Australians at War Film Archive

I am Jack Woodward, not John, Jack. Born on 14 October 1921.

I was born at Wentworthville just outside Parramatta

which at that time was a rural area; mainly citrus fruits, small crops, chicken farms, that sort of thing. At that time the background to earn pocket money was rabbiting, around about forty traps. You had your ferrets, fed your ferrets, and that was good pocket money because in the Depression years there was no pocket money. So for a pair of skinned rabbits, nine for the pair if I was lucky to sell them. If I could train a ferret, young ferret, train him up and I’d get ten bob [shillings] –

big money. At that time they set up a film situation for Gone to the Dogs with George Wallace [vaudeville comedian] out at Parramatta Race Track and I made big money, two bob for a light rabbit. I was made. I turned 18, the war had started and an advert in the paper trying to get another job. I was working part time as a car yard general hand

because I had a licence, not many people had a licence in those days, and an advert in the paper calling for applicants for the air force for wireless operators and clerks.

All right. We go back.

The family lived… My father was a Gallipoli veteran,

my mother… And I had a sister and a brother. My brother was a top architect in Australia. He’s done Alamein Fountain and these things, that’s his background, ex-army fellow. The general life in those days, girlfriends, you didn’t have girlfriends like you have today. All the fellows went to the movies after your soccer game on the Saturday, you had your seats, the girls had their seats, you’d walk home with them and that would be the end of it. That would be it. Social life. Because of the Depression no one

had any money. You didn’t travel anywhere, you lived around your area so you made your own time, you had your soccer and your cricket teams going. Run yourself in those days, run raffles if you could to raise a few bob if you could get it, bartered a lot in respect of food. I had one friend next door who worked at the meat works, he’d bring the offal home and deliver it to my back door, which would be heart, liver and that sort of stuff, brains, and you more or less lived together in the community. My

father had a weekender [holiday house] at Lake Illawarra down south of New South Wales towards Nowra on the beachfront down there. There was only about three houses down there in those days in that area so I would go down when I was about 15, took my bike on the steam train to Central Station where I was, down on the Nowra express, and ride about ten miles across a sand track to where the beach house was. Over Christmas for about four weeks, five weeks, I lived on my own, did my own fishing, rabbiting,

prawning, lived off the land. You were self contained in those days so the first fellows that went into the air force or army were in the same situation. The younger generation, my mates who went into the army, the same thing, a lot of them went in for the same reason I did. I earned 30 bob a week working. I got 35 bob a week in the air force and I got my clothes and my tucker [food] so it was a good deal, and that’s the reason I joined the air force. And the reason a lot of others joined the army was the fact because

of food conditions. You go and look at your casual and a lot of them come from country towns, they joined en masse from country towns because they had food, conditions and somewhere to live.

I’m the eldest yes.

About 18 months and seven years between my sister.

A brick

home, my father being a veteran, he had a war service loan so he built his first house on that. He worked in DVA [Department of Veterans’ Affairs], he finished purchasing the thing and the accounts officer, the DVA, in Sydney so he had a big debt with DVA himself, so to put me into the air force, he had no hesitation to sign the consent when I was 18 that was it. He was a veteran knocked about, Gallipoli, gassed, one eye, wounded twice,

dragged in and out of the trenches, he survived, they are the people you are looking at in Australia, the old diggers, not me, before me.

No he never talked much about Gallipoli, there only story he ever told me was at one time he got hit in the shoulder in France they sent him to Scotland to recuperate, he was on the moors he said, he spent a whole week on the

moors and didn’t see a person. A fellow came out of the mist one morning and walked up and said, “Wally Woodward.” and Dad said, “I don’t know you.” and he said, “I could see you running in Botany every Saturday.” that’s the only story he ever told me except one other thing he said he did capture four Russian guards, an officer took them off and took the credit but he said, “I kept the gold tassel with the blood on it and I’ve still got it.” Most of the history I got from

him was from his mates, and his uncles and brothers and these things and how they did survive and as one brother told me his unit all that was left of his particular section was six blokes. Six blokes went on ambulance stretcher duty and he was the only bloke who survived out of six blokes. I had a friend of mine who was a builder working in Manly, about something like 20 years ago, and the

fellow working there his name was Wally, this is a true story, I said to him, “I only know one bloke called Wally.” and he said, “Who, Wally Woodward? I am named after him.” I tried to contact this bloke, my Dad served him as a stretcher bearer. This is the rough history of World War I as far as I know it, his brother, one brother was a runner at Gallipoli, he got decorated, two other brothers were wounded,

they all got back, all his brothers got back, they were lucky. His background, dairy farm, father died when he was about ten years of age, he had to cut wood, milk cows to survive, he had a hard life, all in those days that was the way of life.

Quiet bloke.

You realise after the illnesses he had from war years, he never talked about it.

No, if I was particularly difficult

he’d chase me around the bloody house until he caught me and put the strap into me unless I’d get up the gutter to the top roof and out of his way but that was all over and done with, I got my punishment, I copped it, no good grizzling about it, I earned it. Does that make sense? At the same token, you’d follow the cricket team as a kid; you’d follow the soccer team around as a kid. It was always there in the background somewhere. He was a great horticulturist; he was one of the first fellows to develop cymbidium orchards in Australia. The glass house was full of orchids, I am going back to

the 46, 47, just after the war years, and he survived until he was what, 82 or 83, but he never whinged, never complained.

My mother was a typical housewife you might say it, bloody good cook, good cook, good provider, whatever you had to prepare, she’d prepare it, she did all her own work, washing and ironing and

cleaned the house and she had, what do you call it, a bad leg from rheumatic fever and spent six months at Moree at one stage and I was farmed out with my grandparents at that time and my brother went to relations for six months. But she still battled just the same when she got back. She lived until her 80’s, the same, she battled the same way, but that was the way of life in those days. We were lucky to have a car because my father saved his digger’s [soldier’s] pension he had in those days and we had an

old 1929 Aston sedan and that we were one of the few people in the district who had a car in those days. I remember going after the war to a reunion at the local public school and two women came up to me and they said, “Jack do you remember us.” and I said, “No.” of course that’s like me, forget them, “My mother used to belt you with a ruler.” and I said, “Oh, McCann.” and she said, “You wrote left handed she used to belt you to get it out of your system so you wrote right handed.”

My hand bled, she had beaten it with a ruler, my left hand, she said, “You were lucky, your father had a car.” so that’s the era you are dealing with before the war that I grew up in. Anything else you want to know?

Meal time, your mother cooked, you turned up when tucker was ready, you ate what you had you didn’t put anything to waste, you didn’t say you didn’t want it, the rule was you just

ate what you got.

You’d have a roast meal, your father would always grow a lot of vegetables, you’d have rabbit, we always had rabbits in the back, we had WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s [chickens], killed your own WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s, you used your own vegetables and you bartered a bit, some bloke like a great mate used to have a citrus orchard and he’d give you fruit. The way of life was like a country, it was a

country way of life basically, you had steady meals, your roast meat, your puddings, the standard puddings, nothing out of tins, you wouldn’t get anything out of tins, it was all cooked and home cooked. So today I do all the cooking because I learnt from her, it goes back in history. Right now, to go from there.

Yes, you had your chores, lawns to mow, WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK yard to clean out and later on my

father had bees, he had twelve hives of bees and he dropped one so I had to take over at about 16 looking after beehives and later in life we had 250 beehives around here years ago, so what I learnt as a young bloke growing up served me later in life just the same.

You had your regular Sunday morning church; you know the church in those days, all the family went. The father

never went because go back in history way back when he was a kid and he took a ha'penny out of the plate and he put a penny in and he would never go back to church again. My grandmother was a great church Methodist and collected for the church and that sort of thing but he never did. My mother, not particular, my uncle, her brother was a great church bloke, my grandfather he sang in the choir in St Johns in Parramatta the family went back as far as the church went.

Except one day I remember an uncle of mine, he was the bloke that served in Gallipoli and got decorated, took me up to the church and I was about five or six years of age, to Sunday school, big black sulky [horse drawn cart], big black stallion, up the main street of the little town, only about two shops, pulled it back on its hind heels and all the women were screaming like a bodgie on a motorbike today, but that’s what he was like, his horse, sulky.

Chip and hoe and a push mower and a mattock to get around the hard stuff. I had to dig the gardens with a mattock, you used a mattock in those days.

No, my brother was, we will say, an intellectual, does that make sense? He played cricket as the twelfth man [reserve], do you know what I mean, he’d be there

but he was an artist. He would get all the prizes from the local papers for drawings and paintings, that’s why he finished up as an architect. He’s a different sort of lifestyle to mine, overlapped, but not the same. He didn’t get the strap like I got, I remember getting the strap.

I finished high school, Sydney Tech [Technical] High School, and the examinations for leaving [certificate]

started on the Monday and the Sunday my father broke his neck diving so I went in and marked off and sat by his bed expecting him to die. He wouldn’t die, the bugger wouldn’t die, so I finished up and had him for three months trying to put his neck into place and he had one vertebra overlapping the other one, wouldn’t go so they turned around then and they decided to operate. A bloke called Callow operated and he operated, he gave him the choice, life or death and he said, “No, do it.” and they pulled him out of it

and he was able to get back on his feet and he carried on and if I digress a little bit, when I got discharged I had to go to hospital at the Randwick Military Hospital to get my knee done, it got busted up north, the surgeon who did it was Callow, the same bloke and he remembered my father so there you are. History catches up doesn’t it?

Clear water, the tide had dropped, you couldn’t pick a depth and the only time I ever saw him dive he didn’t put his hands in front of him and they took him from down south coast where he was by ambulance to Parramatta and I couldn’t drive at the time as I was too young so one of the ambulance blokes drove all the way from the south coast to Parramatta and they told me as a kid it’s cheaper to carry him up alive than carry him up dead.

I started school at the primary at

Wentworthville and what you find in today what’s missing is when I was 12 years of age, in sixth class you did half a day every Friday and carpentry work and trade work in Parramatta Tech. School in the trade school so all my life I had that background. I did another year at Westmead Tech my second year at Westmead Tech, my third year at Granville Tech and I went from there to Technical High in Sydney and I had to go to Sydney everyday by steam train

it would be about an hour’s run there and about an hour’s run back.

The government paid for that.

Military history, no, you had your general history which was mainly British history. You stemmed from there into Captain Cook, your

governors of Australia and the states, the explorers, and that was your background. World War I you knew about, the Boer War you didn’t hear anything about but nothing in particular I can regard to it. You learnt because you lived in that era after the war, all my relations were returned diggers; you grew up with their background, little bits here and there. You spoke to one uncle would tell you something, one uncle I had he got married in

England and left his wife on the wharf and come home and these were little bits you picked up from all my uncles as you went along.

The Anzac tradition, it was not a tradition to me; it was a way of life I knew about. In other words a tradition is formed out of what occurs and what happens so you grow up and become a background to the Anzac way of life. My father would

march in the parade, he would always go to the Anzac Day parade. I never have, but he always did. It’s a different world to him, because he had his mates in the army, this particular unit he was in, what was left of them, an associated unit, they knew each other from association where they served in France and these places, Egypt and Gallipoli. There is a combination that we didn’t have in World War II. Like myself in the air force, a wireless operator I moved on my own from unit, to unit, to unit, to unit,

two squadrons, 24 Squadron, on loan to them for a period of time, but never worked as a wireless operator independently, fire squadron in Bougainville, as a wireless operator working for the aircraft on R2 and working with the army for trials to get the aircraft out to Boomerang to Wirraways, so it’s a different background the two wars entirely. Food conditions were different, like my father said, “Gallipoli was basically pickled

onions and dried apricots.” He got invalided off Gallipoli, he was in the ambulance ship on the harbour when they vacated, I’ve got his records here to show that. Now our food conditions were different. We always had a mess. The only time I stuck trouble was on Bougainville was when we got the two weeks food supply for the troops on Bougainville, this is documented, so we got down to Yank [American] dumps of tin

sauerkraut and tin pork sausages but that’s the only time I struck a real hardship when the food was concerned.

Mischief? You were always in mischief, I was anyhow. Such things, I can remember the girls that went to church, we are talking about 16 or 17 years of age, and they wanted a Christmas tree on Christmas and myself and my mate cut one out of an avenue of palm trees, Christmas trees,

pine trees and put them up in the church and didn’t realise the parishioner was the one who owned the property. We used to go down and get into the orchards in those days and the soccer teams I played with my job was to supply them with the oranges at half time you’d do it at night time, you knew how to get around the bush, you knew how to keep out of mischief, you knew where the shade was, you knew to keep out of making the noise, you learned all this. Like trapping your birds, you trapped your birds the

same way. It’s a different way to the kids today; it’s a totally different life.

The only thing you had in those days would be a cricket back probably. My cricket bat I had was one signed by Don Bradman [famous Australian cricketer], he used to work in Sydney with a firm in Sydney and my father knew him because my father was a runner in his time and he knew all the athletes and those

back then you see. I had two bats signed by him; they’d be worth a lot of money today. But to run the cricket team I used to run the penny raffle when I was 15, penny raffle around the town to be able to buy a ball and we’d borrow the cricket gear off my uncle to play in the senior team and at that time we won the district Parramatta competition from the bushies [people from the country] it was. Do you know we won it and the competition didn’t run again, under 16’s, and we got a baggy cap each that was the biggest thing of my life, the baggy cap, baggy green cap.

Other things, soccer ball, we played soccer, not much rugby league, I played soccer, we had the one ball and stitch it up when it got a bit of leather in it, you’d get a needle and sew another patch in it. They’d pump it up. You survived, but you got more fun, you knocked off [left] school and out in the paddock with your ball, you didn’t have homework like today, it’s a different story, you learnt at school. I mean you learnt or you got your six [caned/strapped], you’d have to put your hand out and wonder do you take four

in one hand and two in the other or do I take a three and a three or do I cop six on my hand now and save my other hand for the next six? You learnt. I was down at Granville Tech and a bloke called Will Dickson, school teacher, he’d be six foot two and it’d be Monday morning and you got one kid caught out and he’d go through 30 kids six each and that did you for the week except when you got transgress and that did you a bit more.

Don Bradman in his

time was the hero. Little fair bloke, wasn’t a big bloke, I remember him as a kid, wasn’t a big bloke, but he was renowned. I went and saw him play a few times. What struck in my mind was he very seldom missed a ball and very seldom didn’t get a ball in the score off and that’s what stuck in my mind with Don Bradman.

In those days that was the

day you could go out to the cricket ground, you could go out to the cricket ground and that was a day out, sat out in the seats all day in the sun and the hill was there, got in the hill and yelled out all day but it was an occasion. When a test match on it was an occasion, not like today, it was a big event and they’d pack the grounds for a big event and those that had one if they could they would get a wireless [radio] going and they’d have a wireless going all day. Even when overseas matches were on they would ping the microphone when the ball was struck and it was all

made up and delivered after the game was over in effect. So all that background you still absorbed as a part of your way of life.

Yes.

You’d go by train and walk from Central Station up Foveaux Street. Later on in life from Tech High it was up near the Sydney Cricket Ground, you had to get the train to Central Station and head up Foveaux Street through Paddington, you walked back the same way. I can remember going through Paddington, as you know it’s a rough old

area in those days and I am only a kid about ten and we are going up through Paddington and a lady said to my father, “Come and have a cup of tea.” and I didn’t know what sort of a lady she was and went home and told my mother. Dad got offered a cup of tea from one of the ladies of the night [prostitutes]. Life was absorbed day by day does that make sense. You work with it, you live with it and there was nothing spectacular it just happened.

Sydney Cricket Ground, around technical high school where I was, was only a few streets away from Sydney Cricket Ground and I played

rugby union with Tech High on Sydney Cricket Ground number two and we played our cricket on Centennial Park for our school for high school competition. We played other players like Patrick Park and these places and as far out in those days as Hurlstone Park outside Liverpool, an agricultural college we played out there. So that was your main sport, my mid week was rugby union and my weekend was soccer so you kept yourself active all the time. Sydney Cricket Ground we were always there, it was

basically just Sydney Cricket Ground to us, around the area was terraced houses mainly, not buildings no high rise buildings of that nature, just a residential area and in many cases a poorer class of residential area. Today those places are worth millions, to those it was somewhere to live.

You would always have sandwiches because if you had a big treat you might buy one of Sergeant’s pies if you could have enough for a Sergeant’s pie, that was a big deal, normally you’d take, you’d take a drink of water because you didn’t have the money to buy a soft drink or those sort of things or go to the tap for a drink of water and that’d be it, everyone would do the same.

Yes, that was my money. I had to go and buy, I am trying to think what I would spend money on, let me go back and think. I’d buy sometimes a few nets for the rabbiting traps, I couldn’t pay out, picture [movie] theatre, picture theatre was where my money went. Nothing else, a nice packet of PKs [chewing gum], that was the big deal, if I could buy myself a packet of PKs I was made. My

objective in life was to be able to, when I went to work was to buy myself a packet of PKs a day, that was my objective, not lollies [sweets], a packet of PKs.

Chewing gum. What else do you want to know?

Rabbiting, well with myself and a mate we set about thirty odd traps we set at night through the bush we’d go round about eight o’clock at night set them about six,

eight o’clock at night, about midnight, about three o’clock in the morning, between the two of us, I’d pick them up at about six o’clock, so you got a bit of sleep between but you went around the traps took your rabbits out of the traps. In winter time, sometimes they’d be even frozen in the traps they’d be that cold. Occasionally you’d get a bush [feral] cat, they’d wreck your trap, a bush cat would wreck your trap, they’d twist it to pieces. So you skinned your rabbits, about eight skins to the pound

round about roughly and you’d sell them to a bloke in town, like a general store. You only made a few bob on them, but a penny was a penny in those days. You didn’t look at two shillings, two shillings was big money. If you had a penny, a penny was a penny.

Traps were a spring trap, you’d push your foot on them and push a spring down and open the jaws and put a little plate over and lock them in a tooth and you’d dig a

hole and put that trap in a hole and you’d lightly cover it with some grass and a little bit of paper over your plate so the soil wouldn’t jam your plate and you’d just go round and clear all your traps off with a bit of bush and clean it all round properly and you’d set your trap that way because the steel peg to lock it in the ground. Your ferrets you ran your freest in boxes or sometimes even I’d carry them in my shirt on my pushbike, we all had pushbikes in those days, carry your

ferret in your shirt, down the tunnel, all your tunnels in those days might be 14, 15, 20 openings to the warren and you’d put your nets out and if you were lucky they were drawstring, like an onion bag, when they hit the net they’d pull close and lock around the rabbit with a peg in it otherwise you’d use ordinary fish net if you could get some off the old fisherman down south where I was, lay it flat on the bottom where the passageway was and curl it over the top, you had to get that rabbit when it hit the net before he got away.

On their leg, they’d run across the trap. You would look for places where the rabbits had been, for fresh dung, you’d look for where they’d piddled and you’d look for where they generally run around and played. You’d generally find dung heaps around where they’d be at night, we’d very seldom set them in front of the warren because they’d run out of the warren but the warren was like an electric train in a

tunnel and they’d rumble down to the warren and if you had four rabbits come out at once you had a hell of a trouble finding which one you’d bloody get before the rest ran away.

Sometimes dead, if he was alive, you’d bat him over the back of the neck, like what they call a rabbit kill on the back of your hand, you’d hit him on the back of your neck, to kill a rabbit.

You’d take them home and skin them at home.

You’d open them up in the middle and bring the skin over the top. Similar to how you’d skin a roo [kangaroo], when you skin a roo it’s the same sort of procedure to some degree.

No, we are going back, it’s the way of life, does that make sense? You’d do the same, you’d trap your birds, we got a penny for a dozen red heads or say, we’d get a diamond sparrow we’d get threepence, big money, so you

made your own traps and I made my own bird traps and you’d put a little fork in the top with a spring loaded lid on it and we had a safety pin to make a spring out of it and you’ve locked that lid in a little fork, a bush fork and you use a bit of millet, you spit on it to get the millet to stick on it, and the bird would come in to and have to crawl into the bottom cage and he’d call the flock, you’d know where the flock would be, you’d look through the bush and you’d find a flock of birds so you set up in that area. Always watch your

wind, you had to watch your wind otherwise he wouldn’t come. He’d call them and lob [land] on the fork and pop down it goes the lid and you had your bird.

Generally redheads, we’d used to get, redheads and diamond sparrows were the main two birds in that area.

Sell them. A bloke had a shop in Parramatta. Penny a dozen we’d get if we were lucky, sometimes a ha'penny a dozen depending what he’d give us. A penny was a penny.

Generally

what you did was sell them to people around the district or trade them. You had rabbits, you’d trade a couple of those, you wouldn’t trade them, you’d give them to a bloke, like Harold Hammond, a mate of mine, he had the citrus farm and his father went to school with my father so you’d give him a couple of rabbits and he’d say, “I’ll give you a bucket of oranges.” It was not a barter deal it was a mutual arrangement between people without talking about it. If another bloke called Clippard, he had a vegetable garden, so you’d leave him a

couple of rabbits and he’d say, “I’ll get you a cauli [cauliflower].” and that’s the way it was, do you understand all that?

Do you want the typical one, hat fur felt for the army? Rabbit skins, hat fur felt for the army, that’s where the hat fur felt came in. Fur, rabbit fur. A lot of them made up different things, some used to make even rugs out of them, throw them all together, dry them.

You take the ferret out of your box, now you have a warren, that’s an area, generally a little bit of a rise usually, but not always, and out of that centre warren would be all passages running through that, there will be something like fifteen, two entrances, there might be three entrances, there might be twenty entrances, depending on where you were, so what you did you first went around and found them all, netted them,

looked out for bloody snakes, there was always the black snakes around there, big black bellied snakes, look out for them and when you got them all set you dropped your ferret down the hole and away he’d go, you’d hear him go. If you had a ferret that was young you put a muzzle on him and the muzzle was a little round circle brass ring with a screw fitting behind it and that fitted behind the teeth. In other words, you put it over his nose and behind the front teeth you put a little screw in it and that stopped him from killing the rabbit

if he killed a rabbit inside or a kitten rabbit he wouldn’t come out, he’d kill a rabbit between him and outside, then you had to get your ferret out, so to get your ferret out you smoke him out, you blocked all the holes up, get bush where the wind was blowing, get a bloody big fire going with green leaf on it and push the smoke through and it’d push him out. He’d come our bleary eyed, couldn’t see where he was going. My wife will tell you, she went ferreting with me once and

I lost one, didn’t you?

He’d push them, and he comes out himself, he trots out and you see him over there and you go and pick him up and put him in the box and away you go to the next warren, you always had your corn sack to put them in a corn sack. If you took them back your live you put them in a hutch to keep them in around the lawn, kept them alive, watered them, they might be there for a week, a fortnight, then you disposed of them.

We don’t have discipline like today, discipline was a way of life and a way of life was discipline was a self discipline; you are brought up with a self discipline. A good example, my mother was

sick at the time my brother started school so she said to me, “You take him to school, start him.” I didn’t know, he was about six; I was only about eight years of age older than him. I took him to school and left him at the headmaster’s office he was at school and they had to find out who the hell he was. That was the sort of thing you’d do automatically. You just did what had to be done, does that make sense?

The anticipation was I would do a trade, all the blokes went to tech school in those days, you got to remember this, today I do half a day senior citizens down here every week to sort out people my age and I am finding out now they can’t read or write as they come out of the Depression years. They left school at twelve years of age, they learnt ABC, they learnt mathematics, now you put that today these documents put out by the

government and they can’t understand them, they can’t read them and they don’t adapt these for the older people to the older era so the schooling was that way. To go what I did to a technical school and specify in carpentry, particularly to go into a trade, the building trade, but there was no building trade for you, that’s when I went to tech my father had enough money luckily for me to be able to put me through high school, put me in tech high so I had a chance, but when I got out of school, I still couldn’t get a job.

My first job I got a job in Ultimo in the middle of the city working for a sauce and mayonnaise company washing bottles. Putting them in trays and then delivering mayonnaise on a pushbike round George Street, down George Street to the cafes. They went broke, the next job I got in a car yard because I had a license, at 17 I had a license, a special license because I needed it for work, that’s how I got it. So I was able to get a job working in a car yard out at Parramatta. Then the

main office was in Sydney so every Saturday, every Saturday there would be five and me, I would go to Sydney by train and we’d bring six cars back to the car yard for the weekend then we’d all go back in one car and all drive a car back to build up the stock for the weekend and Monday we took them back the same way. At 17 years of age I learnt, and the first lesson I ever learnt, the first day I was in the firm there working for them, I had about forty cars to wash and clean,

I was lucky my old man had a car, I could do it, second day he called me in, the next morning he called me in and said, “I want to see you.” and I said, “Yes.” he said, I thought he was going to pat me on the back to wash forty cars, “Yesterday the side gate, two people came in that side gate, you allowed them to walk out of the yard and I didn’t see them, they went out the gate before I saw them, I saw them go, if that happens again don’t come back to work.” So I learnt you walked in that car yard, if he was busy, I got you in a car, I’d crank a car, I got you round to hold something for me, to

keep you there until he was able to deal with them. It wasn’t a matter of discipline; it was things you did because that’s what you were told to do. Automatically you did what you were told to do, at school you did what you were told to do. Your parents, you automatically grew up to do what you were told to do. When you are a little kid you got a belt across the tail if you didn’t do it, but that was the way life was. There was no distinction in any of the community, everyone lived the same way.

We didn’t have a disciplinarian as such, you lived as a family. Some homes did, a lot of my mates, their father would belt the hell out of them and Mum would say nothing but no, in my way of life, Dad would get the strap if he had to, Mum would give me a belt over the tail when I was younger. Nothing drastic beyond that, there was no curtailing of sweets or going to the pictures, you didn’t have those things to curtail.

Silent movies when I was a little kid. A woman used to sit at the side of the movie playing the piano, you’ve seen it on the TV haven’t you, playing the piano and when the heroine was on the railway line roped up getting tied and the train was coming she would slow it down and the train would slow down with it and you’d be waiting for it to happen, then, it will be on next week, it would stop at that point.

The movies that what it was, you sat in sections together, all the kids did, the boys separate and the girls separate. There were no ice creams or anything, you didn’t have any money for bloody ice-creams, you just went to the movies.

Up at the local town we had a picture show in the local town. The town had about four shops in it at Wentworthville at that time.

It’s like things in life, we accepted it, it just gradually came, does that make sense, if I remember rightly you’d have an interval and then you might have a talkie would come on, a bit rough and ready, from our day today I think, I can’t make a comparison because as a kid to me that was just what happened, I can’t compare it to

today’s out put today, that was critical in respect of dictation and that, it didn’t happen that way.

No, you accepted the things as they happened. Another thing in the town was you’d have a elocution teacher would come once a week so all the kids in town would go out to this other elocution teacher and you’d have a play on at the end of the year, not the school, separate, independent, you didn’t have a play at school, you had that as an

independent thing. When I got older, I was 17, I became the boy in a troop who used to go around the suburbs on the stage and I learnt one thing from the bloke who taught me, when you go on the stage always look at the person on the back and talk to them and you don’t get stage fright.

You learnt first of all to pronounce

words correctly then you learnt to recite poems then you went from there to little sketches and you had parts where you had to learn your cues, then you went into a production at the end of the year and you had a big play, two or three plays, went on and you all learnt your cues and you had a prompter on the side if you missed your cue, if you had a good memory you didn’t need to do that. That’s how my memory goes back to those days.

At the local school of arts.

School of arts. My father, the leading horticulturist, he used to judge a lot of shows later on, he was a secretary there of the horticulturist society those days, that was a big thing in the town, they had a show every year, a horticulturist show and they used to have all the bottles stored underneath the shed to get in under the hall and I used to get in there with my mate and pull these crates of bottles out and put the flowers in and put them on display. Everyone did a bit, whatever happened, we all did a bit, you didn’t have to go and pay someone to do it, you chipped in that little

bit [helped] whatever it was.

Wentworthville, we go back in history, my grandmother and grandfather, I didn’t know my grandmother, my grandmother’s place was a dairy place about three streets away from the main railway line. I recall correctly it was called Darcyville after Darcy of Wentworth originally and they had

cattle and dairy from there almost out to Toongabbie on an agistment. The buildings in my time as a kid had a row of brick buildings to house cattle in like in England in the winter time but they were never needed and a big barn at the back and this is only two streets off the railway station. On my side of the railway station where I lived

originally before it was built up a little bit was one tiny little store, later on a butcher started up, and a produce merchant, on the other side of the line was an estate agent, a picture theatre, a school of arts, a chemist shop in due course, didn’t have a butcher there, the butcher was on my side of the line, later on a fruit shop,

a post office and the school was nearly a mile out towards the western highway.

No idea, in those days you never counted people, you never worried about it, you just knew people lived there and of course most of them lived there all their lives in that area, even today, my sister still lives there, still the people we grew up with,

still there living in the area today.

The creek. I swam in the local creek otherwise there was a tyre works there that had been started many years when I was a kid, of course Shannon tyre works, they had big pits, big clay pits and you’d get in there, but every now and again you’d get stuck in the mud, you’d dive into the clay and you’d get stuck in the clay in the bottom. I used to swim there but otherwise in the creek. To be modest in those

days you’d get a sugar bag and cut the bottom out and make yourself a pair of swimming trunks or you swam in the nude, that’s what you had to do.

Just swam. You know if you go down a couple of times you got to get up and try and make yourself get out of it. So you learnt. The nearest [swimming] baths were at Parramatta but you didn’t have any money to go to the baths at Parramatta.

Whatever your gang was that you were with, different

areas had different mates because of distance, where I was in the more populated area in the town area you’d have about six kids around those streets about your age and you’d go rabbiting together when you got a bit older and you’d always carry a 22 [rifle] in those days, everyone carried a 22, it took me years to save up to pay 30 bob for a 22 rifle and then your ammunition and that’s another

thing you spent your money on for rabbiting, your ammunition. About one and eleven pence for a packet of ammo [ammunition], 22 cartridge so you nursed them, looked after them. If you managed to buy what they called Winchester super speed they were the top class and you’d pay another ten for that.

No, if you got into trouble your mates would pull you out. That’s the way it was, that’s all, you all sort of helped each

other. When you are rabbiting it’s the same, you’d all get together, you wouldn’t say it, you’d net your holes in, there’d be two of you and you’d watch so many, the community worked that way, no guidelines, you do it this way or you do it that way, you automatically learnt as you went along. You learnt as you went along, you learnt from the person who was older than you.

No one. You got a 22, you watch another kid shooting a

22 who’s older than you and he showed you and you learnt to shoot the same way. Mostly all in those days would carry a shangheye [a catapult], everyone carried a shangheye.

No, never anyone got hurt, if you saved enough money you had a tomahawk as well, you know a tomahawk? I don’t know any kid who got hurt, no broken legs, no broken arms, no injuries, the only thing you got was a clod of dirt hit you if you got into a

fight with another gang of kids somewhere throwing bloody clods at each other, you wouldn’t throw rocks you’d throw bloody clods.

News wasn’t an item in those days, not like the press today. You had your papers, the Sydney Morning Herald, but that was only for one thing, to find out about jobs. The news didn’t interest me particularly; even the war didn’t interest me particularly. It was there but you didn’t sit down and read it.

The first job I got because my father was talking to a stall holder at the Sydney Royal Show that was selling beef tea and they wanted a lad, that’s how I got the job, my first job.

Selling beef tea, I was selling beef tea in the royal show and they made beef tea, mayonnaise and sauces.

What do you call it

today? Bonox. You know Bonox.

No, the job I had was to, they wouldn’t, it was two German fellows, you didn’t go near them when they were making the recipes up. That was taboo. You didn’t go near them, they had big mixers, you didn’t go near them. My job was to get the bottles and crates outs if necessary work overtime to label all the bottles, all hand labelled.

I’d work on all those; I’d stack them and pack them. At that time, if I got nine pence for overtime, I was made, I could go and buy a meal for sixpence down there, a three course meal for sixpence. I would get my soup, I would get roast meat, corn meat, and vegetables and I’d get say custard and probably baked pudding or custard and jelly, a three course

meal and I’d have threepence left over in my pocket.

No, that’s how I got the job from the blokes at the show the permanent job. They went broke and I had to go and find somewhere else and I picked this up from a bloke I knew, well my father knew, who worked in the motor trade they were looking for someone who was young who could drive a car.

License, I was driving around my father’s car around bits and pieces round the back of the town area, he wouldn’t let me drive

much but he taught me to drive. They’d go up to the local copper to get a license, I remember him saying to me, “You’ve been driving for a long time, you’re right.” That’s it. That was my license, no test.

No, he wasn’t worried, just here’s your license, go.

We had a 29 Aston Sedan.

Square vehicle, wind up windows,

six cylinder motor, manual brakes, no synchromesh, handbrake, that means you had to get your gears in correctly, there was no synchro to get your gear in, you had to get your motor running at the right speed for the gear you are getting in, the rev had to be right, does that make sense, the revolution had to be right to get it in, low gear, second gear, and third gear, you had three gears, first, second and third.

Some cars I drove, one particular car when I was with the motor firm in Sydney taking it out to go to Parramatta, old Fiat had the gear shift on the, had the runner board on the outside, you had to lean over to change gears. I broke an axle across the tram line on Castlereagh Street on a Saturday morning. I stopped the whole traffic in Sydney. That was it, no one worried about it, it happened. No complaint, you shift it.

My father started me; he put me in the car, long straight dirt road and just made me drive it straight that was all. We gradually got out of first gear and we got into second gear next time and you gradually got up to the top gear, that’s how I learnt to drive and I remember next thing he took me down a steep hill and showed me how to use the brakes,

if I could use the brakes correctly I couldn’t get into trouble. You didn’t leave it too late to put them on, ease them on, didn’t belt them on and that’s how I learnt to drive.

No, it was only weekends. They always travelled by train in those days, I went to school by train; he went to work by train.

All gravel roads, a little bit of bitumen here and there but where I lived,

two houses, I lived in one house first and Dad built the second house right and the road I lived in was built with sandstone in the Depression years with the road gangs they cut the sandstones out of quarry, the sandstone in lumps and they laid them by hand, a quarter mile road, a quarter mile long, and they’d pack them by hand then they’d repack the smaller stones from the top of the bigger boulders and they serviced it by running it over with a roller.

Now when I was a kid that was the best place to play marbles in the district because the sandstone was a sandy top road and level and you’d play big ring, all the kids would come to play big ring. You’d get enough marbles and you’d use them in your shangheye that’s what it was all about. Couldn’t afford to buy them you had to win them.

Big ring was a big ring; you had to knock them out of the middle. You’d put the big one in the middle, they used to put a marble in the middle and you’d try to win the marbles out of the ring.

You had three holes, that was three holes, another game you’d play, which is three holes together about I suppose 18 inches apart, two foot apart, and the bigger hole was about three foot away and you worked through your holes up and down.

I was good. I had enough for my shangheye and that’s another thing I saved some of my money for. I saved my money and I bought myself a connie [marble]. A connie was a connie agate, made out of

agate. Proper agate it was, a beautiful coloured marble, a reddy brown colour and they were machined true where the others were a glass marble, and they were not often true or were often what we called botchy, they came out of bottles, the stuff on the top. I got a bottle there with one in it, the old ones, on the side here. You used those as our marbles. Those

connies you never gave them up they were only for tour, you used them to shoot with.

They were all glass marbles, multi-coloured, mainly all multi-coloured except the bottloes, the botchies were a straight glass and after a while the botchy would chip on the outside and you’d have a rough marble on the outside and they were good to play because you had a rough marble on the side, like a sandpaper on the outside.

No, we just call them dibs, called them marbles that’s all. Except your connies, they were a separate thing, Botchies you called them bottloes, you called them botchies because they come out of the bottle.

You had your school clothes to go to school which was not a uniform. You had one pair of shoes so you went barefooted because your shoes you couldn’t go wearing them to much, you had a couple of shirts probably and a couple of pairs of

shorts. As you got older, the big deal when you got older was you got a pair of grey trousers that was a big deal in those days. Grey long trousers, if you got grey long trousers you were made. I have a photograph of me somewhere with a pair of grey trousers on. That was it. But you didn’t have multiple shirts, you had a shirt to go out in and a work shirt, or couple of work shirts and that was it. You wore a tie; everyone wore a hat in those days normally. Normally wore a hat. All the

men wore a hat. They passed a lady they tipped their hat, they’d touch their hat, as they passed a lady, always. Pass a lady, tip your hat, or raise your hat.

Yes, you had a suit, a Sunday suit. Always had a suit which might be a jacket and a pair of trousers but they were kept separate, they were your outing ones.

Yes, always went down the circle.

No, I was

lucky I was on the top of the list. We didn’t have any relations older than me to come back to me, right? All my cousins were about the same age as me.

Some bought, some she made. My sister she made all the clothes for my sister. But my grandfather, he was a tailor. So I used to get, my stuff would be made up from remnants he had. He had a tailor shop in Parramatta.

Later on when I got a bit older you’d go shopping sometimes in Parramatta, Friday night was shopping night. You’d go and get the train in and you’d just walk around the shops and that’s all and buy a couple of things and then you’d come home again. But you didn’t do it every Friday; you didn’t have the money to do it every Friday. You didn’t have the money to pay your train fare; it had to be paid for. All this comes into the picture,

and sometimes you’d walk home. It would be about, I don’t know, probably today, five mile I suppose, you’d walk or run. You’d mainly run in those days, I never walked, I ran. My father would run, he would run from Parramatta to home, as crook [sick] as he was, he’d run home from Parramatta often.

No, we just

lived our life. That was your life. Nothing disturbed you. What our main life concerned was a pushbike. The first pushbike I had to save half the cost, it cost eight pound, I had to save four, the rabbit money went into that, four pound for that. My father bought me an old car because he used to use it as a road racer before World War I and it nearly killed me because it was that heavy to bloody push. But that was the way of life. Buy something that would last a lifetime, not something that’s going to fall to pieces, when the first Malvern Stars

come at you [a brand of pushbike], you wouldn’t take them, they wouldn’t last that long. But the old bloody heavy bike, and you’d ride at night. When I was about sixteen we had a local fire brigade and we’d chase the fire brigade for bloody 20 miles all the kids after the bloody fire brigade, rode your bikes out and come back.

He gave me the other four pound. I had to work, I never got pocket money in those days but he gave me the other four pound but I had to save four, he wouldn’t give it to

me, I had to save four for the bike. With that bike, to me, every two years, eighteen months, I had to take the pedals off, the handle bars, crank shafts, save my money and I’d rechrome the lot and repaint my bike myself, you kept your bike up to scratch [in good condition] and that was the way of life with your pushbike. In those days you rode your pushbike with toe clips, not like they pedal around today, you rode with toe clips, you made your bike work for you.

No gears. Didn’t have gears. It had a slip sprocket, for a fixed sprocket and a back wheel brake, a back pedal brake, you pushed your pedals backwards and your brakes came on or a hand brake for your fixed wheel.

Everyone had bikes, that was your way of life. Bikes. We went to cricket, bike, we went to football, bike, when you go rabbiting you take your gear on the bikes, you leave your bikes in the scrub and walk the rest of the

way to come home. The way of life was pushbikes.

Probably the impression I had, to put it this way, best summed up, I had joined the air force because of the money, nothing else. The woman said to me one day, “Jack it must’ve been marvellous to be in the air force you know with the flag throwing and the bands playing.” and I said, “Bullshit, I joined for five

bob extra and my tucker and my clothes because if I lost my job my family had to keep me, there was no dole. If I didn’t bring something in Dad had to provide for all of us so you had to look at that way of life. You had to get out and do your bit and survive yourself but the war years you knew, because at my time when I joined up there wasn’t really a war. There was no war there was only the Middle East and Europe it didn’t mean anything to us in Australia, that was over in England, not here.

The first troops that went away to the Middle East, I can remember the first troops going away and I was in Melbourne, 1940 and I can remember they lined us all up on our drill squad to volunteer to go out to the Middle East as wireless operators, we weren’t trained, they grabbed one bloke and he got the job he went and we had the job at Laverton, this will come up later probably, to serve them, 250

pound bombs had to be taken out of the depots at Laverton and sent overseas, we had nothing in Australia, we didn’t need it. That’s what I say, there was no war, we didn’t need it in Australia. Do you understand all that?

Yes we always had a radio; my father always had a radio. The first big radio we had and that was an American radio, that was a big deal in those days because all atmospherics there was not much on it, some stations, a couple of Sydney stations with a little bit of

music and that sort of thing, never listened to it much, only if the cricket was on, you’d listen to the cricket, that would go all day when the cricket was on.

It was a whopping big one, it had something like two foot long it was, a whopping big thing it was with a special power pack on it to break down 240 volts, all up to date, it was the bee’s knees [the best] it was.

No,

you got to understand that I say me joining up in January '40 and trying to get an enlistment, examination medicals on about 2 December '39, I had to go to Melbourne to be sworn in so I didn’t get into Melbourne until about the second week in 1940 the war didn’t concern me. The blokes I went down there with, didn’t concern them, six of us went, four of

them were trained electricians, I sat with a bloke who was a WT [Wireless Telegrapher] with me, the next number to me went down in an aircraft up in Koepang or somewhere later on, they went into the air force because there was the militia and they didn’t want to get whacked into the permanent army. You see it was volunteer there was no call up in those days, it was all volunteer, you had no conscription.

I would’ve probably been the first bloke joining up. My cousin wouldn’t have been far behind me, he was in the army and got caught in Crete but there was no send off or nothing, nothing happened. Except about many years after I came home on leave and I went to go and see the local bank manager and I got to see him and he got stuck into me because he didn’t attend my send off, I had been away for two bloody years and I also got a wallet,

he gave me a wallet for send off and he gave me a wallet for my mate Ronnie Lambert but he was over in England by then so that’s how much locally at that time the war didn’t affect anyone. They didn’t even know who’d gone and where they’d gone. That was years after.

I got the letter that I applied, a copy of the letter; I got the record, a copy of the letter that I applied,

joining the air force at that time was called in the advert, “An Expeditionary Force.” if I remember rightly, to join for two musterings, a trainee wireless operator or a clerk, now I had been in the metropolitan and had spent a bit of money on that as well in my time and I had done bookkeeping, a bit of shorthand and typing, and that was

after the next position was trying to get into the course as a shorthand writer. That was the next move so I didn’t so I joined up but my other bit of pocket money went into that as well and wages I had left over. So I applied to the advertisement and I got a letter back to come in and be examined, examine me, the times were such you will

find that my examination said, if I remember correctly, tidy appearance, respectful and good type. That’s what it was like when I joined the air force.

I had to go to Sydney for that, they had a sergeant and a flying doc [doctor] there that’s all they had, two blokes no one else was there when I went there; I had to go on my own. Then they

told me I’d get a call up from there and I had to and get my teeth done that was one thing delayed to 2 December, I had to have a dental clearance, and that cost me thirty bob, I never forgot that, three fillings, ten bob each and that bugged me for six years in the air force it cost me thirty bob and when I got discharged at Bradfield Park on my discharge papers I said I wanted my teeth done and they said, “You don’t get your teeth done, you get discharged.” and I said, “I am not going from here until I get my bloody teeth done.” they had to get a

dentist out from Sydney to Bradfield Park to do my teeth, I was going anywhere until I got my money back. That was life, to me, that thirty bob to me was a week’s wages. I lost a week’s wages and for six years it bugged me that I lost a week’s wages.

I got it back.

Well, I had gone down to Melbourne about Christmas time, just before Christmas. It was no good going down to Melbourne

before Christmas because the stations close down at Christmas you see this is the situation of war, they closed down and went home for Christmas. They had weekends off. It was just like a job you know and that’s why I didn’t go out until 16 January when they re-opened and they had accommodation because I went to the first hut they put up, the first hut, otherwise we lived in the courthouse or something like that.

It didn’t worry him. You just went in those days.

It didn’t matter, there were that many blokes waiting in the queue to get a job it didn’t worry him. I said, “I’m leaving.” he said, “Okay, that’s it, finish at the end of the week, finish when you want to.”

No, this is what people don’t understand, nothing was a big deal really, do you understand that, everything was a part of and way of life. People knew there was a war on somewhere, people knew people were joining up, so it just happened.

Yes, no hesitation with him. He had to authorise it.

Before I, when I went to have my examination, before my examination I had to take a paper to them to satisfy them that I was eligible to be able to join up.

I said, “Dad I am going to join the air force, I will make another five bob a week.” He said, “Okay, righto.” and that was the finish of it. No big discussion.

Today it’s built up to, “My son’s going out into danger, he’s going overseas.” and they all sit in the corner and have a cry and put their arms around each other. No, in those days it wasn’t, it was a part of life. You just sort of did it.

By train. Train to Melbourne, train out to Laverton, the train went to Laverton in those days, then you went and got sworn in and the next day you were there.

Over night, that’s all, the express, it was six o’clock. If I remember rightly I got there about one o’clock the next day at Laverton, give or take.

Laverton is an 18 year old bloke and you can imagine, we are not getting troops in bulk; there is about two coming in, three coming in,

because that’s the only place they swore them in at that time, no other state in Australia, only at Laverton, so you’d get two blokes that come in and when you came in you’d have your suitcase and your civvies [civilian clothing] on and when you walked in every bloke would yell out, “You’ll be sorry mate, you’ll be bloody sorry.” and that’s what used to happen, you’d get, “You’ll be sorry.” So when you got in to the galvo [galvanised tin] hut you started with you got supplied with a bed,

go down to the stores, you got all your equipment down at the stores and a big chunk of hessian bag, “What’s that for?” “Out the back room and you fill it with straw.” So you learnt go out and fill it with straw. Blokes were always coming, fill it up pretty big and it’ll pack down on you so you listen to what blokes are talking about. It’s a way of life to listen what happens. You learnt. They gave me five pieces of wood. What the hell is five pieces of wood? That’s my bed. Five pieces of wood.

You had a centre plank, two side planks on an angle and two bed heads and they all just slotted in together. Put your palliasses on top of that and your blanket, but that didn’t happen after, that was only when I joined up, those things disappeared shortly after that. As a young bloke of 18, you’d go and have a cold shower, all cold showers, no hot showers and all these blokes, and I’d just started to shave, I had a safety razor and all these blokes are using cut throats, Jesus, you see them using cut throats shaving away like

steam and I tried one and nearly sliced my bloody nose off that was it, once was a enough for me. A bloke gave me, it was a Bengor was the brand on it, I remember that Bengor, he had a spare razor, “Here son, try this.” I’ve still got the razor somewhere. Your meals were good tucker, food, you were used to eating what you got it didn’t matter what it was. All those blokes they got fed. You had to wait then for about

three weeks before your drill squad got mustered enough for them so the first week on there I get there about the Tuesday, I get kitted up, the weekend, the following week, sort of mucking about, so we leave past the second weekend. So I got into town in Melbourne by train with all these other blokes, they are older than me, I am 18, they are 25, 28, we get a leave pass, it said eight o’clock to

midnight on the Saturday and ten o’clock to midnight on the Sunday. So I said to these blokes, they were in the pub, I didn’t drink, I’ll have a look around town and stop back to pick them up, “No, we are stopping until tomorrow.” “Why, you have a leave pass until Sunday, it’s ten o’clock.” “No, she’s right, we are due in at midnight.” “Okay.” So I go and book into the People’s Palace and get a good bed and they had a cafeteria in those days, a big deal, a cafeteria. Crumbed sausages, a big deal.

Okay, so we go and get the train, meet the blokes, get back out to Laverton at midnight, see the guard, no worries, next morning, Monday morning, muster parade. Now muster parade was a big thing at Laverton, that was the biggest base in Australia, “AC1 [aircraftsman] Woodward.” “Jesus, who wants me, all these blokes and I’ve only been here a week.” So I walk out, and this bloke says, “AC1 Woodward.” and I say, “Yes, sir.” “I’m a sergeant.

The WOD [Warrant Officer Discipline] wants you.” “Who’s the WOD?” “You’ll bloody find out.” I get charged before the CO [Commanding Officer], they put a guard on you those days to make you for the CO and I was AWL [Absent Without Leave] for two hours, I missed the church parade, that was what the ten o’clock was, no one told me, the 18 year old, the other blokes were smart, they had someone answer for them, no one told me, so I get 21 days CB [Confined to Barracks], my first week in the air force, 21 days confined to the barracks and extra duties

because I didn’t have a drill squad started, not enough blokes. I did a fortnight with the squadron working on photographic aerial photographs developing and printing those. Then I’d do another week in the officers’ mess washing pots and pans, the first day I am there out in the kitchen here is a bloody big jar, out in the cool room, a cream can full of cream, cream, so I drink about four glasses, was I crook.

Pots and pans so the first day I am there, “Right you are on the toaster.” “Toaster? What bloody toaster?” They had this big toaster you see and the LAC [Leading Aircraftsman] was in charge there and I was the poor mug that has to wash the dishes and pick up the bits and pieces. “Put all the toast on there, we are now ahead of the mess, the officers’ mess, cook one side and put them on the side in a heap and when they come in we’ll cook the other side and whack them out. Don’t try and cook them when you serve them we’ll never get them out in time.” So we cooked it and

heated the toast up one side and then when the mess starts you do the other side and toss them out. I got through the first day, I had pots and pans to do, they left me with the pots and pans. Then I had to do the spuds [potatoes] for the afternoon, I had to fill two garbage cans of potatoes, I had to peel two garbage cans of potatoes. They went out into the cool room and put water on them and put them in the cool room to hold them, right? If you dropped anything, you dropped a plate, you had a big

book you had to sign in those days, they were all monogrammed plates, if you dropped it a roar would say, “Sign the book, every bloke must sign it.” “What bloody book, I’ve dropped a plate.” “Over there you mug, sign the book.” We had to sign the book and one bloke, one of the mess blokes, dropped a whole heap of plates one day a whole heap of them and they reckoned he signed the book forty times but that was the way it was. So after about three or four days I was right and I got into the swing of it.

I remember one morning for breakfast, the mess steward, all mess stewards in those days would line up before the mess started, in the officers’ mess, white jackets, navy blue trousers, brass buttons, inspected, fingernails, haircut, on an officer table was a steward, a steward was on the CO table came back and he said to the sergeant cook, he said, “The bloody old man said your eggs are no good, he sent them back to you.”

The cook said, “There is nothing wrong with my eggs.” He said, “He wants another, more eggs, do them again.” So they cooked the eggs up and put them on the plate with bacon on the plate and I remember this mess steward turns around and says, “Wait a minute mate, before you go, come back here.” so he got hold the egg slicer, picked up and spat under one egg and spat under the other egg and said, “Now give the bastard his eggs and see what he says.” Back he comes, “Compliments to the CO, best eggs he’s ever had.” These are things that did go

on in the mess that no one knew about. All right, I finished my time there, did our drill squad.

Theoretically you had to pay for it but they never asked you to pay for it, but the theory was before my time, in the permanent force, going back in years, they deducted it from your pay. They kept that thing going on, it was still going on. It only lasted a while, it

finished up as soon as I went because all the mob started to come in, more people, things changed. I was in the permanent force routine, does that make sense?

You just got lined up, the six of us, and just said you were going to serve the country and that was it, away you go. I think they said something like they hoped you were happy in the force and that sort of thing, no big deal.

Everyone when I

volunteered you signed on for the termination of the war and a period of twelve months thereafter so you found this, anyone would say, well take me, I served my last twelve months in Bougainville, the Pacific area, the war finished in August, I didn’t leave there until December. Because I served an extra three months I get another medal for extra time, does that make sense? Another conduct medal, that medal runs from '45 to '75,

it’s got New Guinea ribbon on it. I’ll show you it, it’s there. Your time factor would be under when you signed up, you never thought about it you were just there and you were just in the air force that ‘s all.

You got your blue uniform, didn’t have a tropical uniform, blue uniform, shirts, two blue shirts,

collars, ties, they had collars in those days, long sleeves, pair of boots and a pair of shoes, socks, sewing kit, towel, forage cap, hat fur felt, in those days a puggaree, you had an ordinary band on the cap and a puggaree, which is a

wider band that had a blue stripe on it, a badge, your brass buttons, brass buttons at that time, no underclothes or anything like that, that wasn’t in the deal, overcoat, at that time it was a short overcoat, what you call a bum freezer, only went down

to your backside, later on they were longer coats. That’s about your equipment.

You just had a, there was no cupboards in those days, you just hooked it up around where you were and neatly pile it, that’s what you did. You had your kitbag, you put your other stuff in your kitbag, when I was issued they were all white

kitbags, they weren’t blue at that time, they were white kitbags.

They had inspection parades regularly on the hut, you had to clean your hut, bed had to be made the correct way, blanket folded the correct way, boots set out in the correct place. That was a regular weekly check-up, generally done by your DI [Drill Instructor], your corporal drill instructor sometimes the

officer would obviously come around with the sergeant, but not regularly.

Yes, you learnt, they came out like sausage out of a machine, sections of the aircraft put their rolls of film going across country and you ran them threw and cut them out later and developed them and printed them all off. But the big thing I learnt was to wash your film properly and that’s why the film later on is good today

it’s still today as good and they can copy it, because I learnt then in the air force that they were very particular that you washed the film properly so you just churned them out as far as the aircraft used them up and they used Hansons in those days for aerial photographs it was all training work basically the photographers and those in the aircraft churn the stuff out and run out then the maps, you run off the maps, if you want to run off the maps then a series of photographs.

You learnt as you went. “Mate you

do this, you stand over here, you put a bucket of water in here, you shift a bucket of water in there, you drain that turn there, you pick up the paper over there.” So like everything else, like I said, you learnt as you went, no one hassled you that way, you’ve got a job to do and you built the next job. Same on the photography and same on the kitchen, I started doing toast and washing up and peeling

spuds and a little bit later I might be packing a few plates, you went through the system.

Nothing. Just to become a trainee wireless operator, aircraft hand, first class.

We go to training now, you want to go to training now?

We go. The drill squad starts; you have enough blokes to make up a drill squad.

They mixed different blokes, electricians, driver motor transport, wireless ops whatever it was they had to do in the drill course. We started on fours, the old four formation. We finished about half way through and had to go to threes because they changed the system to columns of three from columns of four and your style of change of turns and things like that changed from columns of four to columns of three so in

effect I did two drill courses then you went out to the rifle butts and they give you about six rounds on the rifle butts and that was 303 worth on the rifle. You did your bayonet drill you did your drill on the rifle it was a combined thing and then you did your pass out parade and you qualified and that was as far as the corporal to instructor was concerned. Now the drill instructor at that time mainly come out of the lower musterings in the air force, some of the mess hands and that sort of thing upgraded themselves to drill instructor by doing a special course and by doing

that they got rank. In other words, a bloke in the air force who was a corporal drill instructor would have taken him probably ten years to get to corporal but he got up in about 12-18 months to get to a corporal. Because when you do your drill course they give you odd jobs as well for arguments sake, they lined us up one day, “Righto, recreation day.” “Bloody terrific, recreation day.” “March over to the hangars.” “Oh, I get to ride in the hangies.” Go out to the hangars and line them up,

he says, “What do you blokes know about aircraft?” some smart bloke said, “It’s got two engines.” I said, “It’s got wings.” and he said, “Yes, wings, what bird’s got wings and doesn’t fly.” and I said, “An emu.” and he said, “Right, you’ve got an emu parade right down the end there and come back a mile and a half and pick up every bit of paper in the place.” So this is the sort of thing you copped, you never volunteered because you’d fall in somewhere, like a bloke one

day in the parade on our drill squad, “Right I want someone who can drive.” and at even 18 I learnt, “Don’t stick your neck out.” and some bloke says, “Okay.” “Right, drive that crate over to the bloody store.” so these are the things you learnt. Another day, we’ve got a trip on, get in the truck, so we spent two days unloading coal briquettes, brown coal, shovelling with what they call big coal forks, two foot wide and you are shovelling them off into a

truck. That was another job you copped, these are some of the things, they had to keep you occupied because there was no course for us. We ran out of things at different times, blokes seemed to disappear for the day, you’d carry a bit of paper around with you and look smart, you had a bit of paper in your hand you had a chit [receipt] going somewhere no one said anything to you. Another mob would sit and smoke all day. Do you know there was five months before I got on a course? They weren’t ready for it.

We went from there to Point Cook then. Point Cook, a signal school. No course so we did the same. Lucky we had a soccer team there I got into the soccer team playing soccer in a division in Melbourne. They had what’s called Burma Road. Burma Road was a long bitumen road that ran from the huts and the barracks right up to where the hangars were on the bay. It was a mile and a half or something and you’d have to march up, you’d do fatigue moving crates or something like that. I remember one particular

case a bloke got into one of these crates that came over bringing pusher seagull float planes from England and they had these big crates and they got in there and used to smoke in there. They got up in there and disappeared till lunch time you see. Some bloke saw the smoke and put the fire brigade on and hosed them all out. So these things used to happen to you. Anyhow, I got caught running across the parade ground, so what did I get, another 21 days before the CO.

I forget, I was just going somewhere in a hurry and I just didn’t think, so I ran, I was always running. So I said, “Righto.” and the WO [Warrant Officer] yells out, “That man.” and I thought, “What have I done?” so I stopped. He said, “Do you know what you’ve done?” “No.” “You were running.” “Yes.” “Do you know where?” “No.” “Across a parade ground. Do you know you don’t run on the parade ground, only those on the parade ground that are drilling on the parade ground.”

“WOD.” So I get another 21 days’ extra duties in the cadet officers’ mess. At that time the cadet officers was still going through. The first day I am there I’d done all my training in the officers’ mess at Laverton, I was well ahead. Get in and there is two bloody fruit cakes, two fruit cakes, what do they want two fruit cakes for, so I take one back to the hut to the boys, that was about ten

o’clock. They come lunch to sort out what’s for tea at night, the evening, sweets were missing, there was only one, someone’s run off with the evening meal. All hell broke loose you see. But they didn’t suspect me poor little mug, it’s the permanent force base in town that they thought pinched it and took it home. They went off like a rocket. So I had to open a few tins of peaches to make up for the dinner at night. So I did my time in there. Then we went from there to West Melbourne,

number 1 STT, a school of training, technical college. That was a technical college in West Melbourne, Lonsdale Street which was a hairdressers and cooking school and we were the first course to go in, start the training now we are getting into it, I missed the last permanent force class by two days, I missed that, that’s what happened to me. So we go in there, the cooking school is still going, the hairdressers is still going. I remember one, Gordon, he was a

mate of mine, he decided to get his haircut and shave for free. They chopped the guts out of him, they chopped him up his hair wasn’t worth two bob so no one else tried it again. They had to try this case and make out on you. So we used to go from there to West Melbourne Tech up little West Lonsdale Street past the wool stores up about a mile and a half or two miles I suppose to tech. So we started on Morse code you did all day Morse code, tapes going, headphones on and just copying and copying

Morse code. You did then, got to a morning Morse code and then afternoon radio lessons and electricity lessons. I got into problems again, I cleared off with two mates, we decided to take a weekend off. So we jumped the train at Melbourne on the platform, you had to pay full fare in those days there was no concessions, platform ticket

on the train, you’d dodge the conductor between there and Albury and then you are right. At Albury there is no check on NSW [New South Wales] side, we got to Goulburn. My two mates said, “Let’s go and have breakfast.” I said, “Don’t worry; my old man will pick me up.” I get in the dog box, you know dog box on the trains on in those days was a little cubicle at the end on the back and there was a toilet in it and a hand basin. I am having a shave and an army bloke walks in, “Don’t bloody move.”

“What’s on?” I can hear him talking to someone and he says, “You can come out now, Jack’s turned up, we’ve got your two mates and they missed you.” My two mates were at the Bendigo Jail and got discharged, they missed me, I got back, I am a good bloke, I only got 21 days, I copped 21 days back in the can [in barracks] again. So 21 days in barracks, I ‘d take a day off now and again and all the squadron march out and there was only one

squad and they were threes so if you were in the second last rank you could be either one, two, or three in that second last rank. Unwritten law, if you were confined to barracks you got what you want, does that make sense? The drop in the second last lot, so we go past the wool stores and I’d drop out there and a mate of mine, Nigger Burns, he’d throw a bloke out the front of the squad you see and the DI would run up to him and in I’d go, up to the stores and I had friends out at Melbourne and I’d stop there for the day and come back. I had to be

back in time for the squad coming back and the Nigger would throw a bloke out coming back and I’d just drop in the slot. So I’d get my days off just the same. That’s how it worked but in other words I didn’t have any fear because having done two lots of 21 days the third lot didn’t mean a bloody thing to me, it was just routine. So, I finished the radio course, I remember one night when I was doing CB, one of the blokes said to me, “We’ll take a night off.” and I said, “A bloody night off,

how do you get out of here?” and he said, “Down the corner there is six foot a galv [galvanised iron], three strands of barbed wire, but down the corner, there is no barbed wire down the corner.” So he said, “You’ve been working the cookhouse, get a couple of potato sacks.” I got a couple of potato sacks, threw them over the top a bit of wire that was there and said, “Go on up you go mate.” and he said, “Go on you go first.” so over the top I go get out the back lane and hear a bit of noise, “Let me go your bastards.” They caught him going over, so I am outside in the rain, what do I

do? So I walk around the front and give myself up. Round the front of the barracks. The guard had gone to quell the riot and no one knew I had disappeared. They called a muster parade to see if anyone else was missing. So it was the luck of the day, you take your chance and if you had to cop it, what’s coming up, another 21 days and that was life.

I did, I did have a charmed life.

The radio course was a big problem to a degree. Your book of instruction for the electricity and

radio course about two and a half inches thick, a special manual they put out for training, I was lucky, I had a bit of knowledge of batteries working with cars but a lot of the blokes ahead of me had worked with radio gear before, there was about thirty on the course I suppose, give or take, I have a picture there somewhere, about thirty of them, you started with valves and the different elements, your valves and so forth and your valve and elements,

resisters, condensers, aerial tubing, you went through all this equipment, gradually went through it. Round about seven months training we had, I’ve got my little book there, I will show you the marks I got on it. We finished up with two blokes off their rocker [losing mental stability] doing Morse, one bloke went around and started to butt everyone like a goat, we got rid of him, he disappeared. Another bloke they pulled me out of bed one night he was down in the playground, praying to the stars, and it took six of us

to pull him in, so two blokes were lost on the course, they disappeared. So when you work it out, you have half a day Morse code every day belting at you, five days, lucky you only had five days a week.

You had to tune or you don’t. It’s like playing the piano, do you understand that? I struggled. One day it sort of clicked,

it was just like music, suddenly I could read it. I never played the piano, but I know that’s what it was like. You try to work out your tunes and your keys and put it together the same with Morse. It’s a rhythm and what they did they sent the Morse at twenty five words a minute with a big breaks to bring it down to five. The speed of your symbols was twenty five. The break gave you a chance to sort of recognise it, and they’d gradually tighten that break up between the symbols they got you up to say fifteen to twenty words a

minute and brought you up that way.

They said twenty five, we never got to twenty five, not to my knowledge, later on we never, I’d say about twenty roughly. In our last parade in the school up there and the senior bloke from the permanent force bloke, chief instructor, a bloke called Reynold, he just got promoted to WO, the squad’s about to march back to the barracks and I got called out

to go and see Reynold. I thought, “What have I done now?” It’s the first thing you think of, “What have I done this time?” He lined me up and said, “Woodward, Laverton, Point Cook, West Melbourne, Denton got discharged, how the hell did you stop in the air force?” I said, “I don’t know, I’m here.” he said, “Well you are not going to fly in training, you are going to Point Cook then back to Point Cook to work between aircraft and ground. You are not going to

fly in training.” and I said, “Why?” and he said, “Because if an aircraft flew off you’d be missing, you wouldn’t be there.” So he said, “I am going to send you on a special course.” He sent me to AWA [Amalgamated Wireless Australasia] in Melbourne in Queen Street for two months on a special training course on communications with the civvies so I come out of there as a red hot bloody operator, does that make sense?

For operating? Just a Morse key.

That was a big problem, the theory was no components were given to you, you had to learn by diagram that’s the whole problem with respect to most of them. They couldn’t cope with that situation. I think on my records you’ll find I missed one exam in seven months on radio, none on electricity but my procedure wasn’t real good on Morse, on Morse the procedure you operate on between communications, you only did that in the last stage. You’d call a bloke, he’d get your

signal strength back and these sort of thing between two different cubicles. So I go to AWA, I was two months there and I came back and did my first month, this is about December 1940, my mates had all gone, I was on my own, sole bloke, I leave go to the cook house, get a cut lunch, a couple of slabs of cheese and a bit of bread, go to my course and come back again, right? This is in the afternoon. I had been there

about a month, it’s time I had a good feed, so I decided I’ll spend the extra half an hour and go to the People’s Palace and go to the cafeteria, so I go and have a feed, I come back about an hour later and the guard says, “Skinner wants you.” the WOD, “What have I done, has he been looking for me?” He said, “He’s been checking you every afternoon you’ve been late and now you are in the shit, you’ve been AWL again.” I said, “Right, where is he?” “Down at Sergeant Smith.” so I go to Sergeant Smith and the bail bloke says, “Skinner’s looking

for you.” and he just said to me, “Right, AWL, an hour and a half, see you tomorrow morning at eight o’clock.” So I get three days for that. Three days CB, and I said to the CO, “Why, I wanted to have a good feed, I went to the People’s Palace.” and he said, “We supply food for you fellows in the mess, good quality food.” That’s it.

Tucker was tucker was tucker.

We had nothing to compare it with in any case right, it was only routine.

Morse code procedure, lucky as I say, that’s why I went there, my Morse clicked, does that make sense, and I could cope.

Well air force finished at that stage, no more quality, put it that way, you stopped there stone cold dead. You could read Morse

good enough, I’d say fifteen words a minute, you could work an aircraft at fifteen words a minute, you don’t get any high speed up so you satisfied the requirements at that particular point now if you satisfied the requirements and you know nothing about your radio theory then they sent you to go to Point Cook, the procedure to communicate between stations and your Morse code at a reasonable speed so in effect I was sent to polish up, does that make sense? To match up with the civvy. These are

the blokes going out in the commercial, first class ticket operators, the tail end of their course, the Morse code end of their course. Some went to merchant navy, some went to air radio, and this was the background. I finished there and did my 21 days.

No, they were all civvies, they went up there to AWA as civvies.

Just a room, your Morse

keys, your cubicles, you worked between cubicles, patched in between you worked off another station and they gave you Morse tests on the keys for a minute, two minutes, gave you then a test to read, you did that every day, so much on your key, so much on your receiving, so much on procedure. I did two months, two courses, eleven and thirteen or something they were. I’ve never been able to find

out what the course belonged to, no bloke can tell me, a civvie bloke. Then I get posted to Townsville and I got a copy at that time, later on I got a copy of the report from the radio school, and I think it said, “Intelligent, doesn’t do more than he’s got to do.” that was the report. So I was still in that frame of mind, you

do your day, does that make sense and keep yourself out of trouble as best you can.

I had two blokes that went, they disappeared, otherwise I went on my mine.

I said, “Where the hell is Townsville?” and the bloke said, “I don’t know, I’ve never heard of it. Go down to the railway station, they’ll tell you.” So I packed my gear and got down to the railway station, a country railway

station, the bloke says, “I don’t know. You have to go to Sydney.” So I get down to Sydney and they didn’t know. They said, “I don’t know, you got to go to Brisbane, they’ll know.” They knew where the town was in Brisbane. It was interesting, I went up in the train, it was as civil train, no troop train and you had all the windows open

to get a bit of air in because it was hot and you’ve got soot all over you and you are black as the ace of spades. We get up as far as the Burdekin [River], flood, you couldn’t get across the Burdekin, we spent two days in Home Hill and got a bit of tucker, I’ve got photographs there going across the river. I get to Townsville, they get off at Townsville and the tender is there and I think I lost two days in Sydney, I don’t know, I was two days late. The bloke

said to me, “You should’ve been here two days ago or something.” and I said, “I am here.” We got out to the orderly room and I got to go and see a bloke called Sergeant Arthur Wells, he’s in charge. I was attached to 24 squadron for an organised a unit called Central Area Headquarters. Arthur Wells was a permanent force sergeant, he was a nice bloke, he was six foot two and a hand that would cover a Morse key, disappear a

Morse key. Him, me and the six station arrived to start this area headquarters, the Northern Area Headquarters at this stage. At that time they were constructing a room on the end of the hangar that was going to be our six station so we set that up and I helped to get the equipment in and that and get the keys in set up our AR7, I had never seen an AR7 before, that was the receiver we were using. A few blokes came up

Kingsley Radio.

Australian job, good receiver. Next thing I know, a few blokes arrive and they were my mates that went to Point Cook that were going to fly an aircraft, they sent them to Townsville, they never got in an aircraft, they got up there, they were there for a couple of months setting up the base and they take them to air radio they take us to HFDF [High Frequency Direction Finding] station, they never got anywhere in the finish I would’ve been there with them. So they set up the base

there and we worked Northern Area Headquarters we worked airborne and worked Darwin, we controlled Darwin from Townsville at that time. Darwin base that had just opened.

No nothing much. We were just general signals we’d work 24 hours, three shifts in 24 hours, and six blokes you had to right for 24 hours. You got that tired because you hadn’t been sleeping. I am talking about March, maybe April, hot, good huts,

new huts had been put up, they were special louvered huts off the ground, they were good huts, stretcher beds which were good, the steel type stretcher bed, not palliasse again, they were good beds, you worked your shift, I remember one afternoon my mate had come off the day shift, he had been working from night to morning, he had a spell in the day and I used to go on at midnight and we used to go into

town to the movies. So we get the tender into town, South Townsville, open air theatre, and it was good. Sitting out on a balmy night, open air theatre in deckchairs, and of course you’d been working shift work, two nights and day shift and you are half a sleep all the bloody time. That was my mate, he’d go to sleep straight away he hits the deck chair, he’s gone, I am sitting there, I am half a sleep and a girl come and sat next to me, “Excuse me can I sit

here.” and I said, “Yes.” She said to me, “It’s hot.” and I said, “It’s bloody hot.” and she said, “Can you help me?” And I think half way through the first movie she arrived and we were getting to the second movie, and I said, “What do you want?” and she said, “Roll my stockings down for me.” and I said, “Yes.” and she put her leg across my knee and I went to sleep and she woke me up and the movie was over. That’s the stage you are in, you are that bloody tired you stood in the corner and you’d drop off to sleep. I

walked out with her, “Take me home.” and I said, “I can’t, I have to go back to work I start at midnight.” She said, “You lousy bastard, you walked off and left me.” So there, that’s my first experience with bloody women.

So, we worked in the area there and went to St John’s zoo and looked around, we took a couple of shots of crocodiles there and one inside looking out and one outside looking in.

Got the biggest fright of my life to get over the fence and take the shot inside looking at the crocodile and he plodded in the corner for me, rolled my film on my own and I got over that fence like a rocket and he was gone. I would’ve been meat I suppose, he wasn’t worried. We went then and opened up a headquarters in Townsville, in Sturt Street, a big building there, about three stories and we were on the top storey.

I got sent in to do the test watches. In other words they did test watches first, to see how it worked put an AR7 up and I was on my own there and a bloke called Kurt and the WO turned up then there, Officer Wells was going to go south he had done his bit. They decided they’d run what they called remote control. In other words they would run a telephone line hook up from Sturt Street out to drome to the mini station, set the AR7 up and a bloke would

tune it there and feed the signal through and you’d put your headphones on. By doing that, he could control say three receivers out there, one bloke, instead of each operator having a receiver to muck about and just churn them in. Ring him up on what frequency and tune me in. That was the idea and I was there on my own so we hook up the first day and all hell broke loose. We flooded the town with Morse code, because it flooded the induction all through the exchange, the telephone

cable, no one could get a phone call out. What a mess. Morse code all over Townsville. They cut that out and we went back to the standard putting the AR7 out and fixing the transmitter in town. I was there and it started to build up more blokes, and got to a stage, I am getting about, I had a leave pass and I was still living out in the barracks at Townsville at

Garbutt, and I had a permanent leave pass I could come and go as I wanted to, it didn’t worry them, I had gone from a 24 squadron out in the area. Then they barracked us out on private barracks. I got a boarding house down on the strand at Townsville down on the beach. I was made; I was the first bloke out in the first boarding house. A woman there, she had two blokes working the court house and a family name Woodward, they weren’t related to me. A family name Woodward.

The father had left them he was working the court house and those two blokes were there and just me and an air force bloke and a wharfie. Not bad meals the old lady, her husband had died, she was a widow. Long story, to get to there, I was lucky, the air force put an ad in the paper to find accommodation and she rang and I was sent there. I was playing soccer at the time, 24 squadron had a

a game to play the wharfies [wharf workers] in South Townsville, they had changed that, it was near the pub, and they jumped into the pub and the grounds were just over the road and it was a beauty for the blokes. We had to play the wharfies. I got the job to mark the centre half and take him out. What had happened, the wharfies, what had happened one bloke who had a fur felt had would go around and belt

you and the referees weren’t going to say a word, the wharfies could knock you over and jump on. It didn’t matter anything. It was my job to take this centre half out. I did and by gee I was sore and sorry. When I finished and took my boots off and the other blokes raced over to the pub boots and all, took my boots off and a priest come up to me and said, “You’ve played a good game.” and I said, “I’ve been playing since I was 16.” and he said, “I used to play in the Granville district.” and I said, “I’ve been to

Granville.” and he said, “Would you like to have a cup of tea up at the seminary, with a youth group?” I didn’t drink and I thought I would like a cup of tea so I go over to the pub and the blokes, “Righto, my shout []I’ll pay’]. That’s the deal. I’ll have a lemonade.” and the bloke said, “No bloody lemonade, you have to have a sars [sarsaparilla], a double sars, we don’t have lemonade.” So I had my double sars and I said to the blokes, “I am going up to the church with a priest to have a cup of tea with the youth group, will you pick me up when you leave here?” and they said

“Righto.” I am going and one bloke said, “What are you going up there for?” and another bloke said, “There are sheilas [women] up there.” Another bloke said, “Sheilas? They all wear chastity belts no bloody good going up there.” I went up there and it was good, had a cup of tea and a biscuit and the blokes picked me up. The priest said to me, “Next weekend if you get time off we are going over to Palm Island, my group here go over to the mission over there for the day,

we go on the stores boat that goes over for the day and come back. I said, “I will take a couple of mates.” so I got a couple of mates and we went over the next weekend over to Palm Island, I was still living out at 24 squadron at the time. It was a good day. The aboriginal mission was a polished mission, clean and tidy they put on a display for us throwing spears, I’ve got photographs, they were throwing spears at each other and deflecting of one another, an amazing sight to see you know.

Anyhow, that was that trip and we come back and Mary one of the girls, the priest was trying to line me up with a girl Mary, I am not a Catholic I am not anyone, he’s trying to line Mary up. In due course they had another trip to Palm. Another mate of mine, Bluey, he’s a good Catholic Bluey, so I got him to go and I palmed him off to Mary so I got out of trouble.

When I was at Townsville I was getting my photographs, I got photographs with my camera, and I said to one of the blokes, “Let’s not do a shift in the morning at eight o’clock, 24 Squadron boys were taking off and doing the round and doing dive bomb rounds near the hangars, wait here I want to get my camera and get one of these blokes when he takes off.” I got my camera and took this shot and got this photograph of this hangar and the aircraft with a one wheeler and dropped back in the hut and

bang, a bloody mighty crash. What the poor bugger did, took off, did a bank around the left, did a dive bomb on approach and tore the wings off and went straight in. I got his photograph. What had happened, it’s an aircraft accident, it’s happened, and this game I was having of soccer the bloke said, “Woody, I’ve got something for you” and he gave me a couple of nuts, and I said, “What are they for?” and he said, “They are off that aircraft, we got souvenirs you can make a ring out of them.

I’ve got you a reamer and file.” he was the fitter he was. I made a ring out of it, my daughter’s got the ring. I made this ring out of this bloody aluminium nut. That’s how the war was, we all got souvenirs. We all made rings out of it, the poor bugger that died, he died, done his duty. That was part of your life.

We had Wirraways and Hudsons. They were the squadron that went to the

Rabaul and got chopped up in Rabaul. They were up against the Zeroes. I think they lost six aircraft in the first takeoff against the Japs. Got chopped to pieces. Delarue the skipper on the Hudson he got out of it and he sent a radio message by voice to Moresby, I don’t know the Latin, “We who are about to die, salute you.” That’s on record. A mate of mine took the signal in Moresby

WT [wireless transmission] when he came over and he got out of it. That’s history in those times we had nothing. You put those blokes up there in Wirraways and Hudsons against Zeroes you are wasting your time getting off the deck let alone anything else. Well, at that time we set up bases there, Vila, Noumea, Talaga and we had Rabaul. Rabaul went to Moresby and we had Noumea and Talaga, we worked from

Townsville and we go back a little, I will digress. Before that happened we were on duplex watching. In other words, duplex watching, Moresby was building up the war was starting to move, the Japs hadn’t come into the war but things were getting hot. We had a team of six blokes to work duplex. They worked a sender and receiver sitting together. Each on different frequencies. You

received and your mate sent. For eight hours, you didn’t get off for a leak [to urinate], just eight hours straight you did on that key. If you missed a group you hit your mate on the arm you went back two groups and you kept going again. That’s how you operated. We did that for weeks and weeks and weeks and months with six blokes and one night one bloke called Browney, and I am 19, the rest of them are about 25, 30, a lot of them are PNG [Papua New Guinea] blokes and that a couple of operators, and Browney just

cracked up [lost mental stability] one night and just sat there in the chair and cried and piddled. That’s all he could do, just cried, finished, just carried him off.

Yes, I am lucky and I could walk out of there and it was finished for me. If you’ve got eight hours of Morse code in your headphones you get jammed, you are getting atmospherics, your hand is tight sometimes, the sweat is pouring out of your ears, it was hot tropical area, there was no fans in there, and you are sitting on your backside for eight hours and the next night you work for eight hours, that was your

shift, two night shifts to a day shift, one’s a five o’clock to midnight, one’s a midnight till eight, eight to five, and a relief for an hour, the other shift has to come back for an hour to give them lunchtime. To get a break.

All in code. Generally your letter is in figure code, your general codes were all letter code, five group letter code. Generally groups of about forty groups or something like that.

Your priority would run ordinary through to an O - U which is a top priority one, about an emergency, OP was your next emergency, P was a priority, and then an ordinary. So the theory was to get rid of your top stuff, you couldn’t do that because you’d never get rid of your traffic because you had trays with a stack of messages, just a stack piled up, so you’d grab a couple of ordinaries there and try and sneak a P in and then get another couple of ordinaries to try and get them out. You got to remember

the only way to aircraft the only way to get air traffic message up was by Morse code, you had to go that way, it was the only way for communication.

It’s on a message pad in the cipher office. It goes through what is called the tables clerk and he sorts the traffic out

and he might put groups on it, the number of groups, these sort of things on it and then he dishes it out to the operator and puts it in priority orders. Then the traffic coming in the same thing, he throws it out in the tray and the priority order and then the clerk comes and fixes it up sorts them out back to cipher office they’ve got to be decoded. The channel works all the time. Then I got put on from that, I got put on a day shift permanently and I

had to work the odd watches, put on Talaga and Vila first and we had bases there and they did schedules, half hour schedules they had two operators working up until about six o’clock or eight o’clock at night we worked out the time factors, not much traffic it was only a bit of stuff going back and forward, not much. You might have a couple of messages in half an hour, sometimes you would get a bit of a peak, you might run five,

then I got put on this watch at Guam, Waikane, or Honolulu and Pearl Harbour and that was set up about a fortnight before the Japs hit them. In other words to set that watch up, it had to be set up about months before to set the frequency up for it, to organise the navel bases and us to get communications set up at least two months they had to have that set up before it ever happened. I am working the watch one morning

up comes Waikane, out of the blue, I could just hear him, I think one out of five, SOSs [distress signals], we had never heard SOSs, we knew what it was and I yelled out, “I am getting bloody SOSs.” and he looked at me and I pulled out my plug, my headphones went into a plug on the receiver when you pull it out it went to speaker. I put it on speaker and bunged [turned] up my volume, the whole signal station

stopped, SOS belting out, started banging out, so I got back and send him a breaker and hopped in and gave him the QSA [?] clear and he gave me the QSA 1 and that’s the signal I am getting what’s mine he come back QR [?] interference the Japs were jamming it, QR, he’s getting QSA1, he’s getting me at one, he’s putting the signal out, “Please don’t answer.” and he’d rattle out his signal, “I am getting bombed, 28 Japanese aircraft they’ve left me damaged.”

and his signal was very garbled because as you could imagine, he’s getting bombed, he’s all upset, never happened before, he’s missing letters, he’s running letters together, and the Japs are jamming you but I got the signals out, I got the two signals out and they sent out a Yank, the only Yank in Townsville, a Yank naval bloke, some liaison bloke and he sat next to me and when he got up there I said, “He’s off the air.” and he said, “Is he still sending?” and I said, “I’ve got a Japanese bloke I am working.” and he said, “How do you know?”

and I said, “I’ve been working with these blokes for two weeks, naval operator they all send exactly the same, I know this bloke is not a naval officer, not a operator, and secondly the jamming is gone, the interference is gone, he’s got a better signal, he’s up to fours now , I was getting this bloke at ones.” and he said, “How do you know that?” and I said, “I am a wireless operator, I know how it works.”

He sat down with me and started to give me a little bit of questions on a paper, “How many fellows are with you?” and I said, “You are wasting your bloody time, we don’t get out of this.” and he looked and said, “I am an officer.” and that I said, “That doesn’t matter, I am the operator.” So I said, “I will ask your silly questions, where are you?

How many men are with you? How long have you been there?” and he come back and asked me the same questions as that bloke, “How many men are with you? Where are you? What do you do?” Finish up I just shook my head and went off the air. How silly it was he didn’t understand that I knew what the operators were having worked them and I knew they weren’t there anymore, I knew the transmission had changed, the interference had gone, he just wouldn’t listen. So we just packed up and that was the end of it.

Nothing, we were just carrying on, we just had this extra watch to do.

I mean more traffic was going up, we didn’t know why, but they were building up Port Moresby started, we didn’t know why, there is no reason to us, Port Moresby is shifting further north, our base was in Townsville. Townsville was the furthest north base at the time.

Then we went to Lage [?] and we thought we got another couple of stations out there, to us it didn’t make much difference we just did our day’s shift.

No not a clue. Not a word of anything, just work your shift and you had a few mates over in Noumea and Talagi, you weren’t allowed to use plain language, but you’d nick a few words here now and again and get a kick up the tail but then the Japs moved

down and when they hit Honolulu things started to happen. Suddenly you became aware the traffic was changing and priority was changing and you are working Port Moresby you picked up bits of information and they were coming down to the islands you were working odd stations somewhere and he’d be gone, he’d be there and he’d be gone. I got two listening watches at that time; they put me on special listing,

in other words what you’d do in a listening watch, you got your AR7 receiver you have tuned in the frequency you had to have, you got a call sign of the bloke going to contact you, he’s going to send you a message in cipher, you don’t answer him except to give him the acknowledgement that you’ve got it, don’t answer him when he calls you, when he calls you, signal, he calls you, whatever your call sign,

he calls you and you just come back and give him an R and go off straight away and he sends his signal to your whack [?] to make communication. You spend the whole eight hour shift, a day shift, and you’ve got to spend eight hours on that receiver and you spin your dial ten KCs [kilocycles] either way to drift so if he drifts off you pick him up. You have to spend your eight hours just swinging that bloody dial just ten KCs each

side, I picked that bloke up, I was lucky, I got him and all his traffic, my Morse was good enough to get it without missing because there was no repeats, and he’s gone. I did two watches like that and he’s gone. Possibly naval ships I don’t know but they were not our stations, the call station was different, not our stations.

They just go to cipher the channel where directed to the prefix on it.

When they break the code it will tell you what group it is to break it on the book and then you pick up your signal to who it is directed to.

We only used plain language, not ciphers, only plain language, we used to talk to blokes, “How are you going Charlie, it’s hot here, it’s hot there.” there was a bit of chit chat back and forward you know.

Nothing, that was it, no panic, the bloke said, “Look what’s happened.” you know, you go on your next watch, all you do is your next watch, the next eight hours. The watch is done and finished with. The next situation was I got into trouble. A bloke called Harris turned up

from air board, sergeant, in the outside of the sig [signal] room we had a big staircase that went down three storeys on the outside of the building and that was your exit. Inside that little room had hat pegs on it, you put your hats on it and I was knocking off my shift at five o’clock and my hat’s on the ground all trampled. “Who did that?” and they said, “Sergeant from today, Harris.” I said

“Mate, did you take my hat off the peg?” and he said, “Don’t call me mate, I am a sergeant.” and I said, “Did you take my bloody hat off the peg?” and he said, “Yeah on the floor, and trampled on.” and he said, “I put my hat on the peg. I’m a senior NCO [Non Commissioned Officer].” And I said, “Go and get the bloody thing and put it back.” He said, “Don’t talk to me or I’ll bloody thump you.” So I went to thump him and I remember the bloke saying, “Restrain that man.” and three bloody blokes grabbed me. “Righto, up before

Wing Commander Bulgaring [?].” he was the CO at the time. I got about six charges, attempted assault, abusive language, and destroying air force property, namely one fur felt hat off the top of the building. Kurt and the WO marches me in same old story, hats off, read the charges, what have you got to say, I said, “Well the situation is he put my hat on the floor, it’s not done around

here, he wouldn’t put it back and that’s all there is to it. He destroyed my air force property so I destroyed his.” Bulgaring said, “How long has he been here?” and Kurt said, “He’s our first operator.” and he said, “What’s his trade proficiency?” and Kurt said, “He’s our number one operator.” “Why is he still in AC1?” “We can’t take him off a watch.” “I see,

charges dismissed immediate promotion to leading aircraftsman.” so whatever happened to Harris that come from air board I never learnt, does that make sense. So instead of getting roasted again, charges dismissed. The next thing I came in one morning, I come on shift and Kurt called me in, “Righto Woodward, pack your gear, tomorrow morning six thirty

you are flying back to Karumba.” I said, “Where’s Karumba?” He said, “I don’t know, you are going to Karumba.” and I said, “What’s at Karumba?” “A radio station.” “RAAF?” “No, civil.” So I go down and pack my gear. The woman at the boarding house she knew where Karumba was. It’s up in the gulf. I said, “What’s up there?” and she said, “Nothing, there used to be a meat factory there years ago but it collapsed, there is nothing else up there.” So, it’s up near Normanton, “How far?” she said

“I don’t know probably half a day’s travel to Normanton.” I go down, tender picked me up and took me down on a crash boat out to flying boat, Qantas [Airline] flying boat; I was flying posh, velvet seats, attendant with brass buttons on, all the posh blokes sitting up there because flying boat, civil travel was a big deal. I was the only service

bloke, there might have been some army general up in the corner. He said, “Do you want a drink?” and I said, “I’ll have a sars.” and he looked at me as if to say who are you? We fly up about nearly to Cairns and cut across country from there and we got across and started to get water line everywhere, we had a bit of rain down in Townsville before. This was January 1942 and the wet season was

on and we come in over Normanton and it’s also surrounded by flood waters, just a little town about a store and a couple of houses and we got over the Norman river that runs out, Karumba’s there, and there are two little clusters of buildings and like a derelict building, that was the meat works from years before. A little hut up near the entrance

and the flying boat came around and dropped us in and picked me up and the crash boat took me ashore and they didn’t need to refuel it was a short run and we went ashore. Two blokes met me, the two wireless operators and the administrator met me and said, “Go and get your gear and come over to six station over there.” It had the barracks, the usual mess,

cook, rooms, independent rooms and also independent rooms for remaining overnighters, in other words if a Qantas came through and had to stop overnight, refuel, they had special accommodation for the passengers coming through. I went over to six station checked in and he said, “Right.” Gerry Pearson was his name, “What’s your name?” and I said, “Jack.” and he said, “Here’s your gear, standard equipment.” and I looked and thought, “Standard

equipment I’ve never seen this before.” I am used to AR7, one receiver and a Morse key. I got a bank of four receivers in a bank all going away on different frequencies, a blear tosium FDF [?], I knew what it was from my training, I had what was called a straus [?] switching little miniature exchange on the wall and you had a telephone dial and you could dial up whatever you wanted. So if you wanted

CW communications for Morse you’d dial up the figure for CW, clock, and you’d dial up your frequency, clock on it came, your frequency, if you wanted to go to voice, you’d dial to that, dial up whatever you wanted. So they said, “Have you got the gist?” and I said, “Yes.” They said, “We have an HDF [High Frequency Direction Finding] station.” I knew there was such a thing from Townsville. “We are going for a cup of tea; we will leave it for a minute,

the log’s there, there is your call sign, just answer as they come up.” and lucky I had used commercial procedures when I was working in the navy station. I was a hit; I had used commercial procedure when I was working in the navy station. Commercial procedure, not air force procedure. They are gone ten or fifteen minutes up come bloody Darwin called me, I couldn’t find him, there are four receivers going like hell, where was he in the middle of them, I couldn’t find him, all the frequencies are on. So he went

off and Charleville calls me and I cut all my speakers off, bang, bang, bang, I found where he was, looked at the frequency on it and dialled up my frequency and it worked for me you see. Then I’d go back and put them all on and I saw Darwin working again and I cut them all off and found Darwin. Got my frequency, worked Darwin. About half an hour they come back, these two blokes, “How did you go?” I said, “Good.” They said, “Can we have a look at your log? You worked Darwin? You worked Charleville.”

It was a setup. That’s what it was all about I will tell you know. He said, “Righto, you will start watch tomorrow, not tomorrow morning, the morning after, you have to go this afternoon to the met [meteorological] officer.” So I go around and meet this met officer and Eric said, “You will be doing the weather shift in the morning.” and I said, “What’s the weather shift?” He said, “You have to start doing your weathers at three o’clock in the morning, you have to make them up. You get your gear on at three o’clock you work VI the coastal radio at

Darwin and then VI coastal radio Thursday, VI Townsville, VI Brisbane, and send all your weathers.” So I go around to the met bloke and he said, “See how your barometers work, how your thermometers work, where your wind direction is, your velocity, your clouds.” I said, “How do you work cloud formation out at night mate?” and he said, “There are no stars full of clouds.”

He said, “Here’s your weather code.” You put in a code for weather, your temperature might be ZY and put it out and code it out, then you go back to your signal station and you put it into a cipher then, a secret code, he said, “I have to be over there, get your gear on before quarter three and you are ready to go, you must have your weathers done

before that time.” I had no one to wake me up so I sat up all night, no alarm clock, no one to tell me, pitch black, no lights, what am I going to do, I have to be there, there is no starlight, I have to get back to the bush, there is no starlight for me to work out where the fence was and the radio station was, a silhouetted building across the sky only about fifty yards away to get in there to put a light on.

So I go and get the weather on, by gee it was a good service, spot on, three o’clock up comes VID [Darwin], backed his weather out, I’m next, backed mine out, VI whacked his out, Townsville, Brisbane, finished, no questions no queries, each done their weather for three o’clock in the morning, all the bases did three hour weather observation in those days. So if you are flying an aircraft and you want to go from point A to point B you had a three hour

OB to the next station, not like today, so you had an actual weather of where you are going to and a three hour time factor. Then I got into general operation, next day they took me

All off, finished, back to bed. Then you come back for the afternoon shift then to do an afternoon watch.

They come on at six after me. The other two blokes worked the six to eight o’clock at night.

I got the three o’clock run. I got paid for it, it was an extra pay, I got a cheque come out of the blue from the weather mob, from the met mob I got paid for doing the observations. These things happened so I go back to base after that. I had had lunch over there and looked around get your

weather in the morning. The afternoon I looked around the base and went and saw the cook and introduced myself to the cook. Always get to see the kitchen blokes. Two blokes were refilling crew and two blokes were crash boat crew. All civil. Qantas right, they were there refilling the aircraft, they worked for general maintenance, that’s all they bloody did when an aircraft came through. The met bloke, the administrator for the base,

the wireless operator, me, the cook and the post master, because they took telegrams from the cattle stations on that and he had to be there to take them from PNG [Papua New Guinea] or Normanton and he’d give them to us and we’d send them as radio grams on the radio to various locations. He had a little tiny store of toothpaste and chewing gum sort of business and in due course I said, “What do you do here mate?”

and he said, “I keep out of the way.” He said, “Where do you stand?” and I said, “In the middle.” He said, “Yes stay there.”

They were good blokes, just ordinary blokes, they’d just disappear for the day and come back for their meals, if a flying boat come in they were there on deck and they went and did a check of the river for the flight path first and cleared any logs for stuff out and make sure everything was clear for them to come in.

Yes.

No one to tell me to put me on a charge. In come an old bloke looking about 45, sunburnt looking bloke, drag old pair of shorts, battered hat, I said, “Who’s he?” and they said, “He’s Dick, the general hand.” so I went over to this bloke and introduced myself and he said, “You are the new bloke, can I have a talk to you?” and I said, “Yes.” and we sat down and he said, “There are a couple of

things mate, don’t get caught up here with the mob at night time listening to the radio.” and I said, “Why?” and he said, “Tokyo Rose [propaganda broadcast]. They spend all night listening to Tokyo Rose. They are all bloody brainwashed round here.” You couldn’t get anything else on the radio, you couldn’t put good music on, you couldn’t get any other station. He said, “Be careful round the place, I haven’t met a service bloke before.”

And he asked me a bit about the air force and what I’d done and this sort of background. He said, “We’ll go duck shooting one day, I will get you one day and we’ll go duck shooting.” So that night, next night, I did the first weather watch, next night I sat down at the mess and saw these blokes across at the radio so I went over and sat down with them. Tokyo Rose you see and she started, we are going to come out to Australia and she kept naming the places, Winton, Longreach,

Cloncurry, she named all these places and you should recognise the imperial army and assist them and this sort of stuff would come over, and these blokes were sitting there glued to it and she played some good Yankee music, some dance sort of stuff. Then I find when I went to bed on my bed is a torch. Eric had given me a torch, I had passed the test in other words, I had a torch.

So I did my weathers and that sort of thing.

Good, you had beds and blankets and sheets and they did the washing, I don’t know who did it, I didn’t query about that. Dick the bushman he lived up in the camp up near the river mouth with his wife and daughter, she was about 14, and the other hut I learnt was the hut for the pilot from the Port of Karumba and he’s supposed to have

been the pilot for this store ship that come down, I think it was the Wandana or Lucia that used to come every three months to bring the stores and we run out of tucker because the navy took both vessels and the flying boat stopped coming through and we run out of food, Nothing was coming in. So I went duck shooting with him. He had an old jalopy, and old model Ford but cut down into a ute [utility truck]. You should’ve seen it, but it ran. He couldn’t read and couldn’t write but he was the most

intelligent bloke I struck. But he could take a motor to pieces, didn’t matter what you gave Dick to do he could do it. That was the sort of bloke he was, he lived on cattle stations all his life. So we go shooting, I remember he said, “Pick up my daughter.” so we take this daughter. She was 14. He said, “I can use a gun what have you got?” “I’ve got a 14 at home, a 22.” “So give me the 22.” So we go out to this big lagoon

a couple of mile out. Black, as black as the dark you couldn’t see the water, the duck. Old Dick blazes away, whoop on the deck, two barrels, “Now get them Jack go in and get them.” so I go in up to my bloody waist in water, we got nearly 40 duck out of two barrels and his daughter she had a go and she could hit a duck at

twenty yards through the head with a 22. It was amazing, I didn’t have a shot, I put my rifle aside and said nothing. I got the duck, I was happy to pick up the duck; I wasn’t going to have any shooting where I was concerned. So life went on.

Good tucker, it was frozen stuff but they had freezers and stuff like that.

The cook was a general hand, we had a general cook there and Dick used to do a slaughter now and again they’d get a beast now and again, and I went up with him

one day and he had slaughtered a beast and he’d break it down so we had a bit of fresh meat. It was a stray, you’d pick up a stray so you’d have a bit of meat now and again if he picked up a stray from the cattle station. He’d bring it in; tow it in behind his bloody truck. Life was good. Tucker was good it was a reasonable meal all the time he wasn’t a bad cook. The next move we had an overnight bloke came in and it was the last Qantas flight that came through

to remain overnight. Civvies on, a few Yanks aboard, got out of Java, because in the meantime I was working watch one day and they hit Darwin, I was on watch when they hit Darwin and the Darwin bloke went off the air and said, “Enemy aircraft.” went off the air. And he got back on in about half an hour. I was there working when he went off the air.

No, just saw it as, the thing about gelignite, you sort of think something was going to happen. I was in that frame of mind that the Japs were going to come in the entrance any bloody

day and it was going to happen and where was I going to run. I had a three minute fuse on those and I worked it out that I could run a hundred in about 11.5 seconds, give me three minutes I will be well out of the way. I just worked it out because this HFDF station was out in the middle of the salt sands about half a mile away and HFDF station, I will digress while I think about it, a basic room,

with a receiver in it and the receiver was monitored through the cathode ray tube on your TV and end on threw the signal to the cathode on the top and the lips now the North, South, East, West was around it, so whenever you got that signal that came in, whenever you got a radio signal that signal would come in, bleep, bleep, so you change your frequency and you pick him up at some other station and you get bleep, bleep, and you could DF where they were, where

that signal was coming through in a straight line. You fix it then say from Townsville you got another fix on another straight line you could tell where the bloke was, does that make sense? So you cut out your north aerial and the signal would either swing and go East/West so you’ve got your direction. So I learnt how to handle a HFDF station now that was never used when I was there you didn’t have any aircraft call for variant, it came out in

Cloncurry but it was never on the station there but that’s the guts of what happened. We went down to this aircraft came in, I will get back to it, with Yanks aboard, it had a few civvies they could’ve come from Java I don’t know where they come from, there was another base, another refuelling base and a mate of mine, Snowy, was there, they sent four of us out, Snowy went there, one bloke went to Cook Town, one went to Cloncurry. Four of those commercial operated on duplex they

changed to high speed and got rid of the spots that’s how we went. He came in, landed, and those Yanks raced up the gangway and I remember these blokes, “Bloody swim.” and they stripped off and dived in the river and old Dick yelled out, “Crocs, bloody crocs get out of there.” and they looked at him, “What do you mean boy?” and as they were talking to him

down came a bloody croc on the side about twenty foot long and his snout out and his tail went, you should’ve seen them get out, like rockets, they wouldn’t even go within a hundred yards of the riverbank anymore. That was the first thing Dick warned me, “Never walk near the riverbank anytime.” and although Karumba is the biggest and best well known barramundi fishing place in the area I have never ever put a fishing line in, I just kept away from it. We

had to feed these, lucky we had these duck, we got them the day before, we knew the kite was coming and there was enough to feed us and feed them on black duck. Do you know years after in about 1950 or thereabouts I was working in the Registrar General’s I was in charge of trade names, a bloke come out to me and said, “I know you.” and I said, “I don’t know you mate.” and he said, “The last time I saw you was chasing duck as fast as you can go at Karumba.” and I said, “Yes, I was

keeping it for the flying boat to come through.” It’s amazing you meet a bloke like that and you remember after all those years.

That’s right, they had the three lots of jelly [gelignite] and they got instructions two months before from somewhere down south, civil aviation, three minute fuse on them, my job was to run out, I never got there mate, they can have the bloody DF station for mine because I never got there out in the middle.

The crux of that happened, we had a problem arose one afternoon, not a problem, I wasn’t on shift, I was going out to the met station or something to check some equipment and it was getting near dark, about five o’clock and in come a float plane. Across the top, I couldn’t pick up the insignia; he just dropped straight across the air radio

building and hit the Norman river and over the mangroves and over the other side you see. Dornier 24[?], that’s what the Japs were using, Dornier 24, we were using Dornier 24’s Eric the chief operator sent a signal, “CQ all stations, enemy aircraft landed, enemy aircraft landed shut down.” and what he did he didn’t blow the place up in such a panic he burnt all the codes and ciphers. I was there, he took them out of the bin,

threw them in a bin, poured petrol on them and threw the match and yelled out to the administrator, the met officer and Stan was there and they went. I was standing on my own, they had all bloody gone and they went straight across to the barracks so I walked across and I look up at the tracks then, all the mob were running, the refuelling crew, the post bloke,

the crash boat crew, the other bloke, all that was left was Dick, me, and the cook who had dengue fever sitting on the steps, he couldn’t run and they just cleared off. Dick said to me, “What do we do?” so I said, “What about Dick?” and he said, “We’ve got an armoury with 303’s [rifles] there the administrator’s got we could knock them off.” So we go in but we couldn’t break open the armoury. He said to me, “Do you drive a

crash boat, we are going to sink the bastard?, which we did. They left the keys in them, we got the crash boat, there was this aircraft, and we were half way across the river and there was this white bloke on the main plane and we thought, “What’s he doing there?” he got up to the Dutch aircraft, thought he had a Javanese crew on it so we took him ashore, put my gear on, no one would talk to me, I called CQ [Command Headquarters], I called all the stations, I tried to find out what had happened to this bloke. What had happened was he missed

Darwin come from Java, missed Darwin, he just got to us and ran out of fuel. He said he ran out half way across the river, he just got in, he had no time to make an approach, he landed across river, he didn’t even land up and down river. I had no message and he said, “My mate Clem at Cloncurry.” so I tried to call Clem, air radio station, “Call for Clem, want to talk to Clem, Woody here, want to talk to Clem.”

After nearly an hour up come Clem on the key. He’s the bloke I worked with on duplex, we knew each other sending backwards for months so I told him what had happened on the key and I said, “I can’t check anymore but the Dornier 24 is here so you will let someone else in Brisbane know for me, no one is going to talk to me.”

I found out after what they did, for some reason, they only had him doing day shift and I don’t know why, because it got taken over from him in the south, and they got him out of bed in the southern hotel and dragged him out and put him on the set to listen to me because I kept calling for him and that’s how I got communication back.

He knew by sending because as I say we worked for months

together and it was the same style of sending.

I understood that some of the forts from Cloncurry went to Charleville, no one come to have a look, don’t worry about looking, something’s happened so the theory being that you got a plane to rush up there, drop bombs and shoot machine guns, nothing happened, that was it, we were left there. Luckily,

Eric didn’t blow the bloody place up.

That was my trouble I couldn’t identify myself, that was one the problems. So Dick is here and he said we better go and find them, the mob that had cleared off. So we hopped into his old model broken down ute and we found them.

About half a day’s drive nearly to Norman in those times, all we could see, it was just getting near dark and silhouetted on the skyline along the skyline was like a mob of kangaroos, a mob, just sort of dog trotting, we caught up with them and the last two blokes of the refuelling crew were still carrying billiard cues, they had been playing billiards, and they were still carrying the

cues. That’s what happened. Tokyo Rose was propaganda and had put them to such a stage they believed anything and they ran. So then shortly after that Darwin was getting hammered they decided to close the base at Karumba because no more flying boats were going through we took over the rest of the empires off Qantas and that was the run

and that run was originally put in basically for the mail to England by flying boat and these HFDF stations I talk about were put in at Townsville, Cloncurry, Karumba, Camooweal and Darwin and I think some down the west coast but that was the main base of chain to give them bearings right across Australia they could fly safely and they were put in in 1938 by civil aviation

they were that far ahead of their time and people don’t understand that defensive Australia we could DF a Japanese squadron taking off from a base up north because every aircraft when he came up would check his radio, one, two, three, four, five, six, and his signals was LAR [?] query, the only Japanese code I ever knew, one symbol, LAR, one batch, the letters all together, query the signal stretch,

LAR one to five was his strength back and then the team leader, the skipper of the squadron, he worked the base every half hour and the raids on Rabaul on Townsville, have you heard of the raids on Townsville, three raids from memory, I might be wrong, three raids, my mate Laurie goes back to the base that goes from Point Cook to take those raids and he’s in charge of HFDF in Townsville at the time Laurie was and he was left to flying back leaving

Rabaul, half an hour all the way to Townsville and the Yanks didn’t take any notice of it they didn’t even get any aircraft for the first bloke who came in. The second bloke they got Air Cobras up, they didn’t get near him the third bloke they reckoned they damaged, Laurie had working him all the way back to Rabaul to his home base, that’s how good HFDF was, now people don’t understand that. No one ever talks about that and they use that then for the Kana code interceptions to intercept the signals from Japanese

stations and break them down after, the same sequence of stations was used on that in between time when they weren’t working aircraft.

Once we got cleared from them everyone is listening to you, every station is listening to you on their frequency don’t worry about that, they all knew what was going on.

They all start to chirp like birds after that.

We didn’t tell them anymore than it was a Dutch aircraft that’s they way we did it identified the Dutch aircraft, that’s it, gave them the Dutch aircraft, that time the number no one worried about, the fact he’d supposed to have ETA [Estimated Time of Arrival] at Darwin and we found that after he sent a cablegram from Java to Darwin and of course he didn’t send a signal anywhere and I found out after he had communicated and no

one thought to look for him. To get into the system.

They closed the base down, I go back in the flying boat Empire coming through an air force RAAF one we took over, stiff cold, the old plush seats were gone, the stewards were gone, sitting in a hull with a heap of Yanks spewing their guts out in the middle, all airsick because the flying boat would drop four or five

hundred feet out of the sky and just start again, that’s how they fly. By the time I got to town I was nearly bloody airsick myself. We got out at Townsville and I took the day off, I went out till the next day, I should’ve been there straight away, and told, “You weren’t here, pack your gear and go to Cloncurry.” Next day I am on the train to Cloncurry, three days out on the train in those days out to Cloncurry. The train system, the crew on the train would help out every little

settler’s cottage because they are out working the line the settlers, so once they had a cow to be milked they got out and milked the cow, feed the WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s, give them water, they stopped at every little settler’s place along the track out to the back western part of Queensland.

After the war?

That’s a good question because when the flying boat come in over Townsville and around what we call

round about in between Hinchinbrook area it came round to make it’s landing between Magnetic [Island] and the mainland where the track was, bloody Townsville aircraft, it was full, I couldn’t see the aerodrome for the aircraft and when I left it was just a grass strip and Wirraway and Hudsons taking off. When I come back I couldn’t believe my eyes, I looked down, aircraft, hundreds of them, they just poured in that three months, they hit the place

because they intercepted a lot of shipping going out to the Philippines because they were sent straight out here.

There was shipping all through that area. Going back before that, to take off in the flying boat in Qantas when I took off you just sort of way and went off, originally when I was first I had to take the radio gear down to one of the RAAF boats going up prior to Moresby it took him nearly right the full length of Magnetic to get off the deck, the load he had on,

and he used to bounce it off and how the hell those blokes used to get that aircraft off I’ll never know they had to sort of bounce them off to get them up, fully loaded the gun was, all parts of what happened. Now, Cloncurry, I got off at Cloncurry about one o’clock in the morning or two o’clock in the morning, black as the ace of spades you see, so I said to the bloke on the engine,

“Where can I get a sleep?” he said, “Mate, the pub is over there.” and he pointed over to the back of nothing, you could see nothing, “Across the road, the road is in front here, go across the road just bang on the door.” I had a pushbike at Townsville, I pushed the pushbike up. I get across the road and sort of peered my way with the stars in the building and I got myself across the road, I nearly fell arse

over a few times, I had a few falls, left my pushbike to pick it up later. When I got over there I could just see a glimmer of light in the top window section over the main door so I hammered on the bloody door and a voice yelled out, “What do you want?” and I said, “I want to sleep.” “Who are you?” “Australian Air Force.” “Open the door, come in it’s unlocked.” I didn’t see the woman, she yelled out, “Upstairs.” so I went upstairs, black as the ace of

spades. It had a little kero [kerosene] lantern in the corner somewhere giving me the light up the stairs and I fell over a bloody bloke’s body up there in the passageway, it was all black, a bloody Yankee he was, I got out on the verandah over bodies and the whole verandah, I could tell, I could feel them in my mind so I just laid down in the back of the hallway for the night and I woke up and there is about sixty

Yanks all packed in on this verandah. They all got out of Java and they had nowhere to go so they just put them out on the verandah to sleep. So I went back down the stairs got my kitbag and found the woman she was out in the kitchen. She said, “You are the bloke that came in last night?” and I said, “Yes, where’s the Sovereign [Hotel]?” “Down two streets and round the back. Go and see Ma Burns. She’ll fix you up.”

One of the things I do remember my father said was the fact that when they were in the trenches in France a lot of men they lost, particular the stretcher bearing, they couldn’t get at them, they were

stuck in mud holes, in trench holes, up over knees, up waist deep in mud and they just had to leave them behind and hope they got killed in the enemy action there was nothing they could do about it, just leave them there. Another matter I will mention was when the West Melbourne Tech every Friday night in about the middle of 1940 we used to do a march right through Melbourne, down Swanston Street, down Flinders Street,

back up round the barracks at Lonsdale Street and one night we were coming through a march on Friday night and was handing out white feathers to fellows they marched passed. Next Friday night my old mate, Nigger Burns, grabbed her from the side of the side walk, shoved them in the middle of the ranks, and went out the other side and didn’t see her again.

We were at Cloncurry

coming out of the pub. Come out of the pub to the Sovereign Hotel. So I go out to the Sovereign Hotel in the morning, found Ma Burns in the kitchen told her who I was. She said, “Who are you?” and I said, “RAAF.” and she said, “We’ve got a RAAF fellow here, Clem, he’s upstairs.” My mate was in the same hotel. So she said, “Do you want something to eat?” so she gave me the standard steak and eggs. Found Clem, he didn’t even know I was

coming because I wasn’t posted anywhere because I went to air radio. Well, I was with Clem for a while for about a week and then he got posted south and he organised a ride in a Yankee DC5, that’s transport aircraft, we got to Cloncurry it took three or four days to go from Brisbane we had crook motors, we got to Charleville, we did the test flight and maintenance on it, we got it out from

Charleville to Cloncurry and that was it because the crew wouldn’t go any further; the Yankee crew decided they wouldn’t bloody fly it. So they had a skipper, the second dickie, and no one else. So Clem got the job of wireless operator, or radio operator they called him, to go in the aircraft and take it back to Brisbane. I am working on the day he goes off, he got half way to Charleville and said, “I’ve got a problem, they are going to leave me.” and I said, “What do you mean leave you?” and he said, “Well

we are down on one motor and probably half a motor and we are not going to get to Charleville and the skipper and Dick they are going to fly out in a parachute and leave me and I’ve got no bloody wings.” I said, “Why, the radio man kept his parachute, it’s his property I’ve got nothing.” Clem rang me a couple of times on the air and we got a motor back, we got two motors back, and finally said to me, “I can see Charleville, I am home.” That’s the last I heard from Clem, I picked him up later from Coffs Harbour.

Yes, he got the aircraft into Charleville; he didn’t go any further in it. He got off there.

About twelve months I suppose, twelve months Townsville, twelve months Melbourne, twelve months twelve months Cloncurry, twelve months Bougainville, that’s five years out of six. Twelve months practice.

I will give you some incidents, little incidents. Working air radio, on shift I was, there was Tony, Frank, merchant navy bloke, Doddemaide, Kev, and Mark Savage was the administrator, he was the number one operator and he administrated the place and I became the last operator. That meant because I came on shift for them with them I could relieve them to do maintenance

and give them half a day off here and there. I worked a standard air radio shift for the rest of the blokes. I was working a shift one day, day time shift, between eight and five, and round about four o’clock in the afternoon up come a Dutch aircraft on the air and he was down, he was down somewhere between Darwin and Cloncurry, that’s all he knew, he was down. We couldn’t get a DF on him for some reason the signal was no good, we’d get him on air but we couldn’t get him

on DF for some reason. We cross sectioned with Townsville but couldn’t get him. We found out later it was because of the mineral in the area, all the copper areas in Cloncurry and the minerals. So he came up finally after about an hour looking around. I said, “Try and find some landmark we can find you by.” and he came back said, “I’ve found a pump water.” I said, “What’s a pump water?” and I suddenly realised because I had been out roo

shooting with Dick Wellington at Cloncurry, the bores were all numbered, you had a copper gauge of bore out about forty miles out of Cloncurry where you got copper out from a pit. So I get him to go back and have a look at the bore number, so he got the bore number, radioed it in and we found him. So these things happened, little bits. Another set of aircraft, Blue Truscott’s, P40’s were

working between I think Cohen, but on the east coast, round to Darwin to back up against the Japanese, this would be number 42 I think give or take and the aircraft came back from Darwin through Cloncurry to go to Townsville and they flew under our bloody aerial they wouldn’t take our aerials out they skipped right through them because we had what we called a dye pole centre lead would’ve taken the aerial out. He landed he came into the sigs office, I was working, he came in and

wanted to an obs [observation], met obs [meteorological observation ]so I took him into the met section next door which is a little door I raced out grabbed my camera and took a photograph of the P40 now the same day he come in about midday, but in the afternoon there was six P40’s coming from Charleville, they came from Eagle Farm. Then they, I was working on a Hudson, he was in a lead aircraft to get them up from there.

He got in with two P40’s, not the six from Charleville, so when the wireless op came in to get the obs from Darwin I said, “What happened to the aircraft?” and he said, “We started we lost three went back to Eagle Farm with motor trouble, Charleville, two didn’t take off, one bloke went back, that’s six we lost, Cloncurry, you saw the last bloke didn’t you, he went round and round and round and run out of fuel and came in.”

and I said, “Why?” and he said, “They are not trained, the Americans didn’t have enough training on P40’s on conversion and we finished up I think two P40s got to Darwin.” That was the mob that Bluey was backing up until they got there. Another day I was on and knocking off in the afternoon and Charlie Fidel come on, number one operator, and just getting dusk it was, just getting dark,

up come a Fortress, from there they raided Rabaul to Cloncurry, the Fortresses, the bombardment group, they get there and back on the run. This bloke come up wanted a bearing then he said, “I am just about in can you put the strip lights on.” so Charlie challenged him with what they called the “code of the day.” Didn’t have the code of the day so Charlie says, “No, no code no lights.” This Fortress is going

around, over come the CO from the fortress squadron and he said, “I want the strip lights?” and Charlie said, “No strip lights no code.” and he said, “Who’s in charge?” and Charlie said, “I am in charge, we had last week in Darwin they let a Jap in without a code, he shot up our bloody air radio station so I do not let him in.” So he went out, got all their vehicles, tankers, the lot and lined the whole of the strip down to the Fortress and put him in. I said to

Charlie because I am knocking off, “What was his name Charlie?” and he laughed and said, “He wasn’t out of fuel, if he was a run in then he would’ve let him in.” The same bloke, Charlie Fidel, ex navy bloke he was.

A Yank, Fortress, American.

No, good bloke, he was right, he didn’t have his code for the day. That’s the regulations, no code for the day and you don’t get in, you are challenged. When

Charlie was leaving they came over to him and they told him they’d repainted his car you see Charlie had a Vaux [Vauxhall] with beautiful strips down the bonnet and Charlie said to him, “I’ve got my car painted, nice to se the guy from the paint shop over there is doing my car for me, beauty.” I was still on shift when he come out to pick his car up in the afternoon and the Yanks brought his car over, camouflage paint all over.

I remember him out the front screaming and waving his arms, “What happened to my bloody car, where’s it gone?” so they got back at Charlie with the camouflage paint. They had to learn to ride motorbikes because they had motorbikes there. One bloke had an old two stroke, I used to ride that on ship to come in and out and the road was a bumpy road, just a track and jumped a spark park

lead off and I had to keep putting the damn thing back on. Other bloke had a BSA [a motorcycle] and I took it out on the strip and wound it up, down the strip, speed slide, I nearly didn’t come out I was sliding all over the big Fortress strip and I drove about two bloody miles to get out of it. But that’s what you had in those days whatever you had as vehicles. With air radio at that period of time, Charlie was a smart bloke, ex navy bloke he was on the ball,

he said to me one night, I was leaving at midnight, “I’m a bit late going away, I will stay a while.” and I said, “What’s up Charlie?” and he said, “I’ve found the met bloke next door got good tucker.” The Yanks took over our met section you see and there was only a door between air radio and there, and they locked it. I had a key I filed down because when I joined and got my photographic equipment I found a hut in the Yankee squadron all photographic equipment, hypo, fixer,

paper, tracing sheets, the lot and that’s how I developed all the photographs I took at the time. I used to dry them out and do them at night time, dry them and print them. Charlie said, he had been in there, “Have you got a key?” and I had this key so we unlocked the door quietly at about three o’clock in the morning and inside the door was a table and it had asparagus, red salmon, clam chowder,

Carnation milk, in a tube, a ration, they used to put us on this ration, so we got our ration and shut the door again. We used to eat well for a while but the difference in the tucker that they had to us. They had their food. Charlie got his car and away he went south.

No, they were asleep. They had their stretchers in there, they didn’t have to get up until three o’clock obs in the morning, they come in did the midnight, went to sleep. The only had to open the door about two feet and

reach around the corner.

Yes, I opened the door about two foot pinched the tucker, they never missed it, they just put their supplies on the table. Then the next day we found that I got shifted to what they call the OBU, operational base unit to start it, and they sent us up from Townsville a 58, an AT5R8,

that’s a aircraft receiver for ground operation. We are battling to get through from Cloncurry to Townsville, your probably get one sked [schedule] a day in and miss out on four and there is a photograph there of that signal set up somewhere. So we operated there for a while, in the meantime while that was going on, there was nothing to do, you spent half our time in the snooker room in town, and two blokes, they were

real snooker room experts, does that make sense? They must’ve lived in the snooker room before the war. As a bloke, Bobby Phillips was a YMCA [Young Men’s Christian Association] champion so I learnt to play snooker bloody well with these blokes. So when we didn’t have that, we set up a roo shooting expedition. So we would go roo shooting, we had a Dodge roadster then we got on loan, for hire. Before us, there was one bloke there who was a refueller who was sent out to refuel aircraft,

air force base, but he never had any aircraft to refuel at Cloncurry. So he was there for about three months and didn’t refill any aircraft. They brought me back the Dodge for me to take over so we had transport and we used to go out in the Dodge and shoot a few roos. Because I could skin rabbits and I could skin roos, at the back of the Sovereign Hotel was an old shed, I used to peg the roo skins out on the back shed, Old Ma Burns said use that,

I had all my skins up round the wall all dried out. Ammo [ammunition] I was short of, I used to break a magazine on aircraft going through, hop up into the cockpit, they went into town into the pub for the afternoon before they went through to Darwin, hop up into the cockpit, break the magi [magazine], repin it pack, so we had ammo, 303 rifle has no ammunition, that was the issue, so you would use your 303 rifle whatever came out, tracer, armour piercer, whatever came out the spout hit your roo, he didn’t know what hit him.

That kept us occupied between the snooker room and the blokes all roo shooting kept you going, otherwise you would be sitting in the corner doing nothing and live in the pub in town. That went for a while then they decided then they’d build barracks. They built barracks out at the airport. Usual galvanised iron hut, no lining, typical tropical stuff, you had to try to sleep during the day time, a mess hut, they built new sig stations

for us away from the air radio station and we shared that with the operators from the fortress squadron, they had a circuit into Townsville, they used one site we used the other site. Often I had to go and work for them because they had trained on typewriters and if they trained on typewriters they couldn’t get it down, if it come too fast they couldn’t write it, and they would call me out, “Would you come and give us a hand and go over and work there and watch for a while and get the traffic.” Arising out of that one late afternoon or getting near

dusk a fortress was coming in and he wanted a bearing. DF bearing. Now 6540 was the frequency radio for all the aircraft working. But he had been an operator who had worked in the sig hut with me and they used to use a radio man and the radio man used to put him in an aircraft and use him so he got this trip over to Rabaul in the raid coming back and he got lost. I come up to what they call point to point frequency that’s the one I am working in Townsville on, he knew that frequency for a bearing. My job was to

ring HFDF station with mates over there we had HFDF station manned at Cloncurry then, they come up and manned that the air force blokes did. They rang into town and got a cross bearing and I worked it back and give him his bearings to come back in. Townsville rang me and a bloke decided the thumping job got into me, “You can use a point to point circuit for aircraft.” This is the thinking that went on, you have to go and work the aircraft, I said, “It’s an emergency, piss off.” so I finished

up, I just hung up and that was it. Because that bloke had to get in, didn’t matter what it was, your first priority is to deal with the aircraft that has got a problem. So we still did our roo shooting, went out one day to Port Considene [?], Port Considene which is about forty mile out of Cloncurry, an old station, still being occupied, and went out with some officers, the CO took me out to skin roos for him and I am skinning a roo and a

bloke come past, this old stockman, and I am struggling, I’ve got my roo out and I am trying to work the skin off on my own and get the body off the skin he just laughed, “I will show you the easy way to do it.” He dragged the roo over, round a bit of scrub, cut a hole in the hocker and put the legs in the hock and said, “Now pull it off.” So the roo was locked in with the rear legs around the bush and instead of me trying to hold the skin down and pull it off the body I just pulled it straight off the body.

So I learnt in five minutes from an old bushman save me for the rest of my time, I had done a lot of hard yakka [work]. Understand?

What I did,

my classification was tropical service for two and a half years, I think two and a half years in that area because that was the northern base, there wasn’t an overseas service in those days as such. You will find my papers are marked as “tropical service” in that particular time. When we set this base up at Cloncurry we had a CO, Seth, a good bloke, who come around and looked in the sig office, had a talk and away he would go.

So I decided when I moved out into the barracks I wouldn’t shave, I would have a beard, so I knocked off shaving. Seth come around, “No bloody shave, no bloody razor.” Seth disappeared, next day, bloody razor, and he throws it on my desk and I said, “No blades.” away Seth goes next day, bloody blades, come back the next day, “Too bloody blunt, can’t use them.” Apparently the Yanks could get some and away he went. I shaved after but that was the way you could deal with some blokes,

he was a down to earth bloke. At the same time we had a cipher officer turned up, little bloke, I reckon 60 odd, grey headed bloke, he came in, we had a little separate room at the back of air radio, with a sig station in one room before we built the new building and he had the other room for cipher. Did his first day’s work, gave it all to him, why the

sergeant chose to do the shift, I did the shift, it didn’t matter. He called me in in the afternoon, “Woody, can I talk to you, do you mind if I call you Woody?” and I said, “No that’s all right.” and he said, “I can’t decipher.” and I said, “You can’t decipher, did you do a course.” and he said, “I did a course, I did a course and they sent me straight to Townsville and straight out to here, I never had any practical experience.” so I sat down with him and it took me about three weeks to teach him how to handle it, the simple reason he could not work out a

mistake in Morse symbols, in other words if someone sent a “v” to this bloke and the other bloke took it as a “u” it came out as a “u” in the signal, he couldn’t locate the difference between a “v” and a “u” where it could be misinterpreted. Because of that lack of experience he could not decipher his messages. I showed him how the book codes work, the day’s work, the particular ciphers, the particular codes, and I

could then work back in pieces how to cipher.

You don’t. It happens. He’s a nice bloke, help him out. If he hadn’t been a nice bloke I would’ve said, “Go to buggery, sort yourself out mate.” So, Seth gets moved, he goes to Sydney, a new CO turns up, came into the sig office on the first day, walked around, walked out and in the four or five months he was there he never came to the

sig office again, never saw him again. But what he did he was only there three weeks and he set up a pay parade, we had never had a pay parade, we had only about twelve blokes, if you wanted your pay you go and pick up your dough [money] when you want it, you are on shift, different hours of the day, you are sleeping different days. I am asleep and I get woken up by one of the WTs, “Pay parade, Seth wants you out for the pay.” I said, “Pay parade, I am not going out for a pay parade.”

“Seth said to bring you out.” and I said, “You go and tell him I am sleeping, I am not going to any pay parade.” They sent the guard then, one guard, I don’t know what the guard was ever going to do, he comes out Mick, “Woody you have to come if you don’t I will whack on a charge.” “All right mate.” so I go out I had a pair of pyjama pants on and I line up with the blokes and the CO is saying, “That’s not correct dress for the day, sergeant.” I said, “That’s my bloody dress when I sleep mate, good day.” and I went and left him and the pay

parade, we didn’t have anymore pay parades, finished. But that’s what you found, some bloke tried to implement some rules from the south that don’t work in those areas because you are dealing with blokes, if you don’t deal with your shift blokes and they are all cranky they are working three shifts for 24 hours, they are not sleeping, if you don’t treat them with kid gloves you haven’t got a section working, simple as that. I understand how blokes work. The next thing he put up, an orderly sergeant turned up

then, he was the sort of bloke that had to be called “Sergeant.” always “Sergeant.” even to me he was sergeant. So he came to me and he said, “I’ve talked to CO and we are going to put up a sergeants’ mess.” one hut as a mess and the officers had one table up in the corner with two officers, the CO and the cipher officer. He said, “We are going to put a sergeants’ mess up with a table, the corner, Gary and the other sergeant from HFDF has turned up and

you and me.” and I said, “Bullshit.” and he said, “That’s what we are going to do.” and I said, “I can’t sit with you blokes, I have to work with the fellows I am with.” So they sat up there and I get a call from the CO and I go and see him. He said, “Sergeants’ mess? It’s really an obligation for you to sit up at the sergeant’s table with the men.” and I said, “That’s not how discipline works,

not in these areas, you have to work with the men not over the men.” He said, “I can’t make you?” and I said, “No you can’t bloody make me mate.” Now to me, it must sound strange. An officer got a “sir” when he warranted it. At that stage a permanent rank sergeant did nothing with me but give me 21 days CB that’s all he could do, confined to barracks, where was I going to go, we had no flag pole, where was I going to go, otherwise they had to court martial

me to do anything with me. Do you understand that? So he just dropped it. Now that bloke, when I left Cloncurry, called me into his office and said, “Thanks for what you’ve done.” and I said, “What?” and he said, “I recommend you for immediate promotion flight sergeant.” so he realised the place we were running after he’d been there, leave it alone, don’t touch it. My next big problem I had a bloke called Jeff

Scoullar, he was a WT, Charlie got posted to one of the ops he was out on Willis Island, like Charlie was and he came into Cloncurry from Willis, and Jeff came from Noumea, he was on the Noumea bases and he married a French girl in Noumea and he got out on one of the flying boats, she got out with him and they got out of Noumea. She was at Cloncurry and she was expecting an infant, she was in the hospital. So Jeff said to me, “Look tonight I could have a problem I’ve come to stop at the

sig hut tonight in case you get a call through.” The Wellington family I was associated with, I had the two girls working on the exchange they’d patch me through an outside line which was open to me all the time to dial out. We were living in the Sovereign Hotel at that time we had no transport out to the drome because the truck dropped us off and the shift took it in and then came back in the morning to change shifts. Two o’clock in the morning his wife is having infants, twins, how the

hell would I get him into bloody Cloncurry, he couldn’t drive so I went and pinched the refuelling tank off the Yankee tank line, five hundred gallons of juice and I am pushing along, the best I could do was 35 mile an hour slopping all over the road and I got him out there and I just got him into Cloncurry and who passes me in the command car, the CO of the squadron. I looked at him as he went past and he looked at me and didn’t know and kept going. I dropped Jeff off and she had twins

and later on I put an advert to try and pick up Jeff and he died two months before I tried to pick him up. So his two twins, one of them rang me, they didn’t know their background, so I wrote them a letter all their background, how they were born, their history came out later on in life. One was at Mackay the boy and one of them was in Brisbane.

I don’t know, heart attack, this was well after the war years. So, righto, next morning

I was coming on evening shift and the CO is waiting at the squadron and he says, “Sergeant, did I see you last night?” and I said, “Yes.” and he said, “What were you doing driving one of our refuelling wagons?” and I told him about Jeff Scoullar and he said, “Did you put it back properly?” and I said, “Yes, I put it back.” and that was it, no discussion. But you did what you had to do for the occasion at the time. Never mind about the consequences, they come

later, fix your job first, worry about the consequences later. Does that make sense to you?

So this is how the system sort of worked. My next problem. Jeff Scoullar got posted that left myself and a bloke called Kenny Baker, he’s was a corporal, Kenny. He had been at Townsville before to do 24 hour watch

between two of us so I ring up Townsville headquarters to try and get a bloke called Kurt who was the CO of the sig station, “He’s away.” “Do you know a bloke called Harris?” He was the bloke I tried to thump before he kept bobbing up under my nose, the warrant officer, and he just said to me, “No, it’s just you and Baker, you’ll handle it.” and he hung up on me. I said to Kenny, “Bugger it, I am not going to work 24 hours between the two of us, I am battling to sleep now. So I rang back again to try and get

on to him and I left a message and we would work between two shifts, we would work from eight till five, five to midnight, between Ken and me. The girl on exchange at Townsville said to me, “He doesn’t want to take any messages from you.” that was it, that’s what we had to do so I said to Ken, “Bugger him.” So the same night I come to come on shift and before I come on, John came and grabbed me, about five o’clock he come and got me, “Quick get over to the

sig station, Kenny Baker is lying on the floor in pain.” He had an appendicitis attack and John got the ambulance and took him into town to hospital. So I rang up Townsville then, I am on my own for 24 hours. This Harris didn’t want to talk to me so I said to the girl on the exchange, she is one of these people that don’t have to talk to you, “I am in charge of Cloncurry, tell Harris we’ve had a bloody fire

sig station is burnt down.” He rang me back in a bloody panic, “What’s happened to the sig station, fire?” and I said, “Yes.” and he said, “How much damage, who’s injured?” and I said, “Nothing mate, I am on bloody fire not the station.” He said, “You’ll just have to manage, it’s only 24 hours.” and he hung up on me. Righto, so I went back, this is about I suppose ten o’clock at night up till midnight, sent down a

signal to the RAAF at Townsville, now I know the RAAF operators didn’t know what we called the x-codes enough, they knew what they had to do, say signal strength, interference, wait, same as x-codes and a figure after and that was the code number for a particular phrase. I sent her the next signal to say signal strength first she came back, right, gave me a five and come back and sent the signal

strength and said, “I am closing the station down.” she sent “AR [All Received].” in other words, “I’ve got your message.” I pulled the telephone off, turned transmitter, off, the receiver off, went back to the hut and went to sleep. Come out in the morning at eight o’clock I am not going to get back on the air, they can come and get me. Round about midday an aircraft came in, Hudson come in, I thought, “That’s funny coming from that side.”

taxied across to where the sig was and they got this bloke Kurt, the sig officer, “What have you done Woodward?” and I said, “I’ve shut the bloody station down.” “Why?” “I’ve got no staff.” “Harris told me you got Scoullar and Baker.” and I said, “Baker is in bloody hospital and Scoullar’s been posted and I’ve got no replacement.” “Is that what happened?” He walked in, doing an inspection, walked around, got in his aircraft and away he went, nothing was said. But you ask me why, she was at Townsville headquarters when it happened,

she will tell you, about the panic, “Cloncurry has gone off the air, we can’t raise them, there’s no telephone, what do we do?” and Harris is running up and down with a bloke called Curly Walker, the shift sergeant and they were in a bloody panic and they couldn’t do anything with me. That’s their bloody problem not mine, my problem is to open the communications channel and work best I can, but I am not going to work 24 hours a day. Does that make sense? Right. What happened out of that shortly after,

about a fortnight, next day, I think Harris, went on and sent a bloke up, it takes two days to send a bloke up from Townsville anyway it didn’t bloody matter, About a week after I just went on a day skip then and just worked the day shift that’s all, shut myself down at night time automatically and say, “I’m going.” They sent up a bloke called Freddy Higgs, he’s a flying ops, Freddy Higgs. Freddy I knew in 24 Squadron. Freddy was a bloke when back in

24 squad when the Japs over ran them we lost one sig bloke, they over ran the sig station, he got out, he bought both of them back from Rabaul to Cairns. It was never mentioned. Even the air force records you won’t find his name mentioned. He got a decoration for it. Freddy. An officer had to take over my sergeant’s job so I went south from there. So then going south I had to go and get some roo skins so I went into

town and picked up six of my best roo skins. Now to get on an aircraft at that time going from Darwin to Brisbane was almost impossible because aircraft was loaded in Darwin. I didn’t feel like going the train right around to Townsville and back down south if I could avoid it. So I went into air radio station, they handle aircraft movements, sat out the front and waited. A DC3 comes through from Darwin and the skipper come through to get his weather. He knew me, he had seen me

before and said, “What are you doing boy?” and I said, “I want a ride.” and he said, “If you can get your ass on you can have a ride.” So I went out and the hull is packed with blokes, you can imagine bloody sardines to get them all get a ride home, so I got in, they all shoved up, give me room and through my gear down the back with my roo skins. We got half way to Charleville and the wireless op came up to me and pushed his way through the crowd, “You are the radio man from Cloncurry?” and I said, “Yes.” and he said, “Where do I get a

bearing, what frequency to I use?” He didn’t know 6540 frequency emergency for aircraft. That’s how they got lost, the followed the railway line that finished out in the scrub somewhere. That’s what the Yanks used to do, they couldn’t navigate properly. The Australians could always navigate anywhere you went. Anyhow, I gave him the 6540 and we got into Charleville, we stopped overnight because it was late in the afternoon and that’s the first time, only time, I’ve been in a Yankee place for my

meal. As you know, they gave you a steel tray with all your indentations in it with your tucker in it. It amazed me they had meat and jam instead of chutney, pancakes, eggs over easy if you wanted them, maple syrup, I had never seen tucker like that in my life. So we got fed and went through to Richmond. Richmond was a big pukka [official] station, brass buttons and shiny uniforms.

I didn’t realise, I got off the aircraft, dirty old pair of shorts, bloody boots had never been cleaned, my kitbag over my shoulder and six roo skins. I can remember walking down Richmond; down towards where the officers were and the transport section and all these blokes were looking at me. I can still see them looking at me. I never thought anything of it. I go down to transport section, I want a truck you see, the RAAF looks at me and

said, “Sir.” you see, I never carried rank, I never had any rank, I couldn’t get any rank, I never knew where I could get any rank. What I had was what old Charlie Fidel got for me, or Frank, an army sergeant’s armband he left behind somewhere going through on an aircraft and I used to strap that on, that’s what I had. I didn’t have this thing, it was in my pocket. They gave me a

truck down to Richmond to get on a train to where I lived at Wentworthville. I am down to there, where do you want to go from there?

Right, I go to Bradfield Park, as a depot you come in from posting for re-posting out. At that time, this is '43, the beginning of '43, they gave me a form to fill out what they called preferential posting. It had

sections in it and I just wrote across it “Return north.” Instructions underneath, “no instruction on duties.” What do they do, they send me as instructor to Parkes and go to school. I go out there, arrive there, go to orderly room hand my papers in and I remember the bloke saying to me, “Bloody Bradfield Park they are always the bloody same. Here they’ve got you marked as a sergeant and you are bloody AC1.” I said, “I am a sergeant.” and he said, “Where’s your rank?” and I said, “I never

picked up a rank.” So they go and get some stripes and get them sewn on by one of the instructor’s wife. So they put me as an instructor and I went to what they call an outstation. Outstations is the finishing section to train the wireless air gunners because that was the section where they learn to work commercial procedures because at that time air radio controlled the air craft operations, not air force procedures, the civil

procedures, does that make sense? That’s why I got sent there because I was the only bloke who had been out on air radio. Looked at the manual, air force, waste of bloody time, just tossed it in the corner and wrote my own lecture papers, the first thing I did with thirty blokes, now this is not right, you shouldn’t do this. I said, “Right, you thirty blokes some of you don’t want to fly.” Silence. “I don’t want to know who doesn’t want to fly, but those who don’t want to fly go to the right hand side of the room, I don’t want to waste any time with you blokes

because you don’t want to fly.” Because some blokes want to be pilots, they don’t want to be wireless air gunners, they were looking to remuster. Others didn’t want to be in an aircraft they wanted to remuster. They flunked that course they’d be chucked out to something, they’d be a clerk, an armourer, or something else, does that make sense, so if they could flunk that course they’d get remustered. I had four blokes I think they were that put themselves out on the side. So it is the middle of winter so first day in the mess I go into the mess, the sergeants’ mess and I

sit down to my tucker, tropical spread, I should be having butter in Monty Parks and I went and saw the mess in WA and introduced myself and they said, “What’s up?” and I said, “Tropical spread.” and he said, “Yeah, I’ve been eating tropical spread for God knows how long.” and I said, “What about butter?” and he said, “You get a ration I reckon.” He laughed and he said, “What do you really want?” and I said, “I will tell you what I want, when I go on leave I want three tins of Kraft cheese that’s all I need,

and for my sprogs [juniors] over there I want some bread, some butter and some cheese for morning tea.” He said, “Righto.” These trainees they had a couple of radiators in the back room, I had to shoot one out the back window with a chit [a docket], go over the mess, pick up a couple of loaves of bread, some cheese and we’d have cheese on toast. Now there are two sergeants in WA that didn’t want me there because I had jumped the queue. Instead of starting in the

hut I went to the cream [best] job first up, that was never done I knew this because they kicked up a sprog and he always had a chit in his hand to go to the stores or somewhere. So we had our toast and cheese every morning, they could smell it but they couldn’t find it. I will get to it a bit later on and then someone pulled me up one day, the WOD [Warrant Officer Discipline] I think it was, he said, “Sergeant, I believe you know a bit about

soccer. I heard it from somewhere.” I had been a kicking a ball with a bloke down the oval and I said, “Yes.” and he said, “We’ve got a team that wants to go to Dubbo to play 9th Divi [Division], so I got a team up out of all the sprogs, a soccer team, got good old bloke Carroll, second division goalkeeper he was from Mathis [?]. He was good and we beat them down at Dubbo. They were big blokes. I’ve seen big blokes and I’m six foot but I couldn’t get a ball in the air off them. We beat them two one, we were battered, we were a lot smaller than they were. We came back from Dubbo and went by truck back to, that was the only game we had there and we had a bit of hockey going, I refereed a few hockey games which was much the same as soccer in those day. The next problem I had

At this time when I went to Parkes in the middle of winter, I come from Cloncurry there and bloody near died from the cold, there was sleet, in the middle of winter, the first thing I do, one night in the hut, the galvanised hut, went out to the stores the next day got a roll of blackout paper and papered all my room inside. All hell broke loose. The inspecting officer came in and said

“You can’t do that.” and I said, “You can pull the bloody thing out if you want mate as far as I am concerned.” He did nothing about it, but I had a rather warmer room, blackout paper got some nails, packing cases and made a framework and built myself in. So all this came to the notice of these two flight sergeants from WA, they are following me around like a bee around the place wherever I went so on the weekend all the staff would stand down on the weekend of Saturday and Sunday.

They all, except me, lived in town. They were married blokes, wives, they had flats in the, so I said, I will take the two days off you see, Saturday and Sunday, so I take the two days off, I go to Sydney, I come back, I am ten minutes late. Ten minutes late. I get charged by two flight sergeants AWL [Absent Without Leave] on the charge sheet, always charged by one only, not three, 48 hours and ten minutes, they charged

me for not having official leave pass for the two days plus ten minutes. So up before, parade again before the CO and I had seen the CO when I first went there and told him I didn’t want to be an instructor and he said, “You will be here for the duration of the war.” and I said, “Well how do I get out of here, I am posted today.” and he said, “Only one bloke got thrown out of here.” so I kept that in my mind. So a bloke called Reynolds turned up with the CO,

Squadron Leader Reynolds, the bloody sergeant who was my instructor way back in 1940, WO, now he’s the squadron leader, he’s in charge of the base you see at Parkes. I got before him, I knew he looked at my records. He said to me, “AWL, 48 hours and ten minutes, what have you got to say.” I said, “I know what you are going to say Sir, I didn’t have an official leave pass.” he said, “That’s correct, you were AWL.

I am going to send you where you wish you’d never been born.” I looked at him and I thought, “Don’t go to India and don’t go to the Carnarvon.” He said, “Coffs Harbour.” and I said, “You mean Coffs Harbour in New South Wales?” and he said, “Coffs Harbour.” So I get 21 days to the sergeant, I get a reprimand, a six month reprimand,

that meant I had to do my instruction duties, go round the mess and get the complaints from the mess from the officer of the day and of course the blokes have a go at you, “There is no tomato sauce, it’s gone off, the bloody bread is no good.” so you copped all this as a part of the deal, so to Coffs Harbour I go, I was put through one and a half courses of the WAG [Wireless Air Gunner], I put a full course through and another half course while I was there, no problems. Went through, the blokes I dealt with went through.

I go to Coffs Harbour. A day late, the day I get there, I went to see the CO, he said, “Sergeant you are a little bit overdue.” and I said, “I missed the train.” I was there, showed the sigs there, tents were there, we had tents at Coffs Harbour at the time. Who’s there, Clem, my old mate Clem was there and another couple of blokes from 24 squadron, I knew two blokes there, he was a telephonist and he had malaria pretty bloody bad

the poor bugger, you had to get his tucker down to his tent every day he couldn’t get out, no medical. Just had malaria, put a blanket on him and try and get him some quinine tablets, he survived. Anyhow, Clem, I had only been there a day and he said, “The mosquitoes are getting in.” because there were no mosquito nets. So what he did he had a kero tin and he built a dung fire in his tent for the smoke, and the bloody brigade turned out and hosed his tent out. They saw smoke coming out from his

tent so the station brigade turned out and hosed him out. I was there for a while, came on shift one afternoon and looked up at the endurance boards, we had an endurance board on the end of the sig room, that’s your aircraft up, what we were doing was anti-submarine patrol. Now it was never talked about, any submarine patrol, but they were the defence of Australia and at the time we were using mainly Ansons and Beauforts, the two aircraft mainly using on the east coast. I looked up there and said,

“Anson, he’s an hour late, he’s not in.” and he said, “I don’t know, I haven’t heard from him.” and I said, “Mate, he’s not flying.” and he said, “Why?” and I said, “He should’ve been in an hour ago, endurance.” this is the bloke that came from air board, had nothing to do with aircraft, and got put up in that unit, does that make sense, he didn’t understand. So my job was to break out the emergency crew, organise a briefing, get your ops officer out, get the crew out, the Beaufort was there standing by,

I had to do the briefing for the signal frequency we were going to use, got them off the deck. By the time we got them off we only had an hours search because of the daylight. Now in Coffs Harbour, the strip is on south of the ridge that runs from the hospital, so the aircraft had to come over the ridge and drop into your strip. No lights at that time, we didn’t have any lights, they had to get in before it got dark. The only thing we had was a hand operated beacon up near the hospital. I had to go up in the vehicle, switch the beacon

on the top of the headlamp to give them a guide in on dusk to where to come in. Well we didn’t find, we found the wing tip the next day, we were too late, we picked up the wing tip, it was too late. So then things were going good, Coffs Harbour, the beach was along side, I had another mate there that had come down from Brisbane, he was married, we would go to his place for tea sometimes. The jetty town was on its own in those days, Coffs was on its own, separate place, you go up to the pictures at Coffs and home from home. I was there about

three months. The CO calls me in, “Sergeant, squad leader Kurt wants you.” I said, “Kurt.” that’s the WO that had me on charge in Townsville way back and the bloke that come out in the aircraft when I closed the station down. I met Kurt in the back office, he said, “Righto Woodward, I’ve got a job for you.” and I said, “I don’t want a job, I’m at Coffs Harbour, I haven’t got a posting.” He said, “You don’t need a bloody posting, go and get your gear, get out of here and go to Bundaberg.”

So I go and see the CO before I went, he said, “You know why you came here?” and I said, “I haven’t got a bloody clue why I come here.” and he said, “Joe Reynolds and myself are both permanent force.” and I said, “I know that.” and he said, “Joe hates my guts and he sent you over to me to deal with, but you are the best bloody operator we’ve ever had on the base. That was the background. I am going to do something for you, you will never get a benefit for.” When I got my record and my papers years after you

find that Coffs Harbour has been rubbed out, it’s been rubbed out on my papers, if you look at it through a magnifying glass you will see O and F, officer’s training course, I could never get it, that’s what he recommended. I sent it back to Canberra, photostat it and sent it back, and I said it’s incomplete, please complete the original copy. They completed it, they put wrong dates in, some bloke wrote it in. So, Bundaberg, I

go to Bundaberg, go to the sig station there, had about 20 WAAAFs [Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force] and about ten blokes, fairly big station. I had never worked with WAAAFs before, I am only 22 years of age at this stage. I go in and said to Jackie Clarke, I knew one bloke, Jackie Clarke, been out at Moresby, went through town when I was there and I said, “What’s up Jackie?” and he said, “This bloody place is a shambles.” and I said, “What do you mean?” and he said, “Two things Woody, never give a favour to any WAAAF,

that’s the first rule in here, don’t give them any favours, the second rule here is, you’ve got a problem with the aircrew.” and I said, “What do you mean?” and he said, “They just come in take a WAAAF when they want a WAAAF, two o’clock in the morning they come and drag someone out.” and I said, “Is that right.” So I get hold of the met, the first day I am there, I run my phone line, my hut was about a hundred yards, I run my phone line, put the phone on, see a WAAAF, and said, “Righto, you’ve got a problem you ring me and where’s your previous sergeant?” he said, “At the

Morisset Mental Home, he packed up. “Where’s the sig officer?” “I haven’t seen him for six months.” Here was I on my own with all this mob, hadn’t been with WAAAFs before. So about three o’clock in the morning I get a telephone call, “Find officer so and so ACWB [?].” I get up to the sig officer and he’s got him by the arm and dragging him out the door and I said, “See that notice?” I put a notice up, ‘No unauthorised entry’.

“You are not supposed to be here.” and he said, “You are just a pissy sergeant, I am a bloody officer.” and I said, “I don’t give a stuff who you are, drop it and go.” Anyhow, he said, “Make me.” so I hauled him out, I remember three steps, I threw him out three bloody steps this bloke, next morning up before the station administration officer. Big fat bloke sitting in the bloody chair and he’s got a heap of charges, assault, abuse an officer, you should have seen them.

You know what he did, he laughed, he tore them up and put them in the waste paper basket and said, “Not so heavy handed next time sergeant.” and that was it. That was why I got sent there. With my background no one could do anything to me. I was at Bundaberg for about nine months, sig ran well, I got a signal one day coming up from air board but

before I got it I had arranged to go and do a flight in the Beaufort, the squadron that was there were doing coastal reccie [reconnaissance] on anti-sub because the WAAAFS weren’t working the signals, they weren’t working the channels, they weren’t working the frequency, they were on boogy woogy I reckon because we weren’t getting through to them. I said, “I will go up and I will do the check myself from air to ground.” I was walking out the back door, a WAAAF come running out, “Sergeant we’ve got an urgent message from

air board, we’ve got to immediately reply to certain equipment we’ve got on hand.” some landing was going on somewhere. So I am standing in the doorway with that in my hand, the signal and the aircraft is over there and Johnny Gay, come up to me, he was the squadron wireless operator in charge, he said, “What’s the problem Woody?” and I said, “I’ve got to go and

do this trip and I’ve got this signal from air board.” and he said, “I will do the trip for you, give me his logs and you go and fix that up.” Now I had never ever in my air force had a premonition, and I had a premonition don’t get on that bloody aircraft, it’s true, don’t get on the bloody aircraft. I was happy not to get on that aircraft, two pranged [crashed], two Beauies [Beauforts] pranged, before they did their reccie they did a manoeuvre

first and we lost eight blokes, four crews, I should’ve been on that aircraft. That’s the luck of the game that happens to you but the problem was then as soon as we got the message in that they had gone down about eight mile out of the drome somewhere, I had two WAAAFs engage them on the switchboard. The whole place went bloody crazy, had to get them out of the bloody way, they cracked up to find a replacement so this is what you find you suddenly have to plug a hole quick smart before something happens, get a hold of them toss them out of the bloody place get rid of them.

Otherwise one WAAAF decides she wouldn’t come to work one day, to create an incident before that, I had a young WAAAF before that about 19 and she came from up Winton, that’s on the Cloncurry section up from Townsville, her parents came down to see her, she wanted an hour or two off. I said, “Take the day off, I will change the shifts around.”

I changed it around, next day the senior WAAAF come and she was a bit tough and she rubbed herself against me and said, “Sarg, can I get a day off?” and I said, “No.” She said, “But you gave so and so the day off why can’t I get the day off? It will be worth your while.” and I said, “No.” She said, “You are the most hard ass callous bastard I have ever set my eyes on.” That’s what Jacky said, he was dead right, don’t give anyone a favour or you are in trouble.

No, purely a flying training school in Bundaberg, we had a section of 36 squadron I think doing air reccie from there and they worked down as far as Coffs Harbour, we had a satellite strip at Nabiac as well from there and we lost those two aircraft, and we lost another one off Fraser Island, I happened to be on the eastern area in Sydney, a

mate of mine that went to the Middle East that I told you about before, went to see him and when I went in there they said, “You are a bright bloody mob, we just lost an aircraft off bloody Fraser [Island].” and they picked the signal up in Sydney, my WAAAF missed it on the circuit. When I got back, why, she had been knitting. She hadn’t been swinging that dial ten kc’s to the side and had drifted off frequency. We picked them up, we got them out, one bloke broke an arm but we got them out, those blokes, that crew. So

the next problems were they bunged on a stock take. I had never done a stock take. I had been to metropolitan business college, I had done good bookkeeping, I had never seen a stock take done on an air force base before. They started a stock take. The bloody stuff I had shouldn’t have been there. What did I do with it all? So I got a big crate, and stuck it all in the crate. Headphones, wire, cable, crate about a metre

tall it was so I nailed it up and put it in a truck and sent it home. It went all the way down to Wentworthville railway station for me and they delivered it home for me. I couldn’t get rid of it I was stuck with the bloody stuff. So these things happened to you and you went along. So Bundy, I was there about nine months, it was pretty good, there weren’t many other problems except one girl decided she wouldn’t wash, decided she wasn’t going to shower,

you couldn’t do much with her, I couldn’t do much, it was up to madam to do it. So I had to get the WAAAFs and talk to them to get them to shove her under a shower between them give them time off to shove her under a shower. They did and made her scrub herself. I had one other WAAAF decide she wouldn’t come to work, I failed to mention, she didn’t want to come to work, she decided she would stop in the barracks. I sent the guard down to her and

brought her back. I lined her up and said, “You’ve got the option now, take watch or go down before madam in the morning.” I did not want her to go to the WAAAF officer, so she said, “Yes, I will do what you say sergeant.” so I put her on what you call the weather watch. The weather watch was three hours of Morse and figure cipher, that was all the weathers combined so she sat on the weather watch for three hours and when she finished, I said, “Bring your traffic over, now tear it up and put it in the waste paper basket,

three hours of nothing, now you will bloody learn and now you will polish every bench in the place right around here.” and I had no more trouble. I knew what Jacky said in the beginning, “Do not do the WAAAFs a favour, because you’ll be in trouble.” So at 22 years of age I learnt a little bit about women, not much, a little bit.

No problem, they were good operators and they did their job, no troubles.

Good operators, conscientious, did their work, didn’t have any troubles, no more than the blokes, shift blokes, the shift would change around, same sort of thing. I left Bundy, Kurt turned up, the sig officer, I had been there nine months, he said

“Woodward, you are going real well, no more problems at Bundaberg.” and I said, “I want to shift.” He said, “You are here for the duration.” This was the beginning of '44 it was, I wanted to get out of there. He said, “All right I will get you posted, come to Sydney. Where do you want to go? Eastern area or somewhere.” and I said, “I want to go north.” He said, “What do you want to go north for?” and I said, “I want to go north and get out of here.” He gave me five days to going north, my father told me never ever

get discharged and not have overseas service because he was in DVA [Department of Veterans’ Affairs]. Five days off and I am shifted to Bradfield Park, get down to Bradfield Park for posting further north. Then I got to trouble in Bradfield Park. You came in, you checked yourself everyday, you did a parade, check yourself, see if you were posted, and away you went until the next day and come in at eight o’clock every morning and away you went and you used to go home about midday.

So I knew a bloke in orderly room so I get an extra leave pass so I make myself out a blank leave pass to come in at twelve o’clock, I got the standard one for eight o’clock. I come in a twelve o’clock, have a look at the board, I’m not posted, I’m right. So I go and look at the board and a mate of mine said, “You are in trouble Woody.” and I said, “Why?” and he said, “The WOD wants you.” so I go to the WOD and he said, “You are AWL.” and I said, “I am not AWL.” and he said, “You weren’t on parade this morning.”

and I said, “I am not AWL, wireless operators do not go on parade.” Which we don’t do. We don’t go on parade, we are doing shift work, we never go on parade and they charged me with AWL not being on parade. So I go before the CO, he sat back and said, “I don’t really believe you sergeant; I can’t say if the charges are proven I will dismiss the charges.” But you go out to WOD and he will see you get extra duties while you are

on this base. So he said, “First thing, I will put you on the hardening course.” Now the hardening course at Bradfield Park was there for anyone who hadn’t been north before, don’t ask me why, it didn’t make a difference to your physical condition or anything else, it made no difference to you, so they put you on this hardening course. Okay. So I go up to this hardening course and they are working on this Bren gun, I’ve never seen a Bren gun, I know how to use a rifle, watch them, load,

shoot, my turn, fired my round, okay, so then we go throwing grenades, I’ve seen a grenade before, just watch these blokes, duck under cover, that’s easy, I line up, throw my grenade, the WD sees me, “You can’t throw the second one sergeant because you haven’t had a theory course.” I hadn’t done the theory, I had to come off the hardening course. So back I go to his office

and he said, “Tomorrow morning route marches, you will take a section of blokes come off parade, route march for two hours then bring them back.” Line them up, down the road round the first corner, sit down and wait. We wait about an hour and a half, and I said, “Okay blokes, back on your feet and we’ll march back again.” and I remember saying, “For Christ’s sake, slow up.” and some block said, “Why?” and I said, “You are bloody tired, you’ve been marching for two hours.” and he said, “We haven’t.” and I said, “Shut up, don’t talk about it.” This is the blokes,

you blokes in the air force are going somewhere. So we did three days of that, two lots of route marching. Then the next job. Right, there is a job at Woolloomooloo, two bus loads of blokes to take to Woolloomooloo wharves. So I get my list of blokes, line them all up, roll call, check them all on the buses, two double decker buses, down at the wharves. Get down to the wharves, line them all up on the wharf,

go up and see the ship, I see the wharfies are playing two up, I said, “What are you blokes doing?” and they said, “Playing.” and I said, “What about my blokes?” and they said, “They have to shift that cargo there over to there and put it over there, trolley it across and when we feel like it we’ll load it.” and I said, “You rotten buggers, my blokes getting.” so I went down and line up, “Roll call, four o’clock next roll call.” and they said, “What do we do?” and I said, “Just told you, four o’clock roll call you blokes. That’s when I want to see you, four o’clock.”

Away they all went. Except one bloke then got a bloody trolley and wheeled stuff. So I took them all back then. Got discharged and I got posted then after that up to Mareeba, 5 Squadron. Get to Mareeba, I was in the sig office there while the squadron was waiting to go overseas. We worked the land line to Cairns,

our oscillator went crook on us, in other words, do you know what an oscillator is, the Morse is coming out the oscillator like a musical sound we had to go back on the sound clicky clack like the PMG [Postmaster General] used to use, I could use one because I had been in Cloncurry air radio and we had a line to the post office. No one else could write the damn thing, go back in history what your experience was. So I finished up a whole week 24 hours a day living in the sig hut.

So I am working away one day and I get a WAAAF on other end, first time I get a WAAAF on the line to Cairns, that could understand Morse and read a bit of Morse. So I said, “Who’s that?” and she said, “May.” I said, “I am coming down to Cairns, I will look you up.” I didn’t have any leave, so I went to the sig officer, “Can I have a day off?” and he said, “No, no days off.” so I packed my kitbag go down to Atherton, got a truck in Atherton, waited on the

side of the road until an army convoy come through, there might be forty trucks, someone would pick you up, sooner or later you get picked up. So a bloke picks me up, down to Cairns, get to the sig office, introduced myself, “I am going to Townsville.” So I went out to Townsville, knew a bloke out at the transmit station, got an aircraft out to Townsville, went out to the old boarding house at The Strand where I had been back in 1941, stopped there a couple nights and the place was full of Yanks. Fancy being

here, you couldn’t walk up the streets, you couldn’t move for Yanks, ice-cream parlours for Yanks, milk shake parlours for Yanks, so I was like that’s it, so I went out to the airport at Garbutt, couldn’t get an aircraft nothing was going north where I wanted to go, not to Cairns, they were going through to Moresby, not to Cairns. I was stuck. I can’t get an aircraft back, I’m AWL,

I’ve got no leave pass, I’ve got no rail warrant, what do I do? So I walked into town and go look at the railway station. Here is a heap of army blokes lined up the station. So I talk around a bit and find out a troop train is coming in. So I am standing there “How am I going to get on that troop train.” This is about eight or nine o’clock at night it is. I got my kitbag I am ready to go. The lights went out in town. The lights went out in the middle of Townsville just like that. Into the barrier, into the army base,

“Jack, they are after you, we will look after you.” so they all shuffle me up in between them, got around me. The military police, because there are all military police in the place, heaps of them, they thought, “The silly bastard has run out and no one is going to run in.” so they went up and down Flinders Street blowing their whistles looking for me. Got on the train, righto. I said to the blokes “What time are you due in?” and they said, “About nine o’clock in the morning.” So it comes to about half past eight and I think “How am I going to get off the train?” I am in the middle of a heap of army

blokes, air force blokes, they are going to have to line up, I am going to be in big bloody trouble when I get off there, no leave pass or nothing. So we are scooting along for a little while in the middle of nowhere, about half an hour before Cairns, about three mile an hour and I jump off, I don’t know where I was, I was south of Cairns. I am walking along, I found this place, a bush track along the side, and I am walking along and up comes a staff car, army,

Australian, with a major in it. “Where are you going sarge?” I had my little arm band on me, always put your sergeant stripes on for when you need it, you never know. I said, “Mareeba.” and he said, “All right, hop in.” We were near Gordonvale it was, up the back road, cross over to Mareeba, I was there, never missed me, my mates see it for me; I was gone for eight days. Next thing that happened, two days after, we packed our tents. Down to Cairns to pick up the troop ship. I went down and met May then,

she was on shift, so I went and saw the sig’s office “Can I get Mavis off?” and I knew the bloke and he said, “Yes, but someone’s got to take her watch.” and I said, “I’ve got Wally here, he’ll take the watch.” Wally is a bloke who was in Darwin during the first raid. We get back to the first raid. Wally the bloke in charge of sigs up there, the WO, he was a flying officer, through the time he was, he finished up the WO,

said to sig staff, “Every man for himself.” when the first raid hit them. Wally did, and some of the other blokes, he got to Adelaide headquarters, South Australia, he did. Don’t ask him, he’d say, “I don’t know.” you say to Wally “How did you go?” and he said, “I don’t know, I got a horse somewhere, some army blokes in a truck somewhere.” He got to Adelaide without any problems, it took him some days and he got down to Adelaide so he took over May’s watch for her so getting him on the watch I got her off to take her out for the night. I am afraid Wally stuffed up the watch a bit,

doesn’t matter. So we were there for about eight days I suppose so I took May out. I used to earn enough money to take her out, all our pay was stopped, it was stopped when we got to Mareeba. All closed off, so if I couldn’t win my money in a poker game in the squadron, they had no money, I had to keep the game going, nothing was coming back out. Old Pop, he was an older

bloke than me, he was a good snooker player and we used to take the troops on at ten bob a time on the snooker tables in Cairns and made our money that way. We made a lot of money. That’s how I got my train back to Cloncurry. When we were there, there were paw paws on the tree and no one would touch them because there was no one to pick them and climb the trees. So a bloke called Bernie, he was with me as well, Bernie, came, and I climbed the tree as best I could and get the paw paw and go and see the women first and knock on their

door and share the paw paws with them and they’d be happy that you’d picked them and drop them down to Bernie and we used to have paw paws and ice-cream. They had ice cream there for the Yanks.

Tons of them. We will get back to that right? So, Cairns, I used to go up with May in the truck and stop and give her a bit of a cuddle, and come back, I had to come from Redlynch

right into Cairns I had to run home every night back into the camp in the middle of Cairns at three o’clock in the bloody morning. We were there about eight days and they couldn’t get the troop ship into Cairns so they had to take the troop ship back to Townsville and shift our blokes by train to Townsville and board us at Townsville and the 42nd Battalion was on board. This comes up in the records where a bloke who wrote the

book World War II in Northern Queensland Lost 5 Squadron. He found a lead in Mareeba and didn’t know where they had gone because we weren’t booked out of Australia and how I come to know this a bloke in the 42nd Battalion, he contacted this bloke and he knew me and I rang him up and got onto him to fill up the gap that was there. So we get on the troop ship with the 42nd Battalion, went down the hull

in the ship, Liberty ship, about five down, and thought “Fancy being in this bloody place.” so I went up the top and got hold of Bernie, and said, “Take a place on the deck mate.” and he said, “It’s hot.” and I said, “It’s only hot half a day, get in behind the skipper’s place down there, the sun on that side in the morning and we’ll get it in the afternoon and we’ll take it in turns.” So we took it in turns to keep our spot because all the troops on deck as best you could be, so you kept your spot with two blokes off and one bloke on in the heat of the day.

So we stopped on the top deck all the way. Righto, I found a bloke who was trying to look for me, one of the army blokes in the 42nd Battalion, one of these things, he didn’t know where I was, all he knew was I was in the air force from my home town, it just happened that I was on the ship. I never picked him up on the boat, a bloke called Lanky Davison. Now Lanky, a school mate of mine, so we get in to Milne Bay, we had no escort,

and we are told that submarines problem with the Japs we are going into Milne Bay and we’ll stop over night and come back out to sea to go to Bougainville. Now Milne Bay is a whopping big harbour and all the shipping was packed in the harbour and at night time the Yanks are working launch lamp, telling about their girlfriends and their telephone numbers, so I sit there with our blokes reading off all the telephone numbers of all the sheilas, saying, “See this

telephone number the girl has big boobs.” these are the stories that were going around, all around the harbour, imagine all these lamps going, one after the other, about a hundred of the bloody things. We get away from there to Bougainville. We have to moor, two mile I think, to take the blokes ashore. I don’t know, I am up there and the army captain came on to the 42nd Battalion and he’s got his blokes off and said, “Right Sergeant, get your blokes over the side.”

I look over the side, Christ, bloody nets, sixty or eighty foot down there, twenty foot bloody swell, the boats going up and down, our blokes haven’t seen this before, I haven’t seen this before, the army blokes have been trained on nets, I lined them all up, “Righto you blokes, over the side.” You ought to have heard the blokes, “I’m not getting over there.” so I had to go round and pick every bloke’s leg up and throw him over down the net to get them all off. We went to shore on barges; we got them all on barges,

usual system, dump us all on shore, take us a few miles inland somewhere, dump us off, they had a big heap of tents backed up, rolled up. These blokes had never pitched tents before, never seen a bloody tent before. I had been in tents at a couple of places, Mareeba was tents, Coffs Harbour was tents, I knew enough about tents. They didn’t have a clue. They pitched their tents as best they could. I put mine up with 44 drums because being in the tropics then being in town where the

hot is high and gets off the ground and the bloody WOD come around and says, “Sergeant, that’s not regulation.” and I said, “I don’t give a stuff, that’s my regulation.” He said, “Take it down.” I said, “You want it, you take it down.” So my tent stayed up there on 44’s. So I had duck boys on the top of the 44’s, tent on top and nice and cool. That was 5 squadron. My job was to

work the aircraft from Boomerangs to Merewethers, I was drafting and that sort of stuff to back up the troops on staffing runs. Beau, the CO, I still see him, the only bloke I still see, I remember the first time I see him on the Gold Coast I said, “It’s good to put a face to my signal sergeant.” I used to work with him on the radio and I’d never see him. I said to Beau, “How long off strip

mate?” tell my granddaughter, she was with me. “Three and a half minutes to hit the bloody Japs on the Numa Numa trail.” You never hear about the Numa Numa trail, you hear about the Kokoda Trail, nothing about the Numa Numa trail which is three and a half minutes off the met strip to hit them with a Boomerang and a Boomerang was not very fast. This would be December '44 when we took over from the Yanks. They moved out, they were still moving out when we got there,

they had a perimeter, it might have been eight mile by two mile or something and the Nips [Japanese] had the rest of the island they didn’t fight any more with the Yanks, they just took the beach head and stayed there. Around the beach head they had a road, a perimeter road and they had these lookouts like you see on the TV with prisoner of war camps different intervals and they would challenge you with the code of the day with a dog or

cat, if the Nips are out there in the jungle within a hundred yards as if you’d tell them the code of the day. It’s all jungle from there around. So we were there, at the squadron for about three months I suppose and they brought in the course airs, I was working the Corsairs for a while too, they were running because they had longer range, faster aircraft, better armour than our Boomerangs and our aircraft had Boomerangs twice that went over Jacquinot Bay,

New Britain on the other side. I got left behind to start a base unit from there and I went to work for a while on fighter control. Fighter control there was no bloody 5 aircraft but it was still there and they were working base stations from there out to the island around a couple of RAAF stations around there cleaning up. I come on shift one night and I had a bloke called Jimmy Starr on ship

and I had about five or six operators I suppose, to do a shift, and Jimmy, I had him, I picked him up running across a parade ground with sleeves rolled up in a malaria area. He got charged with a breach of the regulations for mosquito control. I put him in the cook house to stand to in the morning I put him back in the cookhouse in the morning he was

buggered, he’d had it, so Jimmy is on the shift and he just sort of nods off. A sig job had come through. I raced over and said, “Righto, trouble mate, it just said, TRUB with the bloke at the other end, log a sig on and go back a minute on your log.” Jimmy did it, whack it off. The sig officer called me in “So, LAC Starr.” I said, “No one sleeps on my shift. You want to see a star, log him in get him over to the petition.” “I wasn’t asleep.” and I said, “I saw you asleep, you are

wrong.” He said, “Sergeant you will charge that man.” I said, “I won’t charge him, you want to charge him, you want to charge the sig station, you charge him.” He was going to say, “You don’t look after your bloody men, your bloke should not have been in the bloody cookhouse.” That’s what shouldn’t happen, a young officer come up from the south, no real experience. He said, “Righto, I charge you with disobeying a lawful command.” so I get charged and I suppose I should be shot in the enemy area.

Go before the CO, a bloke called Kirky Ban [?] from the home town, I had never seen him through the war years, I didn’t know him and he didn’t know me. I get 21 days, sergeant of the guard as well as my sig duties. My job was to go round the aircraft in the jungle each night till midnight and check the aircraft with the guard. First night I go and an Indian Scout [motorcycle] arrived, I could ride a motorbike from

Cloncurry you see, I look at this bloody big thing, panels on the side, and I thought, “If that rolls I am never going to get out from underneath it.” I rode it the first night, I went round my guards, three guards on the revetments, second night, no good so I went and pinched the jeep out of the compound, I just said, “I am a sergeant in charge of the guards, give me a jeep.” that was it, they didn’t know who I was. I learnt very smart, I nearly got shot the first night I went out, park my jeep half a mile down the road and walk.

I learned something else as I walked, which I didn’t learn on the motorbike, as I walked, I could smell the blokes smoking, in the jungle, number one post, I didn’t smoke so I just stood back quietly not far about twenty yards and yelled “Number one post.” he nearly died he did “Put that bloody cigarette out.” so I went over to him and he said, “But you couldn’t see it, I had it covered.” and I said, “Mate I could smell you smoking a hundred yards down the jungle, that’s why the Japs will bloody get you, that’s what will

happen to you.” Number two guard, number three guard, the same thing happened, all of them smoked. So I did my time, I think a fortnight out of my 21 days. I got shifted then posted to the operational base unit to start it. Like a sig station and they closed fighter control. I turn up the orderly room, a bloke called Harris was running it, good bloke, I sat up in the orderly room, checked in with them from fighter control, and he said, “Okay

Woody, tomorrow morning a few blokes are here for you they are due in.” Next morning I went to the orderly room, it had about eight blokes I suppose and he said, “There is an officer coming to pick you up.” and I said, “What for?” and he said, “I don’t know.” This bloke turns up and he’s got a sheet of paper in his hand. “Climb in the truck.” So I get in the truck and go about two bloody miles and after a bit the jungle cleared and he said, “Right you blokes, sergeant here is your plan, you have to lay a concrete floor for the sig station.” I said,

“I’ve never laid a concrete floor.” He had a little rectangle on a bit of paper, that much by that much. That’s the plan.

The truck pulls out we get out and this officer gives me the plan, just a rectangle on a bit of paper. He said, “Righto sergeant, you have to put a concrete floor in, the only builders will be in today, tomorrow and the next day to put a hut on top of that. The Yanks will be here shortly to give you materials.” and away he went, that was it, gone. I said, “What do you blokes know about laying cement?” they said, “We don’t know nothing about

laying cement.” I remember my old man laying a path and putting timber on the side and screened it off so I knew that much. Up come the first Yank truck, he dumped off what they called metal, it was a coral mix that’s what they call metal, next bloke turns up, sand, next blokes turns up, wheelbarrows, bits and pieces and I said to that bloke,

“How do you mix cement mate?” and he said, “You should know how to mix cement.” and I said, “Right, three of those, two of those and one of those.” a three, two, one mix, that’s the standard. I know it’s the standard, you mix that. He said, “You mix it in the wheelbarrow, you have to put a box around.” I knew about that. Didn’t have a tape, I had to sort of pace it out because we had no measure,

roughly what I reckon it was, I know my foot is about twelve inches, but I had to pace it out, measured out and box it up. So we start and he said to me, “Don’t make it too sloppy.” As he was going he said, “What you want is a mixer.” “Where do I get a mixer?” and he said, “There is one down at the quarries down there about ten mile away but you won’t get that it’s the only one we got on the island.” So we start

a little bloke, a Jewish bloke, he gets hold of the wheelbarrow, we didn’t know, so we fill it up to the damn top, so he picks it up and it just rolls on him you see, out goes the cement he couldn’t handle it. This is no bloody good. So I said, “All right I’ll see if I can get this cement mixer.” I had a weapon carrier there, grabbed the weapon, took a couple of blokes with me, about eight miles I suppose down, a Yank had a

section of the ridge cut out, scrapping out this coral mix. They had a Yankee captain there and I said, “Cement mixer.” and he looked at me, and I kept my arm band for when I needed it, and said, “No sarge, it’s the only one on the island used for special purposes.” and I said, “I’ve got a special purpose, my Air Vice Marshall Jones said come and see you, I am only a poor bloody sergeant, I can’t go back to the air vice

marshall and say I can’t get a cement mixer.” and he said, “Who’s he?” and I said, “He’s in charge of all the air force operations for RAAF in the whole area.” He said, “Where’s he?” and I said, “Down in Torokina.” and I said, “48 hours?” and he said, “No sergeant, 24 hours and you’ll get your cement mixer.” I said to the blokes, “Righto, put it on the back of the hook.” I am the only one who could drive, do you understand? No one could drive a vehicle, they

didn’t have licenses before the war. Away we go, and get back, the cement mixer is missing. Not on the back. Christ, where’s it gone. So we back track and luckily we’d only gone two hundreds yards away and we had hit a bump and it jumped the hook. They hadn’t hooked it on properly the two blokes; they had nothing to do with vehicles before. We set the cement mixer up and got it going. We laid block around, laid the floor, and the army came in two

days later and put the hut up. Sisalcraft around it, open the flaps around it, they had to put the concrete floor to stop the coral dust getting up into our radio sets. If they didn’t put that down you wouldn’t have functioned. All your speakers on the magnetic field would have sucked up the dust. So we got going, the funny part about it, we went about two mile to get there and do you know how far our camp was,

two hundred yards down through the jungle. This officer took us right around the back out onto the main road to get us there. So we had our shifts going we were working about three blokes on shift I suppose and we moved out of our tents and took over a section of the Yanks' old tents. Moved into those. Where our camp was, about I suppose

thirty yards away there was a whopping big Yankee camp, a casual section, they never ever used. All lit, mosquito proof, stretches, mattress, blankets, pillows. “How do I get one of those with a guard around it?” So I timed the bloke, how long it’d take him. So I rolled under the wire fence around it, rolled under it when he went past, underneath

and I could see him down the back stopping to have a smoke down the back. I think I started with the pillows, rolled out when he went back, with the pillows, next night, got my blankets, got my mattress and I set up with the Yankee stretcher. Ours weren’t worth two bob, hard wood and tied up with a rope and a bit of corn sack in the middle. I had my Yankee stretcher,

mattress, blankets, first quality, tropical wool blankets. When I got discharged I still had it and I took it home. My eldest kid used to carry it around the ginger blanket as a little baby. So I set myself up, not bad, I went over to see the mess. The sergeant in charge of the mess and this happened in Townsville, the same thing happened. I said to him “Sergeant can I get a something for the blokes to eat at

midnight.” “No, bugger you blokes. We got our mess time.” “Air force regulations say a shift going off at midnight is entitled to a hot meal and a shift coming on at midnight is entitled to a hot meal. Now, do you want to serve two hot meals for eight blokes, that’s four each.” and he said, “I’m not doing that.” and I said, “Okay, we’ll go and talk to the CO and sort it out with us simple as that. He looked at me and said, “What do you want?” and I said,

“Two cartons of sandwiches, and few cakes now and again and we’ll be right.” So he used to make a carton of sandwiches and away we’d go, pick it up going to the shift. I am in one afternoon sorting it out and he’d been a bit skimpy on his sandwiches and I said, “You better get out of church and makes us something decent.” In come the WO you see and I heard them talking and next thing in comes a truck and they unload a heap of crates and I am looking and it’s Yankee

stuff. Red sockeye salmon, orange juice, grapefruit in quarters and tin chicken in cans. Right, I look at all this stuff and thought, “I have to get that.” On my night shift the next night there is only steel mesh on the outside, pulled the steel mesh down, dug a hole outside my sig hut up there, no one knew about it

and just carted my stuff up, red sockeye salmon, all this stacked in, I was eating well for a while, I didn’t tell the boys, I wasn’t going to tell any of the blokes about it, I was on night shift and I’d nick out the back and light a fire, get the chicken out of the tin, cook it up, red sockeye salmon. Then got a soccer team started up, kicking the ball, got the ball off the Red Cross

section, kicking the ball around with another bloke, a bloke called Stewart, he played for Lake Macquarie, good player. Now the Kiwi [New Zealander] camp was about a hundred yards away, New Zealanders. A couple of blokes come across to kick the ball so we set to work and formed a soccer team between the Kiwis and us and I got onto an army bloke I knew and got a competition going, this soccer comp playing with our combined team and the army team.

I was the only bloke who hadn’t ref’d [refereed] because I joined at 18 and the rest had played at provinces in New Zealand and that sort of thing. Our agent was an ex state player, a good team, we never got beaten. We played two seasons; I played one season and got in. Next season a bloke called Smart, he couldn’t get a game, said, “My brother’s in the AGH [Australian General Hospital].” the Army General Hospital they wanted to get a team up, so I went and played with them and formed a team with the army

team with a white singlet with a red cross on it. They used to give me pain when we played our own mob, they got stuck into me. But that was the way it was, you had your bit of sport. When you work it out how many blokes were in the condition to play the sport and they couldn’t. In the tropics there you’d spew your guts up at half time, you are running in top temperature. It didn’t hurt you, you just kept going.

We will get round in a

minute to what happened then. Righto. We go back to Cloncurry, a bloke come up to the sig office one day to air radio, Capaletti, Captain Capaletti, he was in charge of navigation section for the bombardment group echelon at Cloncurry. We got talking, nice bloke, he brings me a packet of cigarettes and I’d smoke them now and

again from the Yanks. I’d got out to the pictures with him sometimes, we’d go to the pictures once a month in Cloncurry, he was a bit of a joke because the bloke would go round the billboards once a month and put a stick them up and goats would come round behind him before they dried and pull them off and eat the billboard, I’ve got a photo of the goat pulling it off the edge of the billboard. So we go to the movies and I learnt with him that American movies were made for American people.

He would be laughing at hell at something and it wouldn’t mean a bloody thing to me, he would explain it to me what it meant to the American people in the movie. Something came up at the discussion and he would laugh like hell and he would explain to me why it was such a comical situation. When you sit with a bloke like that you learnt how the movies were made, it was made for American people. I am in town one day before I moved out to the barracks

at a little café there and you’d get ham sandwiches sometimes. A Negro bloke came in, master sergeant, and he went to get a ham sandwich, the Yank, white bloke, stood up and said, “Get out of here.” Didn’t say a word, just walked straight out. I went and got ham sandwiches and went after him. I said, “Mate, here are your sandwiches.” and he said, “You are not supposed to be talking to me.” and I said, “Why?” and

he said, “You are white.” and I said, “I don’t care what I am, I am Australian, I’m not like the Yank.” So he was in charge of the Negro section of the bombardment echelon labour corps. He was a master sergeant, been through college, got educated, shortly after that I was on shift, I wasn’t on shift, I was in the pub, and I get a ring

“CO will send a car for you.” So this car turned up to pick me up and the bloke driving said, “The Niggers [Negroes] have burnt the bloody camp down.” So I get out there, and they had, they had burnt all our bloody tents. The CO got me to go and try to talk to them because he knew I knew the master sergeant through Capelleti. I go over there and Capelleti is standing there with hands behind his back, I went over and said, “There is nothing I can do Woody.”

and he said, “They have been on the whiskey, they’ve got whiskey somewhere, they’ve burnt all the camp down, our buildings, tents, the lot.” So they just disappeared, years after when I was on leave, I forget where I was, Bundaberg somewhere, I was getting off an electric train in Central and he was getting on.

He got off with me and we had a talk, had a yarn [chat] and I said, “What happened to you?” and he was only a private, they stripped his rank off him, he said, “All our blokes the next day, trucks to Townsville, in an aircraft, up to Port Moresby, to working and load ammunition on aircraft and do the rough work up there, took them straight out of the way.” Now that is the sort of background you found to a Negro situation, one bloke got shot in Cloncurry in the street. Nothing was

said about it but he got shot by one of the white men.

Apparently he crossed over the road and walked in front of them on the footpath. My own experience with him and the tents and the CO will tell you what the relationship was. Now, transport, I will put this in, my first trip on leave from

Townsville, I go by train out to Brisbane, Roma Street, got across, I think I walked across to South Brisbane in those days to the connecting station. I get to South Brisbane and here is all the blokes, the service blokes, right down, the bank down the side, here they are three deep right the way down and round under and below. I said, “What’s going on?”

and he said, “It’s a coal strike, no trains.” I said, “Coal strike?” and I looked at the mob and said, “What’s the good of standing there. I got a mate in town, Chapman who was with me on course and I could go and stop at his place overnight, so I went up to his place to the front to see what was going on. I stand up the top and look at the notice board, coal strike no trains. I am standing there an air force bloke come past me and went up to the office there and picked up a couple of parcels in there and

came out. He said to me “Where are you going?” and I said, “Sydney.” and he said, “Get in the truck.” I followed him down, had a tender down below, got in the truck. He said, “Where are you going, you are lucky mate, you got a ride in a mariner to Sydney, Rose Bay.” He took me down to the river, crash boat and said, “You can deliver this now.” and gave me two cartons of something, they got to go on the aircraft. He

said to the coxswain on the boat “Just tell them we’ve got an extra passenger and put him on.” so I got a ride in a mariner to Rose Bay. That was one trip when I was at Townsville. When I was at Cloncurry, I went on leave same thing, lined up, what do I do, up the top and have a look, stand up the top and out come the RTO, Road Transport Officer “Righto, sergeant come here,

here is your clipboard, go and get the blokes over there and put them on the train the troop train is coming in with two carriages, load them.” So I had the job of all these blokes, army blokes, navy blokes, air force blokes, priority blokes, march them up and put them on the train. I got into town and gave the clipboard to an army corporal and said, “Right you are in charge now.” and hopped off at Strathfield. Now, the third time it happened again I was in Bundaberg, this is true, people won’t believe it. Same, I

get down there nothing is doing. Nothing is moving. What do I do? You have to realise all these blokes are losing their leave waiting to get on a train. They don’t get any extra leave for that, their leave pass is from a certain date to a certain date to a certain time, if they don’t get there it’s there problem. So I thought I would go up to Roma Street and get on the Wallangarra train. In those days it used to go round through Toowoomba, Wallangarra and back down through the tablelands in New South Wales.

Get there, no go, you could only get on that train if you had a leave pass to Toowoomba in Queensland or somewhere like that you couldn’t go into New South Wales on it. I was standing there waiting, I am not going anywhere, the train blows its whistle ready to go, the MPs [Military Police] hop in there trucks and go. I am on my own. I run out, hop on the back carriage and I am away. I got back. Three trips to south, coal strikes,

three times I am lucky, I picked a ride, what about the other poor buggers that were still there days after?

Right, back to Bougainville, I want to get that out of my hair. The situation arose our blokes had to start fighting from the Numa Numa trail down south and up north. They got as far,

about 12 December we took over the Yanks, the day we took over and the troops went out, it might’ve been a week before our first troops went out, round about that time. They had to push them all away back down south. In August this was when we are talking about, I had left, the fire squadron had gone, I was in the OBU [Operational Base Unit] I had made Lanky Davis this army bloke, he came to pick me up to go

fishing, Lanky come and knocked me up one morning about three o’clock to go fishing. We had a trailer, two cases of TNT [explosives], two pioneers with him, we are going fishing. I can’t go fishing, I am on shift. I get one of my mates to take over for a couple of hours and away we went. So we went down to a little native village

down south and they had a boat stowed away picked up this boat and put it on the back and had a bit of saplings for oars and packing post on the end of it. The bloke said, “Are you going with Lanky?” and I said, “Why?” and he said, “You are mad you bugger you can’t go with him.” and he said, “We’ve been carrying this charge around since New Guinea and no one wants to go fishing with it.” “Your old man had a boat didn’t he, he can row?” because he had been down the weekender going through once.

That was all that was said so we pull up, lagoon, “Put the boat in here.” So he pulls up this chunk of pipe about nearly two foot bloody long it was about three inch round packed with a charge and a wick on the end of it. I said to one of the pioneer blokes “Take my camera.” and he said, “If you don’t come back can I have it?” and I said, “You can have it.” So we rowed out to the middle of this lagoon, Lanky threw the charge in,

it went off, I rowed, I rowed, it threw us out of the water, we rescued the boat, got ashore and we got one bloody fish. In my photographs you will see the size of that charge if the pioneer had time to take the shot when the first blast went off and he had time to wind the camera to get the second shot in the air, that’s how big the charge was. I went from there down to the beach, the natives heard the bang, they turned up, we had to

get them out of the water before we put the TNT in, they wanted to get to the fish. We loaded up our ute, our trailer with fish and went back. You had to cook your fish straight away, it would go off, it was all pulverized, you couldn’t keep it. We got back to the mess and got the cook out and put it on the big stove and all the blokes come and had a feed of fish off the top. What’s next? The push was on

to go south and we came to what was called the Miko River. The Miko River was in flood, it should not have been in flood in August of the year. It was in flood and our blokes couldn’t get across it. I had a mate in a tank and said they were stuck and couldn’t get across they were stuck. The Japs on the other side of the Miko River, probably about I suppose three quarters of the way down the south of Bougainville, give or

take. The war finished at that time and you will find, its recorded, I think it was a Japanese colonel came across to capitulation and they capitulated about eleven thousand troops on that island, cooks, the lot, 23500 thousand Japanese come out of the jungle, 23, 500, waiting for our blokes on the other side.

If it wasn’t for the grace of God and the flood waters our blokes would have been wiped out the whole lot of them.

No, no one knew, that was it. When they looked at it, they had their own market day, the natives working for them, they had pigs, they had WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s, self sufficient, they weren’t starving, they had a plantation. Why our aircraft didn’t pick them up, I don’t know. They must’ve been camouflaged well enough, I don’t know

We didn’t pick them up, 23,500 read your history and you will find that is right.

We were pushing them back I suppose, Kokoda Trail, from what I know of Kokoda Trail, I worked an aircraft on the landing about that time somewhere near New Guinea, at Catalina on station

when I was at Townsville and he was on plain language and he spent his surveillance around a landing on the beach head somewhere, I don’t know, because it is not disclosed, gave me all the details of so many boats coming ashore, so many troops, so many support vessels and this is in plain language and I thought “What are we going to do about this, we didn’t have anything.” packing these blokes ashore like steam

they weren’t worried about him they couldn’t give a bugger if he was flying around, he flew around, did his fishing and went back again. This is what started on the landings, and the gradual filtration we certainly pushed them back in various areas but how far could we push them back that was the problem. We didn’t know without the yank supporting aircraft, that was our biggest, having Yankee aircraft to back us up and getting

better equipment, that was the turn, we look at the Kokoda Trail to a great extent you have to remember something about it and I am not an army bloke but knowing what I know and everyone would realise the Japanese advance right down the Kokoda Trail, they had to be short of supplies because they were eating our own blokes, this is documented, they ate our own blokes, they were that short of food, so when they get that far down

that have to start the weak so our blokes had a chance to push them back. Read your history and you will find that is exactly what happened. Now in Bougainville it was a big push, working up north and a big push for south, we didn’t know there was 23500 Japanese on the other side of the Miko River.

I have photographs there of the Japanese coming off the Nauru as prisoners of war and they came

ashore and I was standing by an army captain and I remember him saying to me “Sarge, thank Christ that’s not us.” and I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “If it wasn’t for the Miko, it would’ve been us walking out there.”

They were in good condition, as I say, they had their own market garden and everything. But you didn’t see the Japanese that were captive because we were separate and moved out after that. I was there till

December, as I said, capitulation, the day before capitulation, the night before, I am on shift and I had to put the operators to sleep. There was nothing much to do after midnight, I used to work all the watches myself at night. I was swinging the dial at about half past two in the morning I hear

Lae calling Rabaul, that’s silly, or Rabaul calling Lae. That’s silly, we’ve got nobody in Rabaul the Japs have got Rabaul and we got bloody Lae so I ring up headquarters. Over come some rookie, army lieutenant officer of the day I reckon, I told him and he said, “I don’t understand Morse sergeant.” so I said, “Just a moment.” and I get a bit of paper and wrote it out, there’s Lae, that’s his signal, the word Lae, that’s the signal of Rabaul

and he said, “Oh.” and away he went. Next thing a heap of jeeps turn up, red caps, I don’t know what rank they were, bloke come up and said, “Are you the sergeant with the communication.” and I said, “Yeah, I think they skipped this frequency.” and he said, “What do you mean?” The frequencies are going over each other not getting communication, I put a team meter up the frequency and I relayed the traffic between Rabaul and Lae. The initial introductory to capitulation, I forget where they are now,

on the world record you will find it says, “they had difficulty in communication.” I tried, I can’t get detail out of it, “difficulty in communication” that’s what it said.

I was the link station.

No, you just did your job, Morse was to be read, you got it

down, you sent it. Does that make sense? You knew things could be over sort of business. I’m not going home anyhow, you know you are not going to get on a plane tomorrow and go home you know that. Then I had Gracie Fields [entertainer] come in that particular day and did a concert. The day of capitulation she did a concert. She came in on a Hudson and I worked the Hudson, I worked it going out. The operator come up

he took off and said, “Did you get to the concert last night?” and I said, “No I missed it mate.” I said, “Can Gracie sing a song for us?” She come back, on the mic [microphone] and she could hear me still sending, I was still sending, and she said, “All I can hear is Morse.” so I cut my sending off and I could hear her say something to the, she sang us a song, what was the theme song?

She sang a song for us on the mic going out. But that was the difference with her, she sort of communicated to the troops. You read her, there is a reference in the official war history, you read that and get her autobiography and read it and it says this in her autobiography “She sang and had a concert party for the Australian troops.” if I remember rightly, something like,

“20,000 troops sat around the hillside with matches lit under their faces.” We didn’t have 20,000 troops on the island, but that’s the autobiography, it looks good, she might have had 2000 blokes if she was lucky. So your war records, as I say, are not always bloody correct.

I got sworn to say nothing

the next day not even the blokes I was with. They shut the door on me and that’s all right. Some bloke jumped up and down but no one ran around shooting guns and screaming and waving their hands in the air, the war finished, you were still stuck up on the island, you still have to get back, there is nothing you can do about it.

That was it, what could you do about it. You’ve still got your job, you have to do your shift, you don’t stop because the war is

stopped and shut everything down. It doesn’t work, you just carry on and do it, so I was there until December until I got out, that’s another four months, August until December, and I go down to get posted and get on a liberator, it’s going from Bougainville to Amberley. Old Harris the orderly went down with me. There was a stream of blokes to get on this bloody aircraft, you had

no chance, all priority blokes, mainly blokes with family and that sort of stuff, army blokes. Harris was a funny bloke, he disappeared and come back and said, “Where are you going?” and I said, “You are right to get on the kite mate, half of them are not going.” and I said, “Why?” “It’s got crook motors it’s not going to get back, it’s going in the drink [water].” So he found all these bloody blokes lined up waiting for aircraft, they were waiting for troop ships; they weren’t going on the aircraft. So the Liberator through to

Amberley and when we got out at Amberley, I lined all the blokes up on the tarmac, a whole Liberator full of blokes, army blokes, I was the only air force bloke, I don’t think there was even a navy bloke, the customs went through them and stripped everything off them and left them one pack of cigarettes and all hell broke loose. You got blokes that had been fighting up there and they’ve got about five packs of Yankee cigarettes to bring home. What are they going to do with them? They are not going to sell the things. They

started at the end of the queue to take the first blokes, and then one bloody army got stuck into him, they were going to do it, they would do these custom blokes without any trouble at all. So they compromised, they took one pack off every third bloke or something to make it look good. They got down to me, only about two off me I am in bloody trouble, I got a kitbag and my machine stores under my arm, got my kitbag, my chronometer, and when the Yanks got out they dumped all their tools in the jungle, just dumped them, so I went and filled my kitbag, I’ve still got tools

here I brought back, good pliers, first class pliers, so what do I do, and they get down next to me and see my kitbag stuff and that on the tarmac and I said, “Here take the bloody lot, take it.” He said, “It’s all right, you’ve got nothing here.” and away he went, I put my kitbag under my arm. That’s it, I got my gear home.

Yeah, right, go back to that. The Red Cross was a pogo, I knew him at Bundaberg and he got to me a couple of time, got the girls off shift to go to Church in the morning, I changed the shift around so they could go to church in the morning . He turned up the pogo at Bougainville, he ran the Red Cross section, I went to get some football gear, when somebody pinched my bloody boots, I had to get another pair and he’s throwing

cigarettes out to the natives out the back of the tents, and I thought, “You bastard.” I didn’t say anything. He also had a bit of a meeting with one the nurse somewhere, a nurse in his tent, and I had a matter, Jacky Waters in the home town, he was sergeant in the forestry unit, his job was to go round and if there was a dangerous tree in the campsite knock it down and a bit of timber and that sort of stuff. I got in the

jeep, knew where he was, I found him and said, “Got a job mate.” and he said, “Yeah.” and I said, “Drop a tree on this bastard’s tent.” He said, “Yeah, I’ll do that.” He turned up with a timber jinker [trailer] and truck and a couple of blokes, they missed the bloody tent, they got the tree down, accidentally the bloke ran the tent over with his jinker coming round so we got what we needed after all. But you have to know a bloke to get it down.

Had another situation with these Wellington people when I was there. They wrote me a letter to go and find their son Dick when he was in the army unit; I didn’t know what army unit he was in. I went to another mate of mine, “Where are the hometown blokes in Bougainville?” I had never seen one during the whole war, one was in the tanks, another bloke was in the supply section. I got a mate in the supply section “Where’s this bloke?” him and Jacky were in the

tanks and they had to take me up to the forward line somewhere, so I pinched a weapon carrier, a four wheel drive weapon carrier, they couldn’t drive me, he was from the tanker unit but not a driver, so we got up round the jungle range, two wheel tracks and they got out and walked after a while, wouldn’t ride with me, so we found him and he had just come off patrol out in the forward line. Came back. Then with this other bloke, Nevy Martin, I used to do a trade with

him, I would trade wounded digger’s [soldiers] stuff, tea or coffee and with my tie up with the kitchen another part of the deal was to give me a tin of tea every now and again and I would trade that with the Yanks with a tin of coffee. Then, I would trade the coffee back again with the army and he would give me clothes. Every once a month we had a flying boat and we would go down uncensored, so I would pack my

gear up, and send it on the flying boat.

When the clothes that you take to the laundry and get laundered and re-set up, we’d take them to the hospice and repack them. So this was going and a mate of mine turned up, Ronnie Lawson, I didn’t know he was on the island, he was an air force bloke, they were there under construction, they were pulling out metal strip and putting in a

straight strip, they had trouble preparing the metal strip when the Yanks moved out. He come in, with a fitter’s vice with a chunk of rope around it and a tag with his name on it “Wentworthville Railway Station.” and he said, “I want you to send this home. I got the drum [word] that you send stuff home.” I said, “I can’t send that bloody home like that, they won’t pack it.” So he went away, rolled up the packet, sent it, met him at school reunion years after, after he got it,

all the way down to Wentworthville Railway Station and his mother picked it up. Tell me how it happened, I don’t know, but it did. Fitters vice rolled on the side of the craft.

I went straight from when you get posted, I’ve got a copy of my posting signal there somewhere, they posted the wrong place, they posted me to Melbourne where I joined up. They had to change that because I had to come to Sydney. I just went down to the depot from

Amberley, got a train from Brisbane down and get out on leave and shortly got discharged from there.

I had got to see my family a couple of times, no, you just go home that’s all. This system of hugging and that that the Yanks put on, it’s not the way it was. You sort of just came back into the family that was all,

go and find a job. My problem was because I had volunteered, I couldn’t get a job. All those that were conscripted their job was protected when they came back, but because I volunteered, I wasn’t protected. I walked Sydney and come back in three months, no work. I got thirty bob a week for the first month, that’s what I got, special allowance. After that you are on your own.

I suppose to some degree, for example, I was shit frightened crossing a bloody road in Sydney, I wasn’t used to traffic. I was frightened to cross a road and there weren’t many cars in those days, I was frightened to cross a road. That sounds silly to you, it was a fact. I go into GPO [General Post Office], no work, I go up to the chief of police and he said, “Are you air force?” and I said, “No.” and he said, “Can you use a sounder?” and I said, “I can use a sounder.” He gave me a trade test, “Terrific,

when do I start?” “Come back in three months.” and I said, “I want a bloody job now, I’ve only got a month’s money coming in.” He said, “We have to have you, wasted blokes and we haven’t trained blokes during the war, they can’t get telegrams out, and we’ll be swamped. Can you do a telephonist course.” and I said, “Yes, anything.” so he took me up next door and I did a telephonist course for women, I was the only man working in frontline on my own. I was on front lines for a

while then I was on night shift, back on bloody night shift again. There was an ad in the paper in respect of applications for state public service. I applied for that and went up to the uni [university] and did a maths and english examination entrance for the state public service for the Registrar General’s department. I did fifteen years there with the deputy registrar, corporate affairs, I was twenty years out of my time, did all my grade examinations, I got that sick with asthma, I had to pack up and leave and walk out and I got

six months leave to work outside, got a job with a law firm at Murwillumbah, I had done all real property law, corporation law, births, deaths and marriages, titles, I had done all that in my examinations in the state public service, and I had been back to do accountancy at tech, did my second year of accountancy at night school, amongst the younger blokes.

We were short of clothing at one stage, no gear, no new clothes coming over, in the tropics you are sweating with your clothes on and your boots and all that and we had a muster parade with the 5 Squadron and we get told if anymore complaints go back just leave your rank, name, number, address, and it would go back to your parents, that’s where you sent the letter to. My mate, Lanky

Davis at the time in the 42nd Battalion used to go over to the stores place, they had a store on the base from where they were at operations and I had to pick up jungle greens and gear like that from him. He had a brother, Lester, who was on a place called Green Island, it was Garrison Island. He came back into Bougainville, into the same old situation and he picks me up from the night shift and wants some

grog [alcohol], Lester has come over from the mainland, from Green Island. “Can you get grog?” and I said, “Yeah.” so I go down and knock up the mess sergeant and I give him a case of beer, hot beer, so I go out with him to his big do with his brother and just a tarp [tarpaulin], I pinched some fresh bread from the bakers, a can of dripping [fat] that was just running, a case of onions, hot beer and our slap up feed was a good feed.

That was tucker, you ate and you were happy to eat it at the time. Another thing that did occur to me, just before I left Bougainville, I was working on a Hudson coming in, usually you asked who the operator was, its Walters, the mate who got discharged right back in Melbourne, so I went down the strip and found him and he’d managed to come from Adelaide, seen

air board and got back into the air force and they picked him up and was a sergeant operating this Hudson coming in. He didn’t want to talk to me, he blamed me for the shit he got into at the bloody time. You meet blokes like this in the course when you wouldn’t expect to see them again. Another thing I did miss out on was teeth. When I was at Cloncurry they sent out a pedal drilling machine and a dentist to go round all the bloke’s teeth. They got into

mine and I have hard teeth apparently and he couldn’t get a drill in, battling, chipped all my teeth to get all the fillings in. He couldn’t get the revs [revolutions] up enough and the drills were blunt, war time drills, and he did about twelve fillings for me, I hadn’t had my teeth done for about three or four years. When I went to Parkes later on I had a toothache and went to the dentist and a bloke in there said, “Woodward, I know

you.” and I said, “I don’t know you.” and he said, “Denny Brown, Parramatta.” I used to work for him, he was the family dentist. So he did my teeth, he drilled all those fillings out and redid them for me and on the troop ship when they examined our teeth they told me, “They were not service teeth.” That’s the difference of his trade job, of course, I had been an old client, if I had been a client after the war as to what he would have dealt out to other blokes. I think I told you about getting my teeth at

Bradfield Park didn’t I?

The Kiwis, because we had mates playing soccer with them, they had fresh food, not like us. Every Monday up would come cans of oysters, so Monday morning was fried oysters, I’d throw on my Kiwi hat, they had

Yankee little helmets, go over and join the queue, all my mates playing soccer would go in with them, lamb, another day, fresh lamb, when that was on, we won mates in the mess by telling them it was on. They had their own picture theatre, we didn’t have a picture theatre, I’d put my coat on and go in with them and deck chairs down the front and sit in there, and all our blokes outside the barbed wire, “What are you doing in there, Woody, get out there you bugger.” because I used to go in and sit in with them. That was the

deal, you had your mates, they were same as the Australians, you mixed together same as Australians, that was the way it worked. Their issue of beer, our issue of beer we got, you couldn’t afford to drink it, because it was a dollar plus more than the Yanks, so the Kiwis had beer coupons because there weren’t, I think possibly, I am not going to comment, a certain race problem in drinking alcohol, so you have a beer coupon issued to them and you went in the

compound, barbed wire compound, and you have a bench on the inside and you took the top off and you drank your beer inside the compound. So I always had a pocket of my own beer tops I collect and a rock and hammer of mine and I would throw them over to my mates and sell them to the Yanks straight away and get a dollar a bottle on them. You made your own way as you went whatever happened. After a while, I went to find one of the Kiwis in New Zealand, and he died, I missed him by two months before but his wife knew all about me.

You always had foreign orders, you always had someone doing foreign orders, the history makers, they’d do the initial maker on the ring could carve you a set of wings on the ring, another mate of mine; he carved a set of wings on the ring, right? I gave that ring to my sister for her birthday and she gave it back to my daughter, she got it. Same thing,

I mentioned a Jewish bloke I think, little bloke, was mixing cement, we used to have a raffle at one time that was going, run a bit of raffle and you’d go and buy an item from the Yankee PX [canteen] stores and he won the raffle and I said to Ikey, “What did you get mate?” and he said, “Fountain pen.” You couldn’t get a fountain pen. So my sister had a birthday coming, and I said, “Do you want to sell it?” and he said, “Yeah I will sell it.” and I said, “How much do you want for it?” and he said, “Ten and sixpence.” I said,

“Why ten and sixpence mate.” A dollar was a dollar and sixpence over. He said, “Because you are a mate of mine, otherwise it’s twelve bob. I have been taught always make something whatever I handle and for you its sixpence anyone else it’s twelve bob.” You asked how did people live and that was the background you found.

Probably, Bougainville, before they left, thirty movie shows in a month. I used to have my own truck to run for my own heap of blokes, and a driver went with us and we went in a group and we would do a different movie every night, they would show it to different units. Thirty movie shows in a month, I was thinking we could have done thirty one but we didn’t get to thirty one, I

remember the thirty one movie was ‘None But the Lonely Heart’ but we never got to see it, there would have been thirty one movies in the month we would have seen and always the big deal was cigars and ice cream but they often had the ice cream making little units as you know. But probably a good example was they were well equipped, they had the equipment. When our blokes hit Bougainville there was a heap of, one area of the

camp that we didn’t know, but the blokes up on front line guard and our blokes just walking in and took the other tents, took them clean, all hell broke loose, when they come back at the end of the work, down from the front line. But the blokes, our blokes just grabbed, I am going to stay in this, they are just lying around, that’s mine. But otherwise, they had their own ways, their own ideas, but

they were always a feeling to them of being a super type of bloke because they had the equipment we didn’t have was half of the answer. But my experience was that they were not trained as well as the Australian blokes were trained. Whether it be the army blokes, the air force blokes, I don’t know much about the navy blokes, but in those categories that I dealt with them.

Radio gear we

had good equipment, good enough for what we needed. Probably the best Yankee set I used was a receiver, I forget the name of it, receiver, was a good receiver, a beautiful receiver, but the best equipment that I struck was the Japs. We first started to move in Bougainville they captured a Japanese

section of radio gear I think a set of K’s somewhere, and that gear and I look at it, we were not in the race, no wonder they could blot us out, the equipment and radio, little portable transmitters and that sort of stuff it was beyond our usage and the stuff we had.

No. Bendix receiver was the one I was thinking about, we had a few of those on

loan. We had enough equipment, our transmitters and so on, we were able to equip ourselves and I think as good as the Yanks equipment go. We could always get out our transmitters, receivers and so, the Kingsley was a good receiver, the main one. But otherwise, we had no trouble communicating, we had trouble with communicating as anyone, atmospherics, jamming, it’s going to happen, you work your channels.

Yes, your regular letters, you send regular letters home. Pretty cryptic, some blokes did, it depends who was writing letters. Some blokes would right every damn day, some would write four times a day. Normal blokes that were unattached, you’d write to your folks say once a fortnight. You’d get a letter back and then you’d write one again. A typical example of that was when I was at Karumba,

we almost run out of ammunition, we went duck shooting, and we didn’t have ammo, I wrote home to my mother, and said, “I wish I had my 22 in my drawer at home.” and the next thing she wrote back was that the Federal Police come and knocked on the door and she packed them up and sent them and the Federal Police grabbed her for sending ammunition through the post because she had just packed them in a little packet because they were lead weight. For her time in her life to have Federal Police knock on he door that was the end of her world I tell you.

These things happened in the relationships with your family. My father sent me up a radio once in Townsville, he had friend who was still manufacturing in Sydney, we didn’t have a radio that picked up the broadcast stations and it was short wave radio, I couldn’t cart it, it was too big so I gave it to someone else when I shifted from there.

Any feed was good but the trouble wasn’t that, you

couldn’t eat the food. You weren’t used to that much tucker, your stomach was regulated to so much per day per person per meal and you got a home cooked meal put in front of you there was no way you could eat that home cooked meal. I think I found too the bed was too soft for you; I used to have to go and lay on the floor for a while. Changes in respect of the bed, it was too soft for you.

No, not particularly. One thing I was

worried about was the traffic but I got used to that. Life was much the same. Life hadn’t changed over the war years. Petrol rationing was the only problem that came with the force, still had petrol rationing after the war and even when I got married we had to save up enough juice [petrol] to take my father’s car and we had to work a system whereby my father in law would save petrol in a

44 [gallon drum] to get a bit of petrol and he would trade that juice in the 44s to someone who had coupons to give to us so someone could go away on a honeymoon. Your ration coupon tickets you had to get from somewhere.

Yes, I wrote to her regularly. You will find the book she put out the letter I wrote her from the troop ship in the book there and when I came back I got onto her about a week after I come back, we got together.

The first night we went out we ran out of bloody petrol at the back of Parramatta. I had to go and knock an uncle up at three o’clock in the morning to give us some juice to get home.

'47.

Even now you have a relationship that is different because her service career matches

my background. My background matches her. Being in the same trade you might say and there are certain people you knew, like one of the WAAAFs with her, I went once on a trip from Bundaberg to Rocky [Rockhampton] to check out the communications down there and stopped over night and one of the girls there got married to a mate of mine and she was a great mate of May’s up north. So you picked these little relationships up, communications along the line,

people you knew somewhere had the same background.

No, you’ve got a situation where as I said, on my own, moving around, there is only one bloke I ever kept in contact with, Garth Sutton, who was on course with me, first of all on Wirraways, he got air sick, only lasted a couple of weeks, later on and they put him on instructional

duties out at Maryborough, instructor and he was still an instructor at the end of the war and he was in Canberra for a while and his parents lived on the coast and I met him in Canberra and went down to Canberra. Now and again I get communication from him. Another mate, Bob, up here, lived up on the mountains up here, Beach Point, and he just moved and

disappeared down to Tasmania and never saw him again. There are no long relationships in respect of communications where an army unit was together all the time for years. I was never together with any one for a long period of time and your time with them was broken time. In other words, an army bloke you all had to leave together, you had a day off together, did something together. It didn’t work that way in sigs office, you had shifts. One mate would go and have a shift

off that matched you to go out somewhere together but that would only be the once, next time the shifts changed and you wouldn’t be able to go out together. But you were all mates together, but not the same way, it’s a different world.

It didn’t happen. People can’t understand that. No good me going on an Anzac Day parade, I would waste my time.

No, never, the reason is where would I go? Good example, I’m in the 5 Squad Association, now, I go to reunion with 4 and 5 squadron every three months roughly. The only bloke I know was my old CO, Beau, only by working with him on the microphone. He blew a leg off in Bougainville going pigeon shooting, so he wasn’t there that long, he got invalided out.

I am a stray, I am an NC amongst all the officers and they can’t quite understand how I live, does that make sense to you, because to them, it’s like for arguments sake, the association has sort of been amalgamated with the later Vietnam blokes in our 5 Squad and helicopters right and they brought a bloke to one meeting who was going to assist

in changing things, mingle, it didn’t work, it has a different atmosphere. Anyway, Tom King, the sort of president of the organization, an ex- Wirraway bloke in 4 Squadron introduced this bloke and he said, “You wouldn’t want Jack in your unit.” and the bloke say “Why?” and he goes, “Six months reprimanded at Parkes I know that and he was a sergeant from 1940 till the end of the war.” and he said, “What did you do?” and I said

“No good talking to you, you wouldn’t understand.” Does that make sense to you? That’s the difference in relationship. You can understand probably why, I had to be self sufficient on my own. It’s different to an army unit where your mates are all together if something goes wrong you’ve got someone to lean on to be with at the time. You have to make up your mind what to do yourself, if you are running a sig station, you are on your own. I run Bundaberg, on my own with 20 WAAAFs and ten blokes.

That was my life. I come up that way in the air force, it was no different.

Not really, except I say the only thing you find when discharged, you’ve lost six years. At the age when you come out, six years are lost and you have to try and start again. I was lucky I learnt how to start again. I set a target in the public

service for a fifteen year program to do my grade examinations and I got all the list of the blokes in the Registrar General’s Department, their ages, their grades, worked out their dates of retirement, and there was a gap because of the war years. No one was taken on, so I went and did all my grade examinations which you don’t normally do to be in the public service for twenty years, knocked them all off, and suddenly all

resigned one after the other, bang, bang, I went over a hundred blokes in about three months, and all hell broke loose. Why did I get up there, it’s the same thing of planning I had to do in the services, you have to plan ahead what you are going to do. You are going to run a (UNCLEAR), you have to have enough blokes to do it. So, in effect you got to be able to organise yourself, discharge

somehow yourself, because you are on your own to organise yourself. Now I don’t know why at the present time, it might be trauma problems for the Vietnam blokes, to some extent I can understand, but not generally, because when you go through the war records, we lost more men in six months on Bougainville than we lost in the whole of the Vietnam War, it’s a big difference. The ramification of that for the service blokes and the army blokes should be a lot

harder in regard to World War II blokes than the Vietnam blokes after what about five or six years or whatever it was there. We lost all those on Bougainville more than they lost in the Vietnam War.

No more than I think the degree, I.

was able to run whatever system I had to run myself. Don’t touch my trade. I knew I was a good operator, a top operator; I could work any key with anyone. When I got discharged, air radio DCA wrote to me and offered me to put me through a first class ticket course free of charge when I worked with them. But the form of applications

said, “I undertake to do tropical service.” and I said, “No.” No deal. Otherwise, you have to pick up life as you go, don’t look back over your shoulder, never ever look back over your shoulder. That’s my motto. I work out of the Registrar Generals, I work out, it’s finished, that part of my life is finished. I built a house at Oatley myself, most of my own work, on the river, thirty yards in high tide from Georges River. I walked out of the house over night,

bought a house at Kirrawee, had a mate at Commonwealth Bank, just go and buy something and get a loan, I walked out of two houses to come up here, threw my gear in the car, took my four kids and just moved out overnight. Have a look over my shoulder; I’ve got no regrets what I’ve done.

Don’t think so. I will go through my units basically.

Townsville, I made my way, went fishing with a bloke, when I had time, I got mixed up with the Catholic Church when I had time, I had my soccer, when I had a chance, so I sort of filled in my areas as I went. Bundaberg, I had friends in Bundaberg, luckily a mate that was at Coffs Harbour, his family had come from Bundaberg, so I could go and have, stop with them, not overnight, just have a meal and go out to the pictures with

him and his sister and that sort of thing and his wife, so I cold fill in my time basically, I had somewhere to go and something to do. Coffs Harbour, you had the beachfront, like a seaside situation, I was only there three months and didn’t have a chance to learn much else. I went to Karumba and made my own way at Karumba, the same applied, I had a bit of shooting, my watch keeping kept me going flat out, a different style of operating, you were more on your own

resources that you had to make the system work than what you would if you were in an air force unit because there were no second chances. Air force unit you could go back and get repeats and it didn’t matter if you missed something it doesn’t really matter they have the signal. But if you are working commercial like that you had to be a hundred percent right, dealing with operators. Some of them had fifteen years experience on me and you had to match up or ship out so I was lucky I was able to cope with Karumba and go to Cloncurry on recommendation and still hold myself there.

My life that way was occupied and even at Cloncurry I had a pool room to go to, my roo shooting, I got myself something to do, I organised myself roo shooting, something to do, not sit on your backside. You learn sitting out one night in the middle of winter at Cloncurry, bloody cold, galvanised iron hut, I have two big log fires going outside, midnight shift about three o’clock in the morning, I’ve got a tin can to make myself a cup of

tea, a line out for Morse key to receive a turn up inside and a Yank guard comes past, looking after the, I didn’t mention this about getting petrol, and he said to me “What you doing boy?” and I said, “I am making a brew.” and he said, “What’s a brew?” and I said, “Making tea.” and he said, “You don’t drink tea, you drink coffee. I’ll get you some coffee.” He come back with a packet of coffee you see, so I tip it in the bloody billy, it’s boiling, and he said,

“You can’t do that, you have to percolate it.” To him, to boil that coffee was a sin. The same was having to get petrol. We didn’t have any petrol coupons and the vehicle air force needed petrol coupons we couldn’t run it, we used to go and milk the petrol tankers at night when the guard went round. Roll underneath the tank, drain off a jerry can full and we’d run on a hundred octanes, it was hot but it used to run.

In other words you met the situation and you found your way out of it, no one is going to tell you, you go and do it.

My career was set out, 21 days at Laverton and 21 days at Point Cook and five months at a course,

so in other words I was conscripted to go a certain way, does that make sense? It followed my line everywhere I bloody went because not because I bucked authority but to me it wasn’t rational. In other words, say at the depot at Bradfield Park, why would I sit around the bloody base all morning doing nothing, I was going to, not for anyone, I may as well be at home, putting my

ferrets out in a warren somewhere. I told you a story about when I went home from Bundaberg on leave and I went and borrowed my mate’s dogs, to go rabbiting. I went out the back of Toongabbie way, the back of Northmead, it was all bush in those days, so I had two beagles, my mate he lived up on an orchard, a

protected industry, he was a draftsman, and I used to go and get his dogs, it didn’t matter, so the dog set up a rabbit and the rabbit went through the scrub, me after it, across a clearing and there is a clump of scrub in the middle. Into the scrub the dog went, me after it, flat out. In the middle, what do I get, an army bloke and his sheila [woman] and the dog’s licking his face! What do I do? “Sorry mate.” and cleared off. Now he never expected to be

out in the wilderness and some bloke turned up with ferrets and two bloody dogs in the middle of a tryst with his girlfriend. You had this happen on your way while on your leave, I had no one else to talk to, my mates weren’t there, when I went home on leave, there was no one to talk to, I used to go and have cups of tea and scones with all the relations and neighbours. The girls I’d go to church with, I would go to the pictures with them and as I always did, I would go with them and walk them

home and it was the same deal. But they stuck together. I think one had a husband in the navy, one in the army, another girl was sort of free, there were four of them and they all had their own commitments to some extent.

You still got recognition of your service, the recognition of the fact, I

do, of what the army blokes went through. I didn’t have to suffer but I know from my mates, Lanky, and these blokes I was particularly very close to at the time, not being with them but being associated with them in the nine months or 12 months at Bougainville that you worked with them that you know what is going on. A good example is I helped a bloke out, I look after service blokes with Veteran Affairs problems, and a bloke from Ingham came to me and he was deaf,

he had a problem because he worked for the mill and it was going to create a problem to put his application in. This is how the world doesn’t understand. “Where did you camp mate?” and he said, “When we come out of the front lines we camped down near.” some area it was a trading area for the Yanks, they had a big trading

area the Yanks did, you could buy Japanese cards, Japanese money, photographs they’d taken off prisoners when they killed the blokes, when they first moved in on the islands, swords, a lot of them made up swords, you wouldn’t touch them, samurai swords because they were making them out of car springs, and polishing them up, anything you wanted in this particular area.

He said he was camped along side of that and I said, “Whereabouts?” and he said, “Near the artillery unit.” So when I did the application, I made his application, I assumed he was shooting guns all the time, not being out on the front line. Does that make sense? I match my knowledge with the blokes I deal with.

Whether it’s aircraft or army because I worked with an army co-op squad and work with the army blokes. You’ve got an applications, one bloke for arguments sake, he was in the army, got a heart problem and I sat there with him and I said, “Tell me, you spent eighteen months in New Guinea, what else do you have wrong with you?” and he said, “Nothing.” and I said, “Why?” and he said he was a pharmacist, he treated himself. You strike this with blokes; you have to understand their way of life. Each unit in these type of services, navy, I didn’t have much to do with the navy, it was outside our

category completely.

No, I suppose, it gets back to I think I didn’t have anyone to lean on during the war, I didn’t have any mates to lean on. So if you are in an army unit and you have a problem, your mates will get around and give you a hand or you’ll work something out. I didn’t have that, so for me to go out to civilian life, I had no more to deal with obstacles than I did in service times.

So you just kept moving until the next day whatever it might be.

Nothing, it’s another day. I’ve got no commitment to it because I can’t reconcile Anzac Day to any particular period. Not to me, I can’t. I work with aircraft, we lost blokes in aircraft, it happened on various times,

you working 24 hours a day, basically that’s your routine and that’s how your world functioned on 24 hours a day, your biggest deal would be when dawn came up in the morning to break your nightshift.

No, not particularly. It was just an era you had gone through and he didn’t ask much,

I don’t think he even asked me, he knew I used to write that I wasn’t getting out and I used to get that message home every now and again but that was nothing.

If I hadn’t got overseas service, whatever happened to me during service time, well, it wouldn’t have happened to me on the other side of the coin, I wouldn’t have got malaria, I wouldn’t got dermatitis,

like you see me crying now that’s from dermatitis, I can’t get rid of that, it doesn’t worry me, it’s just a thing that happens, no good grizzling about it, I’ve got worse problems, other blokes have worse than me, I was in the military hospital in Randwick, I had a knee operation, I had malaria break out on me, dermatitis, I wasn’t worth two bloody bob, but I got up and stood on my foot and thought, “I can walk out of here and other poor bastards never will.” That taught me a lesson looking down that ward.

Some of those blokes I knew didn’t last that much longer. In life that taught me a lesson, in life.

Yes, that’s in the jungle areas. Dermatitis I have to watch, it will come out every now and again. I can’t get rid of it, you just put up with it.

You can’t.

Gradually it works out of your system. Last year I haven’t had it, when I was up at Ingham ten years ago, I got crook. The woman over the road come over and put blankets on me, they were going to get the ambulance and I said, “No.” just give me aspros every couple of hours, I will get out of it in a couple of days, a week.

They get you Atebrin, interesting you ask that question.

Atebrin was in two forms, polished and unpolished. If you had a bloke who was difficult in the section, my job as in charge of the section would make sure every bloke took his Atebrin tablet every day. Watch him take it. If a bloke was being bloody difficult, he got an unpolished tablet stuck on his tongue. If he wasn’t mucking about he got a polished tablet, it went straight down. So that bloke knew along the line he had been got at, he knew he had been got at. He couldn’t do anything about it, so these are things that used to

happen in general operation.

Yes, suck.

They would have to make their own assessment. All right, the book I am writing, I am half way through it. That’s going to be the title, “Whack him on a charge.”

The “SOS” means help. I asked my grandkids about different names for my book and they didn’t understand me. I said to Jack who is in the army cadets, “Whack him on a charge.” and they said, “What did he do grandpop, what did he do?” so I said, “He’s in trouble on a charge.” and they said, “We know.” and I said, “We need to put SOS.” and they said, “Help?” and I said, “That’s right, help.” So that’s the title of my book. So to get through to them in my era I had to find some

junction in service wise for the moment to match up, does that answer your question?

Eight I think. Four in Melbourne, one at Bradfield Park, one at Parkes, one Townsville, one Bundaberg,

that’s eight.

They wrote to me, I got a letter of after I got discharged inviting me to go back into the air force but no I couldn’t see it as a career, I couldn’t see it that way. I could only see it as a day to day month to month routine. That’s the way I sort of visualised it, not as a

future for so many years ahead, because promotion couldn’t interest me, I got to my peak in December '42 and I was still there in '46. So I had no aspirations to get to any other promotions For me, I’d reached a niche, I was a free man, they could do nothing to me particularly, I could come and go as I wanted, I could run my unit.

I missed, I had a ham [amateur radio operator’s] licence, I’ve still got a ham license, but to me for years, now they’ve knocked off Morse, as a communication around the world. I’ve got my cards there, I’ve worked all over the world, Russia, on the key, Antarctica, America, all these countries on the key to me it was a good hobby while it lasted because you matched up with blokes and you always match up the

send and speed of the bloke that is sending to you. If he comes back at you at 25, you go back at 25. I worked with a Jap bloke once, five words a minute, he was just struggling, that was the qualification for him, five words a minute and he was struggling at five words a minute and I come back to him at five words a minute. He comes back to me “First operator I work, first operator, thank you.” No one would listen to him at five words a minute,

does that make sense? Same in your service operation, same in air radio, you worked the course at the speed at the other operator, you wanted to be fancy and go to bloody fast, he couldn’t read you. He smartly woke up. No good pushing the key when he couldn’t go back and read it going back to him.

To me, it’s a loss. The younger generation won’t think of, they are on voice,

telephones, voice radio, different communication systems entirely. I don’t know, I can’t compare how communication would be in comparison to voice with Morse code, because with Morse code you’ll get through with Morse code, if you have to repeat yourself you will get through, it doesn’t matter what the conditions are you will get through. With voice at times I don’t think you will, maybe I am wrong, I am not technical in that way in the present situation I don’t follow it anymore.

That’s the way I look at it.

No alternative, it’s a thing that goes back to scratch. I joined the air force to be able to earn a wage and that’s a fundamental to start with. Where you go from there and your life from there on that’s the basis from which you start. You don’t

start because people are waving flags to me, that’s not the way I work. I don’t start because suddenly everyone is flying aircraft and they are pilots and these things that’s not my era, my era is the way I started, therefore your life follows along that line of commencement throughout your time.

Prior to my service career I found this, dealing generally with people I found that you had an officer type and an officer type for example. Some blokes didn’t deserve a “Sir.” didn’t get a “Sir.” and those who did, I’d like to think I mentioned the black jack orchid did I mention this particular thing sitting on the step at air radio and he recognised I was just an airman and treated me like an airman, little pilot on the

end got stuck into me because I was an airman, that’s the difference he wanted to get stuck into me to stand to attention. This was the thing you had to work out in the service how you dealt with a bloke. Like the bloke that whacked me on a charge for disobeying a lawful command in Bougainville, he shouldn’t have done that, he should’ve looked after his staff. He shouldn’t have seen that bloke get into trouble so he didn’t deserve a “Sir.”