Australians at War Film Archive

71 Kent Street, Richmond, I was born at home.

1923

shortest day of the year 21st of the 6th.

Well I was very very lucky we had a very good family life, very happy family life out of the four siblings there was only one bloke got a belting and that’s not bad. We never had a great deal of money during the depression times

but then again my father was unlucky he went to the First World War and he nearly died with intelic fever, which is typhoid I think and it affected his heart and he got sent back and finished up with a pension, war pension and the war pension helped us to eat a little better than the average family. But we had a good happy life and always had enough to eat. We lived in Richmond for a while and mother decided

she wanted to go to a better locality so we went out to Malvern and then Malvern sort of joined up from Malvern. But as far as my family life I couldn’t wish for better.

He only got to Egypt, he was an original like he sailed with their first original fleet from Albany, great big fleet left Albany in Western Australia and they all sailed across

and he served in Egypt, not for many months I don’t think, six months. But when he came back he wasn’t discharged out of the army he was made a recruiting sergeant and he went down Korumburra and he was a recruiting sergeant all through Korumburra, Gatha [Leongatha] all that way, drumming up recruit sort of business and he was discharged after the war ended.

No he never ever spoke

much about it. As a matter of fact I grew up thinking he was a fighter in Gallipoli and all that and he never saw a shot fired, never found out till after the war. But then again old soldiers never talk much really.

Oh yes he used to go and march every year, I used to go and watch him march. Used to wear his

medals to school, even now I’ve got a special jacket in there, I’ve got my medals and I’ve got his three on.

Yeah he finished up TPI [Totally and Permanently Incapacitated pensioner].

He was a lorry driver, like truck drivers are today, in those days there was all horse and carts in the main and he used to work delivering beer.

I used to go out with him on school holidays, it was great day out, out all day delivering beer to all the pubs and I’d get a lemonade at every pub we stopped at.

Yeah, he used to let me drive on the quite roads, I’d be sitting up there about ten year old driving a pair of horses.

Yeah, you go in the brewery,

go in the brewery pick up a load, you might have about eight pubs to do, as a matter of fact the Royal Oak pub up here which is roughly fourteen mile from Melbourne, I was with him one day and it was eight o’clock at night and he was delivering his last load and about two hours to get back so we got back at ten o’clock that night. It was lovely summers night no cars on the road, leisurely life.

Oh yes, yes and I think to he was a very good drinking man, respected, I never ever saw him drunk and I know he drank a lot of beer. Cause it was free.

Well that was sorry tale there she wasn’t the best of health and she died when I was seventeen. I was in the army,

I joined up, I wanted to join up and get away cause I was a big lad and she wouldn’t let me go because I had two elder brothers and she used to say, “You can go when your elder brothers go,” so I said, “Well can I join up the militia full time so I can be ready.” Cause we heard at the Victorian Scottish Regiment were calling for volunteers to build them up to strength, like the war was on at the time, this was 1941. So myself and two mates we went down and we joined up we went into camp and

I come out of camp and in between the camp and the time we went back again she passed away, she was only forty-eight. So the war was a bit of a relief to me I could get away and get away from family atmosphere cause it was pretty sad.

Well

I started work when I was thirteen, actually I’m a bit of a gifted boy I went to school at four and they shifted me straight from the first grade into the second so I was, I left school when I was thirteen and I was in year ten and I was a pretty fair sort of scholar but Depression days nothing for kids. I remember we had a kid at Richmond Tech, I went to Richmond Tech and he was brilliant, absolutely brilliant, could do anything, like 99% and 95% and

all that, he left and I had to come back for the next year to go to year ten and he was delivering groceries on a pushbike. I’ll never forget that, now he’s a bloke that could of gone to uni and romped it through, doctor, lawyer, anything, that was the good old days, you had to have money, getting like it’s getting now you’ve got to have money to go to the uni, only the rich are going to get there.

I remember in the fifth grade in Richmond, North Richmond State in the middle of winter kids would be coming to school bare footed and the teacher used to bring three lunches to three kids, never bought any lunch and she used to bring this lunch and give these kids a feed. As I say it was a battle but we got through, well we never knew anything different, it was the way you were bought up, good clean

family fun. And I think I was about seven when we got our first wireless and something marvellous to get a wireless, these kids today with their computer games and everything like that it’s running the world. We made our own fun yeah.

I went to North Richmond State and then we shifted out when I was in the fifth grade and I went down to North Caulfield Central and then

after six I went back to Richmond Tech to go back to all me old Richmond mates. We used to ride a bike, pushbike from Malvern to Richmond everyday, how’d you like to do it now with all the traffic.

I’d be fifth grade…about eight or nine,

didn’t like it.

Yeah, I lost all my mates but I knew I was going back to Richmond Tech, I was only there about sixteen months, the tail end of the fifth grade and I did the sixth grade and I went back to Richmond Tech for three and a half years.

Richmond was quite good, all honest battlers,

I’ll tell you something the housewives were the cleanest women in the world. We, I had an aunt she used to brasso the tap and paint the back of the gully trap, you could drop your meal on the kitchen floor and eat off it, they were scrupulous, clean housewives, that’s all they had to do, nothing else to do cook. They were mothers and housewives, no diversions no women hardly ever worked, stopped home and looked

after the kids. And we were a big family, mother was the eldest of nine and they used to all live around close to each other, you understand what I mean, they all got married, there were five families within one hundred and fifty yards of each other, so it was one great big family. And all friends, never used to fight or squabble.

Four, three boys and a girl.

I was last, I was the baby.

My brother was about eight years older than me I think, if I remember rightly, my sister was about six and there was a bit of a gap and there was only eighteen months between my second brother and myself, and there all gone I’m an orphan now.

Like in the family?

Oh well everybody, I used to fight a little bit with me next brother up cause he

was a little bit of a black sheep, there was nothing wrong with him but he was just that little bit different to us, like three good kids and this bloke. I think it was because the three of us were very smart at school, like amongst the top and he was in his grade he was down, he wasn’t very smart at school. Whether that got him down, bit of a complex, it’s the only thing I could work out why he was, but he wasn’t that bad at all not really, bit hot headed but neve got into any real trouble.

Oh like schoolwork, well I liked everything, I liked school, maths, I liked geography and history and that’s why I’ve got this bent now on military history, I was always a reader to. My eldest brother used to be in a book club and I was bought up on Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson, when I was about ten, he’s

got a couple of books, life story of Henry Lawson and that. I found that being so young though that when it got up to the higher grade and we got onto trigonometry and geometry and solid geometry I started to battle a bit there, whereas I used to do it easy. But I had no ambitions, we had no ambitions to kick on in life all you wanted to do is get out and make a few shillings and put money in to keep the house going that was part of your life. No trouble

to get sixteen bob a week and ten bob straight over and be happy to do it. But then I was a great worker, one stage there I was delivering fruit for a fruiter on Saturday mornings, oh and after school I’d do a little paper round, not a big one then night time I’d be selling lollies up at the New Malvern Theatre, like I was self supporting.

No,

well I bought a pushbike and paid it off on hire purchase, I think it was seven and six a week I paid off it, something like that I forget what it was.

New Malvern Theatre, it’s gone now it’s not there. But you started off selling lollies but the prime job was ice cream in summer, you made more money, you got commission you see. But my big brother he was the

lolly boy and he got promoted up to the ice cream boy then I got his job. Yeah, working family.

Well this brainy bloke he stood out a fair bit, I mean we had

two or three really brainy blokes but the teachers were the main ones, most were returned men from the First World War and there was one bloke there Mr Buckingham and he was shell shocked and he was in a bit of a bad way, but we knew that.

Oh he’d sort of went a bit off at times and sort of went a bit queer, I just forget now it’s so long ago, but he wasn’t normal. We

had another one, Mr Young, we didn’t like him cause he was a bit savage, but no there were some good teachers there.

No all strictly males.

No not Richmond Tech, oh the state school and the central school there were women teachers. Matter of fact we had a teacher at

North Caulfield Central in the sixth grade and he finished up director of Pentridge Gaol, oh he was a hard savage man, just the place he should have been too. We happen to be sent to his class cause our teacher was sick and when you walked in that classroom you just sat there and you did not look left or right, only centre. Mr Whatmore, we only had him for a fortnight.

Oh you’d get the cuts, the hand out, this Mr Young I’ll tell you about he had a little thing black strap and by god it hurt, he used to have us terrified to, you’d get in there, arithmetic, yeah he was arithmetic and you never lifted your head. And he laid the strap alongside the desk, should be more of it you know now days.

Oh I don’t know I never did anything wrong.

Oh the kids that wasn’t so smart and used to play up a bit, my memory’s not that good to get all the rest of that, but as I say I loved school, I really enjoyed it, never worried me about going to school.

Well I was a pretty

athletic young bloke I was a very good runner, high jumper and pretty good swimmer, there’s all me trophies up there and the last one I won I was seventy-eight.

Oh that’s the swimming club, oh club champion one year, I started swimming again when I was fifty.

Yeah well we’re all old diggers and we started up a swimming club, we used to swim against different other clubs. Used to go to Sydney every year for the

Australian championships cause they were very strong over there and Minto RSL won the Tobruk Shield two years took home the Tobruk Shield and I was seventy four when I swum in that last one. But it was handicap, closest to time, you nominated a time you see and the first time we were point one one off our nominated time over three hundred meters. And then we went up to Albury and we weren’t much far off that

so we won it twice and lots of clubs up in Sydney would give anything to win it once, considering us Melbourne guys are pretty week swimmers compared to those Sydney people. On thing I regret about sport is that I never played football very much, I loved football I finished up very wrapped up in football. Cause my mother was sick and I was the youngest

I’d come home from school and I did her shopping and did all me little bits and pieces that she wanted done and then I’d go and do me little paper round so therefore I never kicked a football really until I was fifteen. And then when I started work and I was playing senior football for the Malvern when I was sixteen and then seventeen I joined up. I came back at twenty two and then I played football until I was thirty, but I would have been a lot better footballer

than I was, cause I could never play as a kid like I never had the experience.

From a young age she was not very strong.

I really don’t know, I think she got a blood clot and stopped her heart, we never ever talked about it. What happened when I was seventeen

we all went to the war, my two brothers went to the war and my sister married a sailor and went across to live in Western Australia and the family broke up so there was nothing discussed, never got round to asking see. But I went to a dance one Sunday night at Hawthorn and everything was all right and I walked in and me mother was dead.

Yeah

well as I said I was, that was May 1941 and the government got wind that the Japs were up to something so they started calling up the nineteen year olds and they called us soldiers back in full time duty, so therefore we were full time duty Militia. And when the Japs came into the war Western Australia were in dire troubles cause they had three battalions, with their small population they had

three battalions and the AIF over in the Middle East and they had four battalions, that roughly just under four thousand men to guard Western Australia. So they called for help and Victoria sent three militia battalions, like the best they had to go across to Western Australia for garrison, we got stuck there for sixteen months. Western Australia was good but

you get away and get a beer occasionally and your always near a country town to get in sort of business. A lot of the time you’re out in the scrub and flies and crook tucker.

Oh we,

my favourite topic, we had a wonderful life cause it was dances on every night of the week, you could got to a dance very night of the week, little churches hold dances to make funds and we’d be out dancing for four or five nights a week. And they were well controlled, no grog even though we were sixteen, fifteen, sixteen and seventeen, we had a little group, girls about eight or ten of us. Being the old time dances the ‘Pride of Erin’ and the ‘Sharmane’ and all those things

and the ‘Quick Step’, no we had a good life that way, never any trouble.

Oh the big dance, our main dance was St Kilda Town Hall, that was the big one, they used to have a big eight piece band and best musicians in Victoria and the girls had long dresses and the boys had to have a suite, collar and tie, or you wouldn’t get in. And never any grog, no drunks, no fights. And then you’d have these little churches, old

dances like Tuesday night and 2 bob to go in, something like that, shilling and the money would go to the church funds. Then we used to have, one of our greatest things we’d hire a, the old furnisher wagons and two bob in to pay for the wagon and we’d go to bush picnics, we’d go up to Lilydale, there was about twenty, thirty of us take a picnic. Get older then we might take a couple of bottles of beer.

Oh sixteen,

seventeen.

Oh yeah we all knocked around together there was no hanky panky, just like brothers and sisters more or less we were.

Oh go to the dances, we four or five boys would go to the dance together and the girls would be at the dance and we got to know them, then we’d go on the picnics together and all that.

There was no drugs or cigarettes or anything like that those days, I’ll tell ya, good clean fun.

No not really, not a special girlfriend, I was more or less, what I started playing football at sixteen like I was football mad, I never ever took a girl out sort of business.

Malvern in the COD yeah.

Only had the one year, yeah I hadn’t played a real game of football in me life and they put me in the forward pocket to keep me out of the road, do you understand football do you, do you play yourself?

So they put me down in the forward pocket and I kicked two third of the goals, of the teams score. We played Moorabbin and they kicked seventeen odd goals and we kicked three and I

got two of them.

No, no. Then a funny thing, two of mates were two of the best schoolboy footballers in Victoria, the three of us used to knock around together. And one bloke he got signed up with Melbourne when he was fifteen, they took him at fifteen years old but he was too young and he come back. But then he was residentially

claimed by St Kilda, so we went down, he and the other mate they had to go down to St Kilda to meet them and I just tagged along for something to do and I wasn’t a good footballer at that stage. Anyway they go down and they get signed up and the official from St Kilda sees me and five foot eleven and a fair sort of a build and he says, “What about you?” I said, “I can’t play football,” so they signed me up. So I went and trained with them,

yeah I trained with the big boys, cracker nights and the fountains and the, cause I looked like a footballer, I was pretty fast and I was pretty well built but I couldn’t get the ball to kick. I played tow early practice games and then I signed when I was seventeen, just three months off eighteen and I joined the army, in May that was so before the football even started.

I don’t think I’d have played league football but I would have been a lot better footballer when I finished up. Although I did play till I was thirty, I came out of the army and played me last game when I was thirty. I played in a, used to be known as the federal league which was classed as the strongest union comp, other than league first, seconds and A grade ammos [amateurs].

I’ve got a photo in there of me in the premiership side.

Born and bred in Richmond and followed Richmond, my big brother always, he was a great brother, he looked after me, he used to take me to the football when I was about eight every week, well not every week, we used to go down to Richmond, Collingwood. And then I got, when I was kicking the football around Malvern and

then I got down to St Kilda when I was seventeen, came back and I was twenty two and I had a cartilage out so I was actually twenty three when I started playing football again. And then I had a son, I played football till I was thirty and I loved football that much I took on training for the same side I played for and I was a trainer for nine years. No unpaid just for the love of it. Then my son was nine and I sort of decided to take him to the league football

and I wouldn’t go to Richmond because they were a pack of bashers, Jack Dyer, old Jack Dyer was a wonderful footballer but he couldn’t coach. And St Kilda had a pretty fair sort of a side and it was a good ground to get to so we started taking my son down to watch St Kilda until he started playing football himself. Then I sort of got attached to St Kilda.

Oh yeah.

Well I’m

at eighty now I go up and watch them train up here, once a week I just go up there and take me seat and sit there and watch them train, I am a very happy man. See I’m eighty and with a bit of luck I might make ninety and over those next nine years I should be able to watch a very good football team after years of watching a very indifferent football team.

Yeah we used to go to Punt Road, yeah we always went to Punt Road and to Collingwood, I don’t know we never ever went to, I can’ remember where I used to go but mainly Richmond. But then when you played you never followed league football, you played Saturday.

Oh different altogether, they were a lot slower, you’re on the half back flanker you stayed on the half back flank, you never left that position. You never come in, it was kick to kick and you always kick to a pack, there was none of that lead in like they do now and you never hand balled. The only time you hand balled was in trouble, understand what I mean, if you were in trouble you never hand ball.

But slower but a lot better to watch I reckon me self, good high marking, still it’s a wonderful game today. I mean this year there starting off bad with all this head crunching, who do you barrack for anyway?

Oh well everybody’s got a soft spot for St Kilda, yeah your one of my mob then, I’ve got a soft spot for Richmond, long as you didn’t say Collingwood.

Yes Tim Watson’s got a good article in the paper the Age this morning, about time they looked at all this, blokes getting hit around the head, punching the ball and knocking them rotten, so it’s about time they stop, they’ll ruin the game.

Well in the old days there was one umpire, it was pretty vicious, there’d be a lot of punches thrown in the pack, punches behind the game cause they had no three umpires

and they used to do some awful things. But it would only be getting one back, you get me I’ll get you back.

Yeah that’s right.

No I never played cricket cause I was always down at the beach, always out in the pool swimming, I just loved swimming,

never played cricket only football in the winter and swimming in the summer and that would be it. I was one stage there a chap lived in my street where I used to knock around with me mate and he used to see me running up and down the street jumping sort of business, we used to put a high jump thing. And he was secretary of the Malvern Harriers and he wanted to take me up there, but I never bothered going up.

I went there, I can work it out I was about ten when I went to Richmond Tech.

Oh well you had, your making it hard now, memory’s not that good. Well you did woodwork and

pluming, as a trade, you got into geography, history, English, algebra, arithmetic, modelling, another one art, all those different things, yeah about ten subjects or something like that. The funny part about it I was nearly, fairly good on the maths and the geography and history and then woodwork

and plumbing I was hopeless, yet I finished up as building tradesman and worked for me self all me life and had a pretty fair reputation at being a pretty fair sort of a tradesman, yet at school I was hopeless.

Well I always liked, even though I was hopeless at school, where I was getting eighty and ninety’s up in me other stuff I was just making, I think they used to give me

fifty five so I could get a pass cause the teachers liked me, cause I was only a little young kid. But always loved mucking around at home with me father’s tools and building things and I always wanted to get in the building trade. Cause I had a couple of me young friends their father’s were in the building trade and I always wanted to be a carpenter, loved to have been a carpenter. But one day I was round me mates place and his father used to have, drink beer with a tiler, wall and floor tiler

and this bloke was looking for a boy to put on and this old Harry Barnes he woke up that I was a active reasonably intelligent kid and he said, “How would you like to be a wall tiler Stan?” cause I was only delivering flowers for a florist, like filling in time to get a job, cause things were tough. And I said, “What’s that?” and he says, “You know.” I said, “In the building trade?” he said, “Yeah, yeah.” I said, “I’ll be in that,” so I went and did it.

I worked till I was seventeen, I was in me third year and I joined up the army and I must praise the government, the Australian Government for this, when I came back they gave me twenty-one months to finish me time, so I came out on full money. The Government paid me boss fifty-five per cent, no my boss paid me fifty-five per cent of my wages, full money and he got reimbursed and every three months it dropped five percent,

till I finished, so rather good for me. And that was, I think I was getting eight pound fifteen a week which is pretty good money after the war for building tradesman cause they were very scarce.

Yeah, florist delivery.

Oh yes used to go up and deliver rethe all around, used to ride a pushbike from Malvern to Kew and Kew Cemetery and put a wreath out there,

it was something to do as I said things were pretty grim, a lot of unemployment.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh I must have been on that for six months or so. But another thing to I learnt how to make posies and wreaths, if there was nothing to do in between I used to help them, I can still make a, if I had the wire and the tooth pegs I could make Cath [interviewer],

a nice posy to take home.

I could yeah, I tried to do one a few years ago to see if I could do it, I’ve got a gardenia bush out there and picked the gardenias, rose leaves, nothing to it really, it’s so simple. They reckon you never forget your trade, whatever you learn you never forget it.

Yeah that’s when I went and became a tiler, I really,

I loved it I loved the building trade. So another thing to I was only fourteen, not quite fifteen, fourteen and you’re working with men and you learn quick, understand what I mean? Three years with men, when you joined the army you were right up with the other blokes that had sort of gone into office jobs and things like that.

Bathrooms and kitchens,

not roof tiling, no just bathroom and kitchen. Used to work on pubs, worked on everything, worked on everything. Mate of mine, older bloke he finished his time and he got a job in the Tivoli Theatre, renovation job and he got amongst all the chorus girls, chorus line and they’d be running past taking off all their clothes just for a quick change and he came home goggled eyed

a few times I can tell you. He was a bit of a young naive fellow too you see, that was the joke of the firm.

Well we had a boss and he had four tile layers, five tile layers and two apprentices, worked on the Alfred Hospital, oh worked in all sorts of places, big pubs and big flats.

No not really the old Royal Oak, was the Royal Mail Pub they pulled that down. But I have a funny tale, talking about football we got the job tiling the Collingwood football club dressing rooms. And the other apprentice and I, he was eighteen months older than me, so we decided we’d bring a football to work and have a kick on the ground. And Collingwood had a champion forward Dick

Lee and his old man old Wal Lee, he must have been about eighty and he was still a trainer. So out we go on the ground and we’re having a kick and the old sod kicked us off, he did kick us off, “Get off,” two famous names there if anybody follows league, old Wally Lee kicked us off the Collingwood football ground.

Yeah that was a good one. Oh I can bring a few names in.

Oh well I was broken, I was just starting to come good at seventeen, I still had two years to go but then I come back. But the funny thing after I came back, not laying a tile for over five years I was sent out to do a little work on the housing commission jobs which was just one course over a sink, and one course over the bath, and one course over a basin. And I sat there on me own, and I had very little trouble picking it up,

never forget your trade. If I was a bit slow the boss wasn’t worried because he was making money, he was sending me out and getting a couple of quid a day for me and he was actually only paying about quid himself, he was making big money out of me for the first six months. Then I only lasted two years, when I came out of me time and then I went and worked for me self, started up me own

tile laying business and went right through until I was sixty. Then I had a very enjoyable time from sixty onwards with being a tile layer, I bought meself a Kombi campervan and I still had all me old connections and whenever the wife and I went away for three months trip or six month trip in our Kombi campervan I’d do about five or six hundred dollars worth of cashies and build up the bank and away we’d go. Actually I made more money when I was retired than I did when I was working.

Oh yes I stayed at home right through.

Yeah paying board, as your wages went up you paid more board. And then I, when I was in the army seventeen and that was it.

Yeah ’37 I started.

No never took much notice, not interested, never had the television or the radio only the papers, we knew there was a war in the offering but it never worried us seventeen, sixteen year olders.

Not our world, girls, dancing, drinking beer and playing football, what more could you want. Actually the war came as a bit of a shock to most of us, we didn’t really expect it. We came home from a picnic jumped out of the furniture van out into Glenferrie Road Malvern and everybody’s talking about the war, they declared war that day, on the Sunday.

Or not the kids, yeah I think the adults did and the heads of politicians and business people, they would of, but never seemed to worry us, then we wanted to know how quick we could get in the army, we always wanted to join up.

No just an adventure, get out and get overseas,

never thought about fighting, that never came into our head. It tell you something when the fighting come in we soon lost the urge for that to I can tell you.

And see if I can find him, old uncle Harry, Harry Hawthorn, he was my mother’s youngest brother, out of nine so he was young enough to go to the Second World War, bit older, about 10 years older than me I suppose.

I’ll get round to check it up anyway.

Are we back on?

Yes I was the first to go in but the second brother he had a, I don’t know what happened but he left home and went, and the next thing you know he’s joined up, in the AIF [Australian Imperial Force], 2nd AIF and of course I never

saw much of him you see and then the other brother he was a very, well he was a great Militia man, he was in the Light Horse in the militia and real keen soldier but he worked for the PMG [Post Master General’s Department] and he was getting up a bit in the iron works, actually he did finish up he went to Sydney after he got married and he finished up the boss of the iron works in PMG in Sydney and a reserved occupation and he couldn’t, they wouldn’t let him out. He was a bit different to me, he was a placid bloke of the family,

he was a gentle, placid type, like where a lot of blokes they’d go and join up under a assumed name, but he wouldn’t do that, everything down the line with him. But he did find out, he got in the air force as an iron worker because they were short of iron workers so he got in the air force. And he was the smartest one of the family and they put him in the office of where he was and he finished up like a clerk,

company clerk we used to call them in the army. And he got to Madang, he got overseas but he never got within two hundred mile of a Jap. And the other brother went in the ack-ack [anti-aircraft artillery]. He got sent up to Darwin just after the first raid and he was in a few raids up there, he was on the Bofors [anti-aircraft gun] but he never got any further. They broke his battalion up and sent him to Canungra and they were going to put him in the infantry and he wrote to me, for me to claim him, and I’d just been pretty

torrid time in Tarakan and wrote back and said, ‘No bloody way I’ll claim ya to this’ I said, “You’re a married man.” I said, “I’ll do all the fighting for the other family.” And I got called up in front of the major and he shows me the letter with bits cut out of it, he was going to court martial me, cause I wouldn’t, told me brother, plenty more funny instances in the army.

Well I put me age up again to fifteen, the 2nd Field Artillery they had cadets, and they had a beautiful uniform, navy blue trousers, red piping, so I joined up there but I couldn’t get a uniform so I deserted, didn’t want to go there in civis I wanted a uniform.

Yeah. But I got in at seventeen that wasn’t bad.

No, army cause my father was an army man and I had a cousin lived with us, he was a wild man, his mother was very wild and he was very wild and my mother and father thought

well, this is fair dinkum, either one would kill each other, that’s how badly they used to get into each other. So mother and father took cousin Ronnie, he came to live with us when he was about fifteen till he was about twenty one. And he was a man, he was a top soldier, he went in and he got what they call, he was a Sergeant, had no hope of getting a commission those days cause he never had any schooling. They had an AIC, Army Instructional Corps and they dragged the top sergeants out

of the Militia to teach potential officers in the AIF and he wanted to get in the AIF, which he eventually got in to the 8th Div and never came back from that, but that’s another story. But he was a real top, keen, so I was bought up in an army atmosphere.

Sixteen, oh about sixteen years in September

sixteen years and four months.

Too young, well I could of done like a lot of other kids did and join but I couldn’t because my mother being sick see I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t leave her. If I hadn’t had a mother then, if she’d have been dead I’d have likely joined up when I was sixteen, in the 2nd AIF, like no mucking about, cause there was quite a heap of kids fifteen joined up.

Oh not so much mates of mine but I’ve heard of blokes.

Yeah I think I might of, not to any great extent though. I do remember talking to my mother about it, she said, “You can join up when your brothers go, you’ve got two elder brothers,” she was a pretty smart women my mother, she was not just because she was a housewife, but very sensible women and she remembered

vividly the casualty report coming through from the First World War, like my father coming back.

No they were all boys bar the old uncle Harry, she had seven sisters and uncle Harry turned up, out of the blue. But there was only two in their generation and that was my father and her second sister, Uncle George

that were military age. Father come back TPI [Totally and Permanently Incapacitated] and Uncle George got a burst of machine gun bullets in his chest and he died very young, he died in 1926, after the war. But my generation every, all the cousins and one uncle were all in the army bar two women,

my sisters she’s married with a baby and another cousin, well she was the eldest and she had kids, but all the rest of us in the AWAS [Australian Women’s Army Service], WAAAF [Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force]. We had uncle, mother’s youngest sister, Uncle Dick he got killed at Crete, Cousin Ronnie got murdered, butchered by the Japs at Malaya, Uncle Harry got his knee smashed up at Alamein, Tel el Eisa sorry

I got my little nick at Tarakan, so wasn’t a bad effort for a family. The only thing I’m crook on is I’m suppose to be the smart one of the family and there all NCOs [Non-commissioned officers] bar me and Uncle Harry, but I could have been a corporal, I was offered stripes but I didn’t want them, I would have been the youngest NCO in the 5th Battalion if I had of taken them.

No they were only seventeen like we were you see and they were a bit different, oh I don’t really know cause I lost track

and some of them might of joined the AWAS or the WAAAFs but at the time they were too young. Three cousins I had, they were a lot older than me two joined the AWAS and one joined the WAAAF.

Oh yes.

Every year march yeah.

I used to go and watch him

but they never used to like kids marching in the First World War, it’s a bit different now.

Oh yes, don’t get me on it that’s me favourite, it’s like a mooma parade now, anybody march. They don’t like kids, they never liked kids marching now there’s a corner for kids, they want to keep it going, we can’t

the 2nd AIF can’t keep it going much longer. This mob here they weren’t allowed to march after the war, with the unit because they never went overseas, and they were a good, they did, what they did was quite good and a top Battalion, they would have been a good Battalion cause they were good types, they were all volunteers and fairly well educated and they wouldn’t let them march. I’m not knocking but they let the WAAAFs march, they let the Land Army march, they let Serbs, Croatians, Dagoes [Latins], next thing they’ll be putting

Japs in I reckon, I don’t think they’ll do that but it wouldn’t surprise me, that Ruxton.

Well not really, it was a very small one and or similar, people lined the barricades and they had drums, and it wasn’t a very long march because only the 1st AIF in it, and I was only a little tacker,

I never, just go and watch him from the barricades. But it’s different now.

Yeah well I did I got in, I lasted about six weeks, couple of months and I deserted, never turned up.

Oh down in the drill

hall, we used to go down to the drill hall to Chapel Street, it’s still there the old drill hall and march and drill and train but only in civis, you wasn’t a soldier if you never had a uniform, I only joined for the uniform, two or three of us, mates. One bloke stopped in and he went through the war with the 2nd Field Artillery and he finished up a sergeant.

No,

no, no. Well when you got your gun you just felt six foot eight tall, yeah never lasted lot had to carry the rotten thing, it used to get pretty heavy.

Well we heard a rumour that the 5th Battalion,

like that’s a Victorian Scottish Regiment, 5th Battalion wanted to build up their war establishment, that’s their full strength and asked for blokes to join up. So the three of us, mates used to play football together, actually we were four but one bloke he was in a reserve occupation, there was no good him signing away his apprentice. So we went down and signed up, Gibb Street drill hall and we got called up and went into camp at Mount Martha. And we did a three

months camp and then they let us out and in between that, that was May we joined up, June, July, August well that’s getting close to when the Japs are starting to move in. So they called us all back in like for full time duty and then they started calling the nineteen year older’s up to build us up to strength and they built us up to strength and when the Japs came in they sent us down round the coast, round Flinders Shore and

to guards down there in case the Japs were going to land down there, and I’d have love to have seen the Japs land down there in that coast, that would have been a butcher’s picnic. Yeah so and then the call come they wanted troops to go across to Western Australia so they bunged us on a couple of dirty, filthy old troopships, that was a decent old trip I can tell ya. If one had been in the evacuating the people from Greece and Crete you hadn’t seen that many holes, bullet holes and shrapnel holes,

oh stunk and smelt and ninety five percent of the troops were sick, five days of horror it was. They took us two hundred miles deep south to dodge the subs, cause there were subs around at the time, Jap subs even though the Japs weren’t in the war, freezing cold and took us five days to get across to the west. Only thing about that trip was that they, there was plenty of, you got two bottles of beer a day and eighty per cent were too sick to drink

so there was plenty of beer around the blokes, I never got sick I was one of the lucky few. But even then I didn’t feel like drinking too much beer in case I did get sick.

Yeah.

Yeah we enjoyed that, keen, we were all keen, no trouble. You talk about under age the old Brigadier Langley who was a pretty well known man from the First World War,

he was our brigadier and we were out on what they call the bullring, that’s where you learnt your initial training, marching and falling in and slapping arms and all that and there was about one hundred of us. And were sitting around there and he rides up on his horse and he says, “Right oh young fellows,” he says, “You in the army now,” he says, “And you can’t get out if you want to and we can’t kick you out, hand up whose eighteen years of age?” Few of the hands went up, “How many seventeen?” Oh about fifteen hands went up,

“Sixteen?” couple went up, “Fifteen?” one went up. Over half of us were all under age and he just laughed and rode away. No I enjoyed that, lovely camp, Mount Martha it’s a beautiful spot and the Highland Pipe Band used to wake you up every morning, and I loved the pipe. We were only out for about a month and they

called us back in. Well there’s another, I reckon I’m one of the luckiest soldiers in the 2nd AIF, they called us back in one night for volunteers for the 39th Battalion, you heard of those haven’t you what they went through. And my cobber and I, there was three of us, my cobber and I we joined up for the 39th Battalion that night and I came home and I had second thoughts, excuse me…….

where’s the wife…

Yeah called us up, they called us all up they were calling for volunteers for the 39th Battalion because they wanted the garrison up there because they knew the Japs were coming, but we never knew the Japs then, so I put my name in yeah and it was for me cobber. And I get home that

night and I was sleeping and I said to my father the next day I said, “Oh Dad I think I’ve made a mistake.” I said, “I put me name to go into New Guinea,” I said, “but there’s no war up there. The war’s over in the Middle East.” He said, “What do you want me to get you out of it?” I said, “Yeah if you don’t mind,” that’s right. So he rang up the adjutant and he said, the adjutant said, “We’ll take his name off on one condition,” that’s right, that’s how I came to full time duty, he said, “He’ll have to come on full-time duty.” Well that suited me right down to the ground so I went on full time duty and if

I’d have gone to the 39th on the Kokoda Track I might never have got home, yeah so that was the tale about the 39th, how lucky was I.

Full time duty you were in there for the period of the war, that was right I joined up for the three months and when I’d been on the full time duty for about month and they started calling up the

conscripts and we got a great heap, about two hundred to build us up to what they call war establishment, and that’s your full strength. And then when we got up to full strength they bunged across to Western Australia.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Well it’s a very famous battalion, it was started around about the

Boer War I think, I’ve got an idea it was, Scottish population, they more or less started it, you had to be of Scottish descent to join it. Because my father was a Scotchman, he come out from Scotland when he was fifteen. And when the First [World] War, they had a battalion of Militia before the First World War and they virtually went across the First War as the 5th Battalion AIF. And in our war,

the Second World War over half of them joined up the 2/5th Battalion, 6th Divvy [Division], that’s why there always after recruits to keep it going. And we used to wear the kilt and the sporran and the bangarian [?] and the pipes and all that, they were a pretty good mob, no trouble, not like when the conscripts came in we had a few blokes that weren’t too happy about it. But they seemed to fit in all right because there was so many of the good types, you understand what I mean?

Instead of all conscripts, if it had of been a battalion of all conscripts like the 6th Battalion, the sister battalion they got a lot of conscripts and they weren’t the very best, they all came from North Melbourne, gave the officers a hard time.

Oh well not,

no we never did it really that serious, I don’t even remember, I don’t remember the three months I was in going to a rifle range. We used to learn bayonet charging, bayonet drill and all that and laying down, used to go on skirmishing, playing soldiers, but very simple really, we didn’t have the hard training that the AIF got.

We got a fair bit in Western Australia, when we went across there anything could happen, like for argument sake when the 8th Divvy were in action and Lieutenant General Gordon [Bennett] escaped, he did the right thing, he came back and we had to go and make a jungle training camp. The Pioneer Platoons of three Battalions went down to Collie and we built the initial jungle training camp cause that was the only place in Western Australia that had something like jungle,

down by the big weir. And the three battalions, militia battalions over there had to go and do a jungle training course just in case they had to go into the jungle.

Yes that’s why he wanted to come back and that was his idea of coming back, he was a brilliant soldier that man, Australians best in my book. And what Blamey did

to him, crucified him and he could have learned all the lessons, he knew all about what was going on, and another thing too, we found out in Tobruk they used to go out in compass bearings like they’d spot an enemy post and they’d spot where he was on the map and they’d go out at night time to raid them, they had to go out by night. And in Western Australia they used to do that with us, they used to take us out at night with the compass bearings, we used

to learn, we were learning from experience of the Division over in the Middle East. Like Greece, they had to force, they went right up into Greece and struck the might of the Panzers and the Luftwaffe and they had to march down, along force march. So they gave us a nice little march, first day we marched forty miles, pack and blanket in soft sand,

and that’s from here to Rye. And the next day we had a skirmish, like sort of training and the next day we did another forty miles and another sort of little mock battle and twenty mile on the way home, that’s not a bad effort. And then on the day after that they just gave us a cut lunch and took us out eleven mile on a lovely river just to have a day’s rest, but that’s why they were doing that, we were learning from the experience

of the 6th, 7th and 9th Divvy.

No we never got them earlier, we did get a couple, we got a few officers, but a lot of officers they got sent back they weren’t any good, the army used to send them back to us

militia battalions I think, we never got the real good blokes. We got one CO and he came from the 2/5th Battalion and I knew a couple of blokes on the 2/5th, they got rid of him, he was hopeless, hopeless soldier. But then again they got rid of him from the 5th Battalion and they got a very good soldier from the 2/14th Battalion who’d been on the Kokoda Track, Stacey Howden. But he smartened up the Battalion, he was very good, he

saw what we were doing wrong, he was a top soldier, marvellous who a Battalion come good with a top soldier CO, if their keen enough. But then he was a bit too good to stay with the militia, he went to an AIF Battalion in New Guinea. But then they broke up the 5th Battalion, no that’s right they sent us to Darwin, we did our sixteen months. They were sending over another Militia Battalion, they sent a Militia Battalion from Queensland,

all the way to Western Australia, they were only sort of, then they sent us because we were more experienced and they sent us to Darwin and two or three militia battalions had been up in Darwin they got sent to New Guinea. So we had our boy camp at Western Australia, that wasn’t bad, we enjoyed that.

Oh down the coast?

Yeah Shore and Rye, we just camped along the beach and dug in weapon pits and trenches and prepared in case they landed. They would never thought they’d land but we had to dig all the weapon pits and our positions so if they did land.

Yeah, yeah always training, training,

we did about three years solid training before we got into action and we nearly all, only a couple of hundred got into action in the 5th Battalion.

Well Pearl Harbour was on, well we never heard much about the war because we were away in the scrub

and you never got into a big town, we never got any news, we never knew how the war was going really, all that time. We heard that Alamein was on, or there was a battle at Alamein, Greece and Crete, but we just heard there was a battle, we never knew the actual story, had to learn that after the war, reading books.

Oh only a couple of months, three

months and things started to hot up. Actually the Western Australian Government was screaming for troops, they were the ones that…she’s right the secretary will get it.

I’ll try and work this one out, I’ve got all me records inside there.

About, just before the middle of 1942 I would say at a rough guess, I’m just trying to work it out…yeah I’d say

around about May 42 we went across to the West.

Oh yes, god yeah they’d more than likely captured Singapore by that because they didn’t take long once they, after Pearl Harbour to get into Malaya.

As I say we never heard

any radio and we never got any newspapers and we just knew nothing about the war, and being young and sort of slap happy we just didn’t care much, we knew there was a war on and no news is good news as far as we were concerned. We might have been pretty worried if we knew what was going on. Like we never knew what those Japs were doing till after the war like, just as well cause there wouldn’t have been, we’d have fought hard on those Japs, we’d have given them some hurry up like if we’d have

known what they’d done to them. We had a fair idea after, towards the tail end of the war what was going on.

No, no the thing was, my idea was to join the Militia I’d get a transfer to the AIF, I’d put in for a transfer. But they mucked things up, when the Japs came in and the Militia were called into the

whole lot of it you couldn’t transfer out unless you got somebody to claim you, so I was stuck there and I couldn’t get across to the Middle East. No I was quite happy with the 5th Battalion, I really thought we’d get into action sooner or later once the Japs came into it, but I didn’t think it was going to take that long.

Well it was, it was a bit bad, they were a bit over the fence the AIF. But the funny part about it the AIF that came home from the 9th Div were mainly reinforcements and never saw any action cause the 9th Div got a hell of a hiding over there, and same with the 6th Div when they came back home, well most of their blokes got knocked off in Greece and Crete,

and they didn’t see any action, only about half of them, they were the blokes that were putting on the act, the blokes that hadn’t seen action. The chocos had a bad name but they cleared their name all right they did all right, as a matter of fact I think those 24 Battalion were chocos and the 57th and 58th they did more work than the 6th Divvy did and the 7th Div, they had a hard row.

But that’s by the by, those air force blokes, the dodos there, the ground staff when they start sticking off about chocos that used to upset me. But we never struck it cause as I saw we were up in Darwin, we were never anywhere near the AIF. But we did, we got the, when the 6th Divvy came home from the Middle East, the Western Australian Government demanded that the 2/11th Battalion, which was the 6th Divvy, that

they stay in Western Australia, so they joined up our Brigade, there was the 5th Battalion, 6th Battalion Militia and 2/11th. And the 2/11th they played up a bit on us but as I say they, I would say 75 of them were only reo’s and they’d seen as much action as we had. But we used to take great comfort, we used to beat them in football. We used to have inter-battalion games and used to always love knocking off the 2/11th.

No, we left before, no no such a thing then. I mean militia nobody heard much about them sort of business.

Oh he was tickled pink, he was wrapped.

No, not really never said much, might of but I forget. Well he knew I was safe to at the time, Militia never looked like going anywhere, pretty safe, might have been different if I’d have gone into the Divvy, 6th Divvy or 7th Divvy gone overseas he might have had a different

aspect.

Yeah round about, was just getting onto winter cause it was reasonably warm but it got cold two hundred miles south I can tell you, yeah I’d say it would be about that.

Oh yes it would be eight hundred,

nine hundred, it was up to full strength, they had to get the up to full strength. Before you shift anywhere, a battalion, they’ve got to bring them right up to full strength.

Oh yes we were pretty, they were a good mob, good mob of blokes, no strife with them all. As I say we got conscripts in though to build us up to strength

and there was a few of those blokes played up, but not many and they didn’t last long, they got shipped out, transferred them out.

Oh they weren’t happy being conscripted in and wouldn’t obey orders and put on a bit of an act, but they soon got smartened up. And there weren’t enough of them to cause trouble cause us blokes had joined up, we were for the authorities like, never got any

assistance from us, we used to look down on them, mucking about like that.

Well when I joined I was in the rifle company, well they did all the hard work and fighting and then they called for volunteers for the pioneer platoon, that’s Headquarters Company which is a pretty safe company to be in, we never knew that at the time. And I got

specialist pay and I met my wife’s brother and that, and that’s where we cobbered up then. And then two carpenters and a plumber, well we had an infinity there building trade, then we got a few bushies. We only had about twenty five to the platoon and sort of we all good mates. But then we never did any guard duty, we never did many exercises, we were mainly

building cookhouses and toilets and fixing up things, we even built a trailer once, to carry our stuff. And I think the best thing I had a piano and I learnt how to build a box for the piano, so we never did any real soldiering.

We went to a place called Melville, that’s just outside of Fremantle, just like a staging camp,

and we were there for a few weeks and then they had a camp at Guildford, that’s about twenty mile out of Perth, you know out to where the scrub starts. And we marched from Melville across there and we were there for a few months, Guildford, and that was near a big town, that was a picnic sort of business, you could get into town and have a couple of beers if you wanted to. Then where did we go to from there, we started going north to a certain

extent and I think we might have gone to New Norcia, you heard of that place have you? That’s where the, occasionally gets in the television, big monastery there. We were there, yeah that would be right New Norcia, then they sent us up even further to a place called Eglinton, that’s a country town. Then I can’t think of the place, lovely spot we used to buy crayfish for threepence each there, it was a crayfish port. Then

we got up to Geraldton, we were a fair way, we were six months or so in Geraldton, not Geraldton itself a place called Minnenooka, that’s twenty odd mile and that was a bad spot to be in, bloody flies and fleas and heat, bored, nothing to do, nearly as bad as Darwin was. Then, now I’m getting me self a bit mixed up here a bit, now in between all that we got bunged down to Collie, that was right, yeah they took us down to

Collie to build the jungle boarding camp, then we did a course there and we went back up north again, yeah, Dongara that’s the place where we had the crays. I’ve been back there, when we bought our kombi campervan we came back and went across to all those places we stopped at. And then we got shipped back home, back to Melbourne and then up to Darwin.

Oh garrison in case the Japs landed, if they’d have landed it would have been the end of us cause we had no ammunition, we had no artillery, we had nothing to back us up, like we’d have been sitting ducks. I think we had five rounds of ammunition, they had a fair bit in the Q [Quartermaster’s] store but that’s all we had on us. That was the idea just in case the Japs landed.

Oh we used to treat it as a little bit of a joke, we weren’t awake up to what was going on, we never worried about it because we realised that after a while they weren’t going to land because they were coming down through New Guinea.

Yeah we weren’t as far up as Broome, that was another six hundred mile further up, we didn’t

even know about that. We didn’t hear about Darwin getting bombed, occasionally I suppose somebody may have got a paper sent across to them, sent the Sun over to them, but never ever saw a paper.

No, no rumours, no just we were in bliss, never heard anything and you weren’t near a town to buy a paper, if you got into

a place like Geraldton you weren’t wanting to buy a newspaper, all you wanted was a feed of steak and a few beers, break up the diet.

Oh the usual goldfish, that’s tin herrings, woolly beef, M & V, meat and vegetables, tins, very rarely got bread, woolly beef and biscuits, porridge,

never got any cereal, powdered milk, yellow death, that’s powdered eggs, nicknamed that yellow death, we used to scramble them. Then they started to get a bit of frozen mutton in occasionally, that was good, we used to love that when we got it, not too often. Dehydrated spuds, dehydrated carrots, it, we were as fit as fighting fox, beautiful condition, no weight on us,

never hurt us. But she got a bit monotonous, but I was one of the lucky blokes I had a good appetite I could eat anything and enjoy it, but some blokes really suffered, picky eaters, they really suffered.

Yeah for a start, yeah the Rifle Company they’re the blokes that do all the fighting, so eight hundred in the

jungle, eight hundred in the company, Headquarters Company they’re the Sigs [signals], Mortars, Pioneers, what’s the other one…they were pretty safe, but the four rifle Companies they were the blokes that ride in the front line, they took the brunt of everything. You had a couple of Sigs attached to you, mortars backed you up, and Vickers machine gun, yeah, I’m

getting ahead of me self, I’m talking about Tarakan where I’m at Tarakan. Most of the casualties come from being in the Rifle Company. But as I say I had an easy war in Western Australia, cause I loved working with me hands, I was a carpenter all the way through, bush carpenter.

When I went up to the Pioneers, and

had to get their war establishment up, they never had time to go and do a trade test and they saw I was a tile layer in me, AB83 and they said, “Is that anything to do with brick laying?” I said, “Oh yes did a bit of brick laying,” so they made me a brick layer, no trade test and I couldn’t lay, oh a brick underneath the bath or something, I could lay a brick but very rarely, and they gave me nine bob a day, three bob a day. And then when we went across to Western Australia that was

all right but then we…

Well we didn’t do much at all really, we used to do a lot of

battle exercises and different stunts against other battalions, it was mainly doing that. I wouldn’t know what the Rifle Companies did but they could have been out on the beach, as we did down on the Peninsula, like build battle stations, like trenches and machine gun posts and all that. Now we didn’t do a great deal other than training, just training, training.

They did grab us Pioneers once, the battalion went out on a stunt, and I think this was patterned on some part of the war, but we were given a truck and a couple of pushbikes and we had a guerilla war, we were the guerillas, that was terrific. We used to wait for the battalion to march along the road and open up fire with blanks, then the battalion had to spread all around, like cover the flanks and all that and we used to jump in our truck and go ten mile up the road and have a rest till the next one. That

was a great one, that was a good one that one. Once we got to a farm house and we walked to the young farmers wife there and she gave us a magnificent feed of fresh vegetables, cause she never had much, it was a battling farm but she had a good garden and she cooked us up a lovely feed of fresh vegies, spuds and peas and we thought it was a Christmas banquet. She was a lovely person to she was. There’s a thing there, she was a young women and eight of us and she was as safe as a church, no worries

about, as if she was in a church, she treated us well and we treated her well. That’s one thing that stuck in my mind about that.

Not a great deal, well I’ll tell you something we were treated like kings in Western Australia, we were cause we’d come across to help save Western Australia, we were conquering heroes. Oh I’ll tell you what we

Vi, I call her Vi, Vi’s brother we were great mates and we’d been down to the pub and we were coming home back to the camp, few mile out of town and there was a church dance we thought and we walked in and we’ll go to this dance, it wasn’t it was a wedding reception. We finished up we got more attention than the bride and bride groom the way they were treating us, things like that. But no, as I say it was like boy scout camp Western Australia, nothing

serious at all, especially for us blokes we weren’t in the infantry sections.

Oh the pioneer platoon and an infantry battalion properly trained as the most important platoon. We could build bridges, bush bridges, like say your coming along and you strike a dry

creek and they can’t get the trucks over, well with axes and rope and wire we could build a bridge, we did those, we used to chop down trees and build a bridge. And explosives, we were taught how to blown down bridges, we were, that’s when we got this colonel from the 14th Battalion, he woke up we were being wasted, so he took us into hand and got all these things going, that we started to be trained properly

instead of being handyman around a camp we were, like we were trained to do our job, what we were suppose to do. That’s a very handy thing, you imagine army can’t move, can’t get across a great culvert we had the carpenters, bricklayers and that to build a bridge, rough as bags. We built a bridge up in Darwin but we had to blow it up, when they blew it up they blew the two corporals

up with it.

Yeah, oh all they got was covered in splinters but they were lucky, the thing went off premature.

Yes, yes, well it’s the tail end of WA. I suppose we went to about eight different camps and when you went to a camp you had to, as carpenters the first thing you did was cope the toilets, first thing you made, we built

toilets and then you fixed up the cooks so the cooks had a, could cook sort of business. That’s what we used to do, we built the camps.

Yes, oh no there’d be something there but we’d make it a bit better. Or sometimes we set up a camp, I think we set a camp up at Gin Gin if I remember rightly, yeah just

set it up.

No, I would say there might be about six infantry battalions spread through Western Australia, she’s a big place Western Australia, we had a sort of an area. Well our companies could be anything up to ten, fifteen miles apart, you might have a company

at Dongara and might have another little fishing village further up, fifteen mile up and maybe there, all spilling all over the place, miles apart. Battalion Headquarters, Headquarters Company I should they’d sort of be in their own little spot. Very rarely got together as a battalion.

It was boring,

only the fact that we were young and full of high spirits and we played football and basketball.

Kick a football around, we played cards a lot, go to bed early, nothing to do, we never saw a picture theatre, no it was just

well boredom, simple as that. Get up in the morning, loaf about, might do a bit of work, that’s it.

Oh yeah we had a battalion team if we ever got together, sometimes if you got close to a big town, Geraldton we’d play there, but never played a great deal of football really. No just, nothing,

just boredom.

Well we were lucky I suppose in the respect that being carpenters and that we were working, most of the time carpenter jobs. The rifle companies they were out training, mock attacks and marching and sort of mucking around.

Yeah.

Yeah well the infantry would be training, but as I say that doesn’t happen that often, my memories coming back now that we were all over the place, just

Infantry would be on their own, just somewhere up the line sort of business. We’d be in Battalion Headquarters and there was a great deal to do.

No, no we just,

no as far as we were concerned we just, unless we got a job to do, no we used to be just in camp mucking about, no parades, never got dressed up, always in shorts and shirts, nobody seemed to worry us.

And it was worse in Darwin, although in Darwin, oh I’ll keep to Western Australia, but I can’t say much more about the west. Well that Collie place, that took about three months we were pretty busy down there building that and then we did our course. Occasionally you’d got to a rifle range…we were up the other side of Geraldton for a while but that was sort of mundane sort of a place.

We had to build a jungle training camp, we had to put flying foxes over rivers, we had to do obstacle courses, what else would come under it, I should know it…just set up camp, put up a couple of tents, I’ve got photos over there were putting up the tents ready for the battalions to come in. Then they sent a Battalion down at a time to do the course, once we finished,

when it was finished all set up. We done all the as I say the flying fox across the river and bridges, all that sort of business and then we disappeared then, we went back to our battalion more or less, until we came back with the battalion, that was right. I think the course took three weeks to do, jungle training. They got special instructors from the people that had been in the jungle to help us like, put us through it.

Yeah we built the bits and pieces. And even in other camps we might build obstacle courses to like, if we got further around, that’s climbing up over palisades and sort of jumping over, hand over hand over ropes over creeks and all that business.

Oh you’d only chop down trees, never got a truck load of timber from a timber yard, it was all axe work and ropes and wire, it’s all bush work. We used to like that, give us something to do, sometimes we were glad to do those things, never mind doing it, instead of sitting round,

hanging round your tent doing nothing more or less. I’m just trying to work out, my memory’s…..we’d set up a workshop, we had a blacksmith and they’d bring in jobs for the blacksmith to do and six carpenters, tent maker for sewing up tents, the blacksmith he was a plumber, and that was our specialists, the rest are only sort of

helpers like.

Oh about that round, about that round yeah, bigger ones for the struts. I don’t know if I’ve got a photo there somewhere on a bridge we built.

No, no it was part of our training to chop down trees and build a bridge so then the battalion wouldn’t be held up like with the road. Another thing to we used to blow down trees instead of chopping ‘em, we used to drill a hole in a tree and whack a lump of geli [gelignite] and blow it up and she’d just fall over. That was more or less a training thing, we had to blow a bridge up, you couldn’t go blowing bridges up so we used to make the tree

like the struts of the bridge. So we learnt how to handle geli, gelignite. We weren’t very happy about gelignite, we weren’t too happy about that.

Cause your likely to get blown up, we blew our two corporals up, but they weren’t badly injured, got a hell of a fright.

Yeah we, you handled it with care, we weren’t over, when we had to do it we preferred not to do it we had to do it, part of your training.

Well taught how to put the fuse in the detonator and crimp it and then push the, drill a hole in the gelignite, you can do anything with gelignite you know,

you can throw it, you can hit it with a hammer, anything you like it won’t blow up until you push that fuse in, like the detonator in and then you, fuses went at different speeds, I forget the speeds now some are fast fuses. And you allow enough and put the fuse in and light it and run and hide behind a big tree and bang up it would go and down the tree would come, for nothing really, nothing to do for the war effort,

oh it was teach us to get used to jelly.

No no accidents, although we did strike silly Infantry blokes in, they’d start playing jokes with jelly and I’ve got one mate now who’s lost his hand, he had a little, tiny bit of jelly and a det [detonator] and he was going to run round and throw it behind one of his mates and he forgot it was in his hand and it blew his hand off.

And he stayed in the army though, he went right through, but they were rat bags those blokes, didn’t realise what they were playing with.

No they were infantry platoons, they had a bit of knowledge of jelly too, the old saying a little knowledge is dangerous.

No, not with jelly you treated that with care.

Yeah, but it was mainly just to use it, as I say if you come to a bridge, like a timber bridge, like you’d got those big struts to hold the bridge up, the idea was to learn how to drill in at an angle and blow

that up, in case you had to in real wartime and had to blow up a bridge, it was only sort of practicing on the trees.

Well not like, it’s down amongst the timber country like kauri forest, you're getting down towards the big heavy timbers cause you’ve got Balfour

comes through Melbourne. But we were mainly in scrub, sand, semi desert, once we got up to Minnenooka and Dongara and those places, Gin Gin, wheat farmers, there’s a lot of wheat farms up there. But there really weren’t, Western Australia once we were over there and there was no danger of the Japs landing it was just, we were there, forgotten.

Well we knew that we wouldn’t be going to the Middle East once the Japs come into it, we knew we’d be heading north, we didn’t know what we were going to do, until the Japs

started their real move, and then they had plenty of troops up in Queensland and New South Wales, the east coast to cover what they wanted up there. Actually the move didn’t come to move people until they had the war practically run, and the divisions that had done all the hard work in the desert, they wanted to get rid of a lot of those blokes, you could get out easy,

early discharge cause they had all these militia blokes that needed something to do. That’s when they started to, another thing to, getting well ahead of me self now there was no need for us to be in the war the last twelve months, MacArthur didn’t want us, Yanks didn’t want us, they could of, the Australian Army could have shut up and gone home the last twelve months. There was two thousand Australians killed unnecessarily,

and there was two thousand killed you could say there’d be six thousand wounded, fighting those wars that we fought in those places. That’s a very savage thing of our blokes, a lot of blokes don’t realise that but me being a man that reads a fair bit and knows all about it’s upsetting.

There’s nothing at all really, I’ve sort of covered practically everything that went on. Sort of round on the coast watching and waiting.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah

Yeah as I said all we did was set up camps and build toilets,

any work that needed to be done we were tradesman that’s all.

Oh yes they had a good tool kit, big metal chest and a good full carpenters kit. I was only a bush carpenter, we had two of the best carpenters I’ve ever seen in me life with us, they could do anything. It was only rough work we had to do though, make fly wire

doors for the kitchen if we had scrap timber and saw up those, all pretty rough work.

No, oh I remember one time the ration truck went down to Perth one time and he had a girlfriend down there and he was parking in the lane and he knocked the roof off a back toilet, you know the old houses, he knocked to roof off and we had to go and patch that up to appease the owner,

that was a black market job that one. The owner went crock that his toilet roof got knocked off.

Oh another thing we used to strike, too, was the cockies [farmers] with their Bren gun carriers knocked down a fence and you’d have to go and fix their fences up, that was nothing to do with the war.

No I’m afraid if you want information about Western Australia for the archives there’s nothing much to be told, I’ve covered practically everything. It got even worse after we left cause they used to reinforce us with other blokes, I don’t know what they did. I’ll tell you what they did do over there we had a wonderful Armoured Division made up of volunteers like VXs and NXs [refers to prefixes on service numbers] and when the, we got pulled

out of the desert they were, what’s the word, U/S [Unserviceable], they had nothing to do so they sent them across to Western Australia and they just rotted over there, all these, they were top class troops. We at least when we first went over there we were building defences and all that, but there wasn’t the threat of the Japs, it was gone. This Armoured Division they were just doing nothing at all, they had a worst time than us.

Oh we built trenches on the beaches and machine gun posts, there were machine gun posts just in case. And we used to do exercises, company against company, like one enemy company and they had referees and if you got shot you got a piece of paper pinned on you and all that caper, but that was boring though.

No, no that was the infantry, rifle companies did that, yeah we were sort of back at Battalion Headquarters where it was nice and safe is there was a real war.

No, no.

The only time the Pioneers got into any trouble in actions if we overrun like, superior forces they run into ya, all had to fight, everybody in then, but that never happened in the West there was no, there wasn’t a Jap within a thousand mile of us. No, I finished up I got sent to a pioneer battalion, that’s a different kettle of fish because we were training the pioneer battalion and infantry and pioneers.

And in the Middle East before Alamein, I wasn’t over there but our B Company they were attached to the Field Company Engineers and for three days and three nights they worked continuously and they picked up one hundred and fifty thousand German mines and replanted them into a another minefield, it was our minefield. That was before the battle so the Germans would get trapped because the German wouldn’t know their minefield was pulled up and they’d run into ours, and

then when the blue started and the infantry got into trouble, they were getting wiped out the pioneers were pushed in at the last minute just to save the day, as infantry. But we were mainly used as infantry in the pioneer battalion. They were the same composition as an infantry battalion and they had a pioneer platoon in their thing. But the companies themselves all had about six

tradesman in the companies. Well I’ll tell you something else we used to do in Western Australia reminds me now we used to build roads, yeah we were up at Yanchep one time, that’s a big tourist spa up there and we put a road through from Yanchep to some other place, Don Company. And we were up there as Pioneers doing the supervising, that’s one job we did but that was only something to keep us occupied.

No they only gave us jobs to keep us occupied from getting bored.

Oh I forget now, it would be Wodonga or some of the names, it might have been down at Fremantle when we first got down there, Guildford, no New Norcia that was inland, I don’t

know what we were doing there, we weren’t there that very long and I don’t know what we were doing at Minnenooka cause we were a fair way away from the beach there, just there. I’m afraid I can’t help you much, I’ve covered Western Australia.

Well the CO and the company commander would decide what to do and they’d see how the Pioneer platoon commander and tell him what they wanted done and he’d get us going and we’d do it, that was all.

As I say first thing was hygiene, that was to make the cookhouse reasonably fly proof and the toilets, that was the main thing.

No.

That was the infantry, the infantry companies did all that. Sometimes oh I don’t remember if they wanted a couple of carters they might of get sent down, we might of got sent down to an infantry company to help, but I can’t remember it now.

Yeah.

Leave?

No we never got leave cause if, yeah Guildford was about twenty mile from, twenty five mile from Perth you’d get overnight leave, only overnight leave, you’d have to be in by twenty three fifty nine. No you never got any leave only night leave, or we didn’t leave you’d go AWL, absent without leave, just duck out of camp and sneak back,

no such, only time you were guilty of being AWL was when you got caught. We got close to a town you’d always sneak out in the dark. Oh that was a fair way out from Perth they used to send the ration truck down into Perth to pick up the rations and they might put a couple of blokes, bit of leave, so they’d go down for the day and they’d have a day in Perth like and come back that night with the

ration truck. But we were sixteen months over there and when we come back from Melbourne we got twenty eight days leave in Melbourne.

Yeah time we left till the time we got back. Yeah we get on the old saying the war was ninety percent boredom and ten percent horror, and it was boredom, I mean boredom.

Well that’s only at night time go down and have a couple of beers, or go to a dance if there was one around, but not too many were in the little bush towns.

They weren’t happy but you just had to accept it didn’t you. Go crook at the tucker, whinge and grizzle,

never played up to any great extent, no sign of any mutiny or anything like that just, we weren’t too happy.

No, no, oh occasional fist fight but not much at all.

Oh we don’t know, I never saw any, we never had, used to find in the morning sometimes lot of people wake up niggly in the morning don’t they,

and then they get teased. No there was never any fights, never any troubles, no. But as I say Western Australia was all right you could occasionally get to a little country town, but when you were in that Darwin that was fourteen months you saw nobody, never even seen a women for fourteen months, there are. The only way you could see a women was if you got sick and went to an AGH up in Darwin and you’d see a nursing sister.

Oh well it didn’t, morale wasn’t that very high but it wasn’t that low,

there wasn’t any danger about it, just got a bit sick of it.

Yes used to get homesick, mail was our best thing we ever got, mail. When the postman come around there’d be a lot of joy and happiness, mail from mothers and mail from girlfriends. Oh some of those blokes too that got homesick and lovesick

they were hard to put up with, had to be careful what you said to them, very short fuses. See I didn’t have a girlfriend and I never had a mother so I was on my own sort of business. Yeah that’s something that bought me back there, you’d got to be very careful of some of them. I tell the things that were bad were married men and especially if they had little children, they should never have been there, they could cause a bit of trouble, get very uptight, had to be careful with them.

Well their married and there missing their wives and missing their sex sort of business. Whereas us young blokes what you never have you never miss.

Well if you had that bloke that was that way inclined, built that way,

another thing the girls weren’t very interested in rough old soldiers from another state. Well you never ever saw too many, oh we used to go when we were in Perth occasionally get out and go to the Perth Town Hall for a dance and that would be all right, but never got that very often. No those little towns I’m talking about like Dongara and that wouldn’t be any more than fifty people living there.

Geraldton was a big place, that was a eleven pub place that, used to get a bit of leave into Geraldton and it was only to go and drink beer.

Yes I, we did it once, ten, eleven pubs, twenty two pots, eleven ounce pots and conquered it,

wasn’t too good the next morning.

Yeah, yes you could have a night leave and the truck left about midnight. But the best job you got was town picket, that was a good job, you got your bayonet, used your bayonet in your belt and you had to go and patrol the town and stop any trouble and call into every pub.

Check every pub so that’s how I did the eleven pubs.

Yeah did lots of things you shouldn’t do.

Well you couldn’t do much in Western Australia cause I suppose the one thing I was proud of, they took us out on a truck,

big truck full of us and they dropped four blokes off at a certain spot on a road, on a map at a compass and they said, “Right oh,” and they made me the boss, and they said, “Right oh you’re here on the map, camps over there away you go.” So what you did then you laid the compass down and got it facing north, there’s north there, over there you get a bearing, I forget it’s so much south east

so you’d set your compass for that and you’d walk as long as that needle pointed and you’d get spot on where your camp was. But I’m looking at it to know where the camp is and over here there’s a town, so I set the compass for the town, cause I knew in the town there’d be a pub. So the four of us went there, they couldn’t do anything to us, I’m only a private I can’t be demoted, and as far as they knew we got lost, I was real proud of that one.

Well they were all like me, I wasn’t an exception, they were always on the dodge, well nothing serious but see it’s not what you did it’s what you got caught doing.

Yes but when you’re in say Yanooka

and there’s not a farm house, there’s not a thing for twenty thirty miles only scrub and few trees, you can’t very far, your on your feet, no bike or car, just got to sit there, just like being, worst than being in prison, least you’ve got the fresh air and you can move around.

I never saw any,

they were kept well away, well aboriginals, well New Norcia there’s a heap of aborigines down there because the mission had a big mission there. But you never saw many aborigines in Western Australia, they were further north. A lot of aboriginals in the army, when we went over there we had reinforcements and we got about eight aborigines and they were good soldiers and good blokes. Especially one time two went out with

out in the bush with two big long sticks and bough home enough rabbits to feed a Battalion so we got rabbit stew that night, that’s fair dinkum, nice meal rabbit stew.

Yeah just with sticks, knocked over rabbits and dragged them all in.

Oh we did a course on bush tucker, we had experts took you out and showed you different things of bush tucker,

but I can’t remember that was only a little two hour course, I’ve got a good memory but not that much memory.

Oh yes, yes, oh they were, one bloke was very very smart, aborigines are very smart people the only trouble they’re a bit lazy, well they’re born lazy, they’ve got more intelligence than the average white bloke, good aborigine

is a good man.

Oh we just treated them as equals.

Yeah.

No just their, no the ones we had were educated like, schooling, they were just like me. Then the bush schools they’d leave us for

dead us city blokes, those bush fellows they were the best soldiers by far.

Oh bush knowledge, tactics, well they’d gone out shooting pigs and shooting all their life, like we used to go and play football in the park and these blokes would be out with rifles and that and they knew they wouldn’t get lost. Only for the bush blokes that half the city

blokes get lost out in the bush, oh they carried them.

As I say they used to bring things like General Bennett getting that jungle training camp down and working out on compass bearings and all that through the 9th Div in Tobruk then they decided on landings. Now when you did a landing you got onto a troop ship and you had to come down a cargo net, into the boats. So there was a place called Point Walter, right on the Swan, lovely place really and the Swan’s a mile wide there, beautiful river.

So they built up this big timber wall, like timber and a scaffold at the back and ladder and you had to go up, and they put the cargo nets as if it was off a ship, like simulation. So you had to go up with all your full pack and clamber down, on the cargo net, it was pretty hair raising for nervous types. And I remember another time they did that, cut in on us when, I forget, might have been up in Darwin they

did the same thing and one young bloke he froze, and they couldn’t get him off so a big sergeant went down alongside him and he went whack and hit him right in the point of the jaw, sorry they tied a rope around him up the top. The sergeant went down and went whack and knocked him out and then they just lowered him down. But this time at Point Walter we were doing the exercise and the Pioneer Platoon consisted of an officer, a sergeant and two corporals and about twenty other

ranks roughly. Well this officer he got sent across to Canberra for three months aircraft identification school, and the other corporal got sent down to a bush town to do a blacksmith course for three months. The sergeant, he went to a school and the other corporal he got compassionate leave which left roughly twenty privates left to ourselves and nobody in charge. And Company Headquarters didn’t wake up so

we decided we’d let it go, so we go on parade in the morning and we’d take on ten blokes on parade and the other ten blokes would just lay in their tents and do nothing and get up, I forget now, 6 Platoon, ten men on parade, three men sick, four men duty, covered up the twenty. Then night time come and

the, Point Walter was right out of Perth and used to have a tattoo report every night, the officer in charge of the Platoon used to go up to the company office and write down tattoos all right. So half of us would go on AWL and the other blokes that left they’d take up the tattoo report all incorrect, present. I’ll never forget this, when you went on a Company parade you had to front up and amongst

all lieutenants and were privates, it was my turn to go up, no that’s right we, two blokes older in the battalion longer than me they went up and mucked things up, so it was my turn to go up. Up I go and I did a pretty good job bar when the time come when we fronted up in the lines and we had to turn left and march away, well five officers turned left and I turned right and I’m looking at an officers chest, felt about that big I did. The officer, he was a good bloke

he laughed. Six men on parade, three men on, they used to go AWL during the day, nick off, three men on duty, cause Pioneers were always on duty, working around cookhouses so pretty well that worked out.

Yeah, oh yeah do things like that.

Oh then they had wailings, you know the wailing boats, rowing boats, you had to learn how to row. And out the pioneers go, about ten of us in this big whaling boat, oh beautiful, we’re all swimming and here’s the company major, all the other boats are in, his trying to call us in but we couldn’t care less about him. So when we come in, what could he do, like for me I’m a private, he can’t demote me, there’s no charge about what I was doing, so I was in the clear,

get away with murder. Now still on Western Australia? Yeah that was a good exercise that Point Walter one, really needed.

Point Walter, that’s where we had the boat simulated to climb down on the cargo net.

Then they used to, another time, oh that’s right the VDC [Volunteer Defence Corps], the old diggers, heard about the old diggers the VDC. They formed up, local Perth, Fremantle VDC put on an exercise against the AIF, us blokes and they got beaten and oh they didn’t like it, they absolutely, we were capturing, knocking them off left right and centre and the old blokes, proud old diggers from the First World War, they did play up. But anyway

we were in the suburbs of Rockhampton, in those days was only like there’s a house on the corner and Cop, mate of mine he’s on guard duty, not guard he was century, keeping and eye on the post. And the bloke comes out and he’s got a tray and he’s got a teapot and he’s got a cup and his little jug of milk, sugar and a couple of biscuits. And he says to me mate, “Would you like a cup of tea?” and me mate, “No not really,” he said, “Come on you’d better have a cup of tea,” he says, “No, no.” “Look I’ll pour you out a cup of tea,” two bottles full of sherry,

he staggered back, had about half a bottle of sherry.

Another time these two mates of mine in, they were in Perth and they were in the pub, oh that’s right and having a beer and there’s two old blokes, blokes about sixty standing there. And they got talking to them

the old blokes are talking away there. Anyway it turns out the two old blokes are proprietors of a great big wine cellar, like in Perth and down they go and do you think they came home, they got onto the champagne they were on, after the grog. They got two great big mags of champagne, one each they got and brought home, so we had champagne with our sausages and mash the next day for breakfast.

Oh the VDC?

They were Calvary too that’s right that made it a bit more interesting.

Oh well the VDC was supposed to attack us on Calvary but we outflanked them and came in behind them

and captured them all, and the old blokes they weren’t too happy, through the scrub, only ten mile out of Perth, not very high timber. The old VDC. Another time in Collie, I’ll never forget this one, I’ll call him Bill, my wife’s brother Bill, we were like that for years, great mates. We, that’s right we

went to the pub and were coming back from the pub and we see the working man’s club, like the Collie Working Man’s, that’s the flash club, wasn’t really flash. In we go and were treated like God’s, all the old members there looking after us and buying us beer and as were walking out I see the leg of ham, what they call the, what was the name for it, the ham was there with a knife and bread and butter and at your leisure you could go and have a bit of ham, actually it was nearly finished

the leg of ham, great big leg of ham, only less than a quarter on it. And I thought, ‘that will go well back in the camp’, and as I walked out I snavelled it, and I’m fair dinkum I reckon half that club saw me do it, and said, “Oh look at those diggers, aren’t they beauties doing a thing like that,” never stopped us, that’s how we were treated, Perth. That was in Collie and we walked into the church, honoured

guests of a wedding. Oh another thing to I was going to all those dancers, as a kid I was a pretty fair sort of a dancer like and the Chairman’s was a very good dance, the Charmin’s a beautiful old time dance and it wasn’t in Western Australia. And I’ll, me tales are coming back now,

I’d been sent to Heidelberg Hospital with tonsillitis. Now I was born very very large as a kid and large tonsils, just born that way and I was getting tonsillitis as a kid, so I front up, I did get tonsillitis, they sent me to Hollywood Hospital, that’s like our Heidelberg and they couldn’t do anything for me cause they put stuff on and I got discharged. And while I was away my mates had got onto to buying sherry at a shilling a bottle, that’s ten cents a bottle and they got full, and all

they got their hair shaved off, with the clippers, the whole lot, they’ve just got like coconut heads. And I had a lovely mane of black hair and I thought ‘I’d better be in this’ so I got mine down. So we got to a dance, and not a bad sort of dance in the suburbs and they wanted anybody Victorian who knew how to do the Charmaine, like to give an exhibition so the people would get an idea how to do it. So I volunteered, cause I had a few beers in me and I picked out a beautiful

blonde, she was the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen in your life. And here I’m big army boots, my dirty old uniform and I’ve got this lovely blonde, and me shaven hair, gee I must of looked a sight.

It’s like the Pride of Erin you sort of go up to and across and you come back and you pivot and you, it was

a really top class, you had the Pride of Erin, oh I forget them now, like the Barn Dance, you ever done a Barn Dance at all in your life? It was a nice dance and they’d never seen it.

No just an old fashion, it would of come from England but in Melbourne for years but they’d never ever seen it in the west.

Oh yes, most of us, yeah especially the country boys they were the best dancers, cause the country dances were great to go to. The Perth Town Hall had a beautiful jarrah dance floor but on our military boots we used to, we finished taking our boots off and dancing with our stockinged feet there, slip and slide everywhere.

Oh yes, Perth Town Hall was a good band, six piece, eight piece band, no good musicians, country dances. What was the other tale I was going to tell you, yes yes that was right. I picked up a girl in Perth and I’d made a date with her and I was going

on leave on the ration truck, as I told you and I got into a bit of bother, what did I do, some bother and the CO of Don Company well he didn’t like me and I’m all dressed up ready to go on the ration truck and the sergeant major came up and he said, “Your leave’s cancelled,” just like that. It wouldn’t have worried me but I’d made a date with this girl, I didn’t want to stand her up. So I went round to the bloke driving the ration truck and the lance corporal

and I told him the tale so they, I went AWL on the ration truck. So in I go and they reckon they were pretty cunning the sergeant major and they put a tattoo report, so I’m gone AWL. Well I happen to have a bloke I played football with in Malvern and he was in the engineers, see the engineers were there and they were doing the, they had civil engineers the Engineers as there lieutenants and they were setting

out the road. And I went across to see this bloke, in fact he finished up playing football for Richmond, Les Jones, do you remember him, Les Jones played after the war, might be before your time. I said, “Look I’m in a bit of trouble Les,” I said, “I’ve been booked for AWL,” I said, “Would you swear on oath that I was playing solo with you last night?” He said, “Yeah no trouble.” So in I go and old Sandy Morris CO Sergeant Major marches me in with the escort,

stand to attention, “How do you plead?” “Not guilty.” “How come?” “I was over the engineers’ camp playing solo and I’ve got two witnesses to prove it.” You should have seen that, he had to let me off, well a little lie doesn’t matter that much, you had to be sharp.

Oh yes, oh yes

it was like unofficial war, officers versus chiefs, things like that, but most of the officers weren’t bad, it’s only those peanuts that went to Melbourne Grammar and got commissions given to them, they never earnt them, they were the ones that caused the trouble. When you’ve got a bloke come up through the ranks, smart private and good corporal and a good sergeant they were all right.

Well I, in Western Australia I was bored, they had a gas school, you had to be trained on gas and you had to have so many gas, qualified gas instructors and gas experts in the battalion in case of gas, sort of like a fireman sort of business. So they had this school and I think there was about forty, about forty to fifty NCOs, from sergeants down to two privates,

there were two privates from the pioneer platoon and I was one of them. Anyway I went to do this sergeants, corporals, lance corporals, and I was only half interested but something to do, use me brain. So when the results were read out, there was a Sergeant Bobby Bligh, a great friend of mine still, he came first with eighty-three marks, equal second was a lance corporal eighty-two and a half and this lowly private from the much maligned

pioneer platoon he got eighty-one, eighty-two and a half and came equal second. But our, like the pioneers like we were classed as the larrikins, we were larrikins, as I said the years we’d put in working in the building trade made us a lot older in our head, and we were larrikins and we never went on parade very much. And the fact that this officer, his private just knocked off about forty sergeants and lance corporals

that sort of business, oh he was tickled pink instead of being rubbished about his rag tag Pioneer Platoon, he was in the officer’s mess, I’m the hero. And he came up and he said, “There’s an intelligence school coming on if you like to do that.” He said, “There’s two stripes for you.” I said, “No,” wouldn’t be in it. I knew I’d do all right, I might not have topped that one but no,

he never spoke to me after that that bloke, he wouldn’t have a bar of me. Cause see I was on nine bob a day and for an extra shilling a day I’ve got to loose me mates. See once your corporal you can’t have that close, you can but it’s a bit hard and I was quite happy. And later on after the war they offered me stripes up in action but I wouldn’t be in that because I wouldn’t have to tell anybody to do something I

wouldn’t do meself like, say point scout, I’d rather do it meself because the point scout is a very very dangerous job. So I knocked that one back, then that corporal was crook on me. If you’re going home and you get on the troop train and being a corporal you get all the duties to do, private you get nothing to do.

Oh blokes that are pretty smart and able and conscientious and never stood over you. But the bloke I liked the best was a corporal I struck in, when I went into action, he run me up the other day cause my wife’s photo’s in the, show it to you in a minute there’s a lovely photo of the wife and I,

and he rang me up to congratulate me. Well he’s a wonderful bloke and respected, only a little fellow and now he looks like a retired minister and when he retired his job was looking after disturbed youth. Anyway I didn’t get on too well with him when I first went to him because it was long details, but we got together and if he made, if I was a good soldier and I reckon

I was in action like, it was him that made me…he was brave, like he carried us through, when we first got into action he was up in front, never pushed anybody in until he worked us out, then he started handing out the nasty jobs, but he was a terrific bloke. He got made, when the five year plan came in and all the five year men went out,

they were mainly sergeants and corporals and he was made platoon sergeant and the corporals, and our Lance Jacky he’d been wounded so we had no corporal to take the Section over. So he offered it to two of the older blokes and they didn’t want to be in it, and he offered it to me and I got a bit pipy in one respect if he’d have offered me first he might have had a chance but I wasn’t going to be third in the line, but I really didn’t want it. And he couldn’t get a corporal and we had a young bloke come in as a late reo,

towards the end of the war you couldn’t volunteer to go in the AIF they used to call these nineteen year older up and they were given the option whether they were going to go in the AIF or the militia. And most of them being dinkum Aussies, AIF see, and this bloke was a fantastic cut of a bloke, about six foot one and big and smart like sort of business only a bit young. So little threepence and dozer, I call them threepence and dozer because

threepence was about five foot five and he was called threepence, and dozer was about five foot six and he was built like that so his nickname was bulldozer, threepence and dozer. I said to threepence and dozer, “Listen what don’t we talk Smithy into giving Woodsy the job, he’s only young and he’s keen,” he turned out a pretty good, he missed out on the action but he did a bit of work after. Anyway we go up to Woodsy and said, “Listen give Bill Woods

the job,” we said, “He’s a good kid,” he said, “And what’s it matter the war practically over.” Anyway Smithy reluctantly put Woodsy in well forty years later I met up with Woodsy, because he went to Beecroft like after the war and forty years later, might have been forty five years later I told Woodsy how he got his stripes, he wasn’t too happy. He said, “I couldn’t work out how I got stripes in front of you blokes.” I said, “Yes that’s the way you got them.” He thought he really got carried away.

Little dozer, little threepence he was a cranky little bloke in way, he wasn’t a nasty cranky bloke, little cock sparrow, were on patrol in Tarakan and we’ve got across a stream, it’s only about six foot wide and were trying to work out how deep it is and mucking around and threepence, little threepence, oh lets go, he stepped in and it was eight foot deep. And he’s got the Bren gun and

a slouch hat on, threepence has gone and the hats floating down the river so we had to go and get him out, drag him out, poor old threepence. I’d love to meet those blokes.

Oh north from New South Wales, they went their way, we all got split up. The, I suppose

the Vietnam blokes carried on and got a welcome back, but us blokes we never got a welcome back after the war we just come back in dribs and drabs and just slipped back into our civvy [civilian] life. Yes he was a terrific bloke.

Oh pretty hard, well after the war when you come back war had finished and I had three aims in life I wanted to get back to me love building

trade, finish me trade, get married and have children, build a house, that’s all I had in mind. That’s why we never talked much, never had much to do with the army, never worried about it. And then we sort of settled down and the older you get the more garlish you get, the more you talk, I’ve talked more in the last two years about than the army then I’ve talk in the rest of me life.

Well I was telling Colin [interviewer], well you don’t

like talking and people don’t ask you, people ask you you’ll talk. See I was wounded in action and my two brothers never ever knew what happened, how I got wounded, they never asked me, if they’d have asked me I would have told them, cause they never saw action, or the brother saw action in Darwin in air raids but not like action in the infantry. That’s the reason why so they went to their grave not knowing how I got wounded.

No, oh well another thing to one brother was in Sydney, another in Morwell and I’m in Melbourne. Yes I got a steel helmet in there, it’s got a hole in it that’s where I got wounded, and I had my brother came down from Morwell for the grand final and he used to stay with me and he bought two mates down

with him and I had the old tin hat hung out in the back toilet I had. And one bloke went down to the toilet and he come in and he said, “Who’s tin hats there, what happened there?” My brother said, “Belongs to him, he won’t tell you though.” If they’d have asked me I would have told them but they didn’t so never got told.

Oh you feel like your skiting, as I say

you go down to the club and you’ve got three Infantry blokes that have been in action and you talking war, what it was like and then say another social member, bloke that never served in the Infantry come along and sit down, that finishes the conversation, you start talking about anything but war.

No didn’t talk about, as I say your too busy getting on with your life, like five years of your life’s gone and your back into civi life and it takes a bit of getting adjusted to.

I tell you there’s a lot of lies about amongst old soldiers to, not so much old soldiers, some of those navy blokes they can spin a tale or two, but the air force never talked much really.

Well they reckon they were God’s

gift of womanhood and they were the senior service and they won the war, all the landings. I’ve got a mate of mine oh we did this landing we did that one I said, “Jack did you land at all?” I said, “Did you ever get on land, how could you do a landing if you didn’t land?” So he says, “Oh we did the bombardment,” now. So I cut him down on that one. I’m not a Yank lover and there was a show on

couple of years ago and a Yankee soldier said something quite true, he said, “Anybody that hasn’t been within a hundred yards of the front line wouldn’t know what a war was,” follow that what I’m saying, real war and that’s quite true.

In Western Australia?

Oh yes well.

Yeah they sent us home, we all packed up came home holus bolus.

Well because we’d had our stretch in Western Australia, and they’ve got all these, all these Militia blokes in the East Coast,

and as I say they sent a Queensland battalion across to Western Australia and they sent us back. But then the militia battalion up in Darwin were pretty seasoned troops, they never saw any action up there but they were sent to New Guinea, so they sent us up to Darwin to take over from them, for fourteen months. That wasn’t garrison, that was six months sixty-five mile down the Adelaide River and the conditions were absolutely horrendous, like wet,

your body was covered with prickly heat, tinea, no air conditioning, continually wet with sweat. And night time all you had to sleep on was a wooden bed with a blanket underneath you, mosquitoes, tucker was terrible, same as you got woolly beef, you might of got a bit of bread up there I can’t remember. The dry was lovely,

the dry was beautiful but we’d go out and play a fair bit of sport in the dry up there, football and that takes a fair bit of, we had football grounds to play football on in Darwin, and basketball courts and things like that. Well we had a billabong there at Darwin, that was funny we found a great big billabong about two hundred yards in the bush, opposite our Adelaide River camp, it was about two hundred yards long and about sixty yards wide and lovely

clean water. We used to swim in it and I got a carpenters job there, the RMO [Regimental Medical Officer] or the medical officer, he went up to Darwin and he bought back a bit of dunnage they used to call it, great planks of Oregon they used to use in ships to pack in between things, they’d just throw it out. And we thought that might do all right for a diving board, you see and I was a bit of a swimmer and diver. So I got the job as a carpenter and I go across

and didn’t know much about Oregon because Oregon is different grains run different ways and this was cross grains. So I make up the diving board and me being twelve stone up I go and jump and the cross grain just snapped, you understand cross grain do you?

Yeah all that work two days to make the diving board and two seconds to muck it up.

Yeah 5th Battalion.

Yeah 5th Battalion, 6th Battalion.

No we never lost anybody, too many, you couldn’t get out, you couldn’t get away to join up, try to transfer to the navy or the air force or join another mob unless you got claimed, no where near a recruit mob you just had to stop there. We were happy in our little way we thought eventually we might get up into action but then if we’d have known what we were going to get into we wouldn’t have been so keep. No up in Darwin

we had, we used to, bigger place and we had a great basketball competition up there amongst all the units, just like league football play for the premiership, used to play football but the grounds were, never played on grass you played on dirt. Well that’s about the only thing there was there.

Oh yeah, yeah few old league footballers, cricket we played cricket

lot of cricket, that wasn’t bad.

Yeah went back to Melbourne, oh this is a funny thing about discipline and going AWL. We get twenty eight days leave, when we got back to Watsonia and were going into town every night, just go in. And all of a sudden they decided to stop all leave,

locked up we are, so this is no good to us, we know were going away again north we weren’t even sure we were going to Darwin we thought we could be going to New Guinea. So eighty five of us, all talking about it so we all marched out and we came back five days later, that’s the only time I’ve been charged, crimed and punished.

No they wouldn’t let us out on leave, we were locked up you see so we had contacts back at the office, let

us know when were moving to go north, so the word came ‘Were moving in a couple of days’ so we all came back. So we all got charged, fined five pound and twenty eight days CB [confined to barracks], which made us laugh, like CB in Darwin, what could you do in Darwin, but they tricked that they gave us field punishment, which wasn’t nice, pack drill and standing around carrying arms, they only gave us a week of that, five pound.

Yes a mass walk out yeah, the silly old CO should have known he was a First World War digger and he was the youngest officer to ever get a DSO [Distinguished Service Order] in the First World War at nineteen, he was in the 5th Battalion the First World War, so he might have been orders to keep us in cause we were getting ready to move. But if you ever want horror tales that troop train, you ever hear blokes talking

about troop trains?

The old fashion suburban train, how old are you you mightn’t remember but they’d whack six men in there with kit bags, haversacks, packs and you had to sleep, you could hardly get a seat and five days like that, never washed, never cleaned your teeth, never shaved, hard rations, didn’t get a feed,

a big station you’d race out and you get sausages and mash. Oh god and the troop ship that was bad, thought we got on the old Ghan and that was a beauty, you’ve seen the new Ghan, the old Ghan was just the one long carriage with seat down either side, all the room in the middle. So you got in there you had enough room for everybody to get his feet in the seats and

two a side on the floor, so you could lay down and have a sleep, that was a good train that. Then you got on the semi trailers, three days on the track up the road, stopping at staging camps to get to Darwin.

Yeah, I struck it lucky there cause we come back on the Overlander, the proper train and we happen to pick a sleeper cabin, yeah we got a beauty only

four of us in it. Well we used to go down, we could fit two of our mates in to give them a sleep, might have been more now I forget, we used to cramp them in so we all got our six by eighteen inches to sleep. But that was all right that wasn’t bad.

Well that’s what you wanted, like imagine sitting up against a seat and trying to get a sleep for five days, absolutely terrible.

Watsonia, that’s still there the Watsonia camp, twenty eight days leave.

Hey?

Drunk beer, saw relatives, well I had, I knocked round with Bill, that’s Vi’s brother and I used to go to their place a lot, that was me home, well it was me home

my father had married again and I got on pretty well with his wife, no worries but he lived up at Noble Park, that’s out in the bloody scrub you couldn’t go out there. But you couldn’t get drunk cause there was no beer, you had to chase around trying to find a pub with beer. Oh that’s right that was a funny thing, me father had an old Studebaker, Leaping Lena they called them and we bought it off him for seventeen quid,

we all dobbed in, you could run it on stuff called anything, it was like a kerosene but it would run a motorcar, wouldn’t do the engine much good. But we went up to Bethany, big guesthouse up in Healesville for four days. And I’ll never forget one day, it’s all old dears, all the old dears a few young women, not too many and this old dear said to me, “You boys been prisoners of war?” We says, “No.” “Oh you look like you’ve been prisoners of war”

I said, “If you’ve been playing up like we’ve been playing up for the last week you’d look like a prisoner of war too.” Anyhow the time come to leave and we all hop in the Studebaker and away we go and they sing the Maori’s Farewell, kissing us, crying. Get into Healesville, pubs open oh in, drove back to Bethany that night and booked in for another night, then had another farewell the next day.

Me twenty first birthday I was pretty sweet with the cooks, being the Pioneers working around cookhouses all the time, building a benches and fixing up their doors and all that, pretty good mates of mine, and the blokes running the wet canteen they were good mates of mine. And I finished up, you got two bottles of beer per week per haps, up in Darwin. So what I had about eight

of me personal mates and the two cooks, I got them in cause they made us a beautiful supper out of the army rations, so they had to be invited. And also when you got your beer you had to have the top taken off so you wouldn’t black market it to the Yanks. But I knew the bloke that was running the wet canteen, they were the boot makers, two boot makers and they were pretty good mates of mine, pretty pally, so I organised with them so we could get our beer out of the freezer

without the tops. To cut a long story short between about twelve of us we had fifty six bottles of beer, and that was a big drink in the tropic, four bottles of beer per man and this beer feed and it was a classic of a twenty first. I had me brother up in Darwin he came down all the way, he hitchhiked down, gee we were very sick the next day, drinking up in the tropics it really knocks you about. So I go down, we had a big workshop and we had it down there

and I go down and nurse me headache and all of a sudden the platoon commander and platoon sergeant walked into, here’s all the empty bottles and tucker all over the place, trying to work out what happened, one of me highlights.

Oh I forget, couldn’t get into trouble, how could you get into trouble when your up there, not enough to send you to jail,

not enough things to charge for anyway, just couldn’t put you up on a charge.

Sixty five mile peg, and anywhere, you’ve got forty five mile peg, sixty five, Katherine was about two hundred and thirty, I forget what Katherine was. And we were there for, we had to build that, I’ve got a photo there of a hut we built, we built huts, everybody built huts and we had to help them like. Then we went

up to Parap, that’s the army barracks, the regular army barracks, with galvanised iron sheds up there, we did a bit of amphibious work, training up, still training, training, doing the same thing over and over again. But as I say we didn’t have to do any training we were the carpenters, we had a proper, we had proper tool sheds, I’ve got a photo of me tool shed over there if you want go and look them, if you after some photos.

Well a couple of antidotes I just thought about at Darwin, one was we had a combined landing exercise in the Mindil Beach and the stupid officers, it’s very very choppy dangerous seas and were all standing on the beach, most of us standing on the beach there’s blokes out in these row boats. And all of a sudden a couple tip over and their in trouble, all with their gear,

and I’m a pretty good swimmer and a mate of mine was a captain of the Warragul Life Saving Club and blokes like us are standing on the beach and the officer made us about turn and look away from it. Where they could of grabbed swimmers and maybe we could of got out and rescued them, that’s something that stuck in my claw, things like that, stupid officers. Another thing too about the beach I had a run with St Kilda in 41 before I went away and I struck a little bloke Terry

O’Brien, he was in the RAF [Royal Air Force] and he was at St Kilda and I got to know him fairly well down there. And I loved the water so I nicked off one day to go and have a swim on the beach and there’s this great big Mindil Beach, oh hell of a big beach and there’s one bloke sitting there on the beach and me. So I go up and, walking up and have a chat to him and it wouldn’t be Terry O’Brien. And while we were there there was a Dornier flying boat they’d captured out in the harbour and were watching it. And all of a sudden there’s blokes jumping off the boat and into the water, off the flying boat,

what’s going on, and then there’s a great burst of flame, up she went. And that’s about the only thing I reckon happened in Darwin.

Well I don’t know what it was, so we wouldn’t see it, it was just beyond us why they didn’t send out any swimmers, volunteers because,

and three or four drowned, that’s what made it worse.

We don’t know what they were doing we weren’t allowed to watch, work that out.

Oh I don’t know what it was, we were very angry us blokes, cause the strong swimmers in the Battalion could always be found a pool like, blokes loved our swimming we’d all be swimming together

more or less. But anyway if were leaving Darwin then I suppose the best part about Darwin was leaving the place and going back home, and that was not a bad trip on those trucks cause you’d stop ever night at a staging camp and it would be two up and all those dice games to play. And then we got home and we had our leave and we all went back up to a place called Rooty Hill, outside

of Sydney. And we stopped there for about eight weeks till they worked out what they were going to do with us, and we had a lovely time in Sydney, really eight weeks continual leave. We had plenty of money cause you come back from Darwin with a fair bit of money cause you couldn’t spend your money up there, if you didn’t gamble. So we had a real good time in Sydney, real hot, real good time. So they sent us in peace meal up to Canungra and I was one of the first mob to go,

and we joined the Number 1 ARTB, and I won’t say what the A stands for but the other ones were torn, busted or ripped, that’s a Rifle Battalion, torn busted, ripped and busted. And I tell you she was tough but we were lucky we’d had those three years, fourteen months, just on three years of tough training like in Darwin, the heat and all that and we were physically big. And when we went to Canungra in the No. 1 Battalion,

it would be about eighty percent 5th Battalion blokes and then they sent the nineteen year old reinforcements, had just been in the army three or six months. And we had to carry those kids cause they were breaking down crying and everything, it was tough, but we did it reasonably easy compared to those blokes. But the funny tale, big mate of mine big Mouldy Lee he was the bloke who was the captain of the lifesaving club and he was built like a brick lavatory

and strong as a bull. And we got this mongrel of an officer who was kicked out of the front line up there cause he was no good and he was an instructor. And on the five mile, five day stunt you had to climb up the top of a mountain and camp up there and they simulated a Jap attack, which meant that the officers and a couple of NCOs were throwing dummy grenades and making a noise. And this bloke got in a bit too close, and big Mouldy Lee as we nickname him, out he sprung like a panther

and he grabbed him round the neck in a stranglehold. And the bloke, “Let me go! Let me go!” Anyway Mouldy reckons he’s had enough and lets him go and the silly fool as soon as he gets away, get about three feet away and starts it up again. So Mouldy really got him the second time, nearly killed him, didn’t put him in hospital or anything like that, but he’d had enough, I’ll never forget that night. But he was a mongrel that bloke, he come down one night from the mess and started abusing us about our filthy state of our tents, which was, we were old soldiers

and we kept the place, we were pretty neat and tidy. And another funny thing to I’ll never forget this before you go overseas they examine your teeth, you get a good physical and all your teeth. And there was about one hundred and fifty of us outside the dental place about six or eight dentists inside. And were all sitting outside waiting for our turn and a bloke comes out and somebody says, “What’s he like?” He said, “He’s the fastest dentists I’ve ever seen.” He said, “He had one on the bowl, two in the air and one on the forceps at the same time.”

Some wags about I’ll tell ya, some funny men. Well another thing to big Mouldy and I they had a big sort of lagoon there and they had a wire, two wires and a diving tower, troops all your equipment Rifle and all had to go between the two wires, like feet on one and hand over hand. And we got one bloke got half way across and he froze and Mouldy and I were down the bottom

swimming round cause we’d volunteered to be lifesavers, we didn’t have to do it. So we get him to drop his Rifle and drop everything off and gone on jump, cause he couldn’t swim, I mean whether you could swim or not you had to do these things. So up he comes and we drag him in and Big Moose off this ten foot tower, had to jump into the deep water, all your equipment. And he stands up there, he says, “Stick to your tents definitely a non swimmer,” held his nose and jumped in. So we waited for him to

come up and dragged him ashore. And nothing much there, I remember we’d finished our course, oh no I’ve got something good to tell you. Finished our course and little corporal instructor, hell of a good bloke he was, he come round and he said, “Look were going out for a march,” he said, “Don’t put nothing in your pack.” So we took our tins of pineapple and blanket, that’s all we took, light, not a light pack actually cause we had tins of pineapple and all these things

to make ourselves comfortable cause we were just going to go out in the bush and have a bit of relax. You wouldn’t know were about three hundred yards the road and some big heads come down and they wanted to see the obstacle course we’d done. So when you did the obstacle course you kept your pack light, but we weren’t light, tins of fruit and all that, we had to do the rotten thing, oh Jesus didn’t that upset us. So that’s Canungra.

There were but never happened with us. Although talk about putting the 5th Battalion in the picture, this is wearing this with pride. This little corporal I was telling you about he was a 2/27th man and he’d been on the Kokoda Track and he’d had two wound stripes and MID [Mentioned in Despatches] and when he’d finished, he was only a small man, as he told us he was absolutely physically mentally exhausted,

so they put him out, B Classes him and he come as an instructor and he was a gentleman, really was. Anyway he got pretty friendly with the tent I was in, six of us in a tent, there was four 5th Battalion blokes and two reos [reinforcements] and every night after tea he’d come up and have a good chat to us, cause he must of got sick of his mates. And he come up one day just before we were ready to leave and he said, “I’ve just written to my CO,” he said of the 2/27th, he said, “And I recommended he claimed you blokes,” he said, “You’re the best bunch of men that have ever come through

Canungra.” And the tent I was in, unlucky tent, one bloke was killed, four were wounded and big Mouldy Lee was behind a Bren gun up in Tarakan and the bullet just ripped the skin off there, well he was virtually wounded but he wasn’t like, he stayed on duty, so that was an unlucky tent, that was Canungra.

Oh yes we knew we were going somewhere,

and I’ll tell you my weight would be about twelve stone three, you understand the old measure do you? The normal weight and I went up to Sydney for seven weeks and when I finished me seven weeks in Sydney I was thirteen stone three, and after a month at Canungra I was down to twelve stone. I walked out of Canungra, I’ve never been so fit in all my life but then they send you out and you lounge around and you do nothing. So we got on the old.

Yeah open slather, never went on parade, just got up and dressed and went to Sydney.

Oh nothing I’ll tell you, I picked up a nice little pretty gentle nurse there and got to know her mother, I got a bit of a warning about her mother, her father was a POW of the Japs and she was only seventeen so, well they never had to tell me that cause I’ve always been a gentleman that way sort of business.

Anyway there’s that much tucker up there, like we were getting rations for eight hundred men and nobody was in the camp, so we used to go up to the Q store and I’ve got me haversack, all got our haversacks and butter and tea. And I was taking it down to see this lass and her mother, rations they couldn’t get. And I’m getting along the road with this contraband and you wouldn’t want to know, I think there was three of us a staff car pulled up, and I think he was a brigadier and he pulled up and he give us a lift. And here we are sitting in with the brigadier with all

this contraband, we thought it was a bit funny. Oh what else happened.

No, no it was just a good time in Sydney, and of course it’s a good place for a holiday that’s about all, I don’t like the place very much me self really.

Oh I forget, I forget now. I well you I got the biggest fright of me life in Sydney it

was two o’clock in the morning and I’ve got a bed booked at the YMCA [Young Men’s Christian Association] or something like that and I’ve had a heavy long hard day and I’m walking down Pitt Street, or one of those streets, and a loose women stepped out of a doorway and she’s dressed in a white suit and she said, “Would you like a girl for the night soldier?” And I didn’t see her or hear her and I leapt about fourteen feet, I thought it was a ghost. That’s about Sydney. Anyway we get up to, there was only four of us, myself and three others,

two others were the first four 5th Battalion blokes to leave Canungra to go up to join the 26th Brigade, the 2/3rd Pioneers.

No we were just told, we were called up and be ready for a draft tomorrow you’re going to the 2/3rd Pioneers. My platoon sergeant from the pioneer platoon he was one and little mate of mine Hooksy Murray used to play football, was in the battalion football team,

he was a range finder and he was going up as a range finder for the mortars, specialists. But the worst part about it you heard me talking about at Western Australia and Darwin how I was a Pioneer and I never did much Infantry work. Well about three years ago, before that I’d handled a Bren gun, I’d fired it I knew how to pull it down but I’d never touch one for three years. So when I get in, I find out I’m in a rifle platoon,

a rifle section, a rifle company, well I nearly fainted. I knew what I was going in for and this Smithy, that I’ve got a lot of time for, he eyes me off and sees me build and physic and little Threepence and Dozer the little two blokes on the Bren he said, “Will you take the Bren gun Stan?” I said, “What?” I said, “I can’t take the Bren gun.” He said, “Why?” I said, “Well if we got into a blue,” I said, “and it jammed I wouldn’t know how to pull it down.” And he thought I was telling lies and being jib

because the Bren guns the most dangerous spot in action, the Japs were always trying to knock the Bren gunner out. Well he really thought I was a jib and he really got stuck into me, very upsetting it was because nobody likes to be called a jib. But he made up for it, we get up to Tarakan and the first job we get, oh we were two or three days following up the infantry, and then they get a report that there were Japs seen in their Botanical Gardens, if you could call them Botanical Gardens,

in Tarakan, it was just like a gravel path going through trees and all that and there were Japs sighted there, “Will you send out a patrol.” So this Ross Smith sent us out and who does he put point scout, me first time. Oh strike me and I’ll tell you how it effects you. I was point scout and Dewy was second scout and the rest, the other eight were behind me, and when I finished that thousand odd yards, or metres, my clothes were absolutely saturated

with sweat, that’s how much fear was making me sweat. And the second he was only half as wet as me and the other eight were bone dry, and that’s as true as I’m sitting here, that’s how the strain that’s on you, point scout. But getting back when little Threepence jumped into the creek and we dragged him out of that, were coming round the beach and all of a sudden we see four Japs building a raft, because at this time of the campaign,

we knocked the Japs out of all their strongholds and were just rounding them up, trying to, honestly we give them a chance to be captured and if they didn’t we just shot them out of hand. If they wanted to give up they gave up but if they didn’t want looked like, so anyway we line them up and Smithy grabs the Bren gun of little Threepence and lines it up on these four nips. We killed two and two run away. Well where we were we were on the beach and the tide was out and it was all mangroves around and

were hiding amongst the mangroves, big strong brave Australian soldiers. And we look up at their little camp and there’s five rifles piled and there piled there and Smithy says to me, “Right oh Stan go up and get those rifles.” And I look up and the jungle comes down onto the beach and you can’t see into the jungle, the rifles are ten yards from it. As I told you before my eyesight had gone and I didn’t really wake up but when your eyes go like in this condition

you don’t know you think it’s just a bit off centre. And I thought, ‘go up and get those there might be a Jap in there and he could reach out’ and I looked at him and I said, “What me?” and he says, “Yes you.” So I thought, ‘here goes’ so away I go and I get up there, about seventy five yards I had to go, grabbed the rifles and took the rifles back to the nearest mangrove, puffing and blowing. Anyway we get back to our

perimeter, we were in a standing perimeter on the track, that’s we stop at night and we’d go out every day patrolling, try and see any nips. And this little Dozer said to me, he said, “I thought you were going to jack up doing that job,” and I thought, ‘oh no’ because one thing in the infantry it’s mateship that keeps you going and you daren’t show fear, like your frighten as hell but fear breeds fear, so you don’t show fear because the other bloke might get catching.

And I thought, ‘Oh no they’ve spun me, I’m a jib’ he said, “I’ll tell ya something,” he said, “I wouldn’t have gone,” so that made me day.

Oh well no not really but we had a bit of an idea,

we must have had a bit of an idea, we knew they were tough. But I tell you the funniest tale, I haven’t told this for years, how I got wounded, and I’m a bit of a, I love a joke. Anyway we go into this attack and were down the bottom of the hill, first of all were reserved behind 16 Platoon and 16 Platoon race up. One section, race up and Bluey Mackey and his section well he wiped

out three machine gun posts and killed seven Japs, and with York Reedy, his lance who was with him for the first machine gun post. Well to cut a long story short Mackey got the VC [Victoria Cross] and Yorky got the DCM [Distinguished Conduct Medal] and where were only thirty yards at the back of them waiting to go in, but before they could consolidate they, the Japs had raced blokes down and chopped that attack off. So they sent us around to the flank. And when we get round to the flank where the artillery had been shelling

they’d knocked trees down and trees over and you couldn’t get through, had to climb over them, if we’d have done that we’d have been sitting ducks. Well our Platoon Sergeant, Stan Jones, he was our platoon commander, he’s got a walkie talkie, they just bought them in, first time they’d ever been used. But right down in the gully they were hopeless. And he got his orders to attack and he’s trying to get back to say it’s impossible we’ll get butchered. And he can’t get through, I’ll never forget it he did his block and,

I won’t say it in front of…

He threw it into the bush. Anyway a runner comes up and the next thing we know we’ve got to attack. So we're all behind trees and this Smithy he was a top soldier, we were always first, an old mate of mine, “That bloody Smithy he’ll get us all killed the bastard, he’ll get us all killed,” he would of to the way he was going on, he never minded he was so brave himself. So I thought, ‘Oh this is it’, so I step out and

you never hear the bullet that hits you, that’s a fact you know. Well next thing I know I get a whack in me head like something hit me with a pick axe, I get flung about eight feet, flat on me back down the hill and I get a pain in me shoulder. And I’m laying there and I thought, ‘They must have dropped a mortar behind us’. So I’m laying down and I’m feeling all me bones and everything like that and I’m groggy sort of business and then I find out I’m pretty right. And the bullet that hit me

hit our lance jack, went through his shoulder and smashed his shoulder and they reckon we were told the Japs couldn’t shoot, they were blind. But there’s this sniper he’s got two with the one bullet, that’s how good they could shoot. And Smithy crawls up to me and says, “Are you hit Stan?” I said, “Yeah.” He says, “Where?” I says, “Up here in the back.” Well he turns me over and well me shirt being green and dark with the water and not a great deal of blood, he said, “Come on you haven’t been hit.” I thought, “God this is it

I’ve gone off me head, I’m really gone.” So as he’s crawling away I reached down, and you know what blood and waters like if you mix it together, I bring out me hand and it’s all dribbling and I said, “What the bloody hell’s that Smithy, Scotch mist?” So back he comes and he says, “Right oh,” he says, “Just grab big Bill Elliot,” I’ll tell you something big Bill Elliot was the happiest man in the world, he got a smashed shoulder, must have been in terrible pain, because he’s married and little baby

girl and he’s got a homer, that’s all you wanted a homer, means, you know what that means don’t you? You go home, you’re finished, your war’s over. “And if you take Bill out,” well Bill, Bill was a big man, he was about six foot one and big boned and bushy. Well Bill beat me back to the RAP [Regimental Aid Post] by one hundred yards, that’s how fast he was going, he’s got a smashed shoulder, cause I’ve got all his gear. And I get down the RAP and the doctor is, RMO, wonderful blokes those fellows RMOs, and there patching Bill up

and giving him a shot of morphine and I’m sitting there and I’ve got the shakes something awful, I’m not going too good, not feeling too good. Actually I finished up with slight concussion and shock. Anyway I was a smoker, but not a heavy smoker and the bloke said, “Would you like a smoke dig?” I said, “Yeah.” I never used to do the draw back very much and I got the smoke and went ……..next thing I know I hear a bloke say, “Grab him,” I’m collapsing. Another bloke said, “Oh you’d better send him out,” the best thing that happened to me world,

if I hadn’t of taken that smoke, they would have more than likely sent me back. But the funny part we’d had a few casualties up there and the first bloke to go was Bob Atkinson and he was a bloke tall as me and twice, oh beefy man, real strong solid man. I saw Bob and he’s been wounded in the leg up the top of the leg round here and he’s sliding down the track on his stomach and he’s grabbing small trees and pulling himself down and he says, “How I’m going chaps?” he’s heading back to the Doctor.

Now he gets back to the Doctor then great mate of mine Harold Chambers, he’s a big tall range bloke, he got shot with one bullet and he’s got three holes in him, now work that one out. Yeah he’s laying down and the snipers shot him and hit him in the buttock, it went in there, went in there and went in there. See so he gets back, this is well before us like and then I come in with big Bill and Bill’s getting doctored up and the stretcher bearers from the

CCS [Casualty Clearing Station] come in, their only little blokes. Well Bill’s their third trip and it’s a mile back to the villages down the bottom of the hills, not like the Owen Stanley, not very high only a couple of hundred feet but it was slippery and muddy. So they’ve taken Big Bob down and they’ve come back and got Harold Chambers, they’ve come straight back and got Big Bill. And I’m walking at the back, see I’m going back walking wounded, they used to call them,

and here’s this little bloke on the back and as you come up a slope he’s got the whole bloody weight, and I jumped forward and put my shoulder underneath and the bloody little bloke, he looks up and he says, “Hasn’t your bloody mob got any little bastards?” So that was a tale about that. And it get into hospital and anyway the shock come on me, they gave me a feed, we’d been eating rotten, oh talk about tucker we got Yankee stuff, little tins, little

glucose, little tin of baked beans, toffee, rubbish, had biscuits. And this is the twelfth day we’d been eating this rubbish and you’d give five pound for a tin of woolly beef. But anyway I get in there and they give me a salad, fresh salad more or less, no lettuce it was cabbage, carrot and all that, absolutely beautiful. Eat that and then the shock hits me, so I lost all that, had me head underneath the marque tent.

And then penicillin had just come in and that was wonderful stuff as you might of heard, that saved a lot of soldiers lives and healed them quick. And all the, we captured the hospital, the main Tarakan, only a little tiny hospital, it was a fair dinkum brick what’s it name and operating theatres. But there were that many wounded, we got a hiding up there and there’s all these marquees all the way round the hospital. So all the badly wounded are inside the hospital and the isolated

few blokes that weren’t too bad were outside. And they were getting a needle ever four hours of penicillin and two o’clock in the morning it was needle time and a great bloody big needle like a horse doctor would have. And the bloke comes in and were all fast asleep, or laying there happy and contented, were in no danger and the orderly grabs the wrong bloke. He rolls down his blanket and he pulls up and he goes whack in the blokes backside, well you should have heard the bloody scream, you should have heard blokes diving out of their bed hitting

the ground, oh laugh. And that joker Reedy, this is a classic tale this is. Yorky had been the original pioneer, he’d gone across the Middle East, he’d fought in the battle of Alamein, he’d been through the Lae, Finschhafen trip and he got wounded and won a DCM up in Tarakan. And I’m walking round the hospital and you had a postal orderly used to bring

the mail through to all the wounded. And he walked in and gave me a letter and he said, “Did you hear about Yorky and Bluey Mackey?” I said, “No.” He said, “Bluey’s been put in the for DCM and Yorky’s been put in for the MM [Military Medal],” that was the case then. I said, “That’s great news,” so I walked up and said, “Congratulations Yorky.” He said, “What for?” He said, “You’ve been put in for the MM.” “Oh no, God no.” I said, “What’s the matter?” And he told all the years he’d been in the army, all the years he’d wrote to his mother he never ever let

her know he left Australia, now she’s going to find out, it’s written in that book over there, that’s Yorky Reedy.

Hey?

Only a young fellow twenty five, gentleman too, Queenslander. Went up in me Kombi campervan and I tried to find him but I couldn’t. And Bluey got the VC.

And Tarakan was, oh this is another thing to seven weeks we were, or they, I had four days in hospital and they sent me away from the main hospital, I got put in a tent, the CCS, which is only a big marquee that holds about twelve or fourteen patients and I was in there with the remnants of a Platoon of 2/48th and they were all mainly shrapnel wounds cause they’d had a grenade fight with the Japs.

And I was having a ball there, but the officers being officers they had to go in their own little tent, they couldn’t come in with the troops and a Jap come in one night and threw a shell in the officers tent and blew him to pieces. So then they put big ark lights around the hospital, shining out so they could see the Japs coming in. And General Blamey’s going to come and see us so we got to sit to attention all day, clean the place up, sit on our beds, sit to attention. About three o’clock,

four o’clock, no Blamey so we got back to our, and all of a sudden a bloke walks in with red tabs and he was driving along the road he was and see the hospital and came in, Morshead, General Morshead, shook us by the hand, thanked us and away he went, but that Blamey they should of killed him in his birth that mongrel. So when I went back.

Yeah I got, want to see the hat, I’ve got the hat, I kept it all me life?

Yeah blew a great hole in the hat and it blew into me shoulder. Now if I go down the Minto RSL there’s a couple of young blokes always pick on us old fellows, in a nice way, they respect us. But every time they’d come past me they’d grab me by the shoulder and I used to think it was me arthritis, from about two years ago I got tendonitis in the shoulder, see,

and I had it x-rayed, I thought, ‘that’s going to be good’, cause I never knew what happened like. And I said to the Radiologist I said, “Anything funny in that photo?” she said, “There is something funny in there,” there’s only four bits of shrapnel I’ve still got in there. And when these young blokes have been leaning on me, and there sharp pieces, no wonder it was bloody sore.

Yeah still there, oh there’s hundreds of them, oh a lot have died now but after the war there would be hundreds of blokes walking round with bullets and shrapnel in their body,

never bothered to take it out, still up there where it landed.

They just kept giving me rest actually because I was, hell of a shock and they just kept me there for three days, dressed the wound in case it went septic, that’s about all. But I used to front up to the Doctor and he’d say, “How are you going?” “I’m all right Doc I’d like to get back to me mates, like to get back,” I was

fair dinkum you know cause of mateship and all that, “Oh no,” he said, “We’ll give you another day.” But when I got back I’ll never forget that night, I was telling you about fear and you hold yourself in, you might be frightened but you never show it. But I nearly cracked the night, before I went in you couldn’t have one man on picket because the Japs were sneaking in on you, you had to have two. And when I get back they’ve decided that the Japs are, we’ve got them on the run there’s not much fear of them getting in. I

had to go and sit out on me own, that’s the hardest two hours, I thought I was going to crack, gee I thought me nerve was going to go. I think the four day spell I had, well. And the tail end of me twenty second birthday we would have been seven weeks, seven weeks we went, but most of them never had their boots and socks, never changed their clothes. Just

kept on going, when you took your boots off your skin would come off, but you couldn’t take your boots off in case of a quick attack. So they give us a spell, they take us back about two mile, right near a RAF base of base troops, what they call ground staff. And they put us in tents, put us on beds and this is lovely, safe, safe at last and we take our boots and we take our dirty stinking old clothes off and lay on a bed,

just a stretcher and a blanket over us and just sitting back, oh beautiful. And about two o’clock in the morning the bloody rifle shot, one of the RAF guards, like not within two mile of a Jap and they're on guard and this is fair dinkum if you see a bush and you watch it long enough it will move. This bloke thought it was a Jap and he let go with this Rifle shot. Well us blokes our nerves are strung like bow strings, all out of bed and landed on the ground. So the next day this Ross Smithy walks across,

asks to see the guard sergeant, the guard you see, and he says to the guard, he says, “Where does your sentry stand?” and the bloke says, “Just over there,” and Smithy says, “Well,” he says, “I’ve just been over there and if he fires a shot tonight,” he says, “I’ll fire straight back at him.” So we had a good night sleep the next night, how will that do you?

Yeah well that’s, it’s only

a trip in a ship, train trip.

Yeah.

Yeah I’ll tell you, a Battalion like family, when the 5th Battalion broke up it was pretty sad and like months leave, seven weeks, I’d had it I wanted to get back to a Battalion. And when I marched into the

Pioneers I thought to me self ‘Ah I’m back to the Battalion, mates’. I get up there and all the tents are pulled down, sleeping out in the open cause we were going to move down to Townsville and Cairns, just sail away. But it was a good trip on the Sea Cat, a ten thousand ton Liberty ship, really like a cruise, got good tucker, American food. Pulled into Milne Bay Harbour, you heard of Milne Bay, beautiful place and the Pacific Ocean was the best, it was like this floor,

beautiful blue, and just sailing up there. And we get to Morotai and we’re at Morotai for oh about a week and what the Yanks had there, they’d split the island where the Yanks had a third of it and they had a perimeter there and the Japs the other side, there was an unwritten truce, the Japs they had no ammunition. But we were outside on the Japs side, right on the beach,

I’ll tell ya, I can tell you this tale, I get a bit emotional…no I can’t tell you. Anyway we get a bottle of beer two nights before we’re ready to hop on the LCI, that’s the Landing Craft Infantry, and we get a bottle of beer and next day we get another bottle of beer. So I go and dig my into the sand to keep it cool so

I’m going to have two bottles and get a bit of a kick, cause looking forward to this and you wouldn’t want to know, Bill, Bill May, Vi’s brother we’d been split up, so that didn’t make me happy and they bring in some more reo’s to build us up and who walks into Don Company, Billy May, also another bloke Jack Wilson, another great mate of mine. Another bloke Rod Ryan he’s another Pioneer, that’s Jack Wilson, so instead of me getting two bottles of beer I got third share of two bottles of beer, but I

didn’t mind doing it.

Yeah, oh we’d been three years, we’d been old Scotties we were tent mates, Bill and I slept next to each other for over three years, went on leave together. And we’re on the LCI, Yankee ships and a bloke’s rolling a cigarette, take out his paper and licks it, slow as slow cause there’s nothing, and a Yanks watching him

and the Yank says, “How long do you reckon your going to be in Tarakan Aussie?” and the bloke says, “Oh they reckon six days,” took six weeks but that’s the heads for you, “Oh,” he said, “You won’t have time to smoke.” So he races away and comes back and gives him a carton of Lucky Strike, out of the goodness of his own heart, their great generous blokes Yank, pretty weak like as far as soldiers go.

No, never, oh we little bit, we used to, there was a few up there and they played basketball, that’s the only time we saw them, no I had nothing much to do with the Yanks. Oh when I was in Western Australia that’s right, oh that was a classic, I forget this one, get back to the West, this is not about the West, this is only my tales. Yeah this is a funny one, I told you about my enlarged tonsils, I was born with them,

look down your throat and I’ve got these great big red and swollen tonsils which don’t worry me one bit. And in Western Australia they got the bright idea two o’clock in the morning, out of bed, get dressed, twelve mile route march, six mile out and six mile back. Come back and then continue your day working, you don’t get back into bed. And I thought ‘This there ruddy joking’ another two or three nights the same thing, I thought ‘hello here’s a go’. Sick parade, you ought to see all the blokes on sick parade, and this doctor we had Dr Dungan,

he was a good, top doctor he says, “Right oh,” he lines us up, “Those who have got cold, those that want to go to hospital over there.” So I go over there and all me mates are what this so and so up to, cause I had a bit of a name round the Battalion as being shifty. And my turn to come up and I walk in and he says, “What’s wrong with you soldier?” he’s real abrupt, “I’ve got a sore throat me tonsil’s are playing up,” and he looked and he says to Wally Wayne, “Sergeant come and have a look at this man’s tonsils.” “Good God.” See

next thing I know I’m in the hospital, I’m going out to Hollywood Hospital. Laying there and they're painting me tonsil’s, they reckon they were too big to take out, it would cause trouble. So painting me tonsil’s and after three days they give up on me. So when I went back, I had to go back on me own steam to a staging camp and I struck some Yanks on the way back and they invited me in just to have a chat. And they were quite nice but that’s all I had to do with them. Yes but anyway they started the same thing up again

and I put the same act on but they sent me to a, there’s a racecourse over in Western Australia, Lonnavale, little tiny old bush grandstand and they had a hospital underneath there and they had a German doctor, fair dinkum German he was naturalised, oh great big bloke. He looks down me throat, “Oh we will fix these,” next thing out they come so me, that finished that little racket.

That’s like our Heidelberg, the main hospital.

Oh no, no.

Oh they're too soft, they're too soft. I never had anything to do with them but mates of mine up at Buna they come in there and they were going to do this and going to do that and took them six days to land sixty yards. They used to, in Buna, this is like fair dinkum, they go up and there’s like a bunker full of Japs up there, the Japs

they used to dig in, impossible to get them out really, you’d have to land an artillery shell, worked like niggers, cut down great big trees and built all these bunkers and covered them up. And they reckon the Yanks walked up and got within what they thought was firing distance and they all stood there and fired every bit of ammunition, just up in a general direction and then bolted, that’s what they were like.

No they just thought it was easy, life was easy.

But still, yes I had a good life in Tarakan after, I played basketball I was captain of the Battalion team and then I used to do a bit of refereeing and I got known all over the island as referee and they used to come and send jeeps for me. One day I’m umpiring the 2/3rd Pioneer Battalion officers versus the 2/23rd Battalion officers, and the CO

of the 23rd was a very brilliant soldier, Fag Tucker, well known DSO. He never played basketball in his life and I had to pull him up all the time, “Excuse me Sir,” he was travelling and all that business. Until the day I got me self a burial job, old Jonesy the sergeant said, “You’re doing nothing,” I never did anything just laying on me back waiting for somebody to come

and pick me up to referee a game of basketball. “Come on,” he said, “Go up to transport,” he said, “And pick up a jeep, a trailer and go round the Jap compound,” we had the prisoners, there were two thousands Japs there, we finished up with two hundred prisoners. “Go and pick up these prisoners with picks and shovels and then go up to the hospital and pick up a dead Jap.” And when they bought the dead Jap out he was wrapped up and he was about that long and about that round, and this only weighed about four stone, they died of malnutrition, they were starving, cause that’s

why we could capture them. So we're going up to their little cemetery, we go up to the cemetery and so we buried the dead, we looked after our, Australia was very good that way, but if we’d have know what they’d did it wouldn’t have got so bad. So we’re getting along and the funny part I’ve been give a rifle and I’ve got six Japs and I’ve been give a rifle but no rounds, just an empty rifle, I wasn’t too happy about that I can tell ya. Anyway this little jeep trailers bouncing along…

Oh no, I’ll tell you we’re getting along right and picked up the Japs in the trailer, there’s six of them and picks and shovels, they're all jammed in right. Where driving along and all this great big pothole, we didn’t notice it and the little jeep hit and up she went. And I looked around and here’s these six Japs, and I’m not exaggerating there three feet out the trailer up in the air, and crash down they come, and the driver says, “Will I stop?” and I says, “No stuff them.”

So we, and this what upset me like about the Japs they were so arrogant in what they did and when we captured them they were cringing and falling, and calling so and so’s they’d bow to you and scrape. So but their digging away to bury their mate, Suzuki, they're all named Suzuki I think, there was only about ten in the cemetery. Anyway there getting a bit agitated, there was on Jap there could speak English see, getting very agitated because we’re getting near,

late. So we found out why they were getting agitated, if they didn’t get him buried they’d miss out on their tea and they wanted to know if it was deep enough. Like Australia, we couldn’t have done…anyway right oh fill it in, couldn’t care us, threw him about that deep, bang took them back. We got them, we captured them

and we hated rice and we gave them all the rice and within a fortnight they were nearly as big as I was, you know the big fat shiny faces, yeah.

Yeah, a couple of them could speak English, you’d occasionally struck English speaking blokes.

Yeah, oh I was seven weeks less four days.

We were only there a week.

Oh Morotai, Australians are renowned as scroungers, like you’ve no idea what their like especially those old diggers. One bloke staggers in one day and he upsets us again, he’s found American M & V, meat and vegetables made by Tom Piper in Melbourne, open it up and it’s like your mother cooked, it’s like mother stew.

And here’s us eating this rubbish, what Tom Piper made for us and the Yanks have got this beautiful stuff, oh. And another digger staggers in and he’s got a hundred Ronson cigarette lighters, Yankee, the Yanks used to get issued with them. There was a hundred in a Company and I happen to be away somewhere, might have been playing basketball or something and I was the only bloke, no it wasn’t that it was before we went in, it was on Morotai, what am I’m talking, it was before action. I don’t know where I was I missed out.

Anyway when we start to get wounded like and killed the other blokes around the Battalion got these Ronson cigarette lighters, but I still didn’t get one, snaffled.

Us pioneers weren’t told very much, we were just told where to go and when. We landed off, we were last to land,

there was 23rd, 24th and 48th Battalions, they were a brigade. And whereas the pioneers were, as I told you trained at engineers and infantry but we weren’t quite up to the strength of the infantry battalion, they were more experienced so they went in and whenever, as soon as they got into trouble, we’re light on for troops we’d be called in. So they went up and we were about, I think it was about the fifth day I was,

had to go through the Botanical Gardens, and about the seventh day they heard there were Japs up on a ridge and they didn’t know where so they called on the pioneers and Smithy volunteers again and away we go. Our job was to walk up this little bitumen road, wouldn’t be quite as wide as this room, just enough room for one truck, no gutters. And wait till we were fired on, how will that do you? And that let them know,

they could then pinpoint where the Japs were, but you couldn’t see them. So along we go, up we go and we get fired on and we head for the, as soon as the first bullet, you hear that, and luckily nobody got hit and we just dived into the scrub. And laying there and they’re still firing, the bullets are clipping the leaves off the tree about that far above your head, but your down, your lying flat on your face. So that’s all right we get out of that one, they bring in, they would bring in

Vickers and mortars and keep their heads down until we get the order to get out. And we’re getting out on this day and there’s a Yank waddling down the street on his own, I’ll never forget this day. We’re all shaking you know and the Yank says, “Any souvenirs down there?” He said, “Yeah plenty of them, lead.” And as soon as he found out what it was he took off. But the second time we did the same thing we came to a crossroads and Tarakan was a floating island of oil, it was only seven

miles long by eleven miles wide and it’s the purest oil they reckon in the world, they could practically use it without refining it. And a mate of mine went up there fifty years later for a look see, to see what it was like and they were still getting as much oil out fifty years later. So on the side of the bitumen road there was ditches oh about six foot wide and about that deep and full of water. But on top of the water was oily scum. So we’re getting to the crossroads and I’m right in the middle of the crossroads

and the Japs open up on us and they all, me mates they dived into this water and I dived as far as I could and I lay in a grass, grass was about that high up to about there, only me legs were sticking out on the road. And I’m looking down and I said, “I’m not going to get in there,” cause had no clothes to change, you had to try and get that oil off with grass or anything you like or let it dry and just sleep in it like. Anyway they’re onto me old mate Tommy Cavanaugh on the ditch that side and he’s running up, “Ross”

he’s singing out, “They’re onto me, they’re onto me.” And the bullets are hitting the road, about six feet from me. ‘Will I jump in or will I take a punt’. So I took a punt, we were pinned there for half an hour till they got their heads down, oh she’s lovely fun and games I can tell ya, now it’s over.

No what we do, as I said before they’d radio

back, the reserve section behind us, we were in sections of ten you see, they’d know we were pinned down and then they’d get through the wireless, telephone get back to Brigade Headquarters and they’d know where we we’re going because they’d sent us out to the spot where they thought they were. So they could pinpoint it, then they had Vickers, those Vickers machine guns they could fire fifteen thousand yards, and mortars,

so they opened up with the Vickers and the mortars and as soon as they got them going then the word would come, get out. And I’ll tell you something talk about the gift horse getting away. I’m flying up the road and all the twenty, the other two sections around the corners, there’s a little concrete thing about that big and I saw it, I thought that will do me and I dived and hit behind that. You should have heard them laugh at me,

it’s all right for them they weren’t…

Yes, yes I’ll tell you. Another time, oh yeah me mate Jack, I’ve got to write this, I write things for the 5th Battalion paper, I’ve written one over there for the 5th Battalion about what I told you about Canungra about the tent, I write and tell them how the 5th Battalion.

And my mate Jack, when I was an apprentice tile layer at about fourteen the plasterer they were doing the plastering on the flats and we’d come behind and we’re doing the tiling. And they had a lad, I was a lad and we got to know each other, this Jack Wilson and I, we’d only meet six times a year when we struck each other on the job. And for about eighteen months or so we got to know each other and we’d have a chat to each other as kids. So I join up the 5th Battalion and the first lot of call ups who walks in

A Company, the Rifle Company, Jack Wilson. So I was with him for six months there and I join up the Pioneers and he stayed with A Company and then we went right through, I used to see him round the traps and on leave sometimes. And we got split up and that time at Morotai when they walked in, who walks in right into my Section of Don Company, number 6 Section, Jack Wilson. So I’m in, I’ve got a mate at long last cause those New South Welshman used to give me a

hurry up, like a Victorian, especially that little Threepence and Dozer, because I was a big bloke and they were littler. It was only good fun, that’s how we kept going you know in the army the way we used to insult each other, in good fun, unless you struck a bloke like that big…you couldn’t say that to him, and that’s the way we kept, humour, digger humour. But anyway I’ve got Jacky Wilson

so I’m, he slept, he dug a weapon pit, every time you stop you dug a weapon pit, slit trenches, foxhole. And I was with Jack and anyway the day of the twelfth we had the attack, and the night before the eleventh they call on artillery, they were landing artillery shells sixty yards in front of our fronts, our soldiers. Imagine that’s all night and that’s suppose to soften the Japs up, didn’t worry about keeping us awake. Anyway Jack put his head up at the wrong time and he got the top of

his head cut off. So he’s sitting in the trench waiting to be evacuated, so we go round to do our job and we couldn’t and we had to come round, and as I’m coming round the flank, Jack’s sitting there and he’s got a great big shell dressing on his head, tied underneath, blood running down his face and he said, “Good luck Stan,” and shook hands, away I went. And sure enough three hours later or four hours later I walk into hospital and who’s sitting up in bed, it’s my mate Jack.

And after the war I used to meet him on the jobs, and he passed away on me, good bloke. Funny thing I used to sit with Jack and think, ‘Gee I’m glad I’m with your Jacky, your so calm and placid, you don’t seem to be frightened’, that’s why I thought, ‘You beauty’. If I’d have, I reckon if I’d have struck a bloke that was frightened as I was it would be the end of it. I’m down the RSL [Returned and Services League] on night and his brother was a social member down there, and

Jack comes in so I, “How you going Jack?” and I hear him say to his mates, “Gee’s he was a good soldier.”

We had a bloke that knew no fear, a bloke by the name of Bluey Minter, he was a bugger of a man, surly, bloke you couldn’t get on with, but he had no fear in his body, he won a Military Medal in

New Guinea, if ever there was a man that won a VC he would of, cause he wasn’t frightened. I climbed out of me hole up in Tarakan and I’m behind a tree about that wide, and they bring the water up to you before you go into action, you fill up your water bottles. And I’m filling up me water bottle and the Japs are up the hill and whenever anybody shook a tree in our position they could see the tree shake and they used to open up with machine guns. And they opened up and I could hear these bullets thudding into the tree,

about three feet, four feet from me, and I’m laying down there and I look up and here’s this Bluey Minter with a snarl on his face. And anything happened he’d rush up, as a private, he wouldn’t take stripes, they gave him stripes, he finished up acting platoon sergeant in Bluey Mackey’s Section cause their platoon sergeant was shot, all their NCOs were wounded, not killed so they put Bluey up as a platoon sergeant. But he

wouldn’t take stripes, but gee he was, no fear whatsoever, I’d have loved to have been like that.

Oh I was offered stripes as I said when I did that school, the gas school and the intelligence school I was offered, there’s two stripes if you do all right, but I didn’t do the school, I would like to have done it cause I rather liked school

work but. My platoon commander wouldn’t talk to me after that but that never worried me cause I never was friendly with him. And then in action they offered me stripes, that’s why that Smithy he, I was the first bloke he gave point scout to cause he reckons I was a jibe and he wanted to prove, make me prove I wasn’t. The first time we got into real trouble was before that actually and he

went in the front, he lead. But see if you’re a corporal you’ve got to say, “Right oh Jack you take point scout,” knowing full well there’s a fair chance of him getting killed or wounded, I couldn’t do that, I’d rather do it myself. So I’d rather stay a private and they give me the job I’ll do it, if they don’t give it to me well good luck.

The first action.

Yeah well that was only walking down the road to attract fire, that’s about four times that happened. That’s not a nice experience but luckily we got out of it, it could of got one of us killed. I’ll tell you something else while I’m here the bravest man you can get is a stretcher bearer, that’s a platoon stretcher bearer, every Platoons got a stretcher bearer. And one of the worst sounds you can hear is the rattle of gunfire and the call, “Stretcher bearer”

you know somebody’s been hit. And those stretcher bearers, no Rifle used to have to go straight up to where that bloke got hit, which meant that they would be under sight of the Japs, dress him, like see if he was dead, whack a bandage on him, give him a shot of morphine and try and get him out. That’s one job they’d never get me doing, oh if they told me to I’d have to do it I suppose, but brave men.

Big Bluey Baker, he was a Queenslander, he was six foot one and he was the ugliest man I’ve ever seen in my life he was. He had a mop of red hair, he had that white skin blotched with freckles, he had a great big hook nose and a mouth full of twisted broken teeth and always had a drip on his nose. But he was a great bloke and in respect he was a real bushy and a bush philosopher, when he spoke he spoke

interesting, like he had his views, we loved him. He fell off a truck and got killed after the war.

No our Section held up pretty well, but we knew old Tommy Cavanaugh he was bloke in his thirties and he was very, very frightened and he was a very staunch Catholic. And I had him for a couple of times, when there was trouble was on, he took the rosary beads out, and I’ll tell you I’m agnostic, but don’t worry about that but I reckon I could recite the rosary beads

after two or three days with Tommy. But he was frightened but they kept going and there the blokes you admire…whereas one little bloke he disappeared on us, he was frightened but never went into action, I think he went to the doctor and we had a good doctor and said, “Oh well we’ll send you back.” Oh and another little bloke we had in the 5th Battalion, Titchy Tate, he’s the smallest soldier in the AIF

and he’s in the 23rd Battalion and he’s been down in an attack with the 23rd and he’s laying down and the bullets, you’ve got a haversack on your back up here and he’s laying flat down and the bullets are hitting his pack, that’s how close it is. And when they got him out, you know, rat shit. Titch, everybody used to tease Titchy and he took it well, he was, we never teased him maliciously, all through the army like, like a little boy he was. Anyway,

I come home from the army and I’m outside Young and Jackson and a bloke walks up and looks at me, Titchy Tate and he goes…they put him in the biscuit bombers and gave him two stripes, there’s me haven’t got a stripe, Titchy.

Oh well it was everything, oh yes even having jokes at your mates and all that, playing jokes on

them, yeah, pretty hard to be humorous though. I see in the journey there, little Freddy Huff, must tell you mateship, died and Freddy he’d been to Alamein fought at Alamein, New Guinea and he’s had it and he didn’t want to go in. And on the LCI a mile out from shore, and a bloke from Mentone, actually Curly Miller a lance corporal,

good swimmer, he swam in, helped him in, to swim to shore to desert and swum back.

Yeah a mile out to sea. They got Freddy and we had this Luke Jack Travers, terrific man he defended Freddy and got him off it, instead of a snarler just got a charge, discharged him. But we never worried about those blokes,

they were there by the grace of God go I, but they kept going these blokes. Joe Wilson he was fairly old and a bushy and he used to turn green with fright, and he’d been through Alamein and Finschhafen, but he kept going, he wasn’t worth a bumper but he was with you and never looked like bolting. Old Tommy Cavanaugh he was always last on the Section, and we used to laugh a bit about Tommy wouldn’t be up there.

And one day I happen to get caught at last, and I’ll tell ya it’s nearly as bad as being in the front cause your looking, getting along looking behind all the time, I like right in the middle, that was the place.

Well what you don’t know you don’t worry about,

like it’s your first time in action. Now I was worried, like if I’d have gone into action, if I’d have been in the army and we had a lot of our blokes made Morotai as reinforcements but they never got into action, if I’d have been like that I would have been broken hearted. I wouldn’t have joined the RSL, I wouldn’t talk to anybody. I’m glad I saw it, I’m glad I got out of it, but you don’t seem to worry what’s, cause you don’t know what your going into. Now this Bluey

Mackey that won the VC, he did not want to go into action, it was his third time in and he was dead scared and he did not want to go and he went in and won a VC. And see now even, I’m surprised, cause I’d read a bit about the Kokoda Track and to me it wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be. To capture that Helen Hill and our company were

ninety men, I forget what it was, oh about nineteen killed and twenty nine wounded, that’s a fair whack it’s not as bad as something. But I never thought it was that hard as I expected it to be, and I always thought I’d like to go in again, but I don’t think I would of like, you know see how I’d go the next time.

Well what I did, I was told to do anything I did it

like I never, I hesitated but I did it. Another thing to, if one of your mate gets killed and your terribly sorry, but then again you think at least it’s not me, a bit selfish but that’s the way it is. Another thing to is your not so much frightened of death as you are of getting crippled. So one through the head or damage or brain, or loose a leg or something, if your going to die lets die quick.

More frightened of being badly wounded. Heidelberg Hospital, now that’s a place I got there in 1946 to have a cartilage out and I got stuck next door to a Patty Jenkins and one of the greatest larrikins I’ve ever stuck in me life, private from the 2/13th Battalion. And Anzac Day, we’re both confined to bed

on Anzac Day 1946 and he wanted to know of anybody who wanted to go to Anzac Day in a wheelchair, and I said, “Oh I’ll go,” never been to an Anzac Day. So get in the wheelchair and away we get wheeled, leg in a great big plaster, aluminium splint, well to cut a long story short no bottles, you know bottle, we were absolutely busting, steams coming out of our ears and we’ve got a bloke races to get to the toilet and Jenkins saying, “Owler you so and so when you get out I’m going to knock you

rotten.” Anyway we just made it, and Billy May, I’ll get right back to it about the Heidelberg Hospital, we gets back to this. When we come back from the island and you’re only on a point system, you had to have so many points before you could get out. So you had to be in the army more or less for a couple of months till your points come down to it. And we’re all out at

Watsonia and we’re all marching in and all 5th Battalion blokes mainly, you know that had been to Morotai in the 23rd, 24th and the 48th, cause the 23rd had about fifty 5th Battalion blokes in it and they got a great name. There all coming in and, “Where you going chap?” “Bloody Bandiana or bloody, all over the place.” In I march and you wouldn’t want to know there’s a 2/3rd Pioneer captain, been in the pioneers got the miniature colour patch up, means he’s been in and

discharged. He sees my colour patch, “Oh,” he says, “a Pioneer, I know you don’t I?” I said, “No I don’t think so Sir I was a late reo.” “Oh,” he said, “well where would you like to go?” I said, “Well it’s up to you?” He said, “How would Albert Park Sigs do?” Billy May comes in after me, he’s an orderly at Heidelberg, all the Pioneers are getting all the jobs around Melbourne, the 23rd there all getting sent all round the place, up in the bush. So anyway this day we’re locked up,

Patty and I were locked in over the weekend so Billy May goes down to the Ivanhoe Pub, Doctor Ryan’s we used to call it, down to dispensary and he brings back a bottle of gin each. So we’re in bed bugling a bottle of gin and some of those sisters were pretty naive and I woke up about two o’clock in the morning and I’m in trouble, I am sick, they thought I was dying, I thought I was dying to. So the next morning they cleaned me up and everything’s all right there,

the next morning the old matron, old battle hardened Middle East matron, she stands at the end of me bed and she says, “Private Owler,” she said, “would you get out of that bed, you will wash every dish in this ward.” And she could see Patty Jenkin’s blankets going up and down laughing and she said, “And that goes for you Private Jenkins.” But getting back to the rude bit, see one night the Ivanhoe Ladies Auxiliary come in, it was the night after,

I’m sick all day you see, I’m not going to good that night, the next night, Patty’s all right there. And I wake up about two o’clock in the morning and what’s going on, here’s this lovely looking girl and he’s just about got her into bed, but I woke up and frightened, she goes for her life, well do you think he got, he wasn’t too happy with me. It was fun and games at Heidelberg at times.

Yeah that’s all right.

Well we didn’t really, we stepped out and we got ashore and the beach come up where all the oil tanks were, they’d bombed all those

they were all just holes and we were on that side and we were on top and all of a sudden some Japs could see us and there’s bullets whistling around our ears. But the old soldiers knew what they were so we dived down, that was the first we struck but it didn’t seem to worry us, we knew we were in trouble. The first time it really hit me was when we got up to the bottom of this Helen on the 11th May and were not up there very long, and as I said, bloke was

going up and he grabbed this tree about that thick and about fifteen foot tall and he shook it and the Japs could see it go and they fired down. And then they had stretcher bearers and they dragged him out, he’d been hit three time across the chest and blood streaming down and walked right past me and I though, ‘God, god Stanley what have you struck here’, oh that’s when I got frightened, that’s when it really hit me, it wasn’t going to be no picnic.

Oh we all landed at the same morning, it was only four battalions landed.

They were severe, if you know much about the Kokoda Trail well their battle lasted five weeks and ours lasted seven and we had more casualties than they

did, but there’s were mainly killed, they had three hundred odd killed and three hundred odd wounded, we only had just under the two hundred odd killed but five hundred wounded. But the difference was the Japs were dug in and we had to go to them so we were on the wrong end of the stick. Where the other way the Japs were attacking the blokes at what’s it name and their static and there’s watching the Japs come up and better show

of killing them than they have, you follow what I mean, see that’s what it was. No, my platoon sergeant said to me, I mentioned talking about Alamein, he says, “Alamein was a bloody picnic compared to this.” And the bloke from the, big Allen McFarland the boss of the 2/24th I got to know him cause I’m a 9th Division counsel like sort of business and he reckons Tarakan was worse, cause

they got some terrible hidings, the Infantry Battalions. Actually Allen McFarland, he cracked he was going up to shoot the CO, yeah that’s true, he told me himself. I have a 9th Division dinner, 9th Division council but I don’t go now. And this wharfie wanted a DSO [Distinguished Service Order] and he was pushing his troops beyond what they were expected to do and Allen McFarland had been a Rat of Tobruk and seen the casualties there and

they got a hell of a hiding at Alamein and a bigger hiding, they got the most casualties at Tarakan all because of this wharfie, Colonel Wall. And he cracked and he was going up to shoot him, fair dinkum they grabbed him and sent him back to Australia, nothing said to him, nothing done to him.

Well we were just following up as a reserve battalion, we had no pioneer work to do.

After the blue we worked on roads, there’s photos there in our journey, patching up roads and that sort of business, working as engineers then. But we always had Infantry as our labourers, we were the brains.

Just rifle, I was a rifleman and we had our Bren gunner and we had two Tommy guns

and you just marched along the road, watching, waiting and as soon as the first shot you were down, you knew it was coming, just lucky enough nobody got hit, couldn’t have missed by much. You’d be in a hole and about that far above your head the bullets are cutting the leaves and there falling down, laugh now can’t ya. But I wouldn’t have missed it for quids,

now I’m out of it, now I got through it, yeah.

Yeah ten, you fought in sections, now I was with the pioneers oh about six months and I hardly knew, three sections in 17 Platoon and I hardly knew some of the blokes in the other sections, but I knew me own

nine mates, blood brothers, mates. And I never knew anybody in 16 Platoon, other platoons, hardly, only unless they come from the 5th Battalion. That’s jungle warfare you see, I can say I was with Bluey Mackey but I was thirty yards from him when he won it, I didn’t see him, cause you can’t see that far. And they were bringing their wounded back through us and

somebody come back and said, “Bluey’s gone.” Tell you another funny thing about Victoria Cross winners. The war’s over, our war was over but they were still fighting so we’re back in company lines, we set up a camp, proper camp company lines, that means there’s a tents this side and tents that side and big stretch of parade ground like, each company’s got that. Anyway we get these young twenty

year old reos come. We get one young bloke, really Surrey Hills city larrikin, swore like a trooper out the side of his mouth, talked like a thrashing machine, all he wanted to know was what it was like in action, and we’d had enough, we didn’t want to talk. Somebody said to me one day, some women physiologists, “And what did you get, any counselling?” I said, “Yes they got us out and they left us alone for three days, never come near us just to feed us,” that’s all we got,

no counselling, these counsellors now, all these Vietnam blokes got counselling. But anyway this Simmo were, “Oh for god’s sake shut up will you Simmo, we don’t want to talk about the war,” oh he wanted to know what it was like in action. Anyway one of the kids up the line, he got the son sent to him and it just happen to be the son that my name was in the casualty list and he came running down. He says, “Stan,” he says, “is that you?” and I said, “Yeah that’s me.” Simmo said, “Did you get wounded in action?” I didn’t tell him how bad I got. Well he wanted to be me

batman, he’d have cleaned me boots if I’d have asked him. Well to cut a long story short he was military mad, he went to Korea, he won the DCM in Korea and then he went to Vietnam and won a Victoria Cross in Vietnam, so I can say I personally knew two Victoria Cross winners, there’s not that many around, there’s only been ninety six in a hundred years, but old Simmo, so I can say I taught him what he knew about soldiering.

Yeah.

Any more?

I’m just getting wound up.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh they were fanatical, brave, stupid. Yeah

they were, they’d be on top of these hills, grounded in and we could only go up line ahead ten men at a time, there’ve got two hundred blokes dug into these bunkers with slits and then logs over there and watching. They told me, I missed out on this but when they did get up there, they’d cut down a strip in front with, the hill come down like that and then a flat bit and down again, we were down there, and they cut all the trees and bushes down, so that if

we’d have broken through the jungle we would have been sitting ducks. But they’d tossed and all of a sudden they’d pack up and nick off, they did that with a few of the 23rd Battalion blokes, positions, done the same way, how we going to get them off out, that’s what they do. Oh they were coming in the top of Tarakan Hill, they were coming with long knives on big long eight foot poles

while you were asleep and jabbing into you, not A Company got that. One young kid he had his Rifle up one day and there’s a Jap with a sword and he’s banging down and the blade of the swords hitting the butt of the Rifle and the kid was getting little cuts in his head, just enough to stop him from getting his head cleaned open. Oh they were…little Ernie Thompson he died of cancer and I

used to go and visit him, I used to hear Pioneer dying through my job and I’d go and visit them. And he had about a week to go and I went out to see him and he’s talking about, he said, he’d been to Alamein, he’d been to Lae, Finschhafen, he was a farmer, and they were asking for farmers. As I said before, MacArthur didn’t want us, he wanted us to grow tucker. So Ernie took the chance, in front of his wife and daughter,

“Oh,” he said, “I didn’t mind the desert,” he said, “That wasn’t bad,” he said, “But I didn’t like the jungle, those Japs frightened shit out of me.” That’s, I’ve got a book in there, a 9th Division book, the blokes that they were in Tobruk, Alamein then they went to New Guinea and when New Guinea was over they come back and had leave and you have no idea the amount of desertions, they didn’t want to go back to the jungle, they didn’t mind Tobruk and they didn’t mind

Alamein but didn’t want to come back to those Japs. I had a house in Sorrento and down there one day and I’m turning the corner and there was about six Japs and I run right into, nearly stopped me heart, still frightened twenty years after.

Well that’s what it is it’s your nerve, you’ve got to sneak around, not make a noise and your looking and night time

you’re listening, you know it’s no spell from it, pressure, nervous, pressure.

No, no. My section only killed four, they mainly get killed by mortar fire and shell fire, but they called the navy and the air force in, they were bloody hopeless drop them anywhere.

After I got wounded they took our, they called the navy in and our blokes had to retreat three hundred yards, like three hundred yards we fought for and they had to lose that. And the closest the navy got to shooting the Japs, they nearly landed a shell amongst our blokes three hundreds yards away, so that’s how good the navy were, that’s why I’m not so happy about the navy, hope some navy bloke hears that. And the same with the air force, they’re not accurate, artillery they’re marvellous.

This night before the attack I could hear the OPIP, the artillery they sent up an OPIP, he’s an officer and a sig and they sent over ranging shots and our CO wanted the shells landed sixty yards in front of our front troops and they didn’t want to do it, and he demanded it. Well I was about thirty yards behind the front troops and they were landing, my cobber he got hit with a piece of our own artillery, Jacky Wilson. And I heard the OPIP say, “Send over a range,” you could

hear the whoosh, that’s what a shell sounds like, never forgot that sound…then there was a crash and a bang and I hears him say, “Drop it a hundred,” another…and a crash and a bang a bit louder. All of a sudden, “Right that’s it let it go.” And ever hour on the hour they’d send ten rounds over, that’s to upset the Japs, didn’t worry about us like getting upset, you were always frightened of a drop short.

Right what do you want to know now?

Well it was down on the beach and I think it was B Company and they had these Jap, one or two on this raft, they were building rafts and trying to drift away, and it wasn’t that far from Borneo if I remember rightly, get across to Borneo. Anyway there trying to call me, come on in, we didn’t want to shoot you, and this one bloke said, “Oh I’ve had this,” and he put up his rifle to shoot them and these Australian blokes said, “You shoot him and I’ll shoot you,” and he was fair dinkum, so

the Jap got saved, but he most likely would have drowned, so makes no difference. And then we’re talking about.

Oh I don’t really know, well I suppose his that way inclined, he’s kind hearted and not that type of body, to see somebody killed in cold blood like that. Anyway that’s what the tale was.

Yes, oh no he was a

nice fellow, he was a well liked personable bloke but he’s just the type of bloke he’d be, sort of fellow that wouldn’t kill a fly, couldn’t imagine him smacking his kids or anything like that.

The what?

Oh yes the chaplain, yes well I’ll start off Headquarters, Battalion Headquarters way down on the bottom of the track and we had to go up, two hundred yards up to where the Japs were and here’s old Molly

Anderson, that was our CO and he’s standing there with a great big grin on his face and this big, the bloke with the kid, like the married man that got wounded in the shoulder and he’s has happy as he’s been, you know thinking about his baby. And old Molly’s got the grin on his face and he says, “Oh here comes my Don Company, Japs won’t stop these blokes,” and big Bill says, “What the so and so you got to laugh at you mug,” stuck to the colonel. But we’re at Battalion Headquarters

and all of a sudden the chaplain, our padre he’s coming up with a hot box and its full of coffee, and the colonel said, “Where you going padre?” he says, “I’m taking some coffee up to the boys up top there,” and he says, “You are not,” he says, “Well if it’s good enough for my boys to be up there, it’s good enough for me to go up.” But he didn’t get up, wasn’t a place for padres, yeah that’s the sort of bloke he was, terrific bloke. I’m not a religious man, like I

just never bought up that way, I’m not anti-religious and when it was over the first church parade, I went to the first church parade, I thought I might get something out of it, no didn’t seem to get to me, but I was that grateful. I’ll tell you what I was praying to a couple of times, used to pray, don’t know who to but I was praying.

Oh praying I wouldn’t get shot.

When the bullets were flying, or before we knew the bullets were going to fly?

Yeah we had a, after the war was over and the padre had a sort of a church parade for sort of the thanksgiving that it was all over and it was a fairly big parade, a lot of people went. But he was very nice, popular man. Oh another thing too, he taught, we had a mister, Salvation Army bloke, he was from the Salvations really, he was, he had two stripes, I don’t know what for but he always had a hot coffee and biscuits. Not far from the front line either,

you were coming out, Ben would be there with a hot cup of coffee and biscuits. Salvation Army used to supply it and he would bring it to you. A lot of battalions had them, they were all through the army, I reckon since the war every cup of coffee I’ve had from old Ben, it’s cost me five dollars. Never refuse the Salvos.

Yes he was very popular man Ben.

No, no.

No, no as I say this counselling gets us old diggers in, anything, somebody gets their car smashed they get counselling, nobody ever counselled us blokes. And what we did, what I did is nothing compared to what a lot of blokes went through and they never got counselling.

Yes old Tubby.

Tubby Knott, Sig rung through, he rung through the sig from Company Headquarters back to the Battalion, “Knott here,” and the Sig said, “Well who the bloody hell is here.”

But he was a great bloke, would go anywhere for the Pioneers, he came down to Melbourne a couple of times. I designed and got the plaque we’ve got on a tree under, in the shrine, just down from the shrine itself and he came across to see that, came all the way from Wagga, and a pretty sick man. Actually I’ve got a photo of him from that trip and it was the last official thing he did was for the Pioneers, he died not long after, old Knotty.

And me mate Stan Jones, here’s one for the aborigines, he was classed as the best NCO in the battalion Stan and he was to, and they, when they opened up the war cemetery at Tarakan he was picked, the pioneers were picked to put the guard on and Stan was platoon sergeant, he had the choice of picking, and I’ve got a photo of him, big Nelson an aborigine, he was in 17 Platoon. And Stan picked him and they said, “Oh no you can’t have him,” and Stan told them to stick

the guard where the monkey stuck his nuts, he just wouldn’t be in it, that was terrible that. Funny people those officers. Yeah keep going.

Oh the monkeys, as I say you’d be getting along a track and eyes peeled

and sweating like, listening and all of a sudden crash, monkey would go through the trees on ya, about fifty yards up the track. Want any more?

Yeah swing through the trees but that’s all they had to do for your nerves your nerves are just ready to, you’re that alert like. And at night time, as I say night time they’d be crashing through the, down the bottom of the hill and all that,

you’d hear them of a night time.

Well for the first twelve days you just slept in a hole and if it rained it rained. You had a groundsheet, or gas cape they are really, they were better than a groundsheet, and you wrap the gas cape round you and put your slouch hat over your head and put your feet up higher than the water and just went to sleep like that.

But the gas cape would make you sweat that much. And you never had a real, you cat nap all the time, an hour here and a half hour there and if you stopped, you were on a patrol and it was pretty safe and quite, you’d stop there and sit by the track and you’d just nod off to sleep, never had one good sleep.

No Tarakan was very, very lucky, it was a lovely climate and we must of struck the best climate, it rained every morning, like two o’clock in the morning see it rained for a fair bit of rain but then the trees dripped the rest of the day, so you always had rain on you. You were never cold, you were always warm, wet and cold,

oh wet and warm. But later on as I say the last three weeks the RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] put a radar station down the bottom of the island and they sent two platoons, 18 Platoon and 17 Platoon down to guard them. We had one platoon of thirty men guarding that so the Japs wouldn’t attack it. And the other Platoon had three days up on a

fairly big track across it, catch any Japs coming through and then we’d swap over. And that went on for a week or more, that was good, that was going easy, that was about the tail end. And that’s where I had the best feed of fish I’d had in my life. The old pioneers found the RAAF, they had a inflatable boat and they found some ammunition and being engineers and explosives they took the fuse out of one of the bombs, either a bomb or a shell I’m not sure what it was I wasn’t there, but, then

they rode out and lit it and threw it overboard. And they reckon there was a bang and the rubber boat and two pioneers were up in the air but when they come down there were dead garfish that big. So we’d been living on awful tucker and we come back from our two days up and they put these two garfish on a plate in front of me. And I’ll tell you something, if ever I get a better feed of fish than that I’ll like to see it, it was absolutely beautiful, fresh fish and I love fish at any time.

Oh well it would be about three or four weeks. I come out about a fortnight and there was seven weeks, yeah about a week before we, yeah about three or four weeks. Things were pretty quite but you never know, still on tenter hooks. Oh at one stage they decided that every infantryman would be out on patrol, of the four Battalions and patrol

every track all at the one time. Anyway I’m put point scout this day and me being blind and not game to tell Smithy, I’m coming up over the track and I look over and there’s green uniform figures, and I don’t know if their Japs or Australians. And I stopped and I called Smithy up, have a look here, he said, “You silly so and so there ours,” I wasn’t game to find out.

Yeah well as I say were sitting in there watching these Liberators coming over, well I could barely see them, they’re big planes those Liberators and I’d be looking up and they’d say, “Oh they’ve opened up the bomb bay, the bomb doors,” and I’d be looking, “Oh there they come, they’re dropping the

bombs,” and I couldn’t see even the bombs. Another tale about the, they started to use napalm towards the end of the show, that’s terrible stuff that and the way they used to do it they used to have the Infantry would be a hundred yards like, as close to the enemy and they’d drop, they’ve got a two inch mortar, they’d throw a two inch smoke mortar up exactly where the Japs were you see. So then the Mustangs, they were your planes they’d fly over with these, like down low

and throw the napalm bomb at the smoke. Well about two mile before where the Japs were there was a RAAF camp and there was one bloke boiling up his clothes in the kerosene tin and the smoke coming up. And the Mustang come over, just reckons he saw him in time and let go of the napalm and landed about two hundred yards from the RAAF camp, that gave them a bit of a fright.

Friendly fire, no not really, only two that was Harry Merchant, he got a whack at the same time as my mate Jack Wilson. There was not much, although, no that’s the thing. But I do remember now as I said the features at Tarakan were named after girls and Margie was about

the toughest of the lot and the 2/23rd Battalion had to manage that. And that was about the last one to go, and they put everything in there and the artillery and they had three point sevens, there a big ack-ack gun, anti tank. So they made them into field artillery and this night they decided to give Margie a decent old pasting and this night they decided to send 6 Section of the pioneers up to guard the reservoir to make sure the Japs wouldn’t come in and poison it. Only a little reservoir, wouldn’t be much bigger

than this house. So were up on top of the reservoir and unbeknownst to us on the bottom of the hill, about three yards are all these artillery, were right in the path. Well I’m, what was I, I was second, 8 or 10 was little Nigger and he comes up and he gets me out of bed. And ten o’clock they must have been the force in, and as Niggers getting into his, underneath his what’s it name they let go for the first salvo. Well you should have seen the concussion we

got, Nigger nearly jumps through his mosquito net, you could see his come about that far up, oh all night it went on, we were like that in the morning, you could feel the blast like somebody punching you. And the roar, only three hundred yards and those three point seven there a big gun, that was one of our worst jobs, but still we were safe, we nobody was going to kill us.

I’ll tell you a nasty one that was told to me a couple of, a few days ago about the Yanks. They weren’t there to any great degree at Tarakan and our Brigade Headquarters, 26 Brigade Headquarters, a battalion mate of mine he was a sergeant there and they’d gone up and they picked up four Japanese women, like comfort women they were. And they’d been neglected and they reckon they were pitiful, they were covered in sores, wouldn’t have weighed any more than four stone and our blokes were that sympathetic towards

them, like being Australians and women like sort of business. And they bought them down and the Yanks barged in while they sort of had them in the what’s it name, the Yanks wanted to take them out and shoot them, yeah but they wouldn’t let them do it. So we fed them up and got them back to health, my mate was very upset the way he was telling me the Yanks carried on, not nice people.

Oh yes, like every battalion’s got what they called a sad sack, he’s the bloke that’s not quite, about fifteen bob in the pound sort of business. We got this big battalion parade, I forget Tubby Allen, General Allen might be coming. And around the parade ground we had toilets and they had to be cleaned out and they used to tip petrol or kerosene or some sort of stuff, used to tip it down and throw a match see.

And Rowtley’s job was to do that and the parades on and all of a sudden Rowtley puts down too much and throws the match up she goes and Rowtley comes out he’s on fire, screaming around the parade ground, six hundred men all lined up and dressed in their best and here’s Rowtley charging round, poor old Rowtley, oh dear.

Oh that was towards the tail end, we were

up in Parap. When Tubby Allen, he got kicked out of New Guinea, MacArthur and Blamey reckon he wasn’t doing a very good job on the Kokoda Track so he got transferred to General and Command in Northern Territory Forces and it might have been a welcome to him. And our Battalion had to get a guard of honour and I’ll tell you something they were something to watch, all big fellows, six foot down to about five ten and up to six foot and they

practiced guard like, slapping arms, arms. And Allen reckons it was the best he’s ever seen, better than the grenadier guards, and he could of meant it to, perfection plus it was, it would have been an honour to be on it. But they practiced enough, they practiced for about a fortnight.

Oh I wasn’t picked, oh they wouldn’t pick a Pioneer, they’d pick the Infantry blokes.

Oh another tale I must tell ya the RAP they sent out RAP, that’s the Regimental Aid Post sergeant and a corporal up, and the Battalion we were taking over from and they went there for a couple of days to learn all about the different drugs and medicines for this and that. Anyway by the time I get up there I’ve got an awful touch of tinea around me crotch, and I’m first in. And I get in there, and great mates of mine Wally, Wayne and Jack Murie, and they’re looking at me,

“Oh that’s pretty severe,” they’re saying, “What do we put on this, gentian violet, no what about this, salicylic acid, that might be, that sound good.” Well they whacked it on me and it took them three days to catch me, burnt everything off, burnt tinea, skin and all off, so they learnt they never put that on the other blokes.

I had no, I’ve been lucky all me life, bar from back trouble, knee trouble I’m as fit as anybody, always fit and healthy. What they did there to we had two holiday homes, one on, deserted holiday home, one at Rapids Creek and one at oh some beach up there. And if you got a bad dose of

prickly heat and tinea or anything you’d get through heat they used to send you away for a week, holidaying, like to swim in the sea water, not much rationing, you had to look after yourself. So we get this lovely little cottage with no window, it was just bamboo slats for windows, no glass windows, right on Rapids Creek. And this Teddy Crozier and I we get into bed one night, the first night and we could hear these dogs barking as we thought. Like there’s no doors,

no doors on it to either. Old Teddy Crozier, he’d got out of Malaya he said, “There crocs.” So that night we slept, we had our 303’s alongside us, one up the spout and the safety catch off, they coughed all night. I was up there in me Kombi campy, we were up there when the tide was slack tide, out you know the change of tide, you could stand up with a 303 and fire in the water and the concussion would kill garfish. We

were cooking for ourselves, little thing about that big stuck out and we used to do that. I was up there with me Kombi campervan, the wife and I, and I went and stood on the same spot, what fifty years later or something, more forty or fifty years later. But the hut was gone and all the, where it used to be all scrub there was lovely homes, see Torack [?] all built around there. But I never liked Darwin, even when I went back I didn’t really enjoy it, didn’t get any thrill about going to Darwin at all.

No, I never struck them. Only this time, I don’t think I finished. We had this billabong and were swimming in it and two aborigines walked past and they reckon we were made cause it was suppose to have crocks in there, but we’d gone round with grenades, about a dozen blokes stood all the way round it and threw a couple of grenades each in and nothing come up so we decided it was all right for swimming, it was a great pool.

Well the concussion would frighten a crock up to the surface, kill any fish in there to, there was no fish, no crocks come up.

Sixty mile

peg they called it yeah, Adelaide River.

Training, training and tactics and skirmishing. But Pioneers we had a workshop there and we used to work around the cookhouses, and get a cup of tea every now and then and keep sweet with the cooks.

Oh might make them a Coolgardie safe, anything like that, anything they wanted we could do for them.

We were building huts up there, we built a lot of huts, there should be a photo of the hut I built, oh well we built but ours was the best of course. And in the wet season we never went down to the showers we just step out in the rain, step back inside our little porch, lather ourselves and step back in the rain, step back in and dry ourselves, that’s how heavy it rained. And electrical storms you have no idea in Darwin, the Sigs used to be terrified

cause they were on a galvanised iron hut and quite often they’d be blown out of their chairs with their headsets on. They hated the job but they had to do it. Talking about Sigs the old atomic bomb, old Molly Anderson our CO, my best mate, he’s pretty crook now he’s getting dementia, Joe but he was a Sig on duty and he gets a coded

message come through, and the only bloke that can read the coded message is the CO, two o’clock in the morning. So Joe gets this coded message and he wanders up to the colonel’s tent and wakes him up and passes it across and the colonel reads it, decoded it and he looks up at Joe and he says, “What the bloody hell’s an atomic bomb?” It was a message that come through to all COs that they’d dropped the atomic bomb. No that was at Tarakan sorry, yeah, so that’s how we heard about the atomic bomb,

all came through code, “What the bloody hell’s an atomic bomb?” said the colonel, Molly. Gee that was great news, yeah. We had a fair sense, feeling of relief because our war had been finished but it must have been better for the blokes that were actually in New Guinea and Balikpapan and those places where actually fighting, it must have been a wonderful sense of relief.

Oh we were having a holiday island paradise picnic, we weren’t doing any work. I’ll tell you what did happen, you’d heard of the Sandakan march haven’t you, this springs to mind. We’d been out, our war had finished, we’d cleaned the Japs up we’d finished patrolling and all of a sudden they start to work us and the 48 Battalion because we had the least casualties amongst the four Battalions, they started to

parade us and march us and get us around. And the big rumour was that they were going to race us in to Sandakan and save those blokes, they knew they were on and we were quite happy in that, we weren’t worrying about that. And all of a sudden they drop the bomb and they cut that idea out, so that bomb might have saved, we could of, I doubt we would of cause I think they, but just might have been able to save a few of those blokes.

Yeah that’s the rumour, only rumours but they worked us, we knew there was something up, when they started marching us and sort of, couldn’t do much exercise, or skirmishing around the place cause there wasn’t enough room. But we knew something was up, we knew it wasn’t a general parade for a general or anything like that. It went on for about a week or so and that’s the rumour we got, that go across and get some prisoners out. It’s only, cause you can’t go on the army rumours there’s that many float about.

But when they dropped the bomb it was all, that was it, lets go back to what we were doing, nothing.

Oh we just carried on, we were doing nothing we just, there was no parades, just went up the mess and had your meals, went down the swimming pool had a little swimming pool there, walked around, played a lot of basketball,

nothing to do there. Waiting to go home, but we were very lucky at Tarakan because there were two ships passing, they took you on a point system. And one ship came through and it was the Glorious, Pommy aircraft carrier and that took a lot of troops away. And Billy May, my brother in law he had two more points than me and he just made it so he went home before me.

And not long after that they bought a fifteen thousand ton Victory ship, pulled in empty and took a hell of a lot back so we were back before Christmas, whereas some blokes in Morotai they took well into the new year before they got home.

Good, although I, the war, I finished up nine stone six after the war ended and I was playing a lot of basketball, I weighed myself and

I was nine six so I wasn’t carrying too much weight. Another thing to I can tell you I put on a mutiny and got away with it, yes I forgot this one. They come back and I had a hundred and thirty two points and I got to Albert Park Sigs and they’re down to about one hundred and thirty six getting out and I said, “I won’t be long now.” And I went to the wet canteen and had a few beers and the port lady [?] basketball team come in to play basketball and half time I’d thoughts I’d get round

and throw a few baskets and twisted me knee and did me cartilage, out to Heidelberg. Had the cartilage out and about two months later back I get and they’re letting them out at a hundred and twelve points and I’ve got a hundred and thirty two. But the officers, the more troops that went out, officers had to go out with them, and the officers were holding troops back so they couldn’t loose there job, because a lieutenant would be getting about nine pound a week, whereas outside he wouldn’t have a job to go to. So I thought this is no good to me, so

I refused to get out of bed, refused to go on parade, just lay there. And they sent a young corporal, about twenty year old down and never been away he says, “Stan,” he said, “Would you mind getting up and coming on parade?” I won’t tell you what I said. And I had to get up about nine o’clock and wander up to the cookhouse and the cooks knew me, old soldiers and they’d give me a feed, let me make a bit of toast and cook myself and then I’d get dressed up and go out into town, or round to Bill May’s place,

come back and go to bed and the same thing. Anyway an officer pulled me up and he said, “Stan,” he said, “Why won’t you come on parade?” I said, “Well I’m entitled to get out,” I said, “I want to get out of the army.” He says, “There’s no work out there.” I said, “Don’t you be surprised, my boss is a tiler.” The rehab business I was telling you about, “So I’ve got a job out there waiting eight pound fifteen a week.” I went out the Royal Park the next day, so I mutinied and got away with it, not too many people can say that.

Oh I think it was around about the July, something like that. I’ve got me freedom of information sheet in there, I’ve got everything in there.

Yeah, oh yes it shows where you’ve been. I’ll tell ya what else I’ve got in there is I’ve got the whole casualty list of all the pioneers in all the three battles, everybody that was killed and wounded, only the copy, my old company commander sends them down to me.

Ah Stan Bourne, well he was out and out villain, he was in a concert party or something and he got demoted, that’s right he pawned the saxophone to buy grog, he was an alcoholic. So they kicked him out of the concert party and he come down to us, as a private, but he was such a good musician he formed up an entertainment group in our Battalion, we had a few blokes

bit of music, and he was able to make them into something fairly good. But he blotted his copybook, I think he did something similar, he was just a no hoper. But he was after the war a top musician, he used to, he played round Palais Demants and all those places. But as I say, he was an alci. He could pick up any musical instrument and play by ear, trumpet, banjo, anything at all he could play, he was

a freak.

This would have to be in Darwin I think, not that good, me memory’s pretty good but not that good, was it Western Australia, no I forget now. No I’m not sure exactly when it was, I never had a great deal to do with him myself.

Yeah he

put on concert parties, oh it was good for morale, very good, especially him he could pick up the trumpet and he could really play, top class. And piano, he’d have a piano and get onto that and he got the bagpipe, he had the bloke play the bag and blew it in and he played ‘In the mood’ on that.

Yeah.

No, no

my father was a Scotsman, he come out from Scotland when he was fifteen on his own, migrated on his own, he was very keen for somebody to play the bagpipes, and I was pretty wrapped up in me father so I said, “I’d try.” But I’ve got no music ability whatsoever, I couldn’t even play a tin whistle, would like to have played the pipes.

No.

Not to my knowledge, there could have been a few blokes going around cause in my days the harmonica was played by a lot of men, a lot of people. I learnt it in the third grade at state school, you’ve got to suck, blow, suck, blow on a piece of paper.

And when I left North Richmond State and went down to Caulfield Central they had a choir, the kids used to sing, and there

was somebody singing out of tune somewhere, and she was a lovely old lady the teacher. She walked around and she said, “I don’t think you’d better sing Stanley,” so I was bared from singing, lucky I can talk isn’t’ it, can’t sing and can’t play the harmonica.

Oh yes well, I was bought up with him, my brother was in a book club and he had Henry Lawson’s

prose and works, actually I’ve got a library now, I’ve got about four books on Henry Lawson, he was my, if ever I was influenced in my life was Henry Lawson because he was a bit of a communist, you see I’m a bit of a communist, but he’s socialist the way, he was a freak. I read, I reckon I’ve read everything Henry Lawson’s written that’s been published and I’ve read three or four autobiographies of him.

Oh I never got much chance to read, there’s no books around, never got near

a library. As I say I used to read that book to me mates.

In Western Australia, had it with me, used to take it out.

No.

No, no radio, no newspapers,

wouldn’t know what was going on, wouldn’t know anything about Alamein or anything like that. Oh they might of let something out if we’d have had a victory, might have heard something but I just don’t remember.

Nobody had one, I think the Sigs might have had a radio. I know in Tarakan they had a big radio cause the war was over and the Melbourne Cup was on and

there unreal those AIF Battalions they had bookies there with bookie stands and bookie bags and everything and a big short wave radio and we listened to the Melbourne Cup. And you could lay the odds, the odds were going up and down, they were playing two up, oh she was a great old day, Melbourne Cup day, I backed a winner.

About the only two I’ve ever backed, ‘Rainbird’.

Yeah, never heard any football, like I was a mad football supporter, still am really am and never heard any football, how the fours were going, how your side was going.

Only my father occasionally, and he wasn’t a very good writer. Oh my brother would write from New Guinea and my other brother would write from

Darwin till I went up there to see him, sister might of written a letter. I had no girlfriend, I’d deliberately went to war without having a girlfriend. Oh I had a, I was going with a girl from Port Melbourne, she was very, very nice but I thought I’d call it off cause war was on and never knew how long it was going to be and I thought, ‘I’ve got no worries’. I had no mother to worry about so I was pretty right that way. I pity, feeling for the mothers,

myself, the worry they had. My wife and I, her mother used to go to the pictures and the new war newsreel would come on and they’d sit down and cry, they never knew where we were, what we were up to, we were never allowed to tell them. But I’ll tell you the funny part my old man, like being an old digger I come back after the war and he says, “Come on,” he says, “Go for a drink

want you to meet me mates.” And everywhere I went, every pub, “Here’s me son Stan,” he said, “The Japs couldn’t get him,” and I thought, I gave it up after three pubs, I went home, he’s showing me off like I was a prize. But he was proud of me, poor old Dad.

Well I, no the mates

I lost were the mates that I hardly had because I was only with the Pioneers about six weeks and there were a few killed, I had no direct mate. Oh I had in the 23rd Battalion I had two very good mates from the 5th Battalion, Les Ward and Bruce McKenzie, especially Les Ward cause I played football with him and against him and that and I was great rapport him and I, even though we weren’t in the same Company we were always glad to see each other, similar types I suppose. And that cut

me up terribly when Les died, and Bruce, even worst when Les was engaged to Bruce’s sister, so that wasn’t very lovely for her. And little young Western Australia kid that used to play football with me he got killed and there was four blokes in the 5th Battalion got killed in the 23rd, quite a few wounded. But as far as, I had no blokes in my section killed, only two of us wounded.

Three of us wounded out of the ten of us, Spot Sullivan, Ron Turner in the other section and Louie Gordon, and who else got killed in the other one…yeah that’s in 17 Platoon, they weren’t great personal mates of mine. And I never knew me cousin had been killed and I knew that uncle Dick had been killed in Crete, cause he was killed before I went away.

Up to Parap, that’s right in Darwin, couple of miles out of Darwin itself.

Just a change, we were just there, I don’t know what we were there for, there was no way the Japs were

going to attack Darwin again, had to put us somewhere. They could have put us in the Flemington Racecourse as far as I was concerned, that Parap you’ve never seen sand flies, they were murderers, I used to come out with sand fly infestations in the head and everything with them, shocking things those sand flies.

No we, not on the beach around the toilet ablutions where we used to go and have our wash in the morning they were out in the open

and there was a fair bit of water around, hanging about and you had to put shoes and socks on to go and clean up. Oh god, midges they called them. I was lucky I never got malaria cause we were on the Atebrin you see when I got up there. Hardly any sickness at Tarakan, she was a very healthy place, very few bit of sickness, good climate.

Well we had a good workshop there and we were always doing something around the camp and that, sort of business. And keeping away from work as much as we could, only work when we had to, we could lay on our backs all day long, didn’t worry us.

Oh yes but there was nothing to see, only bombed out houses and no shops, no pubs, wasn’t as big as it is now. Nice place now Darwin, yeah. We made up a great big fish trap off the Darwin wharf but the wharfies knocked our fish off all the time, we were wondering why it was empty.

Yeah, oh yeah didn’t have much coming in. I’ll tell you what we did do at Darwin that was a bit hectic, very hectic in actual fact now that you’ve jogged my memory. When the European War was over the Poms wanted to be on the party in the Pacific, and they’ve got a place called Vestey’s up there, you might of heard of Vestey’s, oh magnificent great big warehouse and they were stacking that up with tucker and everything,

the Brits…

That ashtray up there, that was made, that was made out of a Bofors shell, and we used to make rings with aluminium and Perspex out of toothbrushes, fair bit of that was done to keep you amused.

Oh send them home, send them home to your girlfriend or whoever you liked

to. Yes I can’t think, to me it’s like a blank, I try to forget it.

No there was no fighting, there was no bombing, we struck the last plane that come over, that was in November, oh I forget now, nothing there, nothing looked like

happening.

Dropped a couple of bombs and nicked off, just to show that the Japs were still around.

No, there was no civilians, all the civilians had been cleared out and practically every house was bombed, there was no

what’s the word, in tact house. We did sleep in houses, we thought that was good, we went up there a couple of times and went into them, you had a roof over your head and slept on the nice polished floor, but they were pretty well knocked about. I’ll, I think they started to bring pictures in for us to see, can’t even remember them.

Outdoor cinema

yeah, no concert parties, to my knowledge. I’ll tell you we did have a magnificent concert party at Tarakan when Gracie Fields sang, she was wonderful, she was a great entertainer Gracie, you heard of her?

Yeah, the engineers and the pioneers they built an amphitheatre, just logs, sit round a big amphitheatre, put a stage there and she come and sang for us,

she’s top quality, far better than I’ve seen or heard, told jokes and sing. We were at the, we had the Jap, the Pioneers we were in charge of the Jap compound where two hundred Japs, prisoners. And we built the compound and looked after them and fed them sort of business, or they cooked for themselves. And were all at the pictures, the Tarakan

picture theatre, I’ve got a photo somewhere of it, knocking about. And the news came over about the Bangka, Bangka massacre, the nurses and I sat there and the feeling you got, I thought, ‘It’s only got to take couple of blokes to go in all those two hundred Jap prisoners’ but nothing come of it, must have been awful, awful close. Just a couple would have had to go, lets get the so and so’s and that would have been it.

I don’t think so, no I don’t think so, they found out the same time as us.

Oh could of yes, yeah that was a good drink.

No I think we were sort of so pleased and relieved and relaxed that the war was over, that was the main thing, sort of stupor. And the trip home on the victory ship was great, bar for me mate of mine Spud Murphy, now he would be the worst sailor in the 2nd AIF. We’re getting across, here it comes here’s trouble, it’s only my wife don’t worry.

Yeah, we’re coming home and that Pacific Ocean

when it’s calm it’s like a sheet of glass as far as you can see and a beautiful blue. And were sitting up there and playing bridge we were actually, used to play a lot of bridge, hell of a lot of bridge. And all of a sudden you can mile up see an upheaval, and underwater upheaval and these two, what would you call them rollers, about twenty foot high, one there and another one would be about two or three hundred yards behind it. And the old Victory ship she went up,

and she went down, and she went down, and when she went, Spud Murphy was seasick, as true as I’m sitting here, the only bloke on the ship, old Spud.

Oh lovely used to get milk, Yankee meals, oh the Yank’s give you these,

fresh hash browns and pancakes for breakfast and lunch was Australian meals, tin of woolly beef and biscuits. And you’d get turkey and ice cream for tea, oh she was all right. We had a bridge school, a ground sheet is about six feet by about two foot six and on the dull side you could write pencil on that. And we got a pack of cards and we’ve got pencils but we’ve got no paper to do our scoring on, the four of us. So we played bridge all day long

and night for about seven or eight days and we scored on the groundsheet. The whole groundsheet was covered with scores and often wish I’d have got that groundsheet cause that would be a thing that could quite easily go to the War Memorial. Must have been a ripper that, don’t know what happened to it we were so keen to get home. It wasn’t bridge, it was solo, I used to play bridge and I wanted to learn solo,

no it was bridge we played. The war, like waiting for the war to end and before the war ended I was in a solo school, no bridge school and I wanted to learn solo playing for money and I was loosing a lot of money, and I just started to get the hang of it and get some of me money back and they stopped the war, broke the school up.

Brisbane, yeah Brisbane River.

Don’t remember about coming home that’s one thing that slipped me memory. Just remember coming into Brisbane River that’s all, but as far as.

No, no, oh that’s another, we had POWs come through Tarakan and our platoon commander come and he wanted half a dozen blokes, some POWs had just arrived up at the hospital and they

wanted a bit of company, bit of Australians to have a chat to. So we went up and sort of had a bit of a conversation with them, because we would have been the first Australians, other than POWs they’d seen. And you think they were crook on the officers, they reckon there was going to be hell to pay, a lot of the officers left them for dead, looked after themselves, didn’t worry about the men. It flared up a bit in the papers but then it died away.

Yeah, while they were POWs,

see the officers didn’t have to work, they got fed better and they were looking after themselves, and the old ORs [Other Ranks] had to defend for themselves and they got nothing, they got the tail end, they had to do all the work and the officers never had to work on the railway, like do any physical work. So they were very, very bitter, “Wait till we get back home,” they were saying, “We’ll stir things up,” but nothing came of it.

No they would have been gone a long time. They used to, the thing about Tarakan if you got wounded you were well covered, within half an hour they’d have you at the AGH [Australian General Hospital] and if you were too bad they’d have you across to

Morotai and if your bad enough you’d be back in Australia within a day or two, they’d fly you right back. We were promised that because one of the biggest worries, or the soldiers worry if you get wounded badly, to get to treatment, but they had it down pat at Tarakan. We had an officer, this is good, I forgot this one, I’ll get his name in a minute. Three campaigns, wounded three times,

hell of a good officer, brave, courageous and he gets sent across to Morotai cause he’s pretty badly wounded and Billy Keys, remember Billy Keys the President, he was a pioneer, he was in our pioneers and he was pretty badly wounded. He’s in the Morotai hospital and old Tom Blamey comes in and he, well he walks up to, oh I forget his name…and he said, “And who would you be?” and this bloke

said, “I’m the Tarakan telephone exchange what number do you want?” he’s got all these things sticking out of me, this has just reminded me, old Tom. Another tale I was told, well the 2/23rd Battalion, talking about ages of kids joining up, he was wounded in Tobruk when he was fifteen, this kid. So under an assumed name and when

they checked up through is records they woke up that he wasn’t the bloke he was and he was underage so they bought him back to Australia and discharged him. So he’s waited around till he’s turned nineteen, when he can join up and he joined up and he got back to his Battalion the 2/23rd again and he gets to Tarakan, which he couldn’t of come to a worse spot and he gets wounded again. So when he comes back to hospital, he wouldn’t go back to the unit he point blank refused, he said, “You’ve had two goes at me your not getting me the third time,” so they sent him home.

Yes, yes I had it firmly in my mind I was going to get back to work, no mucking about. And I hoped, had nothing in mind at the time but I intended to get married and I intended to have a family and I intended to build a house, that’s all I was set on and I did all those

things. Yes I’ve had a good life, haven’t made a fortune. I worked for myself I was independent, if I wanted to knock off and take me kids to the show I could do that.

Oh more or less straight away, as soon as I got out I was back at work within two or three days, cause me boss was desperate for a tile layers. But I got sick of doing nothing,

fair’s fair, you can’t be doing nothing for ever. Yeah I think I was only out four days and I was back on the job.

Caulfield.

No, no my father was up at Noble Park, he was with his second wife. I had a great mate that I’d knocked around with before the war and his people lived at Frankston and he worked at Newport

and my boss, we worked around Caulfield so we boarded together for about two or three years. And I got married first and he took not long after, matter of fact he rung up the other day, we don’t see much of each other yet were great mates. I’m thinking about having a fortnightly booze up with him, meet him every fortnight up at the Malvern pub, cause we have so much in common as young men, we both went our own separate ways.

We’re still very good friends and very pleased to see each other. I had me eighth birthday last year and he was number one invited.

No well I stuck to a couple of the, the 5th Battalion, I go to the 5th Battalion reunions, I wouldn’t miss that, I’ve got a lot of mates there, heaps of them.

But the Pioneers as I say we, never any more than about thirty or forty march and there all dropping off the twig, we’ve only got eleven left and there’s only five of us mobile, so it’s only a matter of time. I’ve got two blokes that have to go in jeeps and they don’t like that, crook on that, too proud, they want to march, the fact they can’t march upsets them, they’ve got to sit in the jeep.

I might be in a jeep me self this year if I can’t get my physiotherapist mate to get this leg going. I haven’t missed a march for fifty four years.

The pioneers yes, that’s up the back there a photo of me leading them out, the last few years I’ve lead them. Doesn’t matter who you are in the battalion, if you run the Battalion Association

your prerogative’s to lead the march, even if your CO come up, but you’d let him do it. We had a good officer come across from South Australia one year so I let him march, he had no, he couldn’t if he said, “I want to march?” And I said, “No you can’t, I’m marching,” I’m leading I should say.

I’ve never been President, I don’t like being President, I’m very emotional and I can’t

make speeches, I can’t get up and say nice things about people. I put over a beauty two weeks ago, we go, four of us go to Duck Board House once a month and the second last time Frankie Chaney he was eating his sausages and mash and somebody made him laugh and a bit of sausage stuck in his throat and we nearly lost him, he went that close to death it didn’t matter much. We had seven paramedics with us at one stage, they got on the phone and two fire brigade blokes

happened to be driving past and they dropped in and two ordinary paramedics dropped in and another three come in after that, we had seven round him. And he was blue, he lost his pulse, he was lying on the floor and me old mate Morrie Ryan he’s saying Hail Maries and I’m trying to recite the Lord’s Prayer and all of a sudden he coughed up a bit of sausage. He went close I can tell ya, he went close. Now that stopped me train of thought.

That’s right I felt obliged cause I’m the spokesman to thank the paramedics, and I meant it to, the way they worked and I thought, ‘I can’t say, I won’t get it out’ and I said to them, “You know,” I said, “When I, if I was a little boy again I wouldn’t want to be a league footballer

or a policeman or a fireman I want to be a paramedic.” And I just got that out…

Yeah, very emotional. I’ve got life memberships, I’ve been secretary of this and secretary of that, everywhere. I was President down at the

RSL Club cause I had to go there, I was sort of forced into being President down there because Bruce Ruxton was playing up, he wanted to take our club over and we split into Ruxton faction or commo fraction, I suppose or a Labor faction, so Liberal versus Labor. And we had a very good President, very strong, smart man but he, the rule said he could only be President for two years and his two years was up. We were doing a great big renovation job on there and me being in the building trade I was the only bloke on the

committee that knows anything about the building, I said, “Oh well I don’t want to be President but I’ll put me hand up.” And I finished up four years, I used to have to take a couple of sherry’s before I went in, just can’t speak. Even though I’m talking like a thrashing machine I can’t make speeches. But I don’t mind being secretary, don’t like being treasurer, no good handling money.

Oh we’ve achieved a lot of friendships, it went all pretty well, lost a lot of blokes. I’ve got an exercise book there any time anybody dies I put their name in, I’ve got fifty names died since I took on secretary, we only had about seventy five, kept me busy,

organised. We have a remembrance every 12th of May, that’s when Mackey won his VC and we get quite a few widows and family to that, that’s at the shrine, twelve o’clock every twelfth of May, we put a wreath on our park. How long it’s going to last nobody knows.

And the association, 23rd Battalion there going to make their direct descendants members of the association so they can carry on and march and carry the banner, keep it going. I myself, once the 2nd AIF is gone lets forget Anzac Day, completely forget it, what’s the good of it. And funny enough now not many of us marching and they get

bigger crowds, the streets are packed.

What for me like?

Oh quite pleasing to see that, but mainly kids and new Australians and flags. And you see the 23rd Battalion in front of us,

they used to have about two hundred marching a few years ago and they’re down to twenty, all of that old and dottery, on walking sticks. It’s a long way to march you know, corner of Russell Street and O’Connor Street right up to the Shrine. When they built that Shrine up on top of the hill they made a big, big mistake, they didn’t know we were going to get old, should have had it down a hill.

Not a great deal, there’s not many of those you know, there’s only a handful to each RSL. We’ve got them down there and I get on pretty well with them bar, I don’t like them SAS [Special Air Service] blokes, they’re up themselves, bunch of commandos I call them. But the old bloke that served in Vietnam, was a call up, I’ve got a lot good mates amongst them. They had no trouble with our RSL

when they joined up, we welcomed them with open arms.

Oh yes, that’s a fact like

MacArthur didn’t want us, like he had no need for us, but the politicians in general, now I’ve read a few books on generals, I just read Macey’s book and the back biting and the back stabbing and the way they work against each other so as they can get to the top, the lust for power and the things they used to do to each other. Blamey’s like that, what he did to Major General Bennett, he would be one of Australia’s greatest soldiers, without any doubt,

First World War, he was the youngest brigadier in the British Army at twenty six, he was wounded seven times, he won three DSOs, you wouldn’t have wanted a better soldier in the whole world. But the thing is too that you’ve got Duntroon versus voluntary soldiers, like civilian soldiers and that’s what causes it all. Like Blamey was a professional soldier and Bennett was a civilian soldier, they just joined up for the duration

and oh, the things they do to each other. I blame the politicians they want to be in it to and they had no need to, MacArthur he left all those Japs to wither on the vine, they couldn’t get supplies in, they were living off the land themselves, he could have left them there, they’d still be there, yet they had to go in, had to get the Australian soldiers in and there was two thousand soldiers die. We had, yeah it would be that easy

and it was unnecessary, that’s a sore point with me.

Not till after the war, never worried me, I was keen to get into action when I was in action I was keen to get out of it.

Took years to come out, it’s only the bloke recently, last

few years wrote a good story on it, like the truth, but too late now.

Yeah, I reckon the Australian Government should be complimented the way they look after us, yes no worries whatsoever. I think were the best looked after veterans in the whole world,

pension wise and what they did for us. Even now this home help they give us, sort of thing that they want to keep us at home instead of building nursing homes, but you’ve only got to ring up. Our cleaning lady comes tomorrow, she cleans, she vacuums, does all the heavy work and four dollars. I’ve got a gold card and that takes me anywhere, don’t have to pay anything.

I get a pension for me eyes, which I’d rather have me eyes back not the pension, but the pension’s handy.

No about the only thing I haven’t been involved in, I contemplated when I retired cause some wonderful men in Legacy, and I really didn’t think I’d be good enough to get in, that’s what they are. But I could have worked, as a wall and floor tiler I could of worked for them a widow gets a quote in for a bathroom and kitchen the Legacy bloke goes and checks to see, make sure she doesn’t get touched. That’s something I could of done, and something I wish I would of done, but it’s too

late now. Yes that uncle of mine that I told you got killed, died in 1926 he had about five or six kids and Legacy looked after them wonderfully. There looking after widows now, they have a great time the Legacy widows, but that’s not the Government, that’s Legacy themselves private, nothing to do with the Government. But Legacy

gets that much money left to them, there’s no trouble with money, they spend it well.

Oh mostly all right, now there’s a few, my mate Joe Sheehan who he is President of our what’s it name he is going down with dementia and he’s just in troubles.

Morrie Ryan he’s pretty sick and Frank Chaney, there all going, they’ve faired fairly well. Financially they seem to be all right, not wealthy men but they live all right.

Oh well as far as I know, yeah, oh it’s hard to say, I think the blokes that didn’t settle easy were the ones early on and they sort of disappeared, but the stayed

sodden ones kept on going yeah. Not too many people, well our war it was a walk in the park compared to the First World War, cause a lot of people come out that First World War shell shocked and in trouble, cause that was a blood bath, that was something terrible. Like when you get six thousand men killed in two nights and out of that six thousand there was six hundred never found, they were blown to pieces and things like that,

shells and oh I’ve read a fair bit about the World War I and it nearly make me shell shocked just reading it terrible, makes you think how lucky we were. Apart from the POWs that to me is a sore point with me, those Jap POWs.

Oh the way they were treated, three and a half years they put in, that’s worse than anything, that’s

I’d rather be in the World War I getting bombed day and night than being in the POW for three and a half years and the conditions they were under. I’ve got a cousin, that cousin of mine he wasn’t lucky but I’ve got a little book I wrote on him, cut out of books, he did a great job trying to save his platoon commander, he more or less saved his life.

But the platoon commander he gave himself up and my cousin he didn’t give himself up, he was to proud and just worked out he more than likely got captured, tortured and murdered. The platoon commander he had such a rotten time he went off his head. And when he died he was separated from his wife, his a wealthy grazier and one, cut a long story short he cut half his estate into half for his wife and ten percent to the 29th Battalion,

ten percent to Legacy, ten percent to something else and my cousin’s wife got ten percent. Which amounted into a hundred and twenty thousand pounds, she got left because of what my cousin did, it’s over there in the little book. But she had Alzheimer’s early so she never knew but her two kids, the children they got sixty pound a long time ago, so that was a wonderful gesture.

I could say I’ve enjoyed the RSL, they do a pretty good job, never liked Ruxton.

He’s a liar,

a sponger, you know what he did, all the memorabilia he collected they were giving Ruxton, sent the memorabilia to Ruxton, he shouldn’t belong to him, he put it all up for auction and sold it for his own personal gain. He’s a man and a half that Ruxton, thank god he’s left Victoria.

Yes yes, old stagers

everybody, the RSL had voted directly like they voted for the politicians he wouldn’t have stayed in, no, no not Ruxton. He kept, he would have kept thousands of returned men out of the RSL, they would have had a bigger membership only for him, only Ruxton people, if they were all members of the RSL he wouldn’t have stayed in. Oh I’ve struck over the years they wouldn’t join

because of Ruxton. See I was in the building trade and I was moving around I worked with a lot of different people, not like people going to work in a an office, an office of a hundred people, it’s all they know, but I met hundreds of people, plasters and painters and all the builders I worked for and the people. And the amount of returned diggers I talked to they wouldn’t be in the RSL cause of Ruxton. I’ve gone very close to getting a life membership down here at Mentone

but I was hoping they wouldn’t offer me one cause I was going to knock it back because of Ruxton. I’ve got full life memberships of other clubs and that’s enough for me. But I joined the RSL because of the comradeship, it’s still there, just like early after the war, it’s just like being back in the army the way we carried on. But that’s not many left now.

Conservative?

Oh yes he was, I personally think

he made the Victorian Branch of the RSL a Liberal party branch. He was always writing in the papers, in the papers about the Liberal party and the Labor party. And there’s two golden rules to the RSL, no politics and no religion, RSL. You can go down to the RSL and get with a group of blokes and if anybody wants to start politics you say, “Listen pal what’s our motto, no religion no…” and they shut up just like that. That’s the

beauty of the RSL. Not Ruxton, he must of been broken hearted when the Labor Government cut out those knighthoods. He was a liar, he was a returned man, he was a returned Infantry man but he lead people to believe that he served in New Guinea as a sixteen year old boy and he’d never been to New Guinea in his life, and I know that for a fact. He was only the nineteen year olders that the,

I told you about they stopped recruiting, you couldn’t join up at the last twelve months of the war, they called up all these nineteen year olders and they said, “Well what do you want to be, AIF or Militia?” and he said, “AIF,” and he went to the 2/25th Battalion of the 7th Div and he served six weeks, the last six weeks of the war at Balikpapan, well that’s good enough as far as I’m concerned he was in the Infantry to, so as far as I’m concerned he’s right there he’s an ex Infantry man, he more or less volunteered.

But when, I picked up a paper up at Kununurra when we were travelling around and there’s an article from his wife in the New Idea how she meant Bruce, seventeen or eighteen year old after a long hard and arduous New Guinea campaign, I tried hard to get that paper. I rang up New Idea, I even offered fifty dollars if anybody would get it for me but I couldn’t get it, must have had them all destroyed. Oh you shouldn’t start me on Ruxton, I’ve got a lot of mates, I’m not a loner.

Oh yeah.

Oh no, only for Ruxton everybody, the rest of them, oh Bruce, what’s his name, the vice president, senior vice president he’s a hell of a nice man, he should have been made

president. But now they’re putting all these major generals in from Vietnam and, cut lunch commando’s as I call them, yeah. The same old names have been running that RSL, company branches and all that they still get up there and, yeah.

Oh no but,

well you can either join or you can’t join. It used to be a empire, or British League you could join that if you wanted to. But I just joined the RSL, well Friday morning I’m going to get up at six o’clock and sell poppies down at Mentone Station like, I’ve been doing that for twenty years, any working bees always in those.

Yeah down the railway, oh I love that.

Oh yeah your treated like,

treat you like your, what do they call it, national treasures, especially young girls like you. You know the men they don’t buy them but the girls they can’t get the money out quick enough to buy a ticket or a poppy, cause their grandfathers have been a soldier things like that. Oh no it’s really pleasurable to do it, like it’s some, you get a cold day and I’m sitting there, but your kept busy, I only do it for three hours, pick up a couple of hundred dollars for the RSL.

I used to do the Parkdale Station but they haven’t got a toilet open so I demanded to get the Mentone Station, sitting there for three hours and no toilet open, they’ve got a toilet open at Mentone. Oh they get to know you, they got to know me at Parkdale, the same women coming through. And I used to like the kids from school come and put in two bob, just give you two bob and I’d give them a poppy

or a badge, only cost ten cents, all goes in. Other blokes would give you five dollars and just take a two dollar band and give you five dollars, so cuts out.

You’re the boss I’m only the puppet.

Yeah. Yeah I’ve got memories, most of them good, not bad, mainly the comradeship was something.

Oh no I’ve got comradeship down there, I’ve got three or four, I’ve got a couple of POW mates down there, I wasn’t with them but their good mates of mine, old Infantry, not many Infantry men left there. No there’s always, I’ve got me 2/3rd Pioneers I see them fourteen times a year,

we ring each other up. Me old section leader rings me up and the president of the New South Wales rings me up and the, I’ll get the word out in a minute, the bloke that writes our journal, we hop and have a chat. I might try and get to Sydney before I leave this mortal coil, if I’m fit enough, I am very fit really, never

been sick in me life but I’ve got bad legs and a back that’s killing me.

Oh you must of heard it?

Now is the hour that we must say goodbye…

soon we’ll be sailing over the seas far away, we always got the Maori’s Farewell, the troop ships when you left. Once upon a time I could whistle but I’ve lost all me puff for whistling.

Hey?

Oh yes I was a pretty fair sort of a whistler, got a good memory for whistle, I could whistle for hours.

I used to work for me self and travel down the bush to work a job and I’m, if it took me two hours I wouldn’t stop whistling, I’d go all through the repertoire, waltzes and musical comedy’s, classic, but I can’t, now I’ve just got no puff, lost all me puff. Get half tanked and get down that RSL toilet, with the lovely acoustics and I’d be whistling away.

No, that’s like the wife used to think, we soldiers used to sing as we marched along, never happened in the Australian Army, Pommies might of done it.