about the middle of April, end of April we had another three units going up, another three sections going up. We weren’t full strength until about April.

Yes, yes they were coming up and we couldn’t understand why we were left in Port Moresby for two and a half years, they wouldn’t relieve us, we don’t know why, because we had such a record. After two and a half years

we knew that there were batteries who were itching to get away in Townsville and yet they wouldn’t relieve us, two and a half years, it was tough. The same thing with the 39th Battalion, they had the worst time and

after two and a half years, the last half of the year or before the Japanese didn’t have any bombers to bomb us. Why we want to know, and they never told us why we were kept there so long.

What they were called?

3.7 heavy ack-ack or heavy anti-aircraft guns.

Yes. Well I have got it there. How did you know that?

“Strawberry Blonde” was one.

Yes.

Where did you get that?

“Leader of the Opposition.”

Oh.

I will give you those copies after of the reports that some of the war reporters gave us.

Yes. I have two or three photos there, of the guns, and we wore-out the first set of barrels.

The guns were manufactured in Maribyrnong, they were Australian-made guns, and they were excellent guns. We wore-out the first set of four gun barrels

and I had to arrange to send them back to Maribyrnong Works because they wanted to do some special research on them. That was something interesting.

They have a range of 40,000 feet.

The bomber, who is bombing, the bomber aimer has to fly at a constant height, course and speed to reach a certain point; the predictor has to predict what is that, what speed,

what course the bomber is doing and that’s why that predictor has to predict, that it gets it at the right spot where that bomber is just coming.

No. It is a separate instrument of about four feet long, I would think, and

quite a heavy instrument but that’s the main part of the instruments for that anti-aircraft battery predictor. We didn’t have any radar then and that predictor had to be run on a wet battery and that was about that long and every couple of days it had to be recharged.

That’s beyond me, except that I know that it is capable for the person operating that predictor of getting that predictor to tell them what height, course and speed they have to do and then the fused setter,

the predictor also tells the fused setter which is an instrument, how many seconds before it must explode.

That’s for sure, very important.

I think it was about, lets say

one predictor would be hooked up to all four guns. I suppose it would be about ten or twelve, twelve or more probably.

I was based at headquarters, see we were out, to go back, I haven’t touched on the bombing

raids in Port Moresby.

They started on the 15th February, no the 16th, because that was Lyn’s birthday, it wasn’t that day, she wasn’t born then. I always remember it was her birthday, the 6th of February, was the first bombing raid.

Then we had day after day, month after month into 1943, we had bombing raids constantly and I watched so many times. It was touch-and-go for some months until (UNCLEAR) we could have been done.

One came over at night and I will never forget this, it was just checking up and having a look, we didn’t have any searchlights, that was a separate section, searchlights come under a separate section.

At first we didn’t have any searchlights so they could come over at night time and if they saw any lights, because it was blackout. When the 62nd Searchlight Battery arrived those searchlights send out a beam of hundreds of thousands of candlepower

and I will always remember the first night a navy bomber, a big navy bomber came over and they had no idea we had a searchlight and then all of a sudden this bright light, and they got straight onto that and the pilot just turned off and shot off away quick, until then we couldn’t. Also in the day time,

if a bombing raid came on and they came over and there was no sun and it was clouded all over the area you couldn’t see us and we couldn’t see them. In the daytime, if it’s cloudy right over they couldn’t hit us and we couldn’t have a go at them.

Yes, they used to have the Zero fighters flying underneath them. They always came over at the height of 20,000 feet and the Zeros would be flying around underneath them to protect and our fighters were much heavier than the Zeros and they were very light and could do anything. Manoeuvre them

underneath and they were manoeuvrable and they used to, every bombing raid all these Zero fighters would fly underneath the bombers and they used guns when they were fairly high and close to them and because we couldn’t aim at the Zeros because they were doing all sorts of things, whereas the bomber

had to come at a straight line.

They were able to, but their main job was to protect those bombers, they didn’t tear off. They had dive-bombers there though that were different and in the middle of June when the Macdhui, have you heard of the Macdhui? Was a cargo ship that used to operate

between Australia and New Guinea, that was a cargo ship and it was in the harbour, this was in June, that was six months after we got there unloading and the next thing, I saw this, I was right on the spot that day, these dive bombers came in and straight down and sunk, the Macdhui was hit

so many times, it sank but it wasn’t deep enough and the upper part of the ship is still there now I understand, and that’s sixty-two years ago.

Our first section, see we only had one section for four guns for about three months before we got more reinforcements and more guns. You said?

The first lot of guns was all we had when we first got there, they were on a high pointed hill because the object of the anti-aircraft gun is to have them on a hill, they are harder for the bomb aimer to aim at a narrow spot,

as it would if it was open, so they tried to put them all on a hill. It was a very steep hill and they, I was telling Martin, never got a direct hit in two and a half years, before they stopped coming over about two years or a bit less, they never

got a direct hit. There’s one day that they dropped their bombs and they started the other side of the hill, and came right over between our guns and down the other side and never hit the guns once.

Yes. It was pretty close, but they never hit our guns once in all that time

because of being on the high pointed hill. The other ones when they came, they went into other different areas on hills and around the whole of the area of Port Moresby, but Moresby was absolutely a shell of a town because all the women

and children had been sent back to Australia before we arrived there and all their houses, the menfolk stayed, but a lot of the houses were bombed.

We had very grave doubts and we never thought, and I didn’t feel right from the first time

when we got there and I felt that we had just been sent up here as a makeshift and they probably written down in the Victoria Barracks, they had written the whole 5,000 of us off. That’s just my point of view, and I think a lot of the others thought the same.

I think one thing was the Americans coming into the war and arriving in Port Moresby and with all their different aircraft that we didn’t have.

Yes. Towards the end of April, we were on our own for four months and we

had no, until March, about the 27th of March we didn’t even have our own fighters there. We were just four gunned out of what should have been a full battery of sixteen guns, we were the lone battery and we had to keep at their

bombers, because the fighters didn’t arrive up there until about the 27th March, they were Kitty Hawks, they weren’t even in the war with the Zero.

The first thing the Americans when they arrive in a place like that, they build a kitchen with wire netting,

not wire netting…so that the flies can’t get in.

Camouflage, so that the flies couldn’t get in, that’s the first thing they do.

That’s the first thing they’ll do. Another thing I might mention our

unit was the first one after the Americans arrived who was joined with an American small weapons, small guns unit and we were called the 101 Australian/American Brigade and

we got on quite well with the Americans and we used to have them on a bit.

They would say, “We’re just the greatest,” and that sort of thing. Actually later on in 1942 when MacArthur arrived, he arrived earlier than that, he was in Melbourne of course, he wouldn’t move out of there and the same thing with

Blamey, they never came up month after month until about three quarters of the year had gone. Actually, it was reported that two of our generals said to MacArthur that they wanted our Australians in the front-line because they were better than your men

and MacArthur agreed, that was something wasn’t it? That’s a big story.

Fortunately, when we first arrived it was awful. We had tinned butter,

the same thing every day, tinned meat but after about three months they started to send us up fresh food which made all the difference for the first two or three months and then you get sick of a diet like that.

They were manned full time.

When I say that they were manned full time, they weren’t on the guns themselves until there was a bombing raid but they were on duty seven days a week, we never got any leave. They couldn’t afford to have leave.

I can’t comment much on that, because

being a quartermaster I was at headquarters, which was away from the four gun sections. What did they do? They just had to probably read or something, some of them would have a bit of a leave but the thing is Moresby was just a shell, an absolute shell. They had been bombed

so much by the Japanese that the two stores there, the steam ships trading and one of the others, the two big stores there, they were completely wrecked, the whole of Moresby, the houses they were all just scrap.

No, no, no,

we didn’t have anything like that for months and months. I can tell you a funny story about after. They bombed the whole place and the stores were just a wreck, a lot of the fellows hopped in and helped themselves to whatever they wanted, which was bad but it was there

and I know our commanding officer, he got the fellows to get him a typewriter and send it back to Melbourne, now that was wrong. One of our fellows, he was down there just after it had been bombed and a couple of days after there was an air-raid warning, I was telling Martin we used to get the

coast watcher at Salamaua Airport, and the airport and all the towns along the east side of Port Moresby where the Japanese landed. Port Moresby was the last one left and that was the one that they wanted, so they could get an open gate and take over Australia.

This fellow was a coast watcher and they were looking a Salamaua Airport, which is just over the Owen Stanley Ranges, they were pretty high ranges, and he would give us messages, which were spot on. Because what he had was a native boy with him and they would be there every night, so they would know where they are

and he would send messages by radio. As soon as any bombing raids started they’d take off the air at Port Salamaua, this message “So many bombers left Salamaua at such and such a time etc, such and such a time” and within two or three minutes we would hear the noise of the engines, because the Japanese engines

sounded different from allies’ engines. We had time to get ready to have a go at them. But this day he had helped himself to a complete set of tails, you know dress tails, long

tails and all, and he was trying it on to see if it fitted him and the air-raid warning and he didn’t get time to get out of these tails and rushing up to his place on the gun in these set of tails it was that funny.

The store had them up there. They were big stores the two of them.

They had everything, drapery, clothing, food and quite a number of the native boys served. That was about in late February that they were bombed and it was just a shell. The stupid thing is the

Japs [Japanese] used to put over the radio, “A missed tile, this one was, the streets of Port Moresby will flow with the blood of Australian soldiers,” now it was printed in the Melbourne papers and I thought, “What is my fiancée going to feel when she sees that knowing I’m there?”

No, we didn’t have a radio, we didn’t have any radio at that stage. The other interesting thing is they admitted over their radio that the aircraft fire from

Port Moresby, above the skies of Port Moresby, was the worse they’d encountered since they left Japan, that was something because we still only had four guns at that stage but they did, that’s what they said, that was interesting.

Yes,

it used to take a while but we used to get our mail probably a fortnight or something like that.

Yes, that would be flown in.

Yes, they were coming in the first two or three months then they started sending us good food that could be kept and the cooks could

make all sorts of different dishes and that made a big difference. We used to get about halfway through 1941, and we were getting creams sent up and tinned fruit. That was one good thing about it.

No, actually I didn’t see

a white woman for about eighteen months. I felt strange when I met the first white woman I saw after eighteen months, and it was one of our army nurses and I thought and felt shy.

I think I had to go, it was at one of the hospitals.

I might have had to take some gear to one of the fellows who was in there, and I thought that was the first white woman I’ve seen.

It was up at the beginning of the Kokoda Trail and a nice area in the mountains for you but

that used to be a convalescent depot, but there was no hospital in Moresby, not a hospital. The 930F were the temps day after day in the wet season and it was terribly hot and of course

some of our fellows got malaria and some had dysentery and at first there was no hospital at all and all they had was a big marquee, I told Martin this, some of these fellows just lay on the ground, no beds, that was in the early stages.

No,

I don’t think we had any doctors there even.

No, but quite a few of them had to go up to the convalescent depot, they had the convalescent depot going on up in the mountains and they had to go up there to recover. Another thing was

the malaria, the lot copped malaria, there was scrub typhus, that took quite a few deaths, I don’t think any of our fellows caught it but quite a few others died with it. It was a terrible thing, there wasn’t even a hospital when we got there, no hospital to go to.

No, I didn’t see, we were very fortunate. Once we had sixteen-guns it made a big difference.

Two of our fellows from that

machine-gun and I couldn’t believe this I was at headquarters and I had to keep in contact with all the various gun sites, the equipment and all that sort of thing and clothing, feeding and all that was under my care. What was I getting at?

Oh yes, the Japanese dropped a 500-pound bomb and they were manning the machine-gun which was further down the hill, up where the other guns were, our guns were, in case any fighter aircraft tried to have a go and the bombers dropped this 500 pound

bomb on us and the crater was about that wide and they were kneeling down at the machine-gun only about a foot and a half away from the edge of this, and I saw the next day and I said, “However, weren’t they killed.” They got terrible shell shock and had to go straight back to Australia, fortunate they were but I don’t

think they would have been for the rest of their lives. I was just wondering what else there was. Is it all right to put a bit of humour into it?

That was the first one, the fellow with the set of tails going up to the gun.

The next thing we were a bit out of the town of Moresby because all the headquarters left because of all this heavy bombing and only a shell at Moresby in the end. We went out a few miles out from the area and had our tents and all that sort of thing and because we had our

open-air toilets, six holes in a row, out in the open, when it rained it was just too bad. That’s how we lived. For the first few months all we had was tables to stand up and have our meals until we got more equipment. It was primitive really.

Another funny thing was, this was well into about early 1944, the bombing raids stopped and because they were pushing the Japanese back and I went around to one of the gun sites one day, and here are these fellows and they were running around chasing each other

and I said, “What’s going on?” and they said, “We are the sheep and they are the dogs,” the dogs were barking at the sheep. They got so browned off, grown men after nearly two years of warfare and there they were chasing each other around.

The other thing was we used to have showers and the water was pumped up from the Laloki River, which Moresby used to have and the showers were open-air and a few duckboards and there were six shower rows for the water to come out and you had to have cold showers

because it was hot all the time, after the day in, it was so hot at night you would have a cold shower. I was in there and all soaped up and the water had stopped and apparently the pump had stopped working and pumping water up to our showers and here we are all soaped up and we had to forget about it for that day,

it was a bit disappointing.

Some of the men did it in their spare time, while they weren’t on the guns. We had two headquarters’ men there and they did little jobs like that.

We didn’t have many vehicles, we only had two

because all our guns, we were called a static battery. That meant they were static on concrete platforms.

The engineer company, one of the army engineer company and I got native boys, they helped, they did a great job

and that’s why they were a static battery and they were bolted down into the concrete. We weren’t mobile, we couldn’t move them. If we wanted to move to another site we had to put all the concrete bases again. We got through.

We were there for two and a half years and by that time the war had moved north, because the Japanese were on the run. We didn’t have until 1943, towards the end of 1943 we had the last raid on a hundred bombers

and we had no more than that.

We spent about eight months actually.

I think I might have mentioned some of the fellows on the guns they got, once they weren’t in action

they started arguing amongst themselves, I think I mentioned that one day I went to one of the garden gun stations and that and the fellows were chasing each other. Some of them were sheep dogs and others were the lambs or sheep, and I thought, “Well, how silly can you get.” Men who had been through months

of action, but it’s just what happens when soldiers are in action and when the action stops they start arguing amongst themselves and doing silly things like that.

I think I better mention I had twenty-four days leave.

Once we had had our last action and the Japanese were being pushed back and then our navy was in control they allowed some of us at a time to have twenty-four days leave back in Australia. My fiancé had agreed before I left Melbourne that we would get married as soon

as I got back and it was on just two years before I got notice of twenty-four days. It was a Saturday afternoon. The problem was to let her know, because we only had a radio, I think I went to the post office and they were operating then and I thought, “How could I let her

know?” So I put in the message, “Coming home on leave, hope to see you about our anniversary date.”

No. That we were engaged, and that was the day

that we were engaged and that was the 5th November and she got the message. Then, the next problem was I didn’t know how long before I’d get back. Those of us who were going back on leave, we had to wait a week before the Canberra came, troop ship, and

embark us further north from Townsville,

Cairns and then we had to get on the train at Cairns and Townsville, and we had to stop a couple of days there and then Brisbane. Eventually we got to Brisbane and that was, I sent that word

to my fiancé on the Saturday and on the Thursday week, about twelve days from when she got my message, the first chance I had to ring her on the phone. While we were travelling on the trains and we weren’t supposed to tell anything about dates. Anyhow, I went to the post office in Brisbane

and spent a night and I rang her and she said, “Oh, we’re being married next Tuesday,” that was the first I’d heard of when the marriage would occur. I said, “I don’t know whether I’ll be able to get there, there is a train strike on during the war,” however, I went to the commandant,

and we had accommodation at the sheep yards at the Melbourne Showgrounds to sleep on but that was how things were. I went to the commandant on the Friday and told him the situation, and he was one of a First World War man, he put his arm around me and said, “Don’t worry son, there will be a troop train leaving on Saturday morning and everyone going south

on leave will be on that train.” Then the trouble was, troop trains often stopped at Sydney and off-loaded the troops for two or three days before going on to Melbourne, fortunately our train bypassed Sydney and from Saturday morning I got on that train and arrived at Albury

early on the Monday morning. I had to change trains, because of change of gauge and arrived back at Royal Park Transit Depot in Melbourne at 1.00 o’clock. That was only about twenty-eight hours before we were to get married. I had to go and see

the minister that night and then we were married at 6.00 o’clock on the Tuesday, that was on the 9th November, just two years since we were engaged.

We were married in a small church in Gardner, my wife, and her father’s mother went

there, and it was just near the station, Gardner’s Station and then we had the, we were able to, my wife had done well, she’d gone ahead and made all the arrangements for 80 guests at the reception which was on Central Park off Perth Parade and that doesn’t exist now, that was where we were married.

Yes, I did. My brother who was in the, he’d been called up in the bank and he was in the pay corps and he was my best man. My wife’s sister,

she was the bridesmaid.

It was just two years, except for that three days. It’s a long time.

No. She’d been through a lot of worry because of those early days in Port Moresby, newspaper

reports that weren’t good, she remained loyal anyhow.

Yes, because I was a naughty boy. Being a quartermaster, I had to ration out all the Atebrin that we had to take, to stop us getting malaria. I had a theory in my mind that if I kept taking

it I might get malaria when I got leave when I got back to Melbourne. As soon as I got word on the Saturday that I was going on leave I started ramming the Atebrin down my throat. Consequently, when I arrived in Melbourne, I was as yellow as a Chinaman. I was married looking like that, unfortunately. Those twenty-four days’ leave

went very quickly and being a good soldier I reported back to Royal Park and that morning, in the afternoon they put me on a troop train, right up to Townsville. I had to wait in Townsville for a month, the troop ship Canberra to take me back to

Port Moresby. I could have had that month back in Melbourne if only they had let me. But that’s life, isn’t it.

I only had the twenty-four days.

Yes, just the twenty-four days.

Yes, we had our

honeymoon down in Queenscliff. In a hotel down there. Then we went on the Marana, it was operating between Launceston and Melbourne because my father lived in Launceston and so we went over there for a week and then

back to Melbourne and had the rest of the time in Melbourne.

Fortunately, at the time we were back in Melbourne my wife’s brother, he lived in Glen Iris and they were going away so they let us

have the house for about ten days, which was very good.

It’s hard to tell you. We adjusted quickly once we were married,

back to more or less to normal and I quite accepted it, didn’t seem any change. Having to get back so soon after, that was the hard part about it.

That would be 1943.

November 1943.

By that stage, the Japanese had been pushed back to the Battle of the Coral Sea, which was the turning point, and the Bismarck Sea Battle. We

didn’t have any, it moved further north, about September 1943 was the last bombing raid we’d had, didn’t have any more after that.

We did. Eventually they

decided we could not understand why we were kept up there in Moresby for a whole two and a half years when there were anti-aircraft battery in Townsville itching to get away and yet they just kept us there. The last seven or eight months there was no more action for us because the Japanese

had been pushed back, so we had to just stick it out. Eventually they decided to relieve us and they sent us a full battery from Townsville, to take over our guns. Actually, by the way, in the army we have to have anything supplied by the ordnance corps you have to

make a signature for it. The way the things were when we first arrived, I had millions of pounds worth of equipment in our unit that I never put my signature onto before, that’s most unusual.

We left all the

artillery sections and all the tents and everything like that. The unit came from Townsville and they just walked straight into that, they probably never saw another shot fired, but they got the same medal as we got, that’s another story. We were very relieved but we could never understand why they kept us there

so long when there was no action from the war.

No. It made us actually, there was nothing we could do, we just had to stay there. The sad thing about it was that when we did go back we were disbanded after being a new battery

in 1941 and then going through all the trauma and the worst part of the war and then they decided that we were to be disbanded. That was a blow to us.

What happened then,

we came to Brisbane first, in a transit camp there for a couple of weeks, and then down to Sydney and at Sydney there was a transit camp at Liverpool, where disbanded men and units, they just had to be allocated to some

other unit, which could have been in anti-aircraft battery. Some of them were sent to any unit at all, even the infantry. I was one of the last to leave and we were finally,

those of us left, we were sent as a unit before we were disbanded to a place out of Newcastle, Tomago camp there and we had about a month or two there and I can tell you a funny story about that. It was on a river, it was about ten

miles from Newcastle, if we wanted to go on leave we had to catch a pump, there’s a pump to go across the river and we used to have to wait for the pump and the driver of that pump, he seemed to have a thing about us fellows and his gun was the same because he didn’t quite like much of us at all.

If we were coming down the road to get on the pump, he’d just take off to the other side. After a couple of times this happened our fellows said, “Right, I’ll get a hold of him.” We said, “Look, we won’t give you a raw deal, no, if there is any more we will toss you in the river,” and they meant it. Anyhow that was where they were sent from there to

Liverpool area and sent to other units. In the end I had to go to Liverpool to fix up all the equipment, whatever equipment we had left we had to pass that in, and then that was the end of the 23rd Battery. I did try,

I was at a dead-end actually in the 23rd Battery because I couldn’t get a commission, seeing I was quartermaster sergeant and I tried three times while up in New Guinea to get a transfer to ordnance because I could have got a commission then, three times they said, “No.”

When we were in the worst of the times up there they said, “This man is too valuable we can’t let him go,” now that was ridiculous because when you have a war going on and an induction every day, anything could have happened to me but that’s how it was.

I was transferred in the end, which was strange, they transferred me to ordnance

school after all, just out of Albury, the Hume Camp that was, and that was where we had to do a course in ordnance. We did that course and I thought I topped the course and because I wanted to get back to Melbourne because

of my wife, she had come up to Newcastle for a couple of months when we were camped there, she was pregnant and so I said, “Could I get a transfer back to Melbourne?” They said, “Yes.” Where to, the headquarters to the 2nd Base Ordnance Depot,

Queens Street, Melbourne, living out. That’s what happened.

All about ordnance, they had to supply all the equipment and that sort of thing and

I knew all the rules and regulations because I had to deal with them when I was a quartermaster of the unit. That helped me to get top.

It means everything. All the equipment, artillery, machine-guns everything. It’s quite a big

and important part. Fortunately, just fortunately, they did give me a posting to Melbourne. Quite a number of senior NCOs [Non Commissioned Officers] from different units who had been posted there and there wasn’t much to do, we used to live out and that would mean we could be home every night.

I had a relation of mine who was a major in Albury, he told me, he said, “You’re in line for an officers’ school to get a (UNCLEAR),” and the war was nearly at the end then. He said, “I saw your results at school and you did exceptionally well.”

By that time we were into about October 1945 and they had started a number system, which is you get a certain number points to take a discharge and I talked this over with my wife. Our first daughter had arrived

in July and we thought that “We’d best not stay in the army because I could at best be sent away.” In hindsight I think it would have been better for me. That’s another story. Anyhow, that’s what happened.

Because I could have been sent away again.

I would have liked to have got a commission. I was very disappointed because I was knocked back three times, by the commanding officer of the unit. That

niggled me. “No, we’ve got a child now and it’s time that we had some real married life.” So I accepted the normal discharge on points in about November 1945.

We had problems

with the company I had been with and it had been declared a protected industry after I had left for the army and when I got back they told me “No, you don’t have, your job is taken,” that caused all sorts of things. After that I didn’t get a penny out of them, after all their promises.

So I just had to, they said, “You could go to Sydney as an assistant manager up there,” and so we decided that we’d take it. Fortunately, we were able to get a house, eventually after three months,

we had to use other people’s homes when we moved to Sydney, and we hated Sydney.

People there are different from Melbourne. They’re not as friendly as Melbourne people and it still exists and there is still a bit of rivalry between them. The manager there, he was not playing the

game with the company and taking days off, not telling me anything about it. I couldn’t say, I wouldn’t say anything, and that was what he was up to. He was very hard on me and after two years we decided to move back to Melbourne.

Well, I had to look for something.

Fortunately, I got a temporary position which was a manufacturer’s agent but that wasn’t what I was after. Eventually I got the position that I really wanted in a manufacturing company that was Sydney-based. I had to open their branch in Melbourne, that proved very successful.

It was Quality Castings, they were experts in stainless steel which was becoming a more involved industry by that time in 1950. They were a forwarding

company that supplied stainless steel components for industry. I had to open the Melbourne office, with one worker to count. Within two or three years, I worked hard and my figures, sales figures compared with Sydney, I wasn’t told this, I just found out

through someone who told me from Sydney, that I was only 10% under the Sydney figures.

I was the manager of the Melbourne office and I also was responsible for Tasmania and then

they had a branch in Adelaide, and they told me did I want to take over the Adelaide office? It was a busy time going over to Adelaide every month for three or four days and racing around and then catching a plane back home.

In 1956, I started with them and I turned 60 in 1976 and I said, “I’ve had enough, racing around this place

all the time going from different states all the time, so I want to take an early retirement.” I took early retirement fortunately, within two months I was offered a position with a Swedish company, which were the 3rd biggest company in Sweden and a private company and

they were in trouble with their Melbourne office because it wasn’t functioning properly so I was appointed sales manager there. As soon as I joined them I said, “Look, I don’t want to work a full week, I will try it for half a week,” of course it started to build up as usual and the next thing I said

“I’ll work four days and I want Fridays off to myself.” That was all right. I had to completely change the sales program and within two years my figures were 7 million, and that was a lot of money in those days. I used to have to go to Sweden every year

for three weeks to the Head Office and I thoroughly enjoyed that, because my metallurgy came into it and it was quite a responsible job.

I hadn’t done anything until I joined the company,

they offered to pay for my course at the RMIT [Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology] in Melbourne. I had to do it, it was night school, I said, “Yes, I’ll do it,” and that’s how I became a metallurgist. I had all the experience through

fifteen years there, so I was in my fifties. As I say there were a few of us who did first and second year and I was very annoyed because one of the young fellows in his 30s did beat me to the top of the class. However,

that’s what happened. I had an enjoyable time with the Swedish company because I could take my wife and daughter over there every second year and from there we went and saw lots of the world. We’d take holidays and see lots of the world.

Yes, but a different type of business though. They had a big factory manufacturing stainless steel plates, sheets and sheets all in stainless steel and they were based in a town called Avesta in Sweden, of about 30,000.

10,000 of the population of the town were employed by the company, that worked out very well.

Unfortunately I’d had a coronary attack after six years and that was the finish, I just had to retire,

I didn’t want to but they had told me after I had been with them for two years, on a trip I went over there, they said, “If I hadn’t joined the company in Melbourne they would have closed it down,” so that was quite a nice compliment.

Yes, I did. I felt I should. It would be hard for her because all these things that had been put in the newspapers such as the baton bomb at Port Moresby, streets flowing with blood of Australian soldiers and things like that.

She stood up to it very well and I could talk to her about it, it didn’t worry me fortunately.

When we were relieved I seem to, my nerves were starting to worry me.

I stayed up in Queensland and they sent me to a place where you rest, a rest place, where you sort of settle down and I was there for about six weeks and I was feeling much better. That was the only time

I had any troubles. I got through the war without, I only just have partial use of the right arm, and so I was very fortunate.

Yes.

No, it was at Newcastle, New South Wales.

No, I was just resting in there and just did the normal things

they do, they took us out on trips every now and again, tried to make us feel as comfortable as possible. I was soon feeling much better after about six weeks they said, “You can go back to your unit.”

No. I managed to get through it without that.

I was very fortunate really because I think being the quartermaster of a unit I could move around not like all those fellows on the guns all the time.

I didn’t know of any. They looked

after us very well and helped us a lot and after six weeks I was helped to leave there.

That happened during the early part when I was on rifle drill and I found I had dislocation of the elbow one morning

and I said, “I’ll have to tell them about this” but they decided it was a recurring dislocation of the elbow, so they said, “You will have to be classed as A2 instead of A1 medically, that won’t make any difference,” but unfortunately after the war I had a

fall and I tripped on the lino [linoleum] one day and fell straight over on my right arm and smashed the elbow and I had about twelve months of physiotherapy and they said, “The only other alternative is to operate but you would end up with a completely stiff right arm.” I said, “No,” because I

have 30 degree movement one-way and I could only move it that much, so I’ve just put up with it ever since.

Yes. I’ve got used to it, I do get a small disability pension for it.

Some things I can’t do,

which annoy me. At the meal table I have got to manoeuvre it around and that sort of thing. I will never get it straight, I can only sort of, and I can’t get it back any further than that. Lots of little things that I just can’t do now. I’ve got used to it now, I’ve used it as much as possible and I’ve built a,

outside here and I built a nice fernery and all the timber and everything and by night time my arm would be terribly sore but I thought I’ve got to keep using it all the time.

Yes.

No, I don’t know what caused it, it’s just that

the movement, the heavy .303 guns, rifles and that just seemed to set it off. I had to be very careful from then on, I just put up with it.

The Japanese used to broadcast quite a lot of things, just to upset us, and that was one of the things that they did. The stupid part about it was by that time Port Moresby was just a shambles. Most of the units had moved

out, and only left a few headquarter units in the Moresby itself, because they bombed it so much it was just, all the stores were bombed, everything, most of the houses were flat and just shambles really.

The bombers would come over

at about 20,000 feet and they would have their Zero bombers accompanying them to make sure they didn’t get hit and they’d come in and just do one run and drop all their bombs and off again.

I may have mentioned before the expert help we got from the coast watchers and we used to get reports from Salamaua and further up the coast as to when the movement all these bombers, they could tell us just roughly what time they would arrive in Moresby. Day after day this happened.

There was a bombing raid every day and you sort of get used to it.

Yes, every day, we didn’t have any fighters until the end of March 1942 when the 75 Squadron arrived, they were a fighter squadron and they did a great job. The other thing

I forgot to mention earlier, there was a squadron of flying boats based at Moresby and they used to go over, they would leave about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, the bow was injured but in Japanese hands and they would leave about 4 o’clock and they would be loaded up with bombs and beer bottles, and the beer bottles

were empty. What they used to do, they would take off about 4.00 o’clock, and I’d watch them from the Moresby area and watch them go up and fly across the harbour, and they were so heavily loaded, I thought that plane would never get over the mountain and the hills on the other side. Gradually they’d just miss it. They would fly till about midnight

over the bow and then they’d take off, land on the water and then take off and drop a few bombs, and drop a few beer bottles. Beer bottles made a noise, the same screaming noise as the bombs dropping. The Japanese didn’t have much sleep the whole night. Before daylight

they’d leave and get back about three in the afternoon, loaded up again and they did that day after day, and the Japanese, they must have hated it. That’s one aspect that I hadn’t mentioned was the anti-personnel

bombs. They were vicious things, because some of the bombers were loaded up with these anti-personnel bombs. The anti-personnel bombs are the bombs that they drop and that’s the fused cap in the bomb that allows them

to drop to the ground and then to go off. When they go off, no hole, as soon as they hit the ground they go off and they send bits and pieces of the bomb in a 60-foot radius

and anyone near one of those bombs could be killed or get badly injured, but they were vicious things.

Yes, we used to call them daisy cutters. You’ve heard of them? Yes, that’s right. Generally it was mainly the bombers that just dropped bombs everywhere.

We got control in the end.

We had quite a few hits to them in that time and some of them were hit and they landed on the mountain, along the mountain,

the Owen Stanley Ranges, some on the Moresby side some on the Salamaua side. Quite a few of them were hit but they could still keep up in the air but they couldn’t get over the altitude and that’s why the air force fellow told us all about the bombers that were scattered across the mountain.

That’s what happened.

They had a Guinea Gold they used to call it, it was a newspaper and that used to keep us in touch, and they’d tell us what was going on, so that was quite a help. That’s the only way,

and some of the air force fellows would tell us. At first we did have a few bombers, I think they were Australian-made bombers and they couldn’t do anything and they would go out and bomb the Japanese and come back over Moresby and some of the personnel shot

a round of holes in these bombers and we only had a few of them but we didn’t have any really, air force planes, to hit back at them. Until the 75 Squadron came and they lost a lot of good men over the time, they were excellent. That was a big help to us.

The Sydney Morning Herald war correspondent in 1942 in Papua New Guinea wrote regarding our battery as follows: “This battery is not an AIF but a militia battery,

only one AIF battery has fired as many rounds or caused as many hits or been in action for so long and that is one that served at Tobruk during the seize.” So that was a compliment. Another reporter was a painter Dargie, have you heard of him?

There is a reference 35488, it says: “Photograph of an oil painting by WA Dargie entitled Guns on ack-ack hill this much-bombed position never received a direct hit, it was a difficultly situated as it was on the very peak of a high point of a hill, this was 23rd Heavy Ack-Ack Battery, Royal

Australian Artillery and had the highest score of planes shot down in New Guinea, Port Moresby, September 1942; catalogue No 145.”

Yes. Another department of information shows our four guns entitled, “Australian Anti-Aircraft Battery somewhere in New Guinea manned and told by

Victorians, using guns manufactured in a Victorian factory: Their bag of enemy planes today is 43.” George Johnston another well-known war correspondent, he was in Papua New Guinea and he wrote a nice article about our battery entitled, “They held the fort alone.” This article was in the records of the War Memorial in Canberra but I do not have

a copy of this.

Yes. We all felt that they were pushed into that at Port Moresby when it was practically hopeless. The Japanese were advancing so rapidly, Singapore had been captured, and the bow was in the Japanese hands and most

of the towns down the west coast, the east coast of Port Moresby they were that close to us that we realised. I think I might mention this, the battle at the Coral Sea was the turning point but about seven days from the

4th May – 11th May and that was unique in that they never, the navy never saw the enemy. That was the turning point because the Japanese lost. It was a

big armada, fighters, at least planes they had two or three, anti-aircraft carriers, a number of troops, troop transports and they were going to take Port Moresby. There was only,

because they were beaten not by much, but they had to go back to bow to reinforce what they’d lost. It was gradually turning around. We had felt very well about it when the Americans arrived,

they had some units, artillery units, but they had all the aircraft, that we didn’t. They arrived towards the end of April. I will never forget the first big American bomber that

flew over Moresby and that was the first big American bomber we saw. In the end they supplied us with aircraft, about ten different types of aircraft that were in action. One of the most successful was the Beaufighter, the Australian Beaufighter and they were unique in that they could fly over,

just be behind a low hill and anyone on the other side wouldn’t hear it until they just got to the top of the hill and these Australian pilots would fly right close to the hill and as soon as they came over the hill they would be ready to drop their bombs. The Japanese called them the ‘Whispering Death’.

That made a difference. Once we got our own aircraft to help and the American forces were always quite helpful. They weren’t as good fighters as they were in bed.

It was terrible, the pilots and planes going backwards and forwards day and night and we knew things were very bad and it was the worst we’d seen since we got there really and that was when we were issued with orders to stay

as long as possible. They were hopeless the Japanese, they loved to land, to depress our guns and use them as ordinary field guns, still hopeless, blow them up, so they couldn’t get them back to Daru.

West along New Guinea. Its 500 miles from Port Moresby, those 500 miles are jungle over 50 flowing rivers. The Fly River, at the mouth of the Fly River in New Guinea, that’s about twelve miles wide

and I had to issue all our fellows with tins of bully beef, biscuits and as much ammunition as their guns could handle and back to Daru. Impossible, absolutely impossible.

Not really.

Because we had been caught in that very difficult situation. I might mention that General MacArthur and General Blamey, I don’t think they came up to New Guinea until about September 1942 and sort of said, “Oh.” That’s my opinion and a lot of other fellows have

the same opinions.

We just said quietly, “Here we are stuck here, and we just have to fight for our lives and fight for our country,” and that was all that we would do. We hoped that we would get through. It was a great relief when the American forces arrived and

when our first fighter squadron arrived. From then on, the next problem was that the Japanese were stopped at the Coral Sea or the Battle for Australia as it is called, and they thought they would get onto land

further down the south coast at Maliana. They thought we had some Americans troops then we had planes. There was our RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] and the militia, Australian militia and some of our AIF troops

had been brought back from the Middle East and that was the first time that the Japanese had been defeated on land. They did some awful things there, some of our fellows in their boats the Japanese would just shoot them and if any of our boats sunk they would

just shoot them in the water, just kill them that way. That’s awful, really, to think of.

Beg your pardon?

Well.

If they did, we didn’t know much about the Bismarck Sea because they’d moved further north.

Once they were pushing them back up the coast when the bombing raids stopped in the middle of 1943, September 1943 we just knew what was going on and we weren’t in action then.

I had to make sure all the, we had four gun sections by that time, whereas

in the first three months it was just the four guns. I had to make sure, I had several fellows under my control and one would have to look after the rations and get them from the supply department, the Australian supply stores and any ammunition,

we had to have plenty of ammunition there and anything else, like if I wanted new boots, new uniforms and that kept me busy and I’d be out and around all the time. Many times I would watch for bombers coming over and you would just get used to it.

Yes, if you’re on the ground yes, on the hill and get on top of the hill which was harder to hit. I remember one day I was out with the commanding officer and another lieutenant and we were

coming back from one of the gun sites I think, bombing raid, not used to the bombing raid we heard the bombers coming, it’s not us. I was the driver and I stopped the car and we all got out of the car very smartly and up a little hill. I couldn’t beat them the way that they were running up that hill. I just took my time but you just got used to it. That time

there was a spell of the bomb and the bombs were pretty close, you just got this acting spell and we got through.

We just take a day at a time. We thought, “We were here, we had to defend

Port Moresby to save Australia and we got to keep at it and do the best we can.” Wait really, until we got the help from the Americans. I have a list there of all the different types of aircraft that they had, about twelve different types of aircraft. The way the Americans

could build airstrips that was amazing.

There were just a few houses left and that was about all.

They’d gone. All the women had gone back, they’d been sent back

before we arrived. Men, women and children and a lot of the men, they were sent back to Australia. The authorities knew how serious it was.

They were around, they’d help a lot. Actually I think they helped in

getting those guns up, sections of those guns up on the hill, when we first arrived. They were quite helpful, there were others who weren’t helpful, and generally they were. Of course you know the story of the four Australian soldiers blinded and being helped by one of the local

ladies and they were quite helpful. There were others as far as coast watchers were concerned, other ladies who would tell the Japanese what they had learned, once the Japanese knew they would behead them. It is hard to realise.

Not many, because once it started, all the units moved out into the surrounding area so they weren’t actually in Port Moresby, only a very few headquarters personnel I think, that was all.

My position was head quartermaster in the headquarter sections and all the guns were out of Moresby or just near there, and we just had to move out and we lived in tents and ate off tables and we didn’t have any seats to sit on

for a few months until July 3rd. I can tell you a funny. One day we had one of our gun sites near where there was an extra wall built, the black American drivers they used to pick up all sorts of stores

to take to the American units and we had a gun site just next to one of their sites, American sites. These black drivers they had a big truckload of corn and they used to, beer would come down,

a lot of beer would come up in crates and they used to drop a few over, they asked us about a site fence between our patrons and their camp. They asked, “Could we drop a few of these over the fence and they would take a few?”

Then this happened a couple of days and then they found out that the rumour was all and they’re not going to try and grab them any more and they’d get into trouble. Anyhow, they came back to our fellows to get all these crates of beer and they said, “All right, you can have them, but you have got to pay for them,” and that’s a bit of Australia

dealings.

Yes. Our battery particularly, because when they arrived there was a 101 Aircraft Battalion came with the Americans but they had small equipment

like mainly for firing on aircraft that are trying to attack, not bombers but the fighters are trying and attack our area. We were the first Australian/American unit

joined for about three months before they moved further north. We used to get on quite well with all of them. We had the American colonel, Colonel Frazer I believe from memory. He was a great guy and once a week he had a meeting and all the senior men, non-commissioned officers and officers were called

together and we were told what the situation was. That was very helpful and that’s another. We were the first ones to be called the Australian/American 101 Battalion. They moved further north after a couple of months.

No. This was incomplete, the 39th Battalion had a shocking time and I was thankful I wasn’t on the 39th Battalion then because they were sent up on the Kokoda Trail where they should never had been,

they didn’t have a hope of stopping the Japanese. It was fortunate when some of the AIF battalions, it was months before we got any of the AIF fellows back and when they did come back they got a surprise in the conditions that the militia battalion, the 39th

Battalion and kept a hell of a lot of the Japanese back. Some of them, I wasn’t there but I saw them start up at the Moresby end of the Kokoda Trail and that’s when they didn’t even have green uniforms. Some of them didn’t even have a pair of boots, they wouldn’t

have had any food for five or six days. At least the AIF fellows when they were put up on the Kokoda Trail they met our fellows and they said, “They were brave fellows, they were militia and we couldn’t have done better.”

I only saw those fellows at the start at the Moresby end of it and it was terrible.

The only thing I took was a photo of my fiancé, and I had that with me all the time.

I didn’t have anything special, just the normal kit bags and we had to carry these heavy kit bags with all our gear. When I got to Moresby, I was fortunate, before the stores were bombed, I managed to buy a camp stretcher. That was a good move, because

not many of them had those.

I suppose it did actually, I was senior to all the gun sergeants and most of those were permanent

army men. We were classed as a militia battery, well part of us were but then we had all these sergeants from Queenscliff where they’d been trained and they were permanent army men. We had a few young fellows who put

their age up so we were a bit of a mixture.

Yes they were. We’d had six months training in Melbourne from June, till they bombed Pearl Harbour, to December. We’d

been actually responsible for the defence of Melbourne, we were a well-trained unit, because we had the permanent army fellows and that stood at a good stead because most of them were in charge of the guns,

that made a big difference.

Yes. Because I have correspondence that

was written in the First World War regarding my uncle and he was killed, so I had a fair idea.

Yes, I felt I should be in the army to defend my country. It was a hard decision to make.

I thought I should.

We’d just kept going and say, “Well we’re here, we’ve been sent

here and we didn’t think we would ever get out of it, so we have just got to keep going,” that was the only thing to do. No, we would worry about our loved ones at home. If I don’t come back just imagine what it would be like. It was pretty worrying times I can assure you.

As I say, we all felt that we had been pushed up there in a hurry just as a stopgap, there was probably no hope. Down in the Victoria barracks how were we going to get out of it?

Yes.

Yes, they were. Most of the time I was sharing a tent, a big American tent, with a sergeant major

and he was a sergeant when he came and he was one of the (UNCLEAR) in the end and he didn’t have any fear in his body but he was a great fellow, but I was just the opposite, I wasn’t like him. We shared this tent together.

He was a real character. The guns had about three forty-four gallon drums, one on top of the other and they were a veterans’ round, earth was tipped into those drums and that gave cover for the gun and I think they had two or three, no I think it might

have been two with a fifty-four gallon drum loaded in with earth. Every gun had those veteran rounds. When the action was on “Butch” we called him, Butch Bartley he used to walk around on the top of these drums, veterans, and give these orders to the fellows

and that’s the sort of fellow he was but we were two distinctly opposite. We used to have out and around in the bush, showers and just open showers, just duckboard and six rows of showers and the water would come up from the lake, I mentioned an incident earlier

and we’d be soaped up and then the water would go off. He used to walk up a little hill to where our tent was and every afternoon it was stinking hot and all that, we’d knock off and have a shower about 5 o’clock, he’d go down to the shower stark naked, towel over his shoulder and a

pair of army boots that he’d cut up and he made them like slippers. He was a real character, the things he said to me. I could go on and on about funny things. In the end he was out on a motorbike one night, after we’d got notice of being relieved and going back to

Australia and we had a motorbike to go around to various gun sections and to see if they were all right. He was out this day and had an accident and went off this bike and broke both his wrists, the day we were due to leave for Australia. Butch couldn’t, as tough as he was, I felt very sorry for him

I had to pack up his gear and take it out, we had hospitals then and take it out to the hospital, after all we’d been together there for two and a half years, and here we had to leave Butch back in the hospital. He got over it all right and he joined us later on but he was a really funny man.

Yes.

Yes, the letters came through fairly well. I suppose we’d get it about a fortnight from when they were posted. Because every letter had to be

examined to see that no information in it and bits cut out and now and again when I opened it a couple of bits cut out here and there. I thought that I might complain a bit and I was quite friendly with officers who were allowed to censor them so I

got on pretty well with one of the lieutenants and he used to say, “I know you won’t divulge any information, I will bring your letters up and just sign them,” so that was very helpful, not all of them. All the men, their letters had to be censored.

There were one or two, two or three of them who did. I don’t know how many but two or three of them did have problems. My wife was so loyal to me for those two years

I felt that was a big help to me to get through.

Well, that’s a good question, because there weren’t any women. As I said earlier I

hadn’t seen a white woman for eighteen months. They did fraternise with the natives.

No they didn’t, not that I know. Actually, later on in about the beginning of 1944, when things

had settled down and we knew we were well on the way to pushing the Japanese back, they used to send (UNCLEAR) up there or something like that. They would have dancing, they built one of the buildings that remained intact and we used to use that for dancing and that sort of thing.

I didn’t, I wasn’t much of a dancer. That was a help to them, I don’t know any of them who had any associations with the native women. You get used to seeing them with their grass skirts, breasts and you don’t think about it any more.

One of our chaps was killed, it wasn’t in action. It was in the evening, the Americans brought

pictures up that they could show, southern pictures they could show and they’d get out in a big marquee and this night they went out and he was sitting in the back of one of the trucks, and apparently the truck went over and caught him across, the tail board caught him across there and that was the only death

that I know of. Some were sent back because, I had one of my fellows and he couldn’t take it and after about six months he was just sent back to Australia, its just nerves. That’s the only casualty that I know of in all that time, amazing really.

I think it was made for him. He wouldn’t wash his clothes or anything like that. He just couldn’t take it. There was another fellow, he was one of the permanent army fellows. As soon as the bombs started dropping he

went to pieces, and he was one of the permanent army men. He was a big strong fellow and they had to send him back. These things happen.

Some of them are, yes. We had a reunion

on the 12th April in Duckboard House, you know where that is I suppose?

Well it’s in the centre of the city, it’s.

No, it’s called Duckboard House. They have reunions there and they have it all set up with a bar and that sort of thing.

We had our reunion there on Saturday. We were a unit, a member of the 30th Brigade, at one stage we were a member of the New Guinea Force, then sometimes we

would be under a division or head command. Because we were classed as ‘storm troops’ and we were a battery on our own, not even part of a regiment. That’s how you used to be moved from one to the other. There were other anti-aircraft batteries, which set up to other sections, parts of New Guinea. Later on in the middle of 1942,

end of 1942. Members of about two other batteries from Victoria and we didn’t even know them. So in these reunions you just don’t know whom, you know your own men. There were eight of us at this reunion, that’s 23rd Battery. I suppose there would have been another

twenty-five there from that battery. Unfortunately, being a small unit we don’t have any particular reunion of just our own battery. There are not many left now, only seven of us. One or two of the others we heard were too sick to come. It’s gradually

getting less and less.

Yes.

In April 1943, we had been there nearly a year and a half and we’d been through the worst of it and the AIF troops had never been through and they did,

a mobile AIF Regiment came back from on duty overseas from the Middle East and they thought, “We’re in an ack-ack, we’re in a choco [chocolate soldier],” as they used to

call it, but we didn’t worry. We were given the opportunity in April 1943, they said, “Would you like to change over to be an AIF?” and the majority of us said yes. We’d done the same thing only we’d been there at the time when those other

fellows, who were in the AIF overseas would have been better there.

Yes.

They probably didn’t want to be sent back to other units, to another place probably. I joined, I said, “Yes, we’d been through this now,” we’d proved what we were

and our metal, why not. Actually, I must mention this, the AIF battery that came back from the Middle East was last stationed in the Moresby area but further away from us and every time we went into action, once they didn’t come

till about, well right into 1942. It was well known in the Moresby area that 23rd Battery bomb, 23rd Battery shells would burst in a nice straight line, but they are a battery and everyone in Moresby knew that but of course we didn’t say anything.

That’s just by the way, anyhow, most of us said, “Yes we’ll join,” so I got my next number.

Yes.

I was a churchgoer. I think, his parents, one of his parents was either a Catholic and the other one was a Protestant, unless his father was from a different

church. He knew I was a Christian and in the campground he would probably walk down from somewhere, and he’d see me and start to hum and he knew all these hymns. So he nick-named me ‘Padre’.

There was a funny incident, he’s mentioned up in the, in Canberra, I did see it but I didn’t get a copy of it, and it mentions him as a, he was such a good

sergeant that he was promoted to sergeant major and that’s why I was a quartermaster and was a sergeant major and that’s why we shared this big tent. He had got this tent from the Americans apparently, who had plenty of them.

We had a few young fellows who had put their ages up, they used to get pretty frightened when they were in action and they said, “This sergeant used to give them a clip over the ear if they got a bit flighty,” you see and they said, “After about a fortnight they were more scared of his clips over the ears than they were of the bombs.” I wish I had got a copy of that, I did read it up there.

Another funny incident, I hope you have got time. We were mates for a year and a half, nearly two years and we got on all right, and he was always having a go at me about missionaries coming up.

He used to go over and play two-up, where our battery headquarters was. He’d go over and play every night and stay till 10 o’clock, but he would only take about five pounds as it was then. Once he’d lost the lot he would come back to our tent. This night,

there was a story from Melbourne, he used to get papers sent up, the Truth, just a crummy thing. Brother Bill was a chaplain, he used to be a Christian and he was helping people in trouble. Then they found out that he was getting onto the sex side

on the telephone to different people, of course this was in the Truth. I remember the day he got this, “There you are padre, talk about your Christians, there’s Brother Bill.” I said, “Oh yes.” A couple of nights after he’d come back and I’d gone to bed and I had this camp stretcher and I’d got it when I got up there,

but his bed was a, you know heavy mail bags, cut down each side and it would stretch out to about six foot six and that wide. He had an ammunition box, and an ammunition box at each end, and he’d got a couple of boughs off trees and tacked that onto the ammunition boxes and then he put this canvas

bag that he’d split and nailed that to there. That was his bed, of course he had fly wire. This night he came back, and I was in my bed and he hoofed up a couple of steps up to the floor

and he came in, stamped in, came over and whacked me on the backside, no he first came in, went over to this bed of his and said, “God bless Mummy and Daddy, Staff Sergeant White and Brother Bill,” and turned around and came over and whacked me on my backside and said, “Pretty religious, aren’t I padre?”

I will never forget that as long as I live, he was a funny fellow.

Yes.

Did I what?

I just took it in my stride, I got used to him, he nicknamed me ‘Padre’ and I said, “Oh well.” No, it didn’t worry me but the funny things that he did. I can’t think of any more at the moment but that’s one that will stick in my mind all my life.

No, no I didn’t, it never did. My wife and I are Christians and I never had any doubts, about that. I thank God we weren’t caught on Port Moresby.

If the Japanese had taken the place, we would have been either executed or taken prisoner of war and sent to the railway or something. That’s the only thing I used to think of, I’d pray I didn’t want that to happen.

Oh yes, naturally.

If one of these anti-personnel bombs daisy cutters. Get caught in the wrong place when

they’re dropping the bombs. The other thing that I have had to think of, in those camps when you’re moving around the area, the raid is on, you hear the fused cap whistling down, it’s a bomb, if you got hit by that it would knock you out or kill you. That didn’t happen fortunately.

I got close a few times but I got used to it. You think, “I hope I can keep alive, get back and be married,” it’s only natural to think like that. I got used to it. Later on you might have a look out and I remember a chap with the ordnance,

I had a bit to do with him, and we’d be perhaps together one day and the raid would come on and I’d be there watching. We didn’t bother about racing to trenches at that stage. Naturally, I think that some people were different from others. Butch Bartley, he just didn’t have a fear of any of it.

I think so, yes, they are. Because of the seriousness of it and the fact that we were sent away, we all thought

we wouldn’t get back.

Up there, not much. I dream a lot but it’s not those things that I dream about, that’s the strange part about it. I don’t know why, it’s usually that I’m getting the worst end of the stick in these dreams. No, fortunately I

got through. It was great to get back to Australia, I can assure you.

I think so.

I think

it gave me more, it did my faith a lot of good.

That’s a good question. I lost my wife

after fifty-five years. She was a lovely person and I just felt when she died and I was with her right up to the last breath and I just felt that God knows what is best and I have got to accept.

I’m thinking about it, that God knew better than I did. If I’d gone first it would have been very hard for her to have handled things because we had quite a number of shares. They were left to my parents.

Learn a bit about the stock exchange. So I thought that, “God knows better than I do. I have just got to accept it.” That was probably what I felt during the war, “Whatever happens, I’ve just got to accept it.” Does that make sense?

Yes.

Yes it was, because

as I mentioned before, and I had a book there and it said that General MacArthur and two other Australian Generals, this was the infantry I will talk about when they were pushing the Japanese back into New Guinea. They went to MacArthur and said, “I want Australian troops in

the front-line because they are better than the Americans,” and MacArthur agreed. I read that. They didn’t come up, the General should have been somewhere in New Guinea much earlier.

MacArthur arrived in March or early April I think and he was in an office in Melbourne because my wife was secretary to the head man in the Trustee Executives and they were in the same building as MacArthur. She saw him go out

quite often. The first time they came up it was about three quarters of the year and the worst was over. I’m just repeating what was in the book and I hope that’s right, that’s the situation.

Excellent. We owe a lot of thanks to the navy and the air force, because the air force fellows they lost a lot of men, good men, Bluey Truscott was one of them I think. The navy, we had four

battle cruisers escorting us through the Coral Sea Battle on the way up.

It means a lot to me because,

first of all my uncle who was a great fellow. I was only born while he was away and I saw a letter one day that he had written to my mother and he said in this “Oh, I believe I’ve got another nevy,” and my mother wanted to know what this nevy was. “Oh, Nephew,” anyhow apart

from that I did four years of, not part time, four years in the field artillery in the 1930s. Then I felt, as I mentioned earlier I think, I had a feeling that the

AIF fellows away we might be needed in Australia and that is why I didn’t join up with the AIF immediately. They had a terrible time, there again, similar to us, only worse they were pushed into the Gallipoli and they didn’t have a hope of

winning there. I lost my uncle I thought, “I should do some voluntary training.” Just as well, I was here to stop the Japanese, I helped stop the Japanese.

I did until two years ago. It was two years ago I

found, the trouble with assembling you just don’t know how long your unit will be passing from Flinders Street. We had to wait up along Flinders Street, nowhere to sit and the last time we waited for two hours standing. I’ve

got back trouble and I stood there for two hours and then I thought, “I just don’t think I can march any more.” The strange thing is as soon as we got marching I felt, “Isn’t that strange? I was so tired.” Anyhow, I thought, “I am just getting too old, I’m afraid.” I’ve got this back

trouble in the top of my back. The RSL [Returned and Services League] they sent one of their men out with his car. He picks the veterans up and takes them in to town and then we don’t even have to wait to join them, as the march starts and then we’re driven down in the cars, arrive behind the

shrine and have all the seats ready for us. Last year and this year I did that. This year I’d just seen my unit pass and I thought, “I’ve seen enough now,” that was quite close to the end. I just saw this

ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation] trailer or something there and I noticed one chap with medals on sitting in there, I thought, “This might give me a chance to say something about the 23rd Battery’s record” because it hadn’t been given much publicity anywhere. Once this chap had finished I went in,

and they said, “Come in.” I came into the other section there and I told them that I had something to say about it. Nothing much had been said and we did a great job and they said, “Right, sit there,” and I put the things on and I didn’t realise it was being broadcasted but I just said my say

and they said, “Very good,” I said, “Thanks very much,” and I asked if they would send me a copy of it. But they didn’t bother about that, they said, “They would.” The other day I was talking to a friend of mine and they said, “I heard you on the air on Anzac Day,” I said, “Where?” He said, “I was driving up in the country somewhere, and I had the TV [television] on

and it came over.” At least someone heard it. That was interesting.

Yes.

When we went up there, we went up there on

the 3rd January 1942. From then on till about 1934 it was the Victory Medal I think, no, the Pacific Star

and that was supposed to be 1939 to 1943, that was what it was originally. But then, they extended it by two years. We’d been in the worst of it in 1942 and 1943 and yet these other batteries came up and probably had never fired a shot in anger

and they get the same medal. That seemed a bit unfair.

Forty-three, officially, it’s in the archives.

Forty three, that was on the, that I showed you before.

Yes.

Yes.

No, because we’d been fighting under the same conditions, under

worse conditions than most of the AIF who were away in the Middle East. A lot of them didn’t see any action there.

No.

No, we’re treated by Veterans’ Affairs and there’ve been very good. I can’t fault them at all, they’re very good indeed.

Yes.

I just can’t think of any just this minute.

Yes. One of the lieutenants who came up later, he is a friend of mine and I kept in touch with him and he is about the only one that I can recall. He’s a Christian, we used to go together when things

had settled down late 1943, there was a Church of England, just at the foot of the hill that the guns were on and that was bombed and they had to try and renovate the Church and get it going. We used to have a padre,

and we used to take a service every Sunday night. Anyone from the surrounding area would come. I used to and my lieutenant friend would go in every Sunday night and it was quite nice to have that.

No I wish I had. I haven’t had the

opportunity, I’m not allowed to, after several years I’m not allowed to fly.

It makes it difficult.

I suppose we’re told that we should forgive and forget. The things they did, I suppose I’ve got to

forgive them, but you can never forget them. That’s the best way to sum it up. I have a book there, New Guinea 1942-43 that was given to me by a friend. He’s a younger man than me and he was in the voluntary army just

here back in Melbourne and he gave me that, and it’s out of print now. That’s got a lot of awful things that the Japanese did. It is hard to even talk about what they did. Our men, they just cut off their heads with their swords, things like that.

Pegging women missionaries on the ground and cutting their breasts off and then killing them. I won’t go any further, it is shocking. That’s in that book.

It was for fifty years, but I don’t think it is now.

The problems are,

what are they called, what’s that religion?

Yes. I think that is very clear that they wanted to get rid of all Christianity, and that’s a difficult situation. I’m quite concerned about it.

I’m concerned about my children and my grandchildren.

Well, the trouble is at present, age of children, in my grandchildren’s age and in their twenties, they used to go to church but

two of them, I mean they didn’t go to church while my kids were away, I think that’s bad. The third one, the one I mentioned, a very bright lass with a degree, she’s just the opposite. I just think, “What has happened with my daughter Lyn in the next ten years? I can’t live

indefinitely, I have got to look after her.” you see, that’s one thing I felt when my wife died, I thought, “I’ve got to look after her.” That’s how I feel, we’ve got a very difficult time ahead.

I can just say that I’m glad I could put something into winning the Second World War. It is disappointing that we are getting back into trouble again and I’m concerned about what’s ahead of us.