Australians at War Film Archive

At Maryborough, Victoria.

An important day, 6 March 1921, Sunday I believe.

My father’s name was Charles Leslie Kuffer, my mother was Ester Evelyn,

previously name Wood.

My father was all his life in the Victorian Railways, various jobs mainly based at Maryborough. My mother was a nurse. My father did a lot of first aid work in the railways, he has the individual championship for the state for working as a First Aider in the

Victoria Railways Ambulance Corps.

She did not professionally but our home was always open for numerous people who came with various aliments of all different sorts. They came to our house either to see my father or to see my mother. Mother, she trained during the First World War with the idea that she would go to the war

but the war finished before she finished her training at the Maryborough Hospital.

Yes.

In my family there was two sisters Lorna and Dorothy and myself..

I’m the eldest. My other sister Dorothy is 5 years younger and Lorna is 7 years younger.

There is a multitude of memories. I had a very loving home, we went to State School and then we went off to High School and then of course that was the depression years. The depression years were such that my father was never out of work but there wasn’t a lot of money about. The arrangement was for

as far as High School was concerned, I think it was he paid my fees and I paid my books because I worked as a grocer’s boy every day before and after school and Saturday mornings and I got 10 shillings and my own bike before and after school and Saturday mornings.

Primary School we had a rather, in those days,

tough times then if you had teachers that used to use the strap but it was not pleasant years. I can remember a girl being in tears because some other boy couldn’t spell and he was being punished for it. Some of those years they weren’t, the school in those days, the teachers were very, some of them were nice but some of them were I’d say brutal.

Maryborough State School.

I can remember we were taught the basics, the main thing of course was to be able to write copper plate writing sloping and if it wasn’t sloping you had your knuckles wrapped. But the writing had to be copper-plate and we had slates of course and slate pencils and

a sponge to wipe it off the slate and we learnt to write copper plate writing on slates.

That was much further down the course. I can’t remember quite as much but then of course you had to have ink monitors and ink monitors each Friday had to change the ink wells and put new ink in them. I suppose it would be about, I’m only guessing Grade 4 or 5, but that’s only a guess.

No there wasn’t much. You were left to your own devices. The playground sports they were not organised sports at the State School, the boys played marbles and the girls played hockey and skipping and one thing or another but the boys played mainly marbles and there was end for end football but that was on, if you know Maryborough it was a very gravelly surface and it wasn’t a very good place

but they used to play football but no organised. Alleys were marbles, alleys we used to call them. We used to play little ring and big ring and that was and they had different passing fads, but mainly you were left to your own devices at the State School. At the High School it was organised but not at the State School.

No that’s right. That was the arrangement then as I said with my father; he paid one and I paid the other. He paid the fees and I paid

the books. There was a Technical School at Maryborough also.

I went to the High School.

I think because I was more, the family guided me I suppose. They thought that I was more capable of doing that sort of work than doing manual, like a trade, although I was very interested in trades. We did woodwork

as a subject but as far as trades were concerned I think they felt I would be better to take something more in the clerical line or something like that. There I went until I got my Intermediate. At that time you were required to have your Intermediate to get any job. Merit was a course, that was a stepping stone and then came Intermediate. They wanted you in various organisations in Melbourne, they wanted you

at 15 with your Intermediate or 16 with your Intermediate which they pay you 16 shillings a week for. I eventually did an entrance examination for the Melbourne Tramways and while I was in Sydney on a holiday, my father took me up there, I was accepted to go in as a Junior Clerk into the Secretary’s Office at the Melbourne Metropolitan Tramways Board at the sum of 16 shillings a week.

Yes, we were brought up strictly as Methodists. It was a very strict rule, we would probably go 3 times a Sunday and in addition to that my father was a Jacobite and I’m a semi-teetotaller

I used to sing in the choir and I still sing in the choir.

My father was in the railways and every year he had a rail pass which entitled he and the whole family to come away using the railway. It was the annual event,

a very, very big event to come from Maryborough by rail, changing at Castlemaine to Melbourne and then onto the electric trains and we would go to a place down the coast well known now as an inner suburb called Edithvale. We would spend our summer holidays and that was a big event.

Swimming, making rafts and my father had a passion for

kites. He would make me a big kite, I had best kite on the beach and I’d fly this kite. We had it up and had a marvellous times, they were very happy memories of holidays at Edithvale.

No not really. They were 5 and 7 years younger and they had their own activities and I didn’t play games with them, no,

the gap was too much.

Yes, I had my grandmother, she lived next door. My father built this home for her when he lost his father. He was a painter and died very young with lead poisoning, that was Charlie Kuffer and my grandmother lived next door. She was very good to me, she taught me how to sew buttons on and all things like that and

she spoilt me a bit. I won’t go into too many details there.

Even before the midwife had even washed me she brought me forward and said, “It is a boy and we are going to call him Leslie”. My mother being very determined, she called me Les, she didn’t like Leslie. My grandmother, she was a very strict Methodist, she

didn’t do any washing of a Sunday and I think the first Sunday there were quite a few dirty napkins and my mother washed them and put them on the line and my grandmother came storming down that Evelyn had been washing on a Sunday. I think my mother’s retort was “Well, they were dirtied on a Sunday”. No more comments and they continued to be washed on a Sunday. She was a very kind old lady and she was also

a strict teetotaller, she was a Women’s Christian Temperance Union.

A very strong organisation yes and my other grandfather, he eventually came but after I left home and they built a home in my backyard at my home in Maryborough and he lived there. I didn’t have association, I had left home by then.

Yes. I had an uncle who lived about 9 miles out of Maryborough at a place called Talbot on the slopes of Mount Grennick and he had a farm there. He was in the 4th Light Horse and he used to come in and he had lost part of his ear, a horse had bitten it off and we used to, “Was your ear shot off Uncle Alf?” “No, it was bitten off by a horse”.

I had cousins of my father’s who also won a Military Medal they were, I talked to them a bit about it but not to a great extent. A lot of people in Maryborough went to that war. One of the members of the family was killed, Edward Hubble, every Anzac Day we used to have to go down and put a wreath on, across for him

at the shrine at the cenotaph. It was at the centre of the town.

Yes. At that time Maryborough you might know is on the main line between Melbourne and Mildura, a lot of people used to go to Mildura for work and the expression was “Jump the rattler”. That meant travel on the trains free of charge.

They would get to Maryborough and get off there and go search the town for food. I know my mother used to give them meals and she often asked them to do a little bit of work to make sure they were fair dinkum. But yes there were hungry men about. There were people working, what was called sustenance workers, they were working but my father didn’t lose any work at the time

with the railways and there wasn’t a lot of money about but he didn’t lose any time, so we always had food at home.

Yes, the matter was that a lot of people in the school photographs they were people who were in business in the town and some were not and there were

poor people, some a little bit more, some people were tradesmen, some people were the local baker, ones was the local bootmaker and the car shop, the garage, then there were people were very poor. The clothing was such that if you compared those pictures of the early school days you will notice that the clothing is nothing like you see today. Yes there were poor people, poor families, and yes the children weren’t hungry

at school like that but you could see they were coming from pretty dire straights.

Yes.

I wasn’t too worried because I was initially staying with friends and they

lessened the blow and my mother being such as she was, she always made sure I was presented well, each week I would send my washing home by train and each week it would come back properly packed with an apple pie or something else like that in it.

I think I sent it home on the weekend.

It would come back

during the week and I would collect it at the station. I would just go across to the station and collect it and I had this case and all my shirts were ironed and pressed and I would be right for the next week.

Yes. My father used to go across and collect it and take it home and she would wash it and send it back on the train and back and it would come to me so that lessened a bit of it. You couldn’t do much on 16/-d a week. Although when I were there 3 months we got 3 shillings rise and it made it up to 19

We were really made then.

I was a clerk, a junior clerk writing pay dockets on a stool on a high top desk with pen and ink and doing all sorts of manual like junior clerk work. Putting satchels on trams and then every third Saturday you used to have to man the telephones and general roustabout in the office. That was the first job on…

the Tramways had a satchel that went between every Tram Depot. You can imagine the number of satchels there were in Melbourne and they had to be handled twice a day and came in under lock and key and so did all the coin and it was handled at 673 Bourke Street and eventually they moved into a new building in Little Collins Street, the new Head Office. At that time I was taken to the secretary’s office and I became

the Chairman’s clerk. Hector Bell was the Chairman at the time and I was one of the Chairman’s clerks.

Yes, it was a bit, it was a sort of a, it was a sort after job, Yes. I was the Chairman’s clerk for a long time.

No. We had advantages being on the Tramways because we were given free pass anywhere, anytime, anywhere in the metropolitan area. Tram,

on the cable tram, on the electric tram or on the buses we could travel anytime free anywhere, so it was really good, you could get around quite a bit. That was just the thing a young fellow wanted in Melbourne.

Different places. The first place I stayed was in Fourth Street just off Kooyong Road in Caulfield and then I moved to Northcote with people who ran a newsagency who formerly were in Maryborough, friends of the family and then I went to

2 doors away to another lady and I stayed there until I enlisted. I enlisted from Union Street, Northcote.

Yes. For 19/6d. I could get a return ticket. You say 19/6d. in those days you could buy a pie for 3d. which is half of 5c

and sauce with an extra half penny. For 3d. you could get a pie and sauce, so that is relative to the time.

19/6d. just short of a pound

From Maryborough to Melbourne.

It was so we got off occasionally. We had friends that sometimes would take me up by car but I became interested in local activities and

I joined the St John Ambulance and that gave me interest in Melbourne.

The Tramways had a Division.

St Johns Ambulance? That is a story in itself. We did parades at South Melbourne Depot at Hannah Street, we did public duties and…

Well, if there was a march in the city like the troops were going away, we would have to man the barricades there. You would stand by for any duty. We were made VAD’s [Voluntary Aid Detachment] of the Third Military District. I’ve got the little badge I can show you. Also, which we found very interesting they used to have duties in hospitals in the casualty ward and you would be rostered to go and see the duties of the A&E [accident and emergency], casualty ward of hospitals.

We got a lot of experience there and some of the things I did there I wouldn’t like to put on camera now.

As I mentioned before, my father was in the ambulance in Maryborough, he was the Leader of the Corps in Maryborough. He was known in Maryborough as “The little man with the black box who used to go to any sporting functions, football”.

He was a serving brother of the Order of St John and he also had an MBE [Member of the Order of the British Empire]. He was very interested and I used to go round when they made improvised stretchers out in the bush and I became interested the fact that my mother was a nurse and saw all these people used to come to the home for different dressings and treatment and it would amaze you the things that people came to the house for. Our house was open all the time as people used to pop in for different ailments.

I could pretty well say, “You name it”, even to the death of a person. My mother would attend during the death of a person. My father would do all manner of things from attention to teeth, to eyes, he was very highly regarded and held very high esteem in the town. That sort of gave me a clue to join the

St John and that is why I think I perhaps started off.

Not really. No, we weren’t aware to any great degree. We sort of went along. There wasn’t much publicity going on, no. War drums weren’t rolling.

We heard of

him but that is about all.

I was in the backyard at home suffering from a quinsy standing at the side gate and my mother came out and said “War has been declared”.

No, [Italian Duce Benito] Mussolini was more we had heard of because he had the dealings in Abyssinia and we heard

more about Mussolini than Hitler and later I was to see lot of the fruits of Mussolini’s labour when he put the agriculture villages in North Africa when I went there with the air ambulance.

Oh yes. That was again big money 10 shillings

Yes, I was about 10 and he brought the [aeroplane] Southern Cross up to a place called Carisbrook, which is about 4 miles out of Maryborough, which is a racecourse and landed there and with other relatives my father considered it would a good idea that I flew too. I am rather surprised now that he let me do. We took off and we did a circuit round and it was fantastic to sort of land again. I now able to say I flew with Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith in

the Southern Cross.

Yes it was. At that stage in my field, the aeroplane was in its infancy and we used to make paper fold aeroplanes. We became interested. A flight bloke would have an aeroplane up as a wind vane, it would spin round and face the wind. Aeroplanes were sort of coming into their own, you had the epic flights of Kingsford-Smith and [Charles] Ulm and all those people.

No, I don’t think I would be capable, I think I would have probably seen occasionally a plane go over, there was a family at Maryborough who did have a plane and occasionally it went over, yes I had seen planes but nothing as big as the Southern Cross.

No. I can imagine looking out and seeing the ground and seeing how

odd it was to be up in a plane, if we were up about a quarter of an hour that would be it. He took off in Plumpton, which is 4 miles away and did a circuit over Maryborough and then went back and landed again, so I don’t think he would be taking us too far, not for 10shillings although he had the plane full.

No.

I think my parents more or less indicated that they didn’t want me in it before and I had to get their consent because I was under 21, I got in before I was under 21and they knew I was going into the medical section because I felt it was what I wanted to do. The airforce was offering

perhaps a more attractive life style than the army, so I went in and did my course, initial course at Ascot Vale and then went back to Laverton to do the Nursing Orderly course. We were given the manual, the Royal Naval Sick Berth Staff, that was the manual we operated from and we lectured there until we were passed out as Nursing Orderlies

and I was posted to 1 RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] Hospital.

The basic training would have taken about 3 or 4 weeks, that included firing five rounds out of a .303 [rifle], because that’s all they could afford at the time, going into a gas chamber and doing our foot drill and…

Yes.

Yes. To

show the effectiveness of the respirator they had issued us with. They put us into a chamber, a group of us and you put your respirators on and they left the gas off and they would, say the first 4 or 5 would take their respirator off and you would get the effect of gas and you would then get out very quickly because it would be unbearable. Just to show us how effective it was to have the respirators on.

Then we would have to march with them on, that was very hard. Yes, we tested out the respirators and I suppose that took about 3 or 4 weeks, about a month. The discipline there was very strict. For example, if you didn’t have your shoe laces barred and tied with a bow you could have your leave stopped.

Very strict. That was so we could take them off, if you were ever in the water you could get them off very quickly. Then we did our medical training.

It was a matter of everyone joining up, although I was with the tramways, in the event, eventually I would have been called up anyway, and I may as well volunteer for the air force as something,

I wanted to do, than go where I didn’t want to go.

The air force was more attractive, perhaps it was the uniform. Goodness knows. The air force appealed to me as more the in thing. Royal volunteers and it was a good group and I don’t regret that decision.

They had been through World War I and they knew it was on and at that stage when I went in the Japs hadn’t come in and it was a long way away having casualties coming home and people being killed and casualties appearing in the papers each day. The war didn’t hit home until the Japs came in. When the Japs came in things took a different

complexion.

Yes, but they didn’t all join the air force. Some went in the army, some of them, a fellow I worked with, he was a Scotty he went into the Armoured Division and he didn’t get away until very late in the war. They all went their own ways. Some went navy, some went army, some went air force, no pattern there.

You went on your own.

No, they gave us our job back when we came back and they gave us a war savings certificate for each week of service or was it each month of service? Anyway we were well looked after, the tramways were very generous and they gave us a job when we came back.

When you have done your Nursing Orderly training, that’s the medical training…

Yes, you did your medical training and then you were asked for ‘preference postings’ and I asked for ‘overseas’ and so be it, eventually I got it but I didn’t get it originally. The Japs came in

and I got posted from 1 RAAF Hospital to 7th Squadron. 7th Squadron was then sent because the Japs had come into the war, down to Bairnsdale and I went down there with the advance squad to open up the Bairnsdale air strip. From there eventually I got posted to 102 Unit which took over and then my wish came true and I was posted to 1 Air Ambulance, which was really a plum posting it was quite a good posting.

It consisted of a series of lectures by a chap named Colby, Squadron Leader Preston was the CO [Commanding Officer] in charge of us, we did our training in 1 RAAF Hospital. Matron Joiner was a very strict disciplinarian and we had to do all the menial tasks around the ward.

Everything, from toilets right through, we did everything. We eventually got our caduceus [insignia of military medical corps], our medical caduceus and then we got appointed to 1 RAAF Hospital. That was quite a good posting too because you could be sent to all sorts of far out outlandish places. I was quite happy to be there, I don’t want to brag about it but Ken Walker and myself, my mate we topped the course and

we got posted where we wanted to.

At Laverton then.

There were a few aircraft accidents but mainly medical cases. There was an outpatients’ clinic, which ran sick parade each day, everything went with the hospital.

I was working in the operating theatre for awhile, I nearly went on a charge there because I let the doors bang on the trolley. That was on my 21st birthday, but I got off. It was mainly medical cases. When the first drug sulphanilamides came in, MB693, and we were treating this particular fellow with MB693 and it was a big deal.

Sulphanilamides had just come into being. I can see the patient and I can see the ward and I can see the sister in charge.

Yes, it was a long ward with beds all down the side. This fellow was kept right down the far side. We used to have to measure all his urine, measure his output and he wasn’t allowed to have anything with salt, no eggs, very fusy. This nursing sister, lost track of her, no one knows where she ended up, she was a lovely girl, and she looked after us rookies if you’d like to call us , we’d just walked in the ward.. She was very good,

when the doctors or the matron came you would have to stand at attention at the end of the bed when they did the sick parade, parade of the ward. Discipline was pretty strict. Matron Joiner was a very strict disciplinarian.

He had a kidney problem. I lost track but eventually, he was discharged but I don’t know what happened to him, you lose track.

A lot of people you see them when they have the initial complaint or accident, like one particular fellow I can think of from Bougainville later in the war, he was shot and we looked after him and eventually he came back to Heidelberg and there my wife was looking after him. You handle them, similar with the air ambulance you would have the patients, varying disease, all sorts of problems and you

would have them for just a short time, they would go through your hands, you would treat them as best you could while you had them and then they would be passed on.

Yes. There was a blue eyed hut there and we were instructed as to how to perform the VD part of the lectures. You would have your short straw and you would be on duty and you

would be sleeping on the job in one of the wards, unused wards and first thing you would know one of the little WAAAFs [Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force] would be there saying “Sergeant, sergeant, there is someone at the hut”. She would wake you up and you would curse and you would go and find someone who had been out for the night and he come and he decided he wanted to have protective treatment. You would carry out the treatment as laid down in our notes.

Yes I was going on to say in answer of your question, the person who fronts up would not have his name entered on a PM1, he would not have his name entered in his medical history, his name would appear in a book there which was kept in case your treatment wasn’t satisfactory and he did in fact, the disease, he did get the disease. But in my case, any

cases I treated, they never ever got any. We carried out the treatment as laid down in the regulations, which was the irrigation and the installation of argeron calimal and we did the whole treatment and sent the fellow wrapped up with an elastic band holding it in position.

No, they weren’t. They all knew if they came to us we would give them condoms and we would also have to give them, that was the instructions, that if they took the condoms they had to take the ointments to take too. Therein lies a story. So these fellows had no qualms about asking us for it. We would say, “When you come,

just ask for toothpaste” because the Australian Comforts Fund was making toothpaste available. So they would ask us for toothpaste and we would give them condoms and the tubes of ointment. The sisters at the time were saying, “What is all this toothpaste you are issuing?” We let the sisters into the know and the sisters would say, “There is somebody else after toothpaste”. We used to issue them and they would go off merrily not knowing

that the sister had them all tabbed.

Yes, the Japs had come, there was one shot down over Darwin. They brought him down and put him in a ward, they had a guard outside and medical orderly had to be inside all the time with him. I was there

with my tour of duty, I think there was only a couple of times I went around there, a special ward to himself, and the interpreters came down and low and behold the interpreter was the one I worked with in the tramways and he had a command of Japanese and this interpreter came down to quiz this particular pilot. What he got out of him I don’t know. It was strange a buddy I worked with at the tramways should front up down there. He was with the army and he could speak Japanese and he

interrogated this pilot.

No, I don’t. I was moved on. You treat these people while you are there, you do your stint sometimes you didn’t see whether they recovered or not. Some cases you did, particularly when you are, when I was at Bairnsdale you would see the patient come, treated and recover. You just do your treatment while you see them,

it was a matter of.

Very good. They gave us all, and I have my notes over there now, which I

carried with me all the time and they were quite adequate.

The VD patients were treated at No 2 RAAF Hospital, Ascot Vale. What would happen if a fellow did contract the disease, you would usually pick him up because you would have a sick parade and this particular fellow would probably hang around

until the last one had come through and then he would come through and explain that he was in problems and where he was in problems and with that he would be very smartly whipped off the station and sent to Ascot Vale. As would apply with all infectious diseases. There again is a story. Clothing being as it was, we had great trouble what to do with a man’s clothing, particularly if he had

scabies or anything like that. We had one very experienced flight sergeant and he devised a way of sterilising the clothes. While it probably wasn’t according to the book it was effective. What we would do, we would get an ambulance and we would put the clothes in the ambulance and in the bottom we would put a tray of permanulated polish and on top of that he would pour liquid formaldehyde and I believe it is a deadly gas.

We were told to slam the ambulance gas door shut and leave it shut for a couple of hours. With that we had no trouble but it was a highly risky, I believe it was a very potent gas. I don’t know what was given off. All I know is liquid formaldehyde and formaldehyde polish caused a great chemical reaction a lot of fumes given off and anything that survived that would be lucky. That is how we sterilised the clothes of these particular infected patients.

We went down in an ambulance and we set up, established the sick quarters and nothing was finished, we had nowhere to live. The doctor took over

rooms or accommodation at the local hotel and there we stayed at the local hotel until such time as they could get some sort of accommodation at the sick quarters where we slept on the veranda. Eventually the hotels in Bairnsdale were taken over by the RAAF anyway for accommodation. We established a sick quarters and there we put wards in. We did sick parades

and we did take patients on board as sick quarters. We had two doctors, Dr Matthews and Dr Jackson. Dr Matthews was a First World War man, both men had wings, both doctors. We did the ordinary type of medical work down there.

We were expected to be

masters of all aspects of it from casualty work to dispensary, ward work, all the different types of work and all different types of cases. You would have to attend crashes, if there was a crash you would have to go out and try and extricate the people and get them in.

Not as many as when I left, that is when they had the trouble

with Beauforts.

I did go out to one and get the patients out and the ground leaped as he came in and lo and behold one of my old school pals from Maryborough. He was right but it was a rather coincidence to have one of my school boys. Occasionally, you met people you knew. I lost one of the chaps from my own grade at Bougainville, he was a pilot too, I was talking to him one day, killed the next.

He was flying Boomerangs but this particular, but you are talking about Bairnsdale now, this was one of the fellows I went to school with, a bit older than myself and here he was and we got him out of the aircraft, he was all right.

No, he was right, only ground leap in the aircraft and he was right. We had all sorts of jobs to do. My main work there was looking after the patients in the ward. We had an outbreak of measles and thereupon we had to nurse them as best we could,

a lot of throats we didn’t have much treatment. They used to have them opening their mouths to the sun and that sort of caper, it’s a bit antiquated. I ended up contracting measles myself and I would be having Dettol baths and one thing and another to try and not get the disease and I ended up making the Dettol too strong and got burnt in some very sensitive places and they put into Bairnsdale Hospital and there I was looked after by the nurses who were

very kind to us.

No, you just had to wear it out. I got over the measles all right. At that stage we were made pretty mobile, we were given motor bikes to ride and I could mention now going into the Authority to ride the motor bike to the Transport Section and the sergeant said, “Did you

ride in?” and I said, “Yes.” He said, “Well ride it out again.” That was the extent of the examination. These were Indian Scouts and we were fitted up so that we could put our first aid kits on the back and get around if need be. We didn’t know what was going to happen. We had all sorts of experiences at Bairnsdale.

Never.

No.

Just learnt how to do it. We used to shuttle backwards and forwards to the base hospital. Just running trips around. I also had to drive the ambulance and it was an old Bedford ambulance and at that stage we had new CO arrived and there was no other transport to pick him up but the ambulance and the only person who could drive was myself. I can hearing him saying now, “Change down man, change down man!” but the man didn’t know how to change down.

There would be a sick parade.

The sick parade would be a multitude of things, you would get respiratory problems, throats, you would get skin conditions, all sorts of things and you would get some who were trying to perhaps

get an easy day, light duties or something like that, come and see the doctors. The doctors were a wake up to those who were fair dinkum and those that weren’t. They had a little bit of this problem and they mixed up this mixture, which was called in the dispensary ‘Miss TNT’. Everybody knew what ‘Miss TNT’ was, except the patient. It was a vile tasting thing, it was

if I could be rude it tasted like the bottom of a cockies cage, it used to dry up the secretions in the mouth, so that the person who fronted up for a dose of it, he had this foul taste and he couldn’t spit out. There was only one man came back for a second dose. We cured some of the malingerers that way. Later on there were other ways of sorting out those who were fair dinkum and those who weren’t. Sick parade later in the war in Bougainville

was at 6 o’clock in the morning, so anyone who was fair dinkum and really sick, they knew to come and they’d get attention.

Doctors’ hours about 9 or 10 and you would cope with the day. Someone in the dispensary, someone in the outpatients, and there would be someone looking after the wards, it was an interesting sort of set up there until it became very big and became 102U and became much more

like a station, a lot more discipline.

All that happens is a signal comes through and you are posted to 1 Embarkation Depot, which was down at Ascot Vale for

posting to the Middle East, to 1 Air Ambulance with much jubilation.

I was pleased to get a position to a unit. A lot of it becomes pretty hum drum sort of business and it is a bit more exciting to go where I was going.

It is getting towards the Spring, early Spring perhaps early Summer,

Yes.

Yes.

Pearl Harbor has happened.

The news was devastating but we didn’t realise the extent it had on the Australian mainland, none at all. We did not know the extent that Darwin had been bombed. No. We didn’t know that they had lost the British ships and the British had left us because they couldn’t support us. We were being supported by the Americans because when we were at Laverton we were having aircraft coming in then with bullet holes in them. We knew it was fair dinkum up north but we didn’t know to what extent it was.

Oh well that war had been going on for a long time and we knew that the AIF [Australian Imperial Force] were there but we didn’t really know that the AIF were going to be brought home. It so happened that the 1 Air Ambulance Unit had been there a long time, and we were going across as reinforcements and we passed some of the Nursing Sisters coming

home. When we eventually arrived in Colombo [Ceylon, now Sri Lanka] they were coming home and we were going to the Middle East then. The AIF were coming home and we were going across to the Middle East as reinforcements to the 1 Air Ambulance. There were two Air Force units there and why they were kept there was probably Government policy but two entirely Australian Air Force Units were 3 Squadron and 1 Air Ambulance Unit. There were Australians scattered in a multitude of other units, but the only ones under Australian command were

3 Squadron and 1 Air Ambulance.

I am a LAC, a leading aircraftsman. We didn’t have any other rank at all, just LAC.

We proceed to Embarkation Depot and you are equipped to go to the Middle East which was extensive kitting.

A far more extensive kit to go to the Middle East. I had a big sea kit and as a matter of fact I got the sea kit there I can show you. We were kitted and made dentally fit, a lot of dental work done and make sure all your injections are up to date. At that stage I had developed an abscess which I had my other medical orderly treat for me, so we kept it quiet but I got away with until it broke out again when I got to Colombo, but anyway we got away with it.

The kit? Yes we were equipped with, like we were given summer gear and winter gear, but we weren’t given the equipment to go up the desert with but we were given ground sheets. When we got to Cairo our kits were put into storage and we were issued with British battle dress.

We had British battle dress and we carried our own khaki equipment, khaki uniform, shorts, khaki socks and our ground sheets but the main thing to go into the desert with was khaki of course, all our blues were left in Cairo. We were issued with British battle dress, which we wore right through. It got cold at night up there.

Yes, we got pre embarkation leave.

Went home and saw the folks and said, “We’re off” and that was it.

I don’t think they minded. They knew that everyone was going somewhere and we had a sort of a code which fouled up a couple of times, so that they, you weren’t allowed to say where you were going,

so I would be talking about places in relation to Maryborough in the direction I was going, I would be talking, if I would be talking about different towns there and beyond and they’d know the direction that worked out all very well until the system broke down, it was when I was posted to Bougainville later on in the war and I was hard pressed to tell them that I was going to Bougainville. I suddenly had the bright idea.

There was one lady in Maryborough who was poisoned by getting in contact with a bush, I started talking about this lady, “How was her arm? Did you notice that her arm was sore after coming into contact with the bush?” and I was thinking it was a bougainvillea but it wasn’t, it was an oleander. My mother had me posted to Hollandia [now Jayapura, West Papua] when I was stationed in Bougainville.

It didn’t always work out but we rectified that as soon as an aircraft came in, I got a message home via one of the crew and said “I was at Bougainville”, so they knew where I was. You couldn’t say in a letter where you were.

Yes, my wife. Lois.

I met her at the tramways, I worked with her sister.

She bought, Joan the typist bought in this ravishing red head into our office one day and my office looked across the light well and I looked across the light well and saw that ravishing red head and there it started.

I don’t know how I managed it but by some means or other. Eventually, she did her training and got a commission while I was away and by the time I came back to Australia by that time I got the rank of corporal and she was commissioned.

No.

No. We left from Port Melbourne on a British India ship called the Mysore, with two to a cabin, 12 of us on board,

it did about 8 knots, we pulled into Port Adelaide and we then had to come into Fremantle again and by that time I got another letter home saying, “I am in Fremantle and all is well in the business” and then we took off from Fremantle doing 8 knots zig-zagging across at the height of the Japanese with this old tramp steamer, it was an old coal burning British India ship,

loaded up with cargo and I used to do a sick parade on that. Ken Walker and myself, we would do the sick parade each morning and for crew and everybody and then we had to do submarine watch. We had a crew up on top and we would do submarine watch and by the time you had finished your shift you saw periscopes popping up everywhere. If we seen anything we had naval gunners down the back with the equivalent of a Japanese 25 pounder, it is a big gun

on the back and they had machine guns on top but if we saw anything that wasn’t going to be ours we would go across and we would zig zagged all the way across and we eventually got to Colombo and they took us off. Having lost some vessels outside then we went across…

Yes, we got ashore there, we didn’t go alongside, we had the boats come alongside and take you ashore and we got ashore there at

Colombo and we went out to, the name of the place… ladies making lace, I forget the name of the place but we went to see the temples, we had to take our shoes off to see the temples. We did the usual things while we were there.

No. My reaction was that the poverty, both there and in India,

it was just beyond, it was so frightening, it was so shocking. The poverty and the beggars and it was beyond our comprehension, I didn’t know what I had struck. Those Indians with white feathers, we weren’t allowed to associate with them at all, they were we used to call them “Gandi wallahs”, because they were followers of [Indian nationalist Mahatma] Gandhi, and

Gandhi was not pro-British.

No. All we knew were a few words to ask for gondpanni and tondapanni for water on board ship, a smattering of words for necessities. No we didn’t know anything about India at all.

We went from Australia right through the Middle East under the control of a sergeant. Sergeant O’Dea and he was in charge of us, he was with 3 Squadron

and he would palm the orders down to us, tell us what the story was. We went across… do you want me to go into India now?

They had lost a troop ship outside of Colombo and we were told and we were then told we had to go by train. We went by train went across the ferry into India to Madras. At Madras, we were stationed there for

some time.

A week or so and then it was determined we are going across by train. Sergeant O’Dea, he got his way. We got first class travel across which in India which is equivalent to our second class here. We went across India and through Poona and down to Bombay and there we were put in an RAF [Royal Air Force] transit camp, Worli,

it was pretty rugged, the food was terrible.

Food and it was a desolate sort of place. We got inside a building to sleep. There was a big bed but they used to have canvas over, raffia, not raffia, coir across to make a bed and the bed bugs used to get in it and they were terrible things these bed bugs.

These beds, you would sleep on that. During the day we would pitch tents and we did that while waiting to be tranzipped to the Middle East. The food was terrible. To give an example, breakfast was a piece of dry bread with a bit of synthetic egg put across it. You would walk across between where it would be served and hoping that the kite hawks wouldn’t dive and take it off your plates in the meantime and you would sit under a thatch tree and eat it.

We used to try and buy food but the RAF decreed, we were under RAF at that time, and they liked to so the colonials that they didn’t get all their own way, we were only allowed to draw the same amount of pay as the RAF. We got enough food, we survived until such time as that abscess broke out again and I had to front up to the doctor. Mustering, a nursing orderly, “What are you doing here?” “Pitching tents?” and there upon

a storm broke out. Why I wasn’t working in his hospital? “How many more of you here?” I was a bit silly about that and I think my mate got caught too and we had to go and work in his hospital for a while. Of course, they found a night shift for us, it was bonza. We eventually got clear of…

Anyone, it was only a brief period, the main thing was to get this

blessed abscess cleared up.

Just mainly it was magsulphide glycerine. We eventually got onto a troop ship called the Nevasa and there were 30 whites and the rest of the ship was packed with Indians. Bearing in mind that the AIF had come home and the Indian troops were going over. There were Sikhs, Punjabis, Frontier Force Riders, they took the arms off all the troops except the Gurkhas [Regiment of Nepalese fighting under the British Army].

The Gurkhas were allowed to retain their kukri, that is the big knife. The Gurkhas were put to on the life boat during life boat drill. They used to have ships rounds and when we got on board they decided these Australians were going to work, they weren’t going to have an easy trip to the Middle East, so they, first of all they said, “Right, you will man the machine guns.” I said “I am sorry”, at that time we hadn’t been armed, we were armed later but at that time we weren’t armed.

I said, “We are non-combatants, we can’t work on machine guns, sorry.” We thought that has given us a nice trip to the Middle East. They said “Well, if you are medical people, you can go down and work in the VD ward, we have some Indian VD cases down the back”. That didn’t appeal either, so we told the gentleman the same thing “We weren’t too interested in working in his VD ward either”. Then he decided, he said “Right oh, can you play the bugle?” “No, we can’t play the bugle.”

“Well there’s a bugle, go away and learn to play G on it.” So we went away but they soon took the bugles away from us. With that they gave us whistles. They said, “Righto, now you will be in charge of the ships rounds, one orderly in front and one of you will be at the back.” This was done twice a day and they would line all the troops up on the deck and Gurkhas on the life boats and all these Indian troops, all lined up on the caulking board, shoes

all spit polished and everything and they would do the ships rounds. I think they used to do about 10 or 12. They did the CO, the OC troops, the ship decks and sail mate and the doctor, an orderly in the front and an orderly in the back and that was us. We took turns, so we would go and open up the water proof doors and they would go from top down and inspect the ship and then we’d go back. They made us work for that. In addition, “One of you will sleep at the orderly room every night.” So we had to sling a hammock outside the orderly room to have a sleep,

we took that in turns too. They made us work, they were determined, they did.

I don’t know. I don’t think they thought it was a reflection, I don’t think it was a wise thing for them to have their weapons. We didn’t have any weapons, I don’t think it was a good idea, I think it was probably standard procedure, I don’t know.

All I know is they took all the arms off except the Gurkhas and they wouldn’t argue with the Gurkhas with their knives.

No, it was my interest in the medical section because as soon as I got to the Middle East, I soon armed myself. I carried a Luger inside my jacket all the time I was in the Middle East

or a Mauser, I was armed as soon as I got there.

No we were armed when we came back. When we went to Bougainville, as you’ll probably find out later on, we were supposed to be doing a landing under fire and at that time I was a sergeant. They said, “You can either have a Thompson sub-machine gun or you can have a Smith & Wesson revolver”. I said, “Well if we are going to do a landing under fire” which was totally incorrect,

I said, “I’ll be looking after you fellows, so give me a Smith and Wesson, it is lighter”. They armed us to go in. I can see our cook now, Frank Gower, going down the rope ladder to go into the barge with a Bren gun, that is how they armed us to go into Bougainville. We were armed later on. At the time, at that stage when we went to the Middle East, Nursing Orderlies weren’t given any weapons.

We didn’t see them, we only knew. We didn’t see them.

The only people we saw, we saw some nursing sisters in Colombo.

They told us they were on their way back to Australia.

Eventually, the Nevasa steamed into Port Tewfik [Egypt] and we disembark and we go to a place called Al Assa, where we handled all that equipment that they had given us from the store,

we did get some of it from Italy later on but the majority of it stayed there until we got back again, we were then equipped with British battle dress, khaki and we kept our slouch hat and my cap field service, blue one, and we put medical fuses on our battle dress and we were issued with 5 blankets, which we needed, and a ground sheet and we then proceeded by truck which so happened to be in Cairo at the time,

to the desert to catch up with our unit. By that time El Alamein was over because the troops were coming home, we picked up with the unit at a place called, just past Benghazi down the little hoop, a place called El Agheila and another place called Marble Arch. The unit was based at Marble Arch on a strip there.

Australian unit, 1 Air Ambulance Unit yes. When we got there they welcomed us with open arms because there was an aircraft at Benghazi when we got there,

they put the two medical orderlies, was Ken Wilken and myself, and they flew us to the unit, we received such a welcome because they were waiting for reinforcements and we were the first ones to come and it boosted the morale. They had a party that night and we had to sing in the mess. It was the first time I had ever sung in the mess and we had to sing and all the rest of it.

Yes I do

“Around her legs she wore a purple garter, she wore it in the Spring time

and in the month of May. And if you asked her why the hell she wore it, she wore it for an Aussie who was far, far away.” We sang that and we got let off.

The tents were dispersed. For example, each tent had a hole which you dug and they were dispersed over an area

and area of a football field. Mainly so they couldn’t be straffed. There was two big tents put called EPIP [English Pattern Indian Product] tents, high ridge tents and they can withstand the sand storm where our tents could get blown over and they were blown over in the sand storms. The tent would be completely covered in sand. You would live in these EPIP tents where there would be the cookhouse, a place to eat and sleep. These big EPIP tents had big stakes and big high

ropes which could them up in the storms. They had these tents and they had a pick up vehicle and when you have been out on a job and you would come back and you would fly low over the camp, and then send a truck out to pick you up and bring you back into the camp. We landed on Marble Arch, we operated there for quite awhile, you’ll probably see in my log book

for quite a while. We moved on and a week later an aircraft blew up on a mine in the middle of it. Mines were a problem. We were instructed there that if you were walking anywhere, you walk in the track of a vehicle, a truck or tank. If there were white lines you would keep in the white lines. We didn’t have any casualties from the mines. Although, luckily,

because at one stage we pulled up for morning tea in a mine field, and a bloke screaming from the road, “Come out, the way you went in, come out, you are in a mine field”. The mines were very heavily mined, particularly if they did a demolition around a bridge, you wouldn’t go anywhere except between the white lines. There, the Military Police were very helpful. The closer you got to the front, the more human the Military Police became.

Water was the problem there in the desert. Marble Arch wasn’t too bad but on the way up a place called Mersa Matruh, we stopped there for tea. The tea was shocking, it tasted just like iodine. The wells would be doctored by the Germans and then we would doctor them up and by the time we got it was so heavily chemically chlorinated that it was foul tasting and we had no water to wash in. We washed our clothes in

petrol and we had at one place, and we had a water bottle per man per day, well I showed you everything and the cookhouse would take some of that. The CO insisted that we shave each day, 3 Squadron didn’t insist on that but we didn’t have any facial problems at all because the CO insisted that we shave. Kept our skin clear. The water was

chlorinated and it was restricted to such a degree that if you ever got any water to have a wash, you would have a gerry can cut off and you would stand in that and wash yourself down, and then you would wash you clothes in what was left and you would end up with mud but we had plenty of petrol. For example if you went to light a fire, there was nothing to light the fire with except petrol. To boil the billy you would put a tin and you would put some sand in it and put some

petrol in and boil your billy. That was the way we boiled the water for our cups of tea. That was the water. Water was bad, it was a problem. Being a teetotaller, they always brought back a crate of beer but they never brought back a crate of soft drink.

Water.

I don’t think it was the next day but a couple after I got rostered for duty first time on aircraft. We had a Flight Sergeant there, Ray Smith, he was very good to us, he told us he broke us to what we were expected to do, showed us the aircraft, how we had to load the aircraft, how we had to put on the IFF, which was the Identification Friend and Foe, so as we could be identified and then I think we were given a job I think I got a ticket to go and do a job. There in lies a story.

By that time I had been allocated a tent and I had dug my hole, you always dug your hole.

Trench. I thought, “I’ll do a good job” so I camouflaged it, so anyway we did a trip and landed, before we landed, we did a bit over the drome and I looked down and it looked like a gun encasement. I over exaggerated, so I got down and I threw the camouflage away.

It wasn’t a very good attempt at camouflaging. There was no point camouflaging anyway so we didn’t camouflage anymore.

Yes because at Marble Arch we heard the first shots fired in anger. They opened up, there was a barrage opened back at El Agheila. We could see the traces which we hadn’t seen before, it was novel and we

hadn’t been attacked, it was too far away but we could hear a few angry shots being fired down there, so we knew it was on. We didn’t have any baptism fire until we moved to a place called Bambut, which was a bit beyond Marble Arch and they decided to move the unit there. When they got the unit there, there had been a reconnaissance aircraft, what we used to call a shoofty aircraft over that day and they decided it was too dangerous to leave the aircraft

there of a night. They left us there but they took the aircraft back to Marble Arch. That night the BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation] news had just finished and they came across and they bombed and strafed. The next morning they came up and they said “What are you doing with your hole Kuff?” I said, “I am making it deeper, it wasn’t deep enough last night. The tin hat wasn’t big enough either”. That was our first baptism at Gambut. That was when we first copped angry fire.

Yes it is, in so far as it only carries casualties, doctors, sisters or medical people, it doesn’t carry. That is why the air ambulance was eventually brought home because they found they could fly aircraft up with supplies on and bring casualties on them. The role of air ambulance when we got to Italy was limited besides the fact our aircraft, we couldn’t get petrol for our aircraft

because they it used 77 octane but they found the need for air ambulance, when we got to Italy was such that they brought it home and disbanded it.

We were under 239 Wing which was an RAF Wing, Wing Commander O’Malley

and he would tell our pilots or our CO that there were casualties to be picked up and we would go in at zero feet because if you read their history you will see that they were attacked before we got there, and we would land at the forward fighter strips. That sometimes meant flying up into the circuit area because they would be down low, and we would have to wait until they all got in because they would be

short of fuel and we had plenty of fuel and we would just stooge round until we were given the okay to come in. We would come in and get off the strip and load our patients and then wait for clearance and get off again with the patients. We would take them from, there would be a Field Ambulance, they would have been treated and take them back to a casualty clearing station. We would be taking over from the army and depending on the aircraft, if we were using the DeHavillands we used to have to transfer the patients from an army stretcher

to a stretcher that would go through the door of the air ambulance. We would have to do that both ways when they were took off and when we landed. When we got to Bristol Bombays, we had wider doors and we could take them without disturbing the patients on the army stretchers. With only one case we proved it satisfactory. We could take the stretcher through and out them in the aircraft, I think we used to carry 12 and this particular day we got a stretcher which

had a faulty side and we struck a bit of turbulence coming in and of course it would be a head case and broke and we were about to go into land anyway and the pilot looked back and I said, “Go ahead and land.” I got him on the floor and held him until we got down. The stretcher was a faulty stretcher. Beyond that it was a much better arrangement, you didn’t have to disturb the patients, you could take them. The army fellows were fantastic the way they used to handle them. We would only

see them for that period when we had them on the aircraft.

These fellows, they were very caring, a nursing sister couldn’t have been any more tender than they were.

The aircraft we were operating from initially were the DH86’s [De Havilland], a 4 engine aircraft and they had been brought from Australia and they had been operating up and down the desert and we had been given instructions on how to handle them. You had to put the patient onto a stretcher to get through the door of the

aircraft. They weren’t all stretcher cases but the majority of the cases they were. The pilot, sometimes there was a co-pilot but usually a pilot and a medical orderly, you didn’t, only rare occasions we would carry a wireless operator. We used to put the IFF [Identification Friend or Foe] on.

To us, it was a mystery box at the back. All we had to do was to make sure that when he took off we switched it on. Apparently, it sent a

signal out what it was to indicate that the aircraft was a friendly aircraft, Identification Friend or Foe. That is all we know about, that is all we were told, “Make sure you switch the IFF on” and that is what we used to do.

It was just racks to put the stretchers on, which you would put up in position, and it was pretty basic.

If you got a bit of turbulence, they didn’t move, there was a little seat down the back for you to sit on, on the De Havillands we didn’t carry any dinghies nor any Mae Wests [inflatable life-preserving jackets] and we never ever carried a parachute. You could not jump out and leave a plane load of patients up there, could you? We had to often ride in an aircraft that was perhaps defective.

Therein lays a story perhaps. This one particular day we did lose an engine to such a degree that it had to be pulled out and this particular aircraft was a Bristol Bombay and you couldn’t feather the engine and so it was thrashing around, making it very hard for the pilot. He was getting around trying to tell us to jettison cargo and fortunately they could hear us coming for miles because the aircraft was carrying on,

eventually, we were losing height and we eventually made the strip and put the aircraft down, we had a load of patients on and the CO took a very dim view of the fact that the aircraft went down and he decreed that the fitter that services the aircraft would fly in it, we had no more trouble. We in the medical staff were pleased about it because it gave us an extra pair of hands to loading, we solved two problems. One, we had an extra bod on board to

help us and the aircraft didn’t act up again, which we were very pleased about.

It depended whether they were walking wounded or stretcher cases. I think we used to carry 12 stretchers, I think we used to carry about 20 in the sitting position in the Bristol Bombays. In the De Havillands, we only had 6 stretchers and they were mainly,

and they were mainly stretcher cases. When we got the Bristol Bombays, we could operate with more on board and depending upon where we were, so the passengers were determined. We would take whatever the army gave us. Sometimes they might be British forces and often as not 51st Highland Division or New Zealanders, the New Zealand Expeditionary Forces were there, carry Free French, we even carried a German

prisoner who couldn’t give us any bother because he was beyond that stage. We carry whoever the army gave us and we picked them up from the forward strip and carry them back and there would be ambulances waiting to take them over again. You only had them for that brief period of time which you had them in the air. It was interesting, ff there had been an action and you would see, you would know who you would bring out. The Guards Regiment, they took

a bit of a pounding, we knew that because they were all big, big men and you got some heavy lifts, particularly loading the aircraft, it wasn’t easy but we used to load the aircraft and you would notice the difference when you got a big man on board. We would take whatever they gave us. We would then hand them over to the army at the other end, to the casualty clearing station.

They were newer, they were a big aircraft, big 22 engines and they were fixed under carriage. They were the first bombers Britain had, they had external bomb racks. When the aircraft was built, it was built with the wing 9 inches too far forward, it never ever carried a tail gunner, they had two waste gunners and it was absolutely forbidden for anyone to proceed behind a door, which was down the aircraft in flight

because it upset the aircraft, so they took the external bomb racks off and the internal fittings and they made them, and gave it to 216 Squadron and used them as a transport aircraft and the transport aircraft when they had finished they gave them to us as air ambulances and they operated them in the desert.

No. They are listed in the history. We wrote them off.

We had some accidents with them and there was one crashed on landing going in on landing and we lost an aircraft, we had a full load of patients on.

A place called Phillippeville in [Algeria] North Africa, we landed there.

I was on the aircraft.

The pilot’s story was that – I can only tell you what the pilot’s story was and I didn’t know this until I got back to Australia – that there was someone on the strip and he had to avoid them.

I didn’t know that until I got back to Australia, however that’s the story.

It crash landed and having a fixed undercarriage off it went. It wrote the aircraft off, we were trapped inside it. One of the patients said, “Stand aside corporal” and I stood aside and he immediately went through this plywood door and we got him out through the

astro hatch. They cut the side of the aircraft up and we passed the stretcher cases out. I remember to this day how furious I was because an American came along smoking this cigar because we had high octane fuel all over the place and I dissuaded him from smoking his cigar in no uncertain terms. One fellow, the propeller came through the side, an airscrew I should say came through and clobbered him on the arm and he took me to task because I told him I knew the aircraft was going to crash and he said, “You should have told me.” I couldn’t have told him

a thing from where I was because I was down the back of the aircraft anyway but we wrote that one off, it was a very nasty accident but fortunately no one was killed. One fellow was knocked about but we were all considerably shaken but we were put in an aircraft and taken back the same day back. No time to worry about it. We had our times when we had problems. The aircraft were seeing the last of their service life.

Nothing like when you land with them and you have to pump up the hydraulics with a foot pump to give you enough air to put the brakes on, they were really seeing the end of their life. They were going right through the desert as transport aircraft. 216 Squadron RAF had them before we took them over as air ambulances. We had a few written off that way but that was one I was on, which wasn’t particularly a pleasant occasion.

Once the sand storm came up everything ground to a halt. You couldn’t do a thing, you eventually lost your tent, we found the ammunition boxes were good things to keep your clothes in because you could lock them up, your tent would be blown over covered in sand.

They would have these big tents which the cookhouse would keep and it was one in which we would use as a bedding place and where we could sleep. You would have to try to get from the cookhouse where they prepared the meal for us across to the area where you could eat it. The idea was to back into the storm and try and keep your meal shaded from the sand and scrape the sand away from it and enjoy it. The cooks worked under shocking conditions,

they did their best to keep us going. We used a lot of bully beef and the M and V [meat and vegetables] we liked, we didn’t like the fish that used to be served up. I put on weight with the bully beef and biscuits. They used to make us an unusual breakfast when he felt like it. He would soak these biscuits overnight and then serve them up with condensed milk on it

and it was quite palatable with a bit of sugar on it, brown sugar. These biscuits he used for a sort of makeshift porridge. They were quite edible. Bully beef and biscuits, I didn’t dislike them at all. We had a variety of food, it was all hard stuff, it wasn’t. I think it was Italy before we got any meat and we then got, we were out of the

desert now and we got different sort of food, but you probably don’t want to discuss Italy at the moment.

They gave us the patients that were

those that would survive best if they were transported by air rather than by on the long road back by ambulances. I think we got the worse cases. A lot of them were head cases. The majority were gun shot wounds except when we got to Sicily When we got to Sicily, as you will see in my log book, we were doing 20 minute hops, doing forward evacuations from the most forward strip we could get onto

and we were pulling them out and we were brining out more malaria cases than actual battle casualties. Malaria was rife there and we had our malaria cases coming out a bit and that taxed us a bit. I think you will see in one day it was 4 trips, 5 trips. We had a lot of trips shuttling back and forth doing the forward evacuations back, so they could be transferred further back. The casualties

were usually seen by medical people, very little required any treatment on our own behalf, we just made sure they were comfortable during the trip, tend to their wants while they were flying and kept them alive and then handed them over without any further injuries. That was how we received them. They were all types of injuries you could name.

It depends on the locations of the fighter strip and depends on the casualty clearing station and where we were taking them back to. It depends on the circumstances at the time and where we were asked to fly them and we just did whatever was decreed of us. Sometimes you would be a short hop and sometimes a longer hop, it was just a matter of what the circumstances were.

In one particular case we set out to pick up one fellow who had been blinded. Even now I know I sat by him all the time and talked to him to try and comfort him. Some cases come back to your mind, by and large they were just a mass of casualties that you just handled. I can remember the German bloke and I can remember some of the cases but the majority of them were just a mass of casualties.

No you didn’t know what was going to happen, you just had to stand by and what was going to happen would happen. You took it in turns to fly when it was your turn to fly and that was it.

How many medical orderlies were there?

We had a Sergeant in charge of us, Reg Guy from Western Australia and Ken Walker and myself,

Dick Flavell and we had a couple of others from time to time.

You couldn’t get up to mischief in the desert. As I think I mentioned to you, we did a lot of target practice, we had plenty of captured German ammunition and we had a revolver and we used to practice pot shots around the place and we would have a, you would entertain yourself, write letters home.

I have since read a lot of my letters home and I always seem to be acknowledging receiving letters or receiving parcels. To receive a parcel was really a high day because they would be sending us cakes sealed up in tins, and things like that, all goodies and that was a feast night when you got a parcel from home and everybody sat around and had a cake from home, usually sealed up in a tin.

I wrote principally to the family, my sister

Dorothy who kept that book I showed you with all my letters and to my now wife Lois and that was the main letters I wrote. We had the airgraph system which came in later in the war, which was very handy because you could write on a page and you would be censored by one of our officers and it would go straight up and be photographed and it would be reproduced in about 4 by 4 and it was

dispatched to your home as you had written it, photographed and reproduced like a photograph.

That depends where you were. It wasn’t regular, no. Sometimes you would get a whole sheaf of mail and you would go for weeks and not a thing. I was fortunate in mail, in fact the commanding officer gave me authority to collect official and private mail on behalf of the unit

at any time and I was to be provided with transport to do it, which irked the transport corporal sometimes when I demanded a truck to go and get my mail but he got his mail, so he was pleased.

There was usually a base, a post office and I knew where it was and I would go in there and collect our mail for air ambulance and it would be a high day when you got letters from home. That brought all sorts of news for the fellows. It would boost the morale.

No, our main job was to get them on that aircraft on that strip and get them out. We would get them on as soon as the ambulance brought them in, we would get them on and get fixed in the aircraft and get it rolling. Some of our pilots were fighter pilots who were

resting during their tour and they would handle these air ambulances as if they were fighter pilots, they would do a climbing turn off the deck and expect the air ambulance to respond to their control. We didn’t like that very much because they were a lumbering old thing. We had these but the main thing was to get them off our hands as soon as we could.

There was a South African Loadstar attached to us, they would come up but they didn’t have a medical staff on it and we got on all right with the South Africans. They were happy and had the characteristic of sometimes talking in Afrikaans when in a group and we found a little disconcerting, we would prefer to fly with our own pilots rather than the South Africans but we had to take it in turns and we were ordered to do so, so we flew with them.

We did. After we got to Tunis, we were given leave. We came back to ruins of a place called Sebratah [Libya] on the coast in the Mediterranean and you could get a swim and leave was given then. We applied for leave to get to Palestine. At that time they thought a second front was going to be

created and they stopped our leave and our leave was rescinded to Alexandria and Cairo. We got down, I think we had 10 days in Cairo. That was between base and Sicily. When we got back we then prepared to go back into North Africa. We went up to Tunis and we went from Tunis into Sicily.

The war finished. They bottled all the Germans up in Cape Bon, and [German Field Marshal Erwin] Rommel was kicked out of North Africa. By that time we had been across and working from the 1st Army coming from Iran coming from that side, we were sorting out the 8th Army and 1st Army casualties, and the war was finished then and we had all sorts of stories around about where the invasion

was going to be. The air ambulance went into Sicily and 3 Squadron were there and there was much banter between the personnel of the two units; who was going to get to the Italian mainland first. Air ambulance won and Cyril Brougham, our Commanding Officer, flew into Reggio di Calabria, which was just on the tip, our Orderly Room Corporal rang and said “There is our

headquarters, we are on the Italian mainland, we are the first Allied AIF force to set up their headquarters on the Italian mainland”. Air ambulance was the first into Europe.

That is pretty good. Anyway we got there. We were evacuating casualties between Reggio di Calabria and Catarina

We were sent in early to Vibo Valentia

and then the decision was made that they were going to pull us out. We had done a lot of work in Sicily.

We flew into Sicily but we had previously operated into Italy. Incidentally there is a rather interesting story there.

We used to fly zero feet as I told you and we used to play to a place near Mount Etna, a place called Taormina [Sicily], and we used to fly so low that the people on the ground used to be waving to us as we went past, then we would strike trouble because the Royal Navy would be out and you never flew over the Royal Navy, you could fly all sorts of fairy colours you like but you wouldn’t fly right, you would always fly around the Royal Navy if you didn’t want to be shot at

because we had some experience with some friendly fire before. We eventually flew into Reggio [di] Calabria and then they decided to take quite an advance squad into Italy and we went across by landing barge. We went across between Messina and Reggio [di] Calabria by landing barge. Sicily was quite colourful. There we had, we were based

inland and 3 Squadron on the coast and the fighter bombers were harassing the Germans to such a degree that they decided they were going to put an attack on. They came across and dropped a lot of anti-personnel bombs on them and we copped it too. We were on a different field and at that stage we became a bit lax, we didn’t have a hole, we were camped in a bomb dump in an olive grove for a bit of cover and we were given instructions there that

no one was to open fire, you had to lie quiet, no one was to fire anything at all. They came across and attacked us with anti-personnel bombs. I landed in a water course, I thought I was going to be first in but I landed on somebody else. It was a bit unnerving that, particularly when we were mixed up with the bombs in this bomb dump. Eventually,

we got off there and went into Italy but it wasn’t a very pleasant night that. The anti-personnel stuff, it is a container which breaks open in mid air and they all go off in a different tangent. It so happened that during the course of the attack this thrashing noise came through the air and we didn’t know what it was, we had never heard it before or again.

It was the canister which housed all these smaller bombs was coming thrashing through the air when it exploded open and it landed just beside our water course where we were hiding, sheltering. It was the most unnerving thing ever, this thing coming down thrashing through the air, it was not like an ordinary bomb. It wasn’t like an ordinary bomb, we couldn’t figure what it was. We never heard it before or again. That was Sicily. The navy was there, they

used to harvest the fig of India, it was prickly pear, they used to make jam out of it and they had these big prickly pear plantations and they used to come and harvest those. We had a strip there but they wrote another Bombay off there, which I wasn’t on. Sicily was interesting. I was in Sicily at the time when

the Italians decided to come out of the war. We had taken off from over near Catarina and flown across to a place called Milazzo, on the north coast, and we landed there and they suddenly grounded all aircraft and we couldn’t figure out what it was. They had expected that the Italians aeronautical would fly in the aircraft

away from the Germans but they didn’t, the German’s stopped them. We were all grounded, we couldn’t take off. We had to stay there and they grounded until such time. Some of the navy went to Malta and surrendered but the aircraft didn’t get off. We thought they would come into our strips but they didn’t. That was when the Italians came out of the war and from then on all they wanted to be called “Allies” and we used to say, “You can be called co-belligerents”.

I didn’t have anything to do with them in Sicily. I didn’t. When we got to Italy, a different story. I’m perhaps jumping your questions but when we got to Bari for example, they decided they would put on an opera, “The Barber of Seville”, for us in the

Teatro Petruzzelli, which is the main theatre in Korsicavoya. They put on this opera for us and officers could have the boxes and other ranks elsewhere. There were a few ex-officers about that night to get in the boxes. I think I was sitting with a couple of New Zealand nurses. They used to have a show on there at night time in Bari but Bari is another story.

We did a lot. They were mainly fort evacuations. For what reasons I don’t know but we used to do these short hops from the front back and mainly malaria cases, some battle injuries.

We had no further, once we landed

and unloaded that was it.

No, entirely the Army. 239 Wing was an army wing, we worked in co-operation with the army. 3 Squadron was in the same wing. We were often with 3 Squadron.

To which army?

The British Army, depended,

some were inclined to treat us as colonials and we had our ways of dealing with that.

One of our tricks, if you went perhaps, if you had to go into an officer, the trick would be they would talk to you when they were ready., That didn’t suit us, so we solved that by

going in and do stamp, stamp and salute. He would have to put down his pen and pay attention to you. It worked a lot of times. They couldn’t charge us but we annoyed them.

It was satisfying. We had our own ways. We did brush with them.

We found that the English soldier was very, I wouldn’t say down trodden, but he didn’t have the, he wouldn’t get up and stick up for his rights like the Australians would. The higher the ranking they are, perhaps the different attitude but some of them would accept all sorts of things and not complain.

I would prefer not to discuss it really. I am aware of it and I

know of it and I know it happened but there again you have a lot of people who didn’t even join up, they had no finger pointed at them. Because a fellow was in uniform and then he decided he couldn’t do certain things, I don’t think it is right to take judgement.

In some cases, yes and in other cases, for no apparent reason. Leave it at that, ay?

No there’s not. It’s hard. It depends on a person’s make up I suppose.

Yes. This is why I decided to give this interview because I feel that Air Ambulance did pioneer it and perhaps the original men who went over there before we got there because they taught us how to do it. They did eventually form Medical Air Evacuation

Units here, which was staffed by nursing sisters and there was No. 2 Air Ambulance back here and they did eventually. No. 1 Air Ambulance was a brain storm of I think wing commander Daley at the time. It was quite a new thing, it was mainly sent to evacuate AIF casualties and it was a very forward step and the Government is to be commended for what it did.

We always had a medical on board, much against perhaps what has been written, we always had medical attention on the aircraft. There was always a medical orderly, one or two on the aircraft. It has been said sometimes that the air ambulance didn’t have this medical attention during flight, that was not so, there was always a medical orderly on board. It’s a sore point with me.

I think that the RAAF did it before the South Africans came into it and the British didn’t have it going. We started the ball rolling to make things back, for a seriously injured person or wounded person to get back rather than have to go on a tortuous trip back through army convoys. It was certainly a step in the right direction.

It is all very well in hindsight to say “We should have done this or should have done other things”, we had to have aircraft first of all that could get in and out on short strips. We had to have aircraft that, well it caused a minimum of kerfuffle [fuss] where we were. We were recognised by our red crosses underneath. One place it was mistaken for a black cross and

friendly fire they fired about 36 rounds out of a bofor gun. I wasn’t on that particular aircraft. My aircraft was further over sea that I was on. One boy got a bit of shrapnel. If they were 9 inches closer they would have brought the aircraft down. It was friendly fire. These aircraft were such that they had to be able to operate on these forward strips. In hindsight I just wonder perhaps if we could have

had a bigger or modern aircraft but times were that you made do with what you had. You made do with what you had and did the best with it and that’s what we did.

Once we got as far as Vibo Valentia was concerned, we were mainly concerned with what they were going to do with the future of air ambulance. On Vibo Valentia

it was a strip, they had dropped what is called a spike. It was a 3 pronged spike, it would puncture the tyres. One particular aircraft I was on with a fixed undercarriage it put the aircraft out of action for the whole day because to change a tyre on the Bristol Bombay was a shocking job. They cleared the strips and put markers down the side, so that we could operate there.

But after Vibo Valentia we didn’t operate again, we had the aircraft at Bari but why it wasn’t used at Bari is another story and I’ll wait to you ask me questions about Bari. Once we got past Reggio [di] Calabria, and Vibo Valentia we didn’t operate as an air ambulance anymore.

Waiting to get instructions as to what were we going to do. We were waiting to see what the Australian Government was going to do with the unit. They decided they

would bring us home to Australia and disband. They found there they could bring supplies up with aircraft and casualties out. It was suggested we should operate the same way but the commanding officer said “We are an Air Ambulance Unit, we carry medical supplies, Red Cross, end of story”.

When we were at Bari.

Bari on the Adriatic Coast. We went across from Vibo Valentia it was a lovely trip across Capestrano, it was a lovely trip across Italy by vehicle. We went into a farm house on the outskirts of Bari, half way between the aerodrome and the airport.

Yes, Otranto on the coast, Brindisi and then Bari and then Vieste further up. Bari is a big city and a big port and that was going to be the supply point for Montgomery’s 8th Army which was advancing up the Adriatic Coast.

I was the mail man as I told you. Very interested in mail.

At that stage we were able to find that the Italians had kept some things hidden from the Germans and I found…

My wife and both sisters, they scored a beautiful coat. It was a velvet finished water proofed coat and I got 3 of them and I packed them up and sent them home and they were the most delighted girls in Australia. They were really lovely coats

and I got 10 out of 10 for each one of them. At that stage clothing were in rations, so they were able to go and I got the sizes right and I was really spot on and they didn’t cost me the world.

They were very popular. Bari was to be the supply port but we became complacent, I say we have,

the allies had become complacent and the Germans put on an attack on Bari and they came over and saw all the ships unloading and they had an attack at Bari in December and we had 1,000 casualties and 11 ships lost in one night. We were stationed between the harbour

and the aerodrome, far enough away not to get any damage but the blast was enough to blow my tin hat off. The casualties were taken to hospital and they couldn’t figure what was wrong with them. Why air ambulance wasn’t involved, I don’t know but we weren’t. They decided they would treat them there and they eventually stumbled on the fact that it was some agent and they found out eventually and

I don’t know, well it was a long way down the track that it was mustard gas. It so happens that one of the ships that was sunk was an American ship carrying 100 tons of mustard gas. It was being brought along behind the army in case the Germans had used it. The only people that knew that ship, the USS John Harvey, it was called, only persons that knew that ship was in Bari Harbour, were those who were on the ship.

They went up with it. The casualties were such that they had all this infection of mustard gas on the skin and they couldn’t figure out what was causing all the trouble. Eventually they got on to it. That was a guarded secret at the time, no one wanted anyone to know that the allies had mustard gas around the place. There’s been a book Disaster at Bari written which gives details of that particular raid. We were lucky that we didn’t

get involved, we could have been involved if they had asked us to evacuate casualties with what we had, but we went in shortly afterwards to see the damage that was done and quite a few of the boys were close to it, afterwards we didn’t know there was any hazard there. But that was the situation at Bari, it was a disaster and a lot of civilian casualties as well and it wrecked the harbour.

Shocking, just these big clouds of flames and smoke going up. Ammunition ships were going up, fuel ships were going up. I hear they say 17 ships in the book, I thought it was 11 but 17, they went out with 1,000 casualties. It was a bad night as they say, it was second only to Pearl Harbour. However it wasn’t given much publicity, Infield has written the book and it is held in Canberra and it is called the Disaster of Bari.

The night at Bari we had no inkling anything was going to happen and suddenly it was on, the bombs started dropping and they were loading with lights on and they were sitting ducks for the Luftwaffe. These ships started to go up

and they were massive explosions going sky high with all the ships going up. We didn’t know which one it was, this particular ship [the USS John Harvey] with the mustard gas on. Ammunition ships and fuel ships and so it went on. Quite an attack. Some of the boys decided in the early stages that it was a side show worth watching but they changed their tune when they were sitting on top of the wall and they were

knocked off the wall with a bit of the blast. It was a shocking night and a lot of civilian casualties too, a lot of damage. Some of the boys were in town even at the Tetromargueretta, which was on the water front, they were there on the night when the bombing occurred, so they were in town in the centre, where the attack took place. It was a night that I’d like to forget.

Got into a bit of a depression in the ground. We were in a farm house which we had taken over and we were in that and there was nothing more we could do. We were confined to camp, we couldn’t go out for the night, so we just stayed put then. The next day a few got into town the next day to see the damage and after that the boys got in to have a look.

It was devastation.

I think it mainly revolves around when we got to Tripoli, that was the first main city that was taken over as a supply port. One of the first things that happened

there was they flew up the 51st Highland Division - their kilts. They put on a parade in the square of the town which made the guards look, it was a fantastic parade to see these Scotties with their kilts and they impressed the population. They put on a display in Tripoli. Because it was a target then for the Germans when they started using it as a supply port. A long range

bombs, the barrage there was something to be seen. It was just a mass of tracers all round the harbour they had a great concentration of fire power going on not only light ack-ack [anti-aircraft fire] but heavy ack-ack too. It was quite interesting and then later it was continued to be used as a supply port and later on when I ended up in hospital in Tripoli,

it was on the bombing run in and we were ushered down into the deep shelters which the Italians had provided at this hospital. The nursing sister, particularly the RAAF one, she would be going up on duties in the ward and we would be going down to the shelter, wasn’t very good. We were also helping down into the shelter a German pilot who had previously bombed us. Hans had a broken leg, he was

very hostile that his JU-88 [Junkers 88 dive-bomber] had been shot down because he lost one engine, he had gone into the Mediterranean they fished him out and he was in hospital but he was a German fighting for his country and we helped him down into the shelter and he had bombed us. Tripoli was quite an interesting time.

I ended up in hospital, during our stay at Casserly, we were sent to a place

called Al Assa and it was late in the day and we got down there and we couldn’t get off that night because there was no flying at night time, no flares at night time so we were stuck there for the night and the desert gets very cold, so we stayed at this medical clearing station overnight. Next morning, we were to return to the unit, so we got into our aircraft and sitting in the co-pilots seat and with the pilot next to me port-outer, port-inner, starboard outer

but the starboard inner wouldn’t start. He commented to me at the time, “Go and push that so and so thing back will you?”, so I said, “Righto” so I got out, went through the slip stream and that is when I made the mistake. Having got the verbal instruction from him to push it back, I didn’t check that the switch was off. I went up to the propeller and touched it and it roared and knocked me down towards the other one that was going and I ended up with a piece of this arm knocked about a bit, spiral fracture.

Well I passed out, how will that do? It put me in hospital for awhile. I sent a telegram to my mother saying, I think the wording said, “If advised injured in aircraft accident, not serious, broken arm”. My mother said, “That’s good. It will keep him out of action for awhile”. I was flown back to hospital and it was an

experience in an RAF hospital with a nursing sister and she ran it like she would back in England, when the doctors came round we all stood to attention at the foot of the bed. There, that annoyed her, how could I stand to attention with one arm in a sling and she couldn’t put me in a bed because I couldn’t stand to attention. I got even with her, I told her I had bugs in the bed and I d id.

So with that she had all the, for the nursing sister of have bugs in her bed that really upset her. So they brought up a blow lamp. It was an Italian bed and they got a blow lamp, and they went through the mattress and they put this torch, kerosene lamp and they burnt them out and they were dropping on the floor all these bugs were dropping and she was convinced. Then she decided to look under my arm and there was one and I said, “Yes”. She said “It’s not, it’s a mole. Why didn’t you tell me it was a mole?”

I’ve got a mole on my arm. She wasn’t a bad sort but didn’t suit the fact that I couldn’t stand to attention with one arm in a sling.

Oh yes she always had us lining up. There is a letter home to the family written by one of the other patients in the other beds, a Scotsman who was burnt, and he wrote home for me, and he wrote a lovely letter home, it’s over there.

This particular fracture was rather interesting, the way they handled it. It was a spiral fracture and they couldn’t put it in plaster and they had to put it into a continuous extension.

It consists of a big wire frame and a pad underneath your arm and they drag it down to the bottom which they did sometimes without anaesthetic and they would have it dragged down until such time as it knitted. I got back to the unit as soon as I could.

They kept me there until it knitted. So anyway, that was that.

It was about 4 weeks I think, out me out of action. It was about the time of the Mareth Line. I missed all the Mareth Line. I was soon back lifting stretchers again. I think that was was probably one of the reasons they had trouble with it. My muscles had developed lifting stretchers, that they couldn’t get the thing. Anyway it put me out of action for awhile.

When I got back there had been an outbreak of dysentery in the camp and the CO was anxious that the medical staff should do something about stopping it. We had an old character, old Tom, he was the AHG, the Aircraft Hand General,and he looked after the toilet arrangements and the water, so we altered his routine, we made him get the water before he did the latrines

and then we quizzed him on “How he got the water?” It turns out that when he went out to get the water he put the chlorine in first and then the water and the chlorine was getting into the pipe and not dissolving with the water and we found that this was causing some of the bowel problems we were having. We eventually got on top of it but only by isolating. Some of the fellows were very sick with this dysentery we had there.

The main thing was to stop the cross infection, we had a dickens of a job there, some of the boys were very sick and they were helpless, they couldn’t do a thing. Fortunately at that time we weren’t doing very much flying, but that’s when I got back to my unit from my arm. It was a problem there. In the desert, the main problems in the desert were desert sores, goes with the lack of water but as I said the water was the problem.

An abrasion would turn into an infection. They would seal it over with elastoplast and it used to heal under it’s own, if you could seal it over they found it was one way to make them heal. They took awhile to heal some of them. The other thing about it in Castel Benito it was a captured Italian airfield, it had been

bombed and we had plenty of their ammunition, their ammunition and we could practice with our spot shooting, anyway one fellow nearly blew himself up but that’s beside the point. What I was anxious to find was a set of eating utensils which the Luftwaffe issued to their troops and it is like collecting a set and we looked around and eventually I did get the complete set, which I was pleased about. They were well prepared, the Germans,

for the war had been planned for a long time, they had equipment like the jerry can for example. We used their jerry cans extensively for water on the aircraft, we would paint them with a white cross. Better than anything we had ourselves. The Italians, we got a lot of their dressings and they had very good medical dressings, the Italians. Some of their equipment like in the desert we were issued with a ground sheet you probably know it as a

water proof sheet, which you could use to keep the water off. The German’s were issued with ones that you would button together and out of it you could make a two-man tent out of it. I carried one all the way with me. As soon as I got onto the fact that I could get a stretcher, we could get a bit more comfort and stop sleeping on the ground. When we found the, we were issued with five blankets,

we found sometimes we had to get extra warmth, we used to line blankets with newspaper and that would give us a bit of insulation to keep us warm. Particularly in Italy but in the desert, 5 were enough to sort of see us through. A bit of sponge rubber, we would scrounge around for a pillow. The ammunition box was to keep our clothes in because when the sand covered us, you could keep your things in the ammunition boxes.

Tripoli itself, it was mainly the fact that it was taken over as a port. We were able to get supplies in there and it was where they put up this terrific barrage and we were just out from the airfield which was outside at Castel Benito.. We used to take off from there and fly over quite a few of the surrounding settlements

Mussolini had put these agriculture villages in. He had attempted to colonise the place and it was quite interesting to see some of that. That was around in that area.

Well we respected,

we had no first hand knowledge, no. We only knew that the German’s were putting up a stiff rear guard action and they were knocking a lot of our fellows around, they were putting up a fight. The Italians were almost out of the war by the time we got there. The Germans were putting up very stiff resistance. The volume of casualties we were getting, we know that they weren’t playing.

It was serious business because we were getting a lot of… As I say.we were bringing out 51st Highland Division, New Zealand forces and Guards Battalions. A few Indian troops were copping it but the 51st Highland Division and the New Zealanders. The New Zealanders, they were in action and I think it cost me £10 sterling

for a beautiful Luger [pistol] and I also brought home and still have to do this day, a pair of German field glasses which he had no further use of which the New Zealander was able to sell to me because he wanted a few extra bob for pleasure. I was pleased to have a pair of German field glasses which I’ve still got.

No, I didn’t ask. Best not ask that.

If you wanted something, yes no trouble.The trading, one of our fellows, particularly he found a lucrative trade selling tea to the Senousis [a fundamental Muslim sect].

Tea. Ordinary tea.

They wanted tea and they wanted cotton. He ended up marrying a

French widow over there and he made a few shekels out of his trade and he could speak the language. He could speak Arabic and he could speak French but he wasn’t very good at Australian but he knew how to get eggs in the middle of the desert, which we found very handy.

He could talk Arabic to the Senousis. They weren’t

to be trusted. You had to make sure you didn’t leave anything lying around when the Senousis were around. Because as I say we dispersed. If you imagine a football field and we were dispersed in that area, it was very hard to keep an eye on things.

Yes, we were getting a fair bit but even at that stage I didn’t know until I got back to Australia the extent that Australia had been knocked around, no. There was a little bit of talk over there but mainly propaganda from the Germans.

The Yanks were having a great time over there while we were over there, and the fact then that there was another train of thought that we deserved Australia and we should be home fighting rather than fighting over there. All we were doing was looking after the wounded and we kept on doing it.

No.

A bit frustrated. Some were welcoming it. I would have like to see the air ambulance continue on but there was no future for us, not on the terms they wanted us to operate. I was a bit disappointed they disbanded the unit, I thought they could have kept the unit in tack and we could have gone up to the islands.

When we got home, that’s another story. To bring the unit home they brought us

down to Otranto and there we could see where the naval ships had been sunk in there, all the moorings in Otranto Harbour and we got off with a convoy going down the Mediterranean. Bear in mind the Germans still had Crete and we came on this Empire Pride, it was built for the assault of Europe, it was a convoy we came down at a great rate of knots. There was an escort ship for every ship of the convoy,

we had a top cover of Spitfires a lot of the way, we got down pretty well between Otranto and Alexandria and they had a submarine alert and we were sent down below which they do, it’s not very pleasant and then they started dropping depth charges. When you are down below and they are dropping depth charges you don’t know what it is like at the side of the ship: woof, woof, woof. We eventually got down to Alexandria and we got

unloaded and the Egyptians decided they were going to carry our luggage and we told them they were not going to touch our luggage very smartly having been there before. At that time we had our kits in front os us and we had our blue uniforms. It was cold in the snow, we had great coats for the snow. We got back to Egypt and we were put down on the

the Suez Canal at a place called Kasfareet [barracks and training camp]. It was an army detention barracks next door to us and there we were sort of waiting to go home. Someone came along with a great bit of news that they were looking for a medical orderly to go on the Burdekin to escort some patients back to Australia with a New Zealand doctor and would I go? I said “Yes, please”. We got on the Burdekin.

This was an Australian-built ship,

one of the river class and they had put quarters for the troops to sleep in between decks and they didn’t have the cargo on. We got the patients all on board and summed up what we had to do. One fellow was in a plaster cast and he no sooner got on board and he got onto the doctor and he talked to the doctor saying he wanted to be out of this plaster cast, he was in an aircraft crash. He got to my end, “Frank, will you take it off for me?”

I took his plaster cast off and I can see him to this day going to the side of the ship and throwing this, like you can imagine the tropics with a plaster cast and he threw it overboard. I nursed the rest of the patients all the way home.

They were a multitude of things. One fellow had, oh all sorts of things we had on board and a New Zealand doctor and it was quite a good trip except we got a sub on our tail.

Before we left the Middle East they went to put our cargo on, so we went down the Red Sea to a place called El Quseir and there we had to take on phosphates and there was a gantry coming out from the ship. It was shipped on buoys and we moved the ship forward to load up different holds. There was dust, there was phosphate and we just about got loaded, and lo and behold we got another sand storm. The ship has to leave one of its anchors and go out to sea and stooge around out at sea until the sand storm finished and back

we came, loaded the phosphate and we are off for home. We got a sub on our tail so we were told and all we know, we weren’t told too much, we ended up down the roaring forties, I have never ever seen any seas like it. The seas were over the top of the vessel, moving the ship around like it was a surf board. We had phosphates down below, which meant the ship was going like that with the phosphate and it would pitch and toss

and we rode these and I have never seen waves, and I don’t want to see waves like it again. We rode home and came into Port Adelaide and I promptly rang the wife’s home. They said, “Lois isn’t home Frank. She’s in Adelaide.” And I said, “So am I.” With that, I had the job, can you imagine what it was like for a corporal in British battle dress, just out of the desert dirty and tired to try

and to get into Dawes Road Hospital where the nursing sisters were. I was fortunate, on the phone I got a sympathetic sister whose husband was also in the forces. I told her my tale of woe and eventually I got in touch with the wife.

It would have been about a fortnight I think, yes best part of a fortnight.

They fitted the ships up with heads for the fellows to operate. They were just a trough and salt water was going through it all the time to dispose of the effluent into the sea and we were sleeping between decks. We had a ship’s carpenter who took sympathy to us and we used to get inside but the food was all right but we did all right on that ship going home.

It was a great sight to see a ship with an Australian flag on it to take us home.

No, there wasn’t much to do, you couldn’t do much at all, just watch this great big sea and say, “I hope we get there”. To see a ship being tossed around the way we were was, I think it went down because it was out of the way of the sub. The first trip across I went across on the

Masula, it was the height of the Japanese occupation of the Pacific and the Indian Ocean there and it was a wonder we got through.

8 knots, zig, zag, zig, zag, all the time. In hindsight it was a bit of a dicey do.

You were travelling alone. If we saw anything, it wasn’t one of ours.

A merchant ship, Burdekin, it was an Australian ship, it was a River-class of ships. The next time I saw that ship was in Bougainville Harbour loaded with Japanese prisoners of war going home, so there you are I did see it again. That was the River Burdekin. It was a river class and they were built in Australia during the war.

And we had a mix of crew, some were air force, the majority were air force, that’s right. Fellows were coming home.

Yes,as a matter of fact I have a wedding picture, when he got home he got married and I cut it out of the paper. I’ve never been in touch with him again but I saw his photo, he got married so he must be all right. He couldn’t get that plaster cast off quick enough. Oh it must have been terrible for him.

You can imagine in the desert with a plaster cast from right down.

No, just knocked.

No, it was my own fault if I had said the right thing at the time and the switch was off but having got the verbal instruction at the time I ignored that and went in and touched it and

of course one of the few people to be hit by a prop and get away with it now. Air screws aren’t to be played with.

Yes, if your number was up you were going to get it. The Bari sojourn was quite interesting. We got New Zealand butter for the first time. Turara soup was the New Zealanders go of us .

Kumera soup which I’ve never tasted again, it was beautiful soup. We got on pretty well with the New Zealanders. In Bari there was a rather interesting, in the town there was a notice in the main street drawing attention to the British church, we would have a

service at such and such a time, “British church so and so”. Straight above it, in big letters in the main street of Bari in English of course. “Give the girl at home a square deal. Avoid venereal disease.” Both notices, one on top of each other on a post in the centre of the city. You would never see that anywhere else in the world again. I’ve got a picture of it. Yes it was worth photographing that one.

Very good advice, that’s right.

I don’t know. A lot of it, yes I suppose to a degree but the majority of it was, “If it was going to happen, it was going to happen”. The interesting thing was that

going through, perhaps going back to the desert again, I went through an Italian dugout at one stage. We used to go in and see what we could find after the army pushed them out and this was on an airfield near in dugout to avoid the bombing and I was fossicking around. We had to be careful because they used to leave the money box bombs around and if you kicked them, they went off with the percussion. You had to watch where you put your feet.

I was looking for mainly those knives, fork and spoon that the Luftwaffe had and anything you could put your hands on because the Italians had some good equipment. They had Berettas [guns] and you could find all sorts of things. This particular day I came across some of this correspondence and I just so happened to see this card. It was a religious card I think with a heart and an angel holding the heart if I remember rightly and a cross on it

in Italian, “God protect you” written from the Italian family to the Italian Air Force bloke saying, “God protect you” and here we are, our families at home asking God to protect us. It brings it back to a level playing field a bit, doesn’t it? You have got to take it fatalistic that if your number was on it you are going to cop it.

This other nursing sister, she organised that I get through. She said, “What are you doing here?” “I’m home.” That was to be short lived. I went back to Maryborough, I travelled on a freight train, sent them a card that I was back home.

From Ballarat to Maryborough I think

in a round about way.

Yes, the ship docked in Adelaide and they took me to the disembarkation station and they took some of my equipment from me. But not my tin hat which I’ve just shown you and not my water bottle which I’ve just shown you and a few other things. I had a control column off a Focke-Wulf 190 [German dive-bomber] and one off a [Junkers] Stuka [Ju-87 dive bomber], which I have sent to the [Australian] War Memorial in Canberra, a few things I have sent off to the War Memorial. I had a bag packed with those and I got home to Maryborough

and eventually got posted down to Laverton again to sick quarters there.

I had a fortnight up there.

I went around and seeing everybody saying, “Here I am home again”.

I think the main problem was to curb my language that I didn’t use it. Being all the time away you get a bit rough. I believe I let out a few swear words go which

didn’t go down to well but they didn’t tell me. Very strict of course. However they were pleased to see me home. I got posted back to Laverton and I was there about a week and my father received a telegram advising that I was arriving back from the Middle East. “Funny thing, he came back about 3 weeks ago”. The air force, the unit had arrived home in the meantime and they assumed I was with the unit and tye sent a notice up to say I was coming home.

I did a stint there at Laverton.

I was a sergeant by then.

When I got back to Laverton. There we had some quite some experiences because there was a bit of flying going on and we had some crash duties there and we had crashes to attend to which were fatal, some of them.

Two that come to mind were multi engines that flew into the side of the hill out there at King Lake way. Eventually I got a posting to embarkation depot again, I was on my way. I said, “That’s alright”. I was going with a medical clearing station, 28 MCS [Medical Clearing Station] and it was a good unit. There was a lot of

you know and I was looking forward to it.

When I got posted to Laverton.

You had to accept it. They weren’t going to send air ambulance up to the islands. They had no cause, they were using meet you aircraft and they had nursing sisters on board and they had No. 2 Ambulance and they were using them and apparently they didn’t need No. 1 Ambulance.

They had no further use for us, so they disbanded us, they went all over the way. Fellows went all over the place, different units everywhere.

No, you got to accept that in the air force you are here one then off to another, you had to accept it.

Yes, a few of them. Yes I did. Like one particular fellow

he was I was telling you at Gambut, we got done over there and he had his hole and he got into his hole all right but when he went back to his unit he didn’t have his shoes on and he couldn’t bear the flinty stones, so we had to carry him back. Same fellow he got pretty sick at one time and I nursed him. Come his funeral they asked me to go and do it, which I did as RSL [Returned and Services League] President

down at Barekia, pretty tough one to do it was, pretty tough one. However yes you do form a bond. The majority in the air force, you must be able to move on from one station to another. The medical clearing station they were forming up was a good unit and I was looking forward to going.

I got a feel about it. Put it this way, the sergeant and WO’s [Warrant Officer] also ran the unit and that was pretty good.

If the unit was run by the sergeants we reckoned it was a good unit. We got up as far as Townsville and I think we were heading for Morotai, I’m not certain. It so happened that there was a wing to go into Bougainville,

84 Wing and the doctor wouldn’t clear the wing because he was two sergeants short.

He wouldn’t allow the wing to go because he didn’t have sufficient medical staff and he wouldn’t clear the wing to go for active service because he was two sergeants short. The signals went hither and yon and it so happened Bill Rooshot from Adelaide, he was a sergeant and myself pulled off this unit and

joined the 84 Wing, posted to different units within 84 Wing. I were appointed to 10 LASU [Local Air Supply Unit], which meant a trip up to Cairns. We went up to Cairns and they said, “You are about to take off.” And this WAAF gave me the nod and I said “Where to?”but she wasn’t going to tell me, so okay I was the only orderly for 10 LASU, so I was my own boss. I thought, “This is going to be good”. But that wasn’t to be.

Time came for us to embark and they bought the vessel in, the [USS] Santa Monica they brought it into Cairns for us to get on board, and they couldn’t get it into the wharf, it was drawing too much water so the whole Wing then had to be transferred back to Townsville. So by train back to Townsville we go we get on the Santa Monica. The Santa Monica was built for the North Atlantic run, a liberty ship, air conditioning wasn’t

playing, it was acting up, we only had salt showers, you could only get two meals a day, the crowd on board and we were supposed to be doing a landing under fire. That was intelligence was screwy. The perimeter had been fixed on Bougainville for some considerable time by the Americans. The Australian Army had taken over and there was an advance party there, so how on

earth they didn’t get the information back. However, we were well equipped and armed. I had a Smith and Wesson instead of the Thompson.

The revolver? Because it was lighter and easy to go because we were doing a landing off a barge and going down rope nets and into the landing barge

and all that sort of caper. We eventually went on board the Santa Monica, and it was terrible conditions, just enough room to put your kit and just enough room to lie down. Only two meals a day. I don’t know if this should go on record…They decided that they would have the corporals to police the meals

lines. They were sort of over run by the troops because they were hungry, so we looked back and we said, “It looks like the officers are going to be doing that”, but they had other ideas and said, “The sergeants will do it.” I mentioned I was posted by a chap named Bill Rooshot from Adelaide, a big bloke, old bloke, pretty cluey bloke and he

said, “We will fix them Kuff.” I said, “What will you do?” He said, “We will man them. If anyone plays up we will send them down the end of the queue.” “Are you game?” Because they told us that if anyone, was to, they weren’t stopping for anybody, if you went over the side, you were gone. I said, “I will stick with you, Bill.” So we lined them all up on deck. “Right, first two ranks down.” A couple tried to beat the gun. “End of the queue. We sent them down the end of the queue.” “Oh”, “End of the queue.”

We read the riot act and that went all right until we got to all these fellows who tried to beat the gun all down at the end of the queue, by the time they get there they have really ganged up on these two sergeants who are really ruling the roost. We said, “Right oh first lot in,” they said, “You sergeants,” and I said “Yes and when you have eaten we will eat.” No further trouble.

This is the one where we were on parade one day, the passing out parade, which is a very important event in the group after doing your initial training and you all stand up to pass out in uniforms, all spick and span, shoes the same way.

A big parade was held in the bull ring and the parade was all up to attention and the commanding officer coming past with everybody behind him of importance and they stopped in front of me. I didn’t know whether I had my tie undone or something else or something was amiss. He stood straight up to me

and got my forage cap adjusted it, took one pace back, stamped his feet and said, “Be dashing, be debonair!” about turn on his was on his way. It was all around the ranks “Be dashing, be debonair”. I had a terrible time for about a fortnight. That was parade picked out amongst the whole lot of them. He had to find something, it is always the way, if they do an inspection you always left something for someone to find something, he didn’t look for anything else. He found me with perhaps the cap wasn’t quite on the right angle.

At that time I had to be dashing and debonair.

We thought we were pretty good.

Yes. Bairnsdale was quite a, it was a lovely experience at Bairnsdale,

at that stage they had gunnery ranges down on Ninety Mile Beach, Letts Beach, and they couldn’t operate these gunnery ranges unless they had an ambulance on site. An orderly was sent down with a driver to spend the day down there while the gunnery went on. They had a Fairy Battle [plane], towing a drogue, from Sale, would come out and the aircraft would approach, it was all controlled by wireless and we had a wireless operator there

and the gunnery would take place with the aircraft gunners. Each gun had a, the bullets on each gun were colour coded. One would be yellow, one would be green, one would be red perhaps. As they had finished their firing they would then bring the drogue in for marking, there was a hut. The drogue was brought in by the Fairy Battle and it came in very low over the top of the hut

and the troops and the drogue, and they would take the drogue onto a table and they would mark it. They would have a piece of rubber hose and a stamp pad and they would go around and say, “That is a green and that is a yellow, that’s a red” and they would count the number of greens and yellows and reds and that relate to the gun. By the time the aircraft landed back at Bairnsdale they would know that the gunner with the red gun hit so many on the drogue and the gunner with green got so many. Gunner yellow got the others.

That was the way it was marked. This dropping of the drogue was a bit of fun they used to come in very low with the Fairy Battle and drop it right on our doorsteps, so they didn’t have to walk far. This day this fellow came in and he came in low and we had to have a red flag flying on the flag pole and he took the top of the flag pole off. I was sitting in the ambulance reading a book and it came down and hit straight above my head, the top portion of the flag pole,

very close call. Fairy Battle slued round and gained height and went back to Sale. We thought, “We would wait and see what happens now”. The next thing the radio came up that flying had been cancelled for the rest of the day, we had to return back to Sale. It was an interesting occupation down there. We had very good food, we cooked the food ourselves down there and it was really a home away from home, just do nothing for the day, it was a holiday.

No, that was just,

you took your turn on those sort of things and they’d say, “Well you have to go down to Sale” and you would have to go down from Bairnsdale to Sale, you would stay at Sale, while this was on and then you would go back to Bairnsdale. That was one of the requirements that they had to have this while the firing was on.

They gave us enough,

they seemed to be generous when they knew we were going down there to spend the day. We had plenty of bread and butter and meat and things we looked after ourselves quite well down there.

Yes. did relate to the camp conditions at a camp called Worli. Worli was outside Bombay. It was a camp run by natives and I told you that

at the time we had difficulty in getting food there and we asking them to give us our RAAF rates of pay, so that we could supplement it but they insisted we only get RAF rates. However it came to a crunch and the boys decided to do something about it. Sergeant O’Dea was in charge of us and he made some enquiries and found that if we all wanted to make a bit of a story about it there would be mutiny.

The only way to get over it was to ask for an individual parade to the CO. So 12 of us all asked for an individual parade to the CO. We didn’t get it.

It means you request a parade, you would go in and state your case that you are disappointed with the food however we were prevented from doing that, it was poor. The food did improve a little bit.

It was shocking, I think I mentioned breakfast was a piece of dry bread with a synthetic wash, supposed to be egg on it, most unpalatable. There wasn’t enough food there and you had to get across between where the natives served it to you to this thatched cover and dodge these kite hawks, which would dive and take anything edible off the plate.

We asked for these individual parades and the food did improve a little bit. They sent the orderly officer around. The RAF Officer came in, young fellow came in and he left his hat on for a while and we told him he had to take his hat off in the mess. Eventually he walked around the mess and looked at all the RAF people and he eventually stopped at the table where the RAAF people were, and I was on the table. He stopped beside one of our member of air ambulance, He was

a terrific fellow, good tradesman, good fellow to have when you are in trouble but he was rather rough. He stopped opposite this fellow and he said to him, “My man…” He ‘my manned’ him so that didn’t go down too well. “Well, my man, how is the food today?” My man was eating this sort of stew with meat and dripping and fat dripping of it and

this particular fellow put his fork in it and held it up in front of this officer’s face and said, “Taste the so and so stuff.” We all sort of stopped in our tracks to see what was going to happen. Eventually he picked it off with his fingers, put it in his mouth and ate it. And God forgave him, that was it, but we got the point home. We have told that story many times because it was one of the funniest things that happened.

Why he picked this particular fellow I don’t know. The fellow subsequently came back to Australia and he pulled his socks up and my wife and I were going to meet him. I was a bit fearful of what was going to happen.

His language, and I said, “This particular fellow, he is a bit rough Lois”, she said “Don’t worry”, she’d cope with it so I warned her. When we met him he had pulled his socks up, he had a good job back here,

a very nice wife, and you wouldn’t know it was the same rough diamond we had with us. He has since died and I did his funeral service. It was hard. Yeah, go on. That was the food at Worli.

Which one is that? About the…

After this Worli incident some of the local English people decided that they would invite the colonials, the RAAF out for

high tea. We had no idea what high tea was. We thought, “Well at least we are going to get something to eat”. Food was very scarce when we got there. Little tiny sandwiches, a cup of tea. Then they decided they were going to entertain us, something we didn’t quite know what quite to expect. They decided they would have a sing song and they decided they would sing one of their favorites, something we had never heard before,

something called ‘On Ilknomore bar tut’. And they sang this ‘On Ilknomore bar tut’ and we didn’t know what they were talking about, we thought they were some foreigners, we didn’t expect that at all. We survived the event.

It went something like this. ‘On Ilknomore bar tut, on Ilknomore bar tut, on Illknomore bar tut’, and then they’d say ‘then wom-sikom-in-ity-oop’ and so it went on and on it was sort of a

round and it kept going and going. It was a favourite folk song in this particular area. Nothing like “Waltzing Matilda” but it is what they used to sing and that’s what we had to suffer at high tea for very little food.

I think they were small little sandwiches of some description. They were very minute, just

little pickings on little plates. There was nothing for a hungry lot of RAAF fellows.

No, they weren’t cucumber sandwiches. No.

Yes. By that time we were on the troop ship, Nevasa that went across and we got our issue with our desert gear and we were going

up the desert and we struck Christmas desert, we got just about where El Alamein was, where the battle had taken place and it strewn with tanks and shells and you can imagine after a battle everything, tanks destroyed, guns destroyed, spent ammunition shells. Amongst this was the red money box bomb. You had to be very careful you didn’t kick them. They were coloured like a child’s

money box, red and black and it wasn’t able to be fired until you pulled a small tab out, it was like a piece of chromite with a brass strip on it, you’d pull that out. There was no time delay on, it hit on impact. This day we hadn’t been warned about them at all and Dave picked it up and thought, “Oh, it’s a money box”, and shook it to his ear

to see if there was any money in it, there was no money in it and threw it away, fortunately he threw it where no one was standing because the thing went off, ‘bang’, and frightened 6 months growth out of him, he never touched them again. We were very careful after that. We weren’t warned at all about them, we didn’t know. It was a close call, they got a shock and so did the rest of us. You had to be pretty close to them for them to be lethal. Nasty things

to be playing with, shaking in your ear.

Yes, early in the peace.

We were in transit, we just sat on boxes and had a bit of bully beef and biscuits and a cup of tea and that was it. There wasn’t much of a celebration. When we got to the unit they had a belated one because of the new arrivals and we had a little bit of a

festivity, not much, just sitting on what we could find and eating bully beef, biscuits and a cup of tea and that was Christmas Day.

They were very good fellows, we got on pretty well together. The unit was a small unit. The CO was very lax with us, he let us,

he wasn’t a disciplinarian but he got the work done. He called us up once I remember for a parade and his opening remarks were, “What a scruffy looking lot of outlaws you are” but we didn’t have any issues, a lot of blokes they captured stuff they were wearing. There was no further issue once we got to the desert. Once we wore out our shorts we couldn’t get any more Australian

shorts, you had to get English shorts. There was no supplementing issues coming in to us. We didn’t blame them for that. The Australians were noted for that, that they would scrounge things.

Yes. Also if they found an old motor bike that wasn’t going, yes that’s a story. If they found an old motorbike that wasn’t going they would work on it because they were fitters and they would get one going.

That brings me to an interesting episode. Two of the boys got this motor bike and they worked on it and they thought, “Oh this isn’t very good” so they decided they’d do a trial run working in the shorts, greasy. They decided they would go for a run on this motor bike out on the main road. This is when we were further up into Africa, this was in Tunis and the road was made and they went down the road and tried the motor bike out.

On was sitting on the pin and one came back. There they struck trouble, they ran into the British Military Police. As I said before when they were close to the front they were human but these Military Police decided these boys were certainly not doing the right thing. They asked them where they were? And they would follow them back to camp. They came back to the camp boys on the motor bike and the Military Police in the Jeep behind, and of course they wanted to see the CO.

The CO at that time, there was a captured Italian workshop and he was having a ball in this workshop doing all manner of things, he had his hat on with his badge of rank on the front of it. I don’t know whether he had a shirt on or not but these Military Police wanted to see the CO. The Squadron Leader came out to him and they stood in front of him and they complained about these boys who were incorrectly dressed riding an unregistered motor bike,

stolen motor bike and a whole list of things and mainly their attire. We were watching over the sides of tents, every eye in the camp watching what was going on, we weren’t seen but all knew what was going on. Apparently, the conversation went something like along these lines of what these boys were wearing. The CO said, “When they were work they work with whatever attire

I determine and when they go on leave, they dress correctly” and they were working on this particular motor bike. He carried on a bit. They weren’t getting so far with the CO, so they decided they’d get away so they turned on their tail to get back into their jeep and I have never seen the CO ask for a salute from any of us. So he got these Military Police and he said, “Is that the way the British Military Police leave a commissioned officer?” They weren’t going to let go at that.

They said, “Where is your badge of rank, sir?” He said, “There is my badge of rank.” He had the office crown on the front of his fur felt hat. You should have seen the parade ground stamp, stamp, salute, off into their Jeep and off they went to a bit of slow clapping as they went out. They got the message that they weren’t to get off the camp again. Military Police weren’t very popular.

The fellows, they were a good team, they relied a lot, the morale was boosted by the padre, the three padres we had over there. Fred McKay was a particular fellow, Padre Davis. Fred McKay eventually ended up moderator of the Presbyterian Church and he was also involved with Flynn of the Inland [John Flynn, founder of the Royal Flying Doctor Service]. Fred McKay used to come to the unit and line up in the

queue with the men for the meals and the fellows would say, “I am not of his religion but can he serve us?” And they did. He would line up in the queue and they wouldn’t know he was there and there would be a bit of language and he would say, “I haven’t heard that language since I was at air ambulance last time” and of course it immediately stopped. He was a delightful chap. He wrote home to our families to tell them that we were all safe over there and were doing well. He sent a telegraph to every member of the units’ family. You ask about the unit, yes the boys

got on very well together. One even married a Sicilian girl and she lived in the unit with us for awhile.

That was a rare occurrence.

I believe she came home with him the troop ships. He went back to Italy and brought her back. I have met her since the war. She has now

died but she was a live wire and kept the place live but as I say she has now passed on.

Yes. A fellow did some drawings and caricatures of me and he eventually married a French widow in Alexandria and with a couple of children. He eventually came back to Australia with his family.

They were the only 2 in the unit.

Oh yes. It was the respect we had for him. If you went out, I’ve got a photograph there of him, he was out with the troops, he was sitting down having lunch out of a tin of bully beef with a biscuit alongside

a swill bin with the rest of the boys. He got what he wanted, we gave him upmost respect. He was an AFC [Australian Flying Corps]. He was directly involved with AFC, a particularly nice fellow. A real father to us, you would never do anything to upset him having such high regard.

Yes and we flew with him and

I was in some situations with him and you were with him on aircraft when certain things happened and you were pretty close you are. He could take an aircraft over in certain circumstances and fly it when we were in trouble. Yes, pretty close.

Can I dodge that question? I’d like to dodge it.

I think we covered most of the things in as far as the

North Africa. The only point about it was that I did want to make a point that air ambulance carried so many patients, over 8,000 patients while they were there and they were given quite a… to get a news item in the Australian press about air ambulance, what they had done in the Middle East and the way we operated as close as we could to the front, I think the unit deserves a,

as I mentioned yesterday, they pioneered air evacuation of the wounded and I think it rightly deserves to be recorded that air ambulance did that.

Yes.

I would have preferred to remain in that role rather than come back

to Australia and find myself for example posted to Laverton, told that the whole of the x-ray plant was under my control and that I was responsible for taking all the x-rays and I had no training in it at all. I had to go and swat it up, to see what I was doing, so I didn’t make any mistakes, buy a book on it and read up because I found I didn’t have the knowledge. We weren’t given any instruction on x-ray equipment and it was there and as a sergeant I was expected to

take the shots and I had to go and swat up which I did. I would have much preferred to be with air ambulance again. The air ambulance, see it lost its purpose in so far as the forward evacuation didn’t exist. We used to do the forward evacuation between the field ambulance and casualty clearing stations, well that didn’t happen in the jungle

that wasn’t available. Helicopters hadn’t come in at that stage, that was something that came later on. There wasn’t a role for air ambulance really.

In the air?

I think I mentioned the fact that the main problem was we had to transfer them from one stretcher to another.

Once we had them in the air, we didn’t have them for any length of time, they were short hops. The main thing was to do it as quickly as possible, get them back so that they could get expert treatment further back.

Yes we did have a few dramas but nothing worth writing a big story about.

I think I mentioned the fact that one of the stretchers was broken when we were coming into land one day and one of them which I took a very dim view of but things happen and you have got to make the most of it. The aircraft were getting towards the end of their useful life. It is a pity we didn’t have more modern aircraft to do it with but they were required for other purposes.

We weren’t exposed much to the general population because we were an Air Force Camp again, you got into the running of the

sick quarters because the 1 RAAF Hospital was no longer at Laverton, the next thing was the posting away, we weren’t here for long. No I can’t remember any reaction. Rationing was on.

No, I think they accepted, they accepted what they could do and what they had, no, I don’t think they were complaining about it. I can’t remember anything like that.

No, I think at that stage the attack on Bougainville, in hindsight was it necessary? At the time it was considered that it was. To take over from Americans, the Americans moved on and the Australians moved in and the war had to go on.

In hindsight you would have a different view, wouldn’t you?

The Santa Monica, yes

When I came home from the Middle East? I was working coming home from the Middle East. Yes, it was a strange ship, it was a different arrangement. The ships varied a lot. The one we went over on, we had cabins, we were sleeping between decks over the top of those phosphates, but that didn’t matter the food was all right. On the Santa Monica going to Bougainville, that was shocking.

The men were hungry as I told you. Two meals a day and the men were hungry and it wasn’t a very good set up at all. You didn’t want to step out of line because if you were thrown overboard they weren’t going to stop for you. You had to handle the discipline pretty carefully, but we did it. The Santa Monica was a terrible trip across. The ship wasn’t built

to cross the Atlantic, the air conditioning had broken down, we had salt showers, two meals a day for the troops, it was overloaded and we went across to go down the nets over the side, which we hadn’t had any instruction on.

No, we weren’t. When we got there we had to get from the ship to the landing barges.

We all lined up on the side and when it came your turn you got over the side with your gear and down you went.

You only had what you could carry. You carried your weapons and you had a small bag. The rest of your gear was loaded off by crane into the barges. You went down these rope nets into the barges and

a wave came up, you made sure you got off then otherwise you had a bigger drop into the bottom of the barge, so you got off at the right time or else you had a bit of a jump. I can even see to this day, I think I mentioned to you yesterday, coming down the cook was carrying a Bren gun and I can see now the tripod of it sticking into his tail as he came down the rope ladder. The poor cook, why he was armed with a Bren gun I’ll never know but there you go. We were armed. It was supposed to be a landing under fire but the perimeter had been there for a long time.

Yes, I was with No. 10 LASU, Local Air Supply Unit. They were a series of units that were put under 84 Wing. They consisted of 17 AOPF; they were the Oster aircraft which were used for spotting. There was 5 Squadron which were flying Boomerangs and a couple of Wirraways,

there was my unit 10 LASU and we were flying the Beaufreighters [a transport conversion of the Bristol Beauforts].

The Beauforts that were used for carrying freight. 10 LASU, local air supply unit, we had the Beaufreighters and then there was the base unit 39 OBU the base unit…

Operational Base Unit, OBU. The other one was 84 Wing Headquarters.

Each of those units had an orderly posted to them. Some had more, 5 Squadron had a lot more. I had an ambulance and some gear, fortunately I didn’t order it myself, but when it got there to Bougainville all our medical resources were pooled and we worked under the doctor, we had one doctor who was 5 Squadron doctor, Dr Ian Morrison and

I cannot speak more highly of that man for his bravery medals which has not been recognised.

It is a long story that. I was just talking about the way we were put together in this unit. We formed a sick quarters, a big tent up on drums with a flooring, and we used that as the sick quarters until one with a concrete base was

built and proper roof was provided. We had two ambulances, I had an air ambulance, one for LASU and 5 Squadron had one and we had Jeeps. He was a rough and ready diamond, a terrific diagnostician, a terrific doctor. The troops held him in such high regard. He has since died. His widow is still alive. As a matter of fact I had a message from her the other day indirectly.

We pooled resources and then we all took turns in doing the different aspects of running a sick quarters. Fortunately we had up the road an AGH and all the cases of any seriousness were sent straight to the AGH, up the road which wasn’t far away. We maintained crash ambulances on the strip for all

aircraft, while aircraft were operating we always had to have an ambulance on the strip and we would take our turn on doing the strip duty.

The driver and yourself on the strip all the time the aircrafts were landing. Taking off and landing. When the operations were going off they were going off bombed up and when they were coming back because some would come back and would have to make emergency landings and they were landing on., the strip was made out of metal and it made an awful noise when they landed. There was a strip at the end if they had to crash land which wasn’t

of metal. It was just earth, this strip was maintained, that was at Piva North. There was Piva South, Piva North. The weather closed in pretty well every afternoon and if aircraft were caught out before the weather they opened up another strip called Torokina [Bougainville], which was down the coast, so that meant a dash for the ambulance down to Torokina strip while that was operating. Torokina was right on the water front.

That happened only occasionally, mainly we operated without much back and forth we operated from Piva North and we had a dispersal base all round and a road straight through so that the crash ambulances could come straight through when the crash occurred.

In this day and age you would be astounded. We had an asbestos suit to wear in case of fire,

a hatchet, first aid kit, stretchers and blankets but the asbestos suit was trousers you put on and then a coat you put on a mica visor. If you had to go into an aircraft with fire this was to be put on. There was no life line attached to it and no supplied air, you just had to breath what was inside it. It was pretty basic.

Once. Only once I had to put it on.

It did but it made it very difficult because it was a mica visor and you couldn’t see out that, what you are doing you were blind, you just had to go by feeling. It did give a chance to get the person out but I am glad I didn’t have to wear it more often. There was only one occasion I had to put it on.

It was a New Zealand pilot and the corsairs had gone in and the doctors had tried to get him out. It is very difficult to get a pilot unconscious out of an aircraft, very difficult. How do you get a heavy man out of a cockpit when he is all strapped in with all his gear plugged in? It is a job and a half.

We managed to do it. They got a team there and we eventually got him out. He only got, I believe he got full use of his hands back

but they were covered, but they were burnt a bit but he got out of it. We worked very close with the New Zealanders. The New Zealanders were flying a squadron of Corsairs, they were doing a lot of the bombing and 5 Squadron of course they were doing their job too but the main bombing was done by the Corsairs. We worked very closely with the New Zealand doctors and they also maintained the strip, so they came to the strip with us too. So we knew a lot of

New Zealanders ourselves. A fire tender was always there at the same time. The doctor insisted that they were heavier than we were and we should always get to the aircraft first, which we tried to do it. He did expose himself in a lot of places to get the injured pilots out, he was a very brave man, very brave man

No, I can’t remember now. The trouble was when they crash landed, if they landed on the earth they didn’t get so much chance of sparking. If they came in to do a belly land and they clipped the end of the metal strip and they got a spark, the tanks usually ruptured and the fire would then follow them up.

As I say if they came in and didn’t hit the strip. Some of them could bail out into the water. I remember one particular case this pilot had to bail out, so they sent another aircraft up alongside him to talk to him, we were listening because we were alongside the control tower, we were listening to the conversation going on.

One pilot was talking to the other, “Now you’ve done this, you’ve done that, you’ve got your canopy back, you’ve pulled up this, you’ve done this, done that. Now you know what you have got to do, you have to turn her over and jump, you have done everything, have you?” The voice came back, “I hope so.” He landed, next thing we heard the radio came up saying, “Parachute is opened, landed in such and such

position”. They had the patrol boat ready to go out for him. “Patrol boat so and so, so and so” and the direction’s is about” and hearing that he had been picked up. It was interesting, “I hope so”. We hoped so too. Sitting alongside the control tower you’d hear what was coming on and one of the particular ones we used to listen for each day was an aircraft, I don’t know his call sign now, he was in 36 Squadron and he used to always be bringing up,

fly in from the main land bringing in mail and you would hear the call sign come up, “This is Charlie, Uncle Donald the pier to north tower”. Charlie Uncle Donald – CUD, “Charlie Uncle Donald the pier to north tower, landing instructions please” and we said, “We’ve got some mail again today.”

No. There was only one air alert, and nothing happened at all, no air attacks at all, we had air supremacy there.

No, but I had something akin to it. Going back in the early stages of the war in Sicily and there we used to have to bide our time to land at the strips if the fighter bombers were coming back or fighters were coming back

because they would be short of fuel and we would have to wait our turn to come in and get our patients. We would have to chug around in the circuit area until we were given the ok that the fighters had all landed, we would then sit on the end, get our patients on board and sit until it was time to take off again. We had to fit in with the operations that were going on, we didn’t hold up any operations,

to get our wounded out. Sometimes we would sit on the end of the strip. This particular time I remember were sitting on the end of the strip, I don’t know whether we unloading or not but I know we were at the end of the strip and an aircraft was coming in and he came in without his guard over his trigger button and he put a burst of machine gun fire straight down the strip over the top of us. That was friendly fire but fortunately he wasn’t aiming at anyone,

and it went astray. So yes there was always a chance but we didn’t have any aircraft come in, we weren’t on any places where they were big bombers, they were fighter bombers in the Middle East and none of those were hung up while I was there, they would have got them off. The bombs up in Bougainville, since you are talking about the bombs they were rather unusual bombs there. They found that when they dropped the bombs they buried themselves

in mud and they didn’t have the effectiveness that they wanted. They put what they called daisy cutters on them, which was a long rod on the end of the bomb and they would take off with the bombs with these long rods on them that meant when the rod hit the bomb went off with maximum force above the ground ,wasn’t buried in the mud. But they never came back with those on. They sometimes had long range tanks on. As a matter of fact the aircraft you were talking about earlier

that caught fire, it had long range tanks on underneath to give it extra range. But no, I didn’t have any experience of hang ups, no.

No only RAAF, the army looked after themselves,

we had our own sick quarters with a few beds in it, mainly a few skin cases, burns were bad to handle, burns caused a lot of trouble in the heat. We had an outpatients and we had a serious of, different from the Middle East. For example we had a lot of ear trouble. We used to

pack the ear with a wick of acidic acid and this would have to be done quite regularly and then you would have to go to a man that had burns, then you would have a skin case and you would have your hands in Dettol as a matter of fact that is why my hands are so, all the pigmentation has gone from them. They were treated when I came back, Veteran’s Affairs [Department of Veterans’ Affairs] look after me with it, the pigmentation has all gone out of those. Hands in

the Dettol and I had skin condition for a long time because you were doing different cases in the sick quarters but to answer your question, they were all RAAF people.

No, nothing to do with them. They would send them up the trees, they were about but you wouldn’t be able to see them he would be so camouflaged. I’ve got pictures there of them. You wouldn’t see the natives, they were up the trees, you wouldn’t see him they were just camouflaged, but no we had no great dealings

with them, the natives at all. There had been offensive there and the Americans had put in a terrific barrage. As a matter of fact there was a grave with 69 Japs buried just alongside our camp but the Americans had this perimeter which had been established and the Australians came in and they enlarged it and they moved to the north and they moved to the south

but without talking about the army operations, the air force were involved and supporting they were all army co-operatives. But to get back to what you asked me about the sick quarters, we did a sick parade to make sure they were all bona fide casualties. Sometimes we had sick parade at 6 o’clock in the morning, so if you were sick, you turned up. It wasn’t the place to come if they weren’t sick.

They would turn up if they were.

Yes.

I would rather not. When you find a fellow with a bullet through his foot which occurred with a rifle when he is on his bed, it is not hard to figure out it occurred any other way, it wasn’t an accident.

A couple.

Yes, it was momentary. This particular fellow was brought in and I have never seen one before and I have never seen one since in such a hysterical state.

It took 5 of us to hold him down. The doctor came in and fixed it in minutes. He put him on the ground and poured a jug of cold water on his face. He snapped out of it.

Yes, we had lost an aircraft that day and he was involved in the rescue efforts and they weren’t terribly successful and his

wife was at home having a baby. He was terribly stressed - poor fellow and we were doing all we could, there were 5 of us trying to restrain him, and the doctor put him down and a jug full of cold water on his face and he came good. I have never seen it before and never seen it since.

Yes. Burns well they treated burns differently they were using dyes and all sorts of things with burns. We found that the best thing up there was for a long time was sulphanilamide, we still used a little bit of that, the main thing was to stop infections and we were using chilled gras which is a sort of a open weave gauze impregnated with cod liver oil and Vaseline.

We eventually scrounged a water clave gras from the Americans when they left and we were using chilled gras and Vaseline dressings on the burns. You would have a skin case, a fellow with an impetigo skin case with pustule over him and then you got burns cases. They should have been evacuated out. We had them laying there with no clothes at all just laying straight on the bed

with a mosquito net at night time. The serious cases went to the AGH but we did have a few of them which we kept in what we called the sick bay. They made this sort of a concrete base and sizelcraft sides and that was used to have these cases. When the news came that the Japs

were sending suicide squads in because the air force were harassing them, I must admit and don’t know whether I should on air but we ended up putting guards in the hospital and we had a roving picket at night time and we were handed back our weapons because they were required, we were reissued with weapons again.

Towards the latter stages of the war, yes.

No. We didn’t have guards at all around us because we had the Red Cross flag and the Australian flag. We didn’t have, all our ambulances were marked with red crosses

and air craft were marked with red crosses and as I said before sometimes it was mistaken for the black German cross but there you go. The hospitals, but getting back to these burns cases, a fair few burns and a lot of skin cases. The serious ones went to the general Hospital, the Army Hospital.

No.

Yes it was. Principally it was ambulance work in the Middle East transporting patients, very little medical work there but when we got back to Bougainville it was back to all different types of nursing, all aspects of it.

Yes, I had no worries there.

It was a different war totally. Where as over there we had a dry climate apart from

when we got to Italy, but in the desert dry, arid and cold at night. Lack of water up there, we had a rain storm every afternoon we used to catch the water off the tin, we had beautiful water to drink. It was a change to have water, we had more water than we wanted there. Every afternoon it just teemed. We had Mount Bagana was behind us and it gave us a shake up occasionally occasionally it was an active volcano just in from

Torokina and Piva, but it was a totally different war.

This doctor was one of the boys, he bought a motor boat, it was a shocking thing, the engine was too far forward and when you put the

accelerator or throttle forward the nose would dip down and you would end up like a submarine. But he used to take us out in this occasionally. It didn’t last long, he got rid of it. We used to go swimming. That was one of the causes for this trouble we had with ear; it was a coral ear they got. The doctor was very fussy, he would take us swimming and he we would come back and he would line us all up and he gave us

an ear toilet, which you would have to have drops of methylated spirits to clean your ear out. He made us all have ear toilets as soon as we got back. He was very keen to start which brings me to another story. They were going to get a lot of this scrub typhus and they had to wear gaiters and they were sticklers for the fact that the gaiters had to be worn with long trousers and

night time you had to have your shirts on. We were getting a lot of skin cases and the doctor decided, “Oh no” he said, “We’ll give the gaiters away, you don’t have to wear gaiters down here” so he gave us the authority to not to wear gaiters which was good because it was very hot, you can imagine the boots and gaiters in the heat. I went to the sergeants’ mess without my gaiters and the WOD

was a warrant officer disciplinary, they weren’t friends of the troops really, you can imagine they were like this Military Police but worse.

This particular chap decided that Kuffer is at the sergeants’ mess without his gaiters on. “Where’s your gaiters?” I said, “The doctor said we don’t have to wear them.” “When you come to sergeants’ mess you will wear them, you are on a charge.”

So I toddled back to the doctor and said, “I am on a charge for not wearing my gaiters”. That night I think there were about 3 sergeants and the doctor and the jeep they went to my unit which was 10 LASU and they went through the unit. The men without shirts, the men withouttheir mosquito nets, all malaria precautions were being ignored,

so the doctor said he was going to put the adjutant on a charge for the way the unit was conducted. My charge was dropped. It just shows you the power of the doctors. Of course he had them. He knew that they weren’t so anyway there was a tightening up then, orders were issued instructions that they had to wear their mandatory precautions at night time, sleeping under mosquito nets and shirts had to be worn at night time and

we still didn’t wear gaiters. That was Bougainville.

Mainly it was a sort of an impetigo, little blisters with that used to form, pustules used to break. It was a shocking thing. They used to treat it with Mercurochrome on it to a degree they were painting them all red. They tried

Silver Nitrate on it, they tried all manner of things on these skin cases. I ended up with a non-infectious one myself, Lupus it was called, I forget the exact name of it It was like I was covered with hail spots all over, little fungus spots. I had to wear brown of course, Atebrin we were on Atebrin and all these little hail spots. I’ll think of the name of it… but it was non-infectious. I couldn’t get a posting south with it if I tried.

There were a lot of skin cases there with it. We had a first aid post down on the dispersal area in the revetinance, so anyone injured down there could get medical treatment, you would have to do your stint down there. And there in lies a story too but I’ll go on to say

we had some fruit, I don’t know where I got it, fresh fruit and I had this fruit down there with me and there wasn’t much to do unless something happened, nothing happened. If there was an accident you would do something about it. I was there this day and this chap came in, he was an old school mate of mine, he went to Maryborough High School with me, the pilot and I said “G’day. Would you like some fruit?” He said, “Oh yeah I’ll have some”. I forget now what it was but he ate it. He said,

“Porky’s up here”, I said, “Is he?” “Yes” he said, “He’s a flight lieutenant”, I said, “Where is he?” He said, “He has taken up an American tent, a big square tent. He is in there; he’s got wings up and a big moustache.” I said, “Oh is he. I’ll look him up.” Anyway, perhaps I’ll talk about the fellow first, the pilot. Two days later he was flying a Boomerang and he was killed. They named a strip after him.

Two 5 Squadron pilots killed up there.

I don’t know whether he was shot, we don’t know. We lost him. I offered to go out but it was hopeless, there was no point in trying to go out and find him. He went into the water. I decided I would find out

where Porky was, so I went up to the tent and I could see him sitting inside and I opened the door and I said, “G’day Porky”. Flight lieutenant, pips, moustache, He bristled, his eyes pierced out, “Kuffer, you bastard”, he said. I hadn’t seen him for many, many, many years since a school boy.

He was called “Porky” and I was called “Barrel”. I was tubby too. Our paths did cross again, he lives locally here now and he plays bowls with my neighbour across the road and occasionally I see him at functions. I had a birthday recently and he got even. On my birthday late at night the phone went

and I picked it up and the voice said, “Is that you Barrel?” I thought he said Beryl. I said, “I’m sorry you’ve got the wrong number.” “No, I bloody haven’t. It’s Porky here.” So he got even with me eventually. At the time you should have seen his moustache bristle when this Sergeant decided to put his head inside the door and called him ‘Porky’. But Bougainville, yes that was it.

I painted a big sign for the OBU [Operational Base Unit], for the, he was a wing commander at the time and he had been in the Middle East too and there were only a couple of us who had been in the Middle East, we had our Africa Stars on and this particular fellow took a shine to me and asked me would I paint a sign over his base unit. I remember getting one of our fellows, his hair and chopping the hair and making brushes to paint the sign. He got the paint and I painted the sign ‘39 OBU’ with the RAAF

randle on it. He was delighted with it.

They couldn’t, he was gone. They named a strip after him, that is all you could do, his aircraft went into the sea.

I came back and I said, “Can I go out?” They said, “Ken you are wasting your time, he is in the drink”. I thought he was on land There were two pilots lost, Vernon and Oxley, they named a strip after Vernon and they named a strip after Oxley, Joe Oxley was my mate at school.

No, you just had to accept that Joe’s gone.

No, it didn’t affect it at all. We accepted it. People were being killed all the time.

It was before the bomb was dropped and we thought eventually the Japanese had to be eliminated and the intelligence we personally had,

I don’t know what the top brass had, we were able to eventually get on top of the Japanese. They had far, far more Japanese dead in Bougainville than they ever thought about. When the war finished the Japanese were in behind between the infantry and the artillery. The army were going to have a terrific fight there if they were going to take

Bougainville, they would have had to have more troops if they were going to do any good there. But they were holding them ,they had no air cover and they were being harassed by the bombing but as far as, when they rounded them up I saw them when they brought them in, I saw the Japs then. As a matter of fact the River Burdekin that I came back on was just off Torokina and we were out on the boat, loaded up with Japanese prisoners of war.

The Japanese, they tried all manner of means. At one stage they had vegetable gardens there and they went down and dropped sump oil on them, they thought it would keep the pests away but they killed it, they did all sorts of thing but there were so many of them there.

Only by the fact that one of

the sergeants from 5 Squadron had a brother in the army and he used to come in and bring his mates in and we used to see some of the army fellows when they came in. As a matter of fact I have a bayonet which they made into a knife for me. We didn’t have a great deal to do with the army themselves, no. Our main work was in this dispersal area, our tents were all in a long line and we eventually, when the Americans

moved out we were able to even get a bed. We had floor boards and a bed, so we were quite good as far as conditions were concerned.

It was just a cleared area. We had the sick quarters out in the centre with a store room and along one side we had the tents in a row. To me, it wasn’t

dispersed, no one had a hole, if you had a hole it would have filled with water anyway. There wasn’t much point in having a hole. There was no aircraft anyway. The risk of attack was remote, it was only when they brought the story in that they thought they were going to come in and do some damage, which they didn’t do. They re-armed us and when we posted the guards, we didn’t do it, they posted guards around the place.

Roving picket of a night with sub-Thompsons and the guards in their beds. They didn’t get in, whether the army stopped them, I don’t know but we were warned. We were put on alert.

No, the perimeter was well established, there was no trouble there at all.

Yes.

That sort of didn’t work. There was a corporal there and I had one fellow posted to my unit. I turned a letter up only this week which I got from him. He came up as a young lad, tubby fellow, used to blush, good worker, he had been trained as a nursing orderly, medical orderly,

he worked well with us. He was the LAC [Leading Aircraftsman] and I was the sergeant at LASU, and to take the story on we eventually were posted home and I didn’t hear of him for many, many years and eventually I got a letter, a long letter, from him. He had seen my name in a St John Ambulance

promotions list and he had been admitted to the Order of St John as a serving brother the same as myself at the time and my name was appearing. “Was I the same Frank Kuffer that he knew?” He told me all about his life and how he had gone on and the way he had gone into the ambulance and he ended up being administrative. I wrote back to him and I said, “I wasn’t such a bad old B after all”.

He said, “No”. I didn’t want to keep a correspondence going but I had the opportunity to call and see him, so I went to his home town, and I went to see him and he was dead, gone. However these things happen. We nick named him because he used to blush so much, much to his annoyance we called him “Blossom”. He

was far from a blossom, he was a big fellow. Blossom stuck with him. But he was a nice chap but unfortunately I didn’t get to meet him again. Yes but as far as the orders were concerned the majority of us were sergeants because we would be posted to a unit and take control of the unit and we were all sort of pooled.

You would be working alongside usually, there were a few other ranks, but we worked alongside the sergeants. Ian Morrison, the doctor, he got on well with all his sergeants. We had a LAC that was a very brave lad, he looked after him, he didn’t have to but he looked after him as a batman, he used to go and make his bed for him but this Ian Morrison was a terrific

fellow.

He was a volatile sort of bloke, his acts of heroism would be the way he used to go into these aircraft and bring them out. He looked on 5 Squadron pilots as his own boys, he looked after them very carefully. If anyone was in trouble, he would ground them, he would stop them from flying.

There were some episodes about that particularly when that Samurai swords.

No. He was a sort of fellow that he was really dedicated, he was a diagnostician and a terrific bloke and he was right on the ball. If you were going to

a crash he always had to drive. Particularly one day there had been a crash and I had the ambulance and I had to pick him up, I picked him up on the way through and he was in the passenger seat which he didn’t like and I had it flat to the boards. We were going between two aircraft and he thought I was going to hit them and he took the steering wheel out of my hands.

He was a terrific fellow. He would go in, see the trouble was when the aircraft caught fire, if there was any live rounds in the guns they would come out and explode and he wouldn’t worry about that, he would just go in himself. I have him in very high regard.

I got a card over there with his own face on it, in his own writing, “Remember the mad doctor at Bougainville” and I do.

Yes he did, yes. The RAAF casualties were in the bomber command. The main casualties, the large number you are talking about were mainly bomber command in the Battle of Britain. Middle East we lost some but up in Bougainville we only lost 2 in 5 squadron in all the time we were up there. We were lucky

but that was the way it worked out. No other aircraft to attack them and they were doing army co-op work. The army went in. I can remember now one particular campaign or battle they had to put a continuous air cover on because that was the only thing that was silencing the Japanese guns. The army were pinned down and the only way they could

get any sort of relief was continue air cover and they extended themselves that way too. They did a good job up there but they didn’t have to contend with Japanese aircraft.

You drop what you were doing. That just stopped.

The fellow with his ear can wait and the fellow with his burn can wait, crashes got top priority.

Yes I think so, we were pretty bored up there, it wasn’t the excitement we had in the Middle East, no. It was sort of routine business; giving injections and doing burns cases,

it was really medical work we were trained for but then again you just had to do it. It didn’t have the glamour if you like the word, that we had when we were out and about in the Middle East. Stuck in the jungle wasn’t the best place. It would rain every afternoon, it was hot and steamy. It wasn’t a holiday.

No, I didn’t. We took, I think I mentioned to you… I didn’t mention to you.

When we were in Sicily, air crew - we took Quinine. We didn’t take what was called Metabrin then, when the British Army issued Metabrin when we were in Sicily and aircrew took Quinine. The rough yardstick was that you take the Quinine until your ears start to hum and you know you have enough. Pretty rough but that is the way we used it.

When we were on Bougainville we were strictly on the Atebrin. You always took your Atebrin because it was too big a risk not to take it. While I was up there, there was no stages of malaria at all. When I came home I had an undiagnosed, it was never diagnosed as dengue but it was a very, it was akin to one of those, but I never had it no, I didn’t have malaria to answer your question, no but I had some

vague thing ,I don’t know what it was.

Yes we heard that when it was dropped and there was great jubilation and when the second one was dropped and it was over there was a great display of fireworks

with the weapons we had. Everyone was firing shots in the air. The officers got a bit concerned about it. The phone went and I happened to pick it up, “What’s all this firing going on down at the medical section?” “Oh nothing sir. I think it is the army behind us, I don’t think it’s the medical section” said I with a revolver hot and smoking in my hand. With it I threw it on the bed and dropped a towel on it, so in stomped the officers to see what

this firing was, they thought someone was going to get shot, it was going on everywhere, it was a real fireworks display. They were firing rounds celebrating. Fortunately I had thrown the towel over it, the revolver was there nice and hot on the bed which they couldn’t see, so we got out of it. You can understand why it was very joyous, the fact that it was over and the fellows were letting off steam.

I let go with a few rounds I had.

This was, it was dark because they couldn’t see who was doing the firing. There were all sorts of things being fired. 303s and revolvers and everyone was having a good old go, machine gun fire going on. It was all up in the air,

“It was over - thank goodness for that”.

We were astounded, we were taken aback, we couldn’t realise it was over. It was, “What happens now?” sort of business. You couldn’t understand, all these years, suddenly it was over, it was hard to

comprehend. It was good news but it was hard to come to terms with.

I don’t think we had one.

The medical section had to keep functioning. We did. I think it was

that stage the doctor decided to make sure everybody’s inoculations were up to date. I was a bit bad tempered, he said, “Unless you can be more tempered you can go back to your tent”. I said, “I’m gone”.

I don’t know, I must have been a bit aggressive. Anyway, we had to keep going. They kept us up there for awhile and with that we became entitled to the Australian Service Medal, which was for that particular area. We ended up with the term, we stayed up there

until they could find a way for us get home, we ended up getting another medal for it. We had to work while we were there, we weren’t loafing. We came home, until they could get vessels up to get us home. It depended on the points you had to get out. If you were a married man with children and a job to go to, you were pretty high ranking and you had been there for awhile, if you were a single man, even if you had a job to go to, it didn’t automatically get you back to Australia.

We eventually, they brought a vessel, the Ormiston in and we came home by ship.

We had some entertainers there, the doctor thought it was good for morale and he encouraged these fellows. One fellow was a female impersonator and with the aid of a bit of parachute material made himself up into a fantastic dress and a fantastic

female. It went over quite well. They had a stage put up and it was quite a big thing and they even invited some sisters to come down from the AGH and that was big time to have some nurses in the place and they invited them into the area. We had a clear area between the hospital and the mess, there was an area there and they put this stage up and everybody came along. Of course at night time

if they were going to the pictures you would go armed with your chair and you would go across and see the pictures and come back with your chair, that was the night time entertainment. Yes they did have these entertainments up there, a couple of them to my knowledge but that was about it. It was quite well received by the troops.

No I was not. I think I was in charge of the lights if I remember rightly. No, I didn’t get involved in that, no.

I don’t know about singing any more songs for you but they had ditties which were not for general recording. More in the Middle East for the song because there was nothing else to do of a night time.

Invariably if they would have it in the mess there was always somebody who would get up and sing and they would have a bit of a sing song amongst the troops at night time because there was nothing else to do. Any occasion for a bit of a sing song, a bit of celebration there was welcome but not so on Bougainville, there was pictures to go to at night time.

I didn’t go very much, I am not very fond of pictures; I am less fond of them now. I remember some of them at the time;

Casablanca was on and some with Rita Hayworth and those film stars that you’ve probably never heard of.

But Ingrid Bergman and Rita Hayworth, they were all the ones that were the rave at those times. There were some quite good shows we used to go and see.

I couldn’t be bothered to go to a great degree.

Yes I think everyone associates with “Lily Marlene”. Everybody would associate with her so much so they used to make up different tunes to it. The history of that song is very interesting. It had its origins in Germany and I believe if you read what they say now about it, it was

the German’s didn’t like it, it was a bit too sentimental for them. Nonetheless, it came over at night time and we would listen to it. They used to broadcast to us the German radio and we used to listen to it. Even the British, everyone sang ‘Lily Marlene’. War time songs were “We’ll Meet Again” and those. The ones that were war time Vera

Lynn used to sing, they were always catchy tunes at the time. One song that came out of the war I associate with is “Lily Marlene”.

No, I don’t think so. It was a very nice tune “Lily Marlene” and I used to play it on a mouth organ.

It was very haunting, I used to like playing “Lily Marlene”. I carried a harmonic with me all the time over there and amuse myself with that. There was nothing else to do but lie on your bed and play your harmonica or lie on your bunk and play your harmonica.

No, not to a great degree. There was not two up, there was not much to do in the desert of a night time, you wouldn’t be showing any lights and there was

not much to do. On Bougainville there was a two up school there, I never became involved with it I couldn’t be bothered with it. Did a little bit of trench art there making bracelets and things like that. You’d get the Australian coins and a bolt and you would hammer the coin until it took the profile of the bolt and then you would get some of this

New Zealand paua shell and you would file that to the shape and put that in and make bracelets. Just little things to fiddle with. It’s called ‘trench art’. You would do a lot of things with spent shell casings and make little things out of that, aircraft and get someone to solder it all together for you and make things. I had a, I lost it I don’t know where it has gone to, it was a lightning made out of the

303 bullets. It was a very nice one and someone took a liking to it. I’ve lost that since I brought it back. You do a lot of fiddly things like that. The night time was usually after the rain came in the afternoon there wasn’t much to do, you would be confined to your tents and that was about it. I do remember

at one stage I was quartered with one of corporals at one stage, and he shared the tent with me. I don’t know whether I was a mad sergeant or not but I always had a loaded revolver under my pillow. I don’t know whether I was mad or not. He was frightened, he wasn’t game to get up of a night time, he thought, “The mad fellow from the Middle East would shoot him”.

Yes. I always had a loaded revolver under my pillow.

It didn’t give us any status but a little bit of respect perhaps. The fact, to use the air force expression, that “You had your knees browned”, you had been around and you weren’t just coming up for the first time.

I think I was a member of the RSL before I went to Bougainville. We got a little bit of respect with our Africa Star on, because we had been there, not that we had been there and done that but we had seen a little bit of action and we were given a little bit of respect and they expected a bit more of us.

They did give us that little bit of respect I suppose. I used to try and live up to it and do the right thing with them.

The Americans were pulling out when we got there. The Australian army had, by the time we had done our landing, the air force did

a landing, the army had taken over and the Americans were pulling out and they were getting rid of their equipment. A lot of their equipment was good equipment and was bulldozed into the ground or dumped off into the sea. Good equipment, fortunately I got onto some good medical instruments. They were far superior to anything which we had. I’ve still got them. Forceps and things like that. We got

the order clerk from them. They were throwing out beds, things we could have used but there was no machinery to sort of hand it between Americans and ourselves. They had this big bulldozer through and the things they put into this trench when they bulldozed it over, that was the way they got rid of it. They did get rid of a lot of equipment, whether it would have been to our advantage or not but I found that the medical stuff was, and as I say I’ve still got it.

Not that I use it now to any degree but it is handy for anything around the house

The Americans, we struck them in Sicily and Canadians as well. We had just about all nationalities in Sicily, we had met them all.

Bougainville, we took over from them. A lot of the installations were, like the strips were all put in by the Americans, a lot of the tents were erected, semi flooring, the place was established and the messes had been erected by the Americans. We were just taking over their quarters, not their

facilities but the quarters they had established. Yes we did strike a lot of them. They had gone in there in a big way with a big bang. That is the way they operate, they go in with a big bang. They took over the base. There was quite a few Japanese killed in the particular area where we were.

Yes.

Yes as a matter of act, we were reliant on them for equipment, Britain couldn’t help us at all, we were relying entirely on the Americans for what they could provide us with. After Singapore fell

it was entirely up to the Americans, what they could provide for the defence of Australia and we just had to go along with it, their good ways and their bad ways. We found their attitudes, their languages were different, the way they expressed themselves was different to the way we would have expressed ourselves but that’s the way it goes.

They were

generous people. If they had anything you could have it. I don’t think they were being big timing themselves if you wanted something “Yes, you can have it, sure guy”. If they could help us they would. They were moving on and we were taking over and there was not much point them having things they couldn’t use anyway. They were

generous people and beyond that I didn’t have much more contact with them. We didn’t nurse any of them and I don’t think apart from North Africa, I don’t think we carried any of their casualties. We found that particularly in North Africa when we landed at one of their bases called Telergma [US air base, Algeria] to see what they were getting to eat, icecream and

we had never seen it since Cairo. They had it different, spam and a different diet and entirely different life style and different amenities that we wouldn’t dream of. They had a different, it was more affluent, we were living on borrowed and stolen clothes on

army basic iron rations and they lived differently. Good luck to them and when their planes went off, I can think of one big strike in Sicily, the air was completely full with their aircraft and their vapour trails and they went off and they raided the oil fields in southern Europe that night and

they got knocked about a bit. We were on one of the forward fighter strips in Sicily and their planes that were damaged were coming in and crash landing and we were helping getting the patients out of them. We helped as much as we could when they were in strifeand yes we helped them but when they go over they go in a big way.

So did the Brits but at that stage we didn’t see the mass strikes that were coming from Britain, we saw the ones that were coming from North Africa. They were coming over in massive attack on the Axis partners in Southern Europe.

We saw them go over and we saw the casualties coming back. The

ones who were unable to make the trip back to North Africa, put down in Sicily, that is all we saw of it. The Liberators that came in, we helped drag the people out of them.

Yes, there was. When you think of it there was Canadians, Americans, British, New Zealanders, you had all the Indian troops,

you could name it and we had whatever the army gave us, we just handled. It was more interesting there than Bougainville where we only had the Americans pulling out and we had the New Zealanders. We got on well with the New Zealanders, particularly well with the New Zealnders and our doctors worked very well with them.

I don’t think

I would be in a position to watch any of their limitations. I would say, if I could be critical they were not as resourceful as perhaps the persons that had to be. We by nature had to be resourceful and I don’t think I could say that was a trait but heir generous nature and their friendliness was quite good.

It was just the usual medical ailments that would befall people in a community and the air force wasn’t different to that. We still had the sick quarters going, we still had sick parades, we still kept it going and

people would get posted home and we would be loosing staff who had higher points they would be going and you would be, somebody would be stuffing up doing Frank’s job and somebody would be stuffing up doing Bill’s job and it was spread around. We did notice that it was over but the medical section just had to function, so did the cookhouse. It was the same thing.

The food was right, there were no complaints about the food, we were never hungry there. I don’t think I was ever hungry, I was thirsty in the Middle East very, very thirsty but never hungry in the Middle East. We always had plenty of bully beef. You could always get iron rations, you could always get the hard tack, but I didn’t mind the biscuits and I didn’t mind the bully beef provided it wasn’t lukewarm, you couldn’t eat it then.

But if it was hot, you could eat it or if it was cold you could eat but I had no complaints with that. We didn’t like the fish that came in, goldfish we used to call it, that was not very popular. The M&V, meat and vegetables, that was McConickies was all right. They had tinned sausages, that was all right. I had no worries. As a matter of fact pictures you see of me in Italy, I put on weight quite well on the army food.

Yes, we were. As a matter of fact, I at that stage, decided that it might be a good idea if I did an officers’ course and I did apply for it, an A&SD [Administrative and Special Duties] course, I applied to do that.

Administrative and Special Duties, A&SD. I had applied to do that but I didn’t want to leave the medical section. The only way I could still stay in the medical section was to become an adjutant of the unit, which would have meant I would have left Bougainville because there was no such posting. If I had done that I would have stayed within the medical fraternity if you like because that was where I had done all my service and

where I was interested in it. To do an A&SD course, if the war was going to go on for a number of years, it would have meant I would have to come back to Australia to do it. It would have been a home posting for awhile and I wouldn’t have minded that for awhile.

Yes, we wrote all the time. This aircraft used to come in each day, Charlie Uncle Donald, the C47 with our mail and supplies used to come

up every day before the rain closed down. Yes we had regular mail coming up, there was no worries about mail from Australia. We were kept in good contact there.

It was a major pull out and the Ormiston was coming and we all got told to go on board that and we went and landed in Brisbane.

No, there wasn’t any excitement, it was a sort of anti-climax. There was no great welcoming or anything like that, there never ever was any great welcome home, you just get home and get back to your job. When I came back home I thought, “Well now I will be right now with that service to get out” but no, I didn’t have enough points.

They had to find a place to send me, so eventually I got to embarkation and they said, “Right oh” and they posted me of all places to Mildura. They were closing the station down at Mildura.

The air force station. It had been a fighter training, ATU for pilots for fighters. I had to go up to

Mildura and help close the station down. The station was closed down quite easily.

It involved returning to store everything that had been issued. Quite obviously a lot of the things couldn’t be found and there were a lot of accidental fires. The sergeants’ mess was burnt

down and a store was burnt down. Put it this way, there was only one way you could balance the books if an aircraft crashed, the amount of equipment it was carrying, it wouldn’t have got off the ground. It was the only way to square the ledger. There was a fire up there in the sergeants’ mess and I was on the hose nozzle and they put the

booster pumps on and we had the fire just about out and then we had an officer come down to direct the operations, “Water here, water there”, and of course in one of his, “Water heres”, he got in the middle of it. He got knocked head over turkey into the ambulance and the corrugated iron so much so that he had to front up at the sick bay sick bay the next morning with a straight face and

I said, “What happened?”, he said, “Somebody hit him with a hose last night and he got knocked over at the fire.” We lost our sergeants’ mess, we had to go somewhere else to eat then. That was an interesting time. While we were up there they were stuck for pickers to pick grapes and they offered a small remuneration if we would go up to the blocks and pick grapes. On our days off we went across, they made us members of The Long Bar, the working man’s

club, not that it interested me but I was made a member. The grape picking was hard work, we earned every penny but it was an interesting experience the fact that we had been out picking in the grape harvest at Mildura. They couldn’t get labour. That was one of the aspects of it. I had some relatives there and I used to call on them

on my father’s side of the family and this particular, we used to call her Aunt but I don’t think she was a relative, she used to make terrific Cornish pasties; you would cut them in half and they would fall either side of the plate. They were magnificent. Memories of Mildura. Cornish pasties and grape picking.

I was in Mildura until I pegged out my time, it was

a matter of a few months but oh, to try and balance the ledger! Over time things do disappear, there was one. Everyone could face up to the fact that it wasn’t there, they couldn’t balance the books, it had been destroyed by fire. It balanced the book up and no one was worried about it. If you were presented with a

sheet with these things missing, where were they? They weren’t of great value but it was just a matter of the red tape involved to square the ledger up. These fires were convenient. I have to say they were accidental.

Discharged? I think at that time we had to go to Royal Park

the day after Anzac Day ‘46 and given our ration books and given our discharge, given leave pay and paid us off and we were back in civvies. We kept our uniforms. I was fortunate that I had a job to go back to and within a short time I was back

in the tramways again.

Yes. Sort of lost a bit. It was a way of life that became interesting. Sort of a protection if you like. We felt that was the way we had been living, we became used to the discipline, it was a way of life that had become accustomed to and it was going to be different, wasn’t it?

Sure it was different when you walk down the street as a civic, you didn’t have to stand to attention to speak to someone or you didn’t have to salute anyone. Yes, it was different.

Yes. They kept our job open for us and gave us a war savings certificate, which was for each week of service or each month of service, which was a generous thing and

we had a leave pass if you like signed by the Secretary of the Board and I went back into the secretary’s office when I came back. That was my first jobs and from there on I took other jobs on and I eventually ended up as the safety officer for the organisation. That involved looking after the accident prevention, fire protection for the whole of Tramway organisation, every depot in

the metropolitan area and I had a little car I used to park in the garage here, a little van. I used to go by tram and that was good because if I had to go from Preston to Glenhuntly I could pop myself in the tram with a book and that was the afternoon’s work. My CO was a bit brighter than I was, he thought if he gave me a car, he could get his pound of flesh. I could be at Footscray and I could also do Glenhuntly and on the way back I could call at so and so and then I could go home

and he got more than double the amount of work out of me by virtually giving me a car to drive. There was a regulation if you could garage the car at home and you went to somewhere else on the way, like you didn’t go straight to the point, you had a point of call or you had somewhere else to go, you just couldn’t just drive yourself home and back and forwards to work, it was a matter of you had to plan your day accordingly.

With all these safety audits that had to be done in all different tramway organisations, it wasn’t hard to go round them. To do a safety audit you didn’t even have to announce you were coming, I didn’t mind, I would always be able to help them find something to try cut down accidents and that was what we were on about; accident prevention. It was a big task, interesting job, a very interesting job.

I had open sesame to everywhere in the organisation although in some areas I had to be accompanied by an engineer. For example the substations, because you could be walking along and that light for example would be carrying so many thousand volts and he would say, “Duck your head as you go through there”. I had to have an engineer there in the sub stations but I had open sesame to everywhere in the organisation and Preston workshops, which was then a hive of activity, had

pracitcally every trade that you could think of and with every trade went the hazards associated with that trade. It was a very interesting job and I ended up with 49 years service with the tramways, I just missed out on my 50 years, I couldn’t get an extension for 6 months. But I got 49 years service. It was a very interesting job to finish up with.

Yes.

As I say it was a very interesting job.

Yes, I joined 30 June 1944. I joined at headquarters and then when this area was, you probably remember it being called “Mortgage Hill” with all the ex-servicemen coming here and this was just paddock where you are sitting now, we built this

house and a friend of mine assisted me to build this house. As you probably notice it is a brick home and it’s got ten foot ceilings and it’s very well constructed home. A friend assisted me, he lost his brother in the Middle East and he felt he should help me. My family have been very good to his family and he helped me build this place. However going backwards and forwards there are a lot of ex-servicemen in this area. The fellow up the street was a navigator, flight lieutenant, and he and I

started talking about whether we would form an RSL here, on the tram. We decided we would form an RSL. With that we had to apply for a charter, we had to get the Balwyn Sub Branch to agree to giving some of their area, it was all done by negotiation, eventually we got it chartered back in 1952 and we formed the North Balwyn sub branch. We used to meet in church halls and around the place. Eventually

when Trentwood down here was being developed, AV Jennings [house and land developer] wanted the land we had permissive occupancy on and that was where the service station is down here where you get your petrol. We did a deal with Jennings, a very good deal. They gave us the land where we are now plus an area for bowling green was and the place built at cost and we put a memorial hall there, which is down there now. Since 1952 I’ve always been a member of the committee of the RSL. I suppose about

10 years I was President and I have been a trustee of the place ever since it was built. Although we had a bowling green there, I never ever bowled because of my arm I didn’t bowl. I think if I was keen enough I could have learnt to play with my left hand but I wasn’t keen enough. My wife played down at the RSL Bowling Club but they have folded up. Now we have memorabilia on the place. We have a Bofors gun and a big anchor and a propeller and we are getting another propeller off a Mustang probably next week

as an item to remember the air force. An air screw off a Mustang and we are going to put that on the site. But we’ve got an anchor down there that we had the army bring it out for us with a Major, it must weigh about 5 ton I think, it is an enormous thing and we’ve got a Bofors gun, which was the army,bofors gun navy and now we are getting this bigger propeller, air screw to represent the air force. The RSL would have about 390 originally,

we are down now to about 160 members at the moment.

No.

Yes. The Vietnam veterans like to stay in their own clique if you like

because of the reception they received, a lot of them have a bit of a chip on their shoulder. We had a Vietnam veteran address us the meeting before last. The President of Box Hill came across and addressed us and we asked him the question at the time, “Why is it that

the Vietnam veterans are having this post traumatic stress?” And he was frank with us. He said, “When you blokes came back from the Middle East, did you know what RSI [Repetitive Strain Injury] was?” The complaints we didn’t know existed now exist. They perhaps have got these more sophisticated approach to their ailments where we came back and we said, “He was bomb happy”. Do you know what I’m saying?

Yes that’s right. I saw a fellow that had a broken marriage down here. This particular fellow, he was never ever taken prisoner by the Japs but he lived the rest of the time in the jungle. He had a few problems, a lot of them have problems but you can’t do much to help them. We find now that with the advent of the Gold Card,

a lot of our fellows are having far more attention than they were before. It was recognised that anyone who was exposed to the enemy has been given their treatment and from an RSL point of view and an ex-serviceman’s point of view the Gold Card was the right thing to do for the aging veterans.

They can get now without any worries, they can go and get

treatment. Whereas before they were dependent upon welfare to give them some assistance they can now get it from DVA [Department of Veterans’ Affairs]. A fellow within a stone throw of here, he recently died but before he died Veterans’ Affairs came out and put rails in for him and did everything they possibly could for him.

I saw his widow last week and I was talking to her and she said they have done a marvellous job for her because he died because of war service. The Veterans’ Affairs are looking after the veteran community very well.

Only briefly. My wife was a member of the Air Force Association.

I briefly remember the Air Force Association but

I found you couldn’t devote your attention to two organisations. It was best to concentrate on one. The RSL’s approach to things was more in my way of thinking than the Air Force Association. I have attended the Air Force Association things but not to any great extent.

Every year. They have a dawn service here at 5.45. and

I conduct the service - a stand to at 5.45, we usually have Parliamentary representatives, both Federal and State, Municipal, usually the Mayor, this time it was a Councillor, we have the local member Petro Georgiou, Robert Clarke representing the State Government and this year we had the local Councillor, she wants to come again next year. We usually have a speaker and for the past 13 years we have had a Vietnam veteran

Brigadier Monsignor, the Reverend Gerry Cudwell, he comes out and speaks to us, and he has asked now to be relieved of the job after 13 years and we have approached one of the local Ministers who is a legacy widow, she is now a doctor, Dr Eileen Parkinson, she is a member of the Patriot Funds Council, she is member of the church I attend in St Agnes North Balwyn Uniting Church.

We asked her last week if she would speak to us. She said, “She would be honoured to do so”. She is going to speak to us on Anzac Day 2004 at 5.45 in the morning. Arranged already.

Yes, I did. I was with No. 1 Corps and I moved out of the Tramway Division and I was in with Corps and ended up with the exalted rank of corps sergeant major,

it is a good job. I used to be as the Sergeant Major, you can really do what you want to do. For example, the sergeant major always had to inspect the Melbourne Cricket Ground if they were doing a parade at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The sergeant major, I was always there to inspect their uniforms as they go in and if anyone wasn’t up to date they wouldn’t get in. I also carried, if a fellow had dirty boots, I also

had a shoe cleaning outfit and I would say, “Go behind that truck and clean your shoes and then you can come back again”. That was a job itself and you had to be on the ball. I remember one year one of the top brass, one of the ladies, she was a VAD in the Middle East, she came along, fronted up and I let her in she went in and she came up and she said, “Why didn't you tell me I didn’t have my tie on?” I said “Well,

I thought you had a new type of uniform ma’am.” She was one of the top brass. I didn’t live that down. I let one of the top brass in without a tie on.

We got engaged after the war and eventually got married on 28 February 1947 at the Scots Church, from then I ceased to be a Methodist and I was a Presbyterian. There wasn’t a church for us to attend when we first came out here. This house took 2 years to

build and we then had 2 boys and we moved in here after the place was built. This was paddocks. There was a wild life sanctuary over there in Greythorn Road and the camels used to graze out here hobbled around the place and it was real rural. Eventually, we got roads made. We had power, the water I tapped on Caster Road,

we had no sewerage, we had a septic tank eventually but it was just pretty basic when we moved in here. Eventually, we had to pay for roads, we got a phone. I was able to get a phone because she was a nursing sister and we got a phone on here and it is still in her name.

Yes.

No, I don’t. She was interested in getting

into the RAAF but she was lucky to get in because when she trained she was so young she couldn’t do her midwifery training in Victoria and she went and did it in New South Wales. She was in New South Wales when the Japanese sub attack was on. She was doing her midwifery course at Paddington but they didn’t really need women with midwifery in the air force but how she got through the net I don’t know and she doesn’t know herself. She got into the air force and did her training and

she was posted to 2 RAAF Hospital at Ascot Vale.

Nursing training, pretty basic training it was for the nurses. They didn’t do much drill or anything like that. She was at Heidelberg for awhile. During my sojourn in the Middle East, she was eventually posted to Adelaide, Dawes Road and that is where she was when I came back to Adelaide.

General nursing duties, yes. She came back to Heidleberg again and saw the war out there. She was out before I was because she had a job, she was working, being medical she was able to go to work for a doctor in a private practice in Brunswick. Then eventually

we looked after the family. In later years she worked for 10 years, I’ve got her 10 year badge over there, where she worked at Vinnies [St. Vincents] Hospital in the eye clinic and also annually gave the tramway employees, service wide, right throughout the metropolitan area their influenza injections. Major General Riston used to line up and get his and I’ve got a picture

of her giving the chief his flu jab. She used to go around to the depots twice and it involved for a couple months giving them flu injections. It was a very interesting job for her and she got to know the tramway organisation. In 1990, she was working in the eye clinic in Vinnies Hospital but she has been ill since then.

Careful now, don’t get too personal.

No.

You couldn’t talk about much because the officers, they censored you, you couldn’t say where you were, you could only acknowledge things that were sent to you. A lot of my letters mainly acknowledgements of parcels, acknowledgements of letters. You

couldn’t tell news, you could a little bit of smattering of news but otherwise, there is a letter over there with all pieces cut out of it. I said something, I wouldn’t have intentionally done it but I put something in it they didn’t like and they chopped it out but normally they went through without any alteration. Occasionally there was a black out where some of them got a bit enthusiastic and chopped something out of your letter, but no you couldn’t talk about much in your letters, it was mainly the contact.

They air graph was the thing, we could just on a page about A4 size and that was photographed down and you saw the size they come back 4 x 4 with what you had t osay which you pretty well need a magnifying glass to read. But they were great because you would get a message home. There were also the cables and there were set phrases like you’d want 2, 4 and 6 and that made up a message. “Fit and well, love”,

something like that and your name. I kept in contact, so they would know you are going all right. There were different phrases you would get, by selecting a phrase but it was a stereotype of thing but it was contact.

I think it was an opportunity for her, she had to go in something and I don’t think she liked childrens’ nursing although she had done at Melbourne, she had to do a certain stint at the children’s and it was an opportunity for her to find, she had to go into something so she went into the air force. I don’t know what enticed her or why

a lot of her friends they went in too. It might have been the association, but no I don’t know why she went air force.

No, it was general she was doing,

she would do whatever was called upon her but she was a good nurse. She tells the story now that during her training her name was Madison. The girls say, “You get all the jobs Madison. You come in with a bright smile on the face. You do this Madison you do that. I come in with a dumb look on my face and they don’t give me anything to do.” She was always willing and she was quite proficient in nursing.

She joined it mainly because RAAF nurses were very, I was going to say clicky but they were very close band, there were not a great number of them. They formed the RAAF Nurses Association, which is affiliated with the RAAF Association. The RAAF Nursing Service, there is no such thing now.

They’re part of the RAAF. The Nursing Service was such that they were administered by a strict matron and they were a, I met them after the war, I didn’t meet them during the war because I nursed with some of the girls at Laverton and we got on pretty well together. We used to annoy them and they used to annoy us, it was a sort of an uneasy truce.

Yes. You would be irrigating a pilot, he wouldn’t be able to fly because he had wax in his ear and you would be syringing his ear but you always made sure that the syringe was pointed at the sister a couple of times. They took it all in good heart.

They tried all sorts of dodges but you had to be a jump ahead of them. We got on pretty well

with them. Initially, they were inclined to look down their noses but very quickly the NCO [Non Commissioned Officer] fixed that up. Nursing sister always wanted orderlies to help in her particular ward, she found that orderly X and orderly Y and orderly A and B had all been sent by the sergeant to do a job somewhere else and she didn’t have any orderlies today she was in bother.

You had them where you wanted them, they had to be nice to you to get the staff right. There were ways around it. When we got there they were very fussy, we didn’t know how to do the envelope bed ends, wasn’t done to one girl’s particular liking. I said, “I didn’t join the air force to make envelope beds”, I didn’t tell her that but I thought that at

the time. We were pleased to see her out of the way. See they were officers in charge of the ward. We could fix things up, we could level the score quite easily, ways around them.

No, never. The trouble was of course when we didn’t have other clothes like she didn’t have any other clothes to go.

I didn’t have any other clothes apart from my issues of the time which were pretty basic but once we got here I had civilian clothes back home here.

It was frowned upon, that wouldn’t be the thing done for an officer to be fraternising with a, no that was not done. Not in uniform, no.

There was nothing to say you couldn’t but you wouldn’t do it?

You knew from the training. If you were with an officer you wouldn’t be holding hands, walking down the street holding hands with an air force officer, would you?

You wouldn’t be doing that. You respect the uniform. We didn’t

wear, I had a suit home here but clothing was rationed. I had a suit which my mother kept in Maryborough for me and I used to get that and I still had civilian clothes.

No, after the war.

Yes quite violently, sitting on that lounge.

It was at 14 Byron Street, Elwood. How does that suit you?

As soon as things got organised. We decided that we would get married down at Scots Church, Elwood. My wife wanted a centre aisle in the church; it had to be centre aisle in the church. I didn’t mind that centre aisle business.

The lady sitting over there on the chair was the bridesmaid, and my friend in the tramways, he was the best man and we had the reception at Grosvenor in Clindon Road, Toorak. That was a very good night. I was told to make sure I stood up straight and spoke slowly as I have done today.

It was February and we went off for a honeymoon at Torquay. We stayed at Two Bays which was nothing like this now, it so happened on 6 March - was my birthday. My father through devilment wanted to send a telegram to me. I’ve got the telegram still over there. He sent word like this to Mr Frank Kuffer are of the new wife, cream Vauxhall car, Torquay and

I got it. How we got it, that somebody else knew we were staying at Two Bays and they sent a telegram to me care of Two Bays name and of course it only needed a bright lad at the Post Office to say, “Here’s this fellow but we can’t find him, he is at Two Bays”. That landed around at Two Bays and next thing they wanted to put us in the honeymoon suite. I borrowed a Vauxhall car

from my cousin, cars were scarce and we went down to Torquay, so there you are care of the cream Vauxhall car, new wife and it got me and I’ve still got it.

Yes it did.

I’m certain I got a sense of maturity through the service. I had quite a lot of experiences which at the time you think they are a bit of bug bear but we were taught a discipline then which I didn’t have before, I was perhaps a bit young and didn’t have the maturity I

did when I came out. But yes, I think it certainly gave me that idea that you respected other people’s point of view. I went in first, I think I perhaps wasn’t very tolerant religious wise because of my training. But when you share a hole with a fellow of the opposite faith and see other people of other nationalities also having a religious conviction you say well, you know

you are a bit more tolerant to other people also, as regards different nationalities. Before the war I would have hesitated, to handle about a person with a different skin colour. Having worked with the Gurkhas and the Gurkhas were admitted to our mess, I respected the Gurkhas and

their fighting qualities and you come to realise that everybody isn’t white. I was far more tolerant with regard to other nationalities than I was before. I still am not tolerant as far as I should be a Christian I know but I can’t forget the Japanese atrocities. I didn’t witness

them but I knew of them going on and now I know them in more detail.

I knew of some of them, not all of them.

No. Only when they surrendered.

They brought them up on a corvette,

they brought the general up, he came by water with a destroyer, he came aboard. I have pictures of him coming aboard at Torokina, at the surrender but I still can’t, their atrocities are such that I can’t forget them. I should forgive them but I can’t forget them. What they did to our nurses I

can’t forgive, that is one of the things. What they did, my uncle was a prisoner of war, he…

Of the Japanese. He was in Changi [prisoner of war camp, Singapore] on the Burma Railway. I discussed it with him after the war. He said that he owed a lot the fact that he survived to the fact that he was an older person, bald headed and they gave a little

bit of respect being the older person. His age gave him a little bit of protection. What they did to our nurses I can’t forget. I didn’t witness it first hand but I can’t think of any person of any nationality doing that. It still rankles me a bit. They are all dead now I suppose and we

forget it.

No, I went off to serve.

It was as an Australian but I

marvelled at the fact that so many of my persons the same age as myself were prepared to go and serve in Bomber Command to defend Britain. To me the sacrifice there is for the, I know it was the same cause but it was a different theatre, they are away from their kit and king, it was a totally different war, there were so many of them lost

that I think Australians today couldn’t comprehend what the fellows who went and served in Bomber Command did. I have the greatest admiration for those who served in Bomber Command and the battle of Britain, in view of the fact that they were fighting in a different theatre of war nowhere near Australia, if they weren’t fighting there, they would be fighting back home but it was

to defend England. We sang the national anthem and “God Save the Queen”. And that’s another story. When we were in Egypt and we all sang “God Save the Queen”. The Yanks came along and they also sang the American national anthem, and we also had to sing the Egyptian national anthem. Not sing but we had to stand up while it was played.

If you went to a show, you had the 3 national anthems. We didn’t have much respect for the Egyptian national anthem, it was parodies, rude parodies, which we used to sing loudly and orders came out to the effect that the national anthem of Egypt was not to be parodied, were to be sung to it. They were rude parodies to, they were pro-German,

we understood so and we always kept the Arabs at arms length, we never let them get close to us. They respected us because the Australian Army had been before with the slouch hat and they knew what to expect and anyone with a slouch hat they kept away from. We were not allowed to let them come any closer to us. The instruction was that I never had to do, was that if they went for a knife you didn’t go for the band, you went for the

blade and cut your hand because they’d just transfer it from one hand to another. We were told not to let them get within 3 feet of us, and we didn’t let them do that. We didn’t have much respect, we used to annoy them if given the chance the Arabs because they weren’t offensive but you know.

We didn’t know anything about them. We knew the fall of Singapore, we knew the loss of ships there that was devastating, so was the sinking of the HMAS Sydney. The effects on the Australian mainland, we didn’t know. We knew it was attacked, we didn’t know what extent. We didn’t know until after the war the extent,

it was kept secret.

Was it just? No wars are just are they really. Was it a just war? The same thing could be applied if you ask the question was the recent battle in Iraq a just war? If there is a dictator like that and has to be removed and they have tried all

ways of removing him and there was no way of removing Hitler and there was no way that the Iraq people could rid themselves of Saddam. Is it just? The oppressor has to be removed by some means. War was justified. So to answer your question I suppose yes, it was just. When you think of the Jews who were being slaughtered,

was it a just war, was it justified? You have got to say, “Yes” don’t you?

I think after 8 hours, I think I have done a pretty good job. My main interest is to see that the efforts of the unit that I served with have been recorded.

Yes, I do think that. We were given our deferred pay, we were given recognition, we were given medals for our service.

Since the war any disability I have had, I have been looked after by a very generous government. I have no complaints at all, yes we have been looked after and I think the majority were. I think the government has looked after us very well. Yes, we have been recompensed. We were not looking for any great home coming but we were given medals to show our service and

given our discharge certificate. You can get a certificate now if you want to put it up on your wall, yes I think the government has amply repaid us and recognised us with what we have done.

I was honoured to get that

and more recently also to get the Centenary Medal. I have both those to add to the bar now. It was very nice to get it and recognised what I have done, the only down side was that my wife couldn’t share it with me. After all she helped me get there. So yes it was a recognition of what I have done and

a lot of it was done by my sister who put the case forward.

Mainly for service to the veteran community and St John Ambulance and the last one was as Chairman of the District Board, as President here. I was also delegate to a District Board, which controls the sub branches in this area. They have since been disbanded, the RSL have revamped their structure.

The District Boards controlled about 8 sub branches in this area. There are now 36 in a region and I am taking a back seat, I am not participating. I am just sharing my job here as Chairman and I ceased to be a State Councillor as at 30 June because of the new strata in the RSL. I have permanent membership of the District Board because of my years of service and that was also cited in the centenary medal.

This is a role which was introduced by the North Balwyn Sub Branch, some RSLs do it but we particularly the Roman Catholic schools, we go to both St Bridget’s and St Bedes. St Bedes down in North Balwyn, they do put out the red carpet for us. We go down there with a team of about 12 fellows and they all put their medals up and they items of memorabilia, not that mass of

memorabilia I showed you, but I take down the housewife and a few things to to show the kiddies. They are very interested and they welcome us and what’s more the teachers welcome us. This is something new you know. So much so that they bring in a morning tea that is fitting, a very lovely morning tea they put on for us and after we go to the rooms and speak for about three quarters of an hour and they ask us questions and we give them a little bit of a story and they ask all sorts of questions.

I’ll tell you one of those questions in a minute, remind me. The boys come out the front and we go into the assembly room and we have a stand too. We have our flags there and Ivor White, he usually takes the flags there, he dips them at the last post which I have on tape and then I invite the children to sing “Advance Australia Fair”. I was going to lead them off with my voice,

but after about the first words they took over and seeing those little tots all different nationalities singing “Australia Fair”, it is very hard to keep a straight face. We go to the schools and we go to St Bridget’s and they do similar, put morning tea on for us and we go to the schools and classrooms. I sent a letter off this week, we’re invited, we have seven schools in this area and with exception of one which is inconvenient we have offered them

the fact that during Remembrance Week this week we will attend the other 4 schools, if they want us to attend assembly we will take team of half a dozen fellows down and we’ll go to the school and let them ask us questions because the children are very interested. Particularly we have fellows from the Navy, from the 3 services and one of our nursing sisters, who was in the Middle East, she came down

to St Bedes and a little bit of story about that and she was there with her medals up and one of the little girls said, “Where did you buy those?” She quickly informed that, “She didn’t buy them but she earned them”. So asking a nursing sister where she bought her medals was rather a thing to get over but the kiddy didn’t know so she explained that she earned them, where she served and all the rest of it. Different story. She has quite a long story that girl. She lives quite locally here. She is not a girl now, she is a lady.

But the questions you get asked, I try not to leave myself open for questions in open forum but this particular day I think the secretary said, “Does anyone want to ask the President a question?” One little tot, a little tiny tot with eyes peering up to me, she said, “Why do they have wars?”

So I said to her, “Have you got a brother?” “No, I haven’t got a brother”, I said, “Have you got a sister?” “Yes I’ve got a sister”. “Do you have any fights with her?” “Yes” I said, “That is why they have wars”. “Oh”. “That is why nations have wars.” She couldn’t get on with her sister. “I said that is why nations have wars.” So I don’t know how I got out of that question, it was a sticky one wasn’t it?

Bye now.