Australians at War Film Archive

Well, I was born in Neutral Bay in Sydney and my father was a fisherman and my eldest brother, Don and myself, we used to have to go out with my father, fishing,

and he used to fish at night. And he was a prawn – trawling for prawns and then we’d come home in the morning, we’d have to have a bath and get dressed and go to school. And as you know, before the war, The Depression was on, everybody had to try and make a quid because everybody was unemployed and my other uncles they owned three ferry boats on Sydney Harbour, so I

used to have to go down and work as deckhands, on these ferry boats. So I could earn pocket money and a bit of money for the house and then in 1940, when this war broke out, and they were starting to recruit people to go to the war. And all my school friends, at the school where I was going to, they all put their ages up so that they could

enlist. And my father, he signed on the Queen Elizabeth in the engine room to do his little bit towards the war. And in 1941, my eldest brother, Don, who is two years older than me, he signed on the Queen Mary in the engine room. And then I said, “Right.” So I was fifteen at the time,

so I signed on the Queen Mary as a deck boy. And that was the start of my sea career.

Well, it was quite amazing, you’re talking about your school life, in those days, to the way the school life is today, if we missed a day at school, we’d have the truant

inspector down to our house and there was no such thing as having days off, or wagging school, because your parents would really bloody give you a hiding. My father used to use a big blade razor to shave and he had this great big razor strop which he used to really hammer us with that if we didn’t toe the line. And even at school,

if you didn’t toe the line there or you wasn’t doing your bloody lessons properly, the teacher would cane you. And it was quite common. He just pull you out in front of the class. Yes, it’s most amazing when you look back at your school years now, and in the winter, everybody used to have to bring a little bit of fire wood or a bit of coal or something to school, because we all had

fireplaces in the school and we used to have to help to keep the school warm, to keep the classroom warm. But I see now, where they’ve got these small classes of thirty odd people and I’m quite certain that the schools that I went to in my primary day and high school, the classes were a lot bigger than twenty five or thirty pupils. And it was compulsory at our school

to learn to swim. They didn’t worry about playing football or cricket but everybody had to learn to swim. When you learnt to swim then you could play other sports and every school you had to do all your first aid courses, and everything. And it was most amazing that I still remember them today, cause I still do all my

first aid, St Johns Ambulance and CPR [cardiopulmonary resuscitation] and I learned it all at school.

Well, I left school when I was fifteen. And I’d only just got into high school. But I had a very, very good time in my primary class, when I went to primary school. I remember going to kindergarten, and it’s amazing the school I went to was a very, very old school at Neutral Bay

built in the late 1800s and you see these schools today, they don’t last very long. But these old schools which they built to last in those days, my school was still a very, very popular school in Sydney and I can remember the school where my parents went to in Sydney and those schools are still schools today and they’ll be still schools in one hundred years time.

Because they were built to last, not like the schools today. And everybody, the teachers were so strict, we had all male teachers and it was most amazing how strict they were. And we had to do a lot of homework every night and when you look back now at the way the schools have changed but that’s just

natural thing. The whole world’s bloody changed.

My father, as I say, he was a fisherman. And his father before him was a fisherman. As a matter of fact I can trace my family back to Portuguese, we’re a very, very old seafaring family and we

have got a very big record in the shipping office in George Street North in Sydney, the Taylor family have been going to sea as long as they’ve got records in the office.

My mother? It’s amazing the way you look at the people today. My mother never stopped work. And I said, I was brought up during the time of

the Depression and my mother used to have to go out and do laundry. My father used to go fishing at night and because there was nobody working, he could not sell his catch and it was quite common for us to take fish and prawns to school, to feed all our school mates because their parents weren’t working and there was no dole or nothing in those days like you’ve got

today. Everybody helped everybody else. And I’d take prawns to school. Some of our other friends there, they used to be a bakehouse in Neutral Bay where I lived and they’d bring half loafs of bloody bread. And we would give the kids prawns and they’d eat prawns and bread and you think about it now and they say, “Heavens above! They were certainly well off.” But everybody, it was so hard with everybody being unemployed and

course when the war broke out, everybody wanted to enlist in the war. And of course, everybody put their age up so that they could do their bit for Australia.

Well, they had these people going around advertising and they had it in the papers and that. And they were recruiting and they were calling for

volunteers, and everybody wanted to volunteer. And it was mostly the single people, the younger people who were volunteered, because people going to school, they could see a really change in life, why go and study when you can go away to war? And earn some money. And your clothes are supplied and everything.

I never wore shoes, I was twelve years old before I wore a pair of shoes. And every Sunday, I used to have to go to Sunday School and I’d take pennies and halfpennies to put in the plate. Yes and as I say, I look back now and I was in the church choir and I used to wear a great big Eton collar. Yes. When

you look back on those days now, how the world’s changed.

No, I don’t. It was 1939 and I would have been going to primary school then I would have been just finishing my primary school. No, I don’t remember the exact date when war broke out.

Well, my father, he had always been a seaman. He used to always work in the engine room. And so all my relations were all seamen and we knew that that was what we were all going to do and it was stressed to us that we’d be going away to sea when

we were old enough. And when this position came up, when they were advertising for crew for the troop ship, Queen Mary, she came into Sydney Harbour to be refitted as a passenger ship, to be refitted for carrying troops. And as I said, we were running ferry boats in Sydney Harbour and we used to take the passengers and that out to the Queen Mary, not actually passengers,

the people working on the ship. They were replenishing the ship from passenger ship to a troop ship. And I said, “Gee that’d be lovely to work on a ship like that, so big.” And when it came up that there was a job there, cause my brother had signed on, in the engine room, as a cleaner and my father was on the sister ship, he was on the Queen Elizabeth, working in the engine room,

and when this position came up for a deck boy, well I automatically went straight in to the shipping office in Sydney and applied for a job. And I was just turned fifteen and they accepted me. And that was the start of my sea career.

Well, she was eighty five thousand tons and she was a beautiful

ship. And I’d been on lots of ships previously but nothing like the Queen Mary. When we got off the ferry boat and you’d walk down what they’d call the working alleyway, and you’d go up to the accommodation in the forepart of the vessel into the fo’c’sle and all these bunks, she carried such a big crew, she carried a crew of two and half thousand people. And then

it was most amazing. And when I was accepted as a crew, and I was on as a deck boy and my job was to work in the bridge, up in the wheel house and so I’d leave the fo’c’sle and I’d walk down this working alleyway, I would jump into a lift and I’d go up twelve floors to the bridge, and I’d never seen anything like it. I’d get up there and it

was so high up in the sky and you look over the wing of the bridge, yes, most amazing. And from the first day that I stepped on board that vessel I never looked back.

A deck boy on the ship. My job was in the wheelhouse, in the bridge. And when we were at sea, I worked

with the quartermasters and the signalmen. And as they’d be receiving a message and all that, they’d be singing it out and I would be writing it down on a pad and then I would hand that to the officer of the watch. And sometimes the messages were sent by semaphore, sometimes they were sent by international code flags, and some they were sent with an alder signalling lamp.

And the men who were doing the signalling, the signaller he would just sing out what the message was, I would write it down, I’d hand it to the office of the watch who would give it to the captain. And then, I would have to clean all the brass and all the woodwork and we used to work four hours on and eight hours off, all the time, seven days a week.

Well, we had such a variety of crew. Most of the crew were British seamen, ninety nine per cent of them come from Liverpool. They were what they call, Liverpudlians. They were a very, very popular seafaring race. And then when they started to come out, when the ship came out here, a lot of the crew

were sent back home their contract had expired or their articles had expired and so then they were able to be replaced by Australian seamen. And course, that’s how I got my job, there was the deck boy’s job and not being very well educated, I started studying then, with all these other cadets on board the ship. Which was a very,

very big blessing for me.

Well, I wanted to improve myself, as you know, when you’re working on ships, you keep on getting promoted. You start off as a deck boy, and then after so many months or twelve months you’re promoted to an ordinary seaman. And then after been an ordinary

seaman for a couple of years, well then you sign, you do these exams and then you’re made into an able seaman. And once you are made an able seaman, if you’d like to continue on with your nautical profession, you can start and sit for your exams and get a third mate and a second mate and a mate’s certificate and a captain’s certificate, which I had got over the years. And through

serving my time on British ships, who were so well known for their high standards that it was most amazing. Any other place in the world where you work, if you have got British papers, you’ll get a job, because they’re recognised all over the world.

Before the war?

The Queen Mary had came out to Sydney to be fitted out as a troop ship. All the furniture was removed and put in store in Grace Brothers in Sydney. And then all these extra bunks and that were fitted in. So she could carry five thousand troops. And then when we started loading all our troops, we loaded Australian

and New Zealand troops for the Middle East and so we departed Sydney with five thousand troops and we steamed right across the Indian Ocean, right up through the Red Sea, up to the mouth of the Suez Canal, to Port Tewfik. And we used to discharge our troops during the day and of a night we used to have

to up anchor right out in the Red Sea, cause we were frightened of getting bombed overnight where we were. Because the other ships in the harbour there, the Georgic and them, had been all bombed at night and we would come back next morning and we’d finish discharging all our troops and then we would start and load German and Italian prisoners of war. And it was most amazing.

These German prisoners of war were so arrogant that they were kept under strict guard all the time on the ship. Whereas the Italian prisoners of war, were so nice and humble people that they used to work all round the ship with the crew and in the galley, peeling potatoes and all that. They were so nice,

you know you could see that they didn’t want to go to war. And when we left Port Tewfik the ship was long overdue for dry docking. So as we’re steaming down across the Indian Ocean, we received a message to proceed to the naval base at Trincomalee. So we went to the naval base at Trincomalee,

and we went in there and anchored and shortly after, our sister ship, the Queen Elizabeth arrived. And so we transferred all our Italian and German prisoners from the Queen Mary into the Queen Elizabeth. Because we had made arrangements to go to Singapore for dry docking, because we were long overdue

for an overhaul and a refit. So we knew that the Japanese were trying to take Singapore. But we knew that Singapore, being a naval base and an army base, it was very, very well protected from the sea. And we didn’t think that the Japs’d have any chance in the world of ever taking Singapore. But unknown to us, the Japanese

came down through Malaya, and in the back door, and took Singapore. So we were flabbergasted and being on the bridge in the Queen Mary, and we’re waiting in Trincomalee, all the crew down below, they were having bets, what was our next port of call? And my brother, being a gambler, used to get onto me and he said, “What’s doing Ray? You should know,

you’re on the bridge, you know what’s doing?” So I sneaked into the chart room and saw all these charts of Singapore on the table. And I said to my brother, “We’re off to Singapore Don because the charts are already on the table,” he says, “Excellent.” So we went down and put all these bets on, so lo and behold, next day, Singapore falls to the Japanese so we left Trincomalee

and away we went and our next port of call was New York. So we steamed halfway round the world and we got to New York and then the Americans they started refitting out the bloody Queen Mary once again. They increased the passenger accommodation so we

could carry more troops. And in places like the theatre, and these big halls on the ship, they had the bunks, seventeen high with catwalks round them so that they could carry all these troops.

Only ten days. Because they must have been notified,

we were coming to have everything ready. And when we came into New York Harbour and we tied up, we went in along side the wharf, and the big ship alongside of us was the French liner, the Normandy. And she was also being fitted out as a troop carrier and we left New York in the morning, bound for Boston, for dry docking and the morning

we left New York, the big French liner, the Normandy, caught on fire. She has been sabotaged and through the firemen trying to put her out they filled her with water and she just rolled over and sank. So we continued on to Boston and then we arrived in Boston, we went into the American naval dockyard, into the big dry dock

and we had our refit done. All the propellers were removed and everything’s fitted and the ship was repainted and we were only there about ten days in dry dock, but they had so many thousands and thousands of people working on us, it was amazing, so when we refloated out of dock and we went alongside the wharf in Boston we commenced loading troops and I’m not sure if we loaded ten

or fifteen thousand troops but we were completely full with American servicemen. So we left New York.

I had never seen anybody so well dressed. Their uniforms were shiny they were so well dressed and so well behaved and

their officers and that were very, very strict. And you look back on it now and you say, “Now we had fifteen thousand troops when we left, plus two thousand crew, how are they going to feed all these people?” So we left New York and we weren’t at sea twenty four hours, and we had a very big fire, up on the

sundeck in the bloody first class accommodation. It was an electrical short in the bulkheads and we had to stop the ship so that we did not cause any draft with the vessel moving through the water. But anyhow they put the fire under control, and then straight away we continued on our way again with an American naval escort and

we proceeded down the east coast of America, down past Florida to what they call Quay West. And we anchored there and this big oil tanker came alongside and filled us up with fuel oil. When we were ready we departed Quay West and we steamed right down the bloody Atlantic Ocean and our next port of call was Rio de Janeiro. And then we anchored in Rio,

and we took on fuel, water and stores. And while we were at sea, feeding these great quantity of troops, you see them lined up there all day. With their dixie and their little pannikin and they’d go round and round and round in circles, they used to be fed twice a day. And I have never seen anything working so smoothly.

And every morning early at daylight the normal ships’ practice, like every ship they do it. You have to wash the ship down. And when we started washing these bloody decks down we had never seen nothing like it, there was that many used condoms it used to block all the bloody scuppers and we’d just have to bloody clean them all to get rid of all the bloody water. So

it was most amazing how these American troops used to carry on.

There was no women there on board the ship, not one woman on board the ship. So when we left Rio de Janeiro we went right across the Southern Atlantic Ocean and our next port of call was Cape Town in South Africa, where once again, we had to get fuel, water and stores.

You could manage how much food you’re using feeding seventeen thousand men. Three meals a day, or two meals a day. Then we left Cape Town when we were all fuelled, stored up right across the Indian Ocean, made a landfall at Cape Leeuwin on the Western Australian tip, right across the Great Australian Bight to Wilsons Promontory, round the corner, up the east coast to Sydney,

where we discharged all our American troops. While we were in Sydney, Sir James Barrett called the father, my eldest brother and myself up and explained to us that it was satisfactory for one family to sail on the one ship during wartime.

In case the ship got sunk, they’d lose so many relations. I had four uncles on board the ship, apart from

my father and brother. So anyhow, I signed off and my brother Don signed off. And I was in Sydney then and the Queen Mary was still out at anchor, she was getting ready for another trip to bring out more troops and then I signed on a British oil tanker, called the Skandia. And I’d never worked on tankers before so

serving my time it was very, very good experience for me to sail on a different ship. So I got on this big oil tanker and as they explained to me, the crew, that we used to go round in the big convoys and our job was to fuel up all the naval vessels in the convoy. And we would be the last ship in these fleet of ships

in the convoy. So that the naval escort vessels could come alongside of us all times of the night and day and we would fill up all their fuel tanks and the reason that these naval vessels were using so much blasted fuel, because they were circling round and round the convoys all the time and the convoys, they didn’t steam a straight line they used to zigzag all over the ocean.

And we went right across the Pacific Ocean and then we arrived at the Panama Canal. So the whole convoy, we went through the Panama Canal to the Caribbean. And we anchored at the port of Colon. And while we were all anchored there, the Skandia, the ship that I was on, we proceeded down to the Dutch Island of Curacao. And we

loaded a full load of fuel, water and stores and then we came back to the convoy at Colon. And by the time we got back the convoy had doubled in size. All the ships had all accumulated there waiting for their trip across the Atlantic Ocean to England so we departed Colon for the UK [United Kingdom].

Well, at that point, the Germans were winning the war, we were very, very sad, they’d just moved around across Europe, they had Dunkirk and the Mediterranean was closed and all the Atlantic Ocean was bloody

infested with submarines and the amount of shipping that the British had lost in convoys was unreal, thousands and thousands of tonnes of shipping.

Oh we saw lots of ships sunk all the time, and as I said, when you’re in a convoy, where our position was at the tail end of the convoy and we were zigzagging everywhere,

and ahead of the convoy were all these naval destroyers, they were zigzagging all over the ocean, looking for submarines with their asdic gear and all that. And no ships were allowed to stop, you’d pass lifeboats full of people and you were not allowed to stop because you knew that there were submarines bloody waiting for you. So you just have

to pass these poor people, sitting and waving to you in lifeboats and life raft and you’d continue on your way to your destination.

Well, you just got to take it as everyday life. You can’t do nothing about it, you can see the naval vessels there, they go back and pick up these

distressed seamen who are in life rafts and life boats, but the people, the vessels in the convoy, there’s no way that you can pull out of a convoy and go to the assistance of another vessel.

Well, it’s hard to say, you get out in the Atlantic Ocean, they could be life rafts for ten days. It just all depends. They don’t keep in one place because the currents and the winds

blow them off the track. You’re not on a shipping track because the German submarines would be on the shipping tracks and these convoys used to zigzag all over the ocean trying to get to their destination and you know the naval vessels and that were ahead of the convoy and they would be zigzagging and they’d pick up

the sound of a submarine under the water and they would shoot off and they would drop depth charges and everything. And then by that time, there’s vessels in the convoy would be torpedoed and if they were lucky they could get in a lifeboat or a life raft and they’d just pull away. And then they were just left afloat in the ocean while the convoy proceeded on its way. But there’s no way in the world, nobody was allowed to stop.

And course, as we got closer to the United Kingdom, to the UK, then the naval vessels would come out with these big air balloons and then they would hand them to the vessels so that you would keep them made fast on the ship above the vessel so that you could not be bloody strafed

by enemy aircraft or bombed. Because these big balloons were on long wires right above the vessel and of course as you got closer to the UK the convoys then would all break up because they had to go to different ports for discharge. And on the Skandia we were ordered to go to Glasgow, which was our port of discharge.

So we proceeded to Glasgow, where we all paid off the ship there and left the vessel and then I travelled round England for a few days and that and finished up in London having holidays and then I joined the seamen’s pool.

Well, it was very, very unfortunate, it looked so bad, it had been so badly bombed

and the people, it was most amazing, you know they were short of food, they were short of clothing, there was lots of times there was no electricity, yes, it was very, very sad. But they all took it in their stride, and I’d been in London several times during air raids and I’d been down in the bloody underground railway stations there in the air-raid bloody shelters, biting my fingernails.

Oh it’s very hard. The alarms’d go at night and of course everybody then, would all have been in a hotel or somewhere drinking cold beer and you’d all run out and you’d get into these air-raid shelters wherever you were and for some unknown reason all the Australians used to always congregate up at what they call Lancaster Gate. And that’s where all the Australians used to be and we’d

got to our hotels and our clubs there and it was very, very unnerving. To be in an air-raid shelter, when they’re dropping blasted bombs all around you. It’s an unusual feeling.

Well a lot of people, they usually have the little overnight bag packed,

most people and when the alarms go and they run into these shelters, they’ve usually got a bottle of water and a little bit of food and they might have a blanket and a pillow and they were getting quite used to these air raids, but it’s very unfortunate, you know when they come out and find their houses have been flattened and the fires are raging everywhere.

Well you can’t hear much at all because where we used to be would be underground but I have been in all kinds of air-raid shelters in my time, but you can hear these bloody bombs dropping I can quite assure you. And you know that they’re very, very close.

Oh I’ve travelled all over England, the crew boys used to take me home, I went home once to the Trent Valley with one of my shipmates, and it got all round town that there was an Australian there and when the young kids saw me, they said, “He’s not an Australian, he’s not black.” They must have thought we were all Aboriginals. But I travelled

all over England in my brief stay there.

Well as I say, it was most amazing, when you’re sailing on British ships, well it doesn’t matter, as my sea career increased, I’ve sailed on Norwegian, Canadian, bloody all kinds of bloody ships, and

lots of times you can’t even speak the language. But being a qualified seaman everybody knows their job, your watches are the same, if you’re on deck, the whole thing, is all the same on every ship. And by sailing on British ships, they’ve got such high standard as I said earlier and anyhow when I left London and I joined the pool, which you’ve got to join the pool, being

unemployed. And they said, well, they gave me a train ticket and I jumped on the train and I went to Liverpool and I had to join this ship there called, the Waipawa, which was owned by Shaw Savill, an Albion company which is a big company that runs vessels to New Zealand carrying frozen meat. So I got to Liverpool and in Gladstone dock and I went down on board the Waipawa and she was all ready to sail. So as soon as I got settled down in my cabin and met all the crew and that, and we went through all the normal procedures of shipboard safety and that, and then they said, “Right, we’re sailing now.” So we had the pilot on board, so we went out of our Gladstone dock, out into the Mersey River and then we steamed right across the Pacific Ocean once again, to the Atlantic Ocean to the port of Colon and then through the Panama Canal right across the Pacific Ocean then, to Wellington New Zealand and when I joined this Waipawa she was completely, fully loaded for New Zealand and she was a ship of five cargo hatches and on each hatch there was an aircraft, which was coming out for the New Zealand.

Then we sailed right across the Pacific Ocean to Wellington was our first port of call and then we started discharging all our general cargo. And then as we started to discharge general cargo, we started to

load frozen lamb. And then we left Wellington and then we went down to New Plymouth and then we went down to Dunedin and then the Bluff and we went right round the north and south island discharging and loading with frozen lamb. And by the time we arrived back in windy Wellington, we were

completely full with frozen lamb. And the New Zealand government gave everyone on the crew a half a lamb to take back to England as a present. And while we were travelling all round the New Zealand coast, discharging and loading, they were that short of labour in New Zealand because on account of the war

and everybody had gone to war, that the seamen on the ship on the Waipawa, they had to help all the stevedores discharge and load all this frozen cargo. And we were paid the same money as the New Zealand stevedores which was a lot more money than we were receiving as British merchant seamen.

So it was quite nice for us to get this lovely present of all this money. And of course when we arrived back in Avonmouth in England, after we’d finished loading, in Wellington, we sailed right back across the Pacific Ocean again, through the Panama canal and then we went right across the Atlantic Ocean again to England and

our port of call was Avonmouth. And so we discharged all our frozen lamb in Avonmouth and we cleaned the ship up and then we were directed to proceed to the Mersey River again which was the ship’s home port, Liverpool. So we arrived in Liverpool, laid ship and then we were directed

to proceed across the river to Birkenhead. Was the port where ships were to go to load ammunition. So we went into the big basin, the big dock at Birkenhead and we commenced loading ammunition and stores for the British Army in Alexandria in Egypt.

These big docks up round the Mersey River, like the Gladstone dock and the Birkenhead dock, you go in through loch gates into these docks. Because you get very big rise and fall in the tide. And when we were alongside the wharf at Birkenhead

loading ammunition, before we started, we had to put wires fore and aft off the ship right across the dock and make them fast on the other side. This being when the air alarms went for an air raid, the crew’s job was to pull the ship right out into midstream in the dock, in case you got bombed,

you did not block the wharf. So when these bloody alarms used to go you’d slacken the ropes off on one side of the ship and start the winches going and you’d automatically pull the ship right out into the centre of the dock and you’d just leave here there while the air raid was on. When the air raid was finished, you’d reverse the process, you’d slack the wires off and you would take the ropes to the

drum end and pull the vessel back to the loading wharf and commence loading. And this here worked very, very well.

Well, it’s most amazing, most of the crew who joined the Waipawa, with

me, came from the eastern coast of England and they came from the seaport of Middlesborough, and this was the way they used to bloody operate, all these seamen were on this pool and you never know what ship you were going to go on because at these particular times all the Russian convoys and that were on

and lots of people refused to sail on the Russian convoys and so they used to recruit people in London, send them to say, Birkenhead or Gladstone dock to join ships on the Russian convoys. You didn’t know where you were going until you got away to sea. And this is the way they used to operate so we were lucky. When we joined the Waipawa and we all got together, we all said, “I wonder where we’re going

this time?” But we were lucky, because once we got out of the Mersey River and we started heading south, we went across the Bay of Bisque and across the bloody Atlantic. But it’s amazing, you know you sail with all these different bloody nationalities and different people over the years and they’re all so experienced.

Well, it’s most amazing, you were just accepted into the whole fold because on the Queen Mary half the crew were English, the other half who had joined in Sydney, they were Australians and as I said, previously it doesn’t

matter what ship you sign on, all onto a routine and you all have your own job to do and it works very, very good. And I was with three other deck boys, we were all employed in the wheelhouse and our job was to look after the bridge. We

would keep it clean, do all the polishing of the brass, we would walk around with our bloody pad and pen and we would write down any messages that came in from other vessels and we’d hand that in. And course when you’re on there as a deck boy you’re learning all the time, I had to do so much time on the wheel, learning to steer, I was taught

then, I had to learn the Morse code, I had to learn all about flags, I had to learn semaphore, which was so benefit to me later in life.

Oh, you, A, B, C, E, F, G. You have flags but lots of ships they have a standard pole and these arms move around.

And they usually stand up on the wing of the bridge with the flag and you send messages. Then quite frequently if a ship’s too far away, well they use an alders lamp which use the bloody Morse code and when they’re talking to all the ships in the convoy then you use international codes of flags. And the commodore

vessel will hoist a flag and everybody’ll read it and you’ll put up your answering pennant to say that you’ve received the message. And it’s very, very well organised.

Well you’re just a crew, I mean, it’s exactly the same as if you were in the catering department or the engine room department you’re just one of the crew and that’s all there is.

You just had to toe the line and done what you was told and you had to work four hours on and there was eight hours off, all the time.

Well, the hardest things was being away from home and missing my mother and my brother and sisters and all my school mates

and being with older people, it was very, very hard because in those days everybody smoked because being on a ship, tobacco and cigarettes were so cheap because there was no customs duty, and you’d buy a packet of bloody Craven A or bloody Woodbine cigarettes for

a bloody couple of shillings cause it was pound, shillings and pence. And so everybody used to smoke, I suppose I started to smoke when I was fifteen, I don’t know. Yes, but it’s very hard for a young person to being fifteen years old leaving home and going away to sea for an

indefinite period. Even though I’d been working on little boats and ships all my life, since I could walk. I always come home at night, and when you’re away at sea and you’re with all these strange people you had nobody to talk to, so it was very, very lonely. But then again, you’re working

your normal watch of four hours on and eight hours off and you had to do your own washing and your own ironing and the only thing was, all your meals were cooked for you, you just went down and up to the window on the galley with your plate and got your meal. And then you’d wash up your plate and put it away. And then you’d do all your own washing and laundry and you had

there was no such thing as hanging it out in the sun, we used to have what they call, drying rooms. You’d hang all your clothes up in a drying room which was steam dried and they’d dry very, very quickly.

Australian soldiers? Well, all these troops, on a troop ship when they’re going to war, from the time

that they get on board that troop ship, they are practising, every day. They work all day and half the night. And they run and do all their exercises and it’s amazing, they’ve never got a dull moment. And of course it was a lot different when we got three times as many troops when we left America. Even though

troops try to do as much exercise as they could, but they had to queue up in this endless bloody queue to get their bloody meals. And they were fed twice a day. That’s most amazing how the people working in the galley could feed so many people, so many meals twice a day. After you had your meal, you had to wash up

your plate or your dixie, then you’d sit down, you’d have your cup of coffee and they had a dessert also, you know I mean they were very well fed. The only thing they didn’t have, they all complained there wasn’t enough water for them to do all their washing, they had to wear clothes for day in and day out and underclothes, there’s no such thing as changing your underwear every day.

And you couldn’t even go and shower every day, because even though the ships carried a lot of water, they didn’t know how long they were going to be away before they got to the next port of call. And so everything was preserved, all your water and food. There was nothing wasted.

No, no, but

we had a ring on the ship there and they used to have fights amongst themselves, they’d put the gloves on and different battalions’d fight the other battalions and all that. But as for the troops themselves, no, I can never, ever say that I’d ever seen any fights amongst any of the troops.

Well, we had

our job to do and the only time I’d see the troops, as I said, you’d come out of your bloody cabin and you’d walk down this working alleyway, which was only for the crew, and then you would get into a lift and then you’d go up twelve floors, to the sundeck and then you would walk into the wheelhouse. And we never were on the deck mixing with the crew,

the other seamen who used to clean the ship and wash the ship down, once a morning, they used to associate with the crew, with the troops but not very often, the crew was not allowed to associate with the troops.

We came to Cape Town, when we left Cape Town and then we went right down to south Indian Ocean and right across the Indian Ocean and we made a landfall at Cape Leeuwin,

When we were in the dock, we were in the dock there at Birkenhead. Now this here is a big dock where all the ships used to go and load ammunition. And when we had finished loading our ammunition, of course, in those days everything was loaded by hand, it is different today when all

your cargo now was on pallets or it’s containerised, in those days it was all loaded by hand and hand stowed and it took about ten days to load a ship. Not like today, where it only takes hours. And so at night time, we used to go ashore, to the seaman’s mission, they used to have dances and that there. And I could always

remember this because this particular time it was in the middle of bloody winter. And we used to go ashore with our big sea boots on and sea boot socks and we’d get into the seaman’s mission and we’d take our sea boots off and leave them at the door. And then you’d walk around inside with your big woolly socks on. Yes most amazing.

Well there was all these people

would come down specially to the mission, they were all volunteers and they used to have these dances at certain nights of the week, then all these volunteers’d come down and all these seamen, would congregate at the seaman’s mission, and they were quite nice, they’d have a meal there, have a dance and you could sit down and of course in those days, there was no TV [television] and that, you

might watch a picture. But that’s about all. But it was mostly a dance or a concert which was put on.

Well yes, it’s most amazing, you know, it’s they’re very strict on ships, when you come into a foreign port, you’re just not allowed ashore,

you’re on watch all the time, you don’t break watches, just because you were in port unless you were in port for an extended period. But you’d go ashore, you’d come into a port, like you’d come into say Cape Town and you’d give them a sum of money, they’d ask you if you wanted any money to do some shopping. And they’d give you whatever money you wanted,

to go ashore and do your shopping and buy your toothpaste and hair oil and shaving cream and razor blades or anything which you were short of for the next leg of the journey. But most of the people, they weren’t very interested in women, because in a lot of these foreign ports it’s very, very dangerous to get caught up with these bloody prostitutes,

of course any port all over the world, these women hang around sea ports all the time, after seamen. And they’re very, very strict on bloody ships because it’s so easy to get venereal diseases, carrying it from place to place.

Everybody was. Everybody,

in those days. Oh, no they were very, very strict and course, there was no such thing as bloody condoms, or nothing from those days.

Oh they’d just tell if you had intercourse with a woman, how to wash yourself and clean yourself and

what to look out for. And everybody was briefed on it. But it didn’t make a difference, lots of people got gonorrhoea and they would all tell you they got it off the toilet seat and silly things like that and but that was just normal life.

Oh no, well when we left Birkenhead, we went out into the

Mersey and then we picked up our pilot, and then we went down and as I said, we had loaded for Egypt, for Alexandria and then we were informed that the Mediterranean, had been closed to British shipping because it was under German hands. So for us to get to Alexandria, we had to go right down the west coast of Africa

right down to Cape Town, where we pulled into Cape Town and then we had to load fuel, water, and stores. And we must have been in Cape Town about a week and then we left Cape Town and we steamed right up the east coast of Africa to the Red Sea, to the Gulf of Aden and up through the Red Sea, back to the

port Suez. And then we went through the Suez Canal, and then on the other side of the bloody Suez Canal, waiting to get into the Mediterranean, on the left hand side, is the port of Alexandria. If the Mediterranean hadn’t have been closed to British shipping, we could have done the trip in about four days. But it took us four weeks to come right round Africa,

and then as I say, all your discharging is like loading. Everything is done by hand. And it took us weeks to discharge all our ammunition in Alexandria and then when we were all discharged we were put on stand by and then we left there late in the afternoon and we steamed right into the Mediterranean over towards Crete.

And we met this little vessel out in the middle of the bloody Mediterranean and we loaded all these troops and air men on board, which had escaped, they’d come from the island of Crete and this ship I was on the Waipawa is what they call and intermediate ship, it carries passengers and cargo, and it had accommodation for twenty passengers.

So we loaded these twenty Australian and New Zealand passengers there and then we took off and then we went right down through the Suez Canal again, through the Red Sea right across the Indian Ocean and down to Cape Leeuwin, to the west coast of Australia across the Great Australian Bight, round Wilsons Promontory again..

Well, they were very scantily dressed, I’m not too sure, they weren’t allowed to talk. I don’t know how you say it, but they were not allowed to discuss where

they’d come from or what they’d done or even where they were going. We were not allowed. And then we came down and most amazing and then we came up the east coast to Sydney and then we discharged all the twenty odd passengers.

Well,

it had leaked, but they weren’t allowed to talk, you couldn’t talk to them and they were kept away from the crew, they weren’t allowed to mix with the crew. Most amazing and of course, again we did four on and eight off, anyhow when we got there and I signed off the Waipawa in Sydney and she was up in Darling Harbour and she loaded a full load of frozen meat for the UK and I said goodbye to all my shipmates and she went across the

Pacific, across the Atlantic and back to the UK. Yes, most amazing.

Well, it always is, but then it’s just like when I came home, my parents were so pleased to see me, because I’d been gallivanting all round the world, and my father had signed off the Queen Mary and he was at home and my other brother went away and my mother was so pleased to see me and my

other younger brother and two younger brothers and my sister. And course, the first thing my poor mother said, “Now what’re you going to do now?” And I said, “Well I don’t know, you know I’ll have a bit of a break.” And then reading the local paper the American Army Small Ships, was advertising for experienced seamen

and the rates of pay they were offering was a lot higher than what we were getting on British ships.

Oh I don’t know just off hand, now, but it’s very, very high. Even the American troops and the American seamen, people sailing on American ships they were getting a lot more money than British ships, because every time that they were in any kind

of action, they got a war bonus, which we didn’t get on British ships. Now, if we would have been on a war bonus going to places like Alexandria and the Mediterranean and all that, we would have been very, very happy, because we would have been getting our war bonus. So anyhow, I went down and I made my application to join the American Army Small Ships.

And so when they saw all my papers and my discharges, they were quite impressed because anybody who has anything to do with ships, if anybody who’s worked on British ships, for any length of time they automatically know that they’d be pretty good and pretty experienced. So

I got a job as an able seaman with the American Small Ships.

Oh, it’s not so much winding back it’s just so nice being with the family, the whole thing is how much money

you’ve got and how long’s it going to last you? That’s the burning question, when you go on holidays, when you’re paid off a ship, you stop ashore until you’ve got no money left. Then you go to your parents and borrow some bloody pocket money. And it’s just amazing, so anyhow when I joined the American Small Ships, the

they were bloody impressed with my experience at sea and I’d done all these gunnery courses in England at gunnery schools and all of that. Which was compulsory and all these other lifesaving appliances and fire fighting appliances and you get certificates every time you do course and they were very impressed

with all these British certificates that I had. And of course, I had no trouble passing my medical. And so they automatically signed me on. And then I’m at home and I bloody went down with fever. So my mother rang up the American Army Small Ships in Sydney

and said that I was sick, could they send a doctor? So they sent a doctor out to me. And he had one look at me and he said, “Heavens above, where you come from?” And I said, “Well,” and he said, “You have got all the symptoms of malaria,” “Oh, I’ve been all up round Africa and all that.” And they said, “Well, have you been taking anything?” It was common knowledge on a ship when

we’re getting down near Cape Town, where there’s a lot of malaria, the chief steward on the ship who used to look after the medicine chest, they used to give us this bloody quinine every morning. And they had these big bottles of quinine powder. And course through everybody being smokers, we used to have and roll your own cigarette, we’d get this quinine in a teaspoon, which

the chief steward used to give us and we’d put it in our cigarette paper and roll it up and swallow it and then it would dissolve. Otherwise you couldn’t take the ordinary quinine, it was too bloody bitter. And your teeth used to get all soft. So this American doctor said, “This is amazing, this, you having malaria.” So he gave my mother all kinds of instructions and course

luckily there was no mobile phones in them days, so he went back to headquarters and in the afternoon he came back with all these bloody doctors and I was like a guinea pig. And they were all looking at a case of malaria. And so they started giving me all this treatment which they had these Atebrin tablets, to try and cure me of malaria. But I was a guinea pig, so I was there until I had recovered.

And then I was sent on a passenger ship in Sydney Harbour, American liberty ship, and then I was sent to Papua New Guinea, to Milne Bay where I joined an American Small Ship called the Tassie Six, which started my experience with the American Army.

Well, those bloody

Japanese had just landed and they had just been beaten and it was terrible. There was bloody wrecks on the bottom and bloody landing barges up on the beach and tanks up on the bloody dry land. And they had invaded Milne Bay before we had arrived and our troops had pushed them back out. And so I joined

this little ship called the Tassie Six. It was already loaded and I signed on as the bosun. And our job was to carry all the supplies up to the frontline, to the troops. And away we’d go. We’d go right up the north coast of New Guinea, or Papua and we would discharge all our cargo.

And then we would load on the hatch under a canvass all these injured troops which we would bring back to Milne Bay, to the hospital at Gili Gili, the military hospital. And then we never carried medical orderlies but they would join the ship with these wounded. From wherever

we picked them up from.

Well they were all bandaged up, you know and most of them were on stretchers, stretcher cases and it was very, very sad. They’d only be on the ship for about four or five days, they weren’t on the ship very long but they were only under a canvass on the deck. They slept

on the deck. And these orderlies would have to move them so they could clean them and they had a bowel movement or want to go to the toilet and they were just fed army rations and that while we were bringing them back to Milne Bay, to Gili Gili, which was the big army hospital. And then we’d load up again and away we’d go again.

Everybody did, everybody’d

give a hand, stretcher cases. And quite often they’d come out in landing barges, mostly and then we would just help them on board and we’d just put them on the hatch. We had this great big cargo hatch with a canvass on it and a canvass awning to keep the sun of them. But there was no accommodation, no cabins or accommodation or nothing. And then

as the war start moving up the coast, we used to be in all these invasions and that, behind the invasions, we would carry all the supplies and we’d bring out wounded and Milne Bay was our headquarters all the time, but as the war start moving further up the coast, we moved then to Oro Bay, then as the war moved further up the coast

we moved into Finschhafen when we took Finschhafen from the Japanese and then that was our main base, Finschhafen and then we used to go in as we were pushing the Japanese away, we went into the invasion of New Britain and over to Cape Gloucester, Talasea and Cape Hoskin. And then by this time we were carrying

these military police on the ship when we’d leave Finschhafen. Because our job was to go in behind the invasion and when the troops’d land in their landing craft and they’d push the Japanese inland and capture them, they would call us in and then we would come in and we would load these Japanese prisoners and then we’d

put them down the hatch. And we’d keep them down in the hatch until we’d filled up and then we would bring them back to the prisoner of war camp which we were established at Finschhafen.

Well, the naval vessels, they stand at sea and they would bombard the whole coastline, where they were going to land. And the Japanese’d be in the trees,

snipers and all that. And through the naval vessels being at sea, they would bombard the whole coastline for hours and hours and hours before the landing. And then the landing crafts’d come in with all the troops and then they would go ashore.

Oh it’s hard to say. We wouldn’t know, I suppose it would be well over twenty. A lot of the ships were passenger ships, they had the landing barges on the side and as they’d come in, they’d lower these landing barges down and then they would lower all the troops down into the landing barges and the troops, they were all fully armed of all their equipment and haversacks on their back,

and then they would go back ashore. And course, the other ships, who was with us, they would bring back wounded. But this particular time we were just employed bringing back prisoners. And we’d go in, and we’d discharge what cargo we had, and wait. And then we would load all these prisoners and

they had no idea where they were, they couldn’t speak English and they all thought they were in bloody America. And they knew by the American uniforms and they thought they were in bloody America.

Well the Queen Mary was such a very big ship and everybody it confined to their own particular job.

But when you get onto another ship like the Waipawa, which is a different class of ship altogether, it’s a cargo vessel, the work is different but the hours are the same, you work four hours on and eight hours off and the routine is all the same, it doesn’t matter what ship, even when I was sailing on the Skandia which was an oil tanker, all your cargoes are liquid cargo. But all your routine’s still the same, four hours on

eight hours off. And on an oil tanker, unfortunately you go into a bloody port and within 24 hours you’re discharged and then loaded, but on a ship like the Waipawa, which is a cargo vessel, it takes you weeks to load and it takes you weeks to discharge. And luckily they load these

Waipawa is a specialist ship, it carries a freezer cargo. It’s got five hatches and they all work it out that there’s one hatch for each port you’re going to go to so you discharge all that cargo out of that one hatch. Then as soon as that’s discharged you automatically start loading a frozen cargo in that hatch. The cargo is already frozen ashore and

as soon as you load it, you’ve got your refrigerators working and you’ve got that hatch down to a very certain temperature so that it’ll keep that cargo beautiful for the trip home to England. And then you’ll fill that particular hold up, then you’ll go to the next port of call, you might leave Wellington and go to, say you’re going down to Dunedin, and then you will discharge all the Dunedin cargo, until that hold

is empty, then you’ll fill that up with lamb. Then you’ll go to the next bloody port which could be The Bluff. And then you do exactly the same again and then you circumnavigate, both islands north and south New Zealand and you discharge and you load. And by the time you arrive back into Wellington, all your general cargo from England has been discharged and that ship is completely fully loaded

with a cargo of frozen lamb for England.

Well, then again, I was only so young, and everything was so different. When I left the Queen Mary and I went onto an oil tanker, I had no idea what an oil tanker was like, here’s a great big ship, with about forty tanks

and full of fuel. And you just go in alongside the wharf, they put the hoses on and in a matter of hours they would have all that complete ship full of cargo. And then you’d take off and you’d go and pick up the convoy again. Then when I joined the Waipawa, the whole thing was altogether different. Because I went from

an oil tanker, onto a bloody passenger cargo vessel. And it takes them about six weeks to load these bloody ship and about six weeks to bloody discharge it. Whereas an oil tanker, you’ll go there in the morning and the following morning you’re fully loaded and you’ve gone to sea. And everything is different.

Well they had such a bad name in the war, tankers, because if you were torpedoed there’s never any survivors off an oil tanker. They just blow up. And but then again, I mean, our wages, sailing on a passenger ship, a cargo ship or a passenger cargo ship, were exactly the same as sailing

on an oil tanker.

Well, on our particular job it was so common. Yes, my parents were horrified when I joined an oil tanker, they couldn’t understand it. But being young and all

my life ahead of me and I just wanted everything different and you get on an oil tanker, everything’s different, the work’s different, the only thing that’s the same is your four hours on, eight hours off. But when you loaded, half the time you can’t even go out on deck, because you’re that heavily loaded with fuel and cargo, that it’s underwater, if there’s a big sea running.

All the bloody decks are awash, twenty four hours a day. And it’s not like an ordinary ship where you’re out working on deck all the time. But an oil tanker, you’re more or less confined inside the ship.

We were, oh yes. Oh yeah, because we’d been associated with oil tankers all the time, with the Queen Mary. Because every time we stopped,

in say in Quay West or bloody Cape Town or bloody Rio de Janeiro, these big oil tankers’d come alongside, and fill you up with fuel oil, which was the whole life of the ship having enough bloody fuel to complete the bloody voyage. And this is when I was on the tankers, our job was so important,

to the convoys, because these escort vessels, the naval vessels, they were steaming flat out all the time, all around the convoys, right ahead of the convoys, looking for submarines and everything, and they were using vast amount of fuel, and the only way they could do their job was to come back to the oil tanker, and pick up their bunkers so they could

continue. Otherwise they would have had to go into the nearest port and left the convoy unguarded. So when you look back on it, it’s amazing.

Well, it was just my contribution to the war effort. But we were taught that at school, and it’s

most amazing you know, of course when they started coming around recruiting and they started all this recruiting business, everybody says, “Oh we’ll be in this.” Of course, everybody put their ages up and of course, the government knew that these people had put their ages up but they just had to get these enlistments. And that’s the way

it was.

Well after, only being so young that when I was up in Port Tewfik and they were bringing these German prisoners on board and they were so sulky and they had to be really handled roughly because they would not be done as they were told. They

just couldn’t understand being taken prisoner. And they were disgusted and they used to get very wild with the Italians, because the Italians were altogether different to the German prisoners, they were willing to help around the ship, they asked if they could do some job because they were bored

doing nothing. And could they do a bit of painting or chipping? Or did they want a hand in the galley and they were so good. But the Germans were under strict armed guard all the time.

Not actually roughly but if as you know, you’ve all got to do your exercises any

jail you’re in, you’ve got to go out and do exercises and these Germans wouldn’t leave the cabin. And the military police’d go down and push them out on the deck to do their exercises. And these Italians, used to poke fun at the Germans because they didn’t like being told what to do. Because they were

the superior race, in their eyes.

Well, it’s like everything else, I didn’t have nothing to do with them because on my particular job I was twelve storeys up in the air in the wheelhouse. And when I’d done my four hours up there and I’d come down, by the time you come down and had a shower and had

a meal, it was time to go to bed, because then they’d come round and they’d call your next watch. You don’t go walking round the ship all the time.

Oh yeah, we were all on watch, different watches.

Oh I don’t know, see because we come from a seafaring family and of course the war was on and everybody wanted to do their bit and the other uncles and that, they’d been sailing on these Small Ships on the Australian coast and when they start advertising for crew for this gigantic,

bloody five star hotel bloody passenger liner, well, they were just bloody invaded with all these bloody applicants. And so you know, it was such a vast experience.

Well, she was so bloody worried about us all on the one bloody ship, not so much us all being away at war, but she was upset that we were all on the one ship as everybody else was. But that just the way it was, she was there and we all wanted a job and they’re all recruiting, I wanted to join the navy, always wanted to join the navy, and

even when I was going to school, I was in the naval cadets. It’s amazing, when you think back now. I always wanted to join the navy. And when I came back after signing off the Queen Mary, my brother and went down to the naval recruitment officer and we wanted to enlist in the navy and

they would not accept us. Because we were merchant seamen and they were so short of merchant seamen that they would not accept us in the Royal Australian Navy. But I always wanted to join the navy.

Oh, that was just the way of life. Just it, you know. Oh we had lots of things,

I would have liked, I was thinking about putting my age up but they didn’t have it going then, but after being in the American Small Ships, and seeing how they were carrying on and I’d met all my Australian partners up there who were on Australian landing barges

and all that. And it was very, very good.

Oh, I don’t know, just for training, it’s very good. I had another uncle, one of my uncles was in the navy for years and years and he always used to tell us about it, you know.

No they wouldn’t accept us, they asked us what we were and we said,

“We’re merchant seamen and we’ve just paid off the Queen Mary,” and they said, “I’m sorry, we can’t accept you.”

Oh well, we just said, “Oh well, fair enough.” So anyhow that’s when I went down and I joined the Skandia. And my brother joined a Canadian ship. I’ve got all my brother’s papers there and he joined a Canadian ship and

my parents were horrified when I joined this oil tanker, in wartime. Because they had such a bad history. But it’s just life.

Yes. Oh yes.

The only differences was in their food. I mean an Australian’d have steak and eggs. I’ve sailed on American ships and I’ve seen them spreading strawberry jam on a lovely rump steak. And you’d say, “What the hell are you doing?” And he said, “What’s the odds, it all mixes together when you eat it.”

Yeah.

The operations on a Americans ships are all the same. The hours of work is all the same. The only difference is the money is different, you get more on American ships. And that is what young people look for is the money.

Well, as I say, you’d be on an oil tanker and of course our job was, we’re behind the convoy and we’re just steaming and we’re working all round the deck and we’ve got everything there all our bloody pipes and

every time we pump fuel up the bloody ship is light and our work, we had a lot of work to do. You’ve always got work to do on a ship irrespective of what it is and but on the oil tankers, is bloody, there’s always one of the bloody vessels coming in, the patrol vessels coming in for fuel and stores and

so everybody was kept busy. And of course as I say, everybody’s on watch four on and eight off. And course in those days I mean, the ships are a lot different today, I mean we didn’t have radar, we didn’t have all this bloody equipment of bloody autopilots and that which you have today, they’re all manual and yes.

About twelve thousand tonnes. So that’s quite big. And the Waipawa was a lot bigger again than that. It was a big passenger ship and it had five hatches, it had all the centre part of the vessel, all the accommodation, had accommodation for twenty passengers, it carried a doctor,

it carried a crew of forty eight. In those days that was quite a lot. A ship these days, that size would carry a crew of five. But that’s just the way the world has changed. And when you’re at sea, everybody got a job to do. You’ve always got a job. And you come off watch,

you’re on watch for four hours, you might do two hours on the wheel, then you’ll do two hours on lookout. Or you might do one hour on lookout and one hour on stand by. Then after you’ve done your four hours on watch, you’d come down and you’d have a feed and you might just sit round and play a record or something. There wasn’t a great deal of stuff then to keep you occupied, not like today with TVs

and all that. And course I always one for studying and of course I was always had me head in a bloody book studying.

Well, when we took the first lot of Australian and New Zealand troops to the Middle East, they were exercising,

all day. And they’d be running around the deck, fully loaded with all their packs on and then they’d go to all kinds of classes and only having a small number of troops they had plenty of room to move. And that is why they were so well off, on account of all the exercises

that they were doing. And they had gunnery practice and everything.

No, I’m sorry. I know the 9th Battalion was there and the 7th Battalion. But I don’t know the New Zealand battalion.

Oh we mixed with them all the time. Because

they had two-up schools there and baccarat gambling and everything.

Well, they had so much spare time it was such a big ship and we had say five thousand troops but the ship was so big that they had so much area to play and it’s amazing they had all these games there

that they used to get out, baccarat and bloody two-up and crown and anchor and all these gambling games that they used to bloody. They all had money. It’s amazing. And they all had bits of pencils and paper giving IOUs [written acknowledgment of debt – ‘I owe you’] out.

Oh no. Well I played, I played two-up with them and I’d play baccarat and

then they had all these other funny little games there and they used to have. But it was so common, even up in Egypt there I used to go to the Australian bloody base at Aboukir in Egypt while we were discharging and they had their gambling there, just the same. As if it was on the bloody troop ships. Yes. Yeah, well I was six weeks in Alexandria, so I knew it pretty well I

used to go up to Cairo and up and see the pyramids.

Oh well we’d get out on day tours. Even though the war wasn’t in our bloody favour, we would go out and we used to go down to the army base at Aboukir and we’d go down and play cricket and football. Go swimming,

That’s correct, they were all in training.

We were free to move around, I’ve got my pass out there I’ll show you after. When I was in Alexandria, had to keep your bloody your identification with you all the time. Especially being a civilian in a military zone.

All the time.

I mean well they’re there all the time. All the bumboats would come alongside the ships wanting to bloody sell you bloody goodies and all that, you bloody, you’d go ashore and these bloody prostitutes’d want to pick you up and places like Alexandria there where there are bloody big streets of bloody prostitutes. Course Alex [Alexandria] was a great big bloody army base. There was bloody hundreds and hundreds of thousands of troops there.

Yes.

Well it was just the way of life, it’s the same anywhere you go. They’re put there by the government, and they’re all medically examined so that they’re not bloody riddled with bloody gonorrhoea and syphilis. It’s a bit different these days when you’ve got HIV [human immunodeficiency virus] everywhere and everything.

Oh nothing at all. But only what you’d hear them talking, hear the other people talking about on the ships at sea. About, “Oh it’ll be nice when we get to Alex, bloody beautiful bloody place, it’s so cheap,” and all that.

Oh well,

we knew. We were briefed on everything about all this bloody venereal disease, don’t you worry about that we were all briefed on that, long before you go away to sea, because it’s so bloody dangerous on a bloody ship.

Well, I don’t know I

should imagine, I’d be bloody scared too. But I couldn’t imagine me bloody sneaking round the back getting into these bloody place of ill fame, these bloody brothels and that there. But these were all run by the army. And they all had their medical certificates out saying they’d been medically examined and they were bloody free

and all that. And it was just a way of life in the services.

Oh, no. Oh I could tell you some funny things but I’d rather not. You know.

Oh yes, you know you could go to all these, especially in bloody Egypt, heavens above. You know you had all these bloody sideshows and all that there,

Oh well, the war didn’t affect them at all. It’s amazing, you know there was hundreds of thousands of people passing through there to go to the battlefronts,

and Alexandria was such a busy seaport. And when you read history and you go back a hundred thousand years, it’s always been the same. You go back four hundred thousand years and it’s always been a very, very busy seaport. And then you read about the British Navy down there, when they

defeated the bloody French in Alex.

Well, we had read and we’d heard all about Alexandria at school, about Cleopatra and all this. You know I mean, it was just common knowledge and when you get there you want to see all these catacombs and all these underground bloody

graves and all that. And the place is so old. And you wonder that it’s still survived and a thriving city today. It’s bigger than ever and yet, bloody thousands and thousands of years ago and you see the pyramids and you’d wonder how they’d built those bloody great slabs of stone down the bloody Nile on bloody barges. And

the amount of arithmetic and that must have gone in to build them because they’re so square, they’re set at a certain angle, every stone in a pyramid is cut at a certain angle. And you say, “Now where did they get the steel tools to cut this heavy stone?” You know and then I was reading an article, about

this bloody Cleopatra’s bloody lighthouse and this obelisk which is now on the banks of the bloody Thames River, which weighs bloody so many hundred bloody tonnes. And they bought it right down from hundreds and hundreds inland and it’s all carved. Now how did they carve this? This is four thousand years ago. How did they carve it? Where’d they get the steel chisels

and all that from? But this is just bloody history.

Oh we were briefed up very good because Alexandria was the head place. All the wounded was brought into Alex. That was the base.

Oh yes.

Oh no, as I say, we’d get out where the Australian base was at Aboukir, they had their own hospital and everything there where all the wounded was there and the hospital ships used to come in to Alexandria and load the wounded and bring them back to Australia.

Well,

at that particular time, this was when they were all fighting in the desert and the war wasn’t going very well our way in the early part. As I said, the Mediterranean was closed and for us to get supplies to our troops we had to travel halfway round the world from the UK [United Kingdom]. It’s amazing.

Well, I don’t know it was just everyday life. It didn’t actually worry me, I’ve seen people wounded on ships at sea, you know, I’ve seen people in air raids, being injured and

but it’s just the way of life, I don’t know if I’m a bit cold blooded or what but I’d go in ashore after the invasions and you’d see bodies hanging in the bloody trees, snipers and that who had been tied in a tree and you see they’d just be hanging there, dead. And I’d go ashore and the engineer’d say, “Bring me a souvenir.” Course

I only made the mistake once, I picked up these pair of Japanese boots and put them in my little sugar bag and gave them to the engineer, but I didn’t know that there was feet in them. So he screamed bloody blue murder when he got his souvenir which I’d brought from the battlefield. But I’ve seen the American troops there with rings round their necks and they’re the ears they’ve

cut off the Japanese prisoners. And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the Americans they’ve got what they call a ‘Bull Durham bag’, it’s a bag they keep their tobacco in with a string on it. You see them carrying them around their neck and I’ve seen them full of gold teeth which they’ve kicked out of the Japanese dead. All these gold teeth.

Yeah. We were there.

Well they’d have them in their pockets and then they’d put them in their Bull Durham bag. Yes, but what happened on the battlefields is bloody scary I can quite assure you.

As I say the troops there they were offering the natives so much money to bring Japanese prisoners in. And they used to get them and tie them up with a bit of barbed wire and bring them in and then they’d pay them so much money for

bringing in these Japanese prisoners.

This was up in Talasea and Cape Hoskins on New Britain. And then they’d bring in a Japanese head and wanted to be paid, they couldn’t see any sense in dragging the whole bloody body in. Some Japanese soldier’s been shot, so these natives wanted to get their

bonus. So they’d cut the head off and bring the head in to get their bonus. They didn’t want to drag the body in to get their bonus, they were paid so much a head.

No, I saw it.

Oh no, I’ve never seen them cutting the ears off the Japanese but

I’ve seen the bloody blokes with the ears round their necks like bloody dried bloody apricots. And you can see that they’ve just been bloody cut off cause the blood was still congealed. And then they’d be skiting about how many gold teeth they had in their bags. But that was only common knowledge that.

Yeah.

No, I didn’t have much to do with the Australian soldiers, not up Papua New Guinea.

I should imagine so, I should imagine so.

Oh, no more than twice, I’d say once, but no more than twice, but that particular area where we were

and then you’d be there and they’d be joking about the natives instead of bringing these people in, these Jap prisoners in, dragging them in from the bush, they’d more likely have to feed them two or three days to get them into where the troops were. So why bring the bloody people in? Why wouldn’t they just bring their bloody head in, they still get the same money.

But that’s nothing to what the atrocious Japanese used to do. This is why we had these courts in Rabaul, for these war crimes, was the Japs committed, in the Pacific Islands during the war. Against the Americans and the Australian troops.

That was ’44, ’43, ’44.

Oh, I was sixteen in ’42.

Oh yeah.

Well,

I’d heard so many rumours of how the Japanese were treating our prisoners, that it never worried me of how our troops treated the Japanese. And you’ve only got to read any war history of how, even with our troops in Changi prison in Singapore,

how they were treated by the Japanese and on the Burma railways, and all that.

Well, it must have leaked out because we had a good idea of what they were doing. And after Pearl Harbour, that was it.

What they done when they came down and bombed Pearl Harbour, when they wasn’t even at war with America, all those families and that was in the naval base in Pearl Harbour and these Japanese planes just come over the horizon and killed thousands and thousands and thousands of bloody civilians. And nobody as I say, we saw

all this thing going on and you say, “Well, you can’t blame the Yanks.”

Oh yeah.

Well nobody’d know anything about it, you wouldn’t tell anybody.

It’s not something which you let everybody know how old you are. You try to make out you’re older than what you are. Because when you’re a little bloody teenager, you’re more or less under the bloody thumb. And they’re very, very strict on these bloody British ships, you know, with

like young seamen and that.

No. Oh I suppose I might have. Oh I should imagine. Oh yes, we would have had birthday celebrations, course, nearly all bloody ships are dry. You know, it’s not something where

you consume a lot of alcohol, apart from something like the Queen Mary, a big ship, she had a special bar on board for the troops and things like that and for the crew. But a normal ship, they’re nearly all dry. That is why they’re run so bloody efficiently. But you never actually seemed to worry about your birthdays,

it’s amazing, it’s only since I’ve been retired here that I didn’t realise that we’ve got so many bloody birthdays. My birthday is next Tuesday and now we’re having a big barbecue here, over the weekend on Saturday, but I think it’s only an excuse for these people, the worst to me is, they say, “Oh we’ll have a big barbecue.” Of course that means that

I’ve gotta fork out for all the bloody alcoholic bloody beverages, so I’ll get a few cartons of beer and I always keep a lot of rum and whisky and that here.

Well when

you’re at sea most people on most ships, you’ve got a hobby. I used to do a lot of knitting, I used to do a lot of crocheting, I’m excellent with a needle and for sewing and all we always had things to do.

Oh well I’d make clothes, I’d make my wet

rough weather clothes, all the skins and the sou’westers and we’d knit them up and put bloody linseed oil all over them, let them dry and, oh I don’t know. It’s amazing I always used to do a lot of knitting, I used to do a lot of crocheting.

It was common on ships.

Most British ships you’d sign an article for two years, and say you’d load in England and you’d sailed out of the colonies, by the time you got back to England, well you’re away for three or four months. And when you’re at sea, apart from reading, there’s not a great deal to do, when you’re off watch. So

most people just read, you know, another great things, different now when you can go and put a bloody tape in or a video in and watch something. But there was no sports or nothing like that you could play away at bloody sea.

Oh heavens above. Very,

very rarely. Very rarely. She couldn’t write to me, cause she’d never know where I was going to be next. And then I’d arrive home in the middle of the bloody night and I’d knock on the front door, she’d have a fit, she found out I’ve just come home from bloody Europe or somewhere. But when we were young, you know, like all Australian families we were very close, but when the war broke out we

all had to go away. Well we were all away at sea.

Oh yeah. Oh no, I’d write to her regular. And I’d post it in the next port of call and you know, there was no such thing as bloody ringing them up. We never had a telephone or nothing. So I’d always write if I’d be in New Zealand or bloody Egypt or bloody Cape Town or somewhere.

Oh I’d just tell her where I am and where I’m going and I don’t know when I’m coming home. Because during the war, you never knew what your next ship was. You didn’t have much say in that. You’d go down to the pool and then they would, you’d join the pool in say, London or somewhere and they’d send you to a bloody ship in

some other bloody place, Middlesborough, but it was so nice, sailing on British ships and even today, every harbour master, every pilot and all that, in the marine division, they’re all served their time on British ships. Because the

they’re so strict and it’s right there.

Oh yes, well the lowest you could get is a deck boy. And then after twelve months, you go as a junior ordinary seaman, and

then these people, like an ordinary seaman and that, well you get all the dirty jobs. You know, you get down cleaning bilges and all this. Then as you progress and you get up to an able seaman, well then you’re actually one of the crew. And

it’s quite amazing, cause everybody’s got a particular job to do and you try to take a pride in the job that you’ve been assigned to do and you’re looking at your bloody mate next door making sure that your job, you’re better than him. It’s very good. But it’s the best thing I ever did was start going away on British ships. And course

when I went to school I mean, as far as we were concerned as we were taught at school that we are the British Empire and even going to school, you know you’d stand there of a morning and bloody line and you’d sing ‘God Save the King’ or ‘God Save the Queen’ or salute the flag and they hoisted it up; very, very strict.

Oh marvellous, absolutely marvellous. What she gave, bloody beautiful, so good.

No, we were always taught at school

about the First World War and about the Boer War, when they called for volunteers the first people to volunteer were the Australians and they made such a name for themselves, in the Boer War, and then when the Second World War come up with Gallipoli and that, well then you know, they were really,

high class bloody troops. And even in the navy they had such a very, very good name in the navy.

Oh shit yes. Christ, in the bloody Boer War. Oh yes…

No actually, oh no. But it was just on my family history. And as I say, when you trace our family history right back to the Portuguese, they were all bloody seamen, you know.

Always in the early part of the war, when we were crossing that bloody North Atlantic, the amount of ships which was lost, is bloody phenomenal and the amount of men and merchant seamen that was lost, but they all knew how dangerous it was,

but that was their way of life.

Well we were doing lifeboat drill everyday, knowing that it could be our turn next. And every other ship was the same, they were doing it, this was compulsory, to do

all these bloody lifeboat and fire drills, even today, it’s compulsory. And if a ship comes into a port in Australia here, a foreign ship, the first thing the inspector does when he goes on board that ship is ask for the ship’s log. And then, he reads the log and he sees that all the personnel on that ship has been

going right through the routine of doing their fire drill, lifeboat drill, evacuation and this is compulsory on every ship. And this is why everybody is so experienced.

Everybody has got a job to do. But they

ring the alarm bell on the vessel in the wheelhouse and it goes right through the ship, just like a bloody air raid and then you all run to your position, you run into your cabin, get your life jacket and put it on. Then you go to your station. It all depends, it could be a fire drill. You’ll go to your fire station, and then you’re going right through it, you roll your fire hose out and get everything all ready, or if

it’s a boat drill, you go to your boat station. And get the boat ready for launching, and you’re at your particular station, you could be looking to go to the gripes or getting hold of the bloody painter on the handles on the wings to swing the davits out. But everybody has got a particular job. And you’re rotating all the time so everybody does everybody’s job so if anybody gets injured, somebody else can automatically do that job.

Oh well, I’ve done everything, of course.

Well, I don’t know, my job more than likely be on the davits on the lifeboats and being young my job was to get in the boat and I would hand over the painter and then somebody would run that down the deck and make it fast, so if we’ve gotta swing the boat out and lower

the boat down, it’s already made fast up there. And then when you get in the boat, all you do is just pull the toggle out and then it releases, you haven’t got a knife to cut or nothing and everybody has got a pacific job. And when you get into a boat, everybody knows whether you’re going to sit down, whether he’s oar, or somebody going to start the engine, somebody’s going to let go the falls, and everybody got a job. And everybody,

each lifeboat drill you rotate and do the other man’s job and so when an emergency comes, we’ve been halfway between the Panama Canal and Waita [?] in New Zealand and we’ll pass another company ship, right out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and we would stop and they’d ring the alarm bells and they’d lower a lifeboat and everybody’d jump in the bloody lifeboat and you’d have a bloody boat race out in the middle of the bloody Pacific Ocean and you’d have to row

right round the ship, come back, hook your boats up onto the falls and pull it out and then swing it back in and put it back onto the chocks. And they see, which is going to do it first. And there’d be a prize and all this for it.

Oh it’s compulsory, you do it every bloody week. When

you join a ship, any ship, you have a thing on the wall with everybody’s name, what your job is, in your lifeboat drill and fire drill. And every ship has got that when you first join it, you are allocated a number and a job, every ship in the world. Doesn’t matter what language it is.

That is why you can go on any ship. You haven’t got to be able to speak the language, as long as you know what your job is.

Oh, well, we were lucky, we didn’t have any casualties at all, from Australia to the Panama Canal, in the Pacific. But as soon as we left the Caribbean and we started getting out into the Atlantic, that is when we knew we were going to strike all this trouble.

Oh, no, as I say, you’re on stand by all the time, we all had a little pouch round our waist with all our personal effects in it. All the time, you had that all the time. And if you just had to be unfortunate, and take to a bloody boat, you’d have your tobacco and matches and all that, with you and

and more than likely your bloody personal effects, your bloody passport or something, but on a ship like the Skandia, which has got a minimum crew on deck and down below, you’ve got a chief steward, and a cook that’s all. And then you’ve got a captain, a chief officer, a second officer and a third officer on the bridge. You’ve

got the same in the engine room. You’ve got the chief engineer, the second and the third and then you’ve got a bosun and then you’ve got about eight ABs [Able Seamen] and everybody has got a particular job to do, all the time and as I said, when you join a ship, everybody is allocated a position, for fire drill and lifeboat drill. As soon as that is carried out, it’s usually on a Saturday, that is automatically

entered into the logbook and then the chief officer signs it. And bloody during the week, you’ve got so much maintenance work to do, around the deck, some people steering, some people keeping lookout. There’s usually three men to a watch. And then you come off watch and then by the time you

have your eight hour break, you have a read, have a walk around, write letters and then when you go back on watch, you’ve got so much bloody work to do on watch, steering the ship, keeping a lookout, it’s altogether different now. There’s none of that. They don’t steer the ship any more they don’t keep a lookout any more, whereas we’d carry forty crew.

Now they carry five. There’s no crew in the engine room, everything’s operated from the wheelhouse, it’s an unmanned engine room. Everything, if he wants to pump the bilges out he’ll press a button and he’ll come up on the computer and oh it frightens you. They leave port and they’ll set the radar, on ten mile. If it picks up an object, ten mile, it rings a bell

they’ll set the echo sounder, to a certain depth, say ten fathom, so they’re steaming along, over the bloody continental shelf of a thousand fathom, as soon as they get into ten fathom, the bloody bell on the bloody echo sounder will ring. And then apart from that, a ship now, will be so short staffed, the officer of a watch, every fifteen minutes, has got to go round and

punch the bundy so that he’s not asleep.

Oh yes. It was just off Jamaica. Yes.

Oh no, we were right behind the convoy, it was a long way ahead of us and it was one of the outside ships in the convoy, they’d got torpedoed and when all this happens, all these signals go up and usually the convoy moves to a different angle, all these convoys are zigzagging all over the bloody ocean and everybody’s talking to each other on the intercom between

ships on Channel 12. And the navy commander or the commander of the convoy, he says, “Nobody’s to stop, you are to carry on. We’ll pick up survivors.” And as you go past, you’ll see people in the life raft mostly they can’t get a bloody lifeboat in the bloody water, the ship’s sink too bloody fast. But we were

always greatly bloody scared on bloody oil tankers, because knowing quite well that very, very few people survive if you get torpedoed on a bloody oil tanker, apart from the bloody ship blowing up and catching fire, once the bloody ocean’s smothered in the amount of bloody cargo you’re carrying in those bloody tanks, it’s frightening

and you walk around with your bloody life jacket all the bloody time, even when you’re out on bloody deck. But as I say, everything was so well organised and our Royal Navy and American naval escort vessels who used to escort us, were so good and so fast,

this is why they burnt so much bloody fuel. But most of the ships coming into England were full of foodstuffs, and the bloody ships leaving were full of bloody explosives and all that. But it was always recognised as bloody oil tankers, they were just the bloody floating bloody coffin.

Jesus. But then again, they never had any trouble getting crews for them because it was just the seaman’s way of life. But my brothers, my brother Don, he sailed on bloody oil tankers for bloody twenty years.

Oh yes. Oh yes. They were most common, they were the ones which they bloody were bloody they were after

because they knew quite well that if they didn’t get that bloody cargo of fuel home to the UK, it’d be very, very bad for the bloody war effort. And they were the first vessel which were targeted was the oil tankers.

Well, you don’t see much. It seems to happen so fast. And it usually, it seems to happen at night. But

it’s just a vast explosion, you know, yes it’s very, very hard to explain, the bloody oil tanker, and we all know the whole bloody cargo is bloody so bloody inflammable that once one goes off, it automatically just detonates the rest of the bloody cargo.

And then once it gets floating around the bloody ocean, and it starts heating up, well then the whole ocean catches on fire. And this is where all the danger is. It was most amazing, because they used to put these oil tankers, I don’t know why, they’d always be on the outside of the bloody convoy.

And whether they were a bit worried about it putting them inside the middle of the bloody convoy or what. But I’ve been in so many bloody convoys, and there’s always been so many bloody oil tankers in a convoy, cause that’s one of the main bloody products which has to come home into England is bloody fuel. But even though

there was a lot lost, but thanks to the efficiency of the navy, there could have been a damn sight more. Yes.

Oh, I don’t actually know.

The Tassie Three, I joined the American Small Ships as an able seaman. Because on account of my sea experience on British ships, you’ve got to serve a minimum of three years before you can qualify for an able seaman. And I had done my three years, just about and I’d done all these gunnery courses,

and I’d had so much experience on cargo and oil tankers and general vessels that when I produced my certificates to the Yanks, they automatically gave me a rating as an able seaman. When I went to Papua New Guinea, to Milne Bay

and I was signed on the Tassie Six, I was signed on as the bosun, but that is the next one up as a petty officer, on account of my experience, because a lot of the other crew are more or less, even though they could have been a lot older than me, they’d only just started going to sea.

Well when you get to a job of a bosun, the whole feeling bloody changes because it’s up to you then, you run the whole ship, the chief officer, of a morning, he gives you a list of work he’d like carried out and then you allocate it out to all the seamen, what’s got to

be done and it’s the bosun, he runs everything runs the whole ship.

Well,

Well, it’s unfortunate where we were because as I say, you could leave Milne Bay, you know, fully loaded, but we could have a bloody team

of bloody troops on deck going up to the frontline, and we’d go in and we’d discharge the bloody troops and we’d discharge our bloody general cargo and then we’d go and hide until we were called in and then we’d pick up bloody wounded and all that and bring back to the base hospital at bloody Gili Gili and we didn’t always carry, just some trips you’d carry troops,

you know, just all depends of what was doing.

Both.

Oh see, a bosun, he hasn’t got a watch. Every other person on board is four on and eight off. A bosun does day work.

He’s on call twenty four hours a day and he is walking round the ship all the time, making sure that everything is in order. You could have wounded on board, they might want the fire hose going on deck to wash the deck down, so you might have shit all over the place. The bosun does that, he’s there all day, twenty four hours a day he’s on call.

You could be taking troops up, you’ve got a bit of a bloody galley on the bloody deck so they can do some cooking for the troops. You just walk around give everybody a bloody hand. And you’re up in the bridge discussing the work with the officer of the watch, who might want something doing.

The blokes on the wheel there, another bloke on bloody lookout. You might have to drag the bloke off the lookout so he can give you hand to do something else around the bloody deck which is urgent. There’s so many jobs which has got to be done, all during the day, you know you go round of a morning, you’ll dip the bloody all the tanks, to make sure the bloody ship’s not leaking. You’ll dip the fuel tank, you’ll dip the water tank.

You’ll write it all down. You might have to transfer some fresh water into another tank to keep the ship evenly trimmed in ballast and there’s no bloody, everybody’s got a bloody particular job to do all the time.

Well it was just another new place to me, and I’d saw Africa

and all these places and New Guinea was just a bloody jungle and we’d just got there after the invasion of Milne Bay and there was bloody sunken ships on the bloody beach there and landing barges all over the place had been blown up. And, Gili Gili they had this bloody big canvass bloody hospital there. And that was like our base, right in the bottom of Milne Bay.

Had a big coconut plantation. And being a fisherman and that being a bloody tropical country, I said, “This’ll be bloody marvellous.” cause everyone loves fishing. And up there it’s the first thing you do as soon as you bloody leave port you throw a fishing line overboard and you’re pulling fish in all day. Bloody lovely.

Well it it was the base. Our Small Ship, we had a bloody tent there with a wood floor. That was our base, that was our office and this other Gili Gili was where the army

hospital was. All under canvass, big, big hospital and they would treat all the wounded there. And then when the hospital ship’d come in, the Manunda or any of these hospital ships’d come in and they would have everything ready there and then they would evacuate all the wounded or all the patients onto the hospital ship,

and bring them back to Australia.

Oh yeah, well we’d be bringing them down on the ship. And being the bosun, I’m around there all the time. And if the bloody medical orderlies want something or sing out, I’d be the bloke he’d sing out to. You know and no trouble. No trouble.

Oh, well they never actually discussed the fighting in the jungle with the Japanese. No they never discussed that. You know, they were just waiting to bloody go home.

Oh no, I don’t think it’d be anything they would discuss. You know, I was carrying troops all the bloody time, when I was on the Tassie Six and the other little ship I was on, the Wombat. And we were always up behind the frontlines all the time, bloody keeping supplied with bloody food and

bringing wounded out and bloody most amazing. But I can honestly say that none of the wounded ever discussed the fighting with us. Even when we’d go in with the invasions and that, we waited out there for to call us in we’d go in and we’d load Japanese prisoners. And take them back to our prisoner of war camp which we’d established at Finschhafen. But

those poor Japanese, by heavens above, they’d been living in the bloody bush there for bloody months and months and months. With no food, and they were all covered in bloody sores and all that through no medication, course there were so bloody many of them. And course,

lots of places there they were isolated, they couldn’t get any food, they couldn’t get any supplies in, because we had the whole bloody place sealed off. And we just said, “We’ll starve them out.” And that’s what happened, even in Rabaul. We just bloody completely cut them off. And all on the east coast, right up as far as the Dutch border, Hollandia, they’d raided all the native gardens, they’d eaten all the

native food. And they were in a terrible way, either people, it was a terrible bloody place. And just had them completely surrounded, they could not go anywhere. They couldn’t get any supplies in, they couldn’t get any air drops in and they were all just starving.

Well, it’s very hard to say because we would just bring them up the gang plank and then they were just put straight down the hatch. Which was just a small hole in the bloody hatch and they’d just go down a ladder and that’s it, and they’d stop down there. And we had these MPs [military police] on board there and they didn’t even go down to see the prisoners, because there was no need for them.

And we just had buckets down for them to urinate in if they wanted to and all that. Then we’d just hand them down food, and water. But they weren’t allowed on deck. But they couldn’t converse with anybody, because they didn’t speak English and they were always, not actually shy but

they didn’t know what was going to happen and I suppose I’d be in the same bloody way too if I’d bloody taken a bloody prisoner of war. And you were locked up in the hole of ship. You had no idea of where they were, you can’t speak the language, you don’t know how the war’s going on.

Oh they were suffering from malnutrition. Wasn’t so much the suffering from malnutrition, it was their health. They were breaking out in boils and weeping sores, they’d been scratched in the jungle and all festered and

when we would send food down, they’d snap it up straight away. And they were pleased to get it. Been starved you know.

Heavens above, well that’d be, I do that all the time. Because we used to keep what they call a ‘focal head lookout’ up the bow of the vessel and you see these hundreds of bloody ships ahead of you.

And being patrolled outside, by all these patrol boats and naval vessels, and it was amazing the way they used to go, you’d be steaming along at a certain speed and then all of a sudden on the split second the whole convoy would move, and alter course for half an hour or ten minutes and then it’d alter course again.

Into another course. And the last ship on the convoy it had a wire hanging out of stern towing a buoy, which was hollow. And as it towed this buoy through the water, about half a mile astern,

the water used to run in the front of the buoy and spurt up and leave a spout of water and we being behind the convoy, this was our mark. We knew how far we were from the convoy. And it’s towing this buoy on a wire, the last ship and we’re behind it and the man on lookout is telling

the officer of the watch, how close we are to this. And he’d say, “Up ten revs [revolutions], down ten revs.” You know, revolutions and you’d keep your position. And for no apparent reason at all, next thing the whole bloody convoy would shoot out and this buoy being towed astern would be shooting up this spout of water with the speed of the vessel, and we’d

see that and that was our mark, course it’s different these days with all this electronic equipment, then it was manual. And if the patrol boat’s ahead they’re zigzagging all over the place, and they pick up on their equipment, on their sonar, a submarine underneath the water. And course then he’d put all his flags

up and of course it’d alert all the convoy that there’s danger in the area. And then away we’d go zigzagging again and these bloody destroyers are up there, and they’re letting these depth charges go, trying to bloody get this bloody submarines and that, and course the Atlantic, as I said, previously, we’d lost so many ships and course, the closer

we got to England the more dangerous it got because we’re in confined waters.

Well as we were coming up, we’re coming from the centre of the Atlantic Ocean and as we’re getting closer to England we are now, apart from the submarines, we’re now we’re in flying distance of bloody aircraft.

And then this is more trouble. These aircraft would come out and they would circle the bloody convoys, you’d only see them in the distance, and they were relaying our positions back to their base in Germany or wherever it was. And it was most amazing, course, everything was manual, you had no equipment like we’ve got today, for picking up all this, it’s all done

by sight and hearing. And this is why it was so essential.

Practice for the aircraft to circle the convoys at a great distance and then we knew what to expect

as we got closer to England and this is why the naval patrol boats then would come out with these great big balloons and they’d pass them to the ships in the convoys and you’d keep them and fly them right up high so that the aircraft couldn’t come in and dive bomb you or strafe you. And you kept them all the way until you got right into port

and then they’d take them away and take them out for the next convoy. But the Atlantic Ocean was so bad that we’d lost so many ships and course, it was just unfortunate and they were all coming out of the Mediterranean and the Baltic. And as we got closer, and course as you’re going up across what they call the Bay of Bisque, off of Spain and that, the closer you got, the more dangerous it got.

Oh we saw dogfights all the time, yeah.

Well we wouldn’t actually see them but when these enemy aircraft would come out and start in circular convoy, then the British and the Americans would send

their aircraft out to intercept these aircraft and then these bigger bombers, which were coming out to bomb the convoys, they were being escorted by these German fighter planes and by this time, the British fighter planes would come out and then there’d be dogfights all over the sky, and it wouldn’t matter

even if an aircraft crashed and came down, we weren’t allowed to stop. But the navy had that all under control, as far as rescue anybody. Well it wasn’t common, but I have seen, you know, people parachuting down, out there, their planes had been damaged by bloody fire and they’ve evacuated or ejected and just

come down by bloody parachute into the bloody ocean. And usually they’re picked up by the naval patrol vessels, and then as you’re getting closer to England well then, the convoy’s starting to disintegrate, everybody’s getting their orders, what port to go to, to your port of discharge. And it was amazing how it was all worked out and

all the escort vessels would take so many of these cargo vessels and escort them into a safe port. But they were under surveillance all the time, by enemy aircraft. Most amazing.

In what respect do you mean, “What roles?”

Oh well, I mean, ninety per cent of their cargo was food. That was the big factor. Was food and supplies like all the tankers and all that, they’d be bringing in bloody fuel. Crude oil and

petrol, and course there was also other vessels bringing in bloody ammunition and all that too, to the UK. But the biggest volume, would be food. And this is why it was so essential to get these convoys through. Because they had such a big bloody population to feed,

and there’s no way in the world that the England or her allies there could ever just feed themselves off the local produce. It all had to come from overseas. And this is why it was so essential for the merchant navy to deliver all these bloody products.

All the time, you wouldn’t get a more worse bloody ocean than the Atlantic Ocean for rough weather and as you get closer in to what they call the Bay of Bisque, that is rough all the time. But the Atlantic Ocean is very well known for very, very rough seas. Very rough.

Well, they’re used to this and it’s most amazing, all ships are loaded for these conditions, they all carry a Plimsoll mark on the side of the vessel, and on that Plimsoll mark it’ll tell you how deep you can load a ship down, into what conditions. Summer, and winter. And all that

fresh water, or salt water and you load by these marks on the side of the vessel, for safety. And that is what is done. And they’re taking it into consideration, your port of departure and how far it is to your port of arrival and how much fuel you’re going to burn so that that ship will come up a certain amount so they can carry extra

cargo. And it’s not complicated but it’s so well worked out, on a safety factor. And every ship in the world has Plimsoll mark on the side, and they load to that Plimsoll. You get a ship down in the tropics, it wouldn’t load the same amount of cargo as a ship in winter. And a ship in fresh water,

would load less cargo than a ship in salt water. cause salt water is so buoyant and it all depends of where your port of loading to where your port of discharge is to what you’re going to load the ship and that’s all worked out, apart from that, you get what they call the winter in the North Atlantic which is terrible weather and this is also on your Plimsoll mark,

so it doesn’t matter where you are, you’ve gotta load to these marks so that when you do encounter these rough seas, weeks and weeks and weeks after you’ve loaded and you’re at sea, you know that that bloody ship is safe. Because it has gone by the regulations and it’s loaded to the draft required. That’s all worked out and there’s no way in the world, cheating, because that’s it. That’s very, very, very

good.

Well, on the average cargo vessel, I mean, you’re completely battened down, every porthole, every window, every door is completely locked, the ship is watertight. And you’ll take seas over the funnel, and that, but it won’t do any damage, because your

windows in the wheelhouse rotate, and in those days everything was visual, not like now, where you’ve got radar and all this other high tech equipment, and it was all done visually and as the rougher the sea got, the slower you went, you eased your engines down in conjunction to the water, so you didn’t take too much

water on board. Because even though you’re loaded to your Plimsoll mark, in very rough seas, these bloody hundreds and hundreds tonnes of water come on board the bloody vessel which puts you deeper in the water, and you regulate that by your speed. Because the buoyancy of a vessel, keeps the vessel afloat. And this is the idea. This is why some trips take long, some trips take longer

and shorter. And soon as you strike head seas, beam seas, following seas, they’re all got their own characteristic, you get a great big following sea which is very dangerous and it will be pushing the ship along. And it’s what you call, you’ll broach. The ship will spin, and it could roll, but this is all taken into consideration on the buoyancy of the vessel, by loading to the Plimsoll mark on the side of the ship.

And very head seas, when you’re punching into a head sea, you have to ease right down, because you take that much bloody water on board over the bow and it runs right off over the stern and then the beam sea, is very, very dangerous because you’re rolling and it’s a big strain on a ship. You can hear a ship moaning and groaning, with the rivets and plates moving.

And it’s all done, it’s all controlled from the wheelhouse they know, by experience and the feel of the ship by their feet, how things are going and they just govern the speed of the vessel to make sure that it’s safe. Even though they could be running late, which is very embarrassing when a ship’s under daily charter and you strike very, very rough weather

you just got to do the right thing and just ease the vessel down, even though it might take a couple of days or a couple of weeks longer. It’s just the safety factor. But it’s most amazing.

No, unfortunately, I’ve never been seasick. The only time I ever get sick is if I’ve got to work in a bloody engine room, and I’ve got

fuel blockages and you’re sucking bloody diesel in or something, trying to clear fuel blockage and you swallow half a gallon of bloody fuel and then you might get a bit upset in the stomach but I’ve been lots and lots of bad weather, lots of bad weather. I’ve been in cyclones and typhoons and I lost a ship in a cyclone. Years ago, it was just

unfortunate, just bad weather. Yes. And course, in those days, you did not have a weather report like you’ve got today, you can go and switch your TV on now, or you can switch your bloody computer on, and get a weather report anywhere in the world. It’ll tell you what it’s like, what the temperature is, where it’s snowing, but

in those days, of war, you just had to rely on knowledge and your barometer, and local knowledge on what the weather was going to do. And this is proved very, very satisfactory.

The military seamen?

Well,

in the army you mean? Yes, most amazing cause, I know myself that a lot of the military seamen were ex-merchant seamen. I know that for a fact and we still discuss it down at the RSL [Returned and Services League] when we’re having these meetings and after the meetings we have discussions about experiences and that and it’s amazing, what just eventuates.

But course the military didn’t have the ships like the navy has got and the navy vessels, you get these small destroyers and that, you never get any more uncomfortable ship, they’re so long and so narrow and they roll, say on damp grass.

But they do the job and they’re very seaworthy and course now that all this new equipment on all ships, not on all ships but lots of ships, they have got what they call a rolling equipment, you’ve got stabilisers which you put out which stops all these passenger vessels have got them. You know they only move a few inches, a few degrees, cause they’ve got stabilisers on them. But

there was nothing like that before.

Well, you would have a commodore, on one ship, in the convoy, he’s got the commodore, a merchant seaman on board. And he is in contact with the navy, on all the patrol boats and they work out, before you leave

port, where you’re going, what you’re going to do, you also have your plans of what your zigzags and you have a clock on the wall, with a circle on it and you set it all up as the hand goes around and it touches one of these bloody things on the clock, it rings a bell and you know then, you’re going to be ready to alter course and

but it doesn’t always work like that because, if the patrol boats ahead detect some underwater sound which they cannot define, if it’s a submarine or something, then they will divert the convoy, put their flags up and signals, and then everybody will shoot away and you might steam the opposite way for hours or days, until you

get the all clear and then you’ll alter course again and continue your passage. There’s no such bloody thing as going straight from A to B. It just doesn’t work like that and this is why when I’m on the tankers, I could quite understand why they had these bloody refuelling tankers there, these ships in a convoy, they’re steaming at a given speed. Some of the bloody

ships are older and they’re coal burners and again, your watches are four on and eight off. Every four hours on a coal burner, you’ve got to pull the fire out of the furnace to get all the ash out, when that happens, your steam drops and your speed drops. And you drop right back behind the convoy until the firemen fill up that bloody furnace with coal

and get the fire going again to bring the bloody steam pressure up again so that you can catch the convoy up. And this happens every four hours. Apart from that, every four hours, when they’re doing this, these bloody coal burners, start smoking of course, they’re firing in raw coal into the furnace and as it’s burning with forced draft behind it, black smoke is belching out,

the vessels in the convoy are all going crook, because it is letting the enemy know where you are. Because a diesel vessel, they don’t smoke. Once they start that engine, keep that one revolution until the bloody ship stops at the other end, but a coal burner, in the early

part of the war, when we had these coal burners, they would drop back out of the convoy and the naval vessels had to give them the bloody escort because they’re getting right behind, then they’d have to work like hell to get their steam up again to catch up with the convoy, get into their position, but then four hours later, they’d do it again. And this went on all the time, night and day.

It does not, the convoy doesn’t stop.

If these bloody ships get out of the convoy, they’re giving an escort vessel for safety until they can rejoin the convoy, but the other part of the convoy, the big majority of ships, maintain their bloody speed all the time. And even though the other ships are dropping out of the convoy, the other part of the convoy is observing the regulations they’re

altering course, they’re zigzaggin’ and going all over the bloody place. And these poor blokes on the older type ships which are coal burners, soon as they get their steam up again and they catch up the convoy then they drop back again four hours later, and this is just life at sea, this is just everyday life. You work four hours on, eight hours off.

Well, it all

depends where they’re coming from, their port of discharge, where they left, the port of departure, it’s just where they come from. Ninety per cent of the time it’s just a general cargo, usually it’s food, is the big import. They could be carrying wheat. That was one of our big cargoes. Carrying wheat from Canada and bring

it in, back to the UK, as you read by my reports they used to carry lots and lots of grain. It’s most amazing, these bloody coal burners, see I was on another coal burner, the Fort Senneville, we left Singapore, we went right across the Pacific Ocean to Seattle in Washington, we picked up a full cargo of coal.

And we struck such terrible weather, coming back over the Pacific, to Singapore, with a great cargo of coal, that we were running out of bloody coal. We had to divert and steam into Hong Kong and put bunkers in the ship from Hong Kong, because it’s illegal to touch the cargo. We had a cargo of coal, ten thousand tons of coal for the power station at Singapore. We went

back into Singapore, after we’d left Hong Kong, we discharged our bloody cargo of coal, lo and behold we were called then to Vancouver on the west coast of Canada, to pick up a load of grain. So all the way across the Pacific, we had to completely strip that ship out, of all the coal and rubbish for inspection

on arrival at Canada to pick up a load of wheat for the UK. And this is just everyday life for a seaman. This is the way life goes.

This is just after the war.

Well, in a convoy, most of the ships are governed

by their speed. Each convoy is governed by its speed. And these, the bigger convoys, like we were associated with, were all around ten thousand ton cargo ships. Because the larger vessels were a lot faster and it’d be silly to keep them going at half speed in a ten knot convoy, when they could be

doing fifteen to twenty knots. But seeing that we were carrying such an essential cargo, in so many ships, we had all the security, all the patrol boats and that was making sure this convoy was going to get through, because a faster vessel has got more chance of getting away from a submarine attack than a slow vessel.

And this is why it was, these faster vessels, they would zigzag all over the bloody ocean but they’re going so bloody fast, that there’s no way in the world that the bloody submarine could bloody latch onto them. Whereas these most essential smaller, bloody cargo vessels, the convoys were only about ten or twelve knots and they were all

governed, these convoys, this is why they were so big, because there was more bloody slow vessels than there was fast and all that cargo was essential. And it had to get through. And this is why these naval vessels, they stuck to us like bloody shit to a bloody blanket, they were doing such a marvellous bloody job. Jesus.

The bigger ships? Oh they’d be at least four, whereas an ordinary cargo vessel, if you get what they say a flush deck cargo vessel, it has only got the accommodation and the wheelhouse on top. A lot of the other vessels, they’d be three or four storeys of accommodation.

And then a large area of cargo.

That was in them days. Now, these days, of containerisation, you’ll get one thousand ton bloody ship which does twenty knots and it carries all these bloody boxes, it’s surprising, the amount of cargo it carries. And then you look in today’s paper, you see photos of these great bloody ships carrying eighty to one hundred thousand

ton of wheat to Pakistan and they won’t accept the wheat now because it’s got some disease in it. So it’s most amazing.

Oh, no, it’s all hand packed, it’s loose. It’s what they call, loose cargo. It’s loaded on pallets or it’s put in slings, into the hatch and all the wharf labourers

used to have a cargo hook, and they’d pull it out and stack it all by hand. And they’d start from the bottom, in the corners, and work all the way up. And then they started getting pallets, all your cargo was put on a pallet, forty eight inches square. And then these’d be stacked, they’d put a fork lift in the hold and they’d stack all these pallets all round. But in wartime, there was none of that, it was all done by hand.

And all the wharfies would be down the hatch, we’d lower it all down on a wire, with the derrick and then it was distributed throughout the bloody ship.

Oh heavens above, you look at the size of the bloody ship, it’d be well over forty feet. And could be three decks, it’s not just one great hold, you get

a ’tween deck, inside. Once you get inside, you fill the lower hold up first and then you put your beams in, put your hatches on, then you fill up your ’tween decks. That’s between the main deck and the keel. You get three or four decks.

It’s not so much weighed, everybody knows what the weight is. Probably before, you load

the cargo. You’ve got what they call a manifest. And everything is on that manifest. And all your weight, it could be the weight or it could be the size, now it’s in bloody metric, before it was inches and bloody feet, in cubic measure. And you work, we all know that in shipping you work on one hundred cubic feet to the ton. And

they know before you load, of what you’re going to load and what the tonnage is going to be. And this is why they know, why before you start off, what your cargo’s going to be, what the weather’s like, if it’s winter or summer, if you could be up the Manchester Ship Canal, which is fresh water, and you’re loading a bloody cargo, now if you load a cargo in

fresh water and you come down into salt water, it’s altogether different. It’s vice versa, but if you load in salt water and go into fresh water, if you load in bloody salt water, down to your marks, when you go into bloody fresh water the bloody ship sinks. It goes, it’s overloaded. Unless you’re associated with shipping, you wouldn’t understand all this, and everything’s worked out before

you load. And apart from that, they say, “Oh well, where are you going to go to? You’re going to load a full cargo here? What’s your first port of call?” Then you’ll know how much fresh water you’re going to put on board. How much fuel, you’re going to put on board, how much stores. And this is all taken into consideration working out the tonnage of what you can carry. Otherwise the ship will be overloaded.

It won’t be allowed to leave port.

Well, in the old days, it’d take six weeks. Same here, these sailing vessels when they come into Melbourne or Sydney and load bales of wool, that was all done by hand, they’d be there for a month loading bales of wool. Because they’ve got to put them in and stack them tight to get them in. Then when they’ve got them in, they’d cut the outside bales

so they’d explode and they’d push the other bales in so they’d be stowed tight. You can’t afford to have a loose stow. If you strike rough weather, the cargo will shift. And this has all got to be taken into consideration. And you’ve got to make sure, when you’re at sea, what tanks you’re taking your fuel out of, what tanks you’re taking your water out of. Because if you get fuel and water in half filled tanks, it’ll start

and slop and you’ll start getting movement, which is very dangerous. And you know, once you’ve been associated with shipping and this is why when you start going back in shipping, you get like the Plimsoll mark, see this is all British, and everybody follows the British because it’s a proven design, it goes back so far in

history. That there’s been nothing has been invented which can improve it.

How do you mean?

It wouldn’t make any difference, they had to load for safety factor. That was the big factor, safety, the whole thing in a ship,

you’ve so much cargo that exported from Australia to the UK and Europe, twelve thousand miles away, how do you know what the weather’s going to be like? You load here in the summer, by the time you get over there it’s mid- winter. You have to load so that when you arrive in that area, the vessel’s not in danger of being overloaded. Even though you’ve been at sea for bloody six weeks, you get into rough weather or very bad

conditions and the vessel’s in danger, cause it’s overloaded. But there’s no chance of that ever happening. Unless you start getting up in the northern hemisphere and you start getting ice all over your ship, you get spray which turns into bloody ice, then the ships get top heavy, I’ve been in bloody ships where we’ve got to keep our steam winches running twenty four hours a day, your steam pipes, if they’re

not running, the water in them freezes and busts. So you keep your bloody steam winches on deck running all the time, cause you’re in cold weather. And you start getting a build up of ice and then you get your hoses out and you start hosing steam all over it, so to make sure that you’re not top heavy. And this is all taken into consideration on your Plimsoll on the side. And this is when you do your loading, and then

you’ve got to work out what is your port of discharge, where you’re going, are you loading in the bloody cold weather are you going into the tropics or vice versa, you get these bloody ships on the east coast of America, they load big loads of cargo, their next port of call is up the bloody river down South America and it’s in fresh water and as soon as you get into fresh water, coming in from salt, the ship’s got no buoyancy and it goes right down.

Exactly the same. It’s very good though, loading in fresh water, once you come out into bloody salt water, you come up out of the water.

Not necessarily. It all depends where it is hit.

Oh well, the bloody engine room.

That’s what they all go for. And then the bloody ship’s disabled. But they could hit it in the fore part of the vessel and knock the bow off and that’s bloody nothing, or knock the stern off but that bloody engine room. Apart from that, it stands out as the biggest part of the vessel. And apart from that, the bloody funnel’s usually above the engine room, that gives it a good

lead of where it’s going to strike. And but being associated with shipping and you can see over the years, how well it is bloody maintained now and during the war, it was marvellous. One bloody trip you’d carry a full load, a full heavy load of ammunition, you know,

your next bloody trip you could have a load of wheat or something like that. You know, all depends but it’s all worked out beforehand.

Yes, well that was quite common, loading troops, the whole thing, which everybody takes into consideration, is the safety factor. If ship is torpedoed, you have to make sure that you’ve got enough flotation like

life rafts, lifeboats, for everybody on the vessel. This is what was so unusual, with a ship like the Queen Mary which is carrying fifteen thousand troops plus two thousand crew, and there’s no way in the world, that she can carry flotation even though every man

has got a life jacket. You won’t last very long in the bloody water if that’s all you’ve got. But they were very, very careful, this is why all the escorts were there and everything.

Oh heavens above, yes.

Well, I mean, we were

quite lucky in Boston when we loaded all our troops there. We were alongside of a wharf and all the troops were brought by troop train to alongside of the wharf. And they were in different battalions, and they were just allocated certain parts of the ship. But in Sydney when it all started, the troops

were bought out from the shore by ferry boat, to put on board, because there was no wharf big enough to accommodate the Queen Mary and this is when all the fun started, when they had to bring out all these troops which took a long time, you know and then again, when you’re on the water, I say, the big factor is,

lifesaving and each ferry boat could only carry a certain number of troops because that was all it was licensed to carry. And how many life jackets they had and everything, they’re very strict where you’re dealing with water.

Oh it’s hard to say, I don’t know, I suppose, I wouldn’t guess.

I suppose it’d take well over a week. Because apart from bringing them out on these small ferries, they gotta tie up alongside the ship and go in through the hole of where the gangway is and then allocated to their different bloody place of where they’re living. It’s very, very well worked out. It’s marvellous. And I couldn’t

understand, even today I’m amazed that when they started loading troops on the Mary in Boston, that we thought we were never going to finish because we were running out of space and as I said, the bunks in certain parts of the ship were seventeen high with catwalks round them and even then a lot of troops just slept on the deck on their mattresses, you know.

Oh no, there was plenty of room but it was very muggy, you know, not like today, it was ventilated but not air conditioned. Not like today.

Well, it was different, we were sleeping up in the bow of the vessel in what they call the fo’c’sle and we had cabins and there were six bunks

two high, in each cabin. And there was eighty ABs, eighty seamen up there in that particular section, and then down the stern is where the engineers and the catering department where and all the people in the engine room. That’s where they all lived. And right down the centre of the ship,

just about on water level, was what they call this big working alleyway where everybody walked up and it was in three sections, you’d walk down from the bow where we lived, and you’d have to go through a door, into a sealed chamber and you’d have to stop there for the red light turned green then you would move into the next side of the alleyway, the ship is in three sections and the air pressure

is different in each section. You can’t leave the door open. And unless you’re familiar with all this. You’d leave your cabin, you’d come down, open the door and go into this little alcove and you’d look up there as soon as the light turned green the air pressure would equalise to the next section. Then you’d open the door, and go into the next section. And you’d walk through that section

to the next door and go in there. And as soon as that bloody red light turned green and the air pressure equalised then you could go into another part of the ship. But we would go down into the middle section and then we would get into the lift. And then we would go up twelve floors up to the bridge. Most amazing. And in those days, it was the biggest ship in the world, but

today, to see what these big vessels are like, it’s just like a bloody river ferry, compared to these ships today.

Oh definitely. Tasmania, Hobart.

Yeah, we left Sydney and we went into Tasmania, into Hobart and we bloody were waiting there for all our escort vessels.

Egypt.

Yeah. We left Australia

we went down to Cape Leeuwin, on the west point of Western Australia, we went straight across the Indian Ocean, south of India, right up through the Red Sea, to the Suez Canal, to Port Tewfik. And we anchored there and the ship just next to us had just been bombed the night before and so when we start

discharging, we’d discharge all day, and we were discharging all our troops there into barges and ferry boats at Port Tewfik, and then just before dark, we’ll up anchor and we’d steam right down the Red Sea and get out of the way. Under escort all the time.

No, no, no.

I’m just trying to think of it, I know it so well,

You couldn’t see nothing, because they had dropped the bomb and it went down the funnel, of the vessel into the engine room. I mentioned it earlier in this conversation, the name of the ship. No, I know it so well. Be come up in lots of meetings up the RSL.

They’d come over the night before and dropped bombs and one bomb went right down the funnel and blew the whole engine room out. And they had to tow it away. Heavens above, yes, it’s amazing, I get down to the RSL here and this always comes up and course

when I mention Port Tewfik, all these old bloody diggers their ears bloody pop up, because they were passengers on the ship. From Sydney to Port Tewfik and you know this all crops up unusual.

That’s the first port of call.

I was fifteen.

Oh yeah.

Oh well, it was being discussed in the bridge. I was working on the bridge of the Queen Mary and every officer up there was discussing the bombing of this bloody vessel and that is why we were

going to leave every night and come back every morning and continue discharging and loading because, this was the regular occurrence in that particular area about these planes coming over at night, not during the day, coming over at night. Dropping bloody bombs. Heavens above, I’ve got the name of that ship right at the end of me tongue. Yes, so being up in the bridge,

I was familiar with everything that was going on. And when I’d get down there, my brother used to be waiting for me, “What’s this and what’s that and when are we leaving, what’s our next port of call?” And all that and of course, I made a bit balls of it when I told him Singapore, because we had all the charts out and that was our next port of call because we were due for dry docking, and once the Japanese

were in the area, and they said, “Oh well, better take it to Trincomalee and see what’s going to happen.” And of course, even today they still talk about Singapore, see it was British Army and naval base for one hundred years and had guns everywhere, but they were all facing out to sea. They thought that they would have been invaded from the sea.

And the Japanese knew that and so they came in through Malaya, in the back way, in the back door. And it was unfortunate.

Well, if you look at the map from bloody Trincomalee to Singapore is only a couple of days run, it’s not very far at all.

Can you visualise it on the map? You come down, down through the Malacca Straits.

Oh we were all ready, they were expecting us, they were waiting for us in Singapore, for dry docking in the big naval dry dock there. Big dock, one of the biggest in the world. And there was nobody more surprised

than the British when the Japs come in the back door and took Singapore.

Well they were all bloody flabbergasted, they just couldn’t, you know they just couldn’t understand it. Because everybody had been there so many times before and it was even at school, they used to tell you, about the big naval base at Singapore and all the

guns and that and everything was pointing out to sea. The only way you could invade Singapore was to come down through the Malacca Straits and course, the Japanese came in the back door and there was no guns facing that way. And the Australian troops and everything were in the town of Singapore, there was nobody. Singapore’s such a small island,

I lived there for ages.

I’m not too bloody sure on that, I’d have to check my files and find when it did happen.

I’m not too sure when it happened, what part of the war, it was early in the war.

Yes, it could have been, early in the war. And this is why the American troops were so cross with the Japanese as I said, with all this bloody cannibalism and that that they were carrying on up on the battlefields, with the Japanese bloody dead and all that.

And they were talking then about the atrocity of how the bloody Japanese bloody bombed bloody Pearl Harbour to bloody pieces and it was a neutral country.

No.

Yes. See

I was so young, I don’t suppose I’d remember. You know, not taking a great deal of interest.

Oh my oath, oh yeah. Everybody was gambling. And of course my brother he was the big one, because I was the bridge boy, I worked in the

bridge of the Queen Mary and I knew what charts were on the table and everything. Everything was there all ready to leave Trincomalee and proceed down through the bloody Malacca Straits just north of Sumatra, to Singapore just a couple of days run. And they were all ready. And all the engineers and that, they were all ready for this big refit and

then the rumours had got out, that we could be going to America instead of Singapore and this is when the betting started and my brother with bloody dollar signs in his eyes, he said, “What’s happening up on top?” And I said, “Well, all the charts on the table are for Singapore.” And everything was ready for customs and everything in Singapore

heavens above. So he went down and laid his bets that we’re going to Singapore and done his money. But everybody, nobody knew what was happening, you know. A ship like that, just being jack- knifed and put into different places and the enemy was bloody after it and it was so bloody fast, it was amazing, the speed of it.

And these bloody destroyers they used to be bloody be really going to keep up with us once we got to sea. And course, when we got to sea and course it was let out then, course on the Queen Mary she published her own newspaper, every day. And this was all came out then that we were on our way to New York.

Well, they were dumbfounded because they just could not understand it. After the Japanese coming down and bombing bloody Pearl Harbour and completely flattening the bloody naval base in Pearl Harbour and then coming in the back door of bloody Singapore

which had been the naval base of Britain for one hundred bloody years, the whole thing, the whole war, it changed overnight. And everybody was flabbergasted.

Well, they always, after Pearl Harbour,

that automatically made them very, very unpopular. And for some unknown reason, when they took Singapore that put them right on top of the bloody ladder. For their

bloody knowledge of the area all these bloody, this bloody army and naval base and they used to boast about all these bloody guns, all over the bloody place, and they were facing the wrong way. Not one was facing inland, where the Japanese come down through Malaya.

No, not on a ship. No, they weren’t greatly worried, our biggest concern was when we were in the naval base at Trincomalee, and we said, “Oh heavens above.” Our next place is bloody New York, that’s halfway

round the bloody world, to go right across the Indian bloody Ocean and then down to the bloody south of Africa and then right across the bloody Atlantic Ocean and by this time, the war wasn’t going too bloody well. As far as we were concerned and they’d lost so many ships in the Atlantic Ocean and the only way we could get to bloody

New York was to go across the bloody Atlantic Ocean, I mean we couldn’t even go the other way and come across the Panama Canal and go up the east coast of America because we were too big.

Well it was nothing startling about it, it was just a bloody long bloody haul. We left Trincomalee and then we

went down to the bloody South Africa and turned the bloody corner there and then we had so many escort bloody vessels around us, and right ahead of us that there’s no way in the world the bloody submarine could get bloody near us. And we went across that bloody Atlantic Ocean at a very, very fast speed.

Very, very fast.

When we left New York, when we left Boston with fifteen thousand troops, and the first night out and the bloody all up on what they call the sundeck, all of what was the first classed accommodation, it all caught fire. It had been sabotaged, in between the walls. But the

nobody knew down below that the ship was on fire.

Well, these people who had been working on the ship in Boston, doing all these new accommodations and all that, and somehow or other, somebody had put something into the wiring or something, all the wiring fused out and set

the ship on fire inside the two walls. And it was only the quick thinking of the engineers and electricians that bloody saved, we had to stop the bloody ship at sea in the middle of the night to take the weight off it so that the ship travelling through the water, it wouldn’t bloody help ignite the bloody fire, we had to stop the ship

so that there was as you know, once a fire starts, if you start running, it’ll increase the oxygen, so we had to stop the ship so that they could get all this fire equipment in to put all these bloody fires out. And there was fifteen thousand troops there but nobody knew about it. It’s not like as if an alarm went off. They didn’t. Because

it was only the people up on the upper deck in the crew who knew that the ship was on fire. All the officers and that, army officers were up there also, they live there.

Yeah, we left Trincomalee, no I don’t think we did, we just made a landfall, at

Cape of Good Hope and just rounded the corner and then we went straight across because from Trincomalee from Ceylon or Sri Lanka as it’s called now, across the Indian Ocean now, down there, you know, it’s not a great distance.

It was bloody mid- winter

and we had just come out the tropics. And all we had was tropical bloody clothes and nobody could go ashore and the ship must have radioed ahead that we were coming out of the tropics because when we arrived in New York, the seamen’s mission, bought all these winter clothes

down for us. Coats and long trousers, everybody was in short trousers and bloody sandals and scuffs and it was most amazing. It was mid- winter when we arrived there.

Well, as I say, we were laying alongside the Normandy, we were one wharf, she was the other. And

everybody was working on the Normandy, converting her from a passenger vessel to a troop ship. And they started to do exactly the same to the Queen Mary. And we were there for a couple of weeks while we were getting all this done. And while all this is going on, the army came down and they installed all these bloody anti-aircraft guns all over the bloody ship. And on

the stern we had these great big six inch bloody canons and as I said, it looked like an armed merchant cruiser. When we left, because we had that many bloody guns on there, we had to have a special load of bloody naval personnel to operate all these bloody guns.

Well,

we didn’t. I made lots of blunders when I first got there. Being, in those days, it was very, very strict on colour. The first mistake I made I’d gone the wrong end of a bloody bus. And because I’m sitting down with all the Negroes, and I was ordered off, because only the front of the bus is for the white people. The back of the bus is for

the Negroes. And you couldn’t even go into a toilet, you couldn’t even go into a bar. And you gotta watch if you went into a restaurant because they were so strict unless it was down at Harlem or somewhere which caters for Negroes but it wasn’t common for a white person to associate with a Negro.

The Negroes.

They told me to get out. And course, soon as I start to speak they knew bloody well that I wasn’t a Yank. Yeah. Yes, and they were so strict there, heavens above, you couldn’t even go to the toilet. Yes, it was winter time when I was there, I can always remember it, I couldn’t understand, it was snowing and

when the snow would hit the footpath it’d melt. Most amazing. We had never seen this in our country.

No, no. Never.

Well, when we got known there, we were invited out by different groups of people you know, sightseeing and all that. Because

it’s quite a rarity to see an Australian. It was quite good.

Excellent. And course they didn’t know, that we’re there to take fifteen thousand troops back to Australia. When we left New York and came up to Boston and we went into the dry dock in Boston and I have never seen so many workmen,

they were like flies, all over the ship, going right through it, going every inch had been run down, she hadn’t been done for a long while Beautiful, marvellous tradesmen, completely painted the ship from the top of the mast to the keel. And then we went back into the water and then they bloody put us alongside the docks and then we started loading troops. And we were waiting for us to fill up because they just

kept on coming and coming, bloody trainloads of them were coming and we just couldn’t visualise where we’re going with these because we thought we were going to take them to the Middle East, we didn’t know we were coming to Australia.

Well, they were all so young. All happy and

they didn’t know where they were going either. And they were so bloody happy, and course it was all so secret, there’s no families come down to see them off. Was so secret and as soon as the last one was on board, we just let go and away we went. And then it came out that the Queen Mary had just left bloody Boston, full of bloody troops. Where’s she going?

A big question mark, nobody knew. And it was kept very, very well under the bloody wraps for weeks. And I could just imagine too, having so many bloody troops on one bloody ship, going across this bloody submarine infested Atlantic Ocean and this is why we were going so far south,

right down past Rio de Janeiro. And right down the south Atlantic, just as well too, but they were so clever, the British, they had everything worked out so nicely. And their escort vessels, heavens above!

Well, once we left bloody Rio, then

it leaked out that we’re going across the bloody Atlantic Ocean, you know, going to bloody South Africa, and they said, “Christ Almighty, where are we going to go to? Are we going to go up the east coast of Africa, to the Middle East or we going to go across the bloody Indian Ocean to Australia?” Nobody knows, Australia was never mentioned. Because we’d been taking all these trips out of Australia, why put more troops in Australia? So

anyhow, but they were, it was amazing that they were so well dressed and their uniforms are so expensive looking. Very, very lovely.

Well, seeing the Australian troops in their garb, you know, I mean with their slouch hats and just tropical dress,

it was absolutely nothing. Even the Aussie army boots and the gaiters and that, they were nothing compared to the quality of the Americans. But it was very good.

Well when I joined the American army, I went down and got measured up for my bloody uniforms

I had four uniforms, and they were beautiful. Khaki, with a nice slouch hat, bloody beautiful, brass buttons, really nice. And I had a special document we used to have to carry, we were civilians in the American Army.

Yeah, most amazing.

Well, New York is a different bloody atmosphere, altogether. It’s a lively place.

Well, London’s a sleepy city, compared to New York. New York is bustling, really moving. But London, I don’t know, it’s real sleepy.

Oh I see. Oh, yes well, the Yanks are just getting over Pearl Harbour, and they’re just more or less just come into the bloody war. And course when we’re loading all these bloody troops, and they didn’t know where they were going, and neither did we know where they were going, it was

all so bloody secret. But once it got out when we were away at bloody sea and it got out that they were going to Australia, heavens above, they were like kids on holidays. They were so happy. I’m sure they would have been too, of course, things weren’t going too well, as I say, we put a daily newspaper out on the ship which gave them

an update of the war every day. And they knew that we had just come back from taking a load of Australia and New Zealand troops to the Middle East. And they were a bit worried that that could have been their next port of call, up to the Middle East. But as it worked out, seeing the bloody Japanese had bombed the

shit out of bloody Pearl Harbour, they were coming to Australia to get settled so that they could go up and bloody belt the shit out of the Japanese. And this is what the whole thing was. And when they heard out that they were coming to Australia, they were so bloody happy. They were so disappointed when they thought they were going to the Middle East. But when they told them they were going to Australia, and this all came up then about

Pearl Harbour, and all that. And then they says, “Well, this is marvellous, we’ll get our own back here.” And they said, when they knew they were coming here, and go through all their training and that in Australia it was quite good.

Oh they were bloody happy. Heavens above. I can still see when we’re discharging the bloody troops here, in bloody Sydney, you know and

the bloody Aussie soldiers are singing out, “You’ll be sorry, Yank, you’ll be sorry!” And the Yanks are singing out, “Yeah and so will your bloody sister.” Oh heavens above! They used to fight all the time. Yeah.

Oh fist fights. Oh yes, they were terrible.

Oh yes. Oh this was the worst place of the lot, Brisbane. Oh this

was a shocking place. Here for bloody down that Queen Street Mall and that, oh during the war.

Oh no, I couldn’t actually say I seen some big fights. I saw scuffles but not great swags of people fighting. Just fighting in the bars and that.

Oh mostly about women, that’s all.

course the Aussies were having digs at the Yanks and the Yanks were having digs back at the Aussies, this is how it all used to start. But there was that many military bloody police here, heavens above. They were expecting it all the time, it wasn’t something that wasn’t expected.

Excellent, we got on so very well together.

Being young, the reason that I liked them so well because they were paying so much money, amazing. And even the American troops were getting twice the amount of pay that the Australian troops were. Their rate of pays was so high. And that’s when the bloody blokes said, “What did you join the American Small Ships for?” I said,

“Well look at the money I was getting when I was sailing on British bloody ships. Look at the money I’m getting now.” You know, it’s a big thing. Being young, money talks all languages.

Well, yes, well I didn’t stop in London very long, because I was living at Lancaster Gate, some of the time, and then other times I was living down in bloody, I forget now, the place now. Where the

Seamen’s Union, there was a seamen’s hostel. And I used to do a lot of travelling, I’d jump on the trains and I was very interested in all the old history, and I was in my glory there, being so young, and going into some of these old hotels and all that, which were hundreds and hundreds of years old. And it was very, very good. Just as well

my bloody wife’s not here now, she hears me, my heavens above, it’s a good place London, all the young blokes used to have marvellous time there. For some unknown reason, all the Aussie soldiers and airmen, used to all congregate at Lancaster Gate. For some unknown reason. Thank god we had so much in common.

Well, it was like a suburb of London, and there was hotels

and clubs and all that there, but all the young people used to get there and all the young girls used to get there because all the troops and most of the air men, who were training, Australian air men and all that were all living there and lots of seamen, we used to all congregate there and of course we knew everybody and everybody’s used to tell everybody else and it was quite good.

We knew everybody,

Christ Almighty, they’d bring their bloody mates, you couldn’t go out to a dinner or go to a party or go out for a bloody train trip or a cruise on the Thames River, unless you had a girlfriend and they were all, all for it. And of course in the early part of the war, you know, it was unfortunate that had so much bloody knocking around with bombing and that and a lot of people had been evacuated out

of the town, out into the midlands unfortunate.

Oh they’re all workers. They were all working. Secretaries and telephonists and bloody typists and they were all working and then we used to get together after they’d all knock off. Go out and have a few beers. Go to the pictures.

Oh I wouldn’t know about that but places like Piccadilly Circus and all that, that’s where all the little girls used to hang around and if they see anybody, lonely they’d come up and bloody proposition you, and they had all their little apartments right there. And oh they must have got plenty of work.

But all the ones in the Middle East, they were run by the army and they were big, heavens above they were big.

Well they’re all Arabs, oh tremendous bloody population in Egypt and apart from that, there’s no employment. And apart from a few farmers, there

everybody seemed to be unemployed. I don’t know, there was no work or no nothing. And when all this bloody blew up in the Middle East and Egypt was made the main port, all the women congregated there, knowing there was plenty of work. Quite good.

Oh I wouldn’t know. But it was popular,

there’d be bloody queues a mile long. There’d be bloody ten houses, there operating. Yes, Sister Street, is the name of the street in bloody Alexandria, I don’t know how they used to say it in bloody French or something, “Elle a deux rue soeur,” something. Yes, bloody lovely. But being interested in all the old history, I was in me bloody glory in Alexandria, everything was so old.

Not like, you walk around here and you’ll see a bloody hotel built in 1928 or something. Over there, you get something built in 14 bloody hundred.

Well, we went by bus out and well I don’t know, I wasn’t greatly impressed but

the bus driver was explaining about the constructions of the pyramids, which I had read myself, about the weight of them the size of them, and how they’ve now found all these tombs inside the bloody things with the mummies and all that. And but when you start seeing everything’s so old, so old.

And the Arab sailing vessels, like the dhow, they’re thousands and thousands of years old and they’re still the bloody same. And you’d be out in the middle of the Indian Ocean and you see a Arab dhow and he’d wave to you, he’d want some water and you’d give him a couple of four gallon tins of fresh water. But they’re going right across to bloody India and I suppose, they’d been doing that for thousands of years.

It’s bloody lovely. Yes, course that Trincomalee was quite another eye opener, you know a big naval base there. Beautiful big harbour.

Well, it’s most amazing, when you’re going into Trincomalee, it’s a big high island and you go in through these two headlands and inside is this beautiful landlocked

harbour and that is where we came in and just dropped the anchor and the Queen Elizabeth was behind us, she stopped outside. There wasn’t enough room inside for two ships. So we ferried our German and Italian prisoners of war by ferry to the Queen Elizabeth. Beautiful harbour and she was in the outer harbour we were in the inner harbour, and she was right on the other side of a hill, we couldn’t see her.

And I’d be up on the bridge with the signaller and he’d shine his alders lamp up into the air, and send an SOS message, to the other ship and he’d answer it, and I’d be writing it all down.

Oh, no.

Well being a naval base, we were allowed ashore into the big naval canteen and all that there. Was very, very nice and most amazing, they couldn’t understand this bloody gigantic two ships anchored here, but they were very good to us. Bit different today to what it is.

Well, it’s just like any naval base, it was just all accommodation, and just like a club where we used to have a bar and all that in it and billiard tables and table tennis, ping- pong tables. And it was more or less a naval store I think it was, where the naval vessels would come in to replenish if they wanted

ammunition or fuel, that was the idea of it. And it was such a beautiful big harbour, but there’d been a naval base for, oh I don’t know how many years. But that’s all finished now. Now it’s got independence.

Well Finschhafen was our base. Well when we first went there, to the Milne Bay and I joined the Tassie Six. And everything was so new to me, heavens above I had no idea what this was like and I put

my uniforms away and I just had me old short trousers and a bloody Jackie Howard bloody T-shirt on. And course then once we got into the routine, of going up behind the lines and bloody discharging all our bloody supplies and we’d hide in the bloody trees in bloody scrub and all that, the whole thing was, there wasn’t a great lot of charts of

Papua New Guinea in those days. And as you know, in these tropical countries, there’s bloody reef everywhere, we spent lots of times on the reef. But once we got into the routine, of going up and we taking stores up and bringing bloody wounded and all this bloody stuff back to our base in bloody Gili Gili at Milne Bay, and of course by this time the

Kokoda Trail was well under way and everything was moving further up the coast and then we’d move up the coast all the time, and so then we finished up moving out of Oro Bay as our base and we moved into Milne Bay.

Well, it is such a big expanse of water.

Very, very deep water. It’s not a place you can bring a ship in and just anchor, it’s too bloody deep. But it’s a very big expanse of bloody water. And these ships can just lay alongside the beach, it’s that deep. And put a rope on a coconut tree and tie it up, and just discharge your cargo straight onto the beach, it’s that deep. And course when the Japanese,

I wasn’t there for the invasion I come in just after the invasion, and you could see where all the damage had been done, and all the old Japanese landing barges which they had left behind and their tanks and then once I got settled down on the Tassie Six and we started our bloody run up the coast with several other American Small Ships, looking

after all these troops up on the frontline and as they’re moving up, then we would start assemble different places and then we would follow them up. But they were moving so fast. It’s amazing.

Oh yes, it was

a single hold cargo vessel, built in Tasmania, it had accommodation on the stern and a wheelhouse and a great long foredeck and fo’c’sle head accommodation in it also. And had cargo, had a couple of masts and cargo gear for loading cargo, flat bottom and ferry shallow draft. And we could go in and like

a landing barge and put the bow on the beach. And then we could put our ladders down over the bow and go ashore. And very, very popular ship, very, very popular.

Well, because we were there when needed and we were in radio contact with everybody all the time. And

after these landings we’d be in the area, we’d run back to our base at either Finschhafen or Oro Bay and bringing up all these medical supplies and food and whatever was required. And then as I say, we’d in the early part when we were loading the wounded and we’re taking them back to Milne Bay but as we moved further up we got engaged then by carrying bloody prisoners of bloody war.

And this was another thing, once they got in and they started getting all these bloody prisoners, they had nowhere to hold them and this is what our job was, so that this is what we were employed for, to go in and bring all these bloody prisoners out and run them back to our base at Finschhafen and it’s most amazing, as the war started moving ahead well then we started moving

further north of Finschhafen and this is how it kept on going and going, till mid or 1944, I suppose. And then by that time, we were moved halfway up to the Dutch border to Hollandia, where they were getting the American troops all assembled for the big invasion into the Philippines. And the reason that they decided that they would get rid

of most of the Small Ships, of course as soon as the invasion of the Philippines started, these Small Ships were no longer required because they were too small to work so far away from a base. And they were going to send them all back to Australia. So we had this big base at Finschhafen and we had them, they had all these bloody American Small Ships there just waiting to see what

was going to happen. Would they dispense with them or would we take them up to Hollandia and carry on, up to the Philippines? But anyhow they decided they were too small and too slow for the next step of the invasion so that they would dispense with all these Small Ships and send them back to Sydney.

No, no, no. I’ve been there lots of times, I didn’t go during the war. That’s what it says on my army discharge, the reason that I was discharged because the war had moved out of the area, because it was a different area. I was employed in the South Pacific area. And then it had started to move further away to the Philippines.

But a lot of my other friends went to the Philippines, but I would have gone too, if it was required. So anyhow I can see that we’d just starting to bloody come to a grinding bloody halt where we were. Because it had moved right away and there’s no more danger to Australia. They’d pushed the Japanese right out of the bloody place and the Yanks were taking control of everything. So

it was quite good.

Oh heavens above. You’ve never seen nothing like it. There was literally bloody hundreds of ships had come there from America and Australia, all these liberty ships and landing barges and troop carriers

and they’d all assembled at Hollandia of what they call Humboldt Bay, is the name of it. Beautiful big harbour, which was the capital of Dutch New Guinea. Which is now called, Jayapura. And all these hundreds of ships were all congregated there waiting for the invasion of the Philippines. And so when they left there they all went up to a big place called,

Leyte and invaded there.

Oh I’ve been to Hollandia, oh yeah.

Yeah we were running up as far as there. But we didn’t go up from there further up in the invasions because the ship we had was too small.

Oh yeah, everybody knew. Oh heavens above yes, oh everybody knew because there was so much ground

troops coming on all these ships, they were all troop carriers. And big landing barges, full of troops. And they were getting all ready for this big invasion of the Philippines.

Well, they were everywhere, the Hollandia. And they were all waiting for this big invasion, because that would have been the last straw with the Japanese and that is what they were all waiting

for. And there was that many naval vessels and cargo vessels and passenger vessels, troop carriers, landing barges, there was tugs and barges every imaginable vessel and the Americans were that well fitted up with the equipment that they had, that when they went into the invasion of Leyte,

there was ships there carrying hold wharves, they’d go in and they’d start driving piles and within twenty four hours they’d built a wharf. And then the landing barges’d go in and put their equipment on the beach and next bloody day there’s aircraft landing on a bloody airstrip which they’d built. The equipment they had, was so modern and so far advanced, that the

Japanese had seen nothing like it and neither had anybody else. They’d just been improved all the time. And when all these ships congregated at Humboldt Bay, Hollandia, for this bloody big invasion, heavens above you know straight away it was going to be a success. Because there was so many and to get there, there’s hundreds of bloody islands which was all occupied by

Japanese. In the southern Philippines, between the Philippines and Indonesia and the Yanks just took all them, they just isolated them all. And they couldn’t get food, they couldn’t get water, they couldn’t get nothing and they were all just there starving. So they’re all screaming for assistance. So it was most amazing.

Well, they were good. cause they were always had a win. On these invasions which we were always tied up in, and you know, they’re always looking forward to the next one, kind of thing. And then we’d come back and we’d all congregate at Finschhafen which was our big base then, it was very

big, but nowhere near as big as Hollandia.

Oh yes, this is when we left Finschhafen, for Cape Gloucester, Talasea and Cape Hoskins, this was on the island of New Britain and all the Japanese when they’d taken Rabaul on the eastern end of he island, they’d spread out and taken over

the whole island. And so we had Rabaul isolated. Because we couldn’t get in there so we just had it isolated and the Yanks, as you know Rabaul is surrounded by volcanoes, and the Yanks idea was, they were going to drop bombs in all these volcanoes and set the bloody things off. But they never did, anyhow, they

decided that they’d invade from the western end of the island, at Cape Gloucester first, and bloody Cape Hoskins and then they would just move right through the island, which they did. And there were so many of them and they had such a big back- up, this is where the Japanese fell down, they had no back up, they had no food, the

Americans knew this and this is why they cut off all their supplies. After the Coral Sea battle when they lost all their bloody ships and everything, the Japs, they had all these out stations, all over, on all the islands and everywhere, up as far as Aitape and Wewak and no food, no ammunition, nothing. And they were just isolated.

And so the Yanks said, “Well just leave them there.” And they started being cannibalisms, because they’d eaten all the native gardens, the natives had all gone bush and they were just in all these isolated areas and the Yanks weren’t going to waste any bloody lives bloody rooting them all out so they just left them all there till they were all just about bloody starved and then they rounded them all up. Yes, shocking.

Oh no.

All on the north side, from the west coast of New Britain an then I was in the invasion from Milne Bay, right up the coast, Buna, Gona, Sanananda, Lae and Finschhafen.

Well, we used to drop troops off in certain sections, they would tell us where they wanted us to drop them off and we would come up and we’d have troops on the deck all ready to go into battle. And we’d go in and put our bow on the bloody beach and drop ’em off and away they’d run up in the bloody bush.

And then we would pull off and then we’d go back, keep out of the way. And we’d go hide in the bloody coconut trees and we were in radio contact all the time, and if they had wounded or stuff they’d call us up and then we would sneak in and pick them all up and then bring them back out. And then we would come back to our base at Gili Gili at Milne Bay.

But as we moved further up the field, well then we moved our bases up with us to Oro Bay, and then up to Lae and then up into Finschhafen, once we got to Finschhafen, then that was the main base. And course as the war start moving up, middle ’44, ’45 and the war started to move further away from Papua New Guinea our services were

no longer required.

You could hear them fighting, all the time. And we used to have coconut trees on the bloody deck, we used to have them hanging off the bloody mast as camouflage and we were very well armed, we had two fifty mill guns and through me doing all my gunnery courses in England in my younger days,

it was amazing, when the Yanks saw all this, when I applied for a job they said, “Heavens above, you’ve certainly been well trained on these British ships.”

All the time. Everybody, every time.

Oh, no there’s always aircraft in the area, and oh it was

most amazing, we’d be at Oro Bay and in those places like that in these bases, they had these machine guns all round the hilltops and these aircraft’d come in, see what ships were in port. All these planes were from Rabaul. And these shore batteries would open up on them and as they start coming in, well then we would also open up our twin fifty calibre machine gun and if anybody

was shot down or a Jap plane was shot down. Several times, twice we went out to try and get hold of a pilot but he went down with the plane.

Oh no, if we were lucky enough, if we could save the pilot we’d just bring him back, that was just normal.

They’re water cooled, fifty calibre machine guns.

Oh they’re a bloody big heavy gun. Bloody fifty mill.

No way. No these are on a bloody tripod on the fore part of the ship. They’re fixed. And then once you fire your gun you’ve got to clean it all up and have it ready for the next time and look after ’em. Some of ’em had little pumps on them to water cool the barrel.

Oh they’re all different, different varieties.

Oh yes. And we’d never ever shot any planes down but lots of the other Small Ships had aircraft painted on the side of the funnel, what they’d shot down and all that. But yeah, well this book is coming out in May, it’s called

The Lost Fleet, Volume 2, and it’ll tell them all about this here. We’re going to a meeting on the 15th of May in Sydney, I’ve sent my money down already. We’re having a luncheon, it is the American Small Ships Association. And I knew nothing about that, they couldn’t contact me, cause I was away all the time, so when they did contact me,

they said, I was a member and come down for the luncheon. And this book and that is being printed and it’ll be on sale, The Forgotten Fleet, and they said, “Come down, you’re mentioned.” And my brother’s mentioned in it.

I’ve got the Volume 1, out in my little library there.

Aussies working on the American ships weren’t recognised and although the Yanks sent me all my campaign medals and ribbons and American Army discharge and everything oh the Department of Veterans’ Affairs knew all about it, I showed them all.

Oh, I wasn’t greatly worried, you know, it’s amazing, see a few years ago, the merchant navy got onto me and they said, “We have just read my history,” and I said, “Where did you get this from?” They said, “Oh, we’ve got it here. Now, we’re having a presentation

in Brisbane here.” And they donated me the Merchant Navy Cross with two bars. So I said, heavens above, they knew more about me than I did. Because being a seaman, all your bloody history is there and what ships you sail on. They wanted some information years ago, about when I was carrying Japanese prisoners of war on the

Katoomba in 1946. And they said, “If you want that information go to the archives.” So I wrote to them and they sent me the extracts of a log with my name in it, where I’ve signed and when I was in Rabaul and Bougainville, it’s all there. They’ve got the logbooks of the ship.

So anyhow this bloody naval department must have only got hold of it.

Oh well that was marvellous. Coming from a seafaring family and it was very, very good.

Yeah.

Very bad. Very, very bad, worn out, exhausted, yes. Since this is started and I’m thinking back now, of what we went through, this has never been brought up for fifty years and then this comes out of the blue, you know. And

it’s so vivid in my mind, I can still see it.

Oh no, it was, oh no, it’s just all the Yanks and all that, heavens above. And they were so organised. They’d go in behind these invasions and that, and with their camp kitchens,

and all the food, for the troops, you just couldn’t believe it that they could be so organised. And the medical, everything was bloody spot on. And they were dead set against those bloody Japanese, they used to always refer to Pearl Harbour, which was understandable, was such a great loss of life.

Well, I don’t know, I was only a bosun, I wasn’t a bloody captain, the bloody captain’d give me my orders.

Oh no. No, no we all had our own job to do. You know

and we knew what our job was to do. Yes and that was why we were so bloody popular and they used to laugh at us, we were all bloody civilians, you know, we bloody yes.

Oh no, because they knew that if we wanted to tomorrow, we could go back home.

As you’ll read my report, I was in bloody Oro Bay and my contract was up, so I said, “I want to go home on holidays.” So they just flew me back to Sydney. Had a holiday and I just went and signed another contract. And then come back again.

Oh, my bloody oath, so much so. Oh you want to read some of the remarks I’ve got in my books there of

General MacArthur, when he praises up the Small Ships.

Oh no, he just praising them up, you know, for their services. Because we used to do all these outlying stations, we used to service all the coast watches all the other civilians who were up in the bloody mountains in the trees and that, all the civilians who had been left there

when the war started and they couldn’t get out. And so they went coast watching. And then we used to supply them with all their bloody bits and bloody pieces. And we were in radio contact with everybody. And that’s why these ships were so popular. Yeah, I got the book out there, The Forgotten Fleet, and now there’s Volume 2, has just been printed.

They’d stand out there for hours and hours and hours. And they would completely annihilate it. Nothing survived. And you’d go ashore there and you’d see them hanging in the bloody trees. Course there’d be snipers sitting up in the tree, you know, in a little chair but with the naval at sea there and bombing, and

I don’t know how far inland it went, but from high water mark, right back, there was nothing left. There was not a coconut on the tree. It was marvellous. Yes and the people who owned all those plantations they got paid compensation for war damage by the Australian government.

Well, all the bloody time. Every time we’d leave port, you never know where we’re going to finish up. It’s hard to say, you know, we were so young and bloody fit

and we were so bloody well fed, believe it or not. But when I look back on it now, I think heavens above, you know, every bloody day was you know, you think, is this my last day? Or what.

We’d lost so many bloody ships. Yes.

I should imagine so, lots of times. When you start losing all your bloody friends, through being such a small society the American Small Ships, you knew everybody on every ship. And they

were just like bloody family, and when a ship’d get lost, it was just like losing part of your bloody family. Yes. As I say, for you people to come here, and to bring all this up now, it’s bloody so sad. And you think of the bloody friends that you’ve left behind up

there, you know.

I was away at sea, I’m just trying to think what bloody ship I was on.

Yeah. In ’45, but I don’t remember what day it was.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Well, I wouldn’t know, I mean it was just another bloody day, I don’t even know what bloody ship I was on. But I was on the Australian coast I think when that happened, not too sure.

I don’t even know what bloody day it was, 1945.

Oh no, everybody knew, there was marches everywhere and celebrations. They were all expecting the troops to come home. They just dropped all the bloody atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Yes. This has been so interesting, digging up all this old stuff, which has just laid dormant over all these years.

Oh, not necessarily, but you know,

they had no idea, where the hell I’ve been, you know not the amount of travelling I’ve done and my poor mother, she didn’t know where I was, people’d ask her, they said, “Where’s Ray?” She said, “Oh I wouldn’t have a clue, he’s in New York or in England last time I heard of him.” But the Australians had

such a good solid name with the Americans, amazing.

Yes. This is just after the war, and I signed on the Katoomba and she was

was a troop ship, troop carrier, and so after the war, she was owned by McIlwraith-McEacharn. And so, there was a lot of people wanted to go back to New Zealand. So there was no ship available so lo and behold, they put the Katoomba on the run running across to Wellington.

So we started hauling passengers from Sydney to Wellington. Then after we’d finished that contract we came back to Sydney and then it came up that they required all these Japanese war criminals in Rabaul. To stand trial for all these bloody war crimes.

So they brought all these bloody Japanese down to the bloody wharf in Sydney and we loaded them all and then we steamed up to Rabaul, and when I left the American Small Ships, I had to join the Australian Seamen’s Union, to be able to join

an Australian ship. And the Australian Seamen’s Union, had such a bad bloody name of always being on bloody strike, so anyhow, I bloody joined the union and anyhow I joined the Katoomba and loaded all these bloody troops, these Japanese prisoners of war, and we went to Rabaul and we discharged them all there.

And that’s when all the trouble started. The captain’s name was, Snowball. Okay Snowball, was the captain’s name. So he wouldn’t let the bloody crew go ashore, to witness all these public hangings so they said, “Right, we’ll all go on strike.” And they all went on strike, which didn’t mean nothing. As soon as the ship was clear of all these Japanese war crimes

and criminals and everything, we left Rabaul and we went down to Bougainville to pick up a load of Australian equipment and then we went from Bougainville across to Townsville to the Australian army base, and discharged all the equipment there.

No, it didn’t worry me.

Didn’t worry me at all.

No, knowing what the Australian seamen were like, being bloody troublemakers, they reckoned that they were entitled to go ashore and attend these public hangings and the captain says, “No shore leave’s available for anybody.” So

that was it.

Well, they just refused to work on the ship, we were in Rabaul for a few more days and they just refused to work. But it was too late then, they’d hung all these bloody Japanese war criminals so when we were ready we just sailed and departed.

I wouldn’t know

the way that some of these people are bloody troublemakers, they would have had to attend the meetings and the court first, to see what they were being hanged for, but they didn’t. This was another argument. So they were all found guilty and they were all hung.

I wonder where you get your bloody information from. Because I did see a hanging in bloody Finschhafen, a Japanese war criminal hung in Finschhafen. But whether he shot a bloody American serviceman or not I don’t know. But they had a

court case and they hung him.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Oh, no it was just an ordinary bloody army base and they’d had this army court and this prisoner was found guilty of murder, it couldn’t have been on the battlefield,

whether he was a prisoner of war in Rabaul, whether he murdered a bloody one of the bloody the guards there I don’t know. But anyhow they strung him up and pulled the pin and the floor dropped out and he bloody broke his neck. But it was nothing unusual, I could send your blood cold with some of the bloody things I’ve seen.

What?

Oh I don’t know, I suppose I was having a cup of tea at the Salvation Army bloody canteen. I didn’t think anything of it at all, I just said, you know, “Serves you bloody right, for being so silly.”

Oh, I’ve had lots of experiences, I’ve been in all kinds of bloody cyclones, lost ships, had all me mates drowned and

Well, being so young, and knowing that it was going to be my life of following the sea, I was bloody pleased of my getting an early start

on British ships and even today when it’s bought up, you know, of your past experience and what you have done, in your life, it’s surprising. Yes, it was unfortunate, bloody

bloody good when you look back. I mean, this has brought up so many bloody memories, heavens above, especially when I’m up there in Alexandria, after all those bloody years. Yes.

Well, I don’t know, what I was so impressed with was the way that everything was so organised between the British and the Americans specially up there in the bloody Middle East and then when I came down here and I was working for the Americans and the way that their back up is the way that they won the war,

because they had so much equipment to back them up all the time. That this is how we beat the Japanese. The Japanese never had the shipping, they never had the aircraft, they had the men, but they never had the equipment to bloody back them up, they couldn’t feed them, they had no ammunition, whereas the Americans had everything. Everything. They could lose a whole bloody ship load and it’d make no difference, there was another ship coming

over the horizon with another load of equipment. And this went on all the time. And the further we moved ahead, up the coast, the more stronger they got. And by the time that we arrived up at Hollandia, they were that organised and that experienced, that we were rooting these Japanese out that it’s amazing.

Yes. And that was the whole bloody seas of success. And that’s where the Japanese fell down. They tried to do too much at once.

No. But when they dropped the atomic bomb, then it was announced that the war was finished. Because they had more back ups, if they hadn’t have bloody admitted defeat they would have completely bloody blown Japanese off the map. And it’s unfortunate today that it’s

illegal to even mention Pearl Harbour in Japan, because the people today are so embarrassed of what happened when the Japanese annihilated everybody in the bloody Pacific there, it’s amazing. Everybody was so

shocked when they come in with this great fleet of bloody bombers and bombed Pearl Harbour.

What, when I worked in New Guinea? After the war, I

got a job with Bulolo Gold Dredging Company. I was working on the gold dredges up in the mountains; there was dredge winch men on a dredge. And we got sick and tired of digging bloody gold, my brother and I, for Bulolo Gold Dredging so we went up and took out a miner’s right and so we went mining ourself. We went down the lower Wattid [?] and so we done very, very well,

of course all these fields had been worked right up until the war and all the miners and were all evacuated but they’d never come back after the war, most of them had been killed and too old. So we had heard about these fields lower down, from where we were at the Bulolo and so my brother and I, we went in there and with a little

bit of equipment we had. And all the natives down there were familiar with sluicing, so we had no trouble to teach them what to do, because they’d worked right up until the war. And so we stopped in there for bloody, quite a long while, could have been twelve months or more, I don’t know. And we run out of food and everything so we decided we’d go into Lae and

that was the main port and then we handed all our gold into the Bank of New South Wales and said, “We’ve just come in from up the bloody lower Wattid, mining.” I said, “You know now, we’re here, we might as well have a bit of a bloody holiday.” And so we went down to Sydney, saw the parents and all the family. And then we bought a yacht and then we said,

“We’ll go back home again.” So we sailed back to Papua New Guinea, took us six months to get back there and we arrived back stone, motherless broke. We were always going back to the goldfields but we had no money. So we had this bloody yacht, so anyhow. So this other big company in Papua New Guinea, Steamships Trading Company, the government had all these

ex-army vessels so they put them all up for tender. And this company tendered and bought eight of them and then they wanted captains and engineers and so I got a captain’s job and my brother, Scott, he was my engineer. So we worked there for bloody years and years and course, one thing led to another and we never did get the money together to go back to the goldfields and I got married and the country got independence and

a European couldn’t hold a miner’s right and a European, he couldn’t go and work gold and all this. So we never did go back.

It was absolutely perfect. No taxes, no nothing, high wages, beautiful. You’ve never seen a

bloody country like it. We used to just go down and jump on an aircraft and come down to Sydney or Brisbane for holidays, no customs, no passports, no nothing. No taxation, and course, the brother said, “We ever going to go back to this bloody up in (UNCLEAR)?” Oh I’m married, I’ve got a couple of kids, I’ve got a

bloody house and yes. It’s amazing, when you look back, what you’ve done. I could talk for bloody hours, what I’ve bloody done, in Indonesia and Singapore and all over the bloody place.

Meeting my wife? Yes, well, when we applied for these jobs, I got the captain’s job and my brother got

the engineer’s job, on one of these ships, which the company, Steamships Trading Company, had bought off the army disposals. And the ship that they wanted us to join was in eastern Papua anchored off the island of Samarai, so they put us on this bloody lovely big Sandringham flying boat and flew us down to Samarai. And

Samarai in those days, was called ‘the pearl of the Pacific’. And Burns-Philp they had one of the big stores on the island, Steamships Trading Company had another big store and Bob Bunking, he had another. And so, we flew down to Samarai, to take this ship over and Burns-Philp was the government agent. So we went out and we took this ship over and we had

to fit the ship up for sea and of course we had to go in and get all our bloody supplies and that from the company, Steamships, and my wife was working behind the bloody grocery bloody counter as staff. So we got our ship ready for sea and we started running out to all the plantations all round the bloody Pacific Ocean, this is in ’52, I think it was and course,

I courted my wife for a couple of years and my two year contract in Steamships was up and this other company, Bob Bunting, he owned big business himself, he owned plantations and a store, and he come up to me and he said, “I believe your contract’s just expired, Ray?” I said, “Oh yeah,” he said, “What’re you doing?” I said, “I haven’t made me mind up yet.” And he knew that

I was courting this little girl, he said, “I’m going to buy a bloody ship. How much is Steamship paying you?” And I told him, he says, “I’ll double your wages if you come and work for me. I believe you’re going to get married shortly?” I said, “Yes,” he says, “I’ll also give you a bloody house,” I said, “Oh shit, you’ve got yourself a captain.” So I

joined AH Bunting, and then I worked for them for bloody years. About six years and lo and behold Steamships is branching out and they bought Collier Watson and then they bought AH Bunting. And of course I went with the ship. And lucky for me, when I joined Bob Bunting, it’s only a small company, but he had superannuation for his staff. And

every penny you put in, he put one in. And course when he bloody sold his business out to Steamships, I went with the ship and the agreement was that they had to carry over my superannuation and Steamships was a great big business, they employed thousands. But they had no super and I was the only one with super. And so I signed another contract with Steamships, they gave me a beautiful home in Port Moresby. And

then I worked with them right up until I retired. And course, in those days it was retirement at fifty five. So when I turned fifty five, they gave me all my superannuation and everything and they kept me on as a consultant. Ever since and I still work for Steamships Trading Companies. And I retired

officially in ’82, when I turned fifty five. And I retired in ’69, when I turned seventy. But everybody still gives me work to do and I still go back to PNG [Papua New Guinea] on little jobs and that where they require my knowledge and all that. And people working in Indonesia and Irian Jaya across

the border, but I’m very familiar with in the oil business, they still contact me and information and I still do a lot of consultancy work for Santos, I worked for Santos for years as a consultant until all this bloody taxation come in and their accountant rang me up and they said, “What’s your ABN [Australian Business Number] number, Ray?” I says, “I did not apply for

an ABN number.” They says, “Well, we’re sorry but we now cannot pay you your retainer. Because we now have to account to the taxation department for every penny we spend.” I says, “All right, forget about it.” They says, “Oh no, but when you…” They’ve got the head office at Cornwall House here at Lutwyche. And

when they have these meetings I just sit in the boardroom and they fire questions at me, all these mining engineers and all that. And I sit there all day, answering all questions, and as I’m going out the door, the accountant gives me a cheque as a present. I’ve been doing that for years.

Who?

No. Not a great deal. I’ve been travelling round too much. And so I’ve been living in New Guinea right up until few years ago, I mean the wife and everybody lived here and

but I’ve been working away at sea and I do ninety days away and forty five days at home. And this is the way we’ve been working for years.

Oh everybody. Oh yes, I know all me old bloody shipmates and all that.

Not actually during the war years, no.

People who have worked for the same company, like people who worked on American Small Ships which I didn’t know when they were working there though. But we all worked at the same time, at the same years during the war, and in the same areas but we hadn’t met each other and now, that I say I’m going to this reunion, on the 15th of August

for the American Small Ships Association, in Sydney. Held at Broadway, and I’ve sent all me money down and everything, and my daughter’s doing my air bookings for me and my young brother lives in Sydney, he’s going to pick me up at the airport and I’ll be down there for a few days and when I come back my next trip, I’m off, oh we have a

Papua New Guinea reunion in June up in Townsville. We have one every year. The last couple of years they’ve been at Hervey Bay. The one before that was in Brisbane, the one before that was in Sydney and then next year we have this other big reunion with Steamships Trading Company, all the old staff and that’s in Brisbane. And we all keep together.

Well, I don’t know. As I explained earlier, I didn’t have a great lot of schooling, I’d just started high school in first year and when I went away to sea at fifteen. And I never had a great education, but I’ve been studying

ever since. And as I say, I worked my way up from a deck boy to a master and I’ve sailed as a master for forty odd years. And I worked in Singapore, building steel ships for Steamships Trading Company and I used to deliver all their ships to Papua New Guinea: landing barges, tugs, barges,

tankers, cargo vessels. And then I’ve been working with oil companies all over Indonesia and so I’m quite popular. And even today we laid the first pipeline, up in Papua New Guinea, for Chevron and now they want to lay another pipeline, from Papua New Guinea down to Cape York and all that. And

they want to know if I want to be involved and I said, “I’m bloody fussy.” But it’s surprising, you know, they don’t realise you’re getting older all the bloody time.

Well,

it’s amazing how they can make everything look so bloody real today, on movies, they do everything so bloody thorough. I like seeing these war movies and it’s surprising how bloody accurate they are. They’re surprising.

Knowing the areas where they’re all working, but it’s most amazing when you’ve been up round the Middle East and these places and being a bloody very interested in history and all that, all these bloody places are so bloody old. I used to go all round bloody England and see

all these old places. So old.

No. I never used to wear any bloody clothes to be quite honest. I’d just wear a pair of shorts and half the time never even wore my bloody singlet. I don’t know why I’m not lousy with bloody cancer.

I don’t even wear a hat. I got into trouble years ago, I was up the Persian Gulf at Aberdeen on a oil tanker, and the captain called me up and he says, “Put the…” They issue you these pith helmets. I said, “I don’t like wearing a hat.” He says, “I’m ordering you to wear a hat,” and I said, “I don’t like it, I get a headache.” So they fined me two days’ pay for disobedient of orders. When we got

back to Liverpool, they couldn’t sign the crew off the ship, because I protested about my fine. So when it went up before the marine court, he said, “What’s the trouble?” I said, “The captain’s fined me for not wearing a hat.” He said, “Oh, why didn’t you wear a hat?” I said, “I’m an Australian, I come from the bloody tropics and I don’t wear a hat.” “Oh,” he says, “Fair enough.” So he just threw it out. Every time

I’ve just told them, “I’m an Australian,” and I have no trouble. I was on a bloody ship in Liverpool again we were ready to sail and we loaded prize cattle for the River Plate down in Argentina. And we couldn’t sail because the bloody stockman never turned up. This is during the war, so I went up to the chief officer I said,

“What’s the trouble?” I said, “I know all about cattle, I’m an Australian.” So he told the authorities that he’s got a stockman on board, he’s an Australian and they gave us a permit to sail because I was an Australian. We never lost anything on our way out. I looked after them, fed them, watered them. No trouble, because I was an Australian. You get away with anything. You ought to know in

your profession.

Oh, I don’t actually know. Oh, it’s hard to say.

Oh I don’t know. The most is these bloody trips across the bloody North Atlantic we used to do. It’s most amazing, cause they’d lost so many ships and anybody who got across there unscratched was always so lucky. And we were always so lucky, we were at the right time at the right moment.

And we were so worried when we were going to Alexandria and we couldn’t go through the bloody Mediterranean, which was only a few days trip from Liverpool, and when we took off and they said, “You’ve now got to circumnavigate bloody Africa to get to Alexandria.” It was unreal. Just as well we weren’t paying

for the bloody freight rates on the cargo.

I’ve always been religious, always. And on ships like the Queen Mary, well we carried lots of troops, they always held church services, choirs which we used to attend if we were off watch. And

it was amazing, how many people did attend these services.

Oh I think so. And even when I went to Samarai, my wife was very religious and her parents used to go to evensong every night. And they used to drag me along if I was in port and it got so bad

that they were complaining about the church which was a very old building, big church, very steep roof on it, and it had never been painted and they wanted it painted. And the father came to me and he said, “Look, how about getting some people to paint the church?” I says, “No problem.” So we went into the three stores, Steamships, BPs and Buntings and they all said, “We’ll lend you a ladder, we’ll supply

the paint and you supply the staff.” And so I painted the bloody church with all the ship’s crew and this bloody priest used to come up to my place sneak up when I was home and have a few beers with me. And his bloody wife used to abuse my poor wife about getting her husband drunk and all this bloody bullshit.

Oh I don’t know love.

I don’t know, I mean I’m just so proud being a bloody Australian and doing my little bit for my bloody King and country. Amazing.

I’m not in politics; I wouldn’t have a bloody clue. But that’s excellent; I’ve had a very, very good time talking to you. Bringing up all these old memories, you know, that’s over all these years. Yes.