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Australians at War Film Archive

Cyril Allender - Transcript of interview

Date of interview: 8th March 2004

http://australiansatwarfilmarchive.unsw.edu.au/archive/1586
Tape 1
00:30
So where about were you born, Cyril?
Where was I born? Actually, I was born in Fremantle. Don’t ask me where.
Fremantle Hospital or?
No I don’t think so no. Just outside of Fremantle, I don’t know where it was I have got nothing to say where it was. Just born in Fremantle.
Did you grow up in Fremantle?
01:00
No I grew up in a place called Nabawa just outside Geraldton, you know where Nabawa is?
No I haven’t heard of that.
Its about twenty-five miles out of Geraldton between Northampton and Geraldton. And of course Geraldton was my sort of home town if you can call it. but my parents had a farm there, and I done all of my
01:30
football and tennis and whatever you done, farm work. I had to drive a truck on the farm, drive around the paddocks and what have you.
What kind of farm was it?
Wheat and sheep.
What kind of jobs did you have on the farm?
General, like fencing and herding sheep. I never took on shearing, other people done the shearing,
02:00
it looked too hard for me anyway. General work on the farm, I mean we had horses in my day, there was no such thing as a tractor, I was only a kid then. So I used to have horses, we had teams of horses and they done all of our farming, ploughing harvesting, cropping and all of the rest of it. So I grew up with it,
02:30
and I suppose, when I came out of the army I thought I can go back farming, but there was nothing in farming for me. You know sixpence a week or something like that, as a kid. So I left the farms when I was about sixteen and went to a place called Wiluna.
During those sixteen years what was it like to go to school in Geraldton?
Well I didn’t go to school in
03:00
Geraldton actually, I went to school in Nabawa.
It must have only had a small school there?
Oh yes and you had to walk about four and a half mile to go to school.
How many kids went to school there?
Would have been twenty or thirty I think, I can’t remember how many were there.
Sorry Cyril did you say it was a one room schoolhouse?
Oh yeah.
So you went to school in the one room with all ages?
03:30
Yes. And then I went to Provido School there from there as well, that was closer. I used to stay with an aunt of mine in Provido and
Where is that?
Provido was a lead mine actually, a lead mine out of Nabawa. The hotel there, the Nabawa Hotel was known as the Miner’s something,
04:00
I just forget what the name was then. Renamed of course, but Provido was a lead mine.
Well why did you change schools?
Well it was closer to get over there, it was closer to get over to school. I lived with an aunty of mine.
Did you enjoy school?
I suppose like all kids you know, I hate school.
04:30
Sometimes it was good and sometimes not.
What did you like about it?
Oh I supposed it’s learning and it’s, I think the kids and what have you, I don’t know, it’s one of those things when you go to school what do you do? Like to play.
Were you ever in trouble at school?
I used to get a few cuts [caned], more than one.
05:00
I mean I got my fair share of cuts I can tell you that.
What did you deserve the cuts for?
Well I can’t remember running late for school or something like that. Doing something wrong, talking at school or something like that, not like today because you can’t get the cuts today. I used to get more because they used to hit I used pull my hand away like that and they used to come up and hit it underneath and if you pull it out of the way more than once you get another one.
05:30
Did you play school?
Yeah I used to play football and tennis, cricket, yeah.
What kind of a pitch did you play on? Did you used to have a grass pitch up there at that time?
Yeah. Back, as I grew up I used to play for a team outside of Northampton, can’t think of the damn team name, we won three grand finals anyway.
06:00
What position did you play?
Around about the forward line, tried to kick goals but didn’t kick too many.
You couldn’t have been too bad if you won a few premierships. What do you remember about your parents growing up?
Not a great deal I don’t suppose.
06:30
I mean my parents were parents. I grew up with all of my uncles and aunties more or less.
So were your parents running the farm you grew up on?
Yes, it wasn’t a big farm, on the edge of the sand plains we used to have a wet patch, we used to grow all of our watermelons, rockmelons, pumpkins, all of that they just grew their on their own, sow the seed and that was that,
07:00
no looking after them or anything. And we wanted a watermelon we would just go and get one have a feed out of it and leave it on the ground, next day go and get another one.
They would just self-sow?
That’s right.
Why did you spend more time growing up with aunties and uncles?
Why? That’s a good question, well my parents didn’t want me, so
07:30
I grew up with them.
Were there reasons that they decided that you should?
I think they separated or something like that, yeah. I was left, out in the cold.
So did you see much of your parents at all?
Not greatly, no.
Who were the aunt and uncle that you grew up with?
08:00
Mainly Aunty Eve, I got one aunty in a hospital now she was ninety-eight on the 23rd of family [?UNCLEAR], she is in a home now in Nanduin [?UNCLEAR Mandurah?].
Sounds like she has had a good innings?
Yeah but she has been in a home for a long while now, very low now, I haven’t seen her for a while. But when I went to Wiluna I lived with her for quite a while
08:30
when I first went up there. I finished school of course and whatever as well. And then I came back to the farm for two year, I looked after the farm on my own and then I left home and I went and worked for another fellow for one year, he had a good team of horses and when I finished that year I went back to Wiluna and got a job.
09:00
First of all I got my truck, I was only seventeen, I got my truck and I applied for a job driving this truck, and I got the job, so I had been driving for about three months and the boss said to me,” Have you got a job to drive this truck?” “No.” He said,” Well you had better take this truck into town and get a licence.” So I thought this is the end of my job, because you had to be twenty-one in those days to get a licence. So I drove
09:30
the truck in there and I saw the Sergeant Kelleher, his name was. I said, “Pat sent me I have got to get a licence to drive this truck.” And he said, “Oh well if you are good enough to drive in theirs you’re good enough to get a licence.” So that’s how I got my licence.
So it was easily done?
Yeah, easy enough in those days.
What kind of work were you doing as a truck driver?
10:00
General work around the mine at Wiluna, Wiluna was one of the biggest gold mines, it was in Australia, one of the biggest gold mines in the world actually, at one stage so I believe. And they shafted thousands of feet, I didn’t work down the mine, but I got a job working down the mine later on and I was still working there when I joined the army.
10:30
There must have been a lot of men working on the mine?
Yeah there was a few, I can’t remember I suppose there would be, I don’t know, might be a thousand people, I wouldn’t know actually. There was ten thousand people in Wiluna at one time.
What ages were the men working on the mine?
I suppose all ages I would think, I was only eighteen when I went to the mine and I worked there until I joined the army.
11:00
Were there many young blokes there?
Oh yeah, wasn’t many as young as me but middle aged people, middle aged people, in their thirties and forties I suppose, which mainly all of the workforce is like that really.
What was it like being one of the younger blokes?
Oh pretty good, the older blokes used to look after you anyway.
So they took you under their wing did they?
11:30
Oh yeah I was in charge of the elevators, the elevator with the belts and all of that sort of thing. Good job, used to get two pound a day.
And where were you living?
In the town itself.
Was this with?
I lived with my aunty, living with my aunt there.
What were her house rules for living with her?
12:00
She used to have a boarding house, rules were same as anywhere else, look after yourself a lot, I did. She did all of my cooking for me of course and all of my washing, it was pretty good.
Was the boarding house usually full of other people?
Oh there were a couple of boarding houses around Wiluna at that stage, yes.
12:30
Only four hotels in the place, I suppose they were, I suppose boarding houses they done their trade suppose. Then I lived in a place called Red Hill, when I was there for school I lived in a place called Red Hill with an aunty of mine there and other people, my cousins.
It sounds like you moved around quite a bit, Cyril?
13:00
I moved around a bit yeah. And of course as time went on and you joined the army that took you around a bit.
Before you joined the army you must have learnt quite a bit about taking care of yourself and earning your own way?
I think when you were on the farm you had to, when I was a kid I used to do most of the cooking around the place my parents they taught me to
13:30
I used to do the baking, making cakes and that and I used to love it. I was a better cook then I think than I am today. Not very good today, hope you don’t want, steak and eggs or anything you might be all right today. Other than that not too good.
So you mentioned you were earning two pounds a week on the gold mines?
Yeah.
That’s pretty big money for the Depression era?
It was, especially when you got about sixpence a day,
14:00
or six pence a week, I used to get when I was a kid. When I got my first job, what would it be now? Five bob, five bob a week or fifty shillings whatever you want to call it, that was my first job.
How old were you when you got your first job?
Fifteen.
And what was your first job?
On the mine, no on the farm rather.
14:30
Looking after the horses and doing all sorts of things, fencing and anything, whatever the farm wants.
Why did you decide to go and work on the gold mine?
I considered there was nothing in the farming for me, when you’re getting five bob a week you think, there has to be a better life than this.
15:00
I couldn’t imagine me working on a farm for the rest of my life and I decided it was time to get out, I was sixteen when I left home, I had had enough of farming, I had had enough of farms and I never went back. I mean the poor old [UNCLEAR] today, it is a pretty hard life really, up and down.
Unpredictable each year.
Yes it is, either rain, hail or snow and then when they think everything is right, I can remember we had a really beautiful
15:30
crop one year and all of the emu’s came down and cleaned the lot up. I was only a kid then. And we used to get a shilling I think it was for an emu beak.
What did they use the beaks for?
Oh well it was to try and get rid of the emu’s, they used to pay a shilling a beak to kill them,
16:00
so you get the beak and you get a shilling for it.
So they were like trophies?
That’s right, same as a fox tail you used to get so much for a fox tail.
So were you pretty handy on the old rifle?
Was pretty good then yeah. We used to have a twenty-two on the place.
How old were you when you learnt to shoot?
When I learnt to shoot I was only a kid.
How young?
16:30
I don’t know, six, seven, eight. Can’t quite remember. But we used to go rabbit shooting when we were kids with twenty-twos. Used to have a kangaroo dog. A mate of mine, he was a cousin of mine, I think I was about fourteen we used to go chasing kangaroos on horses, with dogs. And I had a galah, the galah was riding right on my shoulder, and we would be chasing
17:00
these roos and the dogs used to catch these roos and we would follow along on horses, used to go through the scrub jump bushes and go around. But the galah used to ride on my shoulder he would flutter off and away he would go but he would always come back home. Always come back with me.
Did you give him a name?
The galah? I dot remember but he was a beautiful bird.
17:30
We used to have fun chasing these roos. Roo dog, he was good at catching roos. Used to catch them and pull them over his shoulder.
What kind of a dog was he?
They called them kangaroo dogs, other than that I don’t know. He looked like a tiger,
18:00
so that was good fun. There is good fun on the farm when you’re kids and you haven’t got responsibility or anything. I mean I was about fourteen, that sort of thing, it is a good life. These are depression times as well, you wouldn’t know anything about the Depression?
No.
Well we never went hungry because we lived on a farm and had plenty of eggs and meat and grow all of your own vegetables and that sort of thing, so we lived pretty well on a farm.
18:30
So you were grateful that you were living on a farm and not in the city?
At the time yes, I think it was a great life living on a farm. I wouldn’t have minded going back to farming, I could have got a farm through the government when I got out of the army if I had applied I suppose, but farming didn’t appeal to me.
19:00
I think I had burnt off when I was too young, well when you’re young on the farm you get knighting out of it, when you’re getting five bob or six bob a week or something, well there is not much future in that.
How many people were on the farm?
There was about five of us, five or six just depends, different times and different people.
19:30
Usually there are only so many people a farm will be able to provide for in a family or?
Yeah well most of them used to work away as well, used to drive would the farmers as well do you know what I mean? They’d get their jobs. As a kid you don’t really take much notice of what the other half are doing.
20:00
You get your bread and butter, well bread and dripping, and I used to love fried bread and dripping, have you ever tried it?
No,
You should it’s good.
I have heard it is pretty good but I don’t know.
Probably not good for you but it’s good.
So what were you learning about the war as it was looming?
What did I learn about the war?
Before you joined up?
20:30
Oh, before I joined up. Well first of all in 1939 just after the war started we went to Perth from Wiluna to join the navy, they told Billy he was too young and told me I was too old, so to Bill they said, “If we want you we will call.” So he went home and waited eighteen months
21:00
to join the navy and they wrote him a letter and said he wasn’t required, so he finished up joined the arm. So when I got knocked back from the navy I came back to Wiluna and thought well if they don’t want me in the navy I don’t want to do anything, so anyway all of my mates were joining the navy and I ended up joining the navy in March 1940.
21:30
Why did you decide to try and join the navy?
Oh it just felt like it was good, I suppose everyone has an idea, some joined the air force, but I decided I would join the navy but I got knocked back so, I finished up in the army.
Growing up near Geraldton did you see much of the ocean?
Oh yeah.
Do you think that might have been a reason for you to want to join the navy?
22:00
Oh no I don’t think so, I wasn’t a good swimmer anyway, I couldn’t swim anyway. We didn’t see much of the ocean really. Nabawa was about thirty mile from the ocean really, it was a fair way.
So what happened when you enlisted with the army where did you enlist?
22:30
Where did I enlist? Wiluna. I can always remember a mate of mine, bloke by the name of Pat Lynch he dinkied me down to the Rose Board [?UNCLEAR Rose Bay?] used to go down to the Rose Board office, so he dinkied me down there on his bike, said, “Lets go and join up.” So we joined up down there at the Rose Board office and that was it, waited until we got called up.
Did you have to wait very long?
23:00
Not real long I can’t remember exactly, might be a month or two I am not too sure.
Were you still working on the mine during that time?
Yeah worked on the mine until we were called up.
Did many blokes leave the mine to….?
Oh yeah a lot of blokes, yeah. When we came down on the train from Wiluna there was about twenty of us on the one day, so,
23:30
Were you looking forward to going overseas?
Yeah.
What were you expecting?
That’s a good question isn’t it? You don’t know. I mean I think I was looking for a good time. But never thought about the hard part of it which was to come later on of course but the army was good to me, I have got no regrets about it. I spent five years in the army and I have got, I have got no regrets at
24:00
all but I had some hard times, but I have got no regrets at all. Made some wonderful friends and it was, I think it was a wonderful life, it was a wonderful life for me, and the wonderful experience for friendship. See coming from a farm where you haven’t got many people around you, and you go into the army and it is a completely new life.
24:30
Like a family almost?
Well sort of. I mean your mates are mates and you learn later on that you depend on each one ad a dependant, you become friends and mates and not enemies., and you have to live with five or six blokes in your camp all of the time
25:00
so it is a –
A way of life.
Well you live with people and you make some wonderful friends.
Which depot did you come down to in Perth?
We came down to Claremont when we first came down to join up, enlisted in Claremont and then down to Coogee, they had a came in Coogee, you know just down from Fremantle, you know where the South Fremantle Power House is?
25:30
Yes.
The old South Fremantle Power House? Well there used to be a camp there and we used to camp there until the crew that was in Northam, they went out, they went overseas, when their boat came in turn, when they shifted we went up to Northam and did our time up there.
How long were you at Coogee for?
From memory about six weeks I think, I can’t remember exactly.
26:00
So had you been kitted out with uniforms and rifles and things like that?
Yeah.
Where was all that done, at Coogee?
No when you joined up, you get your kit when you sign the dotted line you go and get your gear.
What was the gear like they handed you?
Just your uniforms and whatever, boots, shirts. And first of all you have got to dispose of the gear your wearing.
26:30
How did you dispose of it?
Oh take it home or get rid of it somewhere. I took mine back to, took some back to some friends, they kept it until I came out of the army.
So how long were you at Coogee?
Coogee, about five or six weeks I think.
What kind of training were you doing there?
Oh just general routine sort of stuff, have
27:00
you done anything in the army at all?
No.
Just marching and routine work, route marches and all of that sort of thing, started to learn about rifles and that sort of thing. When you leave there, that’s only initial sort of thing, when you leave there and go to Northam then it starts to get more serious up there.
How much more serious was the training in Northam?
Well it was harder work, more training, more drill.
Can you describe the sort of drill and exercises?
27:30
Yes, well it’s parade every morning, line up and sometimes with rifles, rifle drill, all of this all sorts of drill. Marching with packs and this sort of thing, all pretty serious straight away. And you learn how to handle guns and dismantle them and rebuild them,
28:00
Bren guns and this sort of thing. That all was a part of it.
Was that all training that you did in Northam?
And it only gets worse, bigger and better I suppose you could say, when we went to the Middle East it got harder training. It gets harder all of the time.
Well before we jump forward can you describe the camp at Coogee?
28:30
Just I think they were just tin huts I think, fairly big huts, the cookhouse was fairly big.
And the food?
It was pretty good.
What was it?
For the stuff they had it wasn’t too bad. Army cooking, I don’t know how to describe it. Some of it was pretty good, some of it wasn’t too good. Generally if you were hungry you eat it, you had nothing else.
And what was the camp like in Northam compared to Coogee?
29:00
Not too bad, not a great deal of change, you get away from the no mattresses, we had a palliasse as they call them, full of straw. That’s your bed and blankets.
That sounds a bit rough?
I thought it was a bit rough too. But it’s not too bad when you get used to it.
How long did
29:30
it take you to get used to sleeping on straw?
It doesn’t take too long but your stuck with it so it is no good saying you don’t like it because you have got to get used to it anyway.
How long were you in Northam?
From memory I would say about three months.
Did you get any leave while you were up there?
Weekend leave yeah. I joined up in
30:00
March, I am not too sure when I came down to Perth, probably came down in April sometime originally. Then we would have been up in Northam April, May I suppose and then we were on the boat in October we were at sea.
Well before we get on the boat, what sort of things did you do when you had leave?
Get on the booze I suppose.
Down here or up there?
Well we were up around Northam, go around Northam on leave, if
30:30
you had Perth or somewhere to go, then you would come down to Perth, sometimes we used to come down to Perth if we had a long weekend. We used to camp, there was a place alongside, do you know where Barnes used to be? Alongside Barnes there used to be a guesthouse and we used to stay there for the weekend.
And did you go a bit amok or?
31:00
Oh not really. It was a bit of, I didn’t know much about Perth those days, I mean I hadn’t seen, I think I had seen Perth once in my life until I joined the army. So Perth was all new to me.
And what did you think of the big smoke?
Oh I thought it was pretty good.
Where did you go out on the town?
Used to beat around the bush and go and have a few beers and what have you.
Were there any popular pubs you used to go to?
31:30
Used to go to the Savoy. Do you know where Savoy was? You wouldn’t know where the Savoy was?
No.
It was in Hay Street, not very far down from Barrack Street, what's his name Jones?
David Jones?
Yeah, alongside of that.
And what did you get up to at the Savoy, who would drink there?
32:00
Oh usually a few mates would get there have a few beers and carry on. We used to go to dances, used to go to the Embassy in army boots. That’s where, used to go down there and have a dance in those days.
And you could dance?
No. Oh I used to do a little bit of old time dancing. Used to go to the …
The Embassy?
The Embassy, yeah.
32:30
The Embassy sounds like it was a fairly grand ballroom was it?
A beautiful place, absolutely. I think it was a crime when they knocked it down. Do you know where it was?
No.
Down the bottom of Mill Street I think it was, yeah. I think it was Mill Street. I don’t know what's there now, one of the hotels there on the corner. But it was a beautiful building there.
33:00
Meet a few nice young ladies there on the dance floor?
Yes but the trouble was I couldn’t dance so I didn’t do much good. So since then I have learnt to dance, even now I go dancing five days a week.
Do you?
Yeah.
Whereabouts do you dance now?
33:30
Oh about four or five different places we go to. Fremantle Club, the Stan Riley Centre, the Air Force Association, Hearl Avenue [?] Senior Citz [Citizen’s Club].
Sounds like you have a busier social life than mine, five nights a week out dancing.
It is good yeah.
34:00
Sounds great. So by the time you left Northam were you ready to get on a ship and go off?
Oh yes I had my twenty-second birthday on the Queen Elizabeth I have got a photo out there I will show you.
Who was on board the Queen Elizabeth?
Who was on board? Oh gee, there was six thousand of us. I couldn’t tell you.
And what was it like leaving Fremantle on the ship?
It was fun I thought.
Was there any chiacking [teasing] or mischief happening?
34:30
No not really not on the boat, I got fined five pound for smoking down stairs.
That’s a hefty fine.
Yeah. I was smoking down the decks and I got caught.
Why weren’t you allowed to smoke down below?
Out of bounds down below, I don’t know that was the rules.
What was daily life like on board the Queen Elizabeth?
35:00
Queen Elizabeth I was on. Yes. Well first of all I got lost for a start. Took me about an hour to find out where I was, so yeah it was pretty packed, six thousand on there. Line up for your meals and that sort of thing. It has got a lovely story about the Queen Elizabeth.
35:30
I had a story about it and it is a story, if you like ships you’ll just about cry because it was very sad.
Would you like to tell me?
When it came here, when it was building it the war broke out, it was never finished, partly finished. And when
36:00
we got on there was six thousand of us to the Middle East, and it made another ship and the Americans took it, how come, they got it anyhow. They stripped it right down and had twenty-five thousand Americans on it as a troop ship. And then after the war it was located somewhere over in New York or somewhere over there
36:30
as a floating casino. Anyway it finished up in the Hong Kong Harbour as a floating hotel or something like that and caught on fire and was sunk in the harbour. And when it left, it was built in Scotland and all of a sudden it
37:00
had to get out of the docks because the Germans found out where it was apparently and word was that they were going to bomb it before it ever got away. So they took it out at night, midnight, the only people that saw it go, it never had a farewell or anything like that, never had a bubbly on the,
37:30
say greeted out. But most of the people that worked on it all cried as it left the docks. And it went to America, a lovely story. I was trying to get a photo of it but I couldn’t get a photo, a friend of mine just recently I was telling him and he said, “I can get one.” And he got one over the internet. And he got me the photo of it, full sized photo out there now.
38:00
Oh okay. So how many days were you on board the Queen Elizabeth?
I can’t quite remember but it was probably about two weeks I think. If I went through my books I could tell you.
And what were you doing daily on board?
Well routine there was physics work, mainly well physics mainly.
38:30
Can you describe them?
Well push-ups, and what have you, all sorts of like aerobics assort of thing. No marching because there was nowhere to march but they have to keep you moving somehow. Routine drill. Mainly fitness work you know.
39:00
No time idle they kept you on the move all of the time.
So you weren’t sunbaking?
Well there was a bit of time for that but not a great deal, you can’t get six thousand blokes up there anyway.
Anyone get seasick?
Yes.
Yourself?
No. Never been seasick.
39:30
Not on that boat but on other boats I was coming back on poor bugger hanging out of the boat and he was green. And he was that sick he couldn’t get away, had his head hanging over the side, I felt sorry for him.
I bet he felt like just going over the side.
I suppose he felt like jumping in.
So you said you celebrated your twenty-second birthday on board, how did you celebrate?
A few beers I guess.
40:00
Who were you drinking with?
Oh you had to, I am still learning because when you get on the boat you get all split up to a certain extent and you get into different groups. So you learn people, you get to know people in the army, I mean, “Gidday mate,” you know and, “have a beer.”
40:30
As soon as you have a couple of beers with them everyone is a mate you know.
What was your beer ration?
Not on the boat it wasn’t no, plenty, it wasn’t very good. It was New South Wales, XXXX or whatever it was. We didn’t think it was any good anyway.
But you drank it just the same?
We drank it just the same yeah.
41:00
Well there was nothing else to do of a night, drink or go to bed.
What about gamble?
Used to play two-up. More two-up, there was blokes that ran the two-up schools on the boat yeah. When you were out of money that was it, no money no drinks either. You would go and borrow a few dollars of somebody else and start again.
41:30
And where were you bunking on board, what kind of beds were you in?
In the hammocks. Down below, down under water somewhere.
Sounds a bit claustrophobic?
Yes it probably was.
What was it like sleeping in a hammock?
Pretty good if you didn’t fall out.
Did you ever manage to fall out?
Yeah, a couple of times.
Tape 2
00:35
So Cyril, can you describe the Queen Elizabeth for me?
It’s a very, to me it’s, I thought it was a wonderful ship. It was, the movie theatre for instance, it was something I had never seen in all of my life
01:00
and I probably never will because it’s fantastic. The swimming pool for instance with all mother of pearl, the decking was all mother of pearl. It was beautiful. And the theatre was just something I have never ever seen before, it was all circular and it was just absolutely beautiful. But it hadn’t been finished, I could just imagine what it could have been liked if it had have been finished. There were swimming pools
01:30
and decks for playing games and all sorts of things on it. But I would never see the best of it myself because we were just parked in places, I never saw the best part of it, I never lived in the best part of it because I was only a private I was never going to get in the good parts. It was a wonderful ship.
02:00
From memory it was either eighty foot over the water and sixty foot under or vice versa, I am not too sure. And the water, the spray, if you sit up the front in the spray the water would come right over the ship. We went up there at times, it was rough I suppose, so the spray came over the front
02:30
of it, sixty or eighty foot out of the water. It was eighty-seven thousand ton, the biggest ship, I don’t think there has been a ship built as big since as the Queen Elizabeth. I was just reading just a while ago, sixty-six thousand ton, the new one that just came in yesterday, was a bit heavier, that was sixty-eight thousand, I just read,
03:00
I am not too sure. So the Queen Elizabeth a very, a lovely story the Queen Elizabeth but they haven’t got a Queen Elizabeth anymore have they?
I don’t know.
I don’t think so, the only one there was.
What was the eating area like because I am imagining there are quite a few men on board?
It was pretty good, seeing the place hadn’t been finished
03:30
and I suppose it had been stripped down quite a bit at the time, so, there was nothing flash, not from what I can remember but it was all right.
Was it everybody eating in exactly the same room?
No we couldn’t, I think there was, as far I can work out there would be different decks for eating I suppose well we used to go to different decks, but I suppose there would be more than one deck for eating.
04:00
What did you do mostly to pass the time when you were on board?
Well there is not a great deal to do, we used to play coits and that sort of thing, have a few beers or that sort of thing, the bar wasn’t open all of the time either that time, it was open certain hours. And other than that part of your drill whatever you were doing, I suppose you would call it pretty boring, really to a
04:30
certain extent. Other than drill, drill, drill, drill.
So when did you first dock did you stop anywhere along the way?
No, we went straight to Port Tewfik in Egypt. That’s where we got off it.
So can you tell me what your
05:00
impressions of Port Tewfik were like at the time?
I didn’t see much of it actually, I went from in there to a staging camp and we were there one night and the next day we were on a train,
Can you tell me what the staging camp was like at Port Tewfik?
Well it was pretty basic. Get a feed, bed,
05:30
palliasse.
Canvas tents?
Oh no they were big huts. I think they were used by the some army before, British army had probably had them before, because the British owned all of those countries at that sort of time, India and, the British Empire?
06:00
I think they would have been built by the British originally.
So you were just there for a couple of days?
From memory I think we were only there one night.
Are you being told anything where you were going to be heading?
Yes we had an idea we would finish up in Syria. We knew
06:30
we were going there. But actually I didn’t get to Syria anyway because it turned out. But when we left the boat, after we left Egypt we went on a train to go up to Palestine, and I am sure the train had square wheels, but anyway.
07:00
The conditions weren’t so good?
They were pretty rough and we crossed the Suez Canal there, El Kantara, the name of the place was. El Kantara. Then we went into Palestine and our camp was Hill 69 other than that I can’t tell you anything more that where I was.
And what were the conditions on the train like?
07:30
Oh pretty rough, we didn’t have any meals I don’t think I can’t remember.
Did you say you didn’t have anywhere to sit?
Oh yeah there was seating, we had, I think we had a meal on the way but we were only on there the one day, I can’t remember quite how long it took, it wasn’t that long. But we got to where we got off, El Kantara we got off.
08:00
What happened at El Kantara?
We got picked up in trucks. Taken to our camps, they were tents up there. That was the first time I had been out of Australia and it looked pretty rough.
So what were your impressions then of El Kantara?
Well I wasn’t very impressed at all to be quite honest, it was all desert more or less.
08:30
Can you try to describe the place that you were staying?
Well there was a lot of orange trees around the place and there was, and they used to carry their oranges around in these big heaps on these poor old donkeys loaded with these big heaps of oranges on each side of them, on each side
09:00
of the donkey. Poor old bugger they were just about loaded down with oranges, heaps and heaps of them. Lots of fruit things around the place, but other than that it was pretty bare. A few slip trenches around the place to jump into if necessary. But all tents, like Indian tents all over the place, had all your own tents.
09:30
How much water were you getting?
To drink?
Well to wash or drink?
We had plenty of water to drink and the showers and all of that sort of thing were pretty good. Toilets, they weren’t too bad.
What were the toilet facilities?
Feasible.
10:00
What does it look like?
I don’t know really,
Just a hole in the ground or what?
Yeah they would be, yes a hole in the ground. But they were good, some of them were good compared to some other I went to, we had one just a hole in the ground, no roof or anything else.
10:30
Wooden lid to sit on.
Are you doing much drill and training there?
Well that’s all you do of course through the day, it’s all drill and rifle drilling, all sorts of drill I remember there we learnt about Bren guns and we had Tommy guns at those times there as well.
11:00
What did you think of the guns?
We used to have to pull them to pieces, do them up again. Learn how to dismantle them and put them together again, learn how to use them, it was going all of the time.
Were you getting taught anything about desert warfare?
Yes.
Like what?
Well I don’t think we were going to the desert anyway
11:30
but I don’t think it was anything different, a lot different to when we got to jungle warfare. All we were doing mainly was marching and open country, other than that I don’t think there was anything special about it. Just desert and then
12:00
I didn’t go to action there myself, but in Syria it is very rugged country I believe, rough heavy, so there is no desert there. So I never really got to the desert warfare at all. And it was October when we landed there
12:30
and I think it was January or February when we left there. So I didn’t see anything of the desert at all really, and I didn’t see anything of Syria either.
Did you have any leave?
Oh yes.
Where did you go?
Used to go to Tel Aviv.
What was in Tel Aviv?
Not a bad city.
13:00
Beautiful ocean, the Mediterranean, swell coming in, the wind coming in all of the day yeah it was fantastic. But the city was just another city I suppose, there was hotel and things like every other city and there was plenty of shopping there and,
13:30
three times I was in Tel Aviv.
Did you buy any souvenirs?
Any souvenirs I had I lost them all because when we left to come back to Australia, well we didn’t know we left to come back to Singapore actually, all of our kit bags were taken away and eventually they finished up, we didn’t land in Singapore
14:00
because Singapore fell before we got there, so all of our kit bags finished up in Warwick Kit Store. Warwick Kit Store went up in flames, we lost everything. So all of my souvenirs and everybody else’s went up in smoke. So we didn’t get any souvenirs at all.
That was a bit of bad luck.
Yes it was, I lost a camera and everything there. Photos
14:30
and the whole works there.
With the leave at Tel Aviv, anything else did you get up to in the town?
Not really just go up there have a few beers like I said, muck around. Have the day there and come home again. Another time I was on duty we went into Jerusalem,
15:00
I spent a day in Jerusalem, unfortunately I was on duty myself and three or four others, so we had to look after the other guys who were having a good time and see that they done the right thing. That was a good trip across there, they went across there with these
15:30
Palestinian drivers, took across these old buses, what they call the Seven Sisters? And it is a razorback road, edge, and you lean over the edge like this and that side is not too bad, but this sides. That was a good drive, so long as you weren’t worried about going over the side. It was a long way down.
16:00
What other things did you manage to see in Jerusalem?
Jerusalem? I didn’t see much at all I just walked around the town actually because I say we were on duty half a dozen of us. Went around a few of the churches, had a look around. And I think we went in there,
16:30
something about the guy on the cross, what's his name, God? Went and had a look there, but yes other than that it was just walking around the town. Only had the one trip to Jerusalem. I could have had another leave to Haifa but I knocked it back and never got the chance again.
Why did you knock it back?
17:00
Well I was the only one of our platoon that was going and I didn’t know anybody else, and I didn’t want to go now, knowing anybody else so I knocked it back.
What sort of information was seeping through to you blokes when you were out there doing all of the training?
17:30
Not a great deal, you would get the news follow the news all of the time of course I suppose we were all eager to get to where all of the action was. And sometimes you get there, so it happened. I think everybody goes over there thinks
18:00
I want to get there and have a go. Other than that it’s, just wait and waited and do the same old thing again tomorrow and the day after, it goes on and on.
Sounds like it was quite tedious?
Well it gets a bit boring I mean really,
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I mean you’re doing the same thing all of the time, but that’s army you have got to get used to it that’s all.
Were you hearing any propaganda?
What was her name? What did they call that woman? She used to give, going across the Middle East on the Queen Mary and the Queen Mary was sunk we heard that.
19:00
That it had been sunk, I forget what they called that woman. She used to get on the air, she was a German yes. Whether she was a German or not, but she was from Germany and she used to get on the radio and tell us all of the things that happened that didn’t happen, like the Queen Elizabeth getting sunk, which didn’t happen.
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Well we’re still here anyway.
So you treated it with a lot of humour the propaganda?
Well you had to laugh didn’t you because you were still there. We weren’t floating around in the water.
So what's the next step? Do you go back to Australia at this point?
20:00
No, we were told that we were leaving Palestine and we were going to Singapore. So we were brought back to El Kantara again came back by train back to Egypt. And we went to a staging camp
20:30
there and then we were given, the name of the boat we came down there on was the Old France. We came back on to Egypt. So we went to staging camp in Egypt that night and we went into Egypt that night, a couple of us went into Egypt and had a look around.
21:00
What did you see in Egypt?
Well there was nothing there but we got a couple of bottle of brandy and brought back with us. We had a drink on the side of the road. Anyway we got on the boat the next day, next day went on the Kosciusko I think was the name of the boat that took us to India.
21:30
That was one of probably the worst trips I have ever been on a boat. We had steak and kidney twice a day and I think it was from the First World War.
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So you were just talking about the ship that you were on on the way to India?
When we got to Bombay, we were given six hours leave, and of course the terrible thing was we missed the boat.
How did this happen?
How did it happen? Well we got on the beer and didn’t get back in time and the boat had pulled out and left us
22:30
behind. Anyway we were picked up that night by the British Redcaps – police.
This is in India?
In Bombay and we were taken to a staging camp and they put us in these huts. And of course we were all about half nut I suppose and I woke up in the morning, where the hell am I?
23:00
So I thought I must get out of here pretty quick, I dint know anybody around the place so I didn’t know where I was going, didn’t know where I was. So I run into one of the other blokes, he said, “What are you doing here?” I said, “We had better get out of here.” So we walked out, I don’t know what street and a taxi was going by so we grabbed a taxi and said, “We want to get back to the wharf.” So he took us
23:30
back to the wharf and we said, “The bloody boat is gone.” But we thought we were the only two people left in there and we thought, God this is going to be great if we’re stuck in Bombay for the rest of our lives. Anyway we walks up and down to the wharf asking for someone to take us out to this boat you see? So finally we got a boat that said, “If you come back at such and such a time we’re going out there we’ll take you out.”
24:00
So he took us out there and they went around the other side, on the starboard side, and that was it, nobody really missed us. And at that time we didn’t know there was another two hundred and fifty behind us, they were all picked up later on and were brought back on a ferry and they were all fined five pound each, and were confined to the brig for the rest of the trip.
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What did you get fined?
I didn’t get fined at all because they didn’t miss us. So we got on the booze there but we hired a gary [type of rickshaw], and there were ten of us on this gary and we were going to drive around town and it broke down. So someone kicked the horse out of the cart and someone set it on fire.
25:00
So then we were surrounded by the ten [UNCLEAR ‘deem of’] Indians. So one bloke , I was riding a horse down the main street anyway and another guy jumped there was a wedding, and another guy he jumped and rid with the bride and groom down the main street of Bombay. Anyway we had a lot of fun. We got aboard again and then of course we were heading for Singapore.
25:30
What was it like on the ship?
Pretty rough, very rough.
So can you give me a bit more detail about what was so rough?
Well they were just, we had no hammocks to sleep on or anything like that, probably sleep on the floors. There was seven boatloads of us and I can’t remember all of the names of the ships. But before we got to Singapore,
26:00
Singapore fell from memory about twenty-four hours, thirty-eight hours before we landed and then we turned around, unbeknown to us of course and finished up in Ceylon. Ceylon then.
Well how did you find out that Singapore had fallen?
When we found out when we got back to Ceylon, we weren’t going to Singapore anymore because Singapore had fallen. So we didn’t
26:30
know where we were going then we weren’t told where we were going.
What was your reaction to what had happened in Singapore?
Well we didn’t know, we had no idea what was going on from there. We weren’t told. And we weren’t told anything from there, we were on water for seven weeks incidentally.
Well how did you find out about the fall of Singapore?
Well that was general
27:00
knowledge I mean it was on the news and everything else.
Did it come as a bit of a shock?
Oh yes, I mean even today I believe Singapore shouldn’t have fallen really. They had all of the troops they wanted there to hold Singapore and it was mis-management I put it down to that is why Singapore fell, but anyway
27:30
it is something that was out of my control.
So you ended up back in Ceylon?
Yes they took us back to Ceylon we were there for two days, just parked there, couldn’t get off the boat or anything they held us there.
Just parked there.
Seven boats of us. And so then we leave there and unbeknown to us we don’t know where we’re going, no one tells us.
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After about another month on the water sitting there going around and around I don’t know. And somebody said, “The dingo looms up.”
The dingo?
The dingo, you know, on the flour mill in Fremantle. Fremantle. Of course the only people who knows about the dingo are West Australians I suppose. Then we knew where we were. So all they done on that boat,
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and I am not joking when I say we had twice a day every day, and I think as far as I know the seven boat loads had the same. Almost rotten steak and kidney twice a day, and ropey bread, sour ropey bread. Anyway right away, we had Indian crew and we got to know of a
29:00
few of them and said, “We want to buy some food.” So we used to buy or food, we got one tin a day a meal a day so we used to put our rope down and pass it up and we would bring our dinner up of a night time, that’s what we lived on. We couldn’t eat the other food.
So you lived off Indian food?
One meal a day, that’s all we got on there.
What kind of food, like curry?
Curry, yes, it was lovely.
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We used to see them putting the meat, all of these sides of bullock on the boat before we left and all of these Indians walking around with heaps of meat, sitting on it or whatever. We thought well this is great this is, we have to eat this. Don’t know if we got any, I didn’t see it, don’t know what happened to it. And before we got to Fremantle we had a storm
30:00
and you could see them, about a third of the boat and the propeller, came out of the water, you could see the whole lot of the boat, it was all of the same. You would be walking along and come to a standstill, mark your place because you couldn’t go anywhere, it was too steep to walk you would just stop and then all of a sudden down she’d go and away you’d go.
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So that was the toughest trip I have ever been on a ship.
Sounds like a pretty bad storm?
Yes that’s right.
Where were you on the boat to sit it out?
I think I was about half way down from memory, they had these bunks, one by one I think they were about three deep, up on those.
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There must have been a bit of seasickness going on in a storm like that?
Probably was, I didn’t see too many that I knew of. A lot of guys, I never ever got sick on the boat, but I mean I have had a boat of my own since, I never ever got sick. I don’t know you would think at sea you would get used to it. I used to think you can’t be sick all of the time
31:30
but some people they just get sick all of the time. They just, have you been boating?
Yeah a bit.
Were you sick?
No. Lucky.
I don’t know I don’t get seasick so I don’t know how people get sick.
Sure so what happened when you can into Fremantle?
Missed the boat.
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So you got to Fremantle got off the boat?
They gave us twenty-four hours leave I think and there was about two hundred and fifty missed the boat from here. It must have been West Australians that missed the boat from here.
Was there anybody to greet you when you came back to Freo [Fremantle]?
Not really.
So it was really a surprise that you made it back to?
I don’t think people wouldn’t know that we were coming most likely with all of the
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secrecy those days.
So what did you get up to over your twenty-four hours and more?
Well a lot of people, I had friends to go to, they went to their places and other than that we had a few beers and mucked around and a lot of them had no intention of catching the boat, of course.
33:00
And when we did go to catch the boat it had gone so we missed the boat?
So then we were picked up by the cops and taken back to Claremont.
So what's the penalty for missing the boat?
Five pounds. There was two hundred and fifty of us.
What would be the equivalent today? I mean is that a lot of money?
Yeah five pounds, that’s two weeks’ pay.
33:30
Five bob a day so what’s that?
It’s a fine that you don’t really want to get. I mean did you intentionally miss the boat?
Yes and no, I wasn’t fussy whether I caught it or not, I didn’t want to miss it, I thought the boat would wait for it but it didn’t. We finished up,
34:00
we were all lined up in Claremont, we were lined up ten at a time to face this old judge, all five pound each, that was it. And then we caught, we were put on a train and went back to Adelaide.
What's the train journey like over to Adelaide?
34:30
Pretty rough, I went in a cattle truck. With a palliasse. That was my trip across there.
It must have taken quite a while to get across?
Yeah, it took must have been about two days I think from memory.
Well how did they feed you during that time?
Well they used to pull up on
35:00
the side of the road, I imagine they had a cookhouse on the train and they used to pull up somewhere on the Nullarbor and feed you, all get out on the line and they would bring this tucker out there and dish it out.
Are you being told anything about where your final destination is going to be?
No we knew that
35:30
were going to New Guinea when we come back, but we didn’t know when.
So why were you heading towards Adelaide then?
Well they took us in there for, I don’t know why we went to Adelaide really, but that were our battalion went and we were there for three weeks I think from memory.
36:00
What were you doing in Adelaide?
Nothing much at all, saw a bit of the city there was not much doing at all. We had lost all of our kits, the kits that I had told you. We were getting supplied with all new clothes, we had no clothes, see only what we were wearing more or less.
36:30
All of that time we were without clothes for more than two months, never had any clothes, well most of our clothes had gone a change of clothes I suppose was all we had.
So how did you wash these clothes if that was all you had?
They probably didn’t get washed I can’t remember, didn’t get washed most likely. Oh they would get washed your underwear would get washed I just can’t quite remember
37:00
what, there was no washing machines or anything, just rinse them out yourself and do them. When you’re in a camp of course you do your own washings. Some of the camps have got washing machines and things like that but when you’re pout in the rough there is nothing like that so you just do it the best you can.
Were you doing any training in Adelaide?
37:30
Not a great deal at all. Just mucking around, a boring sort of place and then we went from there to just outside of Brisbane a place called Yandina. We were there for quite a while, done most of our training there jungle training, there was no jungle there but that was sort of a jungle training we were doing there at Yandina.
38:00
So what sort of things would you learn as part of jungle training?
Fitness mainly, march, march, march, we done a twenty-five mile march, full pack one day.
That’s a long way.
Yes. Full pack. And that was pretty hard but there was no jungle there, that was it, it was just a walk, just a march, but we were pretty fit when
38:30
we didn’t finish there we went up to Cairns, up on the Tablelands and then we eventually caught a boat from Cairns to New Guinea. Port Moresby.
So what sort of things were you learning as part of your training in Queensland? Apart from fitness?
39:00
Well there was no jungle in Queensland, no one knew what jungle really was until they got to New Guinea really. We were sort of doing jungle training, digging trenches and all of this sort of thing. Making use of ourselves, a lot of farmers that were around the place that were trying to
39:30
grow fruit, pineapples and that sort of thing, we were digging trenches and this sort of caper making a mess of the farmers, that was one thing. I suppose they thought there was a chance we might get invaded I don’t know, I suppose.
So what sort of things did you learn as part of jungle training during that time?
In Queensland well nothing much other than that.
40:00
As I say it was all fitness training mainly and weapon training and that sort of thing.
What sort of weapons were you training on?
Oh rifles and on either firearms, shooting, things like that. Practice shooting. Firing.
Are you getting taught how to work through a jungle at all?
40:30
You know how jungle training is different to desert warfare? Are you getting taught that?
Yes to an extent but there is no jungle in Queensland, there was no jungle for us to train in. when we got to New Guinea we had jungle to train in. we didn’t have jungle clothes like they have got today.
41:00
So do you feel that you were getting trained at all in any sort of preparation for what you were going to experience in New Guinea?
Well as it turned out we didn’t because I don’t think any of us knew what jungle training was until we got into the jungle itself. We knew nothing about jungle warfare, we had to start learning there and then. Then
41:30
you can only learn jungle warfare in the jungle and it is a different warfare all together to anything, to desert warfare. I mean I wasn’t in desert warfare so I suppose the training would be a lot different for that than it was for up there, but really we didn’t have time anyway to do jungle training.
So really do you think that the time you spent in Queensland was a complete waste of time?
Not really I don’t suppose I suppose it’s waste of time when you’re doing the same thing over and over again.
42:00
End of tape
Tape 3
00:30
So where are we up to now?
How long were you in the Atherton Tablelands for, Cyril?
About a couple of months I suppose from memory, it’s hard to think back that far you know.
What did the training camp there look like?
Pretty dry, pretty hard,
01:00
no big trees but a nice lot of timber around, small timber you know like it is reasonable well scrubbed not a lot of scrub on it, I am talking twelve feet, fifteen foot trees, not much higher but plenty of it. And very hard country hard on the foot.
01:30
Why was it hard?
Oh because it was summer time it was dry. I suppose that’s why I mean it was hard, it wasn’t,
What kind of training exercises did you do there?
March, fitness,
02:00
What kind of exercises were you doing out on the tablelands?
Oh only a general fitness training. Getting fit because we knew where we were going, well we had an idea where we were going, that was sort of general knowledge at the time. And I think the general idea was to get us fit because you had to be fit when you got there.
02:30
And it was just fitness, fitness, fitness and drill of course I mean you can’t get away without the drill it is one of those things that is one, all of the time.
Were you in tents up there?
Yes tents up there six to a tent. And they weren’t too bad.
So how were you taken out of the Tablelands up to the islands?
Went across there to Port Moresby. I think we went to Cairns, the Duntroon I think it was took us across the first time.
03:30
What kind of ship was the Duntroon?
It was a little passenger ship that used to run around the coast up there, it’s not here anymore, I think they sunk it didn’t they? There was a Duntroon and I forget the other one.
What was it like on board?
It was quite good.
Who went across to Port Moresby with you?
That was part of the 7 Div, we were all on,
04:00
see I went away with the 2/16th Battalion from here originally and when I got the Middle East I was transferred to the 2/14th Battalion.
Why?
Well because we went over there as reinforcements and so they decided to send up where we were needed. I was quite happy with the 2/14th,
04:30
they were a Victorian battalion of course. They were a very good battalion and good mates. Just like everything you had to get to know different people and all new mates again.
05:00
So you moved to the 2/14th?
So the whole 7 Div went over at once to Port Moresby. And then of course we went up to, I forget the name of the place we went up to, Itiki or something like that it was. I think it was about fifteen miles out of Port Moresby.
05:30
What do you remember about arriving in Port Moresby?
Just taken away on trucks of course there was nothing in Moresby really. Ever been there?
No, what was there when you arrived there?
Well there was not a great deal in Moresby, we didn’t get a chance to have a look around anyway we were just put onto trucks and taken inland.
How did you get onto the shore? Was there a wharf there?
There, must have been. Yes there would have to be a wharf there I would imagine.
06:00
We were on the Duntroon, so –
So you jumped onto trucks and where were you taken?
We went on the trucks about fifteen mile to a place called Itiki I think,
What was up there?
On the edge of the jungle, hot and dry. At the time it was, and sweat, sweat, sweat.
06:30
And training. More training.
What kind of training did you do at Itiki?
Not a great deal different really to what we had been doing, just fitness, but it was a different sort of country altogether.
Were you taught anything about the countryside?
Yes we were taught how to live off the land,
07:00
we were taught how to sharpen your bayonet and cut your way through the jungle and all of this sort of thing if necessary.
What other tricks? Bush or jungle survival?
Yes you had lectures on how to survive and this sort of thing yes.
What did they tell you about surviving in the jungle?
You can live on the land but I don’t know how you did I will tell you about that later on.
07:30
What was the camp at Itiki?
We were in tents and actually we had quite a big cookhouse it was a tent but a big tent. And it wasn’t too bad, it was pretty good.
What was the tucker like?
Reasonable, it was never anything flash in the army but it was always
08:00
pretty good.
What kind of meals were they?
Oh you get quite a good variety, mainly stews and soups and things like that. Beans.
Pardon?
Beans, beans, beans. More beans.
Like baked beans?
Yes. And eggs like powdered egg.
What's powdered egg like?
08:30
Not very good but if you don’t know what eggs are, powdered egg are a way of making scrambled eggs. You haven’t had the powdered egg? I think you can still buy it.
I think you can, I haven’t tried it though.
Don’t want to try it either.
You can get powdered potato too.
You can get powdered potatoes too can you? Thank God they didn’t have that in my day.
09:00
So stews and soups are kind of winter meals, what is it like eating hot meals and soups in the jungle?
Hot meals in the jungle, didn’t get too many of them.
Well I suppose while you were?
Yeah while you were in the camp, it was all right yeah. Not too bad.
09:30
But in lots of places you would be on bully beef, especially on your route march and like that, you would be on the bully beef. Biscuits. Do you know about dog biscuits?
Sorry?
Dog biscuits, how you survive on dog biscuits, they were good, if you can chew them.
I have heard they were pretty tough, those biscuits?
Yeah, they are good really, but gee,
What do they taste like?
A bit like, do you know Anzacs [sweet oatmeal biscuits]?
10:00
Probably a bit more like those than anything else, but they are harder than Anzacs you wanted good teeth for them.
But they tasted sweet?
I wouldn’t say they were sweet. They wasn’t nasty or anything like that they were all right.
They had to do.
Yeah that’s right if you’re hungry you’ll eat them,
10:30
you couldn’t retry to cook them, they would float around in the water, they wouldn’t sink, they wouldn’t get soft either.
Did you see any returning soldiers from the track when you were at Itiki?
No there wasn’t any at that stage no.
When did you start to go up the track?
Around about I could tell you,
11:00
it took us eight days, 28th of August, so it might have been the 20th of August that we left to go up the track.
What company were you in?
B Company, that’s the company there.
What were you briefed about going up into the jungle?
Not a great deal other than what we had been taught before we left.
What were you told about the Japanese?
11:30
At the time we weren’t old a great deal about them because I don’t think they knew themselves at the time. It was something new, they didn’t know. But because it’s hard to explain how it’s so different, you will go up there and
12:00
you can’t see anybody in the night time it is so dark. You can’t even see your hand in front of you, that’s how dark it is in the jungle, it is actually black. We weren’t actually told much about the Nips [Japanese] at all really, other than, I think they were worried about the numbers most likely.
12:30
They are hard fighters I think and numbers don’t tend to worry them of course. But getting back to marching, we left up there the first day, a place called Imita Ridge, that was five thousand feet the top of that, that took most of us
13:00
eight hours to get up there.
Was it difficult marching?
Yeah, that was the first day of what they called the thousand stairs.
Was that a part of the track?
Most of the guys got up there and I got to within about a hundred yards of the top and some of the steps were put in by engineers
13:30
and some were this deep and some were this deep and I got to this last one and I couldn’t get up it, on the last one. So a little fuzzy wuzzy [indigenous Papua New Guinean] came along and he said, “Give you hand.” So he took my gear and of course I just run up the rest of the way. But yeah I found that pretty hard going.
How heavy was the gear that you were carrying?
We had about forty-five pound plus, plus, plus.
14:00
What made up that forty-five pound?
Rations, food rations, ammunition. Guns, rifle, Bren gun, Tommy guns, that’s on top of your forty-five pound on your haversack.
So what were your rations?
Biscuits, chocolate,
Chocolate?
Yeah.
How long did that last in the jungle?
14:30
Well it had to last you, emergency chocolate, but because you got a meal, the cooks used to meet you for a meal at the end of the day, or lunch time you would pull up for lunch and there was meals for you, but the rations that came for you were for emergency, so you would hang onto them. Like bully beef and other things, I suppose there was beans as well, I
15:00
just can’t remember what was in the pack now for emergency rations, but they were for emergency, you hung on to them.
How much water did you carry?
Well there is plenty of water in New Guinea, I think we carried one bottle but you didn’t have to worry about water because it rained all of the time in the jungle, if you weren’t saturated with sweat you were saturated with rain anyway. It didn’t make any difference.
How much ammunition did you carry?
15:30
We had bandolier for a Bren gun and there was grenades, I think we had two grenades each and I just forget how many rounds of rifle ammunition we had actually, probably about fifty rounds, only a guess.
16:00
Plus a bandolier for the Bren gun. So we had a fair bit.
Did you ever carry the Bren gun?
Yes, when we got across the ranges we had to take turns in carrying the Bren gun. That was all in the –
16:30
And what other guns did you mention that you were carrying?
Tommy guns and .303.
Was the Tommy gun a good gun?
Yes and no. It was done away with when they got the Owen gun. It was a bit heavy and it wasn’t as good as the Owen gun.
What was wrong with the Tommy gun?
17:00
I suppose that it was, as it was it was a good gun but the Owen gun was a bit better. The Owen gun operated if it got wet or anything like that, where the Tommy gun didn’t, it didn’t like getting in the mud for instance or getting wet.
17:30
So you generally had to be more careful with it. But the Owen gun you had to be very careful with it too because if you dropped it or didn’t put it down carefully it would go off, as one of our fellows found out. Killed him straight away. So that was one weakness it had. But it was a good gun, when you used it it stayed straight, where the
18:00
other gun pulled you around all of the time same as a Bren gun did. So it pulled out of line, but in those circumstances the Owen Gun was a better gun in the desert than it was in the jungle, see?
Were you fighting in the jungle when one of your fellows had that accident with the Owen gun? Or were you just….?
That happened in the second when we went up on another campaign,
18:30
that happened in the Markham Valley.
Well we might mention that when we get there later on. Just while I am talking about your ammunition, was it difficult to kept it dry or did the moisture affect your ammunition?
Didn’t seem to, it would have been wet all of the time, had it in pouches but I mean it would have got wet but it still worked all right.
Did you carry any groundsheets to keep dry?
19:00
A groundsheet? Yes we all had a groundsheet, we had a blanket when we started, I don’t know what happened to that.
Decided you didn’t need them, a wet blanket would be pretty heavy?
That’s right, they were pretty useless.
So when you left to go up the track for the first time where were you going and why?
19:30
We knew where we were going, the idea was to go to Kokoda airstrip, that was the object, but we didn’t get to Kokoda airstrip because the Japs had commandeered the airstrip before we got there. So we got to a place called Isurava, that’s where we
20:00
first met the Japs.
How long had you been out of camp before you got to Isurava?
Eight days, because we got there the 28th.
What happened when you first had contact with the Japs at Isurava?
Well for me it was, when you start getting bombarded by bullets and you can see no one, you don’t know where it’s
20:30
coming from. And of course we no sooner got there and they invaded us from the rear. And that’s where the problems started and we had problems all the way back from there, that’s when we started to retreat from there.
How long did it take you to retreat from there?
I can’t remember, probably a month.
Sounds like a difficult march.
21:00
See I got cut off and quite a lot of us were cut off and we were fourteen days, and we hadn’t had anything to eat for fourteen days, talking about biscuits, we had biscuits where we regrouped. It was a place called Efogi where we were cut off
21:30
and we were given two biscuits each and that was to last us whatever and so my mate Johnny Adams, we were very good friends, he said to me, “Well you can have the biscuits because if I take them I will eat them today.” So that was okay, so I used to break a piece off and say, “Johnny there’s your breakfast.” “There’s your dinner,”
22:00
at night. So after fourteen days when we got back I said, “Guess what John?” he said, “What’s that?” I said, “I have still got a biscuit left.” And he said, “You miserable bastard, I could have died of starvation!” So we had four biscuits last us thirteen or fourteen days.
22:30
And what were you doing during those fourteen days?
Fighting our way through the jungle, we were trying to get back in front of the Nips [Japanese] all of the time, but they were on the track and they kept, we had to cut our way through the jungle and they kept beating us, they kept getting in front of us all of the time, we couldn’t get in front, so we just had to keep going and going,
23:00
until we got in front. And when we did get in front we met our own guys. They had actually stopped the Nips at this time until we got in front of them. Then we, we had to keep going, because we had had it by that time. Put it this way, I went up there, when I left I was twelve stone, I come back seven
23:30
so, if you want to get on a diet that’s the way to go.
You recommend it do you?
Yes, anyone overweight do that, yes.
How did you manage for those fourteen days cut off in the jungle fighting against the enemy?
Well you just, you can’t really, you can’t do much about it at all, you’re cut off and you can’t do
24:00
much about it. Just hope that you get in front and hope that your mates are going to stop them, hold them back so that you can meet up again.
Were you fighting with Japanese on a daily basis for those fourteen days?
Oh yes, us then? No, we were out of contact with them then, with the Japs then. We weren’t out of contact but we weren’t in contact with them.
No firing?
Yes. But we knew where they were.
24:30
We knew where the track was and that sot of thing but we couldn’t get back onto it. There were other groups there, three other groups with us as well, they went different routes to us, one of them he was away for three weeks. There was fifteen of us, and at night time we used to, we only had groundsheets, we used to lay our ground sheets out and the fifteen of us used
25:00
to crawl up like a bunch of bananas at night, in the rain, on the mud whatever was there. And that’s how we used to sleep at night, huddled up against each other to try and get warm a bit.
And could you sleep in those conditions?
Yes a bit. I used to chase apples down the side of the mountain every night, beautiful green and red apples, and I could never catch one.
Having delirious dreams?
25:30
Did any of the blokes you were with mention having similar dreams?
No they didn’t actually, whether they did or not I don’t know, they never mentioned it, but I used to tell them, the dreams I used to have, always apples.
Had you always liked apples?
Not a great deal, I didn’t mind them, I still like an
26:00
apple, but it is not my favourite food. It is just one of those things that came up you know, “What do you dream about?” The stupid things, sometimes you have dreams and you wonder what the hell you dreamt about it for.
Do you remember the feeling that you felt when you were first cut off?
26:30
Well I am not too sure actually how you feel. I was never, I mean you just have to take things as they come. I was never feeling that I was in danger or anything like that. I never ever felt that I was going to be shot or injured. Fortunately I suppose that it
27:00
worked out that way. I was never, there was one at my toe that was close enough, I thought they wouldn’t want to go further than that.
You would have to be unlucky to be shot in the toe wouldn’t you?
Well it went to go past me and hit me in the toe, I was lying down and a friend of mine, we were both lying there together and we were pinned down. And the bullets are hitting just under his chin and hitting all of the dirt into his face. And I said, “Why the hell don’t you shift from there before you get one?” and while
27:30
I am telling him that one went past and hit me in the toe. Hit me in the big toe and God did I jump around. He said to me, “For God’s sake, get your arse down, you’re going to get one.” So anyway everything eased off and we got out of there fortunately, but there was a couple killed there as well. That was a sticky spot.
28:00
I am just a little bit confused, Cyril, can you describe the fighting that took place when you were first cut off?
Well that didn’t happen when I was first cut off, after that we weren’t involved in it. We were out in the jungle, but prior to that, coming back from Isurava, this is where it all started and we kept being pushed back.
28:30
We withdrew all of the time and I remember we done a route march at night, a march to get from one place into Efogi and our sergeant led us out with a pencil torch, that’s all he had and believe me you can’t see the man in front of you, so we had to hang on to their bayonets, the bloke’s bayonet.
29:00
And they led us out like that, our company, probably twenty of us I suppose, as a guess. But if you slipped and fell over and lost a hold of and tried to yell out stop and tried to catch up you couldn’t because you couldn’t see him. And we got to a place called Efogi and we had a rest that night and one guy came to me, and this is a story that I always tell someone.
29:30
Came to me and he was a bloke named Wally Clarke, showed me a photo of his wife and baby and told me how he wanted to get home. And he always used to come to me and we would have a talk about something. And I can still see Wally leaning on his elbow having a talk to me there on the ground, having a rest. And before he left he gave me his rosary beads
30:00
and asked me to look after them for him. And to this day I don’t know why he did that. Because I never thought about it at the time, but the next day he was killed right in front of me. And I always wondered about those beads if they helped to keep me alive or not I don’t know. I had a lot of, that day there was three, four
30:30
four of them killed, there was three of them and then the captain he was killed, oh from there to your car away from me. In that time, that action.
What was that action?
That was trying to get through the Japanese at a place called Efogi,
31:00
and some got through and some didn’t. We didn’t get through so we that’s where we got cut off from in there.
Who got through?
I can’t name them, some got through some didn’t, not many got through. There was four guys out of my platoon, there was only the four of us that were left in the platoon,
31:30
others had been wounded, some were killed, there was four of them killed out of my platoon. Had to leave some, at Isurava a Bren gunner was killed, my corporal and the guy alongside me they were both wounded and I was left out on my own actually.
What did you do then?
I was scared.
32:00
The first time I have been scared, well the first time I have been there as well. They came in throwing these grenades at me and I dodged them, I kept rolling down the side of the hill and I got out of it, it was dark and I got out of contact altogether. But some of the others were out of contact as well and we happened to meet up in the dark
32:30
so we stayed there for the night in one spot. It was too dark to go anywhere, you can’t see anything, so we eventually got out of there and joined up with the company again the next day.
How did you move to join up with the company?
Very quietly, very glibly and you know in
33:00
preparation you know. When we got back to them, the Japs had moved forward, they came around behind us and of course they withdrew and they did that several times and that’s how they kept getting in behind us all of the time. That was one of the problems.
33:30
How did you manage taking casualties and seeing some of your mates killed?
Well those that could walk had to walk their way back themselves. One bloke had his arm cut off. Blown off, well it wasn’t completely blown off but they took it off anyway. But he had to walk back, he had an eight day walk back, but he did it, he died not so long ago.
34:00
You mean in recent years?
Yes he died a couple of years ago as far as I know. I still get a newsletter from the battalion every now and again and it tells you who is alive and who is not, but he died a couple of years ago.
34:30
But there were other guys had to go by stretcher, see the fuzzy wuzzies brought all of the stretchers back see? What was possible, but where we were cut off at Efogi we had seven stretchers, we had to take them up the side of the mountain and take them down the other side, that took us nearly all day until we got out of there. What you do, if you can’t
35:00
carry them you pass them on to the bloke in front of you and then when you get to the end you come around go to the back and start again. And that’s how we done it, how we got the stretchers up and down the side of the mountain. But those stretchers were taken away to a certain spot to be picked up later on in some way or other, I didn’t know how at the time, and the first aid bloke went with them. And they finished up caught by the Japs and the whole lot were shot,
35:30
they were shot on their stretchers. And the first aid bloke as well looking after them, they were all shot dead.
How did you react to that news?
Well we didn’t know of course, we didn’t know until much later on, didn’t find out about it, we wouldn’t have known at the time.
It sounds like an atrocity though?
Yes, it was terrible,
36:00
because they can’t do anything, they have got no rifles, they have got nothing. Just laying on a stretcher and the Nips come along and just shoot them. Whether they got any enjoyment out of that I don’t know. They were a terrible people, they didn’t leave anybody living.
How terrible were the Japs?
Hard to describe, I didn’t think it was possible for any human being to be like they were,
36:30
cruelty was one of the things, I would like you to come down to the army barracks down there and show you the hospital.
The hospital down at the barracks?
The army barracks yes. It is a great experience to see.
So what's in the hospital display?
Just a display from Burma, the Burma Railway Hospital.
It is a really good display is it?
37:00
Oh yes. Marvellous. All designed, run by a prisoner, he built the hospital, like in mini size of course and all of the bodies, the preparations, all of the equipment which most of it was made by hand.
37:30
A lot of it bamboo. They had a saw, for hacking off legs, dressings, it’s all there. And the Japs, the way they treated those guys was unbelievable. Of course there was no prisoners taken in New Guinea of course.
Did you discuss,
38:00
or were you receiving news of these Japanese atrocities in the jungle while you were in New Guinea?
No, we didn’t really, no we didn’t know about it at the time. Found out later on that they were eating our guys, eating the leg part of our guys, cutting the leg part out and eating it.
38:30
Living on it. Yes they were pretty, it is hard to describe what sort of people they are really because it is just unbelievable.
Were you angered by the stories that you were hearing?
Now, yes.
What about when you were in the jungle?
39:00
Well you didn’t hear about in the jungle really, only heard about it after. Mainly later on, I was in charge of a prisoner camp at the end of the war.
Well before we get onto there how long were you in the jungle in New Guinea on the track?
About a month, I am not too sure.
So you had gone up to, the name of the place is Avara?
39:30
Isurava.
Isurava. And then Efogi?
Well Efogi is on the way back, see we’re getting pushed back. If you can imagine all of these places we went through, these places on the way up and we’re going back through them again. And there was different, other places as well, I mean before that there was another place called Butchers Hill,
40:00
one of our officers for instance, I ring up now and again, he is in Queensland. His brother was in my company, he was a Bisset, I don’t know whether you have heard of his name or not, I don’t know. Stan Bisset is still alive, he is ninety-one, ninety-two I think, and Butch was killed in Isurava.
40:30
Of course there was a VC [Victoria Cross] won in Isurava as well, Bruce Kingsbury won a VC in Isurava. Also I am not too sure, Butchers Hill I think, where a bloke out of my platoon he won a DCM [Distinguished Conduct Medal]. And Charlie McCallum his name was.
41:00
And he should have got a VC in my opinion as well, but anyway he didn’t.
Were you fighting alongside him when he was given that medal?
No, I wasn’t but he was out of my platoon actually.
Where did you return to from Efogi?
When we come out, that’s where we
41:30
got off there, we come out again at Imita Ridge, somewhere in that area there. That’s where they held the Japs up and that’s where we got in front. But we didn’t go back to action, we went, I went to hospital anyway.
Why did you go to hospital?
Diarrhoea, as soon as we got back they give us a meal and we finished up with diarrhoea.
Tape 4
00:37
So I am just a bit confused, you were at Isurava first and then you went through to Efogi is that right?
Efogi is a long way further back, you have got other places to come back through before you get to Efogi.
01:00
I can’t remember all of the names of them, then to Templeton’s Crossing, you have got to go through, I have got a map in there.
Can you just step me through what happened from Isurava right back to Efogi? Is that the final point you were at?
Yeah there was quite a few, when we were pushed back from Isurava. The next place,
01:30
is, I forget the name of the place and we held up there for quite a while.
Can you explain about being held up there? What was going on?
Well there was fighting going on on the track there, we were pinned down, as I was saying we were pinned down there and that’s where I got one in my toe.
Oh so that’s where you got the one in the toe.
I would have to look at that map there to tell you where it is.
02:00
Then this other place called Templeton’s Crossing and then another place called Butcher’s Hill,
And what happened at those two destinations?
Well they were all places we held up and tried to keep the Japs back and of course we were getting pushed back all of the time and the fighting was just in around the track itself.
How outnumbered were you?
Well they tell us about six or seven to one.
02:30
It became a bit difficult because they kept getting behind us all of the time. I don’t know how they done that but they did it and of course we were getting cut off all of the time and we just had to keep going back and back, if we got brought back,
03:00
well they say, “Withdraw,” so you withdraw.
Did you have any wounded men with you?
I never had one with me wounded but there had been guys that weren’t wounded too badly and just kept on going, yes. They would have done that.
Well how were these blokes getting treatment?
We had doctors with us.
03:30
If they had anything serious they had to be carried back by a stretcher and the fuzzy wuzzies did that, they done most of the stretcher bearing, they were absolutely marvellous they were, and that’s a long way to carry a stretcher, back into a place where they can be picked up, to carry a stretcher I would say it’s probably a week’s walk. Say from Isurava for instance and of course the further you get back the shorter its gets, if you understand that.
04:00
But so you can just imagine, I don’t know how many people it took to carry a stretcher back, but you can just imagine trying to carry a stretcher back through there and so far, it must have been terrible for the blokes that did that. I have got a terrible lot of respect for those fuzzy wuzzies, they are marvellous people.
04:30
What did you do about your toe because obviously it is injured and constantly wet from the rain, did you have any troubles with your toe?
No, I never had any trouble with my toe, it just hit it. Didn’t damage it but it hurt. But yes, you’re talking about being wet?
Yeah that’s got to be uncomfortable?
Well you’re wet all of the time.
05:00
So it is unavoidable, if you’re not wet with rain you’re wet with sweat, I had the same shoes, boots that I started with, fortunately I still had them when I finished, just about worn out I think. I must have had the same pair of socks as well. So once you take your socks off if they’re full of mud you wash them out and put them back on again.
05:30
Same as your clothes, you take them off, wash them and put them back on again. There was plenty of water up there, plenty of rivers around. Some were a bit dangerous as well especially if you can’t swim. So if they had the crossing across them you made sure you didn’t fall off.
How do you go about a crossing?
06:00
Mainly you have to walk through them, one side to the other, yes.
And what's the water like there, is it deep or moving?
Most of it wasn’t too bad, some of it was deep. Deep water, they had a little bridge across like a log, a couple of logs, make sure you didn’t fall off. In trouble if you fall off. We done that in training, walking across planks, walking across one end and jump off the other.
06:30
Probably about ten or twelve feet across, it was only in Queensland of course on the beach. Maroochydore there somewhere. So we used to practice that, jumping down the other end, I think it was a ten foot jump down the other side. Didn’t fancy it at first but it wasn’t too bad when you got used to it.
You also mentioned, is it Butcher’s Hill?
07:00
Yes.
What happened there?
Just fighting, people getting injured, hurt.
Can you describe what an average day was like when you were under those conditions?
Average day was very uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable either walking or lying and dug in,
07:30
different places. Different companies were in different places, I mean different platoons are in different places, so you don’t know exactly what the others are doing except for where you are yourself. So you don’t get, this is where you have got to be, you dig in and hold your position there and hope that you stay there for the rest of the day. But when things get worse, you just get up and leave again.
08:00
Who makes the decision, are you getting information from other places or is it?
Oh yes, in contact with the CO, commanding officer, in contact all of the time because the linesman’s are still there with you, got your telephone lines so they’re still there with you and they are
08:30
getting information all of the time. And of course it goes from CO, might go from the platoon to your CO and then to commanding officer, to your captain and when it comes back again he will be advised, they are in contact all of the time. They’re in contact all of the time can find out what to do and how to do it.
09:00
mainly at the time when we were there we were in reverse all of the time. Before we get to Efogi we were in other places and had the same sort of problems as well.
Sorry, what was that problem?
Well have a battle there trying to keep the Jap’s back until they get in behind you and you’re on the run again.
That’s got to be pretty hard on the nerves being under all of that pressure all of the time?
09:30
It was, it wasn’t very nice at all.
So how do you avoid being shot under those constant conditions of firing?
Lucky.
You don’t think there is any sort of technique involved, just luck?
I think so, you have to be a little bit, I mean you just don’t walk around stupid,
10:00
sort of thing, be aware of where you’re going, and when you’re dug in you’re dug in and hope for the best.
How would you dig into a situation, would you literally dig trenches?
No you don’t have time for that. You just try and pick a little spot, which you think is available, get behind trees or something like that,
10:30
you can only take what's available to you at the time. As I said we were pinned down in about this much ground and you just push yourself into the ground as much as possible. But like I said, the bullets were hitting under his face, so that’s a situation, of course a guy was killed there as well.
11:00
It just finished sticky.
What happened to get to that point where it was sticky?
Well you have to get out if possible, if you don’t get out you get killed you have to move you have to get out of there somehow otherwise there is no way out.
Can you describe what was going on?
11:30
At the time when the mate got killed?
Just rifle fire. You don’t know where it is coming from. You can’t see anybody and it really is not very nice. When you’re firing you don’t know what you’re firing at, you know approximately where they are but you can see anybody, see in jungle you can’t see much further
12:00
than, that wall there. And some places less, so you’re in the dark all of the time and it is not very nice.
So how do you figure out where to shoot?
Just hope, hope it hits something, hope you don’t hit some of your own blokes, that’s one of the problems.
12:30
Was there much of that happening?
Well there wouldn’t be a lot of it happening, but the bloke that got his arm cut off that was by one of his own blokes, yeah that was early in the piece. It does happen, that’s the only one that I know of. How often it would happen I don’t know but it can happen.
13:00
What did you think of the officers that were basically telling you what to do?
I think we had on the field we had magnificent officers, really magnificent officers, Bisset and Captain Nye, he was my officer originally.
What was so good about him?
Oh, he was a good officer.
What made him a good officer?
13:30
What made him a good officer, I suppose the training he did. He was a courageous man, he was killed because he was too courageous, that’s probably what cost him his life.
What happened in those circumstances?
Well he was screaming out our orders to us, that was in Efogi where he was killed.
14:00
And he was just open to anything, he was standing there walking along helping try to get through the Japanese, trying to force our way through when he was killed. Like the Bisset brothers, they were very good officers,
14:30
Treacey was one of them. We had marvellous officers all of the way through, marvellous officers.
Is it the way that they related to them men?
One of the ways and they were good guys, yes.
How would they relate to the men?
Well when you’re out there I mean they don’t relate like they’re an officer, they were one of us. All in for it.
15:00
Sorry, I don’t understand what you’re saying?
Well I mean they weren’t standing back behind telling you what to do, they were up the front with you.
When you’re moving through the jungle how do you do that? Obviously you’re not walking along whistling away so how do you negotiate that?
Well you had to, there was lots of occasion you had,
15:30
you had to hack your way, you had to pick your way through. I mean it was just like walking, you go through scrub up anywhere where it is scrub, I mean this is not scrub so much, they have got vines, we used to call them come backs, they would grab a hold of you and you had to walk backwards to get unhooked, all of that sort of thing.
Were they spiky?
Come backs, yeah they would grab you.
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All of those things. And big timber, big timber but all undergrowth, it’s thick as well, and it is only small stuff but you have got to get through and you have either got to pick your way through it or cut your way through. It doesn’t come easy.
What sort of cutting utensils did you have?
Just use our bayonets mainly,
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cutting through that. That was one of the things we used, the only thing we had to cut your way through. Very uncomfortable.
So would there be a couple of people cutting and the rest would….?
Oh the bloke in front would probably hack the way mostly but we would all have a go at it,
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have a go at getting going, I mean somebody had to lead and somebody had to follow wherever you were going. For instance on the track it is only a one man track, you can’t walk along there three or four men wide or anything like that. It’s on the main track, probably certain places where you might be able to do that but mainly it is one
17:30
behind the other and of course you can’t walk beside one another, not enough room. But when you’re in the bush itself that’s the same thing again, someone has got to lead through there and you just follow and hack a bit off as you go.
How would you negotiate different tracks? How would you know tracks were in
18:00
whatever direction if you got off the track?
Well we knew where the track was and there is not too many tracks around, there was different tracks, but the track that we were following we knew where it was. And we had a compass, and you worked it out by compass as well, in our case we did. Had to. If we got too far away from the track,
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we had to, we knew where the track was, we just couldn’t get back onto it. From Efogi on.
And that was because the Japanese were on it?
Yeah, that’s right, they had the control of the track yes. They did.
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Right back as far as Imita Ridge, that’s where they stopped eventually and from there on of course I had nothing to do with it after that of course. But right back to, I had from Efogi back to Imita Ridge, I didn’t have anything more to do with it except trying to get in front of the Japs, which
19:30
we couldn’t do until they pulled them up. We caught up with our own guys there, luckily they held their fire because they thought it might have been some of us and we got back in daylight so it was lucky that they didn’t open fire on us.
What was the place you ended up at?
Originally?
20:00
No, it was past Efogi?
Imita Ridge.
Bitter Ridge?
Imita, Imita. I-M-I-T- A.
Can you explain to me step by step what happened at Imita Ridge? This is where you meet up with the?
Well I can’t tell you much from what happened there because that’s where they held the Japs up and
20:30
that’s when they started to push them back again. Then they got reinforcements there, we left, finished our job.
And so how were you actually there at Imita Ridge?
I went over Imita Ridge.
And so you just weren’t fighting there, is that right?
I wasn’t fighting there, no.
So what happened when you got to Imita Ridge?
We were taken to a Salvation Army camp.
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They gave us a feed. And a bottle of beer, nearly killed us.
Can you describe first of all what that Red Cross camp was like? What did it look like?
Inside camp they were pretty good. And outside camp, they were always there. I didn’t have much to do with them of course, only that time.
21:30
They always had a hot cup of coffee or something for you a biscuit or something to see you on your way. In the camp they had big tents where you had libraries and that sort of thing, they were very good the old Salvos, and out in the bush at the end they had the
22:00
billy boiled all of the time ready for you if you needed it, and a meal if necessary. And help generally, they were very good. And I had about, I don’t know whether they had anything to do with the help of getting people to the hospital or not, but they helped all of these guys get back to Imita Ridge,
22:30
once they got past Imita Ridge, they got help. They got transport from there. And so but I had, all of the wounded had to get past Imita Ridge first before they could get help.
Sorry all of the wounded had to get past?
They can’t get transport up the Kokoda Track. Impossible.
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You said the wounded when they arrived at Imita Ridge they got transport?
Yes on the Moresby side of Imita Ridge, yes that’s the first mountain.
So that whole area of Imita Ridge is quite a large camp is that what you’re saying?
No, no camp there at all, that’s where the Kokoda Trail started.
But I am thinking there are a lot of people around that area, am I right?
23:30
Well the army was there yeah, the armed forces were there, that’s where they held the Japs up and started pushing them back over the mountain again.
So you left from Imita Ridge to where?
Went back to a camp, went back to our base camp.
Right so the base camp isn’t at Imita Ridge? That’s where I am getting confused.
24:00
No.
I just couldn’t figure it out. Right, so the base camp is near Imita Ridge?
Probably ten or twelve mile back, ten mile back probably.
And so is that where you’re getting the Salvation Army treatment?
No, they were down the bottom of Imita Ridge.
Right, okay,
24:30
so what happens after you get the treatment from the Salvos at Imita Ridge, from the Salvos?
We got help from our own mob and people come and help you to get out and in our case we got back to our base, MacDonald’s Corner I think it was called. And from there we were taken back to our base and from our base we went
25:00
to hospital. That was in, just out of Moresby.
How were you transported between these different bases?
Well there, either truck or jeep, one or the other.
How many fellows are travelling with you at that time?
Only three of us in my case.
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So there are not a lot of you?
No, I just forget how many there was. There was fifteen of us altogether, there would have been the whole fifteen of us that all went out at once.
You mentioned before when you had refreshments with the Salvos, it nearly killed you, can you explain?
We hadn’t had anything to eat for fourteen days
26:00
and they shouldn’t have given us a feed like they did. They give us a bottle of beer as well, that’s why we finished up in hospital with stomach ache. What do they call it, diarrhoea. So yeah they probably didn’t realise that we hadn’t had anything to eat for so long.
26:30
Except those two biscuits I told you about.
Well that’s got to be quite difficult to go through that sort of physical journey and not be eating anything, I mean it seems impossible?
It is possible, I found out.
But you must be extremely tired?
Well yes, very tired. But one thing we had was plenty of water so there was always water to drink.
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Living off the land, I couldn’t find a way of living off the land. They can teach you as much as you like about how to live off the land but I don’t know how to do it, still don’t. I wasn’t brought up like that.
Was there anything you could eat up there?
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Bananas if you could get them. We saw one bunch of bananas but they were green so they weren’t very edible. You know had a go at it, didn’t go down too well. But I found out after four days you don’t get hungry anyway. Food is, I think after that time it doesn’t penetrate,
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the first four days it is very hard to describe, you’re so hungry it’s terrible. But after four days I found that I didn’t get hungry, I wasn’t hungry anymore.
Was that normal for….?
I don’t know. I think so probably.
Do you think it’s just
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psychological or is it physiological?
No I think its pretty normal. These people that go on hunger strikes, after four days they’re not hungry, that’s why they keep going. I have only done it once so I know what it’s like to be hungry and I know what it’s like not to be hungry because
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I never got hungry after about four days, I wasn’t hungry after that. But by the same time you still hope it’s not going to last, I mean you don’t want to be hungry like that all of the time. That’s the sort of hunger, it is a sort of hunger that you are sort of not hungry. You aren’t looking for something to eat
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but you hope that it is not going to go on like that. A bit hard to describe how you’re hungry and want something to eat and can’t get anything to eat at all. You just put up with it I suppose.
How do you keep positive under those sorts of circumstances?
You probably don’t, really.
Well you were there, how did you keep going?
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Well I think it was, I never ever thought for one moment that we weren’t going to get out. I thought that I had nothing in my mind like that at all. It wasn’t in my mind at any time. There was one guy that was with us, I think another day we might have had to leave him, behind. He was about forty years of age.
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What had gotten to him?
Oh well he had no, his feet, his boots were worn out, his trink [?] had worn out, he had just had it, you know. One more day and I think he would have given up. But I wasn’t in that position I wasn’t like that myself personally. I don’t know how the other blokes felt, I am sure they didn’t
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feel very comfortable, and they probably thought, I don’t think there was any doubt that they didn’t think they were going to get out of there. I didn’t think so I felt sure that we were going to get out. But hunger was one, meals was one of the things, I don’t know how much longer you can go I don’t know. Fortunately I didn’t have to go that far.
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Fourteen days was good enough.
But yet you had to get yourselves out of the situation?
That’s right yes, if you don’t get out you die straight as that.
How do you keep your sense of humour under those circumstances?
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You can always tell a joke, you can always laugh.
I am just wondering if there was any joking or laughing going on?
You can laugh at somebody falling over for instance. We would always have a laugh about something.
I am just wondering that maybe humour is something that helps you get through that?
Probably yeah, there are all little things that crop up all of the time I mean just like I was saying
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To Johnny, “Here is your breakfast.” Break a bit of biscuit off. You know, we would make some wisecrack about it every morning. Every time I would break a piece of biscuit off for him, one piece of biscuit I don’t know what it was going to do. That’s the way it was. I suppose you had to have fun.
Try and have as much fun as possible?
33:00
So what happened to you when you arrived at the hospital?
What happened? Well obviously I went straight to a bed, I just got normal treatment I think, I was treated for diarrhoea and we were give right
33:30
meals. I suppose not the full meals a hungry man would be fed I suppose, I am not too sure. But we got back to good health there and I no sooner got to it when I was back again. We were getting ready to go up the range again when I got scrub typhus.
Can you describe scrub typhus for me?
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I can now, I couldn’t then. Well I didn’t know, when I went to the hospital I sort of collapsed on the parade ground. I went to the doctor and of course I had a temperature a hundred and three, sent me to the hospital, I was there for about three or four days and I said, “What's the matter?” and he said, “I don’t know, you’re the only one to survive up to date.”
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I said, “Oh.” I found out later on I was there for about three weeks I think from memory, a hundred and three all of the time and all they can do is try and get my temperature down. So they found out after what scrub typhus was,
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it was caused by a little, wog, like a head lice? I only saw a photo of it, and it’s red and they came out of the ground and you get it through lying on wet ground. That’s how you get scrub typhus I am told.
So you were one of the first cases?
I was one of the first few that got scrub typhus, yeah.
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So I got six months holiday out of it, I was three months in hospital and, I was down to seven stone then though.
Three months in hospital, that’s quite a bout?
Yeah they flew me back to, after three weeks they sent me back to Brisbane and I was in hospital there for about three months.
Can you remember anything about being in the hospital or were you really quite comatose?
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Oh yeah I wasn’t unconscious or anything like that. I probably didn’t feel as sick as I, I can’t remember being sick I was just I was hot, I was, you know I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t stand up, at the first.
Why couldn’t you stand up?
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I suppose because I was still recovering from the track I lost about five stone for a start and then having this fever probably didn’t help. So I managed to get myself out of bed one day there at the hospital, and she said, “What are you doing out here?” she gave me a blast. “Could have fallen over and we wouldn’t know where you were.”
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I went to the toilet outside the hospital. But that was after I had been there about a week. I couldn’t get out of bed, I was too weak to get out of bed. And they wouldn’t let me out of bed anyway because they were trying to get my temperature down. And that lasted for about three weeks at a hundred and three, when they got my temperature down they flew me out.
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Back to Australia.
And that was three months you spent in hospital?
Three months in hospital, in and out of hospital. And then I had another three months in a staging camp. The battalion had been already back from New Guinea by this time. They were back on the mainland. So I joined them again and went back into training again.
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So you get out of the hospital and you’re put into a staging camp is that right?
Just out of Brisbane, yeah.
Just rewinding a bit how do you get out of New Guinea back to Australia?
They flew me out, Sunderland or whatever they call them. Remember that old plane they had? Flying Sunderland.
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And so then you’re put into the staging camp back in Queensland?
Yes.
Can you describe what that staging camp was like?
Well it was pretty good. I just forget exactly where it was, not far out of Brisbane because I used to go into Brisbane I had a free run actually, I didn’t need a leave pass or anything I just wandered around when I wanted to.
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So you weren’t confined to the staging camp?
No I had a free pass sort of thing, I had a pass with me all of the time.
And that was a part of your recovery?
Yeah. Then they came back to another place out of Brisbane and we were there for a while,
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back in Yandina again I think.
Is that your company?
The battalion yeah.
So how do you hook up back with them?
Well they just send you when you’re right, they just say go back to your company now and put you on a something, truck
40:00
or something and send you back to camp and that’s it.
And what did you think about going back to your battalion?
Oh I couldn’t get back there quick enough really, I was sick of doing what I was doing and I couldn’t get home, they wouldn’t let you go home. So I was in no-man’s land sort of thing, I mean home is over here and I am in Brisbane and all I can do is go backwards and forwards into the camp all of the
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time so it wasn’t a lot of fun.
Did you get much mail?
Used to get some mail yes. I wouldn’t say a lot, I got my fair share I suppose.
Who were you getting mail from?
Oh I used to get mail from some of my aunties and a girlfriend I had in Brisbane. And one in Perth.
Oh so you had one in Brisbane and one in Perth is that what you’re saying?
Yeah. That’s right.
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So the mail was getting through to New Guinea?
Well I have still got a letter here somewhere. I got a girl from Brisbane and it was posted missing, I have still kept that letter, it is here somewhere, it had got missing somewhere on the letter.
They couldn’t find you?
That’s right.
How important is it to get mail?
Oh it was pretty important. If you don’t
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you’ll think you’re a nobody.
Does it help with your morale?
Yes. It’s good, I used to get a fair bit of mail. Always someone writing me.
How regular was the mail?
Didn’t get any in Kokoda, none there.
I was thinking it would have been hard to get mail,
No mail there.
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End of tape
Tape 5
00:33
So when did you go back to rejoin your battalion?
Well I just can’t remember exactly.
01:00
Around about March, do you want to know?
Well I want to know what you do when you return to your battalion and what you do now?
I could tell you exactly, I think it was around about March, I am not too sure. And then we go back to New Guinea in an American,
01:30
what do they call those ships that were just a steel hunk of metal?
Liberty ship?
Yes, something like that yes. And there was no sleeping place or anything we just slept on the steel floor and that and we went back to Moresby in that. I think Henry something it was called, something like that.
02:00
And after some time we flew back over the Owen Stanley Ranges, and landed in, I am not too sure where we landed exactly. Poppondetta, somewhere there. And then we go up the
02:30
to Ramu and Markham Valley. We were taken from there up to the bottom of the valley by DC3 and we walked right through the valleys
03:00
without any trouble until we got to the bottom of the hills at what they call Shaggy Ridge. Have you heard about Shaggy Ridge?
Now I haven’t what happened there?
That was in 1943. I had my second birthday [?UNCLEAR ‘upadigity’] up there, I wasn’t up there too long it wasn’t too long I got dengue fever up there, but before that
03:30
we were doing a lot of marches, well not marches so much but,
Patrols?
Patrols yes. And I brought a prisoner back from there. But on my birthday I took my Bren gun up to the top of Mount King [King’s Hill], sad defeat, so I am told.
Why did you take the Bren gun up there?
Oh just for observation.
04:00
I went up there and stayed there for the day and came back, no troubles.
Who did you go up there with?
On my own.
Was that how you decided you would celebrate?
I had my birthday up there, yes.
How did you spend that day up there by yourself?
I was just sitting by the gun, idling around but there was nothing there so I came back.
What were you hoping to find?
Just observation,
04:30
to see if there any movement around anywhere. But I didn’t see anything.
Fortunately it was a quiet day?
Well yes at that time there wasn’t a great deal going on there because they were still sort of finding out where the Japs were at that time. Because 16th were up there too, 2/16th. And of course what did I do, I got
05:00
dengue fever.
What were the symptoms Cyril?
You feel like you’re going to die. Like you have pneumonia, I was so sick.
What were your energy levels like?
My energy? I didn’t have any. I had a doctor and I was in a little hut and I don’t remember even getting out of
05:30
there and my ear burst over there and I had all of this stuff over me and in my mouth, and the doctor came in and I said, “I don’t know what's gone wrong but all of this stuff keeps running down in my mouth.” And he had a look at me ear and there was a great hole, my ear had burst in the thing.
Why had your ear burst?
I don’t know why it burst but I would think through the fever.
06:00
So how were you treated?
I wouldn’t know, I was too sick to know how they treat me, but I think it would be a fever, probably like scrub typhus so I would think they would have to keep me as cool as possible, and I was flown back to New Guinea, back to hospital again. So that was the end of Shaggy Ridge for me.
Had you been involved in any action while you were there?
06:30
Not Shaggy Ridge no, not there.
But you did patrol work?
Yes, there was quite a few patrols yes. I brought one Nip in one day prisoner, don’t ask me what happened to him, but he didn’t survive I don’t think.
Why do you say that?
Well we didn’t have a prison camp.
So what do you think might have happened to him?
07:00
I think someone got rid of him.
Did that happen often?
There was no prisoners taken up there. My sergeant Jack Matthews was taken and Colonel, Colonel Keys, they were both taken up in Kokoda and they haven’t been heard of or seen since.
07:30
Missing in action?
Oh no they were taken prisoner because they were there and all of a sudden they weren’t, so they were taken prisoner by the Japs but they were probably shot out there somewhere in the bush where no one can find them. That was this side of Efogi back towards Moresby.
So this is before you went up to the?
08:00
No on the way back.
When you say on the way back do you mean?
When we got back to Efogi again, when we were forced back, that’s where they went missing.
Was this on your first visit to New Guinea?
Oh yes.
Right. Could you explain to me what was happening and where you were when they went missing?
08:30
We were carrying the stretchers down that I was telling you about.
This morning?
Yeah that I was telling you about earlier, and what happened was Jack went away to try and get some fuzzy wuzzies to carry some stretchers into a place where they were going to be picked up later on, and he never returned, never saw him again. And Colonel Keys went about the same time, so we presume they were both picked up together,
09:00
wherever they might have been somewhere along the track. They were probably caught up and ambushed or something like that and taken away for questioning and if they didn’t get what they wanted they would have been shot, well they would have been shot anyway. Killed.
Did that affect your morale?
I suppose it did a bit, Jack was a good friend of mine, I missed him of course,
09:30
you don’t like to lose your mates sort of thing. He was a sergeant, he was a good sergeant to us, I missed him yeah sure.
Who replaced their command?
I am not too sure who took over from him at that point. I was cut off then from there, and I got back when I came back a second time
10:00
I can’t remember who was our sergeant then, probably MacDonald, Hank MacDonald was most likely our sergeant then, he was a private at one stage. He came up through the ranks and finished up a lieutenant.
What was the command like while you were fighting in jungle there? What were your superior officers like?
10:30
How important was their leadership?
They were very good leaders, oh yes, I think they were anyhow, good guys.
Did they lead by example in the jungle?
Sure did.
What set them apart as leader from the other men who were fighting beside you?
Oh well there were so many of them, the Captain Nye was one, the Bisset
11:00
brothers, Bisset was one led by example. Treacey. Mocka Treacey, he was one. Moore, there was a few of them. Sergeants and corporals, I can’t remember all of their names right now.
What about your high command?
11:30
High command, are you talking about Blamey are you?
Yes what did you think of him?
I didn’t think too much of him at all, I don’t think he got too much respect from anybody. Especially after we came back from Isurava. I don’t know if you know what he ended up saying in the …
Why don’t you tell me that story?
Well he indicated we were a bunch of rabbits,
12:00
I forget how he worded it, the rabbit that runs always gets killed or something, something like that. I thought he was lucky that he didn’t get killed himself that day.
Why what was the buzz going on amongst the ranks?
Well there were no fights going on, but they weren’t very happy with
12:30
his thoughts of what we were. We weren’t the only ones who thought he was a bit rough sort of thing, he was never very popular.
Just getting back to where you were before, the first time you were in the jungle, you came down with scrub typhus and the second time and the point where we
13:00
are up to you mentioned you had dengue fever, now at some point there you also mentioned you were bringing a Japanese soldier down from somewhere?
Yes we picked him along the track at one of our –
Patrols?
No when we were at,
13:30
one of those, looking out, lookout, he was picked up.
Were you the soldier that picked him up?
No he was handed over to me to bring him in. I brought him back to the office and I didn’t see him again.
Ddi you bring him back to the office by yourself?
Yes. In front of a bayonet.
How far or how long were you alone with him?
14:00
I would say probably an hour’s walk. Something like that.
It must have been an unusual experience?
Yeah well that’s as close as I ever got to one, I didn’t actually know whether to let my gun go or not.
It must have crossed your mind, did it?
It did, yes.
14:30
What stopped you?
I don’t know, I thought I had better do the right thing and do what I was told. So that’s what I done.
Lucky for him.
I suppose he could have gone sooner couldn’t he? Sooner than later.
Is there anything else you haven’t mentioned about the Markham/Ramu Valley before you got sick?
15:00
No, not really, on one of our patrols there we crossed, it was very, very hot going across the valley and from memory it was very wide, about a kilometre or two kilometres wide and we crossed it at an angle and it took us a day to get across the other side, we sort of walked up the middle of it sort of thing.
15:30
And when we got to the other side we came across all of these dead Japs, they had been there for ten days and we had to bury them. And it wasn’t very good I can tell you.
When you say all of these dead Japs what sort of numbers were there?
Ten of them. They had been killed by parachutists I believe, just left them there.
16:00
I am not too sure who they were, Australians or Americans I am not too sure at that stage.
Were there enemy soldiers buried very often in the jungle?
They were the only ones I buried except for a couple of our own that we buried. But that was a terrible job because they had been there for ten days in the stinking hot weather,
16:30
you would grab a hold a leg to push them in and the leg would fall off or the arm would fall off or something.
It sounds….
I don’t think it was a good funeral. It was shallow I can tell you that, it was hard ground to dig. Dig a bit of a hole and roll them over into it.
Why did you bury them then?
17:00
Well I think it is just military law that you must bury them. No matter who it is. As far as I know.
You mentioned burying your own, did you have a ceremony with those burials?
If it was possible yes, that didn’t happen too often, I didn’t have to be at too many. Some of the guys that were killed in front of me we had to leave them where they were,
17:30
so I don’t know if the Japs buried them when they came by or not, they should have. Whether they did or not I don’t know, those bodies were picked up later and I don’t know how they do that but they were taken to the cemetery just outside of Moresby, Bomana or some name like that. And all of those bodies are
18:00
picked up and taken back there. How they do that don’t ask me, I don’t know. I don’t know how they find them.
Were you setting up ambushes or were you ambushed yourselves up there?
I wasn’t but I think they had been. I set up ambushes, yes.
Can you describe to me how you set up an ambush?
Oh well, I mean it is just a matter of hiding in the scrub and hoping someone comes along, like a rabbit, set a trap for him, and hope he jumps over it.
18:30
You just set yourself up and wait and see if anyone comes along and if they do, there is a point where you can see so you can, if it’s an enemy just pick them off as they appear. Just these radar guns they put them in a place where they are not seen sort of thing, it is the same sort of thing actually. I mean because you’re hidden out of sight
19:00
but you can see yourself, does that make sense?
Yeah sure. Were there Japanese snipers in the jungle?
Snipers, I think it was snipers that got my three mates, yes they were snipers. They get up the trees. Unfortunately we don’t keep our eyes in the trees all of the time, your eyes are in front of you more than up the trees.
19:30
So they can be very dangerous people because they are out of sight, it is just like an ambush isn’t it when they hide up the trees. They were pretty good at scaling the trees apparently.
Whereabouts did you encounter the snipers?
I didn’t really, well that was in Efogi, would have been
20:00
snipers there that got my three mates there. I think it was a sniper I don’t know, I am pretty sure it was.
How were you brought out of the jungle with dengue fever?
I didn’t, with dengue fever?
Yes.
I was flown out, because I was in the end of the valley, right at the end of the Ramu Valley, no
20:30
Markham Valley when I was picked up. I was taken out by plane.
That would have been risky or was it?
No I don’t think so.
What about flying with a burst eardrum?
I don't know, I don’t remember much about it to be quite honest.
What condition were you in?
21:00
Not very good at all. I think I was, I don’t remember getting picked up from there.
So you were pretty numb?
Yes I could have went one way or the other I think.
Do you think it came close?
Only thing was I decided that I wasn’t going to pack in obviously, I am still here.
So how long did you spend recovering from the fever?
21:30
The next campaign, I don’t know when we finished that campaign, a lot of the boys went back to Unnangata [?] which I didn’t get to because later on, that was in the, that would be end of 43,
So how long did you have the fever for?
Probably a couple of months I suppose you know getting over it, yeah.
22:00
And where did you go to recover?
I went back to base and back to Australia.
So you returned twice to Australia to recover?
Yeah the battalion came home again too eventually. After that campaign they came back to Australia and we started to rebuild and then went back again.
Were you put into a hospital?
Yes.
Whereabouts?
22:30
In Moresby.
Were you in hospital the second time that you came back to Australia?
No.
What did you do the second time you came back to Australia?
We went to staging camp in Brisbane again.
How long did you stage there for?
Until the battalion returned, how long it was,
23:00
it was 1944 when I went back again to Morotai we went back to.
What were you sent to Morotai for?
We were sent there, there was no we didn’t see any fighting there, we went there to prepare for the invasion of Borneo.
And what were you doing?
23:30
What was I doing, normal things, training and preparing for drilling on how to get out of the barge and all of this caper.
Where was that done?
Morotai.
That sounds like an interesting exercise.
Yeah.
How much time was spent learning how to get off a barge?
Well not really
24:00
a great deal, I mean you know how to get off a barge, they are just going to drop the plank down and you’re going to plunge in the water anyway. You get off in the water anyhow. There are occasions when you have got gear to get off with and they try to tell you how to do it and what to do, don’t fall in the water if you can help it. Stay on your feet, that sort of thing.
24:30
And so were you involved in the landing?
At that stage when we got to Morotai I transferred from my battalion I went to 2/4th, what the hell do they call it? I was delivery of food and that sort of, anything.
Supply depot?
Supply depot yeah.
25:00
Why did you transfer?
I had had enough, I never recovered from dengue fever and what’s-his-name fever either. I never got myself back to weight again and I had had enough of army at that stage, so I thought I might get out there on four wheels for a change. That was only the last bit, close to six months.
25:30
Was that a difficult decision to make?
It was really, leave all my mates behind, you know.
But you knew it was the right decision for you?
Well yeah I felt I had served my time as a foot soldier so I felt it was time to get out.
Were your mates sad to see you leave?
Well I don’t know about that, none of them around to ask them that anyway.
26:00
So tell me about the supply depot?
It was pretty good, there wasn’t a lot to do and I was a corporal at the time so I didn’t have much to do. Just drive around in trucks mainly. Take a bit of gear here there and what have you, so it wasn’t too bad. That was at Balikpapan,
26:30
I was doing that, that’s towards the end of the war.
Can you describe what was at Balikpapan?
At Balikpapan? That was an oil refinery. And the landing at Balikpapan we were ashore for about two days I suppose watching all of the foreshore be blasted and the smoke
27:00
from the refinery. When they strafed all of Balikpapan, all of the coastline, all of the, there wasn’t a palm tree left growing actually, all of the tops were cut off there was nothing left on them. All that was left was stumps along the foreshore where the invasion was going to be.
27:30
And the oil refinery was blown up of course, it just burnt for days and days. Smoke, the tanks were exploded of course, and one of the tanks just looked like a road, the explosion spread it out alongside the road, looked like a road itself. And there was just a big mess there. Incidentally
28:00
one the Japanese snipers was up one of these trees and he was blown out, well he wasn’t blown out he was left hanging there, and he was still there when I left, part of him.
That must have been an unusual sight?
It was.
What sort of comments were passed?
Oh, no one worried about him he eventually fell to pieces. “Don’t mind him, he is getting smaller and smaller.”
28:30
Was there a comment or joke made about him?
No I don’t think so, nobody could get to him, they couldn’t get him down unless they shot it down, but no one was going to worry about it, he was just left hanging there, hanging from a rope.
How do you think he came to be hanging from a rope?
I presume he was shot in the strafing when they were strafing most
29:00
likely and fell out of his perch.
So you’re assuming the snipers would rope themselves in?
Well obviously yeah, that’s what happened to him anyway so obviously they rope themselves up there, probably to get down again I imagine that was the idea, to have a rope to get down the tree again.
Can you describe what you were doing at this location?
29:30
After that, when the war finished I was in charge of the prisoners, of a prison camp.
But what was happening in the location where the Jap was hanging from a tree?
Nothing at all, it was out in the open, nothing there at all.
You mentioned that you were there for a while as the body got smaller and deteriorated, what was your reason for being there and what activity was taking place in that vicinity?
30:00
Supplies were coming in there by boat. All food and all of that sort of thing had to be carted in, I didn’t drive a truck I just told somebody else to go and do it.
So what were you doing?
I was a corporal then.
So how did a corporal operate in the supply depot?
I wasn’t in the depot at all I was looking after the trucks,
30:30
the vehicles.
Can you tell me how the depot operated, how it serviced?
Not really.
How the products were unloaded and how they were put into trucks and delivered, and to where?
Well they were taken to the wharf, the trucks were lined up at the wharf, I didn’t have trucks lined up there but there were other depots as well, and they were lined up there when the goods came in,
31:00
and they would take them to wherever they had to supply them to. I didn’t have much to do with that at all really. I wasn’t, in Balikpapan the battalion they were out further out, finished further off. So they were up there where the fighting was so,
31:30
How long were you there at this?
Oh about six months I suppose.
What kind of accommodation did you have set up there?
Only tent, pretty good. It was six in a tent, it was all right.
What other structures or buildings did you have there?
32:00
There wasn’t a great deal, there was nothing much there really, there was a bit of a city further in but we weren’t allowed in there so much. Not as much of a city as where the people lived. They weren’t allowed in our territory and we went allowed in their territory so, well the natives and that, they lived in a certain area. But there was a
32:30
town, I believe there is a town a bit of a city somewhere there but I never ever saw no city. We were just stationed around where the oil refinery was and the wharf.
And it was destroyed palm growth was it?
33:00
Oh yes there were no palms left, all of the tops were knocked off them. I suppose they would grow again I don’t know.
What was the name of that location, did that location have a name?
That was Balikpapan in Borneo.
I thought your location might have had a smaller name?
33:30
No we were in the wharf area, not the city part but the port of Balikpapan.
So were you there when the war ended?
Yes.
What happened was there a big announcement that the war was over or?
Yeah well when the war finished, I was looking after prisoners after that.
34:00
Before we get onto the prisoners that you were looking after, what happened the day that the war ended?
Not a great deal.
Was there excitement?
Oh yes everybody was very happy that the war was finished and we were free again, sort of free. And everybody was glad
34:30
that it was finished and to be able to get out and go home.
Do you remember being told that the war was over?
Oh yes.
What was your initial response?
Oh I don’t really know, I don’t think at the time, it meant a lot yes it did mean a lot.
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There was nowhere you could go and get drunk and a party on, that wasn’t on, I guess it was just another day.
Were blokes shaking each other’s hands or patting each other on the back or anything?
Not that I recall.
Looking forward to going home?
I was yes, I could have went to Japan in the [British Commonwealth] Occupational Forces, but I hadn’t been home for two years
35:30
not home not to here. So I decided not to go, decided to come home first and take my chance whether I got to Japan or not, but I didn’t get a chance. So I was flown out on the 31st of December, to Sydney and I spent two weeks in Sydney waiting to get home.
Before we reached that point, where were you left in charge of the Japanese prisoners?
36:00
In Balikpapan, in the wharf area.
How long were you in charge of them for?
Oh a few weeks, probably a month I suppose.
And that was after war had been announced over?
Yes.
How were they held, how were they contained?
Behind barbed wire.
Can you describe what other facilities they had besides barbed wire perimeter?
No. There was no other facilities there, they were allowed
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if they wanted to go to the toilet or anything like that they were allowed to go to the toilet or be taken to the toilet. They were taken to their meals and that sort of thing. They didn’t want to get away because there was nowhere for them to go so they didn’t take much looking after. I mean if they tried to get away I mean no good them trying to get away they had nothing to go to.
How were they fed?
37:00
Fed the same food as what we had.
Which was what?
They used to go to the kitchen and have their food in the camp, it was taken to them yeah. They had the same food as what we had.
That would have been unusual to them I imagine,
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they would have been used to eating rice and so forth?
Well I suppose, I don’t know, if you used to rice I suppose it would be. I mean we were very thankful to get some rice anyway if we had the opportunity, which we did sometimes. So I think they were treated pretty well, they were treated the
38:00
same as how we were treated really. They weren’t treated very good by me, but.
Weren’t they?
No, I used to make them work.
What sort of work did you used to make them do?
Doing repair work, roads and that sort of thing. They had basket, you know two of them and a big pole on their shoulders? Two men to a basket, make them fill it up and carry it and dump it where it had to be dumped.
And you worked them pretty hard did you?
38:30
Oh yes, they would say, “Oh that’s enough we don’t want any more, that’s plenty.” So I would say, “Put some more in.” Make them carry it a bit heavier.
Did you see any poor treatment of the Japanese prisoners?
No. I didn’t see it, but I believe there were after I left.
Was there?
So I believe.
What made you believe that?
Well there were some Z force wanted to have a look at a couple of
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people that they knew was criminals, so they went in there and killed them. I was told this. That was after I left there. So the captain actually got the sack over it for letting them in, but he didn’t know they were going to be killed anyway. So they killed two of them there yeah. They weren’t tortured.
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Did you see and foul mouthing or abusive behaviour towards the Japanese soldiers?
No.
Nothing whatsoever?
No, not really they were treated pretty well. But they had to work while they were there during the day. I didn’t look after them at night time only during the day. I used to look after them during the day time.
40:00
So then, we used to make beer up there after the war, used to sell it to the Yanks, five pound a dozen.
What did you make the beer out of?
My girlfriends in Brisbane, she used to send me the hops, and we used to get the malt from the nurses, the hospital, make some beers.
40:30
What did you have to do with the Americans up there?
They didn’t have anything to do with us at all, but there were Americans there and they didn’t mind drinking our beer so we used to sell it to them. Five pound a dozen we used to get. I couldn’t drink it.
So you wouldn’t even drink your own brew?
No.
Tape 6
00:30
Just thinking of a couple of things when I was sitting back there, was there any souveniring of Japanese swords and other things?
There was, I never got anything. I think a lot of guys after the war there were a lot of things lying around that were easy to get. I saw a bit of
01:00
Indonesian money, invasion money, there was plenty of it around, but I didn’t bother about it. Especially the Japanese stuff in Balikpapan a lot of the guys picked it up there and took it to Japan with them and the people there thought it was good money and they got rid of it. But it wasn’t worth anything really it was invasion money.
That’s funny, so they tricked their own population?
01:30
Yeah. So that was one thing. But there was other things, I have known a few guys to get swords and a few things like that, but getting the damn things home was one of the hardest things you know. But not only that at the end of the day I really didn’t want anything, I wasn’t interested in souvenirs. All of the souvenirs when I had money I lost them anyway, so they were all gone. Photos and things like
02:00
that, I wasn’t great for taking photos and that sort of thing. I took photos but I lost my camera when it got burnt, so I didn’t worry about another one, I lost those photos and other things. Other than that I had a few small souvenirs that I picked up around the place, but I didn’t worry about it much after that. There wasn’t much way
02:30
of getting souvenirs over there, especially New Guinea and places I went to. In the jungle, I mean there was never anywhere where there was a decent town in most of the places I went to, you know? But there was always something to do somewhere. Have a few beers or something else if there was nothing else to do.
03:00
There was always beer to be had.
Well you were saying before that you managed to brew up beers for the Americans, so the Australians wouldn’t drink it but you sold it to the Americans?
Oh some of our guys would have a go at it yeah but it wasn’t that good. But we didn’t know much about making beer in those days.
Were you saying you were inexperienced beer makers?
It was drinkable but it was a bit hot.
How did you make it?
03:30
Just brewed it. See a lot of the guys said you could make brew by a bottle of orange cordial, put a couple of sultanas in it or something like that, throw that in the sun for a week and you have got a brew.
What?
Yeah.
I am sorry that’s new to me. So you get a bottle of orange juice put a couple of sultanas in there and leave it out in the sun?
Yeah well it is hot
04:00
up there, leave it out in the sun for a week or two and you have got a brew. That was one method. I never tried it myself but I know guys that were doing it. We had our own, one of the cooks he used to do it for us, Wally Clark. Used to make the brew.
And what did he used to brew up?
04:30
Well I used to get the hops and he used to get the malt from the hospital as I was saying.
What did they use malt for in hospital?
Malt?
Just seems unusual that a hospital would have malt, maybe I am missing something.
I don’t know I don’t know what they were using malt for in a hospital either. But you have to use malt for the, make your own, the herbs,
05:00
not the herbs, what's the other stuff you put in?
You’re the brewer, not me, I don’t know anything about brew. I want to find out how you make this beer up there.
Well it was easy at the time, it was.
Step by step please.
At the time it was. You’re not thinking of making brew are you?
Well no, I am just interested to hear how you guys were making it up there. Because you haven’t got a lot of supplies and these
05:30
days I have seen people make beer, but they buy it in a shopping centre, stick it in a can, mix it around and pour it in something, it is very easy. Back then it has got to be a lot more difficult?
No, it’s not that difficult. I mean if you have got the ingredients. Hops and malt is the two main ingredients.
And you just stir it around?
Oh yes, you just brew it up for about a week.
In a tank or what?
06:00
Yes, you have got to put it in something, a jar or a big something. Four gallon drum if you happen to get a hold of them like the cooks would have. They have probably got food in these big jars, do you know what I mean? You buy all of this stuff in bulk and you have got plenty of stuff to put it in,
06:30
you have got four gallon tins and you put the booze in there and brew it up, when it is all brewed up you just bottle it. Siphon the top off into a bottle, cap it and away she goes.
Bob’s your uncle [everything is fine]. So it is actually hot enough in the tropics to not have to add heat or anything to it?
07:00
Well you don’t need a lot of heat at all, I mean you need an even temperature to make beer. Not that I am an expert, but you need an even temperature and probably up there it might have got too hot as well. Humid, I don’t know.
Was it more relaxing in Balikpapan?
Oh yes it was, but there is not much there though I mean there was nothing to do.
07:30
You’re isolated, if there is beer you drink it.
What did you do to pass the time away? Apart from beer brewing?
Oh well there is not much you can do really, I mean there was no place to go especially over there, I mean there was no place to go. Just muck around I mean there was nothing on at all, no city,
08:00
not even a town there. Nothing to do, no shopping or anything. Anything that was there was blown up anyway. There was nothing there at all.
Did you play any cards?
Yeah. Not a great card player, I am now but I wasn’t a great player then. Used to do a bit of gambling,
Yeah.
Two up, there was a two-up school somewhere, poker school.
So how did you go gambling?
08:30
Good loser. Never won. Yes those gambling things they don’t seem to suit me at all. If I put my money on a horse they seem to run backwards.
Oh dear.
Or they fall in a hole on the way. I used to have wins every now and again, not too often., but you have got to win now and again otherwise
09:00
you can’t keep going. Just win a little bit, enough to keep you going. Two-up was one of the biggest games over there or anywhere in the army. Always a two-up school somewhere.
It’s funny that you call it a school because nobody is getting taught anything.
Yes they are.
What are they getting taught?
Well I don’t know why they call it a school either,
09:30
two-up school that’s all I know. We just always used to say two-up school.
That’s very funny.
What would you call it?
I thought you would call it a two-up ring. Isn’t it round?
Well up in Kalgoorlie they call it a ring.
I just find it interesting.
Have you been to Kalgoorlie?
No. Just also thinking about when you were out in the jungle, did you come across any booby traps?
No. Fortunately.
Because some of the fellows we have been talking to said booby traps where everywhere.
10:30
Yes it is true see when you’re pushing the enemy back, see we didn’t have a chance to do that, not that I know of. Especially in the desert that’s where they were they had all of these ground grenades and all of this sort of thing, they had them all over the place, especially all over Europe.
11:00
Particularly in the desert.
They are probably still digging them up. The trouble is they have never been pinpointed to where they were put and when they go back again they are finding them now. And they are running into them now, one of those guys that was killed over in whatsiname? He ran
11:30
over one of those traps. Just reading about him because his wife is still complaining that she hasn’t got the payments for him properly yet.
What do you think about that?
Reimbursements?
Yeah just while we’re on the subject.
Well I think today, I don’t know anyone in my time that got reimbursed for the death of their husband. I was only a single bloke so
12:00
but what happened to all of those people, they never got reimbursed, they are today. I mean they get lots of money if they get killed over there today. I mean it is big money if they get killed. No one worried in my day if they got killed or not and no one got nothing for it either. So it makes you wonder, why didn’t all of the parents of all of the
12:30
blokes that were killed over there, six thousand I think in New Guinea were killed. I don’t think they got anything, their mothers never got anything for them, or their wives or whatever.
Probably if they did start reimbursing people like they reimburse now it would break the treasury, considering there were so many people in the Second World War.
Well, I think there were
13:00
six thousand killed around about over in Singapore and Burma, over there I think about six thousand killed over there as well, so a big payout, you’re right about that.
You know half a million payout per person, you’re getting into millions.
It probably would break the treasury yeah. So they are reluctant to pay
13:30
even today. You can’t take them to court sort of thing. I think you join up for that if you’re in serious health? Should you or not?
Look I don’t know different times are you talking about back then or now.
I am talking about now.
14:00
What we’re doing today is a different thing all together, it is a different war. It is just trouble spots and Australia is just poking their nose in there, which in my opinion they shouldn’t be there, that’s my opinion.
Shouldn’t be there?
It’s not our troubles, that’s what I think. America as far as I am concerned, Iraq had nothing to do with America, but they went in there to try and fix it and they’re still trying to fix it. Well they were told in the first place they wouldn’t be there, but they didn’t want to believe it did they? Well the rest of the world believed him, Russia and Germany and all of the rest of them, France, they didn’t think it was there. Mr Bush did, so he was all right.
15:30
I suppose one thing, it is good we have got American on our side, that’s one way of looking at it because if we need assistance we knew where we’re going to get it from.
Well I suppose this is right you have got to be one the side of America otherwise you have got no protection if somebody comes and you know?
I have got nothing against America either, I mean they give them a hard time when they’re coming here, but I don’t believe they should do, because I mean a lot of people forget
16:00
that I think without America I am not too sure where we would have been in the last war. I think that Australia might have come under the command of the Japanese if it hadn’t been for America.
Well you have got a point there, I mean what do you think of the Americans dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
It was a good thing, it was one way of finishing the war, and had they have kept on
16:30
going Japan would have gone to the last Nip. Japan, they don’t care about bodies. They have got plenty more to take their place, so they would have just kept going as far as I was concerned. From my point of view I was glad because it brought the war to a sudden halt sort of thing and that’s what we all needed and wanted, we didn’t care
17:00
how it was. The Japanese didn’t care what they done to us. And at the time I don’t think America or Australia were consciously worrying about the contamination after the bomb or not. That wasn’t going to be their worry, because the Japanese, if it had have been on the other foot they would have loved it, that’s the way I think.
17:30
Unfortunately most of these places like Germany, England, it was much closer to the people and it was the innocent people that suffered. Innocent people who didn’t want war. No one wants a war, all of the people hanging around in cities whether it is Germany, Italy, England, Darwin, no one wanted to be killed up in Darwin and there was two-hundred and fifty people killed there, all innocent people.
18:00
And the Jap’s didn’t worry about that, so why should we worry about Hiroshima.
Ddi you change your opinion of the Japanese at all when you were taking care of them as POWs [prisoners of war]?
No I don’t think I ever will.
18:30
It is very hard to change your opinion, my wife said to me, “Forgive and forget.” You might forgive but I don’t think you can forget, one way or the other you can’t get them away, they don’t go away from you especially when you see them killing your mates.
19:00
And fas I say for no reason.
It was a war, that’s the reason.
There was that reason but they didn’t have to come into the war. I am talking about what I think. Japan thought they were on a good thing because at the time they thought that Germany
19:30
had the war just about won probably they thought, but it didn’t work out that way. So they finished up paying the penalty, but we all pay the penalty don’t we? I mean there are no winners in a war. Nobody wins and it doesn’t stop it, because it is still going, it is going on in just about every country you go to now. Its there somewhere, it doesn’t stop. There is always arguments.
20:00
It is on in Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, it’s in other places as well, not too far away from us Indonesia. Not so much a war but we have got boys over there keeping the peace over there. Why? It’s protecting of what? Otherwise there would be a war on again probably.
20:30
Do you regret not being a part of the Japanese occupying forces?
Yes.
Why is that?
I am sorry, now I mean I could have had a free trip to Japan, I would have
21:00
because it was a holiday. I know a lot of guys that were there, my brother-in-law was there and he had a good time, a holiday. But he also went on to Korea as well. But he also had a good time in Japan as well, I was sorry after that I didn’t go in the occupation forces, but I had my opportunity and I blew it, I am not crying about it.
21:30
I mean I never did, I had my opportunity, I blew it so that was it. I knew what the result was, I had a chance when I got home, a small chance but when I applied for it I found I had blown my chance, they said, “You can’t leave from here.”
So you had to go on from….?
You had to go on from over there yeah.
22:00
That was it, so I regret it yes.
Well you went through a lot in New Guinea and,
Well after five years I really got to the stage where I had had enough of the army and especially when the war was finished I just wanted to see the end of it, get out and start living again.
You mentioned that your brother-in-law was part of the occupation forces as well as the Korean War, did you have any other relatives
22:30
that had been a part of war efforts?
No, I only got married after the war of course so he only became my brother-in-law after the war, he was over the Middle East when he was sixteen. He came back and how did he get to? He went over there with the
23:00
Occupational Forces after the war, that’s how he came to be in Korea.
Did you have nay other grandparents or anything involved in other wars?
No. My grandfather I never knew, he never spoke about war when I was a kid. And because I am tied up with the army barracks down there, a friend of mine he is tied up with the 10th Light Horse
23:30
and one day he brought a book of the 10th Light Horse, of all of the soldiers in it all of the names. So he brought it in one day and he said to me, “Is this guy any relation to you?” and it was my grandfather. And he taught me to ride a horse, I mean he taught all of us kids because he was a jockey, local jockey. He was a good rider now I know why
24:00
he was a good rider, because he was with the 10th Light Horse. I didn’t know, he never talked about it when I was a kid.
So when you were a kid he just never mentioned World War I?
Yes, World War I yeah.
Were there any fellows who did mention the Great War when you were growing up?
No not a great deal, I sort of, I think I was probably too young actually
24:30
at that time. Like the guys that were in this last war, World War II, they were too young, a lot of them were too young, only started to live when it was all over sort of thing. So you don’t, I never talked about it really.
Why is that?
Well
25:00
my family knows nothing about it hardly, I mean I didn’t talk about war when I come out, I had had enough of it I suppose, I don’t know.
Do you reckon that was a personal choice or was something that was just a sign of the times that you didn’t talk about it?
Well I didn’t really want to talk about it for some reason or another. I have got just lately I
25:30
have got with people who are more interested in me and my war career than my own family is. Because I never talked to them about it when they were young, and a lot of the people I know now, they are sort of interested in what I done, what happened you know? So its, I sort of get myself interested again. Go down to the army museum again
26:00
and that gets me interested again and I get books. I just read a book just recently called, From the 2/14th Battalion and I wrote a letter to him, one of my friends and I saw him last night only for a couple of minutes, he was going in and I was going out. He said, “Why are you still here? I can’t understand why you are still here.” So I told him I just finished reading the book on Kokoda, Kokoda Track yeah.
26:30
Well I mean Kokoda has certainly increased in knowledge recently with school kids learning, more about it, do you find that that’s true?
People talk about it? I don’t mind talking about it now, I didn’t like talking about it before. I went back there and Stan Bisset who I was talking about earlier,
27:00
he organised a trip back to Isurava in 1998 and he, I was sent an application if I would like to go.
So you actually have to apply to go?
Yes. So I sent the application back and said, “No I didn’t want to go.”
27:30
So he rang me up and said, “I would like you to come. I would like you to change your mind.”
Sorry who is this who is trying to talk you into it?
Stan Bisset.
He is one of your mates?
He is one of the captains, his brother was killed up there. His brother was lieutenant in my company, B company, his brother was killed in Isurava.
And what's his reason behind pushing you to go?
28:00
Well I don’t know, I know Stan, I knew him during the war and he is a nice bloke and a brilliant soldier. Him and his brother, unfortunately one got killed. He is a very nice man, he is always willing to talk to you. I rang him up just recently and unfortunately he wasn’t home, but I ring him up every now
28:30
and again have a bit of a yarn [ a chat] and see how he is going. But he asked me to change my mind, and so I did. And I cried, but I was glad. Afterwards I was glad I went. I have got a tape of it here. It was very sad to begin with.
Why is it so sad to begin with for you?
29:00
All of the guys there I left behind. Not only that the fuzzy wuzzies were there, and all of the schools were, they were, when we went to Port Moresby, they took us over to the Owen Stanleys [mountain range] by Caribou and then to Kokoda Airstrip, and
29:30
from the Airstrip to Isurava which is only about five minutes away actually. By plane. A day by walking. But anyway when we got there, all of the school kids, they had all been given holidays and all of the school kids, we were just surrounded with school kids and everyone was so happy to see
30:00
us. And I couldn’t help but cry when they put all of these things around your neck. Absolutely marvellous. So then we were flown up to Isurava, had a ceremony up there, and of course we were flown back home again after the ceremony. And dinner, would you believe it was the best dinner you could go to,
30:30
had the fuzzy wuzzies to dinner too as well. And they had all of their style of cooking, or whatever they done. It was great. I went up there and helped myself with them. They are wonderful people, the fuzzy wuzzies, they really are.
How much of that connectedness was still there after so many years?
It sort of brought back life again,
31:00
I started to get interested in the past. More so that before. I have so many, unfortunately all of my good friends that I had, they are not with us today. I had a good friend here a personal friend he won a DCM [Distinguished Conduct Medal] over in Borneo,
31:30
Dick Hill. Dick Hill was a very good friend of mine. After the war I used to live down at Rockingham when I retired, that’s where my wife died.
What did he get the DCM for?
He loaded some tanks and before they moved the Japs blew them up
32:00
and they had a gun mounted in a hole somewhere, he was a different company to me. And he decided to go up there and clean them up on his own. So he sneaked up there with a rifle and bayonet and threw them out of the pit one by one with a bayonet.
He is lucky to be alive?
He is lucky to be alive, never got
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wounded at all. I think in normal circumstances he should have got a VC, but anyway he got a DCM. Dick was a good man.
Sounds like he was a bit crazy.
Well I would have said that as well. But yeah.
33:00
Just going back you mentioned to Julian [interviewer] that you were there for the historical Blamey speech, can you take me back to what the immediate reaction of all of the soldiers were at the time, just that uncomfortableness, what did you experience when that was happening?
I think they were devastated really. Everybody just couldn’t believe that a man of his knowledge or whatever it was that you want to call it could come out and say what he did and it proved to be all wrong
33:30
in the long run. I mean him and MacArthur, he was just a yes man for MacArthur in my opinion because MacArthur wanted to rule that Australian forces as well if he could. We had a fellow by the name of Potts who took us up Kokoda and brought us out of there and I think he has been named as
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one of the best soldiers we had as a leader, he was a brilliant man. And to for a man like Blamey to degrade him like that, to send him out of that and into a militia force in Darwin after that because he believed he done the wrong thing. But he doesn’t know how many lives he saved. Potts saved so
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many lives with his actions, they way he did. Because at the time Blamey and MacArthur said that we had enough troops there to over run the Japs, but as it turned out we were at least six to one, over run.
Well how can the information from those high up powers be so incredibly wrong?
That’s a good question.
35:00
Intelligence they say, I don’t know how they get it wrong I can’t tell you.
Were you blokes all discussing it after it actually happened?
Yes.
And what were you saying to each other?
Oh well, we should have shot the bastard.
But I mean were there a whole lot of soldiers being completely infuriated?
35:30
Oh yeah, we had a full, most of the battalion was there, what was left of them. I don’t know how many was there I couldn’t tell you, four or five hundred I suppose.
But quite a few blokes?
Oh yes. That’s what was left of them, I mean when we came out of there our battalion only had two hundred and fifty fit men I think, so I am told. I didn’t count them but there wasn’t very many.
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There was only four in my platoon, I don’t know about the company. There was only about half a dozen left in the company. All of those there, that were killed over there, that’s not counting all of the wounded. Hell of a lot of wounded, there was probably a lot more wounded than there was killed. Of course
36:30
a lot of them got out, some of them died in action, died afterwards. So he wasn’t a very popular man, he never was and he never made himself popular after that of course.
Never really recovered from it?
No he probably never ever said sorry either, that he had made a mistake.
Probably if he had have apologised for it,
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he would have been a bit better off in the military world.
Probably yes.
Do you regret being at Kokoda at all?
Not really. No I was lucky enough to get out of it. I got experience that you have a chance to have and I suppose if you come out of it like I have, I suppose it’s
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good to be able to think about it and if you want to talk about it, I am not a great one to talk about it really, but it it’s always with me. It doesn’t go away from me Kokoda, it is something you wouldn’t want to do really. A friend of mine has walked over it, it is easy to walk over it when you have got nothing on. Well it is not easy,
38:00
but I know people, I just saw some of these things of it on TV, guys that have walked over there, some of them were crying did you see them? So it was easy, they didn’t carry anything and they didn’t find it easy. No I now I don’t say I didn’t mind, I was fit and I was young
38:30
and it made me sore, I climbed the hills and I slid down them. And it was an experience that you can’t forget. So you know sometimes I think it is an experience I never would have had normally, not an experience you wasn’t, but I have got it with me. I can’t get out of it.
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But it wasn’t a holiday that’s for sure.
Do you think it changed you as a person?
Five years in the army I think did yes, I think it taught me to appreciate life and people. Learn to live with people. It is hard to live with
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people in a lot of circumstances. My wife of forty-one years. I had a second wife it didn’t last too long, it is the difference ,you get on with some and you can learn to live with some and some you can’t. But I think that for myself I believe
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it was a great experience and it gives you a lot of courage to go on with life after.
When you came back did you see a lot of other mates from the track?
I see quite a few, because I am in the 14th Battalion and they are a Victorian battalion and there wasn’t too many from here, that came back from here,
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but we used to go to Anzac House and mix with the 2/16th, which we all went away with the 2/16th originally anyway. So we used to go up there at that time, but most of those, a few have faded away all together and a few don’t go because of health and what have you. I have been there a couple of times and there is no one there anymore so I don’t go anymore either. So it is one of the things that has faded out.
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I got to the march every year, but the marches are getting to the stage where things are getting on I’ll be the only one marching soon. I march with the 2/16th Battalion I think there was only ten or sixteen of us there last year. They are getting down in numbers, for myself I think they should be all like me, they should be able to walk.
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Then again I walk for an hour every morning.
That’s pretty good.
I missed out on dancing this morning waiting for you. I go dancing four or five times a week.
Well you must be a lot fitter than I am actually.
Tape 7
00:30
Did you ever smoke?
Yes.
Did you quit?
I smoked bung twist, do you know what bung twist is?
No.
In New Guinea we couldn’t get tobacco when we used to get into some of the camps the fuzzy wuzzies they used to chew this bung twist and they would give it to us every now and again. It’s like liquorice.
01:00
So we used to get it and chop it up as fine as we could and see if we could dry it out and then we used to smoke it. It just about took the top of your bloody head off.
Bit of a rush?
Anyway, I haven’t smoked for about forty-five years, might be more.
Did you smoke before you joined the army?
Yes I did, unfortunately.
How old were you when you took it up?
01:30
About fifteen I think. We were like the kids are today, because you do it, everybody else has to do it. Do you smoke?
I don’t now.
Have you ever?
Yeah, I have socially.
Did you do it because other kids done it?
Basically.
I think that’s the problem yeah. I don’t like it, nearly killed me to do what the other kids were doing.
02:00
So the fuzzy wuzzies chewed on this twist did they?
A lot of it, they used to chew betel nut as well, their teeth used to be red and all down here was red. I don’t know what, always used to call them betel nuts I don’t know what the hell they were to be quite honest.
Did you try betel nut?
No I did not.
Did any of the other blokes try it?
Not that I know of.
02:30
Tried, we called in bung twist, it’s trade tobacco, that’s the right name of it.
Trade tobacco?
Trade tobacco yeah.
What does that mean?
I don’t really know it was the name they give it, I mean it’s probably for those people over there, those that use it.
03:00
Was it something they grew in the jungle?
Oh no I don’t think so I don’t know where it would have come from, no idea, the only place I would have seen it was over there. So the right name was trade tobacco and we used to call it bung twist.
What was your relationship like with the fuzzy wuzzies?
Very good. They were good, oh yes.
03:30
Did you share laughs or jokes together?
Yes if you can talk to them, but they have their own language you know, they don’t speak English. They have got their own, it is hard to make them understand, but they are lovely people just the same. Willing helpers.
What about Pidgin English?
04:00
Yeah well yes a lot of them spoke Pidgin English, a lot of them have got a few words that you can understand. I am sure they put up a lot of English from during the war, and I suppose they probably speak a lot more English now than they would have done before. The townspeople would, they speak pretty good English now, I found that when I went over there in 98.
04:30
But there was none of that around when we were there that was all taboo then. But I don’t know about these bush people, they probably don’t come to town too often. They have got schools up there now, they have got a school at Kokoda, and one of the teachers I got a letter from one of the teachers after I came back. So I wrote her a letter, but I have never heard from her since of
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course and the kids, wonderful.
What would it have been like fighting in the jungles of New Guinea without the fuzzy wuzzies?
Well I don’t know I mean they would have taken a lot of men off our end, which we couldn’t afford, to do the job that they done.
05:30
It would have been unbelievable, just in carrying food up and patients back, it was unbelievable. They probably done harder work than we did because they were carrying food up there as well. Our biscuit bombers were dropping food in which half of we never got because it was scattered all around the place anyway
06:00
and I think the Japanese got most of it anyway. We were kicked out before we got it.
You must have found that quite frustrating?
Yes, especially when you can’t get food yourself and it goes to waste. But the biscuit bombers they called them, were no great success. I suppose they did to a certain extent but a lot went to waste that we didn’t get at all.
06:30
Did the fuzzy wuzzies show you any survival skills in the jungle?
No not really, I never had time for that anyway.
You had time to swap tobacco though?
Oh yeah. It is hard to talk to them though, you can make them understand,
07:00
I suppose they make us understand as well.
I am wondering who must have found each other the strangest, did they find you Aussies strange in the jungle?
I would have thought so because see they had them working for the Japanese as well on the other side. They got caught up with the Japanese and they had to work for the Japanese, either do
07:30
that or be killed I suppose. They weren’t going to let them go, they got caught there. So that was probably, I don’t know how they felt working for the Japanese or being caught up by the Japanese, I have got no idea how they would have felt.
I imagine they were enslaved?
08:00
Yes well they were slaves, I mean they were slaves to us as well but in a funny kind of way.
I don’t imagine them as slaves, I imagine them as volunteer kind of helpers?
Well that’s right they were volunteer helpers, they wasn’t forced to do it. But they had an army of their own you know as well. I suppose they were committed enough to do what they were told I suppose.
So were they just as committed to
08:30
defeating the Japanese as the Aussies?
I would think so, I would have thought so.
I know there was a language barrier but did you try or ever discuss the Japanese with the fuzzy wuzzies?
No I didn’t, no. Because I didn’t really get that much chance to talk to them and get to know them personally, never with them long enough
09:00
to I mean they are doing a little job for you and that’s it they’re on their way. And you never see the same one again sort of thing, different people all of the time and si it is very hard to come in contact with a certain person all of the time, do you know what I mean?
Who did the communication with them?
Well the h higher up people, officers and that I suppose they were the ones that used to tell them what to do, where they were
09:30
wanted and that. Sergeants would do the rest. We had nothing to do with them at all actually, only the ones that would pick up the wounded, and take them back to stretcher, had to make stretchers as well, timber stretchers. I dot know who made those really, I didn’t make them.
10:00
At the end of the war what was it like to return to Sydney after the defeat of the Japanese in New Guinea?
Oh it was great actually. Only thing was that I was over there for two weeks trying to get home.
10:30
You know you’re in a staging camp and all you can do is get your meals bugger around get to town, get on the booze of course I suppose but mainly waiting to get home, we finally got home but we were there for two weeks in Sydney.
Whereabouts did you stay in Sydney?
11:00
Oh I couldn’t even go there now.
But whereabouts did you stay there then?
I forget what they call it. I forget, some staging camp just out of Sydney somewhere, I couldn’t even tell you how to get there I wouldn’t know, not even what suburb it was in.
Did discipline change at all, once the war was over?
Oh yes, it was just more freedom straight away.
What was morale like?
11:30
Morale was still good, I think, yeah. I don’t think it changed anything.
What sort of things did you talk about now that you were home and the war was over?
We didn’t talk about war much, that’s one thing. But as I was just saying a while ago, my kids did not hear about my war, really, because I didn’t talk to them about the war.
12:00
I suppose you just talked about things in general, what's on tomorrow and today, bugger the war had had enough of that. Everybody has talked war for the last five or six years so you want to get rid of it don’t you?
Ddi you discuss your plans for the future?
Not really. When I
12:30
I told you earlier that I worked on the Wiluna goldfields and they were closed down after the war finished and off course when I went up to get discharged.
Sorry where abouts were you discharged?
Was it in Claremont?
Well just before we talk about discharge and the work you did afterwards, when you arrived in Sydney were there any welcome home parades?
13:00
No.
What about when you arrived back in Fremantle?
We came back by something Star, brought us back from Sydney. There wasn’t that many of us, probably a couple of hundred I am not that sure. We weren’t met by anybody, we were let off the ship and we had all of the girls waiting for us.
13:30
And I can remember that we had to jump down the ramp onto the ground and there was a bunch of arms.
Did you have a girl waiting for you on the harbour?
There were pretty girls there but none I knew, no.
You had a girlfriend in Perth didn’t you?
No, not when I got out of the army I didn’t.
So that relationship was over before you got home was it?
14:00
I was freelance when I got home.
So what did you do upon landing on the wharf in Fremantle?
Went to my mate’s place, he got wounded in Isurava, a grenade exploded and he got most of it in his back. And he didn’t take any more part in the war, and he is still carrying that around.
Where was his place?
In Cottesloe. And I used to stay there with his
14:30
parents and his sisters, but there was only his parents, and I stayed there for a while and then I went to live at another persons place, another mate of mine, that was in Midlands. Off the Sterling Highway. I lived with his Mum up until I got married, I lived there for about a year I suppose.
All right so
15:00
we have just missed or skipped your discharge, how long was it before you were discharged?
Oh it wasn’t long about a month, I got back here, it might have been two months, I got back here the end of January and I was discharged the 21st of March I think, exactly five years from March to march on discharge. So I would have been home for a month
15:30
or two months.
Now you have mentioned that within about twelve months you were married and I think you mentioned earlier and I think you mentioned earlier that you went back up to Wiluna on the gold mine?
No I never went back to work on Wiluna. I got married in October.
16:00
So where did you meet your future wife?
In a hotel, she was a barmaid and we decided to get married. Anyway talking about Wiluna on discharge they wanted to send me back to Wiluna and I said, “Well it is no good me going back there there is no job there,” and this bloke at the desk kept telling me, “Well you have got to go back there that’s where your job is.” And I said, “Well I am telling you there is no job there, what is the use of going back when there is nothing there?”
16:30
Well he gave up in the finish and I said, “Will you let me out of here?” So I got my pay and got out.
It sounds like a difficult discharge?
It was so stupid, trying to send me back to something that wasn’t there, and he said, “Well you have got to go back there anyway.”
What happens when you’re discharged? What's the procedure?
17:00
Well the procedure, the rule is that when you leave a job during the war, well in that particular case, you have to get it back. That was the rules, whoever had your job had to get out and give your job back. But when there is no job there and the place is all closed down what do you do about it? There is not much you can do about it.
17:30
I went and worked, you know where the South Fremantle Power House is? I went and worked there when I came out of the army. Got a job there, I done all of the ground floor work on that.
What kind of work is that?
Concrete, mixing concrete, I had a big concrete mixer I used to look after.
So was it being built at the time?
The power house? Yeah. I put all of the ground floor in, mixing
18:00
concrete of course. That was in 1946 that was started.
Were there a lot of ex-servicemen working on that project?
No only two of us that I know of. Three of us, one was a sailor.
Was it good work?
Not particularly. I left there after Christmas, I stayed there for about six months,
18:30
seven months,
Just to get some money in the bank?
And then I got a job driving machines and trucks and what have you.
Whereabouts?
Went up to Byford and the Byford brickworks and worked there for two years probably and then I worked in a gravel pit down at the #
19:00
bottom of the range there, down at the bottom of Lesmurdie Hill. Worked there for a couple of years and so I left there and went and worked for a Bell Brothers, Walter Brothers I worked for there and they wouldn’t pay any overtime so I said, “Oh well.”
19:30
I left there and I went to Bell Brothers and I worked there for twenty-three years.
That’s a long stint.
So I retired there at Bell Brothers. During that time I drove all sorts of things, trucks trains, drag lines, bull dozers, front end loaders, truck knifes, front end loaders, everything. Mastered none of them.
20:00
Jack of all trades. Where abouts did you settle down with your wife?
Bayswater.
Did you buy a home?
Yes I got a war service home in Bayswater in
20:30
1954 or 56, whatever 56 I think for memory. Could hardly get a house those days. Couldn’t get tiles for rooves, made by cement, material was very hard to get so it took a long while to get a house.
21:00
That cost me I borrowed two thousand from the army, two thousand seven hundred pounds, my first house including the block of land.
Real estate has gone through a bit of inflation?
You can say that again.
But then that was a lot of money in those days wasn’t it?
It was yes.
21:30
Why were building materials so hard to come by?
I think mainly because of labour during the war, see we were still on rations when we came back here, petrol rations and food rations, when I came out of the army, they were short of everything, material of all sort. That was one reason, for houses as well.
22:00
How long was it after the war that the rations weren’t any longer required?
It went on for a couple of years from memory, I used to have to use a lot of petrol, I was working all over the place and I had a motorbike see as well, and I couldn’t get enough petrol for what I wanted. So I went and got one of the
22:30
bricklayers I knew, brickie carter used to cart the bricks. And he used to give me the spare petrol coupons every time he got a chance and if I could get a spare coupon for him I could get enough petrol. You had to watch your petrol in those days, you only got so much and then that was it.
Was there any black marketing?
Oh there would have been I didn’t use it myself, couldn’t get into it myself.
23:00
Nothing ever fell off the back of a truck as it were?
I am sure there was.
I just thought you were in the transport game you might have been in on a few rackets?
Oh there is rackets going all of the time. I mean there is always some way of making a dollar from someone less.
23:30
Apart from marrying and finding work was it difficult settling back into civilian life?
Yes.
What kind of difficulties?
I couldn’t settle down. I wanted to be on the move all of the time, I hated be working on a job, more than a couple of week I had to get out of there,
24:00
wanted to get out of there. I don’t know why but I didn’t want to be there. I thought there was some place I wanted to be going again you know? So it was very hard yeah.
Ddi that cause any difficulties in your relationship?
Not really, I suppose
24:30
when you live in a house for so many years you get, you get in a situation and you can’t get out of it can you? I mean you have got a job, so you have got to come home. But the job is where you want to get out of, and you want to get away from it. You don’t want to get out of the job but go some other place and do it. When you’re in one place all of the time, it does no good for me.
25:00
I used to get that anyway.
And I think you mentioned earlier you were married for forty-one years?
Yes.
Ddi you have a large family?
Yes.
How many grandchildren and children?
Two girls. That’s a large family.
How many grandchildren?
Five grandchildren.
25:30
And three great grandchildren. So not a big family at all really.
Oh it’s not bad it is spanning a few generations now, now that you’re a great grandad?
Yes, my grandkids are fifth generation now.
That’s a good effort. Have yo ever discussed your wartime experience with your family much over the years?
26:00
Not really, I think personally, my daughters, Rob, he is more interested in my army career than any other part of the family. He reckons that I should write a book, and I said, “Well it will probably take too long for me to write a book.” So I am not interested
26:30
in writing a book really.
Well we have hopefully done an accurate job of recording your experiences today so you don’t have to worry about a book.
That might help a bit, yeah.
Has the RSL [Returned and Services League] been important to you in your post war life?
I have been a member of the RSL, I am not a member at the moment I have let it lapse unfortunately it hasn’t been an important part of it no. I have been a
27:00
member there, originally in Bayswater and left Bell’s Brothers for a while and I owned cabs for ten years, I owned two taxis and I met a bloke one night, he was a member of the committee of Anzac House, I picked him up there and took him out to #
27:30
Dustin Hill where he lived and along the way we got talking about war of course and he asked me if I was interested, Bayswater RSL had closed down during the war or in the First World War or something like that from memory now. And he asked me if I was interested in helping him to reopen Bayswater, and I said, “Yeah I am interested.” So we did and we reopened Bayswater RSL
28:00
and I was on the committee up there right up until I retired. And I was the number one there in the books of course and I believe it has lapsed again and they sold it and rebuilt a hall while I was in there, and they have sold it and now joined up with Basset End I believe. That’s a little
28:30
bit disappointing. But that was good we opened up and started up a RSL position again when it had lapsed and closed down and it was going good. And now it is closed up again, lacking numbers I think. I suppose being a
29:00
small place, you have to have numbers to keep anything going. I suppose I pulled out of there as well, I don’t live there anymore I went down to Rockingham to live and of course I was a member of the Rockingham RSL and I was very involved down there as well. After leaving there and coming here again I don’t get involved with RSL anymore.
29:30
I have been a member of Fremantle actually but I never get myself involved down there, everything lapses. All of the mates I used to go to Anzac House with, we used to go there evert Friday and have a few drinks, now they have all disappeared and I don’t go there anymore.
How important has the RSL been to you over the years?
30:00
Well I don’t think it, it hasn’t been, it has been good for soldiers over all, ex-soldiers. But it hasn’t really done anything for me personally. I have had no need of help from them or anything like that. But they are there for help if you need help.
Is it a place to continue your mateship?
30:30
Well that’s one of the problems, they’re not growing on trees anymore, like leaves, they’re falling off.
But over the years they have still been there and it has been a way of continuing your mateship after the war?
Well most of my mates, see a mate that I had here, Dick Hill he died quite a while ago. I have
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couple now that were in the 2/14th, one lives in Belmont and another our in Wembley, so I never see them. Sometimes I might ring one of the blokes up, he is not an invalid so much but he is not too good on the legs so he can’t get around too well. I don’t see too much of
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him. all of the other mates that I had were Victorians see, most of them over there. I haven’t got too many over there, all of my good friends they are not with us.
Well if diggers aren’t growing on trees what do you think will happen to the RSL?
All of the young blokes will keep it going. They’re always coming in. Rockingham has improved., particularly with the sailors, it is very strong
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down there. I don’t know about some of the RSLs up this way are getting weaker, but you get in places, I think Fremantle is pretty strong. As far as I can gather. I think Perth is still pretty strong. But other than that, like Bayswater for instance, it closed down, they regroup at another one to keep the thing going but,
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Sorry do the larger RSL clubs have many younger members?
I think they have got a few there, yes. There is Korean people, Vietnam guys. They get a few there. They get all of these young blokes coming back in.
The Gulf and Timor and –
Yeah. A lot of these guys in the war now, a lot of them SAS [Special Air Service],
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a lot of them blokes are only in their thirties most likely. They are special, it takes them ages to get to where they get to. And they are good soldiers, probably some of the best in the world.
Some of their performances recently have been impressive with the Iraq war.
That’s right they have got a very good record. So they will keep the RSL going I am sure.
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Do you think they will keep the Anzac or digger tradition alive?
I am not too sure whether Anzac should be Anzacs anymore, I don’t think Australia has anything to do with the Kiwis anymore, not really. I mean it was all right during the First World War. I guess it will still be know as Anzacs but in my personal opinion I don’t think we should be involved as an Anzac anymore because we’re not
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involved with the Kiwis anymore if you know what I mean?
No we have ANZUS [Australia, New Zealand and United States treaty alliance] now.
Yeah well there are no Kiwis over involved with Australia in these scraps at the moment we are on our own. No doubt there could be some Kiwis with them but as Aussies though.
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What do you think of the future then for Anzac Day?
I think it has still got a good future it will keep going, I hope so.
Would you change the name of Anzac Day?
No, I don’t think so, not now. I think people are too quick to change things, not Anzac itself,
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Anzac Day will always be Anzac Day. But the word Anzac as it is at the moment it takes up two countries doesn’t it? I mean New Zealand is not like Tasmania is it? You got to Tasmania don’t tell the Tasmanians you come from Australia, but you got to New Zealand and you can say you come from Australia.
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True what does Anzac Day mean to you?
I love it. I go there every year, I will be there again this year, legs will still carry me there I hope.
You still march?
Yes.
And when you can’t march will you still go?
Well if I can’t walk I hope I am not here.
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When you can’t walk there is nothing left in life, that’s my opinion.
I only meant if you can’t march the full parade would you go in the parade in a car?
If I could get in there, if someone would take me in yeah.
You have said that you love it, what does it mean to you Anzac Day?
I think it is part of tradition now really.
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Do you ever go there?
I have been a few times I don’t go each year.
Well it’s something that I like, I got to the morning service up there in Fremantle, I don’t go to Perth. I like going to the march, there are guys you can talk to. I have friends that I talk to.
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Not friends so much as people I know. Some of my younger friends, my friends grandson, he always comes in and marches for his grandfather. So I go and might have an evening with them in the afternoon, they’re the younger generation, but I enjoy their company, they enjoy mine so I mean
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How do you share your company with them?
A few beers.
Do you talk about the war?
Not a great deal. They don’t, no, they were in a different world to me, they haven’t been in a war so I don’t talk about war with them no.
Do they ever ask you about the war you’re in?
Sometimes they do, some people are interested.
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Some are not. I have a couple of friends who are very interested. Particularly lady friends I have got who are more interested in my war activities than anybody else.
Do you enjoy telling them about your experiences when you’re asked?
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I tell them what they want to know, I mean if they ask me questions I answer them. The best I can.
What do you think of the growing popularity of Anzac Day?
I think it is great, I think it is getting bigger all of the time actually. Every time I go in there, there seems to be more people in there now than when I first went in there ten years ago or longer.
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I have been going in there since I retired anyway, when I was working sometimes I had to work on Anzac Day. The job I was doing. So I didn’t get to march, but since I have been retired I have always gone in to march and I have been retired now since 1979. So,
Why do you think Anzac Day is becoming more popular?
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I think for one thing the younger generation is getting involved in, through the scraps we have been going to, the younger people have been getting involved because wives and sons and daughters and all are getting tangled up in the war at the moment. And Anzac as well. We have more people involved in uniform today then we had fifty years ago,
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so those people are bringing people to Anzac Day, I think. I can’t believe you go down to the morning parade and I can’t believe that people go to the trouble with babies in prams, it is marvellous that they go to the trouble to bring their kids down at that hour of the morning, for about half an hour.
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I think it is absolutely great.
Well on that note that positive note, I would just like to thank you for speaking with us today Cyril and hope that you found it a rewarding day and I hope that young people in the future will be able to gain something from your experiences.
A pleasure, thank you for having me.
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End of tape