Australians at War Film Archive

Well my pre-war experience was that I was born in 1922. I was born on a sugar cane farm in north Queensland and I started school at a was in the air just outside which was just about 45 miles south of Townsville. Started school when I was 4 years old at there

The Depression years. My father lost the farms through no fault of his own but then we moved down to Brisbane and to Sandgate actually just outside Brisbane and I went to school there until I was about 8. We then went to Western Australia and we were dairy farming there and

no machine milking in those days of course. It was all hand milking. We I used to have to milk 10 cows every morning before I went to school and 8 in the afternoon when I came home and we were there for 3 years but the Depression was getting worse and worse and worse prices of butter fat had dropped to low and then we dad decided that we were going to continue to lose money there so we came back to Sydney and

because of the my father was out of work of course at that time. He went back up to North Queensland to Innisfail and set about trying to get himself re-established. My mother who had trained as a nurse. We had 5 kids. I was the third I was the middle one actually I was

I had a we had a… my mother had a very wealthy sister who lived in Brisbane and I went to live with them for 3 years. They had a spastic son and they wanted to adopt me and I was given the opport.. the chance to say well was I happy to have that happen or not. I said no way in the world I'm not time for Mick Lardelli along and Mick Lardelli fullstop and I'll just battle on as best we can

Anyhow after 3 years we came down to Sydney and stopped with another aunt and I got a job. Very lucky to get a job. Started work at Bradley Brothers in the spare parts department at 15 shillings a week which wasn't able to support myself of course but we were very fortunate in that my mother was a her maiden name was Peak and she was related to the Peak Frean biscuit

people in England and old Sir James Peak had set up a trust fund that no Peak or a descendant of a Peak could ever be destitute and so they supported mother well. I stopped there at Bradley Brothers and eventually I went to board at Glebe Point and the war broke out of course and I thought well this will do me I'll go and join up. So a friend of mine had said well he was going to join too he was 20 but

I was only 17 and he had been in the cadets as an anti-aircraft battery and I'd been in the senior cadets as a infantry person in the 18th Battalion. So to make sure we got into the artillery we both went to joined up at Willoughby which is the headquarters of the 7th Field Brigade and that it was from there that we were it must have been about October I think 'cause the war started in September '39 we joined up in October

but our records would show that we actually enlisted on the 3rd November but actually on the 3rd November we were called up and went into Ingleburn camp which was very interesting. Mainly because the huts there were not completely built they had no doors or windows and I remember

the first thing they said to us well when we was selected for which battery the battery commander said alright I'll have you, you, you and you and eventually of course the regiment was formed on that day 3rd November 1939 and my first thoughts were when they handed me a beacherart [?] bag and said go up with the Q store and fill it with straw that’s your palliasse that’s what your gonna sleep on. Had a few blankets no uniforms. We had what they called giggle suits or

goon skins or giggle suits just khaki work clothes. No hats no rifles but we were lucky as cadets because we had learnt to use .303s and even learnt to use machine guns but of course the artillery was a different thing altogether. So that was my first introduction into army life then when were properly told ‘well now you’re in the army fellas you’re in the army 7 days a week 24 hours a day

leave is a privilege not you wouldn't try to do it ‘it’s a privilege we'll let you think you can go leave that’s fine’ and we set about a very rigorous training more or less physical training. Now that was the first introduction to army life and we eventually got equipped with our guns they were old World War I guns they were 25-pounders

and 4.5-inch howitzers and we kept those for quite some time. They were old wooden wheel ones you know in fact a lot of our old cars used to have what they used to call artillery wheels or spokes they came from the guns actually because they were artillery wheels and we used to go out to the other side of Liverpool

to the artillery range and we'd learnt to use these guns. Got quite to like them as a matter of fact. We didn't really get our 25-pounders until much later in the war and on the 9th January 1940 I was sent down with a group of fellows to the advanced party to get on board the ship

We sailed on the 10th January 1940 and I think the ships in that particular convey now we were on the Orford there was the Orford the Orion the Orcades the Otranto Strathallan Strathnaver Strathaird and a couple of other ships. Our escort we had the battle ship for enemies and the HMAS Australia

and the French cruiser called the Suffron and a number of destroyers and we set of course we stopped at Fremantle and we picked up the convey of battalion of New Zealand troops and their convey and we set off we arrived at Colombo had a bill of leave there and

then we went up through the Suez Canal and we disembarked at a placed called El Kantara on the 12th February which happened to be my birthday so I was supposed to be 21 on that day. I was actually only 18 and then we had a feed of what we swore blind were camel sausages and we went up into Palestine and we went up to a camp called Qastina and we stopped at Qastina for quite some time

We did all our training on those 18-pdrs and 4.5-inch howitzers and we used to go out through Beersheba to a desert area called Bir Asluj and very barren desert area were we used to practice our our gunnery

We learnt of course that gunnery was a practical application of the science of ballistics and ballistics was a science that dealt with … of projectiles we trained and trained and trained and I was appointed the gun layer at that time and to lay a (UNCLEAR) 4.5-inch howitzers

We weren't on the 18th we were on the 4.5-inch howitzer which was very similar to the 25-pounders in many respects but you laid a gun in a particular sequence all the time you learnt it parrot fashion and so the theory was that when you were in action you had to do it and had to do it automatically without even having to think to much about it and even now after 60 odd years I can still remember the actual sequence of gun laying it was alignment of dial site

angle on the site chronometer range on the range comb run the bubble of the site chronometer forward and suppress by at least two complete turns of the elevating handwheel compressing it nearly to the centre of its run the roughly put line by mean of the trail cross level act for lines by the mean of the traversing handwheel place for your hand on the fire and have your support ready and that is the sequence of laying and I can remember it as if it was yesterday.

Yeah, that was the we stuck with that gun crew pretty much oh for the whole of the apart from casualties of the whole war until we got the 25-pounders but you still had six people in the gun crew a No. 1 was the sergeant and the No. 2 were bombardiers and the No. 3 was the gun layer and 4, 5 and 6 were ammunition Nos we tried

to select those who were good diggers because at the time you went to a new position you had to dig a new gun pit. Not like digging a slit trench because a slit trench was a little thing you could get in to get the gun pits a huge hole you had to dig so we always tried to make sure we had on our gun crew a couple of ex-farmers or a plumber. The plumbers used to have to dig everything by hand in those days we had a real good digger fellow named Frank McCrown

Because the army tried to teach you how to dig a hole you know and I can remember they said that you use the pick to strike you break you rake that’s the thing you used for diggin’ but we weren't to keen on that. The plumbers and the miners and that say oh no that’s a lot of rot you’ve got to dig it a certain way had to get it out in big lumps so we were very lucky we had a real good crew

Well what happened then we were we when Italy came into the war and we were then sent up to Haifa to train on anti-aircraft guns and we were at Haifa when they bombed the Italian planes bombed the oil refinery and Haifa itself I understand that we were the first Australian troops to actually come under enemy fire in the second world war

and I don't just quite how long we were there for but eventually we were moved from there to Port Said and our anti-aircraft guns on the defence of the Mediterranean side of the Suez Canal we spent some time there and then we moved down to a camp at Helwan which is just outside Cairo and it was there that we got equipped with our 25-pounders and we trained on those they were beautiful guns

they were well made and instead of having 18 pounds of war fire 25-pounder was a gun howitzer in that it could do both functions like the definition of a gun was a high mass velocity and a low trajectory but that was fine except you wanted to hit somethin' behind a hill well as the howitzer did that it had a very high trajectory and a low mass velocity but the 25-pounder could do both

those 'cause it had variable charges you could take charges out of the cartridge and you could use those so we became very attached to our 25-pounders we moved from there to a camp called Ikingi Maryut which was just outside Alexandria and then that was a jumping-off the spot to go up into Libya for the Libyan campaign so I think the first night we moved up to a place called Mersa Matruh

and then we took up a position around Bardia and I think that was one of the most of an old-fashion type of war if you know what I mean, infantry and artillery barrages and following of that you know the infantry following behind a screen of shells an that time it was the whole of the 6th Division took part in that

and there had been some changes take place to the 6th Division because originally it consisted of 3 brigades and each brigade had 4 battalions now the 16th Brigade originally had [2/]1st [2/]2nd [2/]3rd [2/]4th Battalion and then the 17th [2/]5th [2/]6th [2/]7th and [2/]8th and then they sent actually the 18th Brigade to England which messed

up the composition of the division a bit and it was decided then that four battalions was a bit unwieldy handle they would make a brigade three battalions and each brigade had a was supported by an artillery regiment and so it was the [2/]1st [2/]2nd [2/]3rd Field Regiment for part of the 6th Division well they reduced those to our sadness 16th Brigade then became the [2/]1st [2/]2nd and [2/]3rd Battalion

and the 2/1st Field Regiment which was our regiment and the 17th Brigade became [2/]5th [2/]6th and [2/]7th Battalions and they reconstituted other brigade for the division which was called the 19th Brigade was the [2/]4th [2/]8th and [2/]11th Battalions they had taken the 4th out of the 16th and the [2/]3rd Field Regiment so that really constituted the 16th the second division [[need to hear words to follow meaning here]]

and that was the division that we went into action with but why I say it was rather I think a fascinating sight really on the attack on Bardia we'd done all our ranging and got a was shot in a lot of targets we knew where they were when the barrages had been prepared and each gun was issued with the barrage when it would move and what time when it would swing around

and so forth and the zero hour for the attack on Bardia was 4 o'clock on this particular morning I just don't recall the actual date but at 4 o'clock of course we were all up very early we had to prepare each gun we had to prepare 210 rounds of shells get 'em ready and then the countdown came and they said right you’ve got half an hour to go and then you’ve got 10 minutes and then you count down to 10 5 4

3 1 fire and a whole ring of fire just leapt out of the guns you know 140-odd guns lined around Bardia and behind us of course where the medium guns but just that the sound and the flashes of the guns was fascinating you know

Just an amazing scene yeah. So anyhow that didn't last that long that battle

we took about 26,000 prisoners out of Bardia I think the Italians were a bit pleased to see us in fact it's rather funny because I had an office in Church Street Ryde later on and when I had my own business and an Italian fellow just down the a few paces shops down from where my office was an Italian boot maker and we were talking about things one day and he said

oh you were in Bardia I said yeah and he said oh you took me prisoner and I said what did you think about that and he said terrific and every time I'd walk past he'd drop and salute me he was that happy to get out of it so that was one of the funny little things that happened just after the war

Now what happened after Bardia we after the barrage was over and the attack was obviously successful

there were certain areas which resistance was and one particular area was very took a fair bit of and it was over to the left that we were at that stage we were No. 6 gun and I we put a just kept firing as fast as we could into this I think we put about 80 rounds into this stronghold but during the course of that all the other guns were

firing over the top us and of course the gun layer sat on top of the gun and I felt my ear go it hurt like crazy it didn't once it broke it busted the eardrum once it got broken busted of course it didn't hurt anymore but later on before we'd gone after that and some week or so after they'd moved up a bit towards Turner that became infected and I was taken to hospital I went down to

I was taken to a little ship from Ceylon down into Alexandria I went into a naval hospital we were going to be transshipped to a army hospital and I remember there was a nurse English nurse I don't think she liked Australians very much and she was prodding in me ear and oh Jeeze it hurt I said Christ almighty that hurt she said how dare you blaspheme in front of

me I didn't do myself much good because I said oh what are you a nurse or bloody vet I think they were pleased to get rid of me and we were transferred back to Palestine to the 23rd Scottish General [Hospital] but it never healed but that didn't matter much because they cleared up the infection and I was able to go back and rejoin the regiment back in Libya.

gunfire. Now days, yeah,

the shock wave from the shells well you see know days they wear muffs and ear plugs we had nothing you know just copped it and a lot of people that’s why we're so deaf 'cause we just I've since had another drum grafted in but it doesn't help ya hearing any

Well no because my right ear was perf… I could

hear very I could still hear very well it's only as I got older that of course the hearing in my right ear has now deteriorated and so I need to have a hearing aid I could either turn the television up but none of the family could stand it or I can put a hearing aid in but we can you know we can handle that alright so we came back from

out of the desert out of Libya and we went to a camp called which was not far from the old original Ikingi Maryut which I went to first to a camp called Amiriya just outside Alexandria we then we're only there for about a fortnight when we were sent to Greece we landed at Piraeus at Greece and I don't recall the date I do recall that the day we landed we

got off the ship and we went out just out from Athens Piraeus is the near the port of Athens up into a olive grove and that day the Germans bombed hell out of Piraeus and just about flattened them because they blew up an ammunitions ship in the port but anyhow we had our guns off the ships by that time and so

we got on a train and we were going up to the front which was up near the border of Yugoslavia now unfortunately our guns were on another train so we chooffed off and we got up to a place called Larissa now when we got to Larissa of course we were strafed heavily by Messerschmitt and bombed and so we had to high tail it back out of there well we eventually pick up our guns

and this is where I become a bit confused as to the time I think Brallos Ama whether it was Domokos or Brallos or any.. we sort of went rear guard action all the way back what we'd do we'd take up a position of a night we'd dig in and then that’s the wed give the infantry covering fire and then the infantry would pull back through the gun position

and then when they got back and reestablished wed pick up our guns and go back behind like I'd called it a leapfrog action we just keep leapfrogging all the way back down through Greece defending in the main passes but continually being bombed by Stukas mainly surprisingly enough we didn't have many casualties no-one was killed outright

in those bombings but mainly broken bones from flying rock you know and from the bombing but the Germans the Stukas particularly I can remember one particular day we got caught we just couldn't move in the night time because we had to stop and give fire cover and we had to have the whole day well I can remember just on 4 hours we had never less than 27

Stukas dive-bombing us but because of the mountain the terrain they used to carry a thousand-pound bomb in the centre and two 250-pdrs on each wing but they also had screamers [sirens] on the wing that sounded like bombs falling and they sometimes they'd just come down put the screamers on and then pull out again and then come back so you never knew when they were going to get but you did get that way you could

tell the screamers from the bombs and you became very competent at knowing where they were gonna land because you know whether to panic or not to panic but we withstood all those but I think the most damage we had done we had to stop one particular night and to get out we pulled out fairly late in the morning and the

Dorniers bombers were obviously looking for us and they caught us on the road we pulled into a forest and we thought we'd dodge them but nevertheless they must have said well the only place you could be so nevertheless they pattern bombed that and our guns were always pulled by Marmon Harringtons at that stage we'd been given a week’s rations and said well this's all you’re going to get you know

you’ve got to we're gonna have to try get out of this place if we can we got a bomb through the back of the gun tractor and another one through the motor they were that close you know but a funny thing about it my particular mate and I we were pretty good runners we were fairly athletic and we could run pretty well and so we said Geez we’ve got to get out of here because this gun factory's gonna to blow up at any minute shells don't blow up funnily enough it’s the

cart.. chargers the cartridges that make all the noise very hard to send a shell off actually and I can tell you why that is but anyhow we had this plumber who was a good digger he was an older bloke and he wasn't all that fast but we said well let’s get out of here and we'll get up on the side of that hill where we'll be safe until the fires go out and maybe get us another truck well we took off an’ away we went and next minute we knew

Frank, Frank past us carrying a shovel and a pick anyhow we thought he couldn't run but he's faster than we are today anyhow we got another tractor and eventually we were able to get down across the Corinth canal we were supposed to go out from a place called Argos Bay we were told but anyhow when we got to Argos Bay all the ships had been sunk and were just sitting on the bottom apparently it wasn't a very deep

harbor so we had to keep on going I should go back a little bit here because we didn't get the whole regiment into Greece only 1st Battery and then headquarters you see a regiment consists of 700 men we only got 400 in so anyhow we kept moving back down until we got right down to the bottom of Greece at a place called Kalamata and Kalamata

there was a we were going to be picked up they sent a destroyers were going to come in there was a little jetty we will be picked up that night well we were but only 92 out of the 400 got out because they the little the destroyers had come alongside this little jetty and you'd just jump on and I got a spot near the stack all nice and warm and so I'll be right anyway when we got

out to sea there were 2 troop ships there was the Costa Rica and the Dilwarra we were put on the Dilwarra and they had 6000 of us on the Dilwarra you could sit down or stand up but there wasn't room to lie down and all you got was a had a little aperture sort of thing in the kitchen I s'pose you could go past and get a cup of tea and a packet of cigarettes

and they were lousy cigarettes they were full of salt... they'd go snap crackle pop you know anyhow as soon as daylight broke the Stukas got stuck into us again they sank the Costa Rica and they ran a destroyer up each side of her and we could see this happening and they took those boys into Crete we mounted on the deck of that ship of our ship 132 machine guns which meant we could keep the Stukas up

you'd just send up a hail of bullets and though we had a lot of near misses and the boat was leaking pretty badly we survived the Stukas by that time the next day we’d run out of range of them and so the Dorniers the longer range bombers you see came and gave us a little bit of a tickle up then but we actually got back to Alexandria and we went from Alexandria back up into Palestine and

we went to a camp called Khassa [Deir Suneid] we got equipped with guns again because we couldn't get our guns out of Greece but what we did there we ran the shell down the spout and another one up the beach and we took our dial sights we the young lads had to take the dial sites with them because they were very sophisticated sighting so we took those with us and

we got back to Casa we re-equipped got re-equipped with our 25-pounders and then they decided then because of the battery the regiment at that time consisted of two batteries each of twelve guns 22 guns in a regiment and each a battery consisted of two troops each of six guns well it was learnt very quickly that in that

very rugged terrain in Greece that that was too unwieldy to handle so they decided to split the regiment up into three batteries each of eight guns still the same 24 guns but each troop with only four guns because you could manoeuvre them better in that very rugged terrain so the regiment then instead of being 1st and 2nd Battery was 1st 2nd and 51st Battery and we remained in 1st Battery

all started to ball right though as a Whilst we were there I got sent down to they decided that of course even though I left school at 14 I was very good at maths and I and you'd use a lot of trigonometry in not like you do nowadays when you’ve got computers but whole log tables and that sort of thing

each gun position had a gun position officer and he had an assistant who was the sergeant and then I was became the assistant’s assistant because I had to learn that side of the thing and you plotted where the guns were and you set up the various zero line and so forth and I'll explain how that happens later on I was sent down to Cairo to the Middle East school of artillery

to do a course on counter-battery now counter-battery was meant that you had to be able to work where the opposing artillery was situated and you could do that there was certain techniques for doing that you could set up an instrument similar to a theodolite as that would be now set at 100 yards apart and you could when you see the flash of a gun you could get a bearing on it and get a triangular resection and you could work out where he was

and there was another method called sound ranging which light travels 186 miles a second and sound travels at 30,000 feet a second so when you saw the flash you counted how long it took it to get to hear the bang of the gun you could get a rough idea it was pretty rough idea just where they were so I did a course in there and came back

for the unit I was promoted to a lance bombardier not a striper I was very pleased about that because we used to have very big guards like you'd have about every night you'd have about I don't know 45 men on guard and that was 3 shifts like 2 on 4 off but as a gunner you had to do those shifts but as a

NCO a lance bombardier was an NCO you took just marched that particular lot out and posted them and came back and 'ad a cup of tea it was very anxious that you got that first strip if you didn't want to be marching up and down all night so I was very pleased about that so I still lance bombardier when then Japan came into the war it was about 1942

I think Curtin was the prime minister at the time and I think he decided that the Australian troops should come back so we set sail again from Suez this time we went down back into Egypt into Suez and that was we got on the worst ship worst troop ship we ever travelled on was the ship called the Westerland which is a Dutch ship

it was a dreadful ship anyhow we got on this wretched Westerland and we set sail and in the army like it’s a bit like this Kore [?] this Iraqi thing people you’re never told where you’re going and the amount of intelligence that is gathered can't be disclosed you can't even there used to be a saying loose lips sink ships we were called we were called when we first joined up five bob a day killers

different story in 1942 they couldn't get it back fast enough so we got onto Westerland and the rumours was rife that we were going to Fiji or one of the islands anyhow I think they'd just about fallen by that time and so we were put into Ceylon for 3 months they'd sunk nearly all the aircraft carriers in the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Biscay and that and they'd flown

the planes off those carriers and put them onto landing strips in Ceylon and we were lucky enough to be put on them under the strips which was not far from Colombo at a place called Kalutara and I was an assistant to the assistant at the time and that was alright because the planters the rower and the tea planters were still

very were still farming and we had a gun position in the built into the side of a hill overlooking the drome and the command post was just at the back of those and one of the little servants from the planters house used to come down every morning with a pawpaw and a cup of tea and he used to say good morning master he I thought there was just it this time I was nearly 20 I think

he used to call us all master you know anyhow we it was decided that were going to come back home when we got down to Colombo there was that stinkin’ old bloody Westerland waiting for us to get on it again so anyhow we off we came back it was about Fremantle and they didn't take the troops ships up that east coast at that time it was too dangerous they dropped us

off at Melbourne I think we went to see more for a few days came back up to Sydney and we went to the showground where there was sort of a transfer depot type of thing we were given I think a week’s leave maybe a fortnight I know I took an extra week anyhow went AWL for a week anyhow I we had to report back to the showground

so we went back to the showground a mate and I and they said where are we going and they said Wellingrove we said where in the hell’s Wellingrove and they said out in the bush somewhere and we said Oh Geez were not going up there yet you know we'll keep in touch so we went we just walked out and had another week but we found out that Wellingrove was only just out near you know out near Doonside so then we took another week and we decided we'd better get back got back to camp and

so we got back to camp and the sergeant major promptly put us under arrest for being AWL but anyhow within a couple of days we moved off to Queensland, off to Brisbane and we were get on to board a ship which was a old Liberty ship which was called the Joseph Lane at Hamilton Reach that’s where it was so we went

into town because my aunt lived in Brisbane and I thought I'll go and see her your not supposed to so anyhow I we got on board the ship half full half tanked too we got pretty full but when we got on board the boat we set off there were no bunks or anything you just lay on boards on the floor and the kitchen toilet was on the deck

with water running through it you know pretty rough and we could only get two meals a day because all they could do you had to go at various times so we eventually got Moresby

And now we got arrived in Port Moresby and we were camped at a place called Bootless Bay which near the 7 Mile drome the seven mile drome was operated by the Americans at the time and the Kokoda Track was being fought at that time but there

was another pronged attack coming from. The Japanese had at that stage had Salamaua and Wau and they'd come down through the Mubo Track and the Black Cat Track into Wau and they were going to follow the Bulolo River down to the coast and they were gonna join up with the Kokoda Trail line so it was decided that we would send a battery into Wau. 17th Brigade

were there at the time it was the [2/]5th [2/]6th and [2/]7th Battalions and there was no artillery used hardly at all on the Kokoda Track because they just couldn't get it up the track so we spent weeks training stripping our guns down to carry you know size enough that you could carry them so you could put them in the plane and you could unload them out of plane and you could reassembled them

and we practiced and practiced until we became very adept at that so the day came when were to take off to Wau so we loaded them in the old DC-3s but though the DC-3s used not to be able to fly above 10,000 feet particularly with troops in them because you'd run out of oxygen and there was no pressurization at all in fact you'd look out the window and see rivets popping up and down

in the bowing wings and in the engine cowlings and no sound proofing at all anyhow but to get into Wau they had to fly through a gap because the Wau valley was 3400 ft above sea level and the mountains around it rose another 10,000 ft but there was a big gap in the mountains where you could get through so the first day we set off and we had to turn back because the clouds had come down and that blotted out gap

and of course they couldn't get through the gap. So that was fine went back to Moresby and then the second day we went up and they said no you can't land the Japs have taken the strip well most of the strip well the third day we went up and they pushed the Japs off the strip day and night and we were able to get the planes down

now the Wau strip was on a big slope the planes would come in and land up hill and we could get our guns off but to get out again they had to run down the hill but the disadvantage was they ran straight into the Black Cat Mountain so they had to turn very sharply to get out with the result but they could only take 2 wounded out at a time because they couldn't get the planes off otherwise

but anyhow and all our food came in by mostly just biscuit bombers they'd just tip it out the plane you know an' you'd get your biscuits they were all just crumbs we never had any fresh meat much none at all because even bully beef tins would burst if you dropped them out of a plane we had dehydrated meat dehydrated potatoes dehydrated cabbage everything was dehydrated

with the result that it did affect them a bit because you were inclined to get beri beri lack of vitamin A but they'd give you a dirty big needle and send you back you know fill you up with vitamin B and give you a big tin of Vegemite and say now just keep eating Vegemite you'll be right mate two Aspros and you’re set you know. Anyhow we got the plane we got guns down we got 'em assembled and we were being sniped at

while we were doing that we only got two guns in the first day and by this time I had been promoted to a sergeant and was the actual GPO Act himself not the Acts Assistant the GPO Act [[need to hear words to clarify this]]. It was my job to get those guns laid out in a certain line well the trouble was there in New Guinea most of the alliance countries you had trig stations and

all sorts of areas where you knew the coordinates and the maps were accurate but in New Guinea the maps were all out to blazes and you had to try and pick up determine where magnetic north was and there was a procedure for doing that in this directness which we used to have which was like a theodolite you had to take and everything was even you didn't have non-magnetic watches in those days everything was magnetic so you had to get rid of your Owen

gun and you had to get rid of your watch and everything and you'd swing the compass 12 times and get a mean reading and you'd be fairly close to magnetic north and then you could lay the guns out on a select line well how you did that on the dial side of a gun there's a graduated scale on top of the site which is fixed and then in front of that there's a slip scale which you can undo a screw and

slip that around wherever you want to so when you laid the guns out on a bearing and you set right up the middle of the valley pretty well on a particular bearing say it was 180 degrees you'd then lay the guns out on that line and then you'd slip the slip scale 'round to zero and that became known as your zero line and everything that you shot from there on in was right of the zero line or left of the zero line

so it was much easier you didn't have to say well 182 degrees you say right more 2 degrees or less left 1 degree and so we got that lined up and then we got into action and we blew 'em we really blew 'em part we they blew 'em of the bottom of the strip very smartly and then the next day we got another 2 guns in we had we had A Troop were in well the

operative and within the next week we got the other 4 guns in and we really we really I don't know they reckoned we killed hundreds and hundreds of Japs we really annihilate them and pushed them right back and they retreated back up through Meopal [?] and tried to get back down to Salamaua well I know what when they eventually the 7th Division landed at Salamaua and Wau they

captured Salamaua and Wau but so we were there for 7 months in the valley and we'd we spent most of the time surveying in targets in case they counter counter-attacked but one of the funny things that happened there was a dairy herd in and we had strict instructions that no-one was to touch those cows well anyhow we did have a butcher on our crew we had a butcher and so he said look

he said I think he said if I catch one of those cows which we did so we knocked the cow off and we had fresh meat for a little while we invited the sergeants from the other battery to come up other troop to come up and share it with us and so we they buried the skin and we but the aftermath of that the sergeant major of the 5th 2/5th Battalion was given

the job of trying to find this cow because they realised it was missing and he nearly got killed he took a party out to try and find it and he nearly got killed and when I was mayor we had a function at the mayor’s room and we had a number of returned people there at that meeting and the battle of Wau came up and I said oh I said we knocked the cow off and he said you did I said yeah he said I nearly got killed trying to find that cow

he said you bludgers got it so he said look I want you to do something for me he said when we have our battalion reunion he said I want you to come down and I want these blokes to meet you which I did I went down and met them after the war that was the only bit of fresh meat we had.

Oh there was a dairy farm there see Wau was quite a little township in those days they had they had

they had 2 big gold dredges in there very rich in gold at the ... [Bulolo?] river and they used to have these dredges which they eventually scuttled when the Japs I won't tell you about the gold we got out of there anyhow we did we got a little bit a gold and so that was the story about the cow and Wau but eventually and in fact it was rather funny because

last year not this year Anzac Day but last Anzac Day a young fellow came in he just said is there a bloke named Mick Lardelli here and I said hello what the hell 'ave I done now you know he said I'm John Crowe’s son oh I said Oh yeah I remember John Crowe John was an officer a lieutenant he said I just wanted to come in and thank you he said you saved my dad’s life which I did

what happened we’d been out surveying in these targets with this officer and we to get across the Bulolo River which was a ranging torrent imagine coming from 10,000 feet to 4,000 feet in a very short space of time there was a torrent you know but near Wandumi village there was a a bridge went across like a swinging bridge you know with 2 ropes and a thing on it we'd gone across there and we'd worked our way back

and it was time to get back to the gun position and he said we'll cross the river and I said you’ll never cross that river he said yes we will he said I'll be alright so he took his boots off 'cause at that point it was very narrow but it was come through rocks and very very dangerous I said Johnny Weissmuller remember Johnny Weissmuller used to be a great swim I said Johnny Weissmuller couldn't swim I said I can swim but I said can you swim alright oh not very well but he said it's not that far well I said you’re mad

what you.. I said test before you get in to that river you see that rock where the water's swishing around the back I said I'll get down there and as you come past I'll fish you out oh he said no I said no no please so anyhow in the rock John Crowe got in the river and it picked him up like a sack of potatoes and down the river he came and anyhow I was able to grab him as he came past this big rock and fish him out but he'd a drowned

for sure no doubt about that and he had to walk all the way back with no boots and so that was one of the silly things that happened but anyhow we didn't have to use those targets anyway because they hightailed it back to Salamaua and we were there for 7 months and we had to walk out because we couldn't take our guns they couldn't fly them out eventually got 'em out and they put a road in from Bulolo for the mining

companies they got 'em out after the war but we couldn't get 'em out because you gotta get 'em on the planes couldn't take off with them so we had to walk we had a 4 day walk up through the Mubo and it was a very bad track it was you know you'd go forward one pace and slip back half a pace you know and roots an' things under the mud and slush but when we got to the top of Mubo and looked down

Salamaua and the ocean sitting right up the top was the Salvation Army hut with hot coffee yeah yeah they gave us all a cup a hot coffee and we went down but the hills were that steep to get down to the coast in parts we had to go down on ropes it was that steep so we got down to the coast we got picked up by little barges went to Oro Bay and then we went to Dobodura where the airstrip was got flown back to Moresby

got put on the troop ship the old Australian troop ship the Katoon which took us to Townsville Townsville yeah and so we caught a train back down to Brisbane we had to change trains at Brisbane because of different rail gate clatton junction so we got back anyhow we arrived back in Sydney with jungle greens in the middle of winter sitting on Central railway station frozen

to death yes it was cold and we all bright yellow because we'd been taken out of Burmeda [?] to ward of mal… but there was no we didn't get any malaria there at all it was just too high I think in the malaria areas, we got a lot of malaria later on in the war but not at Wau and so we went out to a camp out 'round Ingleburn way gave us 6 blankets

and uniforms you know warm service dress uniforms and then we were sent then to a camp at Loftus we're we were for some time some of the boys were sent down to the wharf to work on the wharves 'cause see the wharfies were they gone on strike you know so we had to unload the ships and load

'em up again to take them up there went down there I was sent up to a place called Teeangara [?] which is out from Nowra to do a course on observation of fire ‘cause because I had really good eyesight in those days I had really had really good eyesight and even though my hearing wasn't that good I could really see well anyhow they had people

there from the whole of the regiments along the east coast of Australia and we would had to control the shells from the guns on to the targets you were given certain targets and you know you get a plus or a minus and then move it from left or right or whatever happened anyhow lucky again I came for this particular shoot where I was controlling the guns in the ranging gun

we were ranging for No. One gun and there was supposed to be a line of machine gun posts fronting this line of trees well I put the ranging shot down and it appeared to be out to the right but actually I swear blind I saw a twig drop off one of the trees and I said that’s gone through that tree that’s right dead on line it’s gone through the trees

but before your allowed to do anything I said what’s your next order I said we'll run one round of gun fire we’ll knock them out anyhow they said oh well everyone else had to give sort of give their opinion they said no the shell’s out to the right said no I don't think so I saw the twig fall off the tree and so everyone had to give the comment and they all said oh no it’s out to the right and the chief instructor of gunnery said

now he said look I know you blokes end up with a lot of experience seen a lot of action he said you know to bring fire quickly but he said that’s not what this course is all about it is about accuracy so he said what are you going to do I said drop one round gunfire oh well he said that’s your funeral all right give the order drop one gunfire and of course

they fell right where exactly where the machine gun post was going to be because I'd seen this twig fall off the tree anyhow he said well I'll be damned so we went through the course and anyhow when I came back I was in the sergeants’ mess and the I got a message that the RSM wanted to see me and I said oh God what have I done now must have been caught AWL again or somethin' you know so went up to see the RSM and he said oh he said the CO wants to see you so I went in

marched me in and I knew I was alright because normally when your in trouble they say take or remove your hat and belt you know prisoner and escort I'd been through that a few times but anyhow the CO he said ah Lardelli yes he said I want to congratulate he said you you've done the regiment proud he said you’ve topped the school I thought if only you knew how lucky it was

we were at Loftus for some months really we actually had quite a bit of malaria not there but some of the boys you see we went to Wau the other two batteries went to Buna and Gona and Dobodura and they got a lot of a malaria but anyhow after that of course we went back training again

at that time I was sick of being a GPO Act and only being a lance sergeant so I said look I’d like to go back on a gun I can do anything on a gun I know gun-laying I know I know all about it if I'm needed I can always take over the job of the….so I went back on the gun as a gun sergeant then which is a full sergeant so we then went up to a camp on the Tablelands

called Maypee [?] broke my arm there playing football we had to play football very hard ground but that you know broken arms no… put in plaster took a couple of Aspros and then you’re right but then we went down to we the whole division then regrouped at a place called a camp called Wondecla [?] on the Tablelands

and then we used to go down to the coast to a place called a beach Trinity Beach where we'd get in barges we'd go out and then come tearing in and jump out tear up the beach you know practising getting our guns out of the barges and getting ourselves out of barges and then they reckoned we were ready to we were going obviously we were told where we were going

of course but it was obvious we were going to do a beach landing somewhere because we spent weeks and weeks and weeks training so we eventually arrived at Aitape supposed to be in a very calm sea but there was about a 20 foot swell running they brought the barges coming along side and threw nets over the side but we had a few broken bones getting into them because now one minute the barge is up

here next minute you think you let go of the net it's 20ft down anyhow we eventually we eventually got into the barges and we set off to the beach well the sergeant’s always had to lead you know actually the army ran on sergeants really they did really the NCOs really ran the army but we could see that some of the barges going in they went up ran up onto the beach

alright anyhow we had a sergeant named Dicky Wilson another bloke named Jack Dalton and I we were supposed to be we were up the front of the barge to lead the mob off and all of a sudden we ground to a halt and the beach was a long way in and Jacky Dalton said to me Geez Mick I don't like the look of that we’re a long way from that beach he said we'll get Dicky Wilson to go first so we said to Dick

as soon as we drop the flat we'll all get off the barge and we’ll fly off the barge and we said right go so Dick flew off and went out of sight he bobbed up again so we dragged him and put him back on we'd run on one of the sand bank and the next big wave took us over the sand bank and he said you bastards he said I coulda got killed we said we'd 'ave looked after you Dick you'll be right stick with us you'll be OK so we got safely on so

we landed at Aitape and then we pushed down the coast to Wewak we got I got a lot of malaria on the way down and we arrived we were at Wewak when the war finished then the army in their brilliance they decided then that they would do away with a section officers because the sect. you had your four

guns and you had two section officers who were mostly doing forward observation work anyhow but they decided to get rid do away with section officers and make section sergeants so Jack Dalton and I became the section sergeants it didn't make us officers I said you can sergeants can do a better job anyhow they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and another the next one on Nagasaki and so the war was finished and then

the army being you know pretty bright and a lot of them didn't want to they wanted to get home and we were we would have been the first to go home because we'd had six years in the army at that stage and four and a half overseas we'd seen more action than any other unit and we were going to be sent home on a points basis well people married men if they had a long service than we had would go first but then we'd go a lot earlier than

people who’d only done 4 years and still married so we were set to go home and then they came to Dalton and I and they said look you know we'd like you to accept a commission but you'll have to go to Japan with the army of occupation we said stick it up your jumper mate we’re going home you know we've done all the soldiering we want to do so eventually we got loaded onto a troopship again

and we took occupation ships into Jacquinot Bay in [New] Britain and then others into Rabaul harbour it took us ages to get back home and then we again the old procedure - into Townsville and back down and then on leave waiting for discharge and eventually we were discharged now that’s about the extent of our army we had a lot of fun we were very lucky

Well I went back to my old job I was determined that I'd been bossed around long enough well I was never going to work for a boss again so I was going to buy a farm but I had learnt a lot about poultry farming because it was at Epping that I stayed with had a poultry farm and we used to go out regularly with them to Hawkesbury Agricultural College and I learnt quite a bit about WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s

so I bought a farm a poultry farm at Blacktown and that was in 1946 yeah 1946 and then Gloria and I were married in December 1946 I had the farm then so I had a house to go to and farm being built up and so I and the

Department of Veterans’ Affairs [Repatriation Department] helped us they gave us if you were any good and you looked like you were working £5 a week while the farm became productive and a farm was well I bought some with stock on it you know so we started farming now I wasn't you know couldn't live on £5 a week and

put money into the property and that and that so I took a couple of jobs. I had 4 jobs I used to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning and feed the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s and then I'd go off to the Doonside tile works and the best paid job there was dragging the tiles out of the hot kilns and we were on a on a quota system so if you again we had to

do 9,200 tiles a day drag and sort….but it paid £7 15s a week which you know was a big help in those days but we'd would work like crazy and then finish by 11 o'clock and I would go home and work on the farm took a fencing contract with a big piggery because I had learnt how about fencing in the dairy farms and that and that and that was cash in hand so

whilst I was getting the department came out and said you’re doing a hell of a job we'll extend your £5 for another 6 months so I kept buying feed wheat and storing it away so by the time that 5 year that 12 months was up I had you know a fair bit of money put aside and a fair bit of feed then I then laying cages came into being at that time and I was the second farmer in

NSW to install laying cages we made quite a bit of money because we got all our eggs in the winter time when eggs WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s in the autumn you know even the sparrows lay in the spring and we got to produce our own and we used to kill and dress a lot of poultry and put 'em in the cold stores on Christmas time work all night 'cause no flies you'd do kill and dress about 500 - 300 WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s a night

by hand worked terribly hard and we sat there we were there for 10 years then I had three daughters including twins so we decided that they were not gonna be farmers and so I put the place on the market and I in the mean time I took a job I got a job at Blue Metal Industries you know something I'd never done before

I felt very strange (a) working for a boss again and (b) or in an area where I'd never had any experience in so went there and I was doing that for about 12 months before I sold the farm because you know you'd put the farm on the market and every bludger tried to beat you down you know

it might have been a £1000 less which was a lot of money so eventually I got that sick and tired of them I said look I'll keep the farm I rang the agent and I said take it off the market I said I’ve had you blokes I'm sick and tired of being beaten down he said I’ve just taken a deposit which I don't think he had but I think he had someone who'd a paid the full price anyhow so

Eh?

Well I'll finish what happened

out there I then bought a place in Ryde nice home and I bought a fair bit of land with it and the reason I bought at Ryde was because my mother who had worked as a she was supported by the Peak [Frean company] but she took she did have a position she was matron of (UNCLEAR) college and then she developed MS

and I thought well I've got to buy a big house and I've got to buy it with no steps but by the time we'd got it all settled her condition was so bad that she had to go into hospital and I got her into Weemarla Hospital in Ryde which meant I could go and visit her very often so that’s how we came to come to Ryde well how I came into council follows that really

because that whole area was very undeveloped the whole of North Ryde was greenbelt in the old Cumberland County planning scheme and the roads the road in front of our place you couldn't get up it in the rain because it was clay but so we decided that we would our kids were going to school I was president of North Ryde Primary School P&C they built Ryde High School in the end of our street

and I became president of that and we had a little progress associations and we had one fellow a chap named Harry Anderson who we thought we ought to try and get someone in council and try and get something done so we got Harry elected anyhow so the next election came around and Harry said to me Mick you’ve got you’ve got yourself pretty well known through your school activities he said I think I'm going to get beaten how about standing No. 2 on the ticket for me

you won't get elected I said alright Harry I don't want to get elected so we stood and we both got elected I was there for the next 30 years but then it was great really because we had a very very prominent role in the development of North Ryde and we were told 2 things were going to happen there (a) we were going to have a university on that land 300 acres set aside for Macquarie University

and (b) a major shopping centre which was very interesting really because the old Rancho Hotel as it is today was a lovely big home owned by an American couple and they bought the Millers bought that Millers brewery and old Askin was the premier at the time we both in council by that time and we were invited and they bought and they turned it into a

hotel the old Rancho Hotel and Askin came out to open it and he Askin was known to have a few drinks and there was the bloke who said that when they laid down in front of his car run over the bastard he worked with the Rural Bank he was an ex [digger?] so I got a he said two things (a) you’re going to have a university and (b) you’re going to have a shopping centre but you can plan the rest of the area how you want to and he said we said

well you know, we know were gonna have a university but there were 2 proposals before council one by Grace Brothers and one by David Jones and he said during the course of the opening and he said when my mate Mick goes down the road and that happened to be Mick Grace of course we knew we were all going to get it but then we got the university and we had to develop that area we wanted to get good clean industries in there so we looked world wide and what we liked best was the industrial area

adjacent to Stanford University Silicon Valley and we imposed conditions similar to that big setbacks in the main roads 35% site coverage and the activity had to have a compatibility and affinity with the picture of Macquarie University and they said we'll never sell it you know they want $100,000 an acre for that land you'll never sell it well the highest sales were $4 million an acre eventually so

I worked very closely with them as a result of that the 25th anniversary I was appointed a honorary fellow of the university which I still am of course that was then

I was Mayor in '73 '74 then in the meantime I had left BMI

and started my own business and that was very successful and it was growing very rapidly and I said I just can't do both if I can't do it properly I won't do it at all but again in 1983 I had good managers and I could devote more time to it and I think a lot of the councillors recognised that (a) I was strong and took no nonsense

I was honest and I controlled the council well and we had good council and they really asked me if I'd stand again and I did and I was there 'til I retired in the next 12 years as mayor and I threw a few out in that time I might add but I learnt a lot because one of the things you know it’s funny once when I first stood for

council mayor I didn't get in the first time and then within a month I was appointed to what was then known as the Local Government Appeals Tribunal by the government and that was the forerunner to the Land and Environment Court and I learnt so much because you know people that came before they couldn't deal with matters pertaining to Ryde but anywhere else in the state we could deal with you know

to listen to laymen debating an issue and listening to leading barristers and QCs presenting a case to that tribunal was a different story altogether and you know they could both convince you the two were right the finer points of what they were trying to do consequently I learnt a tremendous amount there and when I did become mayor in '83 I really had a very sound knowledge of local government

how it should work and I think that reflected in the fact I was there really for as long as I wanted to be plus the fact I say once at the university having lunch with the vice-chancellor which I do every 6 months they said they'd just appointed a couple of new professors and they'd all been asked to give their background and so forth at this luncheon and they said to me well now there's one thing that intrigues us

how come you can be mayor for so long when they change like people change their socks well I said I'm a good mathematician they said what’s that got to do with it I said I can count to 7 that’s all you have to do ‘cause there’s 12 councillors if you've got 7 you've got the numbers

this latest medal mm yeah well I can show you the letter if you like

but I've got a number of awards first of all I've got the AM which is very hard to OAMs are fairly common in local government but you know I was most fortunate enough to get an AM which is fairly hard to get later after that there was an award given which I think has been discontinued now called the Advance

Australia award which I was granted that to that was about '95 '96 I think and then of course we just been given this ... I've got that many awards I don't even bother to put 'em up on a wall any more that’s life you know what it’s like that sounds terrible when I say it like that I don't really mean it like that its just that when you get involved in a lot of organisations

and you become patron of so many of them they seem to give you recognise at some time or rather

mm

Well I'm a member North Ryde RSL subranch and I'm patron of that branch so I've haven't spent a lot of time with RSLs but I've been

Ryde RSL and I'm always asked to give Anzac Day addresses by Eastwood you see there are four RSLs in Ryde there’s Gladesville, North Ryde, Ryde and Eastwood, the biggest settlement of ex-servicemen anywhere in Australia in Ryde there are the reason for the that is that all that north area east coast huge acres and acres

and when the war was over the department kept that land and war service all the streets are named after Cutler, Morshead and all the generals .... so that’s there are a lot.

Yeah

yep well

Well it was very tough for my mother particularly my father died he must have died in 1937 I think 1937 1936 well that was in the eye of the Depression so we had that problem with the but fortunately we had the support of the James Peak trust which helped tremendously

so we didn't starve we had a close family relationship with uncles and aunts and as I think I mentioned earlier one of my aunts wanted to adopt me

No wasn't didn't surprise me really because they had a spastic son and I had a real feeling even at that age that maybe they were wanting to get someone to nursemaid Jim you know

and plus the fact that I really liked me family I liked me brothers and sisters and I liked me mother

On and off you know my brother was always better at things than I was but we I think in the later years of course I did a lot better than he did

Well as kids particularly on

the dairy farm we had very little time to get up we were fairly isolated the farmers were a fair way from the neighbours and that early and I had to milk the 10 cows every morning before I went to school and had to run to school at Byong [?] because to get time had a bit of a play you know and then run home again because I had to milk another 8 cows and my job was to chop the wood and

we all had jobs you know my brother he was the gardener he grew the veggies we killed our own meat he and I even at that tender age we'd kill carves and pigs and skin them or with pigs we'd scald them and get the but

From 8 to 11 yeah

Well it wasn't a big school one teacher school

it was a village it’s called Mowen actually which was about I think it might have been about 10 miles out of Margaret River and nowadays of course they’re fed by buses into the schools into Margaret River they've got good schools I've have been back to have a look at the old farm but didn't we were very isolated really

Yes it was it was very tough she was a wonderful woman and she never lost her sense of humour or her and we never lost our love for her we managed you know we didn't have any fancy food but we had plenty of good food we could have

I can remember when we were young we could have bread and butter or bread and jam you couldn't have bread butter and jam one or the other because you couldn't afford to have both but we had plenty of bread and on the farm of course mum used to bake her own bread

Well it was different to the bread making things you have these days you know you have a yeast bottle

kept on making your own yeast and the bread would be put on to heat on side of the stove over night and before it went into the oven to be cooked the following morning I don't know I wasn't really a cook but I know that it went through that sorta procedure

Always in trouble always in trouble always forgetting to do things forget to water the horses or do something you know

and plus the fact I was pretty cheeky

No it hasn't changed much it got me a lot of trouble in the army but I survived I think I could have done very well in the army if I hadn't been so cheeky

before the war

Well there was nothing much else to do you know the couple of mates at Epping we sort of they joined the cadets you got a uniform and you learnt to shoot a .303 and you learnt to shoot a machine gun and gave us a bit of a baulk up start when we joined the army actually there used to be a rifle range at Chatswood where we used to shoot

No I didn't I wasn't all I didn't really know much about artillery except an old digger but have might have been a World War I one digger who said to me it was either on the farms or somewhere I don’t remember exactly where he said if you’re going to join the army join the artillery I said why's that he said

well infantry you’ve got to walk everywhere artillery ride

Good advice yeah that’s real good advice didn't tell us you got hell bombed out of ya

No No

That fellow yeah I don't think they talk much about it either and we don't

really talk much about it we talk about the funny things

eh

yeah I look we were survivors in those days and our pleasures were simple pleasures

No not really I don't think we even thought about it it was just that we you know we liked guns and we liked shooting because you know 'cause even as kids we always had our little .22s you know on the farm and most kids had a little rifle, little .22 single shot .22 shoot rabbits or possums or whatever

birds

Well actually I stopped shooting birds because I was at Epping it was down at Devlin’s Creek I shot a bird and I felt real bad about it you know and so said I won't shoot any more birds I'll just shoot rats and rabbits

Well you see it was such a long time we didn't have a family home you know I went to Brisbane and mum took a job out at a station at Bourke with took 2 of the girls my other sister she went to another aunt and my brother went to St Matthews at Manly at a farm and he

went there and lived there for some time he was working on the St Matthews farm which I think was a farm for boys sort a thing so we were very split up actually we never really had a close family tie I think that’s possibly because we got on well with another we didn't spend enough time with each to fall very much out whenever we saw one another it was a reunion

which was great but and plus the fact that eventually you know through the James Peak trust they put my 2 sisters through hairdressing they paid for it and they became very good hairdressers and they ended up with quite good jobs fortunately one of them was a very pretty girl and she got some modelling and even back in those days and she eventually married a

an American who was a cadet engineer with Caltex or with Texaco oil and he rose to a very he ended up a vice president of the company he was sort of in charge of the oil fields in Indonesia for a long time and then

Sukarno came into power and they got took the Yanks out of there he then went to Libya and was in charge of the Libyan oil fields and then Gaddafi came along and they put the Yanks outs of there he went then to England as the first time an American had been head of the Iranian oil consortium and then Khomeini came along and they put them out the Yanks out

then she went back to NY office and then finished up at Houston at Dallas when the Caltex that was there the headquarters was now in Houston still living in Dallas but they had a very big position and I think a very good superannuation and so he's retired now

so we all sort of ended up doing fairly well my brother

he did his he got his own truck at one time I had a fleet of them in the end but he I think did alright you know and he died at 67 with cancer and my elder sister she died just recently at 85 my very younger sister died at 7 with meningitis spinal meningitis

so we all sort of managed you know and I don't think we worried too much about it I don't know I didn't anyhow 'cause I wasn't a worrier

I had supreme confidence that I'd make me own way I didn't want any help from anyone I was going to be fine I could handle it

I had a lot of faith

yeah I had taken a very active role in the Anglican church I was in parish council for a number of years and during that year we built it up to be the wealthiest church in Sydney I think because we built 100 units which they still got and our income is about you know about $700,000 a year which worked commission we got our commissions and that

well

I think I’ve often being asked that question when did I you know a lot of ministers and that I set up various committees in council like the interchurch committees because the Ministers Fraternal was not getting anyway and so I said well I'll send up ..... Ryde task force an interschool task force and interchurch task force which was rather

interesting because that interschool task force we started the you know they have the school concert at the school spectacular at we before they had a starter we had the Ryde School spectacular at the Opera House because I was mayor at that time and the fellow the teacher who was sponsoring that through the interchurch committee came to me and said well look we want to do this but we think its gonna be profitable

we think its gonna break even anyhow but we got to find $10,000 to book the Opera House to start with and he said do you think the council would underwrite it well I said I'll put it to council I'll certainly I'm sure I can talk 'em into it and that’s how that got started we gave them the $10,000 but they didn't use it I think we got about $9,500 of it back was just about a break even situation now profit....

and rising from that following that of course is now the Schools Spectacular which is fantastic

No we went separate days because he

didn't join at Willoughby he joined at the depot where he was with the anti-aircraft guns I think I might have mentioned that earlier and so he joined the artillery there and so the peel [?] regiment really consisted of people from the anti-aircrafts and most of our sergeants came from the A from the permanent army and a lot from the coastal gunnery people they used to have guns from North Head and all around that area and 9.2s.

oh well it was just a drill hall just a drill hall

Well it had an officer there I don't know what rank he was but he nearly brought me undone because he said how old are you know put me age up to 20 he said how old are you I quickly thought I said 1922 I was born oh he said no 1919 I was born

I said I'm 20 1919 I was born but I just had to stop and think for awhile because I was only 17 anyhow he let me go

Yeah I wondered what in earth I had done though when I got into camp and they gave me a bag of straw for a bed and said you know

Well I quite liked the physical training because they’d bring around a bucket of tea at 6 o'clock you’d all put your enamel mug

into it you know and 'ave a drink of a tea and then we'd go and we'd do PT for about three-quarters of an hour well I didn't mind that then we'd have breakfast and then we'd have lectures and then we'd go on a route march we had to route march nearly every day

Well they gradually built up you know I think at our peak we'd do 20 miles at

see those days the infantry I think you did 3 mile an hour you march for 50 minutes and you rested for 10 and you were supposed to do 3 mile in that period and then you’d march for another 50 minutes and then you’d have another 10 minutes’ break

I was lucky because a lot of the fellows had terrible trouble with the army boots

but because having been on working on the poultry farm with me uncle and that I was used to boots so I didn't have any trouble with boots

a lot of trouble with feet yes dirty big red army boots they were too heavy

no but I mean you did what you were told that was it in those days you know there was no if you answered back in fact if you didn't answer back you could be charged with silent

contempt you know you abused the sergeant or something you'd be charged with you know contact with the order of good pre…contact with the prej…. good order of the ....if you told the sergeant where to go so you'd be out you might get 7 days CB or confined to barracks for 7 days if you really were an old offender you'd get sent into the army booth I didn't go into a army booth I escaped that

Oh yeah but only for silly little things

Well I think I got into more trouble in the Middle East than anywhere because well Jerusalem see Jerusalem was the Black Watch reckoned

Jerusalem was their town we said well not it’s not it’s our town and we’d go and have a stoush with the Black Watch every now and then and only silly things like getting into fights and getting exciting riot or something you know and the it wasn't hard to upset the Arabs a bit you know

Well they were great thieves and you know really terrible thieves the Arabs and type of Arabs we were come across every country has them but when a bit of a raucous would start we'd throw a few punches

Yes well you see it wasn't known as stealing then it was a

Scrounging yeah that was it was fairly common but you didn't

scrounging for yourself if you know what I mean you scrounged for the unit

Yeah

You didn't really no you could empty your pockets out in your tent and know that it'd be there in the morning if you left it there for a week it'd still be there because you know no-one

would steal anything of one another they might have stolen off shops they might have stolen from ..... I don't I didn't really get involved in that part of it but there was great confidence in the integrity amongst ourselves because if anyone had of stolen they’d a been treated very severely rough justice you know I'm sure but it didn't ever happen in our crowd

that’s right great sense of comradeship in the army

We managed

Ah yeah well I think it started really in Ingleburn pretty early

where particularly the younger fellows were sort of trying to get together you know we had a lot to learn from the older blokes and we sort of went of leave together because we did the same stupid things you know the older men and the married men I suppose they’d only had they’d only get about a shilling a day you know the married men because they'd allocate the other 4 shillings for their wives whereas we didn't have to do that

we had our whole 5 bob a day

We were disappointed that that happened because

it stopped fairly quickly when we'd been overseas and we came back we had none of it when we came back we only had here was ratbags but we really had no problem with it in that we'd all go on leave together and you’d all go and hit Sydney and it took a very courageous person to come up and call you five bob a day killer.

you know good way to get a bit of a smack in the mouth no that didn't really happen we had numbers and there was a great deal of safety in numbers in those days and it wouldn't matter what unit you were from well you always knew each others colour badges [patches] what division you were from and there was a great deal of pride and comrade amongst the 6th Division boys particularly

yes

I think its pretty much the same group we formed here in Australia because there had been no casualties at that stage no sickness or anything much so that was original gun crew pretty much yeah

people that

we even after the war I was best man to No. 2 on the gun and he was best man to me and we all ended up sergeants anyhow because we had the experience unless you were an out and out ratbag or something your ability was recognised

well before the war I used to go down to the Vanity Fair Hotel and have a shandy but then when we got into the army beer was one and threepence a bottle that’s how you could afford to 'ave a couple of bottles then when you became sergeants of course you were getting eleven shillings a day then you know and you were a member of the sergeants’ mess

and I never well we used to drink the beer first and then there was spirits actually the gunners never had spirits they don't have any they had beer at the canteen but in the sergeants’ mess and officers’ mess you'd have spirits as well so you’d drink through the beer and then you’d drink the scotch and then you'd end up with a gin or something like that you know but

yeah went mad for a while but you soon woke up to the fact that it really wasn't worth it all that much but you enjoyed your beer and you could drink fairly well

I don't know that they drank anymore than anybody else I don't know because we sort of lived the only time we really had any social contact with the battalions

when we were in camp in Australia they you too busy fighting anyhow in action time we might meet some of them in a hospital or but when you were back in Australia it was terribly important that you kept fit so used to play a lot of football and then we had an annual game like the officers would play the officers of the [2/]1st Battalion the sergeants would play the sergeants of the [2/]1st Battalion

and the gunners the privates of the [2/]1st Battalion and they were sort of we became very close to [2/]1st Battalion when Italy first came into the war and we went up to Haifa on the anti-aircraft guns 2/4th Battalion were mixed in with us because they wanted people experienced gunners but they wanted more gunners because they thought they need more people that anti-aircraft equipment so the 2/4th Battalion were mixed up with us and we had

some [2/]4th Battalion mixed in with the regimental blokes but then went we went back again we split up again so we got to know a to of the [2/]4th Battalion people who became part originally 16th Brigade but later on 19th Brigade

Well I don't well there was a great deal of secrecy in the army you didn't really know where you were going we knew the Italians were in Libya we knew they were in Bardia so every time we went to a camp close to Libya we sort of thought well this is going to be it

We really knew

We were in gonna be had blooded in our first battery battle before it happened yeah

There were certain signs but we moved into Libya and then you established a gun position and then they'd send one gun forward somewhere to arrange onto targets and you would say now this is getting ready for something pretty big

and then when you started to do study how to design a barrage and out operate a barrage you knew well only one thing is going to happen here there’s going to be an attack because I mean you wouldn't want a barrage unless you were going to have infantry following up the barrage so you knew and we could tell by the maps that we are they looked like Bardia

being the big thing so we sort of knew it was going to happen and then you know the first day of the major attack we were up bright and earlier getting ammunition ready you don't prepare 200 rounds of ammunition for nothing you know that this is going to be on and then you were told then well now the attack is going to be on tomorrow and its going to start at 4 o'clock

and here’s the No. 1 of these guns was given his barrage program

Such and such is zero line and then up 25 yards and then up 25 yards and up 25 yards and then turn right a little bit you know and then go up 25 yards all the time with a certain amount in between which was you knew exactly what was going to happen then

So they started shooting back then of course which wasn't so good

I think great excitement I suppose teams with a bit of apprehension but we were young and silly mostly excitement you know we’ll fix these dagos you know

Well we knew they were Italians and the reputations of the Italians wasn't you know what are they like oh you know they’re not very good soldiers but there's a hell a lot of them in there but as they say you know we took 26,000 prisoners oh there's been different numbers quoted but I understand there has been 26,000 but

rumours get up to 40,000 at different times but I think the 26,000 would be pretty right

Well it’s a funny thing but there

was so much noise from your own guns that you really didn't weren't terribly aware until after at daylight broke and you could see shell craters around you that you actually had been fired back at but then when the barrage had finished and they were still firing but they didn't last that long and you got very smart really

because you could tell by the sound of the shell how close it was going to be because I mean they have a certain whine and when it starts to die and change tone you could almost say to yourself well hello this lot’s for us or it’s going to go overhead or that’s going to drop short

Just starting to get the whine would be starting to change tone or the scream of the shell

sorta more of a whine than a scream but you could tell it was the same with bombs the moment you could see a bomb you knew where they were going to land because I mean you'd say if a plane was up over there coming your way and you could see the bombs leave you could say well that’s short of us or if he's left it too late there going to miss us it’s only when you think

they’re going to be right on you that you’ve got to worry at all that’s why I think experienced soldiers didn't really waste time worrying unnecessarily because you get very smart it’s very hard to kill an experienced and well trained soldier he knows when to duck

Plenty of it plenty of it that’s why I'm still here

It works I can tell you

No well I was a gun layer at the time through the whole of the barrage and you just can't take your sites you know your not really you don't see the fall of shot you just gotta concentrate on

Whether you change your range counter go up the other 25 or whether your going to move to the right or the left or what your going to do its a very absorbing and you have to concentrate all the time you really don't see a thing when a barrage is on like that you don't see anything you don't hear anything all you can hear is your sergeant telling you you know to change the line or what you’re going to do

but you can't see

Well I don't know how we knew that they had surrendered

and very shortly after that the prisoners just came streaming back through the gun positions you know thousands of them with a couple of diggers you know escorting them

Well we thought you know we’re the big bronzed Anzacs after all as a matter of fact we were filthy dirty because we hadn't washed for a fortnight

we were very brown the bronze yeah oh well we’re the diggers we’re the best you know and we were convinced that we were the best right from the right from the you know even though we got an awful hammering in Greece we just said that bloody air force we got no air cover all their fault

Yeah very yeah you can't win a war without air force without air cover air control of the air

you gotta I mean even in the Iraqi thing if you didn't have they had plenty of planes as well they had plenty rockets as well that they could control you control the air you control the war

Well we played two-up and I invariably

won and that was the first thing I s’pose and then I learnt to play blind poker and I was a very successful poker player they reckoned it was luck but I reckon it was skill in fact everyone says that but then you know wherever I seem to go I seem to I don't know just have good luck you know

and I used to say to an old business associate of mine you know everyone thinks I'm lucky he said Mick he said the harder you work the luckier you get in business anyhow but no just I like at Bardia for example we had a dud shell Italian shell actually land in the gun pit and didn't go off well that’s a bit lucky so I don't know

I used to put it down to faith but most of the other fellows thought I was just arsey but I shouldn't use that word here I was just plain lucky you know

Well first of all you need to remember all the cards that are being played and I think it’s

psychology more than anything I think you’ve got to really look into the other bloke’s mind you can tell signs that they’re a bit worried or they’re having a bit of a bluff or many of a good many a poker hand is won by the winners who’s got nothing in his hand at all but he’s just manoeuvred the other player into a position where he's a had a few losses and he's getting a bit worried about it how much he's lost and you could sorta put the boot in the hand and of course you think now I can bluff this bloke because he’s gotta be very careful

I think yes I think it was psychological thing

I won a lot of hands. Yeah

And then the fact I s’pose you need good cards too but you need I think a good poker player against a not so good poker player with equal hands will always win

I did say earlier that I didn't ever gamble again after I had to give the money back did I say that on air

We went to Las Vegas my wife and I and of course I had to have a bet at Las Vegas but and my sister who lived in America said just be careful Mick because Las Vegas is built on people losing money

and anyhow I played Blackjack and I thought I'm not going to muck about I am either going to lose a bit quickly or I am going to win so I had $100 on the first cards won that so I had 2 and then I doubled up and that was 4 and then 8 then $1600 so I put $1100 back in my wallet and I'll play with the other $500 some other time I was determined to go home winning from Las Vegas which I did I went home winning $1000 American

dollars

I think the I think that the study of people is a fascinating study people are really terribly interesting all of them

good bad or indifferent and I think if you really look at people and really try to figure them out it is a tremendous help in any walk of life really and I think I had that I was fairly successful in that assessment of people and I didn't make too many blues

A good?

Had a very an excellent gun crew yeah they were a really good crew

all true even when we started off with the Sergeant Bertram who was an ex-commissioner bloke who came in you know who joined up same time as we did but came in as a sergeant he was good and then we had the No. 2 who was a fellow named Peter Lloyd who ended up the best man at my wedding and I was the No. 3 who was the gun layer and then we had varying other sergeants after that who all you know had a wonderful team spirit

and we I don't know there was always a lot of competition as to who was going to be the best gun crew we reckoned we were the best I s’pose and another dozen gun crews reckoned they were the best but really you know there was a lot of competition particularly amongst gun layers that you know that you could lay accurately and fast

That was the quality yeah and of course everyone in the gun crew had to play an important

role even the ammunition numbers they 'ad to get the shell into the barrel and that had to ... and get the cartridge in the No. 2 who operated the breech I mean if he was a good No. 2 he'd after the gun fired it would recoil and he was a good No. 2 he'd open the breech on full recoil so he could throw the spent cartridge which was red hot

of course at that time out the back of the gun pit so you weren't walkin’ hoppin’ around on hot cartridge cases and that meant that by the time the gun was being the No. 4 would put the shell in the barrel would have the shell axis in there while the gun was running back recoil and so it was ready to be rammed the moment the gun was out there everyone

in the gun crew had a very important role to play and you worked as a team and you were very proud of your team there was a lot of pride in trying to be the best

Well I just think team work

you had to work as a team if there was a weak link somewhere it had a big effect on the smooth operation of the crew but everyone on our gun crews and I'm sure on all the other gun crews felt the same way and you had to play your part and you had to do it as best as you could

Mmm?

Well you became well I think any team spirit

builds mateship and so yes we were all good mates occasionally you’d get a grubby bloke who you didn't like well you know but somehow or rather we used to weed them out by various I don't know make them feel as though they were just not part of a team and get 'em shifted to the cook house or somewhere

Well it was interesting because it happened that particular episode happened during the barrage into Bardia and apart from and because our own guns and our own gun and the rest of the guns

were making so much noise that you really didn't hear the other shells coming it was only when you had a lum[?] that you’d hear that you'd know where they were going to land so we heard we thought we heard a shell slowing down but with the rest of the noise you couldn't be too sure but when we got up when daylight broke we could see where the shell had landed and it'd bounced out the back of the gun pit and it was just lying unexploded at the back of the gun

pit it'd landed in the gun pit alright but we weren't aware of it because it was dark and we became very much aware of it when we saw it actually they had a lot of dud ammunition the Italians there was a lot of crook ammo.

Lucky for us yeah

Well as I said earlier we didn't you didn't know

whether you could hear it or not because there was just so much your own gunfire and you know guns are pretty noisy things and we didn't really know at that stage that the shell had landed in the gun pit we knew something had landed plonk somewhere we heard a thump but it wasn't until after the barrage and we were able to clean up around the gun pit and stack all the empty

cartridge cases and tidy the place up that we saw the shell sitting out the back so we really didn't know we really didn't know until afterwards

In lots of ways yeah well I s'pose very similar to a first world war action in that there was a barrage and what was called known as a creeping barrage

A creeping barrage was when you’d start firing at say well 5000 yards

then you'd go up 25 yards at a certain time up a 25 up as the and the infantry advanced behind that curtain of shellfire so it crept and so it was known as a creeping barrage

mm

Actually we would put a curtain of fire down in front of the infantry yeah yeah

that gave you know that gave the engineers who were core troops the opportunity to under the cover of that artillery fire to put what they used to call Bangalore torpedoes under the barbed wire and dangarmans [?] and a Bangalore torpedo was just a long length of pipe full of explosive and they'd set that off and it'd blast a track through the barbed wire and dangarmans [?]

and that was done under the cover of our fire which meant that the infantry then could not only continue to advance but they could go through the gaps where the engineers or the pioneers had blown the barbed track through very sort of typical of the old first world war type of tactics like the war’s changed

tremendously since even later on but that was just a you know an artillery and it was interesting because you see I think when you faced a place like Bardia you had your gun positions and in front of that you had your infantry lines and that would be setting up and that would be there for a week or so testing

enemy’s areas and then the morning of the attack they were relief battalions who were gonna take over the actual attack itself but they come through your gun position and go through the existing infantry lines and they were the strike force they were going to take the brunt of the first attack and you could see the in the darkness you could see the boys coming through and you knew

well you sort of knew what was happening

Well nowadays I s’pose they’d use SAS troops in those days they used to call them scouts they would be scouting the testing the strength of the fences in certain trying to establish

where there are weak areas being an infantry tactic I wasn't too much aware of just how they did that I know it happened and I know sort of how it happened but the actual planning that went into it I don't know as gunners we just sort of did what we were told you know we were told to go to a certain position and we'd dig our guns in and we'd fire we didn't always know exactly

what the battle plan was we knew what our role was in it but what the overall plan we wouldn't necessarily well we most unlikely would know what the overall plan was we know we had our job to do we knew how to do it and we just had to do it exactly as was required

The 25-pounders were a fantastic gun they said they were a gun howitzer

and I mentioned the fact that the gun has a high mass velocity and a low trajectory in other words if you wanted to hit a target the other side of the hill the reverse slope hill you couldn't with a gun because they so you'd use the howitzer component of the gun to do that because it'd pop the shell up into the air very high and it'd come down behind the hill and that was achieved purely and simply by each cartridge case you’d have

supercharge which would give you your full boom from then on you had 5 charges your little bags of quart iron so if you wanted to use Charge 5 you’d just put the charge use the shell as it came if you wanted to use Charge 4 you took Charge 5 out and threw it away so you but if you wanted to use it as a real howitzer you might have to go down to Charge 3 in other words you

you could get the same distance or hit the target but you did it in a different way instead of going boom you went booom like that

Well another Charge 5 and Charge 4 you’d take them out and throw them away

Yes

Well the two main we had four types of shells and first of all we had the 117 fuse which relied on actually landing impact and exploding when it drove the striker into the composition exploder but it had to land onto he snow to do well that 99 times out of hundred it would do that

because the rotation of the shell kept it pointing in that direction the other type of fuse we used and was a explosive shell was a 119 now that worked differently in that the moment that shell landed even if it landed on its side like a car putting its break on a little pellet would fly up a tube and it would hit the striker

it was called an anursa fuse anyhow but that was a very effective shell because even if it just hit something and slowed the down the pellet would fly forward and set the shell off so that was that then we had smoke shells now the smoke shell if you wanted to lay down a smokescreen that used what they call a

humerifiderous fuse which was a humerifiderous fuse meant the slow burning of gunpowder you set a time you timed that and the shell itself had a timer on it and when the gun fired of course it ignited the gun powder in the fuse and the length of time it took to turn that to get down to the little explosive part because you wanted those shells to burst

about maybe 30 or 40 feet in the air before it hit the ground and inside the shell were three canisters smoke canisters so when the shell went off actually when it exploded all it did was blew the back of the shell out and the 3 canisters came swirling out and they provide the smoke screen and the other shell that we used was an anti-tank

shell and that was a much smaller shell and it although it was metal it was the metal on the outside was a softer metal and in the middle of the shell was a very hard core of a much stronger than steel possibly high tensile steel or something because the system there was that you hit the tank the shell flattened and it drove the hard core in through the tank

and it rattled around inside and knocked the crew about so that was the main shells that we had

The main ones we used would be the 119s

Well the infantry didn't do that the engineers put the Bangalore torpedoes down you had a engineers they weren't divisional trips they were corps troops they could be sent to any division and a pioneer battalions as well they were much the same they would do almost the same sort of work they were sort of a semi I think the engineers were highly skilled engineers and the pioneers were engineers but not necessarily degreed eng

qualified engineers you know what I mean like a 5/8 engineer

Well the next stage as far as we were concerned as gunners certain strong points the Italians still held the most of the defences had been broken

but there were certain spots there which obviously were holding out and impeding the advance of the infantry complete the capture we would be called upon then to put very heavy fire down on those points of resistance I can remember I think in the barrage itself in Bardia we fired each gun fired 210 shells

each gun but then when we were asked to engage these strong points of resistance most times you'd say right just keep going until we tell you to stop and I think in one particular area we put another 80 rounds of gun into a very very strong resistant area

but it was really at that stage you'd say well fire as fast as you can and mostly the best you could do on a 25-pounder was about 5 shells a minute

Yeah you had to be a good gunner to get 5 to maintain it

Yeah we were getting 5 a minute yeah I suppose there would be an occasional time when you’d only get 4 but

that was known as rapid. Gun fire was about 3 rounds a minute rapid fire was as fast as you could go and you could get up to 5 rounds a minute with rapid fire

Well you’d just stand by waiting waiting you know you'd have a bit of a rest I s’pose

because you’d actually with prolonged firing like that you’d go a little bit punchy you know what I mean

Get sort of when your a gun layer sat on the scene but when you got up you were a bit sort of dizzy you know with the continual banging that soon passed like you know here about a person who has

been punch drunk well I think you know you'd been hammered through all that firing it had a temporary effect but you soon shook that off

I really don't know I really don't know we didn't think we did but possibly

some other people might have thought we were a bit funny I don't know but some there were some people only rare people who what they used to call under attack there were bomb-happy blokes what they used to call bomb-happy they were shell-shocked but on rare occasions you’d get a member of gun crew who couldn't stand the noise of the guns and they'd get what they would call

gun-shy in other words instead of say he was ammunition your 1 2s and 3s were never became shy because they were all old hands and specialized you got any new reinforcements and they always came in as ammunition numbers but very occasionally and we had it once I don't remember the fellow’s name but every time the gun would fire he would put his head down put his hands over his

ears well he should have been up getting the next shell you know so he wasn't much you know he wasn't suitable for our cycle activity

mmh

Well he either got over it or he got reposted yeah and if that had been No. 4 which put shell in the maybe you'd make him No. 6 in the gun crew where you prepared the ammunition and

handed it to No. 5 and maybe you found a spot for him where it didn't effect the efficiency of the crew itself

They were pretty good we had we had good gun crews

The surrender of the Italians

Yes my grandfather was Italian

No because I never felt anything else but Australian I suppose you know I was born and my father was born in Sydney

and my mother was born in Ravenswood in Queensland and then I was born in Queensland and I grew up I grew up as an Italian the only thing when we were little kids at school you know some mug 'd call you a dago you know so you'd give them a smack in the mouth and you became a very good fighter but we grew out of that sort of thing it never happened during the war

no

No you would drive through it moving up to take up another position somewhere but as gunners you didn't see a great deal in that when you moved your

position to go on another place you spent all night digging a new gun pit you did a lot of digging and filling sandbags and you know making your gun position secure and then you know you were anything from 5,000 yards to mostly to 10,000 yards although we had a range of 15,000 yards away from the actual

hand to hand fighting we didn't you didn't really you did very little really you saw the after effect and when the battle was over you might you know you were interested to go and have a look but

No because you didn't get time much you they were moving up to Derna and Tobruk and Benghazi and Tripoli and El Agheila

you were on the move pretty well all the time

I think the infantry saw a lot more than we did naturally because they were right closer to the action than we were we just did what we were told

mmh

Well

I suppose a sense of jubilation you know you said oh well your the big bronzed Anzacs that’s what we are now we fixed this mob up

We thought we continued to think that till we got to Greece then we thought well you know that’s a bit of a different story there

Really I think the army's very clever in that I think they psych you up

Unofficially and without knowing that it’s happening that you know you’re Anzacs you fellows you’re the best you know you’re unbeatable

You weren't actually told that but somehow the message got through you know you were expected to keep up the reputation

of the Anzacs and I think you were very very concerned that you may not do that

and they built on that you know very very cleverly I think

had a lot that’s true yeah

Yes, well we didn't know it was going to be as difficult as it was in that I think if my memory serves me right the Greeks had been fighting the Italians for quite sometime I think even before Greece even before Italy joined the Axis I think you know

I think they'd been fighting the Greeks and Italians had been having what they would call a little war of their own for some time and so we were must confess that we knew that we were going to be fighting Germans we knew that the Germans would be coming down because that’s why we were being sent and we knew that Germans were well equipped and

we knew that they had a good air force we didn't realise that we had no air force of course

Not at that point we soon found out I can tell you we found out very smartly that we had no air force and we found out very smartly we didn't it didn't take much to be a genius to work out that you know that if you didn't have control of the air you had a big problem and we had a mighty big problem I can tell you but the

the Greek people were lovely they were really you know they helped us in any way they could but we felt that there was lack of organisation there in that when we first got up to Larisa of course we arrived on the train and no guns the train with the guns on hadn't arrived there so we were gunners without guns

at Larissa so we had to hightail it back and eventually we picked up our guns and of course it was you know it was just retreat

Well again you see being artillery you really didn't know you knew that the Germans were advancing you knew that you were being bombarded you knew they had

tanks and you knew that we were vastly outnumbered and so you knew that the terrain was very rough and that they I think there was only one road really that went back down back into Greece so you knew that you would be able to hold those roads or those passes very steep rugged country but you couldn't hold them forever and then you know you’d get right over

were going to withdraw were going to take up another position at the back there and infantry we knew that the infantry would be coming back through the gun positions and when they were through we would be moved they would take up a position there a defensive position and we’d move back to give them cover and so it went on until we got down as far as you could go to Kalamata

that’s where we were or I was picked up by a bit of [[British?]] destroyer I think I did mention that we in that evacuation of course there were 2 troops the Costa Rica and the Dilwarra they sank the Costa Rica and we were lucky enough to be on the Dilwarra and we got back to Alexandria

Well I you felt very vulnerable

on the ship cause even with when the ships were being bombed even though we didn't get a direct hit you’d feel the ship nearly lift out you know considerably out of the water when the bombs landed along side it and you could hear the shrapnel from the bombs you know hitting the side of the ship

but well you just hoped for the best you know

ever

No no well we got reports see in those days the ships were all riveted not welded like they are today and they sprung the plates and we knew they were she was leaking we were also told that the pumps were holding and we'd be alright

Well I don't know really what I thought at the time I thought well I still felt that we’d be alright you know and we wondered what we were going to do with those blokes but of course we didn't find out until later that they took them into Crete

Well I’m not really sure because we I think we only got 400 men into Greece we didn't get the whole regiment the 1st Battery which was 12 guns and regimental headquarters well of that 400 I think we only got 92 out now whether they were taken prisoner there at Kalamata

or whether they were taken prisoner in Crete I don't really know but all I know was that we got 92 back out of the 400

mmh

Yeah yeah anyhow I mean I s'pose you’ve got to say well it is a war and you’ve got to take the good with the bad you’d rather have it good

all the time of course

Lucky yeah the thing is I think that I mentioned bonding of the groups I think those boys that came back from Greece had a special a special bonding there because we'd been through something that the

other battery hadn't been through and I don't know there was just sort of just a little bit of a deeper sense of togetherness with those groups than we even than we had with the other members of the regiment

yeah

Yep

Never thought I was anything else but Australian you know well I still don't think the thought never entered my mind that I was anything else but Australian

I was going to war as a great adventure I think to start with it was only when we

sort of got over into the Middle East and we had our first baptism of fire that we saw the way a lot of the other people lived we realised just that you know what a great country it was and our I think that’s something that’s followed me all through me life really now the very strong conviction that if a country was worth living in it was worth fighting for and if a school

was worth going sending your kids to it was worth becoming the P&C and doing something and the same with council if the municipality was worthwhile living you should contribute in some way towards it if you possible could I think it was it was worthwhile being involved in in any aspect of this country fantastic country

I think we really felt like the sacrificial lamb actually because it became evident that we had no chance of winning that particular part of the war and I think we were p'haps a bit angry with Churchill in

particular who the sort of news sort of filtered through that the reason why we were sent to Greece was because they wanted to draw some German troops down into that area because they wanted to delay the tackle on Russia until they got right into the winter when they would be very difficult for the Germans to win the Russian campaign and

I understand that that really did delay the Germans for about 6 to 8 weeks and the consequently and the long term of the war it had a very big effect so the strategy was possibly right but we didn't you know we feel we'd been thrown in at a time when they knew there was no chance of us actually winning that situation

and again I s’pose after the war you think well on looking back in the history of the war it was possibly the right decision but it's just unfortunate that we happened to be the people who had to do it

I think we had more well I don't know if I can speak

generally about it but I think that my impression was that we had no confidence in Blamey you see when we went up through the desert we went up under Field Marshall Wavell who was an English commander when the Australian troops went back again after that first dip in campaign to go back up and retake it again with the 9th Division

then as they were under the control of Montgomery who I think we respected of Montgomery I think the general we had general confidence in the administration of the army but we weren't too wrapped up in Blamey

Well they were very obvious that their tactics that the Blitzkrieg tactic was very well done I think that we weren't too worried about the Italian component because I think the general feeling was amongst my own comrades was you know the Italians would be a liability to the Germans rather than an

asset because they were not though that proved to be the case of course but I think that we were very disappointed with the ability of the French and I think that’s kept I think that they still feel that the French are not really the sort a person you would want as an ally and I think in the Iraqi situation

again let me reinforce that their only interested in France they seem to have forgotten the fact that you know the Americans and the British liberated France they more or less collaborated very much with the German forces so but as far as the to answer your question about as to what we think about the Germans we

though they were well trained and well equipped and they really believed in that they were the master race we thought we were the best fighters as Anzacs but they thought they were better still I think and they were pretty good there no doubt about that but they are well sort of if you can if you can have an honorable enemy well I supposed we thought that I think they looked after our prisoners alright they

agreed to Geneva convention as far as that was concerned whereas the Japanese did the very opposite so there was no there was no real hatred of the Germans like there was hatred of the Japanese

the landscape mm Well it was a pretty country

lush green valleys some snow-capped mountains they were very high mountains I suppose you could I would think compare it a bit to New Zealand in many respects the south island of New Zealand in many respects it was a vastly different

thing to the Western Desert when you really I suppose I think we used to say to ourselves well if you’ve got to have a war have it in the desert because you can't hurt anything you know don't think anyone got any joy out of destroying buildings or killing civilians I think that was something that you that was a consequence of war and an unfortunate one but we didn’t

like it all that much but you know you had to win but the country itself very pretty

No I don't think so I think the weather conditions in the desert were worse in that it was quite

warm of a daytime and lots of dust storms and night was freezingly cold but it was very cold of a night in Greece too but I don't know it was different I know when we got pulled out one night and we went into a we were waiting to move into position the next night we were camped we were sort of pulled up in a place near a creek with a big pond

and we thought oh this is good we’ll jump in here and have a clean-up anyhow we realised when we jumped in the water it was that freezing cold it nearly took your breath away but never less it cleaned us up alright but it was a pretty much the same it was civilised if you know what I mean and it looked civilised

What

Rear guard action yeah

Yeah well yes well I can tell you what the artillery does in that if you had a battery of guns that’s that was 12 guns and each gun had and you had each and you had 2 troops of 6 guns troops in Greece and they changed that to

4 gun troops later on but so you had you had one troop of 6 guns there and you had the 4 guns closer to the enemy well when the infantry after they were retreat they had to come back through that gun position and they would stop before the next gun position and make another stand well while that happened that 4 troop

would move back behind was in the rear troop so that when they retreated again they went through they just kept going through what was commonly known as a leapfrog action you'd leapfrog back over the top of one another but you always have a forward gun troop it became the rear gun troop until eventually but you never moved back until the infantry came through

but then they still had a troop between them you know to support them while our forward troop moved back it was very well organised it wasn't a route in such it was a an organised retreat but using that leapfrog type of action that we knew what was happening there because it became very evident what was happening we knew mostly where we would make a stand because you’d usually defend the mountain passes

Yeah well it wasn't so hard movin' 'em as it was hard diggin' 'em in again you know say as you knew that you were going to have hell bombed out of you in the next day it was very important that you dug your slit trenches so your personnel were protected important that you had a decent gun pit which was as was well protected from

you tried to get a protection of the guns so that you could still fire them and you had a sufficient protection from the from a much protected as you could get from a near misses and mostly the bombs were near misses anyhow and you could still keep firing without being you know knocked about

yourself it was I say a normal strategic plan which you knew what was happening you didn't know what the overall plan was but you soon realised it because I mean after you'd moved back and you’d gone through the other troop and set up the ammunition and the infantry had come back you knew exactly what was happening and then we were told that we were

that we were going to be evacuated from a place call Argos Bay which when we got to Argos Bay they’d sunk all the ships in the bay so we just had to keep moving back down across the Corinth canal down to Kalamata the very bottom of the the….very very far as you could go in Greece before you run out of the Mediterranean

Well I think everything is planned

in the army unless there’s an absolute route you know where people where troops desert and just run no no there was nothing like that it was a very orderly retreat you knew you were losing the battle but you knew that you had to you had to save as many as you could but in an orderly fashion there was no there was no panic worry I s’pose a bit but not panic

mmh

yep

Well I'll described one pass I'm not sure whether Brallos or Domokos because I'm just don't know which order which but in that particular case we of course with the terrain

we had 2 guns on one side of the road and 4 guns on the other this is where we later on decided that that was not a good idea to have six guns you were better to have four-gun troops and the object of course the whole thing was to try and stop them coming down the road because to walk around you and come around behind you they couldn’t get the tanks behind you because they couldn't get the rough

the terrain was too rough and mountainous particularly around those pass it was very very rugged country but you just you know it was difficult in those situations to have the guns all together you had to well first of all you need to disperse them anyhow and you never put them in a straight line because the fighter planes would come and strafe and they'd go straight down

you had to sort of stagger the guns so that that couldn't happen and maybe have the line 2 guns up at a time but that would be all but it was difficult to deploy six-gun troops much easier later on in the war particularly when you got the rugged country in New Guinea to deploy four-gun troops that decision was obviously a very proper one to reduce the size of each troop

but it was hard and it was hard digging because it was fairly rocky country in there in fact I think we didn't get anyone on that particular case that got actually wounded by shrapnel wounded by flying rock when the shells landed close they had broken bones and a few things like that

Well I suppose you'd it possibly start with being about 10,000 yards away from them but as they'd advance you just kept dropping the range to you know 9000 to 8000 until they were

fairly close and that’s when you would move and the other troops would take over so we never on most occasions you we never actually saw the enemy we knew where they were because we had our observation officers out in front with the infantry and they would direct fire of the guns I think New Guinea

was the only place where we actually saw them mostly it was you know your fire was brought down control by forward observation officers and when even though we had other artillery and a gun battle sort of thing we didn't actually see one another we just sort of knew where each one another was

and they just shot trying to knock your guns and knock their guns out but the only person who actually saw the shells landing was the forward observation officer we knew what was happening but we couldn't actually see what was happening

Well I really don't know I'd say on our gun crew the only we only had one person who obviously wanted to pack it in and he eventually was taken off the guns he reported sick with a bad back and they said here couple of Aspros and get back into it and he went with a bad heart and eventually

eventually he was obviously trying to get well he was he was useless you know so we never ever saw him again and I don't think there was plus the other guns had the same problem but and then towards the end in Greece they decided that they would

try and they'd reduce the gun crews in number I think instead of having 6 gunners we only had 4 on a gun because they decided that they would try and evacuate the married men the married men with children they would try and get them out first that caused some problems because a couple of gunners on our gun crew

who were told they had to go were very concerned that they felt that they were letting the team down but they were they were ordered to go it wasn't that they wanted to go they were ordered to go it was what purely and simply a decision of the commander of the regiment or the overall army command in Greece I s’pose

but morale was pretty high sometimes I wonder why you know it was a pretty hopeless situation but then again we still you know most of our gun crew our gun crew was a bit lucky we got three other gun crew out from Kalamata and we got on the ship that got us back

all’s well that ends well I guess

The Greek

I wasn't aware of that

We found that when we went through some of the villages

they'd give us hard boiled eggs and that and oranges because we knew we were short of food but we found the Greek people were very lovely really they knew they knew that they were going to be occupied they weren't you know they knew that as far as the army the Greek army and the allied army was concerned that it was a foregone conclusion and they were you know resigned to the fact that they were going to be an occupied

country but they were still very nice to us they didn't blame us at all they said oh well you've done your best nice people

Oh we always got on well with New Zealand we didn't actually we not actually fight

alongside them there were New Zealand gunners and troops in Egypt we only really met them when we were on leave and we had the only time I came across the Polish it was a Free Poles when we were coming out of Libya

coming back through Mersa Metruh there was a camp of Polish Free Poles we snuck down one night and had a few drinks with them came back but they were you know they were that was just a bit of a drunked that was all we knew about the Poles they seemed

to be very good fighters they determined fighters but then again like all free I think most soldiers who were volunteers were very good fighters they knew what they were there for and they were very determined and they had a great hatred for the Germans but that’s very short amount of time we had with them at all it was

you know the army kept various armies kept pretty much to themselves

We used to have radios but not radios like an ordinary radio but in the gun positions and therefore we had radio contact between the forward observation officer and

the gun position and those radios could pick up BBC when they weren’t getting orders through we had one radio wireless operator who was very good at Morse code and he could take it down as fast as they could give it to us but the only things were used to hear was there used to be a person named ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ I don't know if you’ve heard of Lord Haw-Haw

he used to come on very often and he would particularly when we were in Greece he was a Englishmen [Irish-American] who had defected to Germany and he was on the radio don't know if you might have heard of Tokyo Rose did the same thing in Japan but Haw-Haw he used to come on and say and how are our friends the Australians the Greece and greyhounds….he used to call us how are the Greece and greyhounds today

and you know still running fast you know and all that the propaganda sort of thing but that was about all we used to hear from Germany

Yeah we used to laugh at that yeah Mr Menzies’ Greece and greyhounds we were he used to refer to us as yeah unfortunately we knew he was pretty right we knew better that he did that

we were not going too well

No from far as the Australians were concerned they took prisoners for sure and they sent them into Stalag 3

mostly Australian prisoners went to I believe some went to Italy they treated them as far as we reports after the war anyhow from some of our fellows that they treated them alright you know food was scare but nevertheless it was enough some of them are balloted out onto farms a lot of our boys were farmers before they went overseas

but those farmers treated them alright they didn't sleep in the same house as them but they ate most of the same food that they had from what we can gather I think they treated them alright that’s the reports that we had anyhow

Yeah it was good very comforting to know that the boys would alright because you know we lost very

good mates but you know it was a different matter with the Japanese of course they treated their prisoners terribly

Off the island

No I don't think so I we got down to Kalamata and there were allot of big olive groves in Kalamata Kalamata olives are very well known we stripped our guns of our dial sites and that which were the highly technical instruments and very hard to replace I believe and of course we were given orders that we were to take them with us

and I was a gun layer at the time so I had to make sure I had the dial site too I was required to carry that and they got a shell and rammed it down the muzzle and they put another one up in the breach and rammed it in the breach so I mean there was no way the Germans could use those guns because they'd have to cut 'em in half to get them out but possibly they didn't have ammunition to fit them anyhow

they were I know the French used 75mm guns and our 25-pounders were 88mm its only since Nato and those countries that there standardised on the allied countries’ standard on interchangeable guns and interchangeable ammunition they wouldn't

have had ammunition available to them but they would have had a job to get that shell out of the muzzle it was rammed down the muzzle and the you didn't you put the shell in and you put the cartridge in the cartridge was about that long but the objectives would take that cartridge out when the shell had gone but there was no way you would get that shell out

unless you drilled a hole in it it’s got to come out somehow or rather so the guns would be pretty useless to them they might have been able to take them down and melt them down because I think they were short of iron they possibly took them away and melted them down and made their own guns out of them or did something with them but they certainly couldn't have used them.

the

No the only thing no we didn't because we wouldn't have the capacity to boobytrap so much the infantry would've or the engineers would’ve had the capacity to do that we could only render our guns inoperable but they decided that they would like to fire one put a

cartridge in a fire it would just blow the cartridge to pieces so we didn't booby trap any the engineers may have boobytrapped stuff I don't know

Yeah well that would have been done by specialist groups

My reaction was

it wasn't a big jetty it was a fairly small jetty down there and the destroyers just came up alongside they didn't actually stop they just crept past very slowly we leaped on well first of all we were glad to get on but secondly I like to keep warm and I got a spot near the stack you know and I thought I'm right here but when we got

out to sea and we were transferred onto the troopship and I thought oh I lost me good spot plus I thought the destroyer would be a lot faster than the troop ship anyhow

At night and we got I got out anyhow and my mates we knew it was we were told it was the last destroyer because

when we jumped on and it was starting to get a bit of a gap between it and the wall we said to a couple of other mates look come on jump no they said no we’ll catch the next one you know it’s too far out well catch the next one we said we'll catch you when you jump no but of course the pommy sailor said well this is the last one mate he said we’re not going to get caught in the daylight here so he we got to get out to sea we’ll be back for sure

so they were taken prisoner you know we did see some of them after that war

Well I think as far as I think I might have mentioned it as far as I'm aware we only got 400 men in and we only got 92 out so that was just on 300 taken prisoner

Well we knew that there were a lot left at the embarkation point I think there might have been I know one of our fellows who did get left behind

when the Germans got down to Kalamata there was quite a fight there he got on he commandeered a fishing boat and he did get back on a fishing boat he was recommended for a Victoria Cross actually he eventually got when he came back to Australia that fellow he joined Z Force which used to be drop behind enemy lines and he was eventually caught

and executed by the Japanese in Sumatra but he took a lot of very unnecessary risk he was determined to get a Victoria Cross but he should have got it really but he didn't live far away he came from Beecroft here in Sydney a fellow named Johnny Sachs

I think he won a military medal but he killed a lot of Germans and he at Z Force they were sort of parachutes and behind the lines and he and his mate got caught we heard he’d been executed and of course after the war his brother was still in our unit Tommy Sachs

Well I think he might have told he didn't tell me personally but I understood he used to say that he was you know he'd really was going to try and win a VC they have a very short life expectancy VC winners I can tell you

yep

No they were all evacuees from Greece oh yeah about 6000 of us I think it had normal accommodation for 2000 troops

you could sit down or stand up but you couldn't lie down no food you went past a little window and they gave you a cup of tea and a packet of cigarettes I think you could have got an Aspro if you had a wanted one Aspros were big time in the army

mm

They

Well the each troop had a first-aid person but they our bloke everyone else they were nicknamed ‘Aspro’ they were always known as Aspros because that’s all they a couple of Aspros you’ll be right mate

Well I think the main concern was that there were still a lot of our mates left there

I think the general feeling was we you know we live to fight another day but what’s happened to our mates you know what’s gonna happen to them and that persisted I suppose for a long time but we I think we only heavily bombed for about 2 days the first day of course we were in Stuka range and it was

pretty heavy bombardment but we had 132 machine guns we had on the deck it kept them up then the 2nd day the Dorniers the longer range bombers I think after that I don't recall really I think it took about 4 days to get back I don't recall the exact length of time time didn't seem to be all that important on that boat because you didn't do much about it

but we eventually got back to Alexandria

Look it was round about that time yes you see

the desert campaign really started in the winter time that was in late January February March so it would have been about April when we were yeah I don't remember having recall at the time that it was Anzac Day but now that you’ve mentioned I vaguely remember that there was something about that time

it certainly would have been in April because the general fighting in Libya was in the winter time because it was pretty hot in the summer and so I'd say it would be when we went to Greece it'd be coming onto spring their spring which I s’pose December January February would have been their winter and March April and May would have been their spring

so it was certainly I vaguely there something now that you have mentioned it sort of vaguely rings a bell it was certainly about that time and it could have been on you know Anzac Day

oh yes it was oh yes oh yes if you were in camp certainly it was and

if you were in camp in a near a town somewhere then wed possibly march through the town you know they'd have their commemoration but of course when you were actually fighting no you wouldn't have time to take a day off I don't we had any free days

At Crete

Well we weren't in Crete

Didn't go to Crete

We were the only ship that got back

straight back to Alexandria

Ask the next question

I do know about Crete of course I think it was the first time in that war that they had a very very extensive use of paratroopers

We did have some of our fellows in Crete

but we were lucky enough to get out of it

Lucky Lardelli yeah that’s it

After we came back to Australia

We came back to Australia in 1942

We went when we got back from

Greece into Palestine we got fully reinforced and then we had the regiment was complete and I think I mentioned we went into Ceylon first for 3 months and then we came back to Australia we came back we landed at Melbourne and we came up I think to Seymore and then we came up to Sydney by train we went

we reported to the showground in Sydney and we were given leave I think it was only for a week but we took a fortnight

Mainly drank and played up you know had a good time

We'd all meet in the Kings Head Hotel and you know

and reminisce and have we were just lucky and happy to be home oh we spent time with family and other people but we what really happened we reported back to the showground after a week and we said you know where are we going and they said your going to Wallgrove we said geez Wallgrove I said where’s that they said

right out in the bush somewhere but it wasn't of course it was only out past Rooty Hill so we took my mate and I said ah look this is silly were not going back there we'll have a few more days well when we had a few more days we found out that the boys were coming back on leave into Sydney from Wallgrove we realised it was after a week we thought we'd better go back and we came back

but we only spent a couple of weeks you know before we went up to Brisbane I just have to think about that I think we went to Greta from Wallgrove which is up near Newcastle and then yes it would have been Greta then we went from Greta up to Brisbane and we

were sent down to the we went to Eagle Farm racecourse and we were stopped there for the day then we were to go on board the ship that night or that afternoon at the Hamilton Reach you know Brisbane you knew Brisbane don't you

The Hamilton the Hamilton wharf down there

you've got to board ship there on an American liberty ship called the Joseph Lane

just straight down in the hold there was no bunks or anything. The were up on deck I think and and the running water going through them and we could only get 2 meals a day on that boat because they couldn't the facilities couldn't provide any more meals than that they could only by the time they finished one lot of

meals and got another rostered group went through they only had time to give you 2 meals a day anyhow we went we got up to Moresby OK.

that was run by US crew yes

Yeah well They wasn't troops they were sailors sailors but they were

alright because we were the first time they'd run across Australian soldiers or transported them because it was a cargo ship it wasn't a troop ship cargo ship and we got on well with the cooks anyhow we got to know one of the cooks and we got a bit of extra food from there and we eventually got we eventually got to Moresby

mmh

Well we didn't twist their arms actually we the officers’ dining room was we found out where that was and we made sure we took up a position underneath the windows the windows were there and the cooks would hand us out a bit of the officers’ food so we got a little bit so we didn't actually

they were a good crew but there was one very funny thing happened when we got to New Guinea because I was a lance bombadier when we went arrived back in Australia and by the time we'd got to New Guinea the promotion list had come through and I had been promoted to a full bombadier and so we had to go before the colonel because

we were AWL for a week you see it was the old story you know prisoner and escort you know quick march turn left remove your hat and belt as you went in for some reason we had big canvas belts I think they could be used as a bit of a weapon so anyhow the CO said to me he said look here Lardelli he said I everyone who went AWL we’re fining

them £10 but he said I've got a bit of a problem with you because I can't fine you as a lance bombadier because you're now a bombadier so he said what do you think I ought to do with you he said I don't know I think perhaps you'd better make a donation to regimental funds I said I'll make a small one and he said you'll make £10 same as everybody else you know what

typical army routine I had to go to see the RSM and he said yeah what do you want Lardelli I said I want to make a donation to regimental funds so he said I'll march you into to see the battery captain into the battery captain he said yes Lardelli what do you want I said I want to make a donation into regimental funds he said that’s very kind of you of course he knew the story he said how much do you want to donate I said £10 he said that’s very generous and they wrote out a gave me a receipt

Yeah anyway I was promoted sergeant very soon after that

Yeah well the CO always looked very kindly on we originals you know we'd been through the Middle East and we'd been through Greece and we were good soldiers we were really good gunners not just me but we were we were pretty top gunners

and he gave us a bit of preferential treatment I think

no well being a Sydney unit like having joined in Sydney coming back to Sydney was good because you know I felt sorry for some of those boys who came from Bourke and right out in the country areas because by the time they got home and got back again their week was gone

so it was good to be back really good to be back and then of course we knew the Japanese were on and we were I can honestly say that we were very keen to get stuck into those Japs

Well because they were threatening Australia

Yeah and we

but the army had convinced us that we were the best anyhow long before that anyway we reckoned that we'd fix them up pretty smartly anyhow

well they told us that of course we knew the history they were coming down through the islands but we heard some of the atrocities and that was possibly feed to us anyhow to increase the hate

oh how badly they mistreated prisoners and so forth it turned out to be absolutely true so we really didn't really take any prisoners the very in fact I felt sorry for one poor fellow he was a Japanese but an Australian

Japanese who was an interpreter he got shot he just happened to be a Jap you know and he looked like a Jap

oh well he was just mistaken for one but we were really absolutely convinced that we would stop them and were very happy

to be killing them so I don't know it’s a different sort of a feeling altogether to what it was you know when your homeland and as I said by this time we'd developed a great affection for Australia we really though you know well worth fighting for and the thought that our sisters and brothers might have been subjected to Japanese occupation was a very strong motivation force

you know to really get stuck into them

so I don't know we just were anxious to get into it and anxious to we didn't mind the fact that we only got about a fortnight’s leave when we came back from the Middle East we thought that the sooner we get into them the better I think if anything when went first it took us quite a while before we actually moved

into battle and that was a frustrating period we were camped outside at a base called Bootless Bay and waiting for our turn to get up because we couldn't use artillery on the Kokoda Track because we couldn't get them up there

Well we heard that again and I’ve got to be very careful how I say this I s’pose

we felt very confident that once the 16th Brigade got stuck into the Japs that we were to halt them because we weren't too sure oh we had misgivings I s'pose about how well trained and how keen the conscripts were as we used to call them you know

but we felt very confident that the we had the advantage I suppose in that we had done some training in the semi-jungle type of thing in Ceylon

We felt very happy about that though our own troops and it was the same when we went to Wau it the 17th Brigade again the 6th Division brigade that we had absolute confidence in

No well no that wasn't their fault no we don't say that they were not courageous people not for one minute but we had learnt to survive as I mentioned earlier and we had learnt the tricks to the trade sort a thing a lot better than they did and we had

the durability I think because we had been better trained

Well we did the same sort of training in artillery as we would you were just constantly training we took up a position at Kalutara I think I did say earlier in the interview

that they had sunk most of the aircraft carriers and they had flown all those planes onto land-based strips and that they'd had a number of those in at Kalutara lot of those planes weren’t fighter planes so much as oh they were called Fairey something or rather but they were mostly torpedo bombers one torpedo ones

and we were defending that particular strip but you never stopped training you always doing

yeah quite different quite different in that again you know I think in those

sort of countries if you can beat the terrain you can beat most of the unit and I think that helps a lot we'd been used to training in rubber plantations and that sort of thing in Ceylon and I think we'd become more acclimatised to the jungle conditions with the heat and the sweat and that sort of thing so I think we were much better prepared

than those troops that had come up say from you know had been trained in Victoria and stuck into the jungle

Well the terrain around Moresby was fairly flat the aerodrome

that we were near there was called the 7 Mile strip it was a pretty long drome it wasn't seven mile long it was seven mile out of Morseby actually but that area around Moresby and Bootless Bay was fairly low coastal area and fairly flat so it was quite different to the sort of terrain that we were going to go into except that and we might have been again

lucky I s'pose once we got into Wau the Wau valley was fairly undulating country and surrounded by very high mountains but the valley itself where all the fighting took place and where we had gun emplacements was not unlike the sort of land we'd been training in around Moresby I think wasn't like the Kokoda Track

the tracks into Wau with the Mubo Track and the Black Cat Track were very rugged that’s were the infantry were there but because we on a flatter terrain and more undulating terrain we could blast away at the mountains without being in them if you know what I mean we had that advantage so we were pretty well set up as a normal artillery

positions we could deploy our four guns as a troop and the other troop could supply to army and have a forward battery and a rear troop much like you would in a conventional warfare except that the Japs to get down to there had to come down and the infantry had to hold them

and but the different between those 2 tracks and the Kokoda was that they didn't have the advantage of artillery whereas in the Wau campaign we did because we could form the flatter ground we could blast the tracks anyhow whereas you couldn't get the guns up into the Kokoda so they did a lot tougher than we did actually and so our campaign there was very

successful and reasonably quick and although we were at Wau for seven months I think the last 3 months we didn't there was no more fighting we'd knocked them out of the valley and they had retreated back to Salamaua and that was before see later on the 7th Division landed at Salamaua and Wau and they cleaned them out from there

so what remnants came out came back from Wau were a bit sick sad and sorry by the time they got to Salamaua you know they'd a run out they'd a been very short of food and the walked back and the only way they could get back was to get up through very rugged country to get out of Wau the only trouble was

when we came to leave we had to walk out too because they could take us out by plane because the airstrip you couldn't load 'em the most you could get out on a plane was 2 wounded at the time because the slope of the drome

Well

well what we were doing when we knew we were gonna be eventually going Wau and we knew we were going to be flown in was the first time they had flown guns into any those locations and we knew they were going to have to be man handled when we got them there so we spent most of our time pulling the guns to pieces they'd draw a plan on the ground of a DC-3

and we'd stack the guns on there and then we would rush in and reassembled them and take them away again we did that like the army just repetitive things all the things you did it until you were perfect at it and then after we'd done that we loaded them and took them off actual DC-3 planes to Moresby so by the time were we were ready to go to Wau we

knew exactly where we were going to load the plane we knew exactly how we were going to unload it and we knew we were going to be able to assemble those guns very very quickly and guns were pretty heavy things so now to get them down to size now the barrel was used the biggest thing but nevertheless 4 men could handle that and get it reassembled under onto the buffer and cooperators

I forget exactly how long but I know that I don't think anyone could have done it any faster because we'd done it so often you see I don't remember I wasn't when we got the guns into Wau the Japs were still down the bottom of the strip that there were the snipers were still

having a shot at the gunners trying to assemble the gun because I was at the time GPO acting I was I left the drome and moved back to find the gun position that we were going to put the guns so I didn’t I wasn't actually at the drome when the guns were being assembled I was preparing a gun position for the gunners when they got assembled and we were going to bring them into action

and it took some time because to establish a where actual magnetic north was a bit a you know we longer than you would in a civilised country because the maps were more accurate in civilised countries and you'd have trig stations which subordinates which were known they'd all be registered we didn't have any of that in New Guinea you had to sort of

you went everything you did in the army you were trained to do they really didn't leave anything to chance much they always whilst you might have trained in the Middle East to lay the guns out on a certain bearing by using the trig station you also and you knew you were going to New Guinea where they mightn’t have trig stations just in case you didn't have it you went through a series of exercises as to how you established north

So if you hadn't and there was a set procedure for it

well first of all because in those days your weapons were magnetic and even your watch was magnetic they’re not now they’re antimagnetic now so you had to take the watch off and take anything that was

metal off your body and make sure your gun’s from you and because when you set up what was known as a director which was a little sort of theodolite type of thing and you had to swing that compass 12 times and take a mean of those readings and that would be as close as you were gonna to get to magnetic north having established that you could then established the zero lines for the

guns so that but fortunately very little left to chance in the sort of training that we had because we had years of it and this is where I suppose the experienced soldier that had been through all the things that were likely to happen whether they were gonna happen or not you'd been through them because at that time we'd had

you know 3.5 years of experience and that was a long time the poor fellows that went up the Kokoda for example they might have only had 3 or4 months’ 6 months’ training and they were very and they didn't have even if they had a been able to get mountain guns up there unless they'd had the training that we'd had they’d have a big problem so anyhow so whilst I was in Moresby

I sort of was involved in the loading and unloading of the guns but we would do the training as well on establishing the where north was and establishing how you would lay out the guns on a particular line and we were trained for it even though we thought it would never happened we used to think to yourself mob of bloody

fools you know course there's got to be trig points somewhere you know no no the countries it got to be on the map but the maps weren’t worth 2 bob in New Guinea

mmmh

Yeah well you know the army’s lot smarter than a lot of people think

we used that procedure and we laid the guns out

but all the only trouble was the maps were all out they reckoned I'd laid the wrong line out but I hadn't the maps were 8 degrees out and our first action of course was to support the infantry against the Japs down on the strip which was not hard but when we

the Japs were a big concentration down in the valley at a place called Wandumi and the Wandumi ridge and when we there was 2 villages at the end of the valley Wandumi and Ballambi was named after a person who owned the big farm there so we laid the guns out and according to the map we were going to hit

Wandumi and we hit Ballambi which was in enemy hands anyhow and we realised that we had to shoot in the targets and forget the maps and that was not unusual in that sort of situation because once the battles had settled down and your side had got on top there’s a survey regiment would come through and then actually survey your positions in for

you and established wherever north was north was and we were so close to being accurate that they said to us well now you’re only 3 minutes out 3 minutes is not very much you know in a 360 degree thing and they said well look you’re almost spot-on your system it worked and where you thought you'd established north that’s where north is

the maps were wrong but then again there was a procedure for this because you used to have what was the command post you used to what they have an artillery board which was like a big draughtsman board and on the top of that it was in there in an arc that was in there and an arm with a graduated in yards so you set that up with a zero line in the middle of the board and then as you shot your targets in

you recorded every target the line range angle of site and you did that and every 4 hours from the air force you got what they called a meteor telegram which was a weather report and all you needed to need for that was we knew what the barometric pressure was because it was gonna be you know it varies an inch when every thousand you’re up in the air your eye that you would then correct

those targets you would reduce the temperature to 60 degrees and the wind speed varying to nil and so you could reengaged those targets at any time irrespective of the weather you'd just have to correct them for the meteor and the weather forecast was spot-on because you got one every 4 hours not like today I mean actually it was better then really than than what you'd get now no doubt about that

I just think that it was because it was so often and all the air force would do would send a balloon up and take some readings and do a few things but they knew what the barometric pressure was and they knew what the humidity was you see a shell won't go as far through rain but it will through a clear sky so you'd have to adjust it for that

Well you only did that you only did that in long lulls in the fighting because you wouldn't have time to do it otherwise but what you would plot them in as you actually shot them in to start with so that was near enough anyhow if you had to reengage the target

because you'd had your forward observation officers who would correct it if it was wrong but if you had to bring fire down of a nighttime it was the one thing the only bad part about artillery was they'd put down harassing fire of a night to keep the Japs awake they could start on that target and you'd shift to that one then to that one and all of a sudden you'd shift back again so they wouldn't know where you were going to fire the trouble was the gunners had to be awake to do it

you'd kept the Japs awake all night but you'd hell of a job to keep yourself awake you know but you got that way in the end that with that type of shelling that it didn't have to be done like quickly because it was a sort of a as it was called harassing fire so you could run the gun crew with three men of a night time so your 3 men would do you know

maybe 4 hours and they'd go sleep and then the other 3 would take over for the next 4 hours but they'd sleep in the gun pit because the guns wouldn't wake them they were that tired the guns wouldn't wake them you'd get that used to them you'd be able to sleep through gunfire get used to it yeah I've actually seen gunners lift of the ground with the blast of the gun and not wake up

I reckon I could sleep on a barbed wire fence really

Any

yeah there was heavy fighting on the ground well the first day we went up because the DC-3s couldn't fly above 10,000 ft but the mountains around Wau were over 10,000 ft

but there were gaps which they used to fly through but often and very often and particularly almost every day I suppose the clouds would come down and you couldn't go through the gap but that would happen at certain times so the first day we went up we could get through the gap because of the cloud and the second day we went up and he said you can't land you got to go back to Moresby because the Japs had taken the bottom half of the strip you can't get there

yeah but I mean if you couldn't get down you couldn't get down so you know we'll bide our time they reckoned the 17th Brigade would push them back off that strip anyhow so the third day they'd done that during the night and the third day we got the planes down and we got our guns assembled we only got two guns in the

first day and the next day we got another 2 and that was the whole of A Troop and then gradually we got B Troop came in and that was the whole of the battery in then

well we opened up those two guns over open sites because we didn't you know didn't have time to settle in and go through all the procedure of getting north and so forth you couldn't fire open site so they had

the ordinary dial site which is for long distance one but you also had an open site for use on firing on tanks or on directly into the enemy well the infantry told us were they wanted the shells put down and so they got stuck into that in open fire that had the effect of making the Japs retreat to some distance

away from they strip so that was alright that we from then on in we had control of the strip and it went on from there until eventually we cleaned them out of the whole valley

Very intensive yeah

Clear the valley yeah well once they cleared the valley they only had the rugged mountains to sort of contend with

and that made it difficult for them to get supplies in that created the situation where they had to really abandon the valley and what was left of them and make their way back as best they could to Salamaua where they had control of that particular town

Well that

sort of warfare you didn't have the creeping barrage like you had in the desert it different sort of altogether it really just what called on for the infantry and the liaison with our forward observation officers to know out certain targets because they were individual right the Japs are there give them a blast

Saw a lot of dead bodies afterwards but didn't see any no a lot of bodies yeah

Well we moved up you know as we moved up they just abandoned their dead they used to stink a bit I tell you in the tropical

eh

No they were just sort of they were still in uniform and they were but you'd see maggots and things you know you'd

avoid them as much as you could you know

I think in the early part I think I don't know what the Japanese did in the early part what they did with their sick with their wounded. I don't think in the early part they had that many wounded because it was a bit like a blitzkrieg type of thing coming down but

they certainly abandoned a lot of wounded in New Guinea later on well I don't know that they any wounded in those conditions had a very short life expectancy anyhow and we took very few prisoners most of I don't think I ever saw a badly wounded Jap I think they were all dead by the time we got there

the stories that they used to boobytrap themselves and all sorts of things but we being gunners of course we didn't the infantry were confronted with those problems not us by the time we got to them by the time we didn't actually fight them hand to hand like the infantry did we just blew ‘em apart you know

from a distance but they used to call us the seven-mile snipers what a 7 mile in New Guinea is oh much closer than that I tell you

Well when we first they fired over open sites which maybe a thousand yards

but from then on in once we got our gun positions established we became more conventional artillery action.

No we didn't have a barrage at Wau we engaged in individual targets

We had a barrage at Bardia and those places

A

decisive victory

Well we certainly knew that we'd pushed them out of the valley we knew where they'd gone the only way they could go to escape was to go back to Salamaua and then we certainly knew exactly that they were out of the valley because we after we were satisified

in case there was a counter-attack there was always and in case in the army you had to be prepared for it so we knew exactly where instead of having to shoot in targets we actually went out and we surveyed in targets there were likely to be targets occurred they were all numbered and they were plotted on the artillery board so that if there was a counter-attack we would know

exactly day or night were we could bring fire down to bear on them but we didn't have to do that because they never came back but nevertheless we spent a lot of time preparing in case they had and then it was decided that that was clear the .. had attacked Salamaua and it was safe for us to pull out altogether and come back get back to

Australia again train again

Well we knew we'd won that battle no doubt about that because I mean it was obvious we won the battle because when there were no Japs there left to fight what hadn't been killed had made their way back down to the coast.

Yep

Yeah well I can tell you the exact I think

It's a very classic example how you you know you don't have to worry unless you need to you you know what I mean but you became very expert in knowing where shells were going to land and well that is a bit hard to explain because different sounds and different noises that tell you the story but with bombing of course it’s different again. Now what actually happened we just got 2 reinforcements up that

morning flown in by plane and we'd allocated them to guns to part of a gun crew but because they were reinforcements you always found a job that needed to be done because everyday you had a duty sergeant in the gun position to look after make sure that hygiene was properly .. because the health of the crew was very important various jobs needed to be done so we needed to dig a unit

....latrine well on this particular case because we were at a place called the Slaughterhouse and we had a creek behind the gun position we had to dig in front of the guns well that was alright because if you couldn't hang out that long enough for a bit of a break in the shelling you know so we got these 2 fellows I was duty sergeant this day and we got these 2 fellows out and we said right were going to dig this latrine well

A Troop were the forward troop and that was our troop and we were at the gun position was the old slaughterhouse where we used to kill the cattle for meat and Wau which we weren't all that keen on a place called the Slaughterhouse incidentally we could have had a happier name than that and B Troop were further back down near the Wau strip and this particular day

a very large flight of bombers obviously being sent to try and knock the guns out because as they come up from Bulolo side of Wau we could hear them they bombed (UNCLEAR) fortunately we didn't have any casualties there we discovered later on but as they came up the valley I said to these 2 reinforcements

I said now look I'll keep an eye on these planes because I'll know when they drop their bombs because the reason I would know that was because they release their bombs the bomber release mechanism was activated by compressed air and so when they the bomb bays would be open well you could see the bomb bays open and they had certainly bombs left

and then I was watching the planes and I saw the little puff white it appeared like smoke that would be the compressed air hitting the verified atmosphere the cold air up at the top and I said to these 2 reos I said this lot’s for us for sure I want you to get down in the trench and start to dig which was going to be the ... latrine trench and I said and

now for God sake keep your head down because I can tell you know these bombs are right coming onto us and of course they did because you can tell by the trajectory but I felt one of these blokes move his head as the bombs were falling and of course next thing he said I've been hit and I said of course he’d put his hat up the fool you know

he'd been hit in the back of the neck so blood was coming out so I went to stick me thumb on it to try and stop the blood and the thumb went right in into his neck so it was a fairly big piece of shrapnel so I yelled out to the gun position I think the nearest gun sergeant I said hey Jack get Aspro over here quick and lively I said because we got a bloke wounded here in the meantime we all carried you had to carry it all the time

was a field dressing which was sort of a pad of cotton and bandage I stuck that on him until Aspro arrived and he took over from there well I think the poor fellow and I can't remember his name I think he was known as Nugget I think that was his nickname anyhow so they

came back got a jeep and took him back to the casualty clearing station and put him on a plane and took him off to hospital somewhere I don't know where he went to hospital possibly back to Australia and that was his experience of action

About 2 hours’ flat he was there poor fellow

I don't know how much damage was done but he was conscious

and of course by that time shock would have set in anyhow so really I don't know how severe it was but he was certainly severe enough to be evacuated from the area

No no no I think in New Guinea particularly in New Guinea you had more sickness than actual physical casualties we had a few

but not all that many actually killed we lost quite a few later on in the next campaign in the Wau to Wewak campaign but with malaria and beri beri and scrub typhus scrub typhus was a very dangerous thing

scrub typhus yeah

I don't know it was quite a killer of troops

Oh from a mite that was in somewhere I don't know where just one of those jungle things or tropical things that was very very virulent we had no malaria in Wau it was only later on in the war when we went down the coast that we got a lot of malaria but Wau didn't have too much

don't think we had any beri beri yeah we used to get quite a bit of beri beri we used to go to old Aspro and say now what’s the matter with you and I say I'm beri beri sick and they'd give you a big injection of vitamin B and a tin of Vegemite and they'd say have a couple of Aspros and go back

A lot of Aspros passed out yeah beri beri was caused by the fact that in places like Wau for a long time they couldn't fly food in and everything was dehydrated you got dehydrated meat dehydrated cabbage dehydrated no vitamin B in them all the vitamin had gone and you must have some fresh food some

vegetable particularly otherwise beri beri affected that you your arms went numb and the way they tested they’d stick needles into you until you had no feel but when you clenched your hand of course blood would pop out of the needle holes you’d start to feel them well that’s vitamin

B injections would fix you up in no time you can still use them but they were still numb but once you got your injections and you got your Vegemite anyhow you right you know it wasn't serious thing at all just you know if you had let it go without treatment I think it could become very serious but it was very easy to treat

No no

Well well you see high level bombing in the

German planes no they was they must have had a different system it could have been electrically still you knew if they you could mostly see the bombs if they were you know not too high the Stukas of course you could see them all the time of course because they were dive-bombing

they were a different thing altogether they wouldn't let their bombs go until they were maybe a couple of hundred feet above

Yes its a funny thing with Stukas particularly well we only had that problem with them in Greece and on the ships they weren't as accurate as you would think and the mountainous country I think there must have been funny air currents

or something because you would see the bombs coming straight at you but as the bombs they'd let the bombs go they seem to swing away a bit whether it was the reaction to the mountainous country or whether it was to do with the speed of the plane as it came down but they didn't seem to come down dead straight somehow but there was plenty of them

Well we went twice to New Guinea the Wau campaign I think because of its similarly to unconventional

terrain we were something what we were more used to we sort of recognised the pattern of operation was somewhat similar the fact that we were developing there air superiority

was you know confirmed our belief that without it you have a big problem in any war I can remember one day and I think this stuck in my mind very much so see when the Biscuit Bombers would come in that’s the DC-3s above them just above them they had a flight of

fighter planes Bell Aerocobras then up above that they had Kittyhawks and then right up above them they had the Lockheed Lightnings they were the twin-fused large planes very fast fighter planes in those days very very fast one particular day the fighter Zeros attacked well they made a big mistake because they attacked the Kittyhawks first

and there were we counted 43 Zeros this particular day and they had either lost or weren't aware of the fact that the Lockheed Lightnings were right up above them and of course the Lockheed Lightning swooped down on them and they actually got every Zero the 43 of them and across the valley even were we could see them falling before they got over the top of the Black Cat Mountain we saw about 30

down on that particular day and in a very short space of time

Yeah watching the whole dogfight yeah and you didn't often and we were winning it which was important 'cause then the natives used to speak pidgin English and we used to get great fun out of the natives because we'd say to them the Lockheed Lightnings we'd say eh boy what name that fella we say him fella

balus two-ass belongin' to America a balus was a a pigeon.. and the fact they had two tails they were two assed him fella balus two-ass belongin’ to America we used to think that was very funny

No not very much

Ah they were very much yeah but

they were they were like children they were very not naive I s'pose but they needed to be treated like children they were big lumps of people you know but they usually mostly controlled by a group which was a group called ANGAU which is just New Guinea Rifles and

they’re a volunteer army unit which in which was dealing which was used to dealing with the working on the plantations and that working on coffee plantations and the copra plantations but most of the ANGAU people looked after the natives but you see they used a lot on the Kokoda Track because that was the only means of getting anything there

by carriers and carry out the wounded. You often see film of them taking across the fuzzy wuzzy angels as they called them but because we had access to a landing strip and we could fly wounded out and we could fly we had a few jeeps and things around the place which could transport people and the jeeps used pull our guns into new positions whereas in conventional

type of warfare each gun had its own gun tractor up there you know one or two jeeps would just take the guns out one at a time and move them up to new positions. The other thing that used to amuse us with the pidgin English was the crossguts you know the old crossguts song. What name that fella that fella you pullem I'lll pushim he come I go

shell shock

I didn't see any bad cases of it all no I think that was mostly because I think there was a lot of it in the first world war because there was a lot more artillery constant artillery barrages and constant artillery fire whereas our war was just a

... of quick moving I mean you might be subjected to you see like bombing is different to artillery gun fire or shelling is far worse than bombing because they can keep it on you for 24 hours a day 7 days a week because they can keep firing shells and they can keep the fire on you because bombers have got to go away and refuel and re.. like so you get

large periods of not being subject to it maybe you know their gonna come back again so no we didn't see I think the only thing that I would say and this happened on very rare occasions you'd get the rare occasion where you'd get a gunner

who would become gun-shy in that he would the very thought that the gun was gonna go off would make him put his hands over his ears and that and that would either pass in time and they'd get used to it or you'd give them another job on the gun position or put 'em into position where they were

either a signaller or a cook or something else a transport person or something else where they weren't subjected to that but I don't really think I saw any real cases of what you would call shell shocked like they had in the first world war

I think the only time I think and I think people worried a fair bit about this when it near the end of the war when it was obvious that the war was finishing that we were right on top of it it'd be a terrible that having gone through 6 years of it that you got killed in the last day

It did happen to some people you know we used to think Jesus Christ you know it would be terrible wouldn't it if you went through a whole ... this and then ended on the last day or something but apart from that I don't think we we didn't worry too much

I was at Wewak yeah on the gun position up on the hills at the back of Wewak yeah

Ah it was a good day

It was a real good day yeah but so we hung around there at Wewak for sometime

Cause I think it took a fair while. I think some of the some of the well as I understand some of the Japanese that were still committed wouldn't believe because it was drummed into them that to surrender would be a disgrace

you know to surrender to the enemy and the fact that you know the emperor had and the Japanese high command had said well alright it’s finished we surrender I don't think they their communications at the last later part of the war I think were pretty poor as far as the Japanese were concerned and I don't think they really quite believe it themselves for some time some of those people

Well

Well we knew we because we knew we were gonna come home because you now we knew the war had finished you know Hiroshima just was first step and then Nagasaki when they when that was the finish of the war Japan

capitulated and the pre... resigned and so forth and then we were told well we would be going home but you'll be going home in a certain order. Those married men who have got six years’ service with children will go first and then you'll get points for the number of years’ service that you have and then you will get extra points for the number of overseas years that you'd served

whether you were single or not and so I suppose because we'd had at that time 6 years’ service and 4.5 years of that overseas even though we were young we were fairly early in the group to be sent home but we didn't come straight home we took some occupation troops Australian occupation troops into a place called Jacquinot Bay and we

dropped some more off at (UNCLEAR) in [New] Britain and then we came back to the mainland and I think we landed at Townsville and made our way down by train so only thing is because I said the two of us who were section sergeants at that time in charge of 2 guns were offered

commissions but on condition of going to Japan with the army of occupation and we said no you stick that up your jumper mate we’re going home thank you very much

well I had a fair bit

to do with Japanese particularly as mayor of Ryde because a lot of Japanese companies established there hi-tech industries in the Ryde area like Canon and all those companies are all Japanese companies and run by Japanese out here. We found them very polite people

and I can understand prisoners of war now my brother-in-law who has since died of with a TPI he was a prisoner of war and he just hated the Japanese would never ever forgive them but I think Japan's gone through a big a tremendous change the old feudal system seems to have disappeared and you

know and the industries which have been created there and the fact that they haven't had to spend a great deal of money on defence because they weren't allowed to go gave them a great opportunity to develop. Stole most of the ideas from Britain I think and America but the old story you know work harder do it better

and you'll do alright because Japanese goods before the war were crap you know but they really produced some pretty good equipment now. Pretty good stuff and I think we've got to recognise the fact that our future relies very much in trading with the Eastern bloc. We've got to live with them and I think they understand that and I think their attitude has change tremendously

I think I would much rather deal with Japanese than I would with the arrogance of South Africans

Their arrogant South Africans I think but the Japanese are very polite and I think they just want to go about their business. No I don't feel any animosity towards Japanese. My brother in law wouldn't even buy a Japanese car. He has since passed away you know.

I don't buy Japanese cars either as a matter of fact but that’s not because. I think Japanese cars are pretty good cars but I just got used to the sort of brand I've been using and stick with it

Great

Souvenir hunters yeah

I'd rather not talk about gold I don't think Bulolo Goldmining Company would be all that pleased about the gold

I did bring home a Japanese sword a Samurai sword but Gloria doesn't like guns or she doesn't like swords so I gave it away to somebody

So I do so I believe yeah

Faith

Remember

91st psalm

Well I don't remember the whole psalm

But no the thing there were various things in it which said well you know

\n[Verse follows]\n

A thousand will fall at thy our left hand\n

and ten thousand at the right hand\n but no harm will befall you\n

[A thousand shall fall at thy side,\n and ten thousand at thy right hand;\n but it shall not come nigh thee]\n

That was the most appropriate one as far as the army is concerned I think but there other things. Where you can tread [on] the viper [adder] and the various things and still they won't hurt you you know if you have faith

God will look after you you know

Well I think the fact that you know

\n[Verse follows]\n a thousand will fall at thy left hand\n and then thousand at thy right hand\n will fall but no harm will become you\n and you don't fear the arrow that flyeth by night and the or the pestilence in the day time\n

I just can't think of how it all goes but I know

The only poem I really remember and the war that had a big impact on me was Rudyard Kipling’s and I certainly know that by heart

eh

Well I can recite it all to you its not a very long poem

\n[Verse follows]\n

If you can keep your head when all about you\n Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,\n If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,\n But make allowance for the doubting too;\n If you can wait and not be tired by waiting\n Or being lied about,

don't deal in lies,\n

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,\n [And yet don’t look too good, or walk too wise:]\n

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;\n If you can think—[and] not make thoughts your aim;\n If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster\n And treat those two imposters just the same;\n If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken\n Twisted by naves to make a trap for fools,\n Foresee [Or watch] the things you gave your life to, broken,\n And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:\n

If you can make one heap of all your winnings\n And risk it on one

turn of pitch-and-toss,\n

And lose, and start again at the [your] beginnings\n And never breath a word about your loss;\n If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew\n To serve you[r turn] long after the turners [they are] gone,\n And still [so] hold on when there's nothing left in you\n Except a [the] will that says [to them]: ‘Hold on!’\n

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,\n Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,\n If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,\n If all men count with you, but none

too much;\n

If you can fill the unforgiving minute\n With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,\n Yours is the Earth and all [everything] that’s in it,\n And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!\n

Rudyard Kipling wrote that to his son

They say the psalm with the smallest name and the greatest meaning. Pretty right I think

I think mentally the thing that really had

influenced me I think its influenced my whole life is the that fact that you know friendship and comradeship means a lot to me. People are the most important things in the world. I think you've seen environment destroyed and that and I think one of our most important things I think particularly in the local in the council that you know people are the most important the environment is the next

most important and the real purpose in life is really to make those 2 things compatible with one or another otherwise your not going to have a world. Your not going to have an existence got to have both but you've got to recognise that people have got to live here they've got to develop here and the environment has got to be preserved to such a degree not by the bad greenies I don't go much on them on one of them

You know but but these farmers have got to be environmentally conscience. The do-gooders have got to be reasonable about the fact that people have got to live and without the environment you’re not going to. Yeah I think that’s being one my one of the things I've learnt first of all about life

mmph

Well I was only 17. I was 3 years I'd put my age up 3 years yeah

Yeah I think I learnt a lot. I think I learnt what life is all about and how precious it is

As I say I learnt a lot about people and that’s been

a big help to me in my whole business life as well recognise the you know someone said to me once Mick you don't have to be a brain now I had to leave school at 14 you don't have to be an Einstein to make money you only got to look at what people are making money out of you don't have to invent it but see what they making work harder at it and do it better and you make he like

he gave me the experience of a wheel. An old Chinaman invented the wheel and they executed him because he did you know and someone came along and made out of wood and then someone came and put spokes in it and the wheelright made a lot of money and then someone put a metal tyre on it blacksmiths made a lot of money Mr Dunlop came along and invented a pneumatic tyre put it on the wheel made a lot of money Mr Goodyear did it better Mr Pirelli came along did it

better still Mr Timken came along and put bearings in it they all made a fortune out of the wheel that some old Chinaman invented thousand years ago

Who got executed yeah