Australians at War Film Archive

Yes, surely. Well I was born in Essendon in Victoria on the 7th of April, 1918 and

sometime after that, about eighteen months later we moved into – okay, I was born in Essendon in Victoria on the 7th of April 1918 and my father was an Anglican priest. About eighteen months later my mother died and we moved to the seaside suburb of Black Rock.

We were there for thirteen years and I had the questionable pleasure of being brought up my mother-in-law, step-mother I mean. That wasn’t very pleasant. In about 1933 we moved up to Hay in New South Wales and we were there for a while and I had two sisters, by the way, elder and older than I am.

They’ve both died and I think in 1936 I went back to finish my schooling in Melbourne and I got a job in an importer’s business. I think I was eighteen when I joined the CMF [Citizens’ Military Force], as it was in those days.

I had an uncle who’d been in the light horse and he wanted me to go into that but there was no light horse available to go into and so I tried, I thought perhaps the engineers. I was told to go to my local drill hall, which was only a couple of miles away, which I did and ended up joining the infantry. They told me that infantrymen didn’t march any more,

they rode in trucks. After about ten thousand miles of marching, I doubt it’s truth, so I had about CMF training and I was a sergeant and when the war broke out I was just starting my commission training course. But when they formed the 7th Division I decided I’d leave the course. I

went back as a private into the AIF [Australian Imperial Force] and joined the 2/14th Battalion. In due course I was put into the signals, the signal platoon. I knew nothing about signals but I did learn a bit. I think in October of 1940 we went across on the [SS] Aquitania. There was quite a convoy, all of the 7th Division went

over and we got off on the Suez Canal and went by train down to Palestine and we were in a training camp there at Julis. Some time towards the end of 1940 we were shipped off, told we were going to a cold country and to put warm clothes on and I put long johns and everything on and they marched us up to the station,

then said, “This is only a trial march, we’re going down to the beach.” And we ended up with a twenty mile march over sand dunes and I had blisters all over my feet because I’d put new boots on, and I was very hot with my long johns and that didn’t work out very well. Anyway a little while later we were shot off again and we went up to the desert where the Germans were threatening to break out, and

come down at a place called Mersa Matruh, where I believe, what’s her name? That great queen used to have holiday home and then suddenly we were picked up again. We thought we were going to Greece but we ended up going to Syria. So we went to the Syria campaign. After the Syria campaign we came back to Australia, because the Japs had started their war and then we went up to New Guinea and the Owen Stanleys. Will that do for the moment?

Yes, we didn’t actually land in Colombo, we weren’t allowed to land. Actually what had happened, the Japs were coming down very fast and we were on a horrible little tramp

steamer but I believe we were ordered to go to Rangoon, but before we got there, the Japs had got there, then we tried somewhere else and that happened about three times. We were five weeks cruising around the Indian Ocean, trying to find some place to go and finally, thank goodness, they brought us back to Australia.

Not roughly, it was ‘42.

Before then, about May. When the campaign – ? The campaign was June, July, August, I think, so it would have been about the end of May.

Yes, well when we first got there we were camped at a place called Three Mile Valley, I think from memory.

That was only very temporary. We were carted off to a place called Koitaki, which was right at the foot of the Owen Stanley Ranges and we had a few days of training and getting ready there. If I might just mention one thing that stuck in my mind? The night before we were to move off it was raining but they called a church parade and the

various division, the Church of England, which I was and the Catholics and the others all had a separate space in this great paddock of rubber trees and things around and we all had hurricane lamps and soft rain coming down, and it was the most touching memory I have, a wonderful sight. Anyway after that, the next morning we started on our trip and the good memories started to fade away very quickly.

Yes, that was after the Owen Stanley campaign. We were taken back, if I could, at the end of the Owen Stanleys we were very proud of ourselves. We thought we had done a wonderful job and general in command, Major General Blamey, came along and addressed us and we expected him to give us all the accolades and he abused us and he said, “It’s the rabbits that run that

get shot.” And then he called, by that time I was commissioned and he called all the officers out and he said, “I’m not going to speak as kindly to you as I spoke to your troops.” And he gave us a tongue lashing. It’s a wonder someone didn’t shoot him. And then we were sent up to Gona. If you want to know what hell’s like, go and see Gona.

After Gona, no. After Gona we went back into the Ramu Valley, which is really into West New Guinea, as it was in those days and we fought along the Ramu Valley. You’ve heard of the Shaggy Ridge fight? We were camped under Shaggy Ridge. As a matter of fact I think I started it because my batman woke me up and said, “There’s a funny little round thing up there on the top.” And I had a look

and the round thing was moving and I saw it was digging a hole, right on the crest of a very sharp thing and I went and told, the artillery had a go at it but they couldn’t quite hit it and eventually some of our fellows were sent up to clear it and they did. And Shaggy Ridge was behind that and another battalion took that on, but they came and sat right on top of us.

After Shaggy Ridge we pushed on through, we were heading up towards the coast, but I can’t think of the name of the last place we were at, but there was a dam there, and we had swim sports there which I remember and then we were taken back home again. And after that campaign we went up to Balikpapan.

Well we landed at Balikpapan but we went up to Morotai first of all to get on the boats.

I think Gona was probably the worst I think. The Owen Stanleys was physically very, very tough.

Apart from the features we were outnumbered about five to one. All we had were light weapons and they had artillery and everything else they wanted. It was a very hard and bitter campaign, but Gona was worse in that we were right on type of the Japs all the time, facing them and it was a most forlorn place, muddy

and horrible and the Japs were dug in under trees and under huts. I won’t tell you anything about that campaign at the moment.

We finished up at Balikpapan at a place called Manggar, which was an airstrip about twenty ks [kilometres]

up from Balikpapan. All the six year men and over were told to stay there and wait for a boat to bring us home and the other fellows went over to an island just off, where they were trying to help the natives to settle back again, and eventually we got home. I think we got home in December

’45 and they popped me straight into hospital, a repat [repatriation] hospital in Melbourne as a suspect TB [tuberculosis], so I spent five weeks there and they found nothing wrong but I had a marvellous time though, and then I went back to work.

Yes, I married a woman after we came back from the Middle East. We weren’t engaged but we were more or less engaged and we only had a week’s leave in Melbourne and I suggested we get married, and she said, “No.” And that went on for six days and on the seventh day she said, “Yes.”

And I went to see the CO [Commanding Officer] and I told him and he said, “Yes, that’s okay but you’ve got to be back in lines at eight o’clock in the morning out at Watsonia.” So that was it. Yeah, I won’t talk too much about the marriage. I had two children, a son and a daughter and I still have.

And later I met Joan and that’s a very happy marriage and we have a daughter who has a son and about to have another child and she, apart from other things, she’s an Anglican priest also, and she’s also in the army, so

she’s a chaplain.

Post-war I went back to my old company until 1956 and then I joined my cousin who had a manufacturing business and I was his sales manager and our company was taken over by an English company and I didn’t like what they were offering so I got out of it.

And I joined another manufacturing company for a year as a sales manager again and they had a change of management there and he and I didn’t get on very well, so I left that and went into life insurance and eventually I came over here as a manager of a company here in Adelaide.

And that’s what I was in until I retired in 1985, I think that’s right.

Well it was a beautiful place and the only thing that spoiled it I suppose was, except I used to get belted quite soundly with ti tree sticks and things like that. I didn’t think I was very naughty but apparently I was, and

I went to school at the state school and my father opened up a little church school, where I didn’t learn anything for three years, and then I went back to state school, high school, up to Hay High School and back to Ivanhoe Grammar, which they thought would smooth me off I think, and then I went to work. Actually I got diphtheria during the year, so the headmaster thought it would be

wise to do that than doing my leaving, so that’s how it happened. At – Black Rock is on the beach, we used to swim and we had our neighbours join us and my two sisters and I were always very close, right up to the time they died, so they compensated for a lot.

But I had some good times. I was in the local church cricket team, never any good but I was there. The only time that I excelled was when the other team was short of a fieldsman and they called on me to go in there, and I was at square leg, if you know where that is? And I had a reputation of never being able to catch and my father was batting and he swung one round to square leg and I caught him.

I was very popular. Once when I played for another team later in life, after I left Ivanhoe I was staying with an aunt and uncle and he was the one that was a light horse, and I got into a cricket team and I excelled one day. I went out and smashed the ball around and made seventy-two and then the next week I went in and got a duck, so there you are that’s my life.

It had it’s moments of pleasure but when you know you’re going to get a belting for something everyday you’re not extremely happy. Once I remember I had a poisoned knee and my father decided it had to be lanced so he got a knife and lanced it, so that wasn’t very pleasant either.

I don’t think we had a lot of money and I think my greatest embarrassment was when they took me into a warehouse in Melbourne and bought me a suit, which was two sizes too big for me, and it happened that that night I had asked a girl to go out to a school function and I was so ashamed of this

suit that I wouldn’t go out, so that was the end of that friendship. But you had to buy things that you grew into, but it would have taken me five years to grow into that one, and silly little things happened. You’d get birthday presents and Christmas presents and all of a sudden they’d disappear and they’d go to my step-mother’s nephews and nieces. So we had plenty

and they didn’t have anything, sort of thing. That’s the sort of life it was.

Sticks off a ti tree. Once she told me to go out and get a stick so I could get smacked, so I came down with a nice big twig and that was no good, and uncle happened to be there this time and he went out and got one this big. Didn’t appreciate that very much.

Still I came through it.

Oh no, on the legs and on the back and on the tail.

No, they never got hit, being girls, but they got into trouble. We, between us, used to say we had a black book and we’d enter into it who

was in the black book at that stage, so they used to get into horrible trouble, but oh well we lived through it and we came through it and I think we all lived reasonably good lives afterwards, reasonably good, mindful of pitfalls.

Oh I was supposed to be a liar, I was lazy, I never did anything

and if I was given the washing up to do I’d probably break something. And I don’t think it was anything very bad but whatever I did was wrong and it just happened that way. And I had a bedroom which had been my father’s study and it had a door that never quite closed properly and I’d be sitting on the bed and I’d look up and I’d see an eye looking at me. She was trying to see what I was doing.

So when you’re in disobeyance all the time it’s not very comfortable.

Nothing much, except scream, which I did, but no, you can’t hit a woman and oh well, there it was. I suppose I

should finish it off. After I left home in May I saw my father. By the way, he had been captured by the Japs and put into Changi. The British put him in, enlisted him in the army to give him some rank so he came through that. And after I got home, or just before I got home, he got home and I went out to see him and we had quite a good chat.

That was okay. He and his wife were staying with her sister and the family and I thought everything was going well, but my wife was a depressive, manic depressive and she was having various bouts and that went on about every eighteen months and she’d end up in hospital. And it didn’t give me much

chance to go round looking for my father. One day I went out, my wife had come out of hospital and we went out to see him, and as I said, they were staying with her sister and her husband and I went to spoke to them first because they were host and hostess and after about twenty minutes of chatting to them I went in to see my father. Then I hadn’t

seen him for about a year and, “Did you come out to see them or me?” And it ended up in a great row and afterwards they moved down to Brighton and I made a couple of attempts to go and see them but never allowed in the door. Once I met her in the street and I tried to say I was going up to see Dad and she went into a phone box to phone the police.

But my father died and I went to the funeral and she was there and I went and spoke to her and she said, “Your father never wanted this.” And I said, “And neither did we.” So I spoke to her and said, “Let’s put it in the past. If you want to see me give me a ring and I’ll come out, but I won’t come unless you ring me.” She never did but I got a report back that she was amazed how nice I

was to her, so something came about. She had a soft heart somewhere I think.

Well he was towards the end of the war. He and my mother and the two girls had gone over to England in 1916, I think, and

he was looking after a church over there for a while near London and I think they came back I think in 1917. I was born in 1918. He was a remarkable man. Unfortunately he didn’t take much hand in helping us personally but

he did a lot of things. He took us out for trips and he used to do sketches for us, and I think before my mother died life would have been wonderful. My grandmother and grandfather came out and stayed with us but something went wrong and there was a mighty row one day and we never saw them again. And people used to come around with messages and he

had a violent temper and he’s send them off very quickly and suddenly we were taken out to a woman’s place who we knew as our great aunt but she immediately became our grandmother, and we were waiting at the gates and my father and his new bride came in and that was the start of the worst days. But

we had a bit of fun in between everything else. Luckily we had a stupid sense of humour, we all did. I still have. You get over these things.

He was a trained engineer. He’d been quite a good cricketer

in his youth and he was an outgoing person. He was stubborn and I think you’ll enjoy this. I don’t know if you know anything about the Anglican Church, with the various layers. Some are low church, no great ritual or anything and no decorations and the top is the very high church.

He was low church, but over the time he made friends with the Roman Catholic priest who enjoyed a beer now and again apparently, and I can remember he would come up about nine o’clock at night and rap on the door, on the window of Dad’s study, “Are you there, Thompson?” And Dad would go out and they’d go off for an hour or two and not long after that,

he turned from being low church to high church, and I think the influence came from this man. And we had women in the choir and he immediately sacked them and he a couple of flags, the Union Jack and the Australian flag and they were tatty, and he threw them out and there was petition came round to get rid of him, and he was in the newspapers and life was hectic. I’d go to school and people would say

“Ha, ha, your Dad’s going to get kicked out!” He was the talk of the town. Anyway he came through it, in spite of everything. One of the women he kicked out of the choir was a woman who used to let him use her car whenever he wanted, so she never did after that of course. We lost her and we lost a lot of them. Then he built up a new one. We had a cricket team and a Friendly society and things like that,

and the church used to be packed but he was a, what do you call it? A hell fire man and he’d slam the pulpit and tell us all how bad we were. He said to me once, we were doing a course for confirmation and he told us all, “Whatever I hear from you is between you and God. I will not remember it.” So I thought I’d try him out so

I told him all the things that were wrong, and probably made up a few and I never heard a word about it. I think we could have been very good friends, under different circumstances. I admired him. He was a pretty wonderful person. Anyway, there you are.

Twice during the week and three

services on Sunday and sometimes more, and when we went up to Hay we had two churches, sixty miles each away, and one of thirty and one of twenty-four. I learnt to drive a car. That was great. I used to drive and always accompanied him whenever he went and I learnt to drive a car. We lived opposite the police station and I never had a licence and I loved

it up there in Hay. I think something happened that I decided I’d better get back to school and get the rough edges knocked off and a girl was playing tennis, we had a tennis court in the yard and I was speaking to her through the wire netting and suddenly she put her mouth up and I kissed her. Then notes came over the front fence, and I never saw them. My stepmother used to see them and she was complaining bitterly about

these and soon after that I was sent down to Melbourne to school. It was strange, I met that woman about ten years ago. We went up to Hay and I didn’t recognise her but after she said a few things I realised who she was. She was laughing her head off.

Well you get a bit of rubbishing, “You’re father’s a priest.” And once I remember writing a report on myself and it put, ‘Father’s occupation’ and I put ‘parish priest’. And a lot of them took that to be Catholic and that was the joke of the place, and somebody pinched it and showed it to all the rest of

kids. And, “Oh your father’s a priest,” making out he was a Catholic priest, who wouldn’t be married anyway, so that was it. There were a few little things that were funny, but still, we lived. Actually I complained about it but I suppose in a way the treatment I got produced something worthwhile in me,

as I’ve been able to take a lot of rubbish since.

Well in those early years I was religious because I had to be. In war years, as much as anyone else. We used to have church parades and I’d go on that but I lost

a lot of interest. I came out of the army, and I should say my first wife was Catholic and I tried to remain as a Church of England person, but suddenly I lost interest and then I thought we’re having a lot of trouble in the home and two children had arrived, so I tried being a Roman Catholic.

And I tried to be a good one for a while but eventually that sort of faded and I couldn’t quite fit in with them, and then years later I met Joan over here and she was Church of Christ, and at that stage I was nothing but I claimed to be Church of England, or Anglican as we are now, and I went to church with her a few times.

But one day an old minister came in and preached to us and in the middle of the sermon he pulled up a bugle and started to play that and that was the end of it for me. I gave up and time went on and one of my sisters came over, my sister’s used to come over quite often. This was Christmas time, and Nancy came over and she wanted to go to church on Christmas Day, so I took her down to Glenelg and there were forty people

there, Christmas Day, and the priest was the most dreary fellow I have ever met. And my sister who was a very staunch Anglican said, “Don’t you ever take me to that church again!” Twelve months later she came over again and I did, I took her there again, but this time the church was packed full with about two hundred and fifty people and the service was alive and it was fantastic. She was

thrilled and so was I. We went back and we told Joan all about it and I said, “What about you coming over?” She said, “I’ll do it if you promise not to leave me there on my own.” So from then on I have been very staunch. I became a lay reader and a lay preacher when I was up in Melbourne, and I was church secretary and I was on the

council and I was on the diocesan council. And when we came down here Joan and I had various jobs at the church but I’m not a rabid, saintly person by any means, but yes, I enjoy my church.

Anglican. Joan dropped out of the Church of Christ, so all told we’ve tried the Church of Christ, the Wesleyan Church or whatever it

is and the Church of England, Roman Catholic church, I’ve had experience.

Yes.

Not early on.

Up in Hay, yes. We would come out of the school, the high school, and not far down the way was the Catholic school and we’d clash and then there’d be stones thrown and, “Proddie [Protestant] dogs jump like frogs,” and we had some of the taunts for them.

It was something similar, rhymed. Ours was, “Jumped like frogs,

in and out of the water,” and they had something that was quite different but it rhymed, and I can never remember what it was. I was probably too busy getting away from their stones but apart from that, I think a lot of that has gone.

When I was very young,

the aunt that we eventually stayed with was very anti-Catholic and she used to tell me all the terrible tales about these people, such as the local priest had a raffle for a block of land and the person that bought it went down to see it and it turned out to be a quarry hole, and she said, “You can never trust a Catholic.” I hope you’re not one, are you?

There was all that antipathy and then later in life when I was working, after the war, there was a young lad who came and joined us and he got very keen on one of the girls in the office, and I was driving him somewhere one day and he said, “I like this girl, I’d like to marry her, but she’s a Catholic.” I said, “So what? She’s human.” “Yeah, but she’s a Catholic.” I said,

“Well just a few years I saw lots and lots of fellows die. Some of them were Catholic and some were others but they all had the same coloured blood, so what are you talking about?” “Oh yeah, but you know.” Stupid, isn’t it? We’re all one crowd. I can’t stand anything like that. Doesn’t matter what a person’s colour is or race or anything else, they’re all people.

Well a young cousin was staying with me and he was a problem to me because he was always doing something to annoy me, but I was always being told when doing anything wrong that, “Don’t forget God is watching you. He can see everything you do.” I’d been into the bathroom and came out

and this little fellow ran into the bathroom. He came out and it happened that, oh he said to my step-mother, “The tap was running in there.” And I got the blame immediately as I’d been in before. I said, “I didn’t leave the tap running,

you’re telling lies.” And she gave me a spanking and I had tears running down my face and I went into the bathroom and I looked up top and I said, “God, I hate you. If you were watching me all the time, you’re telling on me.” There we are.

Strangely I wasn’t scared of him at all,

I was scared of her but unfortunately I couldn’t very well go and tell him anything because he always told me she was a very good mother and I was very fortunate to have her and so on. Although he had a fierce temper and he not often used it on us. I remember I was at the table one day and I said I wanted to go to, we didn’t call it toilet in those days.

“Finish your meal.” And I said, “I can’t, I’ve got to go there quickly.” He said, “Finish your meal.” I said, “It will be too late, I’m going now.” I was about seven I think and, “Oh right.” And he sent me off but he followed me and when he found out it wasn’t as bad as I said, he got the razor strap and went “bang,” so he had his moments. But I was very fond of him.

I didn’t have any great love for my step-mother. You couldn’t, could you? I felt sorry for her. I think she had, she’d been a very good pianist. She used to teach music before she was married but she had a breakdown when she was sixteen I believe. She used to accompany some of the big singers of the day.

I think there was, temperamentally she wasn’t able to cope with the job. Although I’ve been very rough on her, in her make-up she couldn’t be otherwise than she was.

The loving? I think with my two sisters and I. We had a girl cousin that stayed with us who

was the sister of the boy I spoke about. She used to get all the loving from my step-mother. Yes, there was quite a bond between my two sisters and also with my father. I think there were days when we probably had a good day with her. They couldn’t all be bad.

We settled down as a family but it wasn’t always good. Mind you this was the 1920s, and life was a bit different in those days. People were much stricter. There wasn’t the freedom for children and they did as they were told and children were to be seen and not heard and it was a very different life. I don’t think it would go over today.

Yes, lots of things happened in those days. People used to come around to the door selling all sorts of things. They’d come around selling apples for instance and there’d be dents in the side of the bucket, so you wouldn’t get a lot. They had to live these people.

I remember once, to give you a good story about my father, a fellow came to the door and he said, “Can you give me any help?” And he held up his shoes and they were all torn. So Dad took off his shoes and he was going to hand them to him and he noticed they had a hole in the sole of one of them, so he went into the bedroom and picked up a new pair of shoes and handed them to him. He got into a lot of trouble from his wife that day.

I thought that was a good example of what he really was like. He was a very generous person. He would have liked me to have gone into the priesthood. He took me up to a college and we had lunch there once and he said, “How did you like that?” I enjoyed it. We played tennis and did all sorts of things. “Righto,” he said, “work hard, get a scholarship and I’ll put you through.” I got frightened after that. I didn’t want to be a priest.

Well my life went away from it, the army and all that.

Well we had nothing. To go to school, school was three miles away, I used to walk. That didn’t do me any harm. The girls did. Sometimes I’d get on the back of a tram and ride until I got chased off once.

I thought I’d better stop that. Clothes, well clothes had to make do and hence I got the one’s I’d grow into. We just couldn’t afford anything and I think about twice in our life we might have gone to a film. We made our own fun and meals were always for interesting. For instance breakfast

Dad would probably have his in bed and he’d have nice fried egg and bacon and toast and marmalade and so on, and we’d have porridge and that was that. Dad had to be looked after but we had, bread and dripping was quite often what we had. Put a bit of pepper on it to liven it up and it’s edible.

Well I can remember having steak. I could never manage steak. I used to chew and chew and chew and chew and I’d get into trouble, and I hated it. I just couldn’t stand steak at all. It was always tough and I still have a thing about steak unless it’s very tender. Oh I suppose we often had poultry. Somebody would give us a WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK and

her parents had fowls and we would get them from there. There was no refrigerators or something in those days and quite often the corn beef or whatever would be bought out and if you complained you got a clip across the ears or something. Once up in Hay this happened, and we had visitors and I was just about to eat my meat and there was a great big thing crawling across the

plate and I’m trying to find it and I wasn’t allowed to say a word and the poor old guests were eating away and I had to eat mine knowing that thing was there.

A maggot, a nice big maggot. We often had that sort of thing. I used to hate to see WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s come out with stuffing because you knew that’s going to be alive, lovely. I could never understand this. My

elder sister was having a glass of milk. You never did get milk, it would be milk and water and she got to the bottom of it and she found mud and a worm in the mud. I don’t know who put that there. It wasn’t me. I didn’t do it. She claims it wasn’t her but somebody had. I think it must have been

a mistake but anyway it happened.

I think we can leave that now, can we?

We had Coolgardies. We had a Coolgardie. Do you know what that is?

Well it’s a safe with hessian sides and on top was a tin of water and felt pads came over and the water would just ooze out around the sides and keep the stuff cool inside. But unfortunately there always seemed to be holes coming into it, so the flies would get into it. If they weren’t in there they were in an ordinary cupboard with just wire on the sides.

And I don’t know, they’d get in the doors but there were always stacks of blowflies around. And that was so in Black Rock and it was worse in Hay, there were lots and lots there.

No, Black Rock.

It was a fibro cement

house. Quite a nice house. Fibro cement was very popular in those days and it had weatherboard below the, it was very nice. Not a very big house but quite comfortable. We had the tennis alongside it and then the church and when he decided to have a school, the school was in the church hall, but the school was a dead loss.

It didn’t last very long.

I think the teachers we had. I told you before, I don’t think I learnt anything at that school. The only thing I can really remember is being in a play when I was supposed to be the knave of hearts, probably fitting.

I think my father got a, he got to know a man who was the incumbent there at the time and they did a swap. I don’t know really. Maybe he was a bit tired of Black Rock. He’d been there for thirteen years and I think he felt it was time to move on

and this one came up. I think he really enjoyed being in Hay. It was a busy life. I know when we drove into it, do you know Hay? Have you been through there? You know what the Hay plains are like? I said to myself how can anyone live in a dump like this? I wouldn’t but about three years later when I was moving back I thought how can I live anywhere else? I loved it.

The horizons were so wide and you start thinking widely and to travel sixty miles was nothing. Look at it now and it was there. So I don’t know, it was such a different life, but anyway, time had to go on and I went back to Ivanhoe Grammar and I enjoyed that year.

I told you, I think I was being sent down to be smoothed off a bit.

I was a boarder of course and that was a completely new experience but a terrific life.

We played cricket, we played tennis, we played football. I should have been reported in one football game but managed to get away with it, and I kicked a goal I remember once. But no, I really enjoyed it until I got diphtheria and that was about, I don’t know, probably May, somewhere about there. So I had six months off with that. By a strange coincidence Joan was in the same hospital about the same

time. We didn’t know each other. She was only four.

I think probably if I had of been anywhere else I would have I would have regretted it but I had fellows around me. This was really, certainly up in Hay was amongst the, I had plenty of male friends around me but my life

had been at home, mostly female influence all the time, and being twenty-four hours a day in amongst males was a great, new experience. I made very good friends and I regretted having to leave it. I wish I had been there for more years.

It would have been good. We had a very good headmaster. Actually I was amazed when I left and got this job. I had to take a reference and the, my housemaster gave me a reference and I read it and I was just staggered. I remember the line, “He has undoubted qualities of leadership,” and I had never, ever regarded myself as a leader. I was way down there

and I’ve never forgotten it. And I suppose over the time it has worked out. Look up at that thing up there on the wall, it’s leadership.

I was a very shy, unimpressive child. I didn’t make any notable

moves for myself. That was part of my upbringing. I’d been put down all of my life. I was never going to be any good. You don’t think you can ever be as good as your father. You’re not allowed to play rugby, because that’s a rough game, but I did. I wasn’t allowed to go to the sports, although I qualified for it. Always being put down so to find somebody to say I was a

leader, I couldn’t believe it. However, you’ll know more about that later.

I’m sure it did, yes, but I still didn’t see it in myself and I was quite astounded to see that written there. Somebody thought they could see it.

Oh yes, that was about the first one I ever had. When I was leaving the school we had, the church school, the woman who was in charge of the school at that time said, “You’ve got a lot of ability, you’re always clean and tidy and you’ve got a good personality, and you should be able to go somewhere.” I couldn’t believe that either.

I think it was probably about five or six weeks, from memory and at that stage exams were coming on and the headmaster suggested that it might be better if I left and when I agreed to that, he immediately pulled out about two hundred envelopes and said, “You can address these while you’re waiting.” So I had a job to do.

I had none really. I just, it was still Depression days and if you could get a job, that was great and it didn’t really matter what the job was. I was the office boy. I sat at a really century old desk, with a sloping lid and I had a stool to sit on and I had to do all the mail and go messages. And

we had a copying system which had a book with a lot of tissue leaves in it and a piece of oil paper, and when you wanted to copy a letter you put the oil paper under the leaf and you put water over the top of it and put the letter over the top of that, and then wind it down on a great big iron clamp, and then you take it out very carefully and it had been copied. And then I had to index all those and if I was writing a letter to

you I would have to have a cross reference to the one that I had received from you and so on. Anyway one day I made a mistake and I tore the page a bit, so I ripped it out and did another one, and the managing director was a very English type person, with white hair, and he came out and he said, “Come into my office.” And I went into his office

and he said, “Did you tear this page out?” “Yes, I did.” “Why?” And I told him why. “Well,” he said, “that deed that you have done ruins this book forever and I can never ever present this in court as evidence because you’ve torn out this page,” and I was about that small.

In 509 Collins Street,

if you know it and alongside it was the Rialto building, which was a wonderful old antique building and it’s now a twenty storey building there. That’s where it was on the second floor of the Allegiance building.

Importers and indenters. I became a salesman there after a while. I had

experience in the accounts, first office boy. I used to be paid twelve shillings a week, a dollar twenty and out of that I had to pay some rent and buy my lunch sometimes. Then I went, no, I went into the accounts, that’s right and then the war came on and I had joined the CMF before this and I joined up in May 1940.

I think, I’ve spoken about the aunt who used to talk about the Catholics. She used to also talk about her two brothers. One of them was an officer in the First World War and I think he was a brigade major or something or other and I think she was very fond of him. And after the

war he had stayed in England, married a woman over there, and we used to always hear about him and what a wonderful soldier he was. The other one, he was a drum major I think. He didn’t get quite the same praise but at least he was in the army also. And when we were at, when I was at Ivanhoe Grammar, there was another lad there who was pretty keen

on getting a cadet unit in the thing and I thought that would be a great idea, because I’d been imbued with this army spirit, so we both went up to the headmaster and spoke to him about it and he said he would consider it but I think they got it eventually. Anyway about that time I turned eighteen and I decided I’d go and do something about it and I think I told you in my,

my uncle wanted me to go in the light horse, but I ended up in infantry, and that’s where I stayed.

I was living with my, mostly with this aunt at a place called Fairfield and that was quite, I enjoyed that. She was a great person. Although she was a sister of

Em, she was very, very different and we had a terrific life there. I was free to do whatever I liked, and then of course once I joined the army I had other activities going on all the time.

Oh Melbourne was a very different place. When I first got a car and became a salesman there I used to park the car outside the office in Collins Street and it could be there all day. Then somebody got the idea they

ought to charge for parking and they said, “No parking in Collins Street, but you can park in King Street.” It cost you two shillings an hour and then we got to know the man who looked after it all and if we paid him two shillings, he’d park it for nothing. So it was wonderful. Life was so different. You could travel around. I used to ride a bike. One of my jobs was to go and collect money from customers who were behind in payment and I used to ride all over, and

it wasn’t my bike, it was the secretary’s and he kept changing it. Once you’d find it would be a three wheeled bike and the next day it would be fixed. A couple of times I went over the handlebars because of that but no, you could ride around quite comfortably. I bought a bike myself and I used to ride into work and that was fun.

No, no, a pushbike. I couldn’t afford a motorbike. Actually,

I walked into, you’re right, I walked into this bike shop and I said, “I think I want to buy a motorbike.” And he said, “Can you ride?” And I said, “No.” He said, “Why do you want to buy one?” I said, “Because I want to ride one, I’ll learn to ride one.” That will do. “How much money have you got?” “Oh.” “What’s your wages?” I said, “Twelve shilling a week.” He said, “You don’t want a motorbike,” and he sold me a pushbike.

At a place called Darebin, I think it was Darebin, which was the next station to Fairfield and I went in there as a new private. They wanted me to, because I worked in an office they said, “Well you be the clerk.” And they showed me a huge, old typewriter,

really old and I said, “Look, I don’t know how to type. I don’t do any of that type of work.” So all right, very regretfully they let me go and not long afterwards there was a camp up in Seymour, not far from Puckapunyal. One of the lads there said, “Listen, the best job is the batman’s job. You just do a few jobs for the officer and he

pays you ten shillings and you get out of a lot of work.” I didn’t like the idea. My aunt when I said this, threw up her arms and said, “Batman, that would be a terrible job, don’t do it.” Anyway I got up to the camp and the 2IC [Second in Command], the man who got me into this unit, he came down and he said, “Look, I wonder if you’d mind taking on a job as batman?” I said,

“What do you want me to do?” And he said, “Oh nothing really. If you could bring us some hot water in the morning, a cup of tea and just make the beds and then do all the other work.” So I did. Well I had not one officer, I had two. One was the company commander and the other was the 2IC. And I was polishing the brass badge on the cap one night and what I should have done was take the badge off but I didn’t, I just ended up with a great black mark right around it with

Brasso [polish], and I thought, they’ll sack me. Anyway this 2IC had been in the First World War and he used to like to have a talk to me about it and because of, I had two uncles that I could boast about and we had quite a little talk, about the army. Anyway still had to go out on field exercises, and there was a lance corporal in my section, in charge of it and an

Englishman who was an absolute pill and moving along, carrying a great Lewis gun and he yelled out, “Down!” And I went on about three or four more paces and he’s shouting and screaming at me and I went down, and he’s still screaming at me and along came the OC [Officer Commanding] on his horse, “Now what’s going on here?” And Yates said, “I told Thompson

to get down and he didn’t, he went on further.” “What have you got to say Thompson?” I said, “Well sir, if I’d gone down where he said there’s a meat ant nest.” “Oh, Yates come with me, Thompson take over the section.” I’d just come to the army. I knew nothing about it and I was a section commander and when I got back to camp he called me in and he presented me with a stripe and said, “Put that

up.” All the fellows said that’s the worst thing in the world, the lance corporal was nothing. He gets all the worst jobs. He doesn’t get any more pay and it was ridiculous. I didn’t put it up and about three or four weeks later I was called into the office again and he said, “I told you to put the stripe up.” I said, “Yes sir.” “Why haven’t you put it up? “Well a lance corporal doesn’t seem to be anything much, from what I hear.” “Well if you haven’t got it up next time you’ll

lose it.” “Okay,” so I put it up and he called me into the office and he said, “I see you’ve got your stripe up.” “Yes.” “Well take it off and put these up.” And I was a corporal. Mind you he was making me work as a lance corporal. I had to train them in marching and train them in, and I knew nothing about these things. I had to learn anything. Anyway we managed, so that’s how to get on without trying.

Yes, it was really, and of course I got a bit of experience and finally I became a sergeant.

From almost no-hopers right through to university students and so on, but you learn to judge every man for what he is and I really enjoyed

army life. It was wonderful. As I said, I became a sergeant and that put a new dimension on it. Suddenly you learnt so much more and so much more about men. Then I think, I mentioned too, I was doing the officers’ course and then another friend of mine went and joined AIF and I thought I

should do that, and I just did that. That created quite a few problems with my girlfriend at the time but I joined up.

It was an infantry unit where we learnt how

to handle rifles and bayonets and Lewis guns, Vickers machine guns, throw grenades, do all the things you had to do, dig holes, yeah all those. You learnt how to go out on patrol, various type of patrols and recce patrols, reconnaissance, where you don’t want to be seen by anybody, and fighting patrol, you do. And

yes we learnt all that type of thing, so I suppose it was natural I’d join the AIF.

There was a big rumbling. I’m trying to think of the

man’s name. He was the prime minister over in England [Neville Chamberlain], and he went over and saw Hitler and came back and there was this great photograph of him and he was giving us peace. I think we regretted that. I think we felt a bit let down. We were in the army and we thought it was about time we went out and did something, but anyway that gave Hitler a chance to build up a bit more and another

year and war was declared.

What was my – ?

I was very loyal in those days. I was part of the British Empire, very much so. I’d stand to attention when the national anthem was played. Wouldn’t matter if it was in the theatre or anyone else I’d stand to attention.

The King was God. I was very proud to be a member of the Empire and that lasted for a long time. If you want to know I’m a republican now.

Not now.

Back in those days, oh yes, yes. ‘Cause I was brought up with that.

This aunt I’d been speaking with she was all for God, King and Country and she was quite a support to us as we were growing up and we got it at home too. I can remember Dad with some crisis in the church, and we all had to stand up and sing the national anthem, God Save the King. I thought that’s a funny thing to do at church but okay, that’s what I’ll do.

Yes, but that was all right. I think at that stage people used to talk about ‘home’, meaning England. It certainly wasn’t home to me but I knew what they were talking about when they said home. We were so anglicised and if you saw even an Italian or a Greek or a negro, good heavens.

Very, very different world. That came after the war of course when we brought out migrants and we brought out people who knew a lot more than we knew, and we changed our style completely, and I think it’s wonderful having a multicultural country. And this is something quite different, but

I do a lot of work in the service club and I’d like to get a few people from other countries in and I’d like to get more in, the more in the mix the better.

No, you didn’t want them. They came out here and take our jobs and

the Italians who were out here usually had fish and chips or fruit and veg, and I remember at Black Rock there was a fruitier on one side, an Italian, and on the other side a notice, “Buy here before the day goes [dagoes].” Lovely, yeah but that was it. We were very, very English.

I was insulted, this was after the war even, and I was in Sydney and I was with a man and he introduced me to a couple and we were talking and there was a bit of joke going on about Englishmen and Australians, and I came in and he said, “Why are you saying that? You’re English.” I said, “I’m not.” I was insulted at

that stage, I was pleased to say.

It is.

Oh yeah, it looked like it a year before. It looked as though it was going to happen and I think it was when the went

into Czechoslovakia or somewhere. And anyway he got over there and war was deferred but twelve months later it was on again. But the pity of it was, in that break, England didn’t get themselves prepared and neither did we. And

all the equipment we had was World War I equipment, even to the uniforms and so on. England was probably even worse off. They didn’t have enough to even arm the people they had.

I recall it very much. Fellows in my battalion called

up a party and we heard Menzies announce that we were at war and we knew that was going to happen. I think in a way we were all very excited because there was a chance for us to get into it. There was also trouble because I’d taken my girlfriend, as she was then still,

and then she made some slur. One of the fellows had been in the First World War and was being a bit boastful and she made some crack about the big bronzed Anzac and he took exception, and he called me outside and we walked outside and I got my nose bloodied very quickly, which wasn’t very nice. Anyway he went off into the 6th Division and I was in the 7th.

No, no, no, no. War was declared on the 3rd of September 1939 and I went in May 1940. The 6th Division had been formed and they were just forming the 7th Division.

Oh I felt I had to. War was on and I’d been trained for that so it was up to me to go.

Oh she was very proud of me. My girlfriend wasn’t. Yes, she was very proud of me.

First of all that’s the end of it all, but it wasn’t. Actually it might have been better but still.

Oh yeah, quite a few, yeah. Anyway eventually she became accustomed to it.

Oh yes, yes.

I think they were fairly proud of me, yes I’m sure they were.

There was a very strong link between my two sisters and that lasted right throughout.

He was over in Malaysia at the time. He’d taken a parish over there and I wrote and told him all about it, and I remember part of his letter saying that,

“When this” – oh, how did he describe it? – “this great adventure is over, call in here on your way home.” And of course that was impossible, the Japs got in there. I was amused at it being called an adventure.

No, no, no, I don’t think so, can’t remember all of the letter, but not very much.

After that he was, the Japs moved in and he was captured.

Right. I was a sergeant at the time and sergeants at that time were really well decorated and you could get little badges for all sorts of things and I had crossed rifles, which meant I was a good rifle shot and I had the Lewis gun, which meant I could handle that. I had

stripes for a number of years of service, blue stripes and my sergeant’s stripes, gold stripes on there. Must have looked rather nice I think, and so I trotted down to Caulfield Racecourse to enlist. That’s where we had to go and so I, they took my name and everything and said, “Wait, and we’ll call

you.” And I was walking away from there and an old sergeant, obviously from the First World War, yelled out, “Sergeant!” And I went over to him. And he said, “Look wonder if you’ll give me a hand. I’ve got the mess parade coming up, could you give me a hand?” And I said, “Certainly.” And I did that and when that was over he said, “Would you mind helping again?” That was all right and, “Sergeant, can you do something else?” “Yes, fine.” So somewhere about two o’clock in the afternoon I was called in and had to go through the medical, and

had to take off all this uniform and put on working dress. Oh, sorry, in the morning I walked past two fellows in this working dress and one said to the other, “How do you spell it?” That took me down a bit. And anyway I got into my working dress and I heard this voice, “Private, grab that broom over there and go and clean out the latrines.”

How you come down in the army, so that was my first day. Go on?

I think the second day Mussolini declared war on the side of Germany and a bit of a wave went through, what’s this going to mean? And we were supposed to be going up to Puckapunyal the next day, all those that were on

leave was cancelled, and I had arranged to go and see my girlfriend, but leave was cancelled so there was nothing I could do. But suddenly about six o’clock at night they waived it and said, “All those who are transferred to Puckapunyal can go on leave.” So I raced out. When I got home I was met with the

description of something that had taken place. Just as I had left a team of police had come in, military police had come into arrest me and the corporal was my uncle, this chap who’d been in the light horse, and he came with the idea of taking me outside camp and letting me go. I don’t know what would have happened but that

was the way he saw the army. We went off to Puckapunyal and as I said, I wanted to go to 2/14th Battalion and we were lined up there and a captain came down and he was in my militia battalion, had been, and he said, “I want you.” And I said, “Okay,” and so when it came time

for me I said, “I’ve been nominated by somebody over here.” And I was sent off. He said, “I want you to be my signal sergeant.” And I said, “I know nothing about it.” And he said, “But you’ll learn.” Well there was a man in the rifle company that I got to know that day and he had been a signal sergeant for about three years, and he wanted to get into the sigs and I wanted to get into a rifle company, and we kept putting in transfers and they were knocked back all the time. Probably as well, he

was killed over in Syria and I’m still here.

I was rather impressed with most of them that I saw. They were again all types. Quite a few of them that I went up with became

quite good friends from then on. The army is a very levelling formation. You don’t regard people by their looks, for their tall, for their lack of education. You assess them on their ability to be with you, friendship means all and dependability.

You’ve got to be alongside someone who’s going to stick with you and you seem to sense the one’s who will, and the one’s who won’t. Generally I made lots and lots of friends and still have them.

That’s right.

That was quite interesting. I resisted because I was still trying to transfer to rifles but eventually the day came where I couldn’t resist any longer. I became quite good at Morse code. In fact I used to be able to transmit and receive at twenty-six words a minute which was considered very good. But we trained with, on Morse code we trained on, I’ve forgotten the name of it now.

The light, you flash the light on Morse code and a heliograph that you use the sun and transmit the sun ray. We trained with flags where you hold the flags up and use Morse code or semaphore, and of course we trained on telephone. With telephone lines when you’ve got a great reel, about so big hanging over your shoulder

and you’re running or walking with that and I was doing that one day and I ripped a nail off my finger. All these things happened. I remember having my teeth looked at and there was a fellow filling one and pulling out another one and I was in all sorts of pain, and I remember looking over and I could see all the chaps looking through the window. That’s great, isn’t it? It was a great life.

As a private I did all the things that privates do. I had all the mess duties and helped one fellow cook up a stew one day and the ash fell off his cigarette and into the stew. Got nice and mixed up so you’d tell people not to eat out of that one, but try another one. Then eventually they put a couple of stripes on me again and I carried those two stripes

over to the Middle East.

At Puckapunyal.

Mostly or sometimes we’d go into Nagambie or Seymour and have a few beers. It was only a few

just for a few hours. Some of them used to go to dances but I was never much of a dancer, so I didn’t do that. And then we’d go home perhaps. I remember taking my, let’s call her Molly, that was her name and I took her into, I think it was the Australia [Hotel] to have a beer and the police came around checking on bona fides.

I said, “I’ve just come down from Puckapunyal.” “When did you come down?” “This afternoon.” And they wanted my name and everything else but they didn’t go further. I had a pass but you have to be bona fides in those days which meant you had to come from fifty miles away to be allowed to have a drink. It was a tough old life.

I think she’d become reconciled to the idea it was on. If I could get over her for a while, we corresponded and eventually in 1942 we came back to Australia to go to New Guinea, and then the night we stayed here in Adelaide for a week, at a place called Colonel Light Gardens.

It was beautiful. Anyway I got home and rang her and she told me she had an appointment that night, so I should have did better. Strangely I had met a girl over here and was invited out to people’s places and I met a lass, and we went walking around the parklands

and I said to her, “I’m very sorry, I’ve got a girlfriend over in Melbourne. I’d better find out how that stands first.” I think I missed an opportunity there. She married a Norwegian, a naval captain. That’s got nothing to do with it, has it?

Great.

Our company was a good company. Headquarter company is made up of all sorts of things, signallers, anti-tank gunners, Pioneers, people who like, almost like engineers, transport drivers, so it was a very polyglot lot, but as signallers we were a bit different to everybody else and there was terrific camaraderie. I think it was in all the platoons because they were all a bit different.

And in this battalion there was a great sense of belonging. The 1/14th Battalion was known as Jacob’s Mob. Jacob was a VC [Victoria Cross] and we were the followers of that so we felt that we had a reputation already because we were the 2/14th.

Get up at

half past five in the morning and go on parade to make sure you were there, and then there’d be a battalion parade and always the company commanders would give the report on how many men present, how many men on leave, how many sick, how many AWOL [AWL – Absent Without Leave] and we always listened for that. There was always hundreds that would go off for the day and come back the next day and so on.

We trained hard. We had to train as riflemen as well as signallers, and we tramped all over the countryside and on one occasion the Pioneers went out on a force route march. They just marched and marched and marched and they covered, I’ve forgotten how

many miles, thirty six miles or something in the twenty-four hours. That’s pretty fast and our NCO [Non Commissioned Officer] said, “My men can do better than that.” And he got us all out and we did a night march and we did. We beat the other one but we went through paddocks and fell over logs and stumps and couldn’t see anything. It was black and I remember dawn was just breaking as we marched through Seymour.

We all had to slope arms as we marched through and I think people were cursing us. The band had come out and was playing and we were stamping along the road, but anyway it was good.

The CO?

The CO was a man who had been in the First World War, a thoroughly gentlemanly sort of a fellow. He had been in my other battalion for a while and then

had moved somewhere else. He was too old for the job really and he used to invariably ride around in a staff car. We’d be miles out in the country and he’d drive up in this staff car to see how we were. He was a very nice fellow and he took us over. But once we got to Syria and it was time to go in they took him away and we got another CO. But the officers generally

were pretty good. We had a little fellow named Butler, Sid Butler. We used to call him Little Sir Echo. He had a terrific voice and when the CO tried to give an order this man would take it on, so he got Little Sir Echo. And anyway he turned out a good soldier and he was company commander later on. Died a few years ago.

Well I enjoyed the training. It was probably mostly, the thing you enjoyed most was the camaraderie, being with a mob of people that you like and you’re all trying to do the best you can and a lot of wisecracking and that going on, it was good. But I enjoyed the training too.

I established a reputation, we had a horrible little weapon called a grenade launcher. It was a thing you fitted onto the muzzle of a rifle and it had a slot in it where the gas would come out, and you used a cartridge that had a very high explosive quality and when you fired that the gas from this thing would come out of that and so you always

had to make sure it was pointing to the side. As I said, I had in practice I had used this transfer to a rifleman to this one and gone through the practice of firing it, and one day we were out on the ground and the company commander decided we’d have three people to demonstrate this. I was a corporal at this stage and there was a sergeant

and another man. I won it, but in my hurry to get it I put that port facing me and instead of facing out and when I fired and I was covered in gas but I was able to see enough to see that I was on target, so that was all right.

One of the mates I had was that chap in that photograph, Clements,

and I first met him when I was in the militia battalion and we were coming back from the range and there were about four or five of us sitting there and I thought this fella, who I had not met before, is not my type of bloke at all. He was almost aggressive, a bit over self confident and I thought,

“I don’t think I could stand too much of you,” so we became very close friends. He was in a different platoon to me and that lasted, actually that was in the CMF and when I became a corporal they made him a corporal, and when I became a sergeant they didn’t have a vacancy for another sergeant so they made him lance sergeant, so he could still be with me. But we were supposed to be in separate platoons and

when we got out to the Middle East, everything went on like that until I was commissioned. And of course that stopped things because my life changed, had to change. And he came down and told Molly one time when he was on leave that I had changed completely. I tried to go and see him when I could and I saw him once after the war.

We got on all right but the old friendship had gone. That worried me a quite lot as I didn’t intend to break it. He couldn’t take the difference for starters, not that there was much except in when you were being formal, but he died a few years later, somehow.

I think persistence, a much better understanding of people, but I think I developed a determination to be better. When I was a sergeant we’d go on route marches and I used to spend the

whole thing, it might be twenty miles or thirty miles or something and I’d spend the whole time going from the head right around the back and checking on each chap as I went past. And I’d do that all day as we were marching. Some of the fellows used to tell me, “You used to drive us mad. Here we are nearly dead and you’re doing that and we’d say we couldn’t keep up with the sarge.” Once I

remember we had another horrible weapon called a Piat [anti-tank] gun and it weighed about forty pounds and it was supposed to blow out a tank, and the fellows would carry it for about a quarter of an hour or so and then they’d be grizzling, and I got sick of this. We were on a long route march and this grizzling was going on and by this time I was company commander or something and at the next stop I said, “Give

me that gun.” And I carried it for the next hour and when we stopped I handed it over to somebody, and no more grizzles. I think they probably hated me in some ways.

I don’t know. I think I was fairly popular. I know I was actually. Again just to prove it I eventually went through all the companies in the AIF platoon.

I did just about everything you could do. I had been with a company, A Company and just before we went up to Borneo I was moved over to C Company and during the fighting up in Manggar, A Company got into a bit of trouble. They had some casualties and I was speaking to the CSM [Company Sergeant Major] afterwards and he said,

“If you’d been with us sir, we would have got up there,” so I think that’s how they regarded me.

Surprisingly because I think I was as scared as anyone, but it was something you can’t show but I seemed to make the right decisions at times, which is good. Yes, I think

I was surprised quite often that the fellows were happy to work with me. Just as well we had, oh later on that will come up.

Looking forward to it. We didn’t want to be stuck in a training camp

all the time. We wanted to get away and so when a move came in October, the 18th of October, we had a week’s leave beforehand, final leave and then we got on the train to go to Sydney and then it was a secret. Nobody knew, there was no publicity at all and we were to go through the night and nobody would know we were gone. All the way along the line, through the night

and into the morning there were people waving. They all knew. It was just an amazing thing and then at Sydney we got onto the Aquitania, an old ship, four masted, four funnel. It had transported 1st AIF and now it was taking us and we came down the coast and somewhere else off Melbourne I think

we saw the [HMS] Queen Mary and I think the [SS] Mauritania and we went to Perth, and we got the other two battalions at that time. Not all with us but on the other boats and off we went. One the way over we heard a broadcast from a fellow, he was an Englishman but he’d gone over to Germany. I’m

trying to think of his name, Haw Haw, Lord Haw Haw [William Joyce, war propagandist in Germany] and he had a very English voice and he made this announcement that he believed the crack divisions, the crack Australian division is on it’s way to the Middle East, “Don’t worry boys, you’ll be cracked.” Another one was, “We believe that Greece

is putting up quite a stand but our troops will do it, but there is another way. If they would send the Australians over here they would flatten Greece very quickly.” Very nice fellow.

Of course you can.

Oh golly, that’s a question. I spent it all, I think I spent most of it with Molly but I

remember going over to see my aunt and uncle and I spent a bit of time with my two sisters and I went into the office and had a few drinks with them and a few things. Actually on the night that we were going my mates from the office came down and one had a case marked “first aid one” and the other one had a case marked “first aid two” and they were full of beer off course.

Yeah, we had quite a farewell, my two sisters, Molly and my aunt was there and the office staff was there so it was quite good.

Oh resigned to it. I don’t say she was happy but she wasn’t often happy anyway.

Oh very proud, yeah.

Old Mac he loved to be with you because he was in uniform. He’d gone back into the volunteers.

Oh a bit sad but I think they were all hopeful that we’d come back again.

Excited.

Yes, that’s a bit sad but of course you’re always going to come back.

There was only one thing that would stop you.

I remember one thing. My mother who I really never remembered, had a family and my sisters had made contact with the family

whilst I was in Puckapunyal and they took me out there. That was my final leave also and I was delighted because an uncle presented me with an engraved cigarette case, a beautiful silver cigarette case. It disappeared somewhere but I was proud of that because I used to smoke and to bring out this was really something. Yes, the reaction all around

I think they were all a bit fearful, of course, hoping they’d see me again and maybe there were some there that hoped they wouldn’t, but it was quite a fairly happy farewell and the station was crowded with people, some crying and some laughing but we were excited.

Probably worse for them than for us because we knew what we were doing but they didn’t know what we were going into, and I think they were all, they must have been quite worried.

Plenty of emotion and I think quite a lot of cheering, whether it was put on or not. I think quite a lot of people tried

to say, “This is beaut, this is fun, let’s make the best of it.” But there were a few people in tears, naturally. I’d say not all of them were women but I suppose like any farewell there are people who think they’ll never see you again and there are people who are hoping they will, but

in wartime that’s all exaggerated a bit.

That’s where it starts to hit and once the train was moving out of the station you thought this is it, we’re committed, and you start to quieten down then and of course out came the bottles of beer and things to get us on our way. As a

follow up to that, as we were leaving West Australia, I think that’s when we felt it and we had to see the last of Australia, and that’s when, I think we were all very quiet at that time. I remember one of my lads who was standing alongside me he started to sing Girl of My Dreams. He had a very good voice and I’ve never

forgotten that and he didn’t come back.

“Girl of my dreams I love you, honest I do, you are,” something or other, “since I first held your charms, about in my arms, my life has been changed,”

or something like that. It was a very sentimental song but it got me, and actually I made a name for myself years later up in Queensland. In between the New Guinea campaigns we went to a pub and there was a concert on and I’d had a few drinks and I got up and I sang it but I’m afraid my voice is not what his voice was.

We knew we were going to the Middle East.

That was all we knew. The 6th Division had already gone and they were up in the desert so we assumed we’d be going up to the desert. Some of us thought we might go to England. I remember my aunt saying, “Well you’re sure to go to England, because the 1st AIF went to England,”

so we must. She gave me a message to give to her brother who was over there. We never got to England.

I think I would have like to have gone to England because the idea was that the fighting was going to be around France again as it was in the First World War, and we thought we’d probably end up there. But well I suppose it was, the desert was not the greatest place in the world. Syria was a pretty tough place but I’m pleased to

have been there. There were other things apart from fighting and in Syria after the war was over we did quite a bit of travelling around. I mean our training camp went to places like Jerusalem and Bethlehem and Tel Aviv and Haifa and quite interesting places, and up in the Lebanon we went to very ancient

places, Damascus and places. It was well worth while and quite a relief from what we had been doing.

Well actually I thought I knew a lot about it. When I was in the office people were telling me about it and my managing director, by the way, said, “Bob, I’ve been looking

at the statistics and only one in ten is killed, so you’ve got a good chance of coming home.” I thought that’s very comforting, but I was asked almost the same question that you proposed and I said, “Well what I can see happening,” the Germans were overrunning everything at the time, I said, “We’ll come to a halt and we’ll get into trench warfare again,” as we did.

I was the expert. I knew that, so that I could quite easily say, “This will be trench warfare.” Never was, no it was a very different war.

Oh sure, yeah. We got very expert at digging trenches in a hurry. Just as well because when we were up in New Guinea, we didn’t have any tools to dig trenches and we had to dig them with bayonets and steel helmets. That’s not

easy.

Sydney, Central Station.

Down to the port and we got onto the

Aquitania, oh one of the wharves there, just out of Sydney.

Only the one. That was the Aquitania and the others left from Melbourne and Fremantle and of course we had an escort. We didn’t realise that until we were on the way and a report came out that somebody had fallen overboard and then all of a sudden

searchlights came up and it was quite amazing. We had warships all around us and we didn’t know. They never found anyone and no-one had, I don’t think. Somebody had dropped a life buoy overboard and it had a flashlight on it and it went down and somebody saw that but I was rather impressed with that to know that we had so much help around us.

Terrible, we were right

down in the lowest hold and it was hot and horrible but it was a lovely old ship and we could get up on deck and we used to run around on deck all day, and everyday it would be lifesaving drills and you’d have to put your Mae Wests [life jackets] on, as we called them, and had to go to your right place and be ready to get into the lifeboat and so on. Luckily

we never had to and just before we got to Suez a German plane flew over us but that was all. Flew over and went on his way but caused a bit of consternation, but he didn’t come back again.

Daily routine was your breakfast, get your bunk cleaned up and then you’d be training.

You’d have lectures from people on various aspects and we learnt about the countries around the place. We had rifle practice out to sea, and generally it was just doing the same sort of things that we’d been doing for months but we were on a ship. I was, and when we went through the [Great Australian] Bight it was very rough,

and I was on duty as a corporal and I ended up being on duty for thirty-six hours straight because all the NCOs got seasick, and I was the only one standing. And on one occasion I wanted to get down to the lower deck and there were two, what I thought were stairwells and I stepped onto one but it wasn’t. It was a ramp and I went sliding down the, to the bottom. I got down there quickly and the stairs were the next lot. I managed that for

thirty-six hours and I was coming off and I was more than tired. I wanted to go to sleep and I went into have a meal and there was a plate of mash, red mince meat sort of stuff and it was up in a great big pile and I took one look at that and it was the closest I ever got to being sick. I went without the meal and went to bed.

Oh there was all our battalion which would be just on a thousand, and there was an artillery regiment which would be somewhere about the same perhaps.

And I fancy there were a few other troops too that were with us. The ship was full and could be about four thousand on it I think.

Well life goes on in the army, and you’ve got corporals in charge of sections and they’ve got to keep that section doing what they have to do, and

you’ve got sergeants and lieutenants and so on up the way, so there’s so much control so that although there are a lot of people you break them into little bits and if everyone is doing their job it’s goes along swimmingly. We didn’t have any trouble. There were rooms of trouble. There were a couple of officers who weren’t very, very popular and

I can remember a chap coming over to me one day and saying, “He’s shark bait.” And I went, “Pardon?” “Shark bait,” he said, “we’re going to get rid of him.” They didn’t of course.

Any?

No, no, no, I don’t think we ever did. The only time I ever heard it was years later when the 9th Division came back from

the Middle East and I was asked to go and give them a bit of training in jungle warfare and one of the battalions, not the one I was with but another one, had a sit down strike and I’d never heard of that in my life before. They were demanding to go on leave or something and they all sat down and refused to do anything, which was quite embarrassing. Thank goodness it wasn’t the battalion I was with. I don’t know how it ended up. I think somebody

was punished, but.

That’s a good question. I think it would have been probably a couple of weeks, might have been longer. It took nine days to get a letter across there in those days and we were in ships. Yeah, probably two or three weeks.

We had an interesting job, if I could tell you this, while we’re on the Aquitania. Being signals we were called up to the bridge to help them with the communications and we had to read signals coming from ships around the place and transmit the replies and that. And I

got ticked off by one horrible captain who screamed out, “Why aren’t we getting that message?” And I looked over and finally very, very, very, faint message and he was reading the message up there and I could barely see it, but anyway we managed to get it but that’s not easy work. We learnt to handle semaphore flags which they put up and they’ve all got a meaning. It’s quite interesting, so that occupied

our days very well. I remember having eyes streaming from looking through the sun at these things and rather damaging to your eyes but very interesting work. I was rather pleased, I was a signaller at that stage.

Well everyone had very well defined areas and the only time, virtually, well even then we were still in defined areas when we had our drill, our overboard drill, we’d line up on all the decks but everyone knew which part of the deck was theirs. It all worked out very well. Mess times would be divided, you go now and somebody else comes half an

hour later and so on, and you couldn’t loiter over your meal. You had to have it and go.

Yes, oh yes. I think we had the, I think the artillery or whoever we had with us, they were Sydneysiders and of course they were very different to Victorians.

They referred to Victorians as bushrangers because they were over the border. There was always that feeling of rivalry between Sydneysiders and Victorians. You get rid of that. We had boxing matches and a few entertainments that the fellows asked to put on. It was amazing the number of fellows who had good voices.

I wasn’t one.

Well they gave us a reasonable amount about it and I can remember them telling us about the light horse and what they did there, which was very interesting and later on we found

samples of that. But they also told us a lot about Europe and what was happening there because that was the main thrust then, and Greece, because I think Italy had invaded Greece at that time, so we heard a lot about that. I don’t think anyone knew where we were likely to go, although the feeling was we’d probably end up

in England or Europe somewhere. We never did.

They told us about the tactics the Germans were using at this time and we spent a lot of time learning to identify German planes from photographs and drawings and so on. We got practise on how to identify German ships as well, as well as our own.

We certainly heard a lot about German tactics as far as they knew it, but I think largely it was taken from the First World War experiences as it had changed very drastically. I’m sure we must have got some news about the Middle East, but only as far as training was concerned, and I remember we were warned very strongly about eating their

oranges, because they all had worms or something in them. Once we got those we were out, however I never struck one. The oranges were beautiful. Lots of things were told, what we can do and what we can’t do but it was probably good information but it wasn’t all right. But we were warned very sternly about the chance of all sorts of diseases

we can get there, germs that get into your stomach and eat you out, and oh horrible, but luckily I didn’t have them.

Only what we had to do. They’d be specific on that because we were already

trained. We knew the things we had to do and I think we may have been told we may have been able to go on leave in various places and so on, but we had to be very careful of the population around us. You can’t trust Arabs. Actually we found them very happy and very nice people, and we lived in Australia and the people instructing us lived in Australia and they

had as much idea as I think we did and I think they just read books and papers and said, “This is what somebody thinks.”

Oh dirty, illiterate, untrustworthy, very war-like. We did find that they did like to raid our camps and on a couple of occasions they

pinched rifles out of the camps, with the fellows asleep around them and the rifles stuck with a wire around them on a tent pole, and they just went out with all the rifles and nobody knew. So we had that happen, but of course the Palestinians were in a bit of trouble with the English at that stage so I think they were getting ready to have a bit of a riot.

Not on the ship, no. We didn’t get any until we got to Palestine.

As I said, to come by air mail, nine days.

Yes we landed, I can’t think of the name of the place.

I should but it’s a landing spot and it’s renowned for the snags and mash, and I think it was run by English troops and you got off and virtually as you got off the ship you walked past this canteen or whatever, and your plate would be filled with sausages and mash and off you’d go

and that was a standard meal.

Oh very flat, very sandy. Around the coast not so bad, but sand hill after sand hill, nothing really spectacular but later on, we had a closer look and we walked over all the sand hills. Later on we rode bikes over them but

certainly not very interesting country.

What a place to die in, I think. Not very impressed but anyway, it was a new experience and there were always people outside, they seemed to appear

and every time the train stopped there’d be lots of kids looking for annas, money, and sometimes they’d have something for sale which would be pretty scungy but usually they were just looking for handouts, they loved that. Mr George, everyone was Mr George, so yes they were like kids everywhere but a bit more so.

I think just one of interest, these were different but we always spoke to them. We must have woken them up because one of my sigs got up into the engine area and somehow talked his way into using the whistle and he used Morse code, so we were all getting these messages. That must have woken up a lot of people. Anyway

we went onto a place called Julis, J-U-L-I-S, and that was our training camp for quite a few months and I think the only really interesting thing that, oh we had lots of route marches and guards and all sorts of things. We had an officer, he’d been a decorated officer from the First World War, but unfortunately he

was an alcoholic and believe it or not it rains, and it rains very heavily in Palestine at times and we had to do a lot of digging to stop being flooded out, and he came along and he said, “Corporal you are digging it all the wrong way, this is where you’ve got to dig.” And he’s trying to show us how to dig it, up hill, “Yes sir, yes sir.” Then he

walked away and then we got on with the job and finished doing it. But they were the little incidents. I was sent off then to Cairo to do a school for signallers, which was very interesting. We met New Zealanders, other Australians and Englishmen and we had, it was quite a concentrated course. There was a little

lance corporal, no it wasn’t, a private, an English private and he was about four foot nothing and a very cocky little Cockney and he took a liking to me because he was always hanging around, and one day he was very excited. He said, “Come and look at this,” and the routine orders were on the board and right down the bottom “Number, Private,” whatever his name was, I’ve forgotten,

and then it had, “Promoted A stroke.” Well they call it a slash these days, “A slash U stroke L stroke corporal.” I said, “For goodness sake, what’s that?” And he said, “Acting unpaid lance corporal.” I mean how low can you get? We thought lance corporal was the lowest, but unpaid. He was delighted. He’d made the first step up.

Yes, sure.

Oh very interested, I thought this was fantastic to see something different to Australia and so different, short trees along the canal and masses of sand and the Nile of course is not very far away, and it was all very, very interesting.

It is such an ancient land. I would have just liked to have wandered around and examined it a bit more but I think probably that’s it. The weather was fantastic mostly. It got very hot. When I got back, can I go? When I went back from this course, oh it might

have been just before I went. I was promoted to sergeant. I was, that’s right, so I went back to the unit with at least a bit more rank and a new life. I was in the sergeant’s mess which was a little bit better too. I was the third Thompson in the mess. One was A W and the other was R V, and

the A W had a number very similar to mine and so our mail was always getting mixed up but I suppose we had quite a friendship between us, the three of us, so I enjoyed those days. We had a regimental sergeant major who had been in the First World War and we reckoned he was a very old man. He must have been forty and he tried to get us doing what he was doing and he could stand on

his hands and walk around. Something I could never do.

We never had, at that stage we didn’t have close contact with them. We’d see a few of them standing around and we might talk to them but later when we were camped there were villages around and

just marching through you’d find them. The boys were always out, quite cheeky, always looking for handouts of some sort. The girls were very shy, probably naturally and you’d see them scurrying off. Their villages were mostly stone villages, no gardens or anything, just these white buildings. Not the sort of life we’d enjoy very much.

But they lived and we got to talk to them and we learnt a bit of the language. I don’t remember very much about it now but, ‘ana ma skeesh’ I knew very well, which means “I want some money” and we used to hear that, ‘ana ma skeesh’ and ‘marfouz something’, “I am very poor.” We’d say to the boys,

what’s a boy’s name? Oh anyway, we’d say “Are you a boy or a girl? I think you’re a girl?” “No.” And he’d lift his shirt to show us. Silly isn’t it?

Sorry?

We went on with our normal training. Sigs

did their training, running out telephones and radio. We were given a radio which was absolutely hopeless. It weighed a ton and some poor fellow, it was like a great big box and he carried it on his back, very rarely worked when you wanted it to but still we had to try to get it going. We tried different methods of laying cable out and it was quite a thing for the chaps to do this.

And we continued with our rifle training because we had to be soldiers as well and route marching and we had plenty of that to get fit. I remember one in particular, I think I told you didn’t I about how we were called to, we were going to move off, did I tell you that or – ?

We got this order that we were on the way overseas and we had to put on thick clothing, I’m sure I told you?

Yeah, I did, and that’s something that sticks in your mind, very painful day. But no this was all and finally we were put on trains thinking we were going to Greece and we went to Mersa Matruh. I’ve told you all of that and then we were suddenly pushed off to Syria.

Oh good. There were a few things that were difficult of course. The sand made it a bit difficult, which meant you had to keep everything very clean. Water was the thing. You had to carry that because it was usually pretty hot there and we were

very interested in some of the farming methods. One in particular that I remember is a chap ploughing his land and a very rough looking plough, just a piece of timber with a thing on it. He had a donkey on one side and his wife on the other, pulling the plough. I think he treated them both fairly.

You don’t, no. You wear a hat and of course the slouch hat is great because it has a beautiful wide brim when you put it down. Getting sunburnt was a self inflicted wound, so you tried not to get sunburnt if you could. Yet I got

badly sunburnt up in Mersa Matruh and I did later, and I never was charged, probably because I had rank anyway. But yes, the sun was a problem. Probably a bigger problem than we recognised at that stage than we do today but yes, I wouldn’t say it was comfortable. You were always in a sweat. I remember

I took my platoon out for a march once and we went through a village. This is up in northern Palestine and there was some houses there and there was a woman outside one and we spoke to her and she invited us in and on her mantelpiece there was photos of a young fellow in athletics and he was an Olympic

runner. He’d been over in Germany and they’d heard there was an attack on them and he was one of those. She was very proud of her son. He was all right. He came out and she gave us a big can of milk and we sat outside and we drank that can dry. It was great and another time we were out and just on the side of the road they have little stoves, little stone ovens and this woman was

crouched, an old crone and she’s there doing cooking bread, pita bread and we just stopped and watched her. And she pulled one out and handed it to us and it was great and that’s how they were. Then we had another one. We were in, oh that’s in Syria, leave it.

Well I suppose the only recreation we had at that

stage was the mess and that really meant going up to the bar and having a beer and sitting down and having a beer. We had, before I had my stripes the only way you could get a beer was to go to the canteen and they didn’t have glasses so we made what were called Lady Blameys. Have you heard of them? You get a, she was supposed to have given the idea, Lady Blamey was Blamey’s wife, of course.

You get a beer bottle and a piece of string or a rag and dip it in petrol and tie it around the top, just below the neck, set a match to it and when it’s nicely burning you plunge it into water and it all cracks and you just smooth off the edges and you’ve got a Lady Blamey and it holds a nice quantity of beer. So we used to take that into the canteen and get a beer and it was good. Played cards and

some people played chess. I played chess for a while, darts, whatever or just sat down and talked or wrote letters or whatever.

A good question. I got letters from my sisters of course and Molly’s letters were pretty mundane. She

told me what was going on at work and she wasn’t getting on well with her boss and I remember writing to her. I went to Jerusalem and I went to all the places I ought to go to, Bethlehem and I wrote her long reports about all of this. She received that quite well she said. When I was in Egypt at

the training course I went to a store one day that was selling gifts for soldiers to send home and I bought her a, I think it was a pair of pyjamas or something or other, silk and anyway I sent them off and sometime later I got a letter from England saying they had

received this pair of pyjamas and their’s must have gone to my addressee, would I please get them back? Well I thanked them very much but I don’t know what happened to the others. She said she never got them so they must have gone somewhere else.

Yes, yes, oh yes, it was something quite expensive. Anyway they

weren’t well received.

Oh sure.

Horrible. Now I like it. Also we were a bit worried about the hands and things too but we tried it. We didn’t have any butter or anything to put on it and had it raw and hot.

Oranges, plenty of those. In that, I don’t know whether I’ve told you this one but one stage in Syria, are we allowed to be in Syria yet?

I think they were worried that the war was going very badly in Europe and it wasn’t going well in the Middle East. Germany had come in in place of Italy and they were really pushing down and it looked grim. It looked as though they would take Egypt the

way they were going. And of course the fear was if they did that they could then wander back up into France. That’s why we were sent up to Syria, by the way, which I’ll tell you about later. They thought the Germans could come down that way too.

We used to get news which came direct to us through the army network and we didn’t regard the Italians very highly of course because our fellows went in and they were capturing them by the hundreds. The Italians didn’t have very much heart for the war.

So they weren’t regarded as good soldiers but the Germans were regarded as very good soldiers. We had respect for them but I felt sorry for the Italians, later, when I fought them. They didn’t want to be in it and they were quite happy to hand themselves over but when I was doing that training course in Egypt there was an English sergeant.

Most horrible fellow and he hated Australians and we were getting all the publicity and he said, “Don’t they realise we’ve got troops up there? Where is mention of ours?” And he just couldn’t say a good word for Australians. He hated us. He paid for it.

He got in a fight with a big Queenslander

and came off second best.

There were South Africans. We didn’t meet a lot of those until later. I wasn’t very impressed with them when I did meet them. I beg your pardon, we met them up at

Mersa Matruh and found them, I don’t think we made many friends amongst them but we didn’t have a lot of close contact, but what I didn’t like was the way they handled their servants, who happened to be Africans of course, and they treated them like dirt. A chap near me one day called for a basin of water so he could have a wash and there must have been a bit of dust

in it because suddenly he picked it up and threw it out, and threw the bowl at him and, “Get me some water.” Very arrogant sort of behaviour so I had quite a dislike for South Africans for that.

You didn’t have to.

No, they went up the other way and luckily they weren’t our way but I can tell you about other nationalities later.

We did meet up with them but again we didn’t fight alongside them. They went to Italy. They did a lot of fighting around there and also in the Middle East, at El Alamein and around those places where our people did but we weren’t there.

Yes, we met some Ghurkas, met some of them at the school.

They were fine, a very good type. We staged in India twice and on both occasions I heard from Indians that as soon as the war was over that India would become a separate country. It wouldn’t be a British country. They knew it at the time and they hated being under Britain. That was interesting.

We thought they were very – but anyway.

Not a great deal but when you’re talking to them you can’t very well take the other side. You’ve got to listen to them and to say, “Look you’re under the best regime in the world,” they wouldn’t understand that. They wouldn’t think so. Could I tell you an interesting little story that

happened while we were in India on the way over. We went up to a place called Deali, don’t ask me to spell it. It was where Ghandi was born, and we were there for about a week, perhaps two weeks but one night I just sort of wandered down somewhere, there was a bit of a stream and there was a small chap, Australian,

leaning against the fence and I went up and spoke to him. And he was the 22nd Battalion, 2/27th, South Australian, and we were talking and I heard a bit of his life story and so on and this was all this way back, probably about five years ago and there was a chap in my Kiwanis club and he said, “I know where I met

you.” He said, “We were in Dehli and you came up and spoke to me.” Fancy that, and here was this little fellow, he’s very sick now and we were in the same. And to carry that on a bit further, when we were on Morotai before going to Balikpapan which you’ll hear about later, we were on ships of course, and I was going down the gangplank and there was a fellow coming up and he wanted to see our CO, could I direct him? And I

said yes, and I told him where to go and he had a quick word. He told me he was with the education company but was a liaison officer with this, and that was about all. And one day I was down at his home. That’s right, I had met this fellow in the same club, the Kiwanis, and I was down at his home and I saw a photograph of him in uniform and I

suddenly knew where I met you. In one club, two people I met during the war years.

We had a platoon commander who wasn’t a very good platoon commander. He was a panic merchant

and he warned us, he’d been to a conference and he came back and he warned us, “We’re going to pull up soon and the Germans are breaking through here and when you get there you’ll have to be ready to come out fighting because they’re all around us.” And he said, “Last night, I don’t know if any of you saw it, there was a plane over the top of us taking photographs.” And we were all ‘ddddd’, “What’s going to happen?”

Of course when we got to where we were going everyone got out of the train and there were no Germans about and we moved off to this Mersa Matruh. Our job was to dig a dug out for battalion headquarters, and we dug and we dug all day in a pair of shorts and I ended up with sunburn. In fact it was worse I had a great temperature and was off for a day after that.

But we dug this huge dugout and then they said, “We’re going.” So we left the dugout. That’s where we met the Africans. They were taking over from us and we shot off to Syria. The reason for going to Syria, if I may now? There was great fear that Germany would push down through Turkey and into Syria and Palestine and cut across and cut off Greece

and all those places. So we were grabbed in a hurry. I think we were intended to go to Greece but they grabbed us in a hurry because they were short of troops and we were sent into do battle. There was the 7th Division, there was a battalion of English yeomanry that are actually horse people, but

they were there and some artillery of course. And we were told that it was most likely that the French would come on side because they wouldn’t want to be fighting us, especially if they knew we were Australian, as we were all wearing our hats. And we had Frenchmen

who came along to call out as we approached the French, “We’re friends.” But they didn’t see it that way, the Vichy French, and they put up quite a fight and Syria has never got a lot of publicity because it was politically unpopular, they didn’t want to offend the French people by fighting them and so there was, I doubt

there was more than two paragraphs and one of our fellows wrote a book about it and it’s just a forgotten war, but it was a very, very difficult war.

Right. Just change the name signal corps means the signals right throughout the whole army, in our case it was signal platoon.

We had roughly thirty people in it and it consisted of a signal officer, signal sergeant and a corporal and the rest just private. There would be people who would specialise in just telephone work. We had a ten line switch board.

They trained in line work, radio, the flags and all those things. We didn’t use half of them. The telephone was the most thing and what would happen when the battalion was going into action our people would be six with each company with telephones and radio and so on.

And they would follow the line party coming along, reeling out the line which would be connected to the ten line switch, and so we’d get the whole battalion linked up on telephone. If that didn’t work you’d try the radio and if that didn’t work you’d try the signalling with flags and things. Didn’t always pay, you usually got someone shooting at you when you did that. And the final work would be to get a runner to go over, but the idea was to

have the whole battalion in communication and this was our job and I had that for a few years.

We were using telephones, a special adapted telephone. It had a little handle on it and you wound to get through and it also had a Morse key on it so you’d send a message by Morse,

which we often did, in fact more often. We had, with the telephone we had linesmen who would patrol the line so if it got broken, I’ll tell you a little story about that in a moment. Then we had the heliogram which is the one that reflected the sun’s rays and you used that to flash it with a mirror that just gave a dilatation,

and so on. And there was a thing there that I can’t remember it’s name, and it was like a torch and you gave it, and of course that was only at night you could use that and again it wasn’t very safe to use. They were the main things. The signallers with the companies were always required to be close to their company commander all the time. The same as the sig officer would have to be close to the battalion commander. He

was regarded as a staff officer as communications were absolutely vital, and I think I can say without boasting our reputation was very, very high, right throughout the war and yeah, that’s the role of the signalman. Make no mistake it’s hard work. They’ve got to lug this blasted radio and

the things about an hour, and the cable and a phone and flags stuck away somewhere in case they had to use them and so on. There we are. There was a breakdown once in the meals. I don’t know what happened but the food didn’t get to one of the forward companies while we were in action and that’s bad, and the calls were

coming out over the phone. And finally one of the chaps got on the phone to me and he said, “Look we’re starving here but I’m watching a spider and if he comes close enough I’m going to eat him.” I don’t think he did and we did get the food to them eventually so sometimes we had a little private call for help but generally it was work. I’ll tell you a quick one if I may? In Syria we had these lines out

and also we were trying to get in touch with the company. It was C Company and the line went dead and we were ringing and that, and I called for one of the fellas to go and patrol the line. The line came on again after this chap had gone and when he came back again he said, “I found that break. There was a joint, another line coming in there.” And he said, “It only had bamboo around it,” as insulator. A couple of

days later we were moving from that situation and the corporal whom I had in charge of that line party went out there and he told me he came to this and he followed the other line, and it went up onto a hill where a fellow had an outpost. And he was the chap, we were and I was going to tell you this later. We were bombed, we were strafed, we were, we had everything coming down on us from this fellow telling his

gunners where we were. Also at the same place there was an orchard out in front of us with oranges and we saw this fellow at the back of the thing waving his apron or something, and not long after the artillery came after us. This bloke was signalling and life was always interesting.

We were in immediate touch with the CO and sometimes the intelligence officer who was also at battalion headquarters. That’s why the sig officer had to be up there with them and Sergeant Rumsley, while he was there.

Yeah.

Who were they?

I’m just trying to remember who our CO was at that stage. I can tell you who the brigadier was. I think it was George Cannon still, yes it was, George Cannon. He was the

one that formed the battalion and he was a First World War digger and quite a gentleman the old fellow. He was the CO, the adjutant was a chap named Butler. The intelligence officer at that stage was, it had been Jim McAllister but I fancy it was someone else.

I can’t remember. My company commander was a chap named, I think a [(UNCLEAR)], he wasn’t with us very long, but I think he’d been sent over and as I told you I had this chap who was a bit radical but he didn’t last very long.

They took him out and another man took over called Claude Nye, who knew nothing about signals but was a very nice fellow. Who else do you want to know? I had people like in my own platoon? I had a corporal named McLennan. He was a,

he was good. Little Joyce, he was a member of the taxation department in Melbourne and he was I think, a lance corporal. I had a chap named Jones, McGillivray, the man who sang on the boat, a little fellow named Lake. I have an interesting story with him, I don’t know whether you want to hear this or not. Oh well we were in an outpost area

at one stage and I had a deputation from an Arab village from down there and accusing this little fellow Lake, he was only a tiny chap, of raping one of the girls in the village, and I knew that this boy wouldn’t have done that but they really wanted to take him away and kill him. But I managed to quieten them down and it was a chap who looked much like him, from another company,

who had come and I was able to hand him over but that was a little incident. But this Lake, I had a very funny bloke named Ison and I don’t know how he ever got to us. He was never any good. One, Watson, he was good. He was a lance corporal. Eddie, he

was a, we used to have despatch riders also. They rode motorbikes round from point to point and the man with him, his name escapes me. There must have been a few more but they’re the ones that I can remember.

Oh there were all various types.

There was another one, Jed Lang and Wallace, Jack Wallace. Now they were all very different people, Jack Wallace and another one named, two very temperamental people and Ray [(UNCLEAR)] was another one. He was another temperamental one.

They were a rough cross cut I would think. Some of them were clerks. One of them was on the land. There was an electrician and a bit of a radio man and mostly they were office workers or in shops or something like that, and their educational level

generally very good. A couple of them, like young Eddie, he was, one of his jobs before the war was pinching cars and he used to drive them from Melbourne over to Adelaide and sell them. He had a mate, I’ve forgotten his name. He was in the same boat but they were very young.

Well we were all young but a couple of harem scarems but the rest were pretty general types. In the sig platoon they had to be really. They had to be able to understand a lot of things and especially doing Morse code and that. It was a very responsible job and they were good types.

The first one was in Syria and as I told you we had Frenchmen out who were supposed to tell their compatriots that we were coming as friends. The first thing they did about that was to blow up the road in front of us. And then ambush us. Well that didn’t worry us too much because

we were further back. I think the first time that we came under fire was in that spot where I just told you where we were shelled and bombed and it wasn’t very nice. At one stage we were right below a hill, not a very high hill, and I just

happened to look over to the left and there was a plane coming around the side of the hill about as low as we were and I yelled out to everyone to get down. And I pushed myself up against the cliff and a fellow was lying down from me on the ground and we weren’t dug in or anything at this stage, and another fellow behind. And after this fellow had gone through and

shelled us and got away and I had a look at there was a furrow between me and the next fellows head and a furrow between his feet and the next fellows head and if that was his lines from the guns that we had, and luckily he didn’t move them. He just went straight through and that was very close. That was Friday the thirteenth of June,

1941 and I haven’t forgotten it yet. We were bombed about four times during the day and we were shelled two or three times and we were strafed with the aircraft. The brigade people had two or three trucks of their own and they were about three hundred yards away and one of them got blown up. It was a hairy day. Okay that was our first taste of real

fire, then we got to, there were two towns, very old towns that are mentioned in the Bible. One is Tyre and there was a bit of a fight there but it didn’t affect us very much except we knew it was going on and then we went to Sidon and I think it was the 27th Battalion

that was attacking Sidon. And we were held up and our battalion was sent round the back of Sidon and a very steep hill, just like that, and we had to clamber up that with full gear and carrying radios and some of the fellows had anti-tank guns that weigh about forty pounds and trying to carry those. And

a French plane came over us and we all went to ground and said great, and from then on whenever we saw a French plane, wonderful, because it gave us a rest. And we eventually got up to the top of this hill and when we got over there all the women from the township were out with bunches of grapes and jugs of water for us, and the French had gone. They must have known they were surrounded virtually and the French had pulled out and

the residents were so happy then. They came out with everything for us, it was wonderful. We moved and go on? We moved from there over to a place called Jezzine. Originally we were on the coastal sector and there was another brigade in the central sector and a third one further over again up towards Damascus.

And the central sector the battle was at Jezzine and the battalion headquarters were on a little spot below a hill and there was a memorial there for the 1st AIF, the light horse, which was interesting because my uncle had been light horse. Anyway we were there and

there was a stretch of straight road running off along which we’d come along to get there and coming over we moved in trucks, run by English people, Englishmen, and dark and no lights, and they’re trying to find their way along these dirt roads. And afterwards they pulled over into a side road and stopped and I went out and said, “What’s the problem?”

As I was the senior person there as the sergeant and he told me very luridly what was wrong and he used the same word in three different meanings and I’m not going to repeat them, to tell me what his vehicle was up to, and I gathered we were there, that was the finish of it. I went along the road a little bit and I could hear voices and they were speaking French, so

I thought I’d better go back and eventually we tracked them down and the next day we got thoroughly shelled on, that little area of ours. No-one got hurt but it was solid, they just dropped shell after shell on us. The shells make a great whistle as they’re coming and they say

you don’t hear the one that hits you, but many of these came. I mentioned a chap named Charlie Watson before and after we’d had about three of these assaults and at the finish we were just starting to relax again and I heard this sound of a shell coming, and of course everyone ducked. And I heard, and nothing happened, and I heard it again and I looked over and there’s this Charlie Watson with a

great grin on his face and he’s whistling and he’d copied it, absolutely, this whistling, and I told him in no mean terms what to do and not long after that, and he was a mean smoker, and not long after that we were shelled again and it got very close to him this time. And when it was over he came running over to me and he said, “Got a cigarette?” He started to smoke.

Yes, that was, what happened after that? I think after we got through that one, oh we were sent out to help wounded in. That was a hairy experience because it’s pretty hilly country and there’s little goat tracks that you follow and occasionally there is a great ravine and a little concrete bridge,

no handrails and following this at night you can’t use torches or anything and then with stretchers trying to take people back, it was really a dodgy exercise. Especially when getting some of the fellows we could hear the French talking just a hundred yards or so away. But anyway we got through all that. Then we were taken back to the coast area again.

And we found we had a very bad name because somehow the orders hadn’t been passed over to the other two battalions there, the 16th and the 27th, West Australia, South Australia and somebody started the rumour that we’d been taken away for relief on the coast and we were getting the name of the Ghost Battalion,

we’re here today and gone tomorrow and yes, very nasty. Anyway eventually the word got through of where we had been because we were in heavier fighting than they were. And so anyway there was still this feeding for a long time after that but we got over it. We got into a battle in a place called Damour, not very far away from Beirut,

and we were camped in a wadi, a deep wadi, which is like an old river course but high cliffs and this battle that was going to start was one of the biggest artillery barrages of the war at that stage, and it was going to happen at night and it certainly happened. At first light we were going to move off

and the company would go up and I was given the job of, would you believe it? Bringing our stores along and mortar bombs and all the other wires and things that they wanted with a mule train, and I think I had about three or four Cypriots who owned the mules, who came along to help us and that is the greatest experience of my life. The battle was just

fantastic, it just went on and on for four or five hours and then the troops moved out and we moved out with these. We were supposed to be up where the battalion was at the, before nightfall. When nightfall came we were on the way but mules don’t walk fast and it came dark and I knew that the 27th Battalion was somewhere on this feature where I was but I couldn’t find them.

It was called El Boun and I saw a fellow coming out of the darkness and he was a signaller from the brigade and I said, “Where do I find the 27th?” And he said, “Easy, just follow the blue line.” And I said, “It’s dark.” And he said, “Oh yes.” So he pulled out a torch and he gave me, and finding this and he said, “There it is.” And just as he said it over came the artillery. They saw his light and they

shelled us. The Cypriots, we never saw them again, they just vanished. I don’t blame them. We lost two or three mules and unfortunately being where we were they toppled down into the bottom, way down below and we had to leave them. We got the rest of them and eventually I got through to the battalion somewhere about lunchtime. Just as I was moving over to see the CO,

the brigadier came walking past and he was my CO in militia days, “Ah Thompson,” he said, “I’m very pleased to see you. I heard you were wounded and then I found out it was another Thompson. I’m sorry for him of course but I’m pleased it’s not you. Thanks for that.” Jackie was a funny little bloke and anyway I went down and I found the CO and it was George Cannon, and I’m standing and he’s underneath a

stone fence and there’s a gap in it and I’m standing at the gap and I’m telling him and he said, “We expected you last night.” I said, “I know sir.” And I told him the whole story so okay, he accepted it and he said, “Can we get the stores?” And I said, “I doubt whether you’ll ever get them.” But told him roughly where they were and he said, “By the way, sergeant, where you’re standing there they’ve got a fixed line on it and they were firing through it yesterday.” And I said,

“Thanks sir.” And luckily they didn’t. Anyway we got out and oh we were under a bit of fire but we were behind the main lines there and from there the Damour was taken and we got to Beirut and we were stationed there.

I mentioned one of my friends before, a chap named Clements. When we were in Beirut we were given leave and I was a sergeant and he was a corporal and we thought we’d go and have a meal, and there was a very nice looking hotel right on the coast and we went there and a notice ‘Officers Only’, in French.

And a fellow came along and he told me this and I said, “Su officia.” And “No, no, no,” wouldn’t have that, under officers, no, wouldn’t have that. But in the end the manager came to these two, horrible Australians who were being difficult. And he said, “I’ll tell you what, I have a friend down the way. I’ll give you an introduction and you go down and he’ll look after you.” So we went down

to this one and we didn’t have a meal, we had a banquet and we got to the stage where we couldn’t stand the sound of a waiter coming in with another meal, and cost us nothing. Anyway that was about the end. I was sent forward to form a forward communications centre and ahead of the battalion and there were troops of course out in front of us.

And I had a little crew from the mortar platoon there, light artillery stuff. I used to have a rifle inspection everyday and one of the mortar men, he came out with his rifle and I couldn’t see down the barrel and I said, “When did you last clean it?” And he said, “Yesterday morning.” And I said,

“When did you last clean it?” “I don’t know, sometime.” And I said, “Have a look yourself.” So we got a steel rod and he had a wasp nest in his rifle. Yeah, that was funny. We had quite a good time there. The locals were very good and there was a girl who used to come along with a goat herd and she used to shake the trees and the acorns would come down and the goats would eat them, and we used

to try to talk to her in French and but my French was, I could get a bit out but I couldn’t – But they were quite nice, friendly people apart from that one incident. And from there we were eventually called back. We were there stationed and the Germans obviously weren’t coming and we were called out and sent

back to Palestine, back to our camp. And they gave me a new motorbike, this time it was a BSA [Birmingham Small Arms]. Did I tell you about riding one? I didn’t tell you about that one. The bike I had was a Norton and I learnt to ride it in Egypt and didn’t do too well but managed and I was riding along this road,

between, I think the artillery and my battalion. And I saw fellows going off the road in all directions and couldn’t make out what it was. One had the sense to stop and look at me and point over my shoulder and I just glanced around and there was a plane coming down the road and anyway I shot into a ditch very quickly. And then another time, another thing happened that was a bit uncomfortable but I was –

Oh then of course I got this new bike and one of the fellows decided that he would like to learn to ride a motorbike, or we thought he could and he started off and he rode right through the ammunition tent and knocked all the boxes of ammunition over, and the bike came out with the head down. And another one decided that he would have a ride and he came along the road and there was a bend in front of him and the road was about six foot above where we were and we could see the

strained look on his face. He couldn’t control it and he came, flew off the road and down and of course that didn’t do much good to the bike either. The head by this time was like this and then we were told we were moving and that all the people with motorbikes would go in a separate convoy. We had a roll, our stuff was put on the back

of thing and the first night we made the border and the next morning we set off, and of course going through the Sinai Desert was sand hill after sand hill and there was asphalt road, but when you get on the other side, sand drifts. And anyway we were well on the way and somebody rode up to me and said, “You dropped your bundle,” all my gear, so I had to go back and I had to go back a few miles and picked it up. And then

I’m all on my own in the desert and riding this silly bike with the handlebars. And I rode all day without seeing a soul except people who’d come up from the sand drifts and they were waiting for someone to come and pick them up. And I got through and I got to the Nile and found my battalion and I got off the bike, put it on it’s thing and said, “I refuse to ride it any more.”

And I did, but not for long after that. When I came to Australia I had it for a while but I soon got rid of it. But that was a hairy experience, and that’s when the idea was we were going to go overland to Burma and of course the Japs got in first. So we were put onto tramp steamers and still they were hoping they could get us off and at this stage

I believe Curtin and what’s his name? The English prime minister?

Yeah, him.

Yeah, Churchill, they wanted us to stay there and apparently he said, “If Australia is overrun we will help you get it back.” And Curtin said, “Not on your life.” And I’m very pleased that he did.

Anyway we couldn’t get to any of these countries and eventually after five weeks cruising around the Indian Ocean we came home. And then we had about two weeks I think at Colonel Light Gardens and then we went to Melbourne and we had seven days leave and on the seventh day I got married and then we went up to Queensland.

When I felt?

Oh from the moment that I stepped into it I think. When we first had the road blow up in front of us

we knew. By the way we were fighting the French Foreign Legion, amongst others. Something I’d forgot. We came to a river called the Litani River and it wasn’t a very big river but it was an awkward river, and a battalion of British commandos were given the job of landing on the far side of it

and going in and taking this thing, and we were on this side to support them. Silly commander of whoever was directing the boats, instead of taking them to the far side of the river, took them to the near side of the river and most of them were slaughtered. They had a terrible time. They didn’t get across the river. That night I was trying to find somebody from the

27th Battalion who was nearby. I had a message for them and I found a body in the dark and I shook it and said, “27th?” “I’m a commando mate.” And I said, “Sorry.” And oh, they were really cut to pieces. The next day the 16th Battalion crossed and we followed them and we got into this place. A battalion of Foreign Legionnaires had forced

marched that day in great coats and full packs. They’d marched forty miles to get into this fort and just to come under fire immediately. You can’t blame the [(UNCLEAR)]. Amongst the prisoners that came out were a couple of Australians. Bush of course, would have put them in as spies, as terrorists but

anyway they were happy. They had just for fun joined the Foreign Legion and thought they were fighting the Germans. Interesting, anyway they all went off. There were Africans, black Africans and all sorts of people that we captured, but it was quite a thing to be fighting the Foreign Legion, who had such a name. Well we got over that

river and into the fort and we hadn’t been there very long when we realised that there was something wrong and we had, we were in shorts and socks, and just at our sock line we found a great red line, fleas and the whole place was just full of fleas. You couldn’t imagine this many, there was hundreds of them and we were itching

everywhere. There was a funny little incident. There was a pig. Some of the fellows found their way to the kitchen and the cook was dead on the floor and so was a pig, and the cook had a knife in his hand and someone said the story of it is this fellow was going to kill the pig and somebody killed him, so now the pig is dead,

so we’ll have him, so someone cut him up and we were eating pork for a while. It’s a funny thing. I’ve got a report on that in one of the books. It was reported that it wasn’t a pig, it was a, not a Frenchman, but a person. It wasn’t, it was a pig because I saw it and

yeah, that’s about it. We pushed on from there and had the Damour battle and that was pretty intense and then got through to Beirut and then at Beirut I told you we had leave and then we went back. The ride over and now we’re back in Australia.

What date?

No, we came straight back to Australia, no, not straight back, took us five weeks trying to get into these other countries and we ended up at Albany and, Fremantle, what’s wrong with me, and we had a change of CO.

And his name was Arthur Keys and he had come from the 6th Division and had a very good name, so the first thing that happened with him was we were allowed out on leave but had to be back by eleven fifty-nine, a minute before midnight. And all those that were back after that time, their names were taken as they came up and

there would have been about thirty or forty I suppose, and we thought that they would be fined as to how late they were but this new CO lined them up in three lines, one, two, three, and, “You’re all guilty. First line, ten dollars, second line, twenty dollars, third line, thirty dollars, dismissed.” He was not popular, however we got to know him and he was a very good

CO. But I think that was a rather arbitrary way of doing it.

Oh right, actually it was good. I did tell you there was conflict because particularly the 16th seemed to be very bitter. We’d had this leave and it took a while to convince we had in fact been fighting hard and

but that was easing off and we were regarded as a very good brigade. We had that feeling ourselves and not just told us and I think the, I would say it was a very cohesive brigade. If I could just go on a bit further, after the Owen Stanleys there was an incident in the

hospital. There was a 16th lad in hospital and someone was speaking about our brigade, that didn’t belong to it and said, “And how’s the Ghost Battalion going?” And this chap just came in and knocked his head off for him, a 16th man, who had been one of the better ones in the, but he wasn’t going to have anything said about the 2/14th.

The other battalion,

16th was West Australia, 27th South Australia and we were Victorian, and later we got reinforcements from everywhere so we had South Australians, we had West Australians, we had Queenslanders.

We were a really first class battalion. You could see it, if you’ve seen marches

of the battalion when we came back to Australia, they were very, very proud. It was a terrific battalion and our association has been quite strong up to the last few years and they’re dying off quickly now, but no, it was very good.

We thought we were going to the East, Asia, because all the reports were coming back about the Japanese advancing and Borneo was the big tip or Singapore, and I don’t know why people said Singapore. They wouldn’t fit us all in but that was mentioned.

And I think we were definitely going to Borneo. That was, not Borneo, Burma, because the ships tried twice to get in there and they couldn’t. It was a most uncomfortable trip. Five weeks on the Indian Ocean on this little City of Paris and City of-something-else, and there were about four or five of them and they weren’t very comfortable and we didn’t like just cruising around either.

And eventually I think everyone was getting impatient and if we can’t get in, let’s get home, because the Japs are coming, so eventually we did.

We couldn’t land at all. We went back to Colombo once. We’d done a circuit and couldn’t and came back to Colombo and

there was a ship in port there with a great big hole in the hull and that had just come back from where we were trying to go, so it looked hopeless and then the fellows started to say, “Take us home,” and eventually that’s where we ended up.

Oh yes, yes, yes, nobody ever expected them to go through the way they

did which made it worse for us because Australia was right there and it was quite obvious that they were going to attack Australia, so yes, we were surprised and we were a bit afraid I think.

Yes, yes, exactly and when we landed we came over here to Adelaide and the thing that struck me the most was the number of people

who we met who said, “Oh we’ve got our slit trenches dug.” And I thought surely they don’t expect them to come to Adelaide. But yes, people were very proud of their slit trenches and they were all prepared for it.

Oh street names, town names, lights out, yes, all those things,

the windows had been blackened in. It looked like a war town and yet there was no threat at that stage but fair enough they had to be prepared.

I thought I was coming to heaven. The first thing it was a hot day when we landed and we, I think we were brought up by buses to

Adelaide and then we had to march down to Burnside, Green Hill Road, and two things happened. We pulled up at one stage and there was a woman where they had corner shops in those days and she saw us and she

turned back, went into a shop and came out with a basketful of soft drinks and passed it around went a few more miles and there was somebody else, it was a man the second time, did the same thing and we thought these South Australians are wonderful people. And then we got invitations to visit and I was walking down the street one day with a friend and a chap stopped us and he said, “Are you just back from the

Middle East?” And we said yes, and he asked us a bit about it and he told us his name, Cooper, and I said, “Are you the Cooper?” And he said “Yes, I’m one of the family.” And he invited us to go down to the [Coopers’] brewery. We didn’t, we thought it was going to be a bit much, but that was, the friendliness was fantastic. So I’ve got a love for South Australia and I was very pleased to come back there.

Rather frightened, apprehensive perhaps is the word, and they wanted to know what our experiences were, what did we expect but generally they liked to see us to see if we were good enough, and that type of thing, but they were, they were very apprehensive.

I don’t think they understood very much about it. I don’t think any of them had heard about any war in Syria. They knew about the war in the desert and, “Were we in that?” And they knew about Greece but they didn’t know anything about Syria and I think that still pertains today. People still haven’t heard about that one.

Where we had the chance of course but in those days it was political. They didn’t want the French to think that we were fighting them. And the French at that time had two armies. There was the Vichy French, who ran France and then there were the Free French who were fighting on our side and it was hoped that the people in Syria, the French in Syria would come over to the Free French, but no way.

Oh well, I went straight home to my girlfriend, Molly, and I think she saw me every day for the next few days and we got married on the last day, and I went off the next morning. And it wasn’t a very happy honeymoon because as she was getting into bed she cracked her head on

the thing and that gave her a headache and it was a very squalid place, and the hotel was blacked out and it was in Spencer Street in Melbourne, if you know that, and it was a very dingy pub and it wasn’t a very happy time.

Well it was done very quickly as you can gather because it had to be done within an hour or two, and she was a Catholic and I wasn’t and we had to be married in the vestry because I was one of the strange people

and didn’t belong. And then we went to a reception down at, at this pub down where we were staying and that finished somewhere around about eleven o’clock at night and Molly hit her head on the shelf and had a raging headache so, and then at five o’clock in the morning I had to get up and go, so that was my honeymoon.

Oh friends I had

around Melbourne. The army friend that I had, he came along and people that I knew and she knew we had. Not a big wedding, couldn’t be, we didn’t have time. Actually as a war time wedding I would put it way down the lower levels, it wasn’t good.

That chap there.

Nambour? I went to other places before Nambour.

Yandina, that was our first camp and that was good. Queensland realised that there was a war on and they had a lot of preparations going on. Phones were surrendered and so on

and they were making quite a lot of preparations because they were right on the... Nambour was not very far from Yandina and it was on a little river called the Maroochy River. Yes, we had a good camp there. We did some hard, so called jungle training and there were a lot of rainforests of course

in Queensland as you know and we trained in those. And I had a great experience, the artillery were doing an exercise and they wanted infantry to help them, not many. They just wanted really one, and that was me but I had to take a signaller with me and I had to take, well I took my batman just

because he’d be handy anyway, and I had my instructions that we were to come out through all this jungle to a point in the distant future somewhere. And I had a map, of course and trying to find that in jungle was difficult. But I had to get there at a certain time to make the attack with artillery and we’d fire and they’d stop

for my battalion to come in. That was great. The first battle was quite good, in open country but then I came to the rainforest and about there the sig I had with me had trouble with his radio, so he stopped to get it going and I went on. And where I was going was very rocky and rocks all the way down, almost

like a staircase and on every level there was a snake. And as I went the snakes were sort of going on in front of me and it was quite eerie, hundreds of them and anyway I made my way for about another half an hour and no-one had come back, neither my batman nor [UNCLEAR], batman – Ben Ford , so I pushed on and by the greatest fluke in the world I came out at the right place at the right time and

the other two caught me up, luckily and they did a good job too. It was very dense timber and everything was, but we got out and I thought that was always an interesting story. The main worry I had was always how many snakes were going to bite me on the way.

The big thing was to find your way in the jungle and keep

your way and if I could just go into the future and I was given the job after this of training the 9th Division, one of the 9th Division battalions, as I told you before, and they were trained in how to find their way in the jungle. And on the last day they’d done very well and I’d sent them off to lunch and I said, “I’ll follow you back.” And I got lost. They found

me.

Oh in detail? Oh jungle is, how do you describe it? The jungle is full of trees and darkness and creepers and wet and things that make

funny noises at night and so on, and it’s eerie to go into a jungle without having anyone shooting at you and finding your way is very, very difficult and you can work with your compass or you can work with your own intuition, but you’ve got to have a landmark somewhere where you know where to go. You can be a yard or two away from somebody and not know they’re there.

So you’re trained in all these sorts of things and how to dig in the jungle when you’ve got roots and everything all around and you haven’t got the right tools. Yes, getting used to the noise is a big thing because the noises, especially at night are just alarming. You’re not sure and if you don’t keep your eyes open you’ll walk into a spiders nest and the spiders are about this big.

And you get one of those on your face and it’s not nice. Yes, it’s eerie and that in itself can upset a lot of fellows, so they had to get confidence. We found one way was to pick up, sometimes you can get bark that has fallen off trees and has phosphorus on it and it glows at night, so we’d pick that up

and put it in our belt at the back so the person behind could see where we were and we’d follow them. At night time is absolutely pitch black because no light penetrates and if we didn’t do that we’d put our bayonets at the back so they could grab that and follow along. And walking silently was another problem, and the worst thing in the world is to walk on a twig as it goes crack, because in the jungle that sound goes all around the place.

You’ve got, building their confidence in it was one thing and we did that by telling that really the jungle is your friend and it’s frightening to the enemy as well, but you’ve got protection while you are here and we got them through but it wasn’t easy, never was.

After the very open, they adapted to it very well really. There were no alternatives of course. I told you about the night before we moved up, didn’t I? When we had that church parade?

Well do you want to hear it again?

Right, well the first thing we did the day before someone found

some grindstones and we got out there and we sharpened our bayonets and I remember somebody coming past from another unit and saying, “You blood thirsty so and sos,” but it wasn’t that. We wanted them to slash creepers and things so we’d get through. We’d had that little bit of experience in Queensland but when we got up into New Guinea the jungle was twice as thick. So we sharpened our

bayonets and then at night we had this church parade where all these fellows who rarely thought of church I’m sure, like me, it wasn’t important but we went into our groups this night, with light rain falling on us and all the lanterns around. It was just such a remarkable sight and you got pins and needles and here were all these blokes,

all hardened soldiers and saying their prayers and etcetera, and I think it was very interesting on that score. Quite often when the fellows were killed you’d have to go through their belongings and we’d find a bible and a prayer book, which you never expected with these men, some of these people. There was always that feeling

I think that there was always someone else somewhere who cares.

Our next move was to move to New Guinea and we weren’t long there. We were in an area that was fairly open.

And then we were moved fairly quickly, it would only be a few days and we were moved up to Koitaki, which was in amongst the rubber plantations. But not very far from a place that was called Ower’s Corner, which was the start of the track up through the Stanleys. And whilst we were there we couldn’t do very much except get ourselves ready. We went through our packs and cast out the things that were

unnecessary and took all the things that were necessary, like rations and more ammunition and oh, whatever. Because we knew it was going to be, we were going to be living on our own for a while. There was supposed to be a spot along the trail where they were going to drop supplies to us and we knew that

we would have to walk for about four days I think it was, to get to this place called Myola and I think on the average we would have been carrying about sixty to seventy pounds weight on our back, a change of socks and clothes. We were in khaki, in fact I think we might have even been in shorts

at the time but we were certainly in khaki. So, can I go into the track?

Yes.

Right, firstly Yandina is on a little river,

not very far from the coast and out from Nambour, going north there was a great swamp. We were told that the Japs wouldn’t be able to us that, that swamp. They wouldn’t be able to wade through there, which we couldn’t understand. Our line started from

where the swamp finished and we dug holes in that but we used to wade through that swamp to go down to the beach, but apparently the Japs couldn’t do that. But we didn’t have, I think I was only there on one occasion and we got the general idea that nobody was very happy about the things, so we were then moved

up to New Guinea. I suppose maybe we might have been there two or three weeks. We did a few exercises and I think we were rather pleased to get away from there. We didn’t like the Brisbane Line. We thought it was most unsafe.

No, this is another story. Do you want me to go on with that one? It came into the next session.

Well some of the patrols were through the swamp, would you believe? But the others were just round about. We made our way down towards the coast without going through the swamp but the real patrolling came later on, which I’ll tell you about when we get there.

Right, wonderful.

I think we were rather pleased. It’s interesting, I don’t think that anyone likes being shot at but no-one likes day after day of training either, especially when it’s interspersed with a bit of drill, you get absolutely fed up with it and I think it’s designed that way and so when the call comes that we’re going you say,

“Great, let’s go.” Well, it’s inevitable, so we may as well enjoy it. So off we got into the ship and sailed to New Guinea. Our first impression of Moresby was very poor. There was a sunken ship, not completely under, and that had been bombed and we heard about the bombings they had been having and I thought, “This is wonderful.”

Anyway we went out about three miles and camped and then in a very short time we were put into trucks and driven by Americans, we had the luck of having an American negro, not that there was anything wrong with him but he was a funny man. And it’s a very winding road to get up there and there was one

bend that was so sharp they had to go up and back and try again, and someone called out to this chap, “If you don’t mind out, you’ll be down the cliff.” And he said, “This little boy is my Mama’s only son and he’s not going down there.” So anyway he got us up there and we moved into this area in amongst the rubber trees. It was quite a nice area there really,

and very humid of course. And as I said before, we were only there two or three days. We were told that we were going to go down to Ower’s Corner where the track starts and we’d be moving on for the next six or seven days. We were told about Myola where we’d be getting new supplies, but we had to have all our own food and everything to get there.

We were told about the native carriers who’d be carrying the heavy stuff, the really heavy stuff, not that we had a lot of it and that they’d also be helping the stretcher bearers. We were given warnings about the people we might strike on the track and how to treat them and so on and to look after native

gardens and so on. So there we are and the first part of the track was quite pleasant. We were wading through creeks and things and it wasn’t very hard but rather wet and I think that was the first day that took us up to a place called Iorabaiwa, I think and the next day we headed into the Golden Staircase. And this had

been constructed by people who didn’t know much about building stairways and some of the steps were that, and some of them were that, and it was a very muddy track and pulling our weight, just getting yourself up and having the weight on your back as well it was really rugged and slippery, and after a while you get tired of the steps so you try to get onto the

mud on the other side and the next thing you know you’ve got your face in the mud. I had a reputation before, I told you before I used to march around, I had a reputation of being a very strong marcher and by the end of the day when we got to the top of this huge mountain and we were guided into an empty village, and I was vomiting and

I think most people were affected in some way. They gave me some food and I just couldn’t take it and I woke up in the morning and I had a craving for salt, for no reason. I had no love of salt or anything, I just craved it and I found as I moved around everyone was saying, “Salt! We must have salt!” And somebody got it from somewhere and so we walked out of the

little village and there was a chap with a bag of salt and we took handfuls of it and just ate it down. And yeah, we were just drained, but anyway that salt got us going. I got addicted to it a bit. I had salt on everything from then on for years until I got blood pressure, so yeah, that was an interesting little thought.

Then we moved on. I won’t go through the lot. You go up hills and you go down hills and you’re crying your heart out by the time you get to the top of a hill. You’re legs are tired and your knees are tired and you’re feet are sore, and when you go down you find it’s worse because you’re legs go rubber and you’re bearing your weight down on it all the time. And before you get to the end of it you’re saying, “Let’s go up hill again,” so you can never be pleased. And you get to

one hill and you look across and there’s another hill and you’ve got another one of these to go up and I think only once did we come to a spot where there were virtually no trees, with kunai grass and a track that we could see that we went through. So we put up with that and then we started to see casualties coming back. The 39th Battalion were up there and the 53rd and we saw these, and I

spoke to one and said, “How are you?” And he said, “Oh not bad.” And I looked at the hole and it was thinner than a pencil and I thought to myself, “Well that’s not going to hurt anyone very much, a little thing like that,” but strangely they can kill too. But these fellows were mostly walking back, but occasionally we’d find the worst ones and they’d be brought back by what we termed the Fuzzy Wuzzies afterwards. They don’t like that term

but they got it there and they were fantastic in the way they could handle the stretchers. So more and more we saw the wounded coming back and we started to hear about the weapons the Japs had, because we were told their weapons were very poor, they were all short sighted, they were all small men, they all wore glasses. And up the top of the track where we were going there was a gap and

at that gap a platoon, which is thirty men, could easily hold up a division, which is about three thousand men, so we were making for the gap. On our first day we hadn’t gone very long when a man who had been in our battalion, I knew him well, I’d been a sergeant when he was and he’d been transferred over the 39th and he became a lieutenant and he passed us.

He said as he came up, he said, “Have you heard there are three troop ships off Gona unloading troops?” And I said, “No, I haven’t heard a word.” And he said, “Yeah, it’s right.” He heard it on the radio and anyway I passed that message on and they checked with brigade or someone and, “No, that’s not right.” But it was right, so instead of striking

a very small force up there, much less than our force, they were unloading troops by the hundreds, and yet, headquarters, army headquarters, weren’t believing any of that, “The Japs were still very weak.” The 39th and a bit later the 53rd got down to Kokoda and they put up a remarkable fight there.

They were pushed out and they got back in again and finally they came back and we caught up with them at Isurava. Before that we had reached Myola and there were no stores there, nothing had happened and so we were held up.

The next day I think somebody got things moving and the planes came in and dropped stores to us and we were able to pick them up. Myola was a dried lake and it was the only spot in the hills that they could drop, so we spent a day collecting all the stores and we still only had enough for one company to move up at a time, so one company would go up of a morning and wait for another plane to come in with stores so that the next ones could go up in the afternoon, and so on.

Sorry, I think I was the last to move off. Some of my sector had gone up with battalion headquarters but they wanted all the fighting troops up first, so I went up with my remaining members, I think about ten.

And we eventually came to Isurava and I reported into battalion headquarters and my sig officer was there. He’d gone up earlier and he was there and he asked me to sit the men down in a little flat space, and we did and he started to tell us all about it. Well he was standing up, so I thought if he stands up, I’ll stand up. And

there were things flying all around our heads and he wasn’t turning a hair and I thought this is remarkable. I didn’t have a very high regard for this man, by the way. Anyway whilst he was in the middle of telling us all about it someone came running down and said, “Sigs, sigs, we want you quickly.” And we grabbed the blokes and ran down the track. We were told to report to somebody or other and I had to find this officer in amongst the trees and the first

one I came to was a chap named Dickenson and he said, “He’s back there somewhere.” So I went back there and I finally found the man and he said, “Oh we want you to go down the track down there and go round there onto the flank.” There’d been a fight and some of our fellows had been pushed off. They’d pushed the Japs off but some of our fellows were wounded and others had reformed elsewhere.

As I got to the track I found this chap named ‘Teddy Bear’ who was wounded and he had a bullet in the foot and another one in the hand. There was a chap named Bruce Kingsbury, who I knew slightly and another man named, forget about it, I’ll get his name in a moment, a very good little lad who came

from Traralgon in Gippsland and at one stage his battalion had joined with our battalion for training back in Puckapunyal, so I knew him. His brother was an airman, Truscott, this one was, oh doesn’t matter, somebody Truscott and so then I think there might have been another two. And I said, “Anyway we’re pushing

off down here to see.” And they said, “We’ll come with you.” And I said, “Right, but Teddy, you get back.” And he said, “I’ll come with you.” I said, “You’re not coming, so get back with your wounds.” So he handed his Bren gun over to Bruce and we walked along this narrow, little track and we came to a little trench. I won’t tell what sort of trench it was, just a narrow trench and I went to step over it with these trees, and I was parting the trees

and exactly as a Jap did the same thing. He was sitting about as close as you and me and just staring at each other and I think he must have got frightened first because he shouted, and we went back and another officer named John Clements, I don’t know where he came from, and suddenly they’re behind me and then he threw a couple of grenades over and I got the fellows through the thing.

I don’t know, I think my early training got me or something. I spread the fellows out in the long line and got them fixing bayonets and the Japs took off ahead of us and when I had them in order I said, “Righto, off we go.” And Bruce was alongside me with his Bren gun and he was doing a great job. And the rest of us were just moving forward and the Japs in front of us were probably getting over into

the trees and we found a few of them that had been hit with the grenades, and we were about three quarters of the way away from the trees and Bruce noticed two fellows sitting up on a rock, just above us, two of our fellows, so he and I stopped and went over to them. Stopped all the fellows and they were just waiting there and we were talking to them all to find out who they were and what they were

doing and I was standing shoulder to shoulder with Bruce and the shot came, and I didn’t know which one of us was shot, we both hit the ground. You don’t hear, you just hear a hell of a noise and anyway Bruce was killed. So that was rather disturbing and he had a very close friend who was with me, Alan

Avery who, Alan was very cut up. They’d been friends from boyhood. So anyway we consolidated then and I sent a message back to headquarters to say that we were holding this ground and what did they want me to do. I thought I’d do a bit of patrolling myself, which was a bit silly. I don’t think I’ve ever been more frightened than I was because I went on my own which

was even sillier. I started to walk through the trees and anyway after a while I thought I’m not achieving anything here. And I went back and a message came from headquarters to say that we were withdrawing and come back, so we moved back to battalion headquarters and I was given instructions to go on back to the next place, which was a beautiful place called Alola.

Well as I said before he was alongside

me and he had the Bren gun that Teddy Bear had handed over to him. They’d been in a fight already, just before we came along and the Bren gun, that is actually a weapon that is normally used on the ground but our fellows are trained to use it from the hip as well. And it has a magazine on it that holds thirty cartridges and you

can fire them off in one burst, which is unwise or you can stagger them. And Bruce was very skilled on it and he was firing from the hip all the time we were going in, and he was spreading it around and to where they were and he kept them on the move, luckily. Because all the rest of my fellows who had a little bit of training of firing from the hip I didn’t think it was worthwhile.

Bruce was giving us the fire and these fellows were just carrying their rifles and bayonets ready for the final rush but we never did make that final rush because these two people that we saw, but thanks to Bruce he got us that far with only one casualty and only one man was wounded and not badly. And we got over and the Japs had sort of cleared out through the trees we thought. So we were speaking to

these two boys who had been cut off and they felt that they weren’t going to get out until we came and relieved the situation. And probably the worst thing I did at the time was to stop at that time. If we had of kept going we would have cleared the whole area but we left this one man standing in the trees and he just, he had the choice of Bruce or me and he chose Bruce because he had the weapon obviously,

thank God. But Bruce was killed instantly but he got us to this situation where we had the area cleared and did it, the one man firing off. So when it came to rewarding him, when a man dies you can only win one or two awards.

He can get an MID [Mentioned in Despatches], which we usually say comes up with the rations but he can get a VC [Victoria Cross] but there is no other posthumous award, so I wasn’t going to put him in for an MID, I put him in for a VC. Do you want the whole story? I sent the report down to head, to head office

and a couple of days later it came back to me. We had moved off by then. We had moved further down the track by then and we had [(UNCLEAR)] and, “Would I please write it up a bit more with a bit more action and such,” so I did. And I think it might have come back to me again for a bit more, so this time I really wrote it up, but Bruce did a wonderful job.

But they wanted this to be a real reward, and as I wasn’t commissioned I couldn’t sign it and one of the other officers signed it and of course, in time, he won the VC. On the same day or the next day there was another chap named Charlie McCarthy, who really did something,

probably far more deserving but they were only going to award one VC, so Bruce got it. I’m not decrying it. He was worded up and Charlie unfortunately was worded down, but he single handily got rid of about half a dozen Japanese and they were trying to pull the weapons off him, he had two weapons, a Bren gun and a Tommy gun,

and he’s firing one while he’s loading the other. He was remarkable and he was killed the next day. Yes, he got a DCM [Distinguished Conduct Medal] because it was put in before he died, but that was that. At that stage we had dug in and we’d cleaned the area out and

those two boys who belonged to C Company I think had gone on their way and I got a message to pull out. So we got to battalion headquarters and the RSM [Regimental Sergeant Major] asked me if I would take the chief clerk, the battalion chief clerk who was as we used to say bomb happy, shell shocked and he needed help to get out.

So I took him with me and we walked down the track and all of a sudden this great blast of fire coming over us and we moved into a clearing and there was a man on a stretcher lying there and all around him were little wisps of white where bullets were shooting into the ground, and I did my top. Down below were fellows who had come down

from here, they were down in the hollow, including a couple of officers who had been sergeants with me in my platoon and had been transferred over to this platoon, and I called them by name and I abused them, and “Hell, come up here and help me get this man down, do you want to see him killed?” He was badly wounded and eventually a little man from the 39th came

up, a little red haired fellow and gradually I got two more and we got this man and moved him down. As we were putting him down, I had a cape, a ground sheet over me and a fellow said, “You’ve been hit.” And I said, “No, I haven’t.” And he said, “You have, I just saw the groundsheet, the little corner piece go up.” I took the groundsheet off and I

took my haversack off and I opened it up and I took out my knife, fork and spoon and my fork was damaged and it had it’s prongs shot off. Behind that I think there was a bag of foot powder and that had a hole right through it and then there was something else, oh mess tins. My mess tin had a hole right through it and the

bullet was half an inch out the back and I didn’t notice but luck was with me then. Later on, some horrible fellows when I put things in store when we went elsewhere, took them all as souvenirs, mess tin, damaged knife and fork and spoon.

We got him out, yeah, yeah. I was ashamed of some of those people that I knew there. It was amazing the amount of fire that was coming around us and not one of us was hit. I’ve never worked that one out. This boy lying on the ground, the whole place was just flickering and somehow we were missed. It had to be missed, had to be met I mean.

Anyway when we got him out he did die eventually but at least we got him out. This little lad with the red hair he stuck with me for quite a while and we got to a place called Alola, and then of course the Japs were following us pretty quickly and moving at night was very,

very difficult and it was night before we got to Alola. And so we had our telephone lines that we’d put in as we went up and I was telling fellows to grab that and walk along with it so they knew where they were. It was slippery and it was hilly and when you got to Alola that was right on top of the hill and I slept that night on the hill with my feet up against a tree. We were all so tired

and we went to sleep and we moved on the next day and the next place we came to was, we stopped again and we held it overnight and

my six were acting as riflemen at this stage. And it had been a ration dump where we were and we were using tins of biscuits and things to, as to make shelter and we were stacked somehow, and I know I got cramp in my legs that night for some reason and never had it before or after,

but had it that night and didn’t get a lot of sleep and was up early. So I went for a little look around and an officer in the next company over was shouting his head off at me, “Get over, get back, get back.” I said, “Calm down, I’ll be right, I just want to have a look and see if there’s any movement.” I went back and then we moved back again. I think we got to Myola

and for the first time in ten days we got supplies and I was able to take my boots and socks off and about three layers of skin as I pulled my socks off. And to have a proper shower or to tip a bucket over me and get into clean clothes, and there they decided that we should have greens but we didn’t have any greens. They had

green dye and we all dyed our trousers because these things stand out and we managed to get a good meal and drops while we were there and then we pushed on back to the next one. This was, I suppose you could call it a retreat, but we preferred to call it a withdrawal and it was a very well planned withdrawal.

What we were doing, as we were going over we were, all our supplies were along behind us and when the Japs had to come forward a reverse situation, all their supplies had to be carried and the longer we stretched their line the better. So all the time we were going back, and every night we would stop and there would be a great fight and we’d hold them up while we went on the next stage.

There was a lot of criticism about it afterwards. It’s been called a retreat which I suppose it was but it was an organised retreat and we got back to a place which is now called Brigade Hill. It had another name then, I think it was, oh I’ve forgotten it but it was just a,

we called it the cricket pitch because it was just a straight piece of track and the Japs were up one end bowling to us up the other, they were bowling their guns. Oh one thing I missed, as we were on the way down from Alola, they had a big celebration at Alola and the general was there on his white horse, and we could see it from where we were on the hill further back.

And then at night we saw them coming around the hills carrying lights and if we’d had even a machine gun we could have picked them off but we had nothing at all to hit them with. They were too far away, but anyway we watched them and knew that it was going to happen again. At this Brigade Hill

we caught up with the 2/27th Battalion who had been held in reserve at Moresby and had just made their way up unfortunately and they would have been a big help. I should say the 39th Battalion had been a militia battalion but well trained. The 53rd were not really a good battalion, they reinforcements from everywhere and they were put on the boat without any training as a battalion.

When they got to Moresby they were digging holes and doing all sorts of things but not doing any training and then they were sent up there and they were badly led and they got a very bad reputation for pulling out. Well certainly didn’t help us, but the 39th when we met them they were gallant, rugged, ragged and they were almost out on their feet and they

said when they saw us coming they thought we were God. And oh they were so rapt, real people coming to help them and they could have gone out as soon as we got there, but they elected to stay and they stayed and fought with us for about two or three days before they, they had lots and lots of casualties as we did.

Anyway we gradually fought our way down and we got to this Brigade Hill and the 27th were holding the track and we managed to get up, it was most amazing. We moved out on a side track and how anyone knew it was there I don’t know. We got onto it and it was hardly a track at all

and it was just gaps between the trees where we could go. We moved off and the 2/16th came behind us but just before we moved we had a call from brigade and it was the first time the radio worked, the very first time and it was a call from the brigadier saying that he was cut off and nominating someone to take over the brigade if he was killed and that was the most important thing.

They put in a counter attack with one of our companies who took two of my six with him and the company commander was killed and one of my six was killed and the rest of them came out. We moved through there for about an hour and just settled down where we were, just went to sleep where we were.

The 16th were behind us and a stretcher party and we hoped the 27th behind them. The next morning we moved on again and after a while came to a clearing and there was a stump right in centre of this clearing and two of my sergeant friends were there and I stopped to talk to them and they said they were waiting for the stretchers. So I just passed a few words and I went on and when we got out to the next little

village that we were going for, not far behind me was the stretcher party and I said, “Did you see Bob and the other one, Brian?” I said, “Did you see them?” “No.” I said, “They were waiting for you in the clearing.” “There wasn’t anyone in the clearing.” And what had happened was between the time I left them and the stretcher party came a Japanese patrol must have come and picked them up. We got a report later that

they had these two and named them and they named them as acting company commanders, which they were, and I could have stayed with them and talked with them for another minute or two and I wouldn’t be here talking to you today. That was a big shock. The worst part of that was when we left Isurava the brigade party got cut off.

Our CO, Colonel Key, the adjutant and I think five of my six and probably somebody else were cut off and took to them scrub to get around on the track and somehow they didn’t and a couple of days into the bush and the CO decided it would be better if they split into two parties. And he had a

pistol and he gave it to one of my fellows and he said, “You go that way and I’ll go round the other way.” They were captured and my fellows, four of mine went and the other six stayed with the, of the four two of them died on the track.

I think it was probably exhaustion or something but I know one of them had, what do you call it when? Hallucinations, and they both died on the way and the other two got out and at one stage they were starving and one of them went up with some

Japs carrying food and he got a machete from one of them and got a hit over the head himself but he got some food and they got out. Eventually they came back home and they were like skeletons and the biggest part of them were their ears. They seemed to have great big ears and little faces but they got through, but all the others

were never found and the tragic end is believed that they were all tied up and used for bayonet practise. We heard first that Colonel Keys may have been taken over to Rabaul and put on a ship that was later torpedoed but they’re not sure of that now. They think they may have all been bayoneted, which is a pity. The Japanese decided, which I read,

that a lot of their men were bayonet shy and they did this to give them some training on how to use the bayonet, but that’s a rather sad story. So we got back and each time we got to a hill we’d stop for the night and we’d hold the Japs off as long as we could.

We got a new CO about that time and he being the brigade major. If you want me to mention his name I will, but I’d prefer not too. We were on this little track and the Japs opened up with a mountain gun and our forward company consisted of eight men by this stage, instead of a hundred.

And they had four weapon pits and when the second weapon pit was wiped out the other four made their way up the track and this CO saw them coming and he came out on the track and, “Get back, get back!” And they just took no notice of him and he’s screaming his head off, “Get back!” And they just walked past him and went somewhere else.

So we weren’t very fond of that CO. Anyway we made our way down to a place called Ioribaiwa, which was the last good stronghold and by this time from the two battalions, we went from up to five hundred men each, just taking the

fighting men and leaving the other services and out of the thousand people the two battalions together made one hundred and the CO of the 2/16th took over this composite group and his name was, oh dear, forget it. He was

good. Anyway we dug in there and of course all we had to dig with was bayonets and tin hats and they kept turning their mountain gun on us. I had a sig, his name was Dave Elliott, I couldn’t think of it before. He was a very temperamental fellow and he’d loose his temper at the drop of a hat and the line kept getting knocked out

with this blessed mountain gun and he’d go up and repair it. And after he’d done it three times, he did his block and he stood up there dancing up and down and cursing and telling them what he thought, and they let him do it. And anyway he didn’t get hit or anything and he got it fixed and came back and we made one more move. We went back to the next crowd, the next hill, oh no,

once we were there the Japs came in on our left hand side and another battalion, a CMF battalion moved up alongside us and somehow they didn’t have patrols out or something, and these Japs came up and there was a bit of a fight on the side but mostly our problem was the mountain gun. It was just at us all the day and Caro, was the man, the CO and I was

about ten yards away from him when this thing came over and automatically I just went to ground. He said, “Once you hear it, it’s too late, you may as well stand up.” It takes a lot to do that. He was right though, once you hear it it’s too late, it’s gone past you. Anyway we managed to come out and

when we got down to the next hill the 25th Brigade took over and we were marching out and feeling rather relieved, and we went through a lot of mud and stuff as we were marching and my trousers were mud from here down and I thought that was uncomfortable.

So I ripped the legs off at the knee. But what I didn’t realise was in doing that I’d loosened the stitches and so I found myself wearing a little skirt. And I think on about the second day after this the adjutant came up to me, he had the same name as me, a Thompson, and he said, “Sergeant,

I suggest you draw another pair of trousers for yourself.” “Yes sir, when and where?” So I had to put up with them until we got to a camp but at least it was rather refreshing. But as we went out there were troops on the way up and they stood,

sorry, and cheered us and we were feeling pretty good and we got back to where we had left, Koitaki, and the brigadier came and had a word with us and gave us a lot of

praise and then.

Troops on the way up, troops from another battalion and they’d heard what was going on. They treated us as heroes and it was wonderful. And Blamey came up

and had a talk to us and told us that ‘it’s the rabbit that runs that gets shot’, and that we were a disgrace and then he sent the troops off and called all the officers together and said, “I’m not going to be as kind to you as I was to them.” And he told us just what horrible, yellow cowards we were and he began, we were going to be given another chance

to prove ourselves and he was sending us up to another area very soon. He caused a lot of trouble. In a hospital our troops heard that he was going to come and visit them and they got letters from the staff, and when Blamey came these

fellows were all hopping around with the lettuce, but that did more damage than anything anyone could have done. He never ever came up to see what the conditions were, he never sent anyone up to find out for themselves what it was like, and he

took what he had heard before. And he believed there was a gap where we could hold the Japanese and he told us that we vastly outnumbered the Japanese, where in fact they vastly outnumbered us. They had over nine thousand to our, well our battalion was about two thousand and that was including the 27th who hadn’t reached

us. And it was just pathetic and the whole reason was that MacArthur was making all the criticisms and Blamey was passing them down and if he’d only sent somebody up to see what the conditions were, it would have been better. So he told us we were going off again and we went up to Gona.

How did we react? I think every person there, private to CO, was ready to kill him. I can’t prove this but you may have heard of Peter Brune? He’s been speaking to some and he said some of the troops refused to salute him, and I hope that’s true but I can’t confirm it because I was waiting in the group to hear his next words. But we

were almost white angry. We would have done anything to him I think if there hadn’t been discipline but the troops behaved very, very well considering. And when we got to Gona the call was when anything serious was going on, “Don’t worry boys, Blamey’s gone.”

So that’s where we went next.

It took a lot. By the way we had only been out of the

hills I think a couple of days, if that, and I was called over to battalion head office and told that I was commissioned, and as usual I was sleeping with my own troops and they said, “We haven’t got a tent for you. Would you mind sleeping there and tomorrow we’ll have one.” So I had to go over there and not tell the troops that I’d been commissioned.

Because way back in Puckapunyal days when I was promoted to corporal they awarded me by taking me out on a very cold, rusty, frosty morning and using tan boot polish on my tail, and I thought if I tell them this I’m going to get worse treatment, so I didn’t tell them until the next day. Then I was taken into the mess and the

only thing they had to drink was gin which I hate but we celebrated a little bit with that and.

It made up because I believe, we provided communication

all the way and even on that very bad day when the radio worked for the first time, that saved quite a lot of, and probably the brigadier. But we had communications with them all the time, right through the worst period and I think it was probably because of that that I got the MID, and it may have had something to do with Bruce

Kingsbury, that little patrol, but so what. It’s supposed to be for meritorious services that thing and there we are.

Well it was pretty sad but it was something that you

were expecting all the time. And it’s a very sad thing when it’s one of your close friends or one of your own men, but you know that that is going to happen and it could be me and it’s just something that you learn to accept. It’s not nice, it’s not nice to bury them. It’s not nice to see them wounded. Sometimes that’s

worse but you just have to harden yourself to it. To have Bruce right alongside me, almost touching my shoulder that was very, very tough. And as I hit the deck I wasn’t sure whether I had been hit or whether he had but there was no doubt about it, he got it right through the heart.

And it was very tough on Alan because they had been friends for years and years and very close.

You did what you could. You took what we used to call, the dead dog tags, with their name, number and everything on it and you took that off and you

tried to make a mark where they were buried and send the things into battalion headquarters and they would notify the next of kin of course. And in this case it was a very bad thing. His wife took it very badly and strangely the officer who went down to speak to her

afterwards ended up marrying her, so that worked out all right. But yeah.

Yes, we did and we always had one. We had a Salvation Army man who was absolutely fantastic and

you’d see him where ever we stopped he’d have a cup of tea for us. He was amazing and he was given an award later. We also had, what did we have at that stage? We had one little fellow, better not mention his name.

If I think I can remember it but I won’t mention it. I think he was what is now Uniting Church but he was rather pathetic. He was always in trouble but he was also always complaining about we officers who drank too much and we used to go out and watch boxing matches and we were not acting like gentlemen.

And we were quite irreligious and he had everything against us, and we weren’t very fond of him. But I don’t think he was actually with us up at the Owen Stanleys. He was with us at the next campaign but the Salvation Army man he was always there. He did well and of course he could bury them and that. When we get to Borneo I will tell you another

story about padres.

We’re on the way to Gona.

At the time not greatly. We had a padre, a bachelor man. He was a youngish fellow and I spoke to

him quite a bit on the track and he almost got me interested again but I’d been through the mill with religion. I’d had it right from the day I was born virtually and I was a bit fed up with it and not quite believing what I’d been told and this man gave me a new idea

about it and a different mode, which I liked very much. But afterwards, oh there’s another story coming up about a padre. Yeah, it probably gave me a little more but not enough to get me to go to church every Sunday.

Well what we knew was that the Japs had withdrawn to Gona, to Buna and Salamaua and they were in a very weakened condition and our job was to go and wangle them out. We knew it was right on the coastal area and

we were going to be flown in so we wouldn’t have to march and it would be a very quick campaign because we just had to really mop up, this is what we were understanding. So they sent off a crowd of composite battalions which they called Cha Force. I mentioned before the man Challen. The name Cha Force from his name C-H-A and

Force and he was supposed to lead us in and they all went up and got into quite a bit of heavy fighting and lost quite a few casualties and very shortly afterwards we followed. We were flown into I think

a place called Dobodura and which was just a landing ground when we got there and then we had to march up to Gona. When we got there, there were a lot of reinforcements and I didn’t know it at the time but there a friend of mine in there and

they went off towards Buna or Salamaua or somewhere. And the next day he was dead and I’d missed the chance of saying hello to him and I didn’t even know he was there but anyway this was beside the point. We arrived at Gona just as it was getting dark and the CO ordered the company to go in and there’d been no

reconnaissance, nothing but the CO was the Cha, who was commander, and he seemed to say where they were and he got this company to go in virtually in the dark and attack this area. To get to it they had to wade through a stinking swamp and it is impossible to walk quietly through water and as soon as they got to the

other side they were met with everything. And it was just impossible, they couldn’t move, and they had to be withdrawn. I had a new sig with me as a sort of a volunteer. He was a reinforcement, just come up to us and he was eighteen years of age and

I asked one of my solid fellows to take the line through and he took this boy with him. And I said to him look after this boy and they went in there, and if it hadn’t been for him I doubt whether we would have gotten anyone out because they stood there. They couldn’t do much about, but they guided people onto the telephone line and they walked back through the swamp with this and we got them all out except for the ones who had been killed.

When he came back to me he said, “Don’t tell me again to look after him, he looked after us.” He was a good kid. Anyway the next morning we moved through this area and how we got through the next morning I don’t know but we were passing all these. And I remember just before we left Port Moresby one of my fellow officers were

having a shower and I was having a shower and I said, “We’re in for it again.” And he said, “Yeah.” And I said, “You don’t sound very happy about it?” And he said, “I’m not.” So I didn’t take it too far. Obviously he wasn’t too happy, he was the first one I saw dead and then I passed a couple of others. Anyway we got in and we went into

position and the next morning the attack started with us and A Company and a company commander named, forget, it will come to me, an excellent man, and he was sent into this attack and the CO was getting very

impatient and said, “Get those men going.” Treacy, ‘Mocca’ Treacy, so Mocca was trained to get the fellows into position and steady them up and then they moved off, straight up the way, through coconut palms. The Japs dug in under trees, under the huts and they just got slaughtered and

Mocca Treacy was killed. After that was over and the few survivors had come back and we got up the next day and the same thing happened, hurrying them up to get going, and that one went in and they came out and lost the officer. And the third one was sent in with the same result and I was the last officer

and I was standing alongside him and you could see he was about to say, “It’s your turn Bob.” And the liaison officer came down and joined us and he was there to hear this, and he was one of our officers who had been transferred out of there and he said, “Sir, it’s the brigadiers order that

no more officers will be sent in.” So he had a word with somebody else and he hit on a corporal, the one who had been with me when we had the attack with Bruce Kingsbury, and I told you his name and I’ve forgotten it now. And anyway, he said, “Yes, I will do it but I want to do a

reconnaissance first.” Something that the CO hadn’t allowed the others to do. And he said, “You’ve got to hurry up.” So he went off and he went down to the beach and he crawled along with just a little ledge and he crawled right up to where the Japs were, and saw where they were and they he came back and he said, “I want two inch mortar and I want some smoke and

I want Bren gun fire.” And then all the things he wanted. He said, “Look get the thing going,” and he said, “when I get all these.” So he got all the things he wanted and he got the mortar in position, a two inch mortar is only a little thing, and they started to move off around the beach and we

had orders to fire going over to support them, and there was trouble getting the voice messages over to the two inch mortar. So I went up and got behind a tree and relayed the message and while I was there somebody must have picked up my voice and I just saw part of the tree that I was hiding behind disappear and just got shot out. Anyway

the upshot of it was that that position was taken without one man being wounded. He had no casualties at all and it was a fantastic effort because he had time to go and look and see what to do. And he cleared the whole area, so he deserved a decoration, but unfortunately he was killed the next day.

Did we?

Well I don’t think that we had to prove ourselves. We’d already done that but certainly at Gona it was a blood bath and

we’d cleared the whole area, Gona, the Gona Missionary and the 39th Battalion came up and helped us there and yes, it was a horrible show. Gona was just horrible. We had a strange casualty,

a very strange thing. We’d captured probably about ten Japs and the corporal who got them had them all lined up and one of them sprang out and took a piece out of his chin, bit him and he became known as the first one to be bitten in action.

So anyway that was that and we were there for quite a while. I was, towards the end of the campaign I was brought down to battalion headquarters because everything was over as far as we were concerned. We had Christmas dinner there. It consisted of bully beef.

We had bully beef every day but somewhere the cooks had found some rice, which wasn’t hard with the Japs around, so we had some of their rice with our bully beef and that made our Christmas dinner. I had another funny little incident which you might like to hear. I was asleep in my one man tent and there was a storm and I was dreaming

that grenades were falling all around me and bursting, and suddenly I woke up with a hand falling on me, oh sorry, that’s where it fell, it was this arm. And I picked it up and it was a cold hand and I thought, “Golly, someone is dead.” And I was following it up and I came up to my own shoulder and what had happened was there was a storm, a violent storm and there were fireballs and all sorts of

things going around and of course I was in the middle of it all. I must have put my hand up like this for some reason and it went flop, so that was good. Whilst we were there the Americans had come into the war and they were a mighty mob, the Americans and we got, where I was in company headquarters I had a switchboard of course and we used to get what they called, sit reps, situation reports on other units. And one

came from the Americans and it read something like this, “A squad sapping northwards met a squad of Japanese sapping southwards,” sapping is digging a trench and crawling along it,

“mutual surprise, no casualties.” We thought that was lovely but the Americans were doing a very poor job and some of our officers were sent over to help them, and they came back and said, “Just impossible.” They just couldn’t get them to move.

Themselves, lack of discipline, lack of training and a great feeling that they were mighty soldiers but no substance and no, they were, they had to have every support in the world, and they had it usually but they didn’t in this battle, so they weren’t much help at all. Because MacArthur wanted them there because he wanted to see

that the Americans had won this thing. But we struck a group of them who were marginally lead and we said to them, “You’d better watch out as you go through, you look like Japs with those hats.” They had a helmet very similar to the Japanese and that worried them, it really did. Anyway here they are, they were our gallant allies.

Oh very different opinion of what we’d been told. We’d been told they were short, they were short sighted and their weapons were poor. They were very brave soldiers and they were not all short. There were quite a few six footers, lots of them six foot or more and they were extremely well trained. They’d

been fighting through jungles all the way down and very brave, very pugnacious, good fighters. I still hold that, I don’t hold any grudge against them but they were good. We were better.

It wasn’t easy, first you grabbed a bottle of beer. I’m not joking, we did and I remember we came back after Gona

and we came back on leave but before we went on leave we went to a little staging camp and it was in a lot of trees, and I walked in and some of the fellows who had come back a few days before me knew the rounds of the thing. And as I walked in I was handed a bottle of beer. And I might have had two or three, I don’t know and I was walking outside for obvious reasons and walked straight into a tree.

Anyway I recovered from that but yes, we just unwound. Then we came down on leave and I took my wife and we went to a luxurious place on St Kilda Road and we stayed there for about a week, and had people coming into visit us and I suppose that was our honeymoon.

And one woman who I knew very well, she was the matron of a hospital and my sister worked there and she came down with a great case of beer, and it was wonderful, and then we went up and did things. Met up with some of our mates and had a great time and then I think it was only a week or so and I had to go back again.

No, no, we went back to Queensland and the next stop was then Borneo.

Did I?

Not many, the one that I took out

myself he was badly shell shocked. I don’t think we saw much of him because I think he was ordered out afterwards. He was a very funny little fellow, very few.

Mainly, I’d say almost they were stunned. They sort of didn’t know where they were or what they were doing.

And you found it difficult to talk and obviously very shaken up and quivering and so on. But he wouldn’t have been able to walk out on his own. I missed out on a little story I was going to tell you, can I give it to you?

It goes back to the Owen Stanleys. I told you about this little red haired boy, well he was still with me and I had

perhaps another two with me and it was very dark and we were at the top of the hill just about to go down when way down the bottom somebody struck a match and somebody said, “Japs.” And this little red haired boy had a Tommy gun and he gave it a burst. And I said, “It may be our people.” But

it was a bit too late anyway and we went on down and sure enough one of them, the fellow who had struck the match was one of my own platoon boys, and he was very cross because the shots coming over him made him jump and he lost his tobacco and his matches fell and he was very cross, but that’s what it was. There was a sequel to that. I joined the CMF again, a year or two later, after the war, and

there was another officer there, a lieutenant, and I was talking to him and I found out that he’d been with the 39th Battalion and he’d been with some other battalion and was transferred over to them, and he’d been fighting in Kokoda and everything. And one day he was telling me about walking down the track and he said,

“We were moving down and we saw a light,” and he said, “one of my fellows put some shots over them.” And I said, “Well what a coincidence.” And I would strike up with him again. So he put it over our heads and over the heads of the others.

It was a dirty campaign, the whole place was just a mud heap and stinking. It had a little creek running into it and this great swamp on one side. And one thing about the creek we found that if you threw a grenade into it you’d get some fish, so we did that a few times but it was a smelly place and just through the mud and rotting coconuts and things like that.

You never felt right and the mosquitoes were very prevalent, just nothing very nice about it and also the Japs had a habit of getting up in the top of coconut trees and sniping and that wasn’t comfortable. And the planes came over and bombed us once. Here’s another story, no, two stories and they let down a bomb on a parachute and it dropped down and got

caught on a coconut tree and the bomb was just hovering over a weapon pit where the two Japs were, and I can imagine how they felt. There’s a fifty pound bomb just waiting to land on them and I don’t think it ever reached them. I think the war finished before it got there. And what was the other funny story I was going to tell you? Yes, about our Salvation

Army man that we had with us and one day he decided he’d got for a walk, which was really foolish. He went away and he was away for about a couple of hours and when he finally came in he was carrying a blanket rolled up under his arm, and I said, “Where did you get the blanket?” And he said, “Oh I found a hut up there and this blanket was there, so I just picked it up.” And one of my fellows who’d been out on

patrol before, he said, “Don’t move.” And he went over and he took the blanket from him and he said, “In there is a grenade.” He’d put it in there sometime before and if he had of opened the blanket he would have been blown up. He was very, very lucky.

Oh you had all sorts of things. Grenades were the things we used mostly. And I’ll tell you a story about that later when we get to Borneo but you had grenades which usually took seven seconds to burst or four seconds,

you could set it by the size of the fuse or you could have an instantaneous, so no delay at all. The moment they let the lever go it burst and that’s the one we used for booby traps, not very nice.

Very strange, very strange, people seemed different. I remember going in for a haircut and there was a chap ahead of me and

he was telling the barber how hard he was working and he was working overtime. And he said he was earning over sixty pound a week which in those days was a huge money. But he said, “I’m working long hours for that.” And I felt like telling him how much we get for working sixty hours a week. Good heavens we were working every hour but

you feel a bit bitter. You shouldn’t, but there was a reporter that used to do it, he got killed, very well known name, anyway he did a film on it and he mentioned how he went back and was in a tram in Melbourne and heard people talking about the problems of rations and they couldn’t

buy this or the price of that and he said, “I thought of these boys up there.” You did, you feel apart from your own people and it’s strange but they’re not, they don’t belong to you. It’s skipping ahead but I think it pertains to this when I went back to work I got a call one day from one of the directors to come up

to his office, and I went in and he was sitting at his desk and there was a Japanese and he introduced me to him. And so I went over and I shook hands with him and we had a few words and then I went back. And afterwards I rang Clive and I said, “Why did you do that?” And he said, “This man is out on a trade mission and he’s very worried and he feels

that Australians won’t want to talk to him, and they’ll call him all sorts of things, and he doesn’t know how to handle it.” He said, “I can introduce you to a man who has been fighting your people and you can see for yourself.” And it was a big test and I couldn’t do anything else, I had to greet him but it was a bit of a shock.

I mean had he told me it might have been better but to walk in and see him, but that was pretty close after, but even our people seemed to be a different race or something. We were so used to being what we were and to suddenly find civilized people going about their jobs was very strange.

I think people were worried and their main worry was when do you think it will end? I mean we had no idea when it was going to end and I think they were worried. And I think every time that they met us they were frightened it might be the last time and that sort of thing. They were worried but it was not so much those, it was the strangers,

the people we didn’t know that worried us. They just seemed to be completely unconcerned. There may not have been a war on. I think some of them were fed up with hearing it on radio and they wanted to forget it.

I talked to her about everything.

I’ll just go back to the early days in the Owen Stanleys after Isurava we got our first mail and I sent my first letter off to her about that time, and we had no envelopes and we had no stamps, and I had a piece of paper which I wrapped up and I put a twig through it to hold it together. She got it,

but the first letter I got from her started off, “I have made a very big mistake. I should not have married you.” And went on and on about this and I think I mentioned she had met another fellow and I think she felt she had married the wrong one. Perhaps she had but that sort of upset me and I was wondering if perhaps the best thing

I could was to get myself out of the way and get shot. And anyway I came through and oh well, that’s another story, isn’t it? But that didn’t help.

This is a story. I took the last remnants out. A few had

gone out like our adjutant and a couple of other officers, they had gone back. We got a call to go to Popondetta landing strips. There were seven Popondetta landing strips and they were Australian and we had to march to

Popondetta landing strip number one and it rained all day. And we moved there and it was probably about a ten mile march and we waited all day and a little Auster came in but it only had room for one, so the CO went off. And that left with me with about thirty people, thirty men and the next day we got a message to go to Popondetta number two and the next day to Popondetta three, four, five, six and seven and

back to one. And then it said, “We can’t get planes in, move to Dobodura.” And Dobodura was where we landed in the first place. So we’re marching along the road to Dobodura, myself and thirty others and there’s a jeep coming towards me and there were three Yanks in it and they pulled up and, “Who are you guys?” And I said,

“We are the 2/14th Battalion.” And, “My God, say give us your weakest man and we’ll take him back and we’ll do something for you.” So I picked on a fellow who was probably the strongest of them all and he got in the jeep and off he went, and we went marching on. And about half an hour later this great convoy of trucks came along, thirty trucks. And we had thirty men, twenty nine now, and every man was able to ride in the front seat.

They thought it was heaven and we were driven into this Dobodura, which when we first went there just a few weeks before had just been a flat landing ground. There were bulldozers and there were buildings and they had a theatre and a bakery and they had all their tents up on boards with netting around them, oh they lived hard.

They were amazing and there we were. I thought that was a fantastic story. I gave that story to Peter Brune. He was very touched by it and he thought it very sad. I think it’s humorous. That’s to answer your question, there were thirty of us.

Well I think they treated us with great respect, the top echelons, no. MacArthur tried to rubbish us all the time. He didn’t want us to go up into the bigger fights, he wanted that to be an American show and I have no

love for MacArthur nor for Blamey who followed his lead. I think, well I know – I was on a train one day and a Yank was sitting opposite me and he tried so hard to get my attention and I didn’t want to, and finally he threw me a salute and I had to speak to him and he said, “I know you are one of the real soldiers, you’ve got the Australia up there.” And that was the

AIF and, “You fellows have been through a lot and we are very proud to be with you.” And I said, “Thank you.” But anyway we’re coming towards the end.

Oh yeah, we lost a lot of men, mind you some had gone out through sickness and a lot had gone out for wounds and a lot had been killed.

Our casualties were very high right through but when we first went up to Isurava, we had five hundred men and when we came out we were down to a hundred and of that hundred we got reinforcements, probably about a hundred reinforcements, and I was going out with thirty and lets say another twenty had already gone, so

it was a lot of men being lost.

Yes, malaria. It became almost a crime to get malaria in the end because we had to use, take tablets, Atebrin tablets and nets, and long sleeves after dark and all that type of thing, and if we didn’t do that we would be in big trouble.

All the officers had to go and look at all their troops and make sure they were covered. And scrub typhus, that was a bad one. A little mite that is on this kunai grass and it grows about six foot high and as you go through these things get onto you and if they infect you, you are very, very sick. It is a typhus and it’s really bad.

Some got both of them, malaria and scrub typhus and some of the wounded would get scrub typhus too, so it was a very big problem, but very few people recovered from it. Another thing, ulcers, leg ulcers particularly. I got two or three of them but some of them were just covered. They would recover but it was very painful.

There was a lot of horrible diseases up in those parts.

Yes, I came away unscathed from there except I did get about three scrub typhus, not scrub typhus, three ulcers, leg ulcers but I got them cured all right.

That is a very harrowing

business, very harrowing. Although they know about it they want to know more intimate things, “How was he at the time? Was he happy?” Was he this, was he that? And of course you’d be able to tell them what a wonderful person he was and of course he was, even if he wasn’t and give them whatever comfort we could. Sometimes we’d be lucky to have some

of their possessions we could take, and that was a very harrowing business.

I had one case which was very difficult. This was an officer who came to me and he’d already been wounded badly in Greece and recovered and they sent him to us and he was a very fine bloke.

And this was in Borneo, coming up later, but we were up in the hill position and he came up to see me, I was the company commander and we sat down and we had a talk and he told me about all his dreams for the future and what he was going to do. And when he left me and went back to his platoon and the two fellows on sentry

duty and one of them had a machete and had just stuck it into a log and Frank picked it up and said, “I’m just going back to my tent, don’t shoot me.” And he went like that and instead of hitting the log he hit a rifle and it was a Bren gun, not a Bren gun, a Sten gun, and it just

set it off and he got a bullet through the brain. He didn’t die immediately. I got him down and I called up, we were on a river and I called up a boat and they came and got him and he was asking me, “What hit him? Was it a sniper?” And I said, “Yes, Frank, it was a sniper,” because I didn’t want him to think that he had killed himself. It was a case of telling his wife, his widow, I told

her that it was a sniper that got him.

Sure, I was lieutenant, I’d been commissioned after the Owen Stanleys and I was still the sig officer.

The 4th Company, still the same.

Well the usual orders. My job was to make sure that the whole battalion had communication right throughout the operation and that was it. So whatever the companies did, we had to be there to give them that

communication.

Oh yes, it was built up again after every campaign. In New Guinea we had reinforcements come up to us after the Owen Stanleys and before we went to Gona. And when we got back to Queensland we got our battalion up

to full strength again, which is about eight hundred to nine hundred people. This time we had a lot of Queenslanders, New South Welshmen, so by now we had members from every state, Tasmania and all but it was still a good battalion.

It was

strange. We went in by plane. Before we had gone in for the first time there had been a drop of an artillery regiment. They came out as paratroops. They all had special training, about two days I think, and they were told how to land and how to do it. And I think they had a drop but they dropped their guns and everything else, but

they landed and they got there the day before us. So we landed in the same spot where they were and our first job was to push up into the hills which I couldn’t quite understand why we did that. I still don’t understand why but we did, and there was a stream there, a very wild stream and the Japs had set up a very nice little ambush for us. They must have known we were

coming that way so we got into quite a fire fight for a while. That friend of mine that showed up he got splinters from a rock in his eye and that put him out of business. But anyway we got out of that and moved down into the valley itself. It was a river and I think it was the Ramu River and a very wide river that seems to have like a delta

for miles, with streams, sandbank, stream, sandbank, very strange. We were marching up along there and we got up to Dumpu, before we had any big problem and there were tanks somewhere around and they

wanted protection and we thought that was rather stupid, “Why do tanks need protection? We need protection from tanks.” Well anyway not my troops, but some of the troops were sent down to guard the tanks and it seems silly doesn’t it? But anyway the Japs attacked them, so there was a bit of a fight in the rear, but it didn’t last very long. It was only a small group that attacked. And I think I mentioned

before my batman woke me up and said, “Look at that funny little thing up there.” And it ended up as Teddy Bear, who I mentioned in the Owen Stanleys, he was in this fight for – we called it the Pimple and we could see him clearly. Although it was a long way up you could tell it was Teddy,

and I’ve never seen a man like him. He seemed to be just bayoneting and throwing over the shoulder and giving it to them, really too, and he wasn’t that huge, about my size, but the Japs must have been really small. But anyway they took this Pimple and the next feature was Shaggy Ridge. About two days later one of

our patrols brought in a chap. They’d noticed a couple of dead ones but this fellow was still alive, and they brought him in and he had jumped from the top of this place down the side of the hill, and trying to get away from them. He could still walk but he must have been very shaken up. The thing that really annoyed me about this, he was brought into headquarters

and there was a newsman there and he took a photograph of this chap, with two fellows with their rifles and bayonets standing alongside him, and it came out in the paper as, “This is the type of Japanese that our men are facing.” A little squirt of a fellow, and looked absolutely sick and I thought it was a horrible photograph, but anyway that was that. I was called

on at one stage to take out a patrol which was unusual for a sig patrol but we weren’t doing much and we found the chap’s footprints, they have a separate toe, and so we set an ambush for them and we waited and we waited and we waited. We wanted to get a prisoner and went back empty handed, couldn’t find

one, so we moved on from there and our CO wouldn’t let anyone have a drink before we went. He said we should have had our water bottles filled, and we marched all day through kunai grass and it was hot and terrible and we were dying of thirst. And when we got to our next

point the CO took a patrol out to find water and he saw some troops over in the distance and thought they were Australians and called and they were Japs. So he was wounded and he developed, what do you call it? Gangrene and they took him out, he lived. He was a very fine person but that was a bit foolish, but he did.

So we got into a few fights there and mostly we were shelled. There’s a funny little story, I had a beautiful hole which had been built for a mortar. It was like a small well, about three feet wide and about three feet deep and I said to my batman, “We’ll get some logs and put over that it will be a good hole for us.” It was. Every time they turned the shells onto us by the time I got to it,

it was full. I couldn’t get in. They used to get about four or five people jumping in that hole and it’s built for two and every time I was stuck outside with the shells bouncing around, it wasn’t comfortable. Anyway one day I wanted to go up and see the forward company and I took another fellow with me who was the intelligence officer. As we were walking along the track

I think the Japs must have seen us and they turned their guns on us and every time you’d hear them fire we’d take cover and then we’d get up and run a bit more, and eventually we got to the place safely and got into the weapon pits with the others. It was a different battalion and then I saw a fellow coming along the track

and recognised him as one of our storemen and I don’t know what he was doing coming up this way but everyone was yelling at him to get down, but he kept on walking and he was deaf by the way, stone deaf, but he could see these shells bursting. And we finally got him in, unhurt, and, “Why didn’t you get down?” “Oh,” he said, “I thought if I did that you’d think I was a coward.” Now you can’t account for everyone, can you?

That was all right, that was our biggest problem, being shelled. The Japs weren’t far away from us and they had a very good sight of us and they just laid it on, but that was Shaggy Ridge, where they were and then they sent in another battalion and that was cleared. So Dumpu was cleared. There was a thought that we would march

across to the other towns on the coast towards Finschhafen and those, Lae and so on, but I think they decided that we’d had enough and they took us out. We had a padre there who I told you very briefly about, who used to tick us off for our behaviour, our language, we drank too much, all this, but on the end of one of those days when we had pretty heaving walking

and that and I said, “How are you, padre?” And he told me, he told me in a very rude way, and his language became more and more lurid, and I couldn’t understand that this fellow who was so holy with us knew all these words to use, and he went down and honestly he didn’t have the respect of a lot of people. He left us not long

after and I’ve got a very nice story to tell you about the next padre that came. I think that’s just about the end of Dumpu. We came out of there. I think there was a bit of patrolling up into the hills, but there wasn’t much more fighting and we came out and that was fairly easy campaign. The next instalment is Borneo.

Are you ready?

Oh right. Borneo was a very different operation for us because it was a real landing and we were taken to Morotai, a little island that the Americans had captured and we went up in Liberty boats,

which were not very comfortable. The Yanks were running it and we were told that we should eat American rations or our own, whichever we wished but I tried one day the American rations and I said, “No thanks.” We could have three meals a day if we accepted duty or two meals a day if we didn’t accept the duty, and I went for the later

and I couldn’t stand their food. Anyway we got to Morotai. A very good friend of mine was sent up in a corvette and he used to get seasick as soon as he stepped on a boat. It didn’t need to move and he had a hell of a trip on the corvette but anyway we got to Morotai and by this time I was

second in command of a company, C Company.

Well whilst we were back in training, oh yes, I left out quite a bit about me, I was sent to a staff school and when I came back I was acting adjutant, and

then one day the man who was the official adjutant came back and he had been at a course or something. And I think perhaps I didn’t hold him in very great regard as an adjutant and I think perhaps he sensed that, and one day he said to me, “What is your preference to be?” And I answered him to be in a company. I said, “My

preference is to be in a company.” And he said, “I thought so.” So the next day I was in C Company as 2IC and my company commander was a man called Hugh Dalby, who in a way was a good friend, but who I had more fights with than anyone else. He was a cantankerous fellow. But anyway I was in C Company but then I seemed to get into a, this is all in training.

And the company commander would go off on leave or go on a course or something would happen so I would be sent over there to act as company commander. So I went to A Company, I went to B Company and I was in C Company already and I’d been to battalion headquarters, my company was headquarters and there was only D Company I hadn’t been too.

When I went to A Company it was reputed to be the worst company in the battalion and they had a fellow as company commander who had been in the Scottish Guards, or some guards in England and had pretty high tickets on himself. But his great forte was charging people for some offence and putting them on order, put them up so they got fined or sent to gaol

or something, depending on how serious. But this was going on just about every day and I went up, and a lot of the fellows in the company had been in the battalion as long as I had and they knew me and, if not personally they knew me by reputation. I didn’t have any trouble. I didn’t have to put anyone on a thing although there was once, one occasion when I

nearly did and I was in the head, the company office doing some work and the sergeant major was with me, and I could hear some singing and I said, “Is there a party going on Sergeant Major?” Or Fred was his name, and he said, “Yes, the fellows are very happy sir.” “Why?” “They’re happy to have

you.” I said, “Oh thanks.” But the singing got louder and louder and I said, “I think they’re drunk.” “Oh I think they’ll be all right sir.” And I said, “I think we’ll go and have a look.” And I went up to the tent and sure enough there was one fellow so drunk he was really making a, and I said, “Look, behave yourself or you’ll be on a charge.” And I went back to the tent and they quietened down and then all of a sudden one of them raced in. He was a corporal, a very good little fellow

too, and, “You’re making a big mistake sir.” And I said, “I beg your pardon?” He said, “You’re making a big mistake.” I said, “I haven’t made it yet, but if you keep on like that I’ll have to put you on a charge also.” So I said, “You go back to the tent and tell them to calm down quickly and in the morning we’re going out on a twenty mile march.” And I said, “In the morning every one of you will be on parade, on time, properly dressed and I’ll see how we get on from there.”

So the fellow who had first caused the trouble was a chap we used to know as Bluey, so we marched out to this place and I didn’t say a word to anyone. We got out there in time for lunch and I sat apart from the company and I had my lunch and I had a few with me, and I could feel the eyes on me waiting. So I let them just cool down for a while and then I called

this man over and I took him apart. I said, “You were very foolish Bluey, you had too much to drink and I think you wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t had too much to drink, and I’m not going to lay any charge against you but I don’t want any repeat of that type of behaviour.” I said, “You’re a good soldier, go back and act like one.” I had no further

trouble and that company was magnificent and it was that company where the sergeant major later said, “Sir, if you’d been with us, we would have taken that hill,” so they were good. Then when we went to Morotai on these little landing ships and the skipper of our thing said, “Any of you people play

poker?” “Yes,” about four of us played poker, so we played poker and we took all his money and the next night he said, “Are you coming to play again?” “Yes, sure.” He said, “I want to play my poker, stud poker.” And none of us knew that but we learnt and we took his money again, and he said on the third night, “Look we’re going tomorrow, what about giving me a chance to get my money back?” So we did but he didn’t get any of

it back. I had eighty pounds with me or eighty dollars or something, with me and some had a lot more and we all had money in our pocket to burn. And after we’d been to Morotai, when we got there we had to move through the American lines, through a wire fence and the rest of the island was Japanese. They just left them there to starve, so

we set up our camp. We used to have patrols out to make sure no Japs, and we were never once visited by Japs, so we were there for about a week or so I think, and then we set off to Balik [Balikpapan] and I’m sorry that incident with the captain was on the ship going to

Balikpapan. And we got to Balik and the planes had been there before us and the navy was out and there was a lot of shelling and banging and great oil things, towers, tanks, were on fire and as we were going into land of course, the Japs opened up with everything.

The problem the Japs had was that somebody had sent a little party over who dropped a note somewhere along the coast pretending to say to be the orders for our attack, which would say that we were coming in from the north and coming down to the Japs.

They put all their defences around the wrong way. They took notice of it and they sent all their chaps up north and we came in down south, so that was quite a help but we got off, and my company had to go up a hill and while I was up there an old school mate of mine

came past with his troop of so called commandos. An independent company of boys and he stopped and had a chat and I said, “Be careful going around here. I think they are not far away.” And he said, “Oh no, there’s no chaps here.” And he strode ahead of his troops, no scouts out or anything and the CO turned up to visit me and we’re standing talking and all of a sudden this

great burst of fire over our heads and a few minutes later these fellows came running back and I said, “Where’s Mr Redhead?” “He’s up there.” I said, “Is he all right?” “No, he’s been killed.” Apparently he hadn’t been killed at that stage but he was out in front and as soon as he was knocked, all his troops ran back and these were the brave independent company

boys and that was a shame. He was a man we shouldn’t have lost.

No, you have battle fatigue after the battle but after you have, the way they get you out of it is you go back to elementary

drill. You get back on the parade ground and you learn to slope arms and change arms and do all those things and by the time you’ve finished that you’re dying to get back into the other as it’s so boring, and you’re doing the same thing all the time. I don’t think, battle fatigue only happens straight after the battle.

Sepinggang? I went to, yes, that was the next airport up, yes. I was still with C Company at this stage and when we got to Sepinggang there were no chaps there and we pushed onto Manggar.

Now somewhere along the line D Company lost their 2IC, so I was taken from C Company and put over to Don Company, not quite sure why but I got to Manggar and the Japs had blown the bridge at the entrance to the airport, which made it a little bit awkward, and there was a tower standing off where an artillery man decided to climb

and that was handy. He was sort of calling the tune from up there and they were calling the tune trying to get him because it was a very narrow tower and they missed but they had blown the bridge. One poor fellow trying to get over, not my company, the following company and he slipped and he fell on a jagged piece of timber that went right through him and he said to the doc, “I’m going

to die Doc am I?” And he said, “I’m afraid so.” And all he could do was give him morphine to ease it but anyway that was that. We got out onto this airfield. It was quite a big airfield and at the far end of it was two big plane parking bays, built about ten feet high

with earth in a half circle and the planes would go in there and company headquarters decided to sit in one of these. Well just on from us there were two big naval guns, very big guns in a big concrete structure and our job really was

to capture that but they ordered a tank squadron and we were able to watch these tanks come in. They were brought up by the ship and they landed and a fellow got out and he put a couple of sticks down to guide them, called them on and the three tanks came up and sat up in line ready to come up the strip. And the Japs went bang, bang, bang,

and knocked the three of them out, which wasn’t very kind. So it was decided that we would put this attack in with our company and a new idea had sprung up in our CO’s mind, and I think he had got it from a school. You have enough support fire and you only need a small bunch of troops going in and we were very doubtful about it but we thought we would give it a try and I think we sent in eighteen men to capture

this thing with artillery and naval support. And Jerry, the company commander and I climbed up the top of this bunker and we were watching it with our glasses and I noticed a mortar land out about a hundred yards away, and I noticed a second one about fifty yards away.

But my brain was obviously not working because the third one came where we were and I got a great whack in the back and went rolling down the bottom and I was quite sure I had it, but before I got to the bottom Jerry came down and he had blood spurting out everywhere. They dropped two mortar bombs on us. I got the first and he got the second and his was much worse and he was carted out.

He’s still going and I said to the fellows, “What’s it like?” They put a great field dressing on it and bandaged it and, “Oh it’s not too bad.” I said, “Do I need the bandage?” “No.” And I said, “Take it off.” And I said, “I’m going up to the gun position.” And by this time the troops had got there and we had a couple of engineers

with big slabs of explosive and managed to get them in and blew the thing, and the concrete ceiling came down on the guns and that put them right out of action and our troops went in straight afterwards and they cleared the whole area. It was terrific, so the company clerk said he would come with me and all the way over they kept firing these mortars at us but we could see them coming and they’d land,

you’d get down, they’d burst and you’d go on again. It was quite funny, amusing, and we got up there and I took over the thing and got the platoons out, and I needed more and there was a platoon from another company and we settled down for a nice quiet night. We had nice weapon pits and everything and it poured with rain

and the Japs counterattacked that night and I called the artillery down, I had an artillery man with me. I called the artillery down and I had, I said, “You might as well give us the naval support too.” So we had a few of them and we had seven counterattacks that night and we managed to stop them all.

And the next day we tried to clean up, the pits were full of water and I didn’t have enough troops to put at the back of me and I was frightened that something was going to happen there. And the next night, we had eight counterattacks the next night and they even brought a flamethrower along. And the silly fellows had this thing trying to get it alight in our sight. They probably didn’t know that

but we had full sight. When we did get it alight the chap on the Bren gun put a few shots in and blew it up, so they lost it. One attack a fellow came with his sword and he got a bayonet instead of that and the fellow kept the sword and took it home with him and another one came with a spear and tried. And anyway we managed to

repel them and I only lost one man and that was really sad because he was the artillery signaller and he went out to check the line and didn’t tell anyone and creeping back he got shot. It was very, very sad. You hate killing your own man. But anyway we managed it but it was a very, very hectic couple of nights and

I think, from what I hear I was put in for a decoration and a couple of my mates had bets with me that I would get it and I bet I wouldn’t and I was right, but that’s when we got the second MID, but I managed to get an MC [Military Cross] for the artillery man. He did a great job because when I wanted protection, more fire, they were only allowed to fire at a certain angle, for safety reasons,

and the troops were calling, “Bring it closer, bring it closer!” And I said to him, “Bring it closer.” And he said, “I’m not allowed.” And I said, “Bring it closer,” and he did. He was so worried but it saved the day for us and eventually later we captured a Japanese note, which was translated which said this hill

obviously was strongly held, so they were withdrawing to another position. I got word from the CO to pull back and B Company was going to take over and go further forward to the next objective and I was to have three days rest. I thanked him very

much for that and he sent a vehicle up to bring me home, so I popped a couple of the tired boys in the back and I marched home with the troops. And I had a photo that I wanted to bring of myself and my sergeant major sitting on a log completely done, and I hadn’t had a shave for about a week and I looked an absolute wreck and I wanted to bring

it but I couldn’t find it. I don’t look much better now, I know that. And anyway the next morning my batman, I had the phone there and he used to come in and he’d look after the phone if it rang and one morning I got a phone call and it’s the company commander who’s gone up top, and he’s going to put in an attack and complaining that it had rained all night and all their weapons were wet and the fellows were wet

and the ammunition was wet, and he couldn’t possibly see how he could put this attack on. I put the phone down very gently and I waited and it rang and I picked it up and it was the CO, “Mel’s got trouble up there, he’s been rained on all night, he’s weapons are wet and everything is wet and he doesn’t think that he can put in the attack,

would you be willing to do it?” I said, “Well we’ve been under rain all night and we are wet, our weapons are wet and the ammunition is wet, but we’ll give it a go.” So there went my three days of rest and we went up the hill and when we went through this company’s position some of the fellows were so ashamed they came and joined us and they came along. When we got up there and we got to the

base of the hill we were going to attack and it was very heavy timber and I called for artillery support and they gave me navy support as well and then we put in the attack. When we got up to the top of the hill we couldn’t move. The artillery had bought all the trees down and it was just a great jungle of stuff. It took us to the next

day to find a way to get around it and when we did we came across the Japanese position very well dug in and they’d left in a hurry because their ammunition was still in front of their thing and other things. And the thing that really amused me, which obviously where the commander’s hut had been, or his tent, there was a pair of ladies scanties hanging up there and I thought that was rather odd.

Anyway I was convinced that we must have stopped something because people were in a hurry, and it wasn’t until about a year ago that a fellow in that company came and visited me and he had been a forward scout in the company and he said he found a way around through this trees and he saw hundreds of Japs moving up the track.

And I said, “For goodness sake, why didn’t you tell me?” He said, “I don’t know, I thought you’d probably be putting in another attack and they were going.” I could have killed the man. Here I was thinking we’d wasted all this ammunition and everything for no reason but I wanted to tell the CO, Bill Roden, but unfortunately he had died just before I got that message so I could never ease his mind about it. But what I thought was just a wasted effort

was quite a victory. So we went back and we went further up the line. I was challenged by a little squad of monkeys. Dad was taking his whole family across the track and we had the cheek to come up and he stood on the side of the track in his tree and he really abused me, it was quite funny. All the family got off and he was telling me terrible

things about myself and when his family were out of the way he went too. But that was about it. After that we went back to camp. We had quite a lot of prisoners by this time and they were in a compound but each company was allowed to have two to come down as a work party. Well I knew in my

company I knew I had a couple of very blunt axes and I had a lot of wood to chop so I thought it was only fair that the chaps did a bit of that for me, and I had them out there chopping wood and the brigadier drove past, no, it wasn’t the brigadier, it was the divisional commander, the major general. He drove past and saw them and about ten minutes later the phone rings, “You’re not allowed to have the Japanese

doing tasks like that, and they can fill in the ditch behind you but they mustn’t chop wood.” I was very annoyed. Also there we had a fellow, we used to call him ‘Captain’, I would say not a hundred per cent [unintelligent]. He was always a damn nuisance but a good, loyal fellow and when we had been on that gun position that we took he was out a bit,

apart, and he used to fire his rifle once every five minutes through the mud and it used to drive me mad. I called him in, “What are you doing?” “Oh just harassing fire.” There was no-one in front and he got back to camp and I was doing camp inspection and I got to his tent and there was a horrible smell

and, “What’s that?” Somebody said, “That’s Captain’s sly grog.” And I called him up and it was terrible. It was made up of puddings, Christmas puddings that he had and they had gone in and it was all a fermenting mess and I ordered him to take it out and tip it out in front of me, which

hurt him, and then I said, “When you’ve finished that now come over and see me in the orderly room.” And he came over and I took him to task and I said, “Whilst I’m your company commander you will not do that again.” “Righto sir.” So very soon afterwards orders came out that all six year men would remain behind and the rest were going over to the –

To finish that story I got a report back from battalion there in the Celebes to say that Captain had misbehaved again, had got very drunk and was up on a charge and at our first reunion he was there and I went over to him and I said to him, “Captain, you gave me a promise

that you would not behave like that again.” And he said, “Sir, I promised while you were there I wouldn’t and I didn’t.” But once I wasn’t there he could do it again. So that was just an interesting little tale. So to finish that off we were told that we were going back to Australia but in fact we waited and we waited and we waited for a ship to come and some of the troops on the Celebes got home before

us anyway, but eventually one came and on the first night the OC troops onboard the ship, a major, an English major called all the officers up and he said, “I’ve never had any Australians on my ships before, but I’ve heard plenty about them and I’m warning you gentlemen that this ship is well run and will not have any misbehaviour.”

And he laid down all the things he wouldn’t have. And, “There will be an inspection every morning.” And it was important that all the troops would be up and although we normally have a beer ration, he’s cancelling that because of our reputation. So we set off and sure enough some of the fellows had plenty of grog without the beer ration and I went down to their

deck in the morning and trying to get them out of bed before, and some of them were so bad I stuck them in a corner and mattresses around them so they wouldn’t be seen, and all the sober ones were left standing, very regimentally beside their beds. And in he came for his inspection and looked around and couldn’t find any fault and, “Where are the others?” “Oh they were up having showers.” And right, and he went off and he went to all the others I suppose around

the place and about lunchtime he stood up and he said, “I apologise for what I said.” He said, “I heard terrible tales about Australians but I’d like to compliment you people and the beer ration is on from tonight.” Well we had a pretty trip back through the Bight and there was a lot of drinking going on but we didn’t have any more trouble with

him that night, so that was good. The poor fellows that we had stuck behind the mattresses were fairly sick for a day or so. Anyway we were back home and June has often asked me or she has asked me or she has commented at times, “What happened when we came home? Did we get any counselling?” Never, ever

but I had to go to Royal Park where the headquarters was for discharge and they do a very rough examination, a quick look at you, “Oh you’re okay.” But when it came to me the, you had an x-ray and a few things and they said, “Oh you’re sick.” And I went, “Oh.” “You’ve got a shadow on your lungs.” And I thought, “This is wonderful!”

And I had to go to Heidelberg Hospital and I was told to get on a truck down the way and I went down and saw truck number three, the fellows on it, three officers and I got up and they said, “Oh how big is your spot?” And I was very depressed and I thought I had TB and I started to realise that these were all in the same boat. We had a glorious five weeks

and as the truck moved off, one of them standing up fell but they felt it was a great joke. We got there and they were all doctors and they could drink well and we had a glorious day. The last day, this is horrible, the last day we had a final farewell and the

next morning had to go down and swallow the snake and that was hard but anyway we were all cleared and went home. Unfortunately my wife was badly depressed and had her in hospital and they started shock treatment on her and that became a regular thing. We had

two children, after that but eventually she had an aneurism and she ended up in a mental hospital, just a vegetable. I had to come over here so I came over with the children and in course of time I was introduced to Joan, through a mutual friend and

so we started again.

I was in Borneo and it was a frightening night because everyone went mad with their rifles and there was more shooting going on than we’d had for a long time but nobody got hurt but it was riotous. Yes, I

think everyone was so pleased that we were going home. One other thing happened, the Japs hadn’t quite surrendered when that news came through and we were sending out patrols just to make sure and one of our company commanders sent out three or four of his longest serving

soldiers, which I thought was a bit wrong and I told him so. They’d been through it all, every campaign and he was sending them out when home was just about to be a reality. They all got back thank God, but it wouldn’t have been very nice if one had gone. Would have been bad if anyone had gone but for those that had been right through I thought that was a very foolish thing to do.

Radio, we had a system that broadcast from head office and it used to blare out every morning with the stupid music and then the news and that’s when we heard and that’s when the fun started.

Oh, I think we went down to the mess and had a few drinks.

After that, of course, the others went over to the Celebes and we were left on our own. Would have been about twenty of us I suppose and we used to invent games and things or go swimming and we used to just stretch out on the beach and get an all over suntan. And then we found little planes would fly over us

and then we had a complaint that the, I think it was the nurses that were near by, were been taken for joy flights and were complaining about the naked bodies on the beach, so we had to be clothed. I think some of the nurses were a bit disappointed too.

Oh very difficult. It was difficult first because my wife was depressed and in hospital and I was at a loose end. I didn’t want to go back to work until I had her fixed and I think I was just lost for the time and it took,

or even when I did go back it took a long while. I used to find reasons to go and have a few drinks and sometimes a few more and I was smoking heavily. Yeah, I suppose I could have done a lot of things, there were a lot of things I could have done, but there were a lot of things I didn’t do and I’m not very proud of those days.

Yeah.

Yes, they were always, still get them occasionally, nightmares where you’re in a situation and you can’t get out and you have no hope and usually there is a high cliff somewhere. Too high, you can’t get over it easily and

you’ve got no protection and the only thing that saves you is you wake up, and I get those. Not so often now but I still dream a lot and they are always stupid dreams, there’s no solution to them. This is funny, you were asking me about religion before because now

I’m a regular attendant at the church and we help and we do intercessions and we do all those little things. And last night I had one of the funniest dreams that I have ever had. I revised the Bible and the story of Jesus and I had all this set out and I turned up references in the Bible

and I had written a complete new sector and it all made great sense to me till I woke up. And I’ve forgotten what the system was. I was telling Joan at the time and it went on and on and on, or it seemed to. They say dreams only take seconds but they seem like hours and I was quite proud of myself that I had developed this service that made the whole thing logical but I can’t remember what it was.

Yes, I still do that. I toss and turn in bed and years ago Joan was telling my daughter that she had never had a comfortable night in bed since she was married because I used to jump around so much. I felt very sorry for her but. I was going to say on this counselling business we were told, “The war was over, forget about it.

Just get back and be yourself.” It’s not good. You can’t. You’ve been in such a strange life for so long and no-one can just snap their fingers and say that’s over.

No, I had the chance to. I thought I was going a couple of years ago but they could only take so many and they drew the names out and mine didn’t come

out, so I missed out. I’m sorry about it because they put the monument down where they thought Kingsbury died, and they sent me photos of it and it’s not the right place. I would love to go up there and find the place. They had great trouble, the woman who was a professor and she was in the party and she wrote

and asked me for details of where the rock is and I gave it to her. And she wrote back and sent me photographs and said they found it by cutting through the jungle that has grown up, and they came to the rock and they found parts of a Lewis gun, not a Lewis gun, a Bren gun ammunition. I said, “It sounds like it and from the photographs it could have been.”

And then later on I got more photographs and I put them on and it’s not the same place, but it will have to stay.

Don’t worry, they are human beings and they were doing their job as we were doing ours and I didn’t like their methods but I think in a

way they were trying to prove to Asians that they were better to the white men, that they were superior so they treated us as inferior, and I think that was mainly their reason for so much cruelty and so on. But they were certainly very good soldiers, no doubt about that. Well trained, well disciplined,

certainly not afraid to die and they did.

All the funny things that happened. You don’t talk about the others, only the funny things that happened. And you can always find stories but there might be some passing reference to somebody who

died but you don’t go into details on that. There’s not many left now. What is it, about sixty years?

No, I’m now a Republican and Australia is important to

me, not England.

Oh it developed my leadership, which if you remember I told you about my teacher saying that, and I couldn’t believe it but of course I found it was in me and it bought that out. I’m still

a leader and I’m in Kiwanis. I’ve been the Australian governor of Kiwanis and I’ve been the distinguished governor and I’ve been the distinguished left hand governor and I’ve been the distinguished president twice, so that’s only because I do have leadership and it was built into me, so I’ve learnt how to use it. I think that’s about it.

I’m not quite sure. I think it could have been the battle on the hill and where the guns were and when

we were at home the congratulations we got from so many. It could have been after the Owen Stanley fight when my CO called me in and complimented me on the way the sigs worked. No, I think really the proudest moment I ever felt was when we were coming out of the Owen

Stanleys and these fellows were cheering us. That still gets me. It was spontaneous and we just felt like heroes and I think that was my proudest moment.

What did I?

Comradeship. It’s a different sort of,

you have friends of sorts but in the army they are more than just friends. They’re you’re support. They are facing dangers the same as you are and there is, what did we call it? An affiliation that you don’t get anywhere else. I think perhaps you do. I think nurses used to feel that. I don’t know whether they do now but they were doing

the same sort of work all the time together and it’s team work and in the army it’s even closer than that because you’re living with these fellows. They are all your friends. Even if you don’t like them they are still your friends and without them you are not going to live. It’s that, it’s the comradeship.

I hope that people think that I did something worthwhile. I don’t want to be boosted up a hero or anything like that. Just one of the fellows doing a job that we had to do. I’d like them to think I did it well. I hope they do.

I was invited to.

I’m not sure whether I got a letter or a telephone call and they told me this was going on, and would I be willing to tell my experiences and I thought, “Why not?” And it was the same when they said, “Would you like to go up to Kokoda?” “Yes, certainly I would. I would like too.” And this I thought was a great thing, a great idea.

Now that I’ve met the people operating it I’m more impressed with it, so thank you.

Yes, don’t have another war. Although I loved the life and all that I would hate to see another war. I was very

much against our troops being sent over to Iraq. That wasn’t our war.

I marched.

Yes, so did June. We were one of thousands that marched around and when we got to North Terrace there was a speaker down at Parliament House, which was only a hundred yards away, we couldn’t get there. It was packed and we walked back along King William

Street and there was still people trying to get off the starting point. It was amazing in Adelaide. There were thousands of people came out to march.

I think, oh from World War II? I’d like to think so but I don’t believe it. I don’t think they’ve learnt a thing. These wars aren’t necessary. If England and Germany and France had sat down

to really talk it over otherwise you have and if Bush and the other countries, especially England and Australia had sat down with Saddam they could have found another way. But no, they wanted to fight and until people learn to live with each other and love peace more than war, I would hate to think that we would always have some sort of trouble going on.