Australians at War Film Archive

Okay my name is Edward Francis Browne spelt B R O W N E. I was born on the 17th of September 1925 in the small town of Elmore, which has a population of nine hundred people. Elmore is situated half way between Bendigo and Echuca in north central Victoria.

I was born into a family of eleven children, six girls five boys [whose names are: Kathleen, Eileen, Francis, Kevin, Hilary, Patricia, Marie, Gerard, Mary, Noel and John]. I went to school at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart School in Elmore. I did my merit certificate and left school and my first job was for three months with the local bookmaker. Always having in mind that

eventually I would apply for a position in the Postmaster Generals Department [in Melbourne]. I passed the Postmaster General’s exam and was appointed to the post office in Rushworth Victoria. Whilst in Rushworth I decided that I would like to join the air force because the postmaster there was teaching prospective air crew members

to be proficient in the Morse Code and I was studying the Morse Code and I thought well I could be a wireless air gunner. But one day while riding the bicycle down to the post office I decided I wanted to join the navy because I could join the navy at seventeen years of age. So I applied to the navy to join as a telegraphist fully qualified. Which meant that you had to send and

receive twenty words per minute. I failed to accomplish that but was proficient at about eighteen words per minute. So eventually they said they would take me into the navy but shortly after that I received a certificate saying I was in a reserved occupation and that they were no longer interested in me. But I have forgotten now, I circumvented that and

and I was taken into the navy and eventually became a telegraphist. Just harking back to Elmore if I may, it was during the Depression days and of course they were the bad old days, but as children we didn’t seem to understand the ramifications of the Depression except that we noticed people

wandering through the town with swags on their backs. Little did we realise that they were fellows who had unfortunately lost their job and were trying to eke out a living as best as they could. So they were bad old days.. my father [Edward Charles Browne] was sacked as a grocer but re-instated part time. He worked as a barman

for a short time, he worked as a curator at the local golf course for a short time and when the war commenced in 1939 he apparently decided that it would be more beneficial for him to join the army. He had served for four years in the First World War and had been seriously ill with Spanish flu. He eventually went in the army for six

years, got an allowance for all of these children he had and all of a sudden the Brownes had a little bit more money than usual. So that was one benefit of the Second World War. I eventually got into the navy, I served for over three years, I saw active service on the HMAS Shropshire and HMAS Hobart. I served in

New Guinea, Morotai, Halmaheras, Philippines, Corregidor, Borneo and eventually ended up in Japan in August 1945 for the signing of the surrender on the 2nd of September and we eventually got back to Australia on

about the 30th of November 1945 we continued with our normal duties on the ship and eventually went on the victory contingent trip to England. On the way back to Australia we had the very pleasant task of calling into Wewak to pick up six hundred Australian Army personnel.

And they were delighted to leave Wewak of course and travel in the luxury of the HMAS Shropshire or so they stated. The trip to England lasted four months, we took over the Australian contingent, which consisted of about two hundred and fifty-five people and included about nineteen women. The contingent

slept under canvas in one of the main parks in London and that was marvellous to see: about thirty thousand allied troops or contingents from various countries march through London. On my return to Australia I was discharged form the navy and returned to the Postmaster Generals Department where I was offered a telegraphist position. I told them I was no longer interested in

that it had just about caused me to go deaf from all of the noise we used to get through the headphones. So I then joined the administrative area of the PMG [Postmaster Generals] Department and worked there until 1978 when I was discharged invalidity mainly to hearing

and other associated navy problems. Since then I have kept reasonably good health. I have been able to participate at a fairly reasonable level in bowls, I continue to bowl for the Rosanna Bowling Club. I am interested in family. [I have been happily married to the former Rita Elizabeth Field for over 53 years, we have 4 children, Leighton, Mark, Genevieve and Anna and 9 grandchildren, all of whom we love dearly.]

and I get a great buzz out of seeing them all.

Well my mother [the former Eileen Maher] was a wonderful person as all mothers are of course. She was

had to bring up eleven children which was no mean effort on the salary my father managed to get as a grocer. I of course left home when I was one month over fifteen and I perhaps wasn’t home when I should have been in those teenage

years when a mother’s influence would have been just marvellous. I used to get home every fortnight from Rushworth, mind you Rushworth was only about twenty-seven miles from Elmore but when you had to pay money to go on the coach and get back you thought twice about spending the money, because I think I was getting about sixty-two pounds a year those days; a pound a week plus an allowance for living away from home.

My mother was a very kind person. Wonderful cook. She was able to conjure up all sorts of things for us in difficult times. I recall that we were always very neatly dressed,

I can’t speak too highly of her. But I don’t remember a lot of other details about her except that she was most supportive for the children. She was involved in a few activities around the town, mainly of course after the children were getting a little bit older, when she didn’t have to care for them

quite so much. I really can’t tell you much more about her at the moment. She died in the Heidelberg Hospital here [Melbourne] in 1977 I think was at the age of about seventy-five.

Well my father was born in 1897

he served for four years in the 23rd Battalion of the first AIF [Australian Imperial Force] as a foot soldier and also as a bandsman.

We’ll start again?

Well he served for four years in the 23rd Battalion overseas.

He joined the army as soon as he turned eighteen in 1915. At the end of the war he contracted Spanish flu, which laid him low for many months. He was lucky to survive when you think that in one single year twenty-five million people died from the Spanish flu. On his return to Australia

he was a very sick man and spent many times travelling to Melbourne to stay at the Caulfield Repat[riation] Hospital. They used to say, “That poor Ted Browne with all of those children.” They didn’t think he would last very long but he made it to about eighty-one years of age.

And remarkably he seemed to get better as he got older. The 20s and 30s were bad times for him but in 1939 he joined the army and served for six years in that. He didn’t go overseas, he didn’t join to go overseas, he joined the garrison and he was stationed at camps

up around the north eastern part of Victoria. At Dhurringile and Tatura. Around the area where I worked in Rushworth there were seven army camps. Five were internment camps, one was a prisoner of war camp, and I have forgotten what the other one was, probably an internment camp. My father became a sergeant in 1939 and remained a sergeant for

six years because by doing that he managed to get more allowances for his children. And also he didn’t have to worry about being an officer because they did in fact offer him officer training on a number of occasions but financially he was far better off being a sergeant. He had his own hut at Tatura Number One Internment Camp,

and I recall on a number of occasions riding my bicycle over from Rushworth to Tatura and staying with him overnight. Which was rather unusual that a fifteen or sixteen year old boy could stay in an army camp overnight. After he came out of the army he found that there was

very little to keep him in Elmore, jobs were scarce. So he decided to move down to Melbourne in 1949 and he worked at the Repatriation Hospital in Heidelberg. He eventually brought his family down to Melbourne and they lived in Heidelberg for a number of years. I returned there and lived at home once again, after leaving home at fifteen

I returned at about twenty-four years of age until I got married in 1951. My father was a very good bandsman. He eventually was the bandmaster of the Elmore Band. And in those days all of the reasonably sized towns had brass

bands and my father was the bandmaster of that. He also used to play the drums in a local three-piece band. And I think three-piece bands in those days consisted of piano, saxophone and drums. And he used to go around to some of the local dances and play the drums. He was quite a

reasonable sportsman and played in the premiership team, believe it or not, in Elmore, believe it or not after all of his illness’ with the Spanish flu. He was a reasonable cricketer. And one of my sisters still has a crystal bowl he won playing cricket for the army in 1941 or something, he scored the first century for the team. So he was quite a reasonable sportsman.

My father died in the Macleod Repatriation Hospital in 1978.

I don’t recall him saying a lot about the war. I know I used to try and get him to open up

occasionally, but he didn’t say a lot. But in those days it was fairly common practice to get around a piano and sing the First World War songs. That was quite entertaining for a young fellow like myself and I learnt a lot of those songs. He had no objection

strangely enough, to me joining the navy. As a seventeen year old I had to obtain my parents consent to join the navy and he had no objection. My mother was the one who objected very strongly. Probably realising how ill my father had become through his service and the fact that he was away in the army once again.

I don’t recall much. I used to hear names like Pozières, Villers-Bretonneux, Ypres, or Ypes however they pronounce it. All of these places where my father had been, but I only learnt that later on by looking at his service record and talking to other people. No he didn’t say a lot about the

war.

I don’t recall any of those either. I don’t recall him going to any 23rd Battalion reunions.

But I do know that he was in great demand on Anzac Day because he was always required to play the “Last Post” somewhere being a cornet player and a fine bandsman they always wanted Ted Browne to play the “Last Post” somewhere.

No I don’t recall

ever going to an Anzac Day with my father.

Well just generally his health was poor.

He was always a tall thinnish man but as the years rolled on he seemed to get much thinner than usual, and I think that was a result of the Spanish flu. But for all of that he developed into a fairly wiry sort of fellow. He was fortunate enough not to be wounded but

got the flu, I think he was lucky to recover from that or at least tolerate it.

Well I don’t think he ever did quite recover, but I recall seeing some paper saying that his health was so poor that

he should never do anything in the army other than be in the garrison battalion. So that suggested that even in the 30s and 40s he was still fairly ill, but able to play cricket. So he wasn’t too bad I suppose.

My earliest recollection about me personally I stepped around the side of the house when I was about three years old and put my bare foot into a broken sauce bottle and made quite a gash in the inner aspect of the left foot as they call it.

I was fortunate enough that living next door to us was an old nurse who tied up the foot and rushed me to the doctor who stitched it up. Without any chloroform in those days much to the chagrin of my mother who nearly hit him. He was generous enough to give her a bunch of flowers after the operation.

I think he was in such a hurry to do something about it, to stem the flow of blood that he didn’t worry about giving me any chloroform. I went to school at Our Lady of the Sacred Heat catholic school. It was a wooden building with a very high ceiling and we used to have a great deal of fun with our

pens that we used to write. They had a nib and we used to dip them in the ink and we used to write and it was very important those days that you wrote properly and were able to spell words properly. But with these pens we caused our parents a lot of hardship by always having to replace them because when the nuns weren’t watching

we had a great knack of laying them on our hand and flicking them up and getting it to stay in the ceiling. So you would look around the ceiling and there would be pens everywhere, that was great sport. We played the usual things up there, cricket and football. We had a paddock next to the school. Unfortunately along one side of the paddock was a great box thorn hedge

so the footballs used to get punctured quite often. We used to play alleys or marbles, whatever you like to call them. I was never much good at that. One of my friends used to wait for me after I had gone to the newsagent to buy one or two so he could win them from me.

We used to do a lot of bird nesting in those days, used to get the eggs out of the nest and we would get a collection of various eggs. I suppose that is taboo today but that’s what we used to do. I don’t know how we managed to obtain it but my brother and I had a football, my late brother Kevin.

And we used to kick that along the bank of Campaspe River at the back of the Catholic Church and this particular time the river was in flood. And my brother had kicked the football accidentally into the flooded river. And I said to Kevin, “Well you kicked it in; it is the only ball we have got and we are unlikely to get another one. You have to go in and get it.” so he took notice of me

being the elder by two years and he jumped into the river and he very nearly drowned. He was lucky to reach the bank again, we never told Mum about that. We used to see men wandering through the town with their bags on their backs and they were an item of interest for us. Little did we know that they were

men out of work, with families probably. Going wherever they could to obtain some work or something to eat. I don’t recall them knocking on our door but I think they used to go more to the farmhouses because they had more chance of getting something to eat there.

The other, mind you the Depression to a child didn’t mean a lot. We weren’t old enough to quite understand it. We did see people sometimes without shoes or shoes that were damaged, strangers wandering

through the town but apart from that there is not much that I remember about the Depression. We always had food to eat and clothes to wear, so we probably didn’t realise just how bad it was for lots of other people.

Well fortunately my

father had part time work as a grocer and he would fill in an hour or two at one of the hotels in Elmore, get a few shillings there. And apart from that I don’t know how we survived. I think the wage in those days might have been about

five pound a week or something, I have forgotten now.

Well rabbit was very nice, someone would give us a rabbit occasionally. I had a great friend George McCormick who died a short while back; they had a farm

and we used to go out there and trap rabbits or shoot rabbits with the pea rifle. That was a source of food. I recall that I was required to ride an old bicycle three miles on an unsealed road out to an old farmhouse to get milk. Now that was a dangerous thing to be riding on those unsealed roads in

wet weather, many the times that the billy fell off the bike and I lost the milk. The same people used to give me a cabbage or something out of the garden occasionally. I didn’t realise just how tough things were in those days, I thought they were just generous people giving us milk and a

cabbage or some other vegetables. Other things we lived on, I seem to recall that dripping wasn’t bad on bread with a little bit of pepper and salt on it. Probably toast for breakfast stews, I don’t know what they were made out of. No I don’t recall, Mum was a very good cook

so there is no doubt she made a lot of fine meals and she could always make wonderful cakes so there was no problem there.

Yes I would say it was a normal happy childhood.

Because we were such a large family we had our particular duties that we had to do around the house. Mine was always ensuring that there was always kindling around to light, we used to always call it a “wood fire” stove, but I learnt many years later that they called them a “one fire” stove and I had to ensure that the kindling was there to light the fire in the morning because we had no other heating.

except fireplaces in two or three rooms and the wood stove in the kitchen. I had to make sure that there were chips for the old chip heater so that we could have a bath occasionally.

I did the examination for the post office telegraph messenger when I was fourteen and I was actually fifteen and one month when I left home and went to Rushworth to live and work in the post office, the position was quite interesting because whilst it was classed as a

telegraph messenger, I was telegraph messenger, I was mailman, I was postman, I was assistant behind the counter selling stamps and what have you and I was also a night telephonist. You used to get that duty occasionally and you would sleep at the exchange. Fortunately you didn’t get many calls but when the alarm went off you certainly got a great shock

because it was a huge thing on the wall and it certainly woke you up in a hurry. In Rushworth I learnt the Morse code and I eventually became a telegraphist in the navy.

Well I think it was a bit like joining the navy, it was an adventure. I was fortunate enough to be taken as a boarder in a particular home. They were wonderful people and looked after us well. I remember the owner of the place was the local blacksmith and it used to be fun going over and seeing him use that hammer. I had a very good friend boarding with me,

a man named Arthur Weymouth who came from a tiny little place in Victoria called Speed. And he worked in one of the banks. Arthur was a great friend and he joined the RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] and became a fighter pilot. And as he was flying a Hurricane in - as they called it in those days - the East Indies, he was shot down. The records state

he was killed in an air battle, so whatever the air battle was, I am unsure. It was a wonderful time for me in Rushworth because I learned a bit about life, I learned to dance, ballroom dancing in those days was a great thing. We even used to go out to the local internment camps to

dances because the soldiers based there were always pleased to see the local ladies go out there and dance with them. That was great fun. We used to go out to the Waranga Basin, which is very close to Rushworth. A huge area of water and we used to have a lot of fun on a boat and trying to catch a fish or looking at the great outlet there that

releases the water and that water pushes its way along the Waranga Channel all of the way to Ouyen. There was always something to do, it was an interesting town because there was always something going on. Whether it was a bit underhand or somebody was interested in someone, there was always something going on. And it was an eye opener to a fifteen year old in those days.

I don’t know. I seem to recall that one person ended up in gaol for doing something. I forget what he did. I don’t think he was a bad fellow by any means but he just got caught doing something.

I don’t know I suppose it was just being in a different area, different way of life and there were lots of interesting things. Just out of Rushworth there is a place called Whroo, W H R O O which is about five miles from Rushworth. Now a derelict gold mine out there called the “Continental” I think it was

and the owner of that mine, with the money that he got from mining the gold built the Menzies Hotel in Melbourne, so that was quite a talking point. I remember a young lady that I used to talk to down the Murchison Road there, her father had a sawmill at the railways station. I think there were six or

seven sawmills operating in those days, you know these great big steam engines and the saw benches and they were constantly cutting up wood from the forest putting it in railways trucks to send to Melbourne. And that was their living up there for many many years. With these steam engines and cutting up the amount of wood.

This same fellow had a little gold mine of his own just out of Rushworth so it was fun going down there and seeing what he did, how he dug out, I think he only got a few specs there nothing much. and we used to go out to Whroo, ride our bikes out there and go along these dangerous tunnels in the Continental mine. There would be shafts with rotten wood and we

would be stepping over, today it is a tourist attraction. They cleaned it out or blocked up some of the dangerous shafts and they have one long shaft and the tourists walk through there and read a little bit about it, learn about the old days when they were getting gold out of there. And they have a wonderful forest there.

What do they call it? I can’t think of it, but it is a black tree. It has got, has lovely red wood and it polished up beautifully, and they have got a lot of trees around there and that very gravely country which suggests straight away that there has got to be gold there somewhere.

I recall that there was an old cemetery just out there at Whroo. There was a number of Chinese around there in the old days, even when I was working in Rushworth we used to send a mailbag out there, I think there were about five families there, no one there these days.

Well of course they were all gone when I lived there except for one particular family who were very fine people and I think they might have been descendants from those early Chinese.

Going to Rushworth? Well Dad I don’t think worried too much, perhaps he thought I was closer to him, and I was much closer to him, he was just a few miles out at the Tatura Camp and I could ride the bike out and see him. And when he was going on leave he would call in to see me and usually hand me ten shillings which was most

welcome. So obviously he was getting a few dollars for all of the children, allowances so he had a few extra bob in those days. Mum was pretty worried about me going over there and I recall the first day I went over there to Rushworth she came with me and sat with me at the side of the road and we had something to eat and didn’t say much.

And she sort of waved goodbye and caught the bus back to Elmore and left her dear little Franky there to work in the post office.

Empire? Well of course in those days they used to talk about King and Empire and in the navy

it was fear God honour the King. I don’t think I had any strong views on it, it was a word that was mentioned. We realised that we were part of the British Empire. And when you looked at the atlas you saw that Australia was marked in red as

all of the other parts of the British Empire were shown in the atlas. So we were aware that we were part of the Empire but apart from that I don’t think I had any specific thought about the matter.

We had I remember we used to talk about

“Empire Day, the 24th of May, if we don’t get a holiday we’ll all run away”. You know this was at school and attending a Catholic School, I don’t recall that we got a holiday on Empire Day. I do recall however that we always got a holiday on my mother’s birthday because she was born on the 15th of August,

which in the Catholic religion is the Assumption of Our Lady into heaven. So that was great. I used to look forward to my mothers birthday because I always got a holiday from school.

At school yes the nuns were very strict. In fact looking back or thinking back

you saw how strict they were. It was nothing for them to really make your hands pretty warm with the great strap that they used to use. I suppose the discipline didn’t go astray but when you think of the minor breaches that there

were and the discipline that was metered out, it was pretty severe I think.

Probably talking in school, simple things and that might get six cuts of the cane as they used to say. Perhaps walking along the wrong

side of the school or talking to the girls, you know something which was rather minor.

No it was normal practice in those days to try and obtain your Merit Certificate which was eighth grade, and if you achieved your Merit Certificate you had achieved quite a bit. Very few people

went on to do their sub-intermediate and intermediate mainly because of economic problems. Very few people could afford to send their children to school on further than eighth grade, and of course some of the children left earlier than eighth grade and weren’t all that interested in getting their Merit Certificate, they were just trying to

survive, trying to get a job. There weren’t many about. My first few months after leaving school was with the bootmaker and that was all right. But I really never had any intention of staying there, it was just a bit of income for the family, help your parents. And I did that

examination for the post office and fortunately passed and obtained a position in the post office and that was great in those days. Lots of people aimed at getting into the government public service because you thought of it as a secure position. A position where, if you showed any promise, you could always achieve something.

And that was great to get into those government departments in those days.

I think he was a bit like his son Frank he was looking for the big adventure. My grandmother, his mother was pretty adamant I believe

that he was not going to join the army until he turned eighteen. So almost immediately as he turned eighteen he joined the army. But I think with a lot of Australians in those days. What did they know? What had they seen? Where had they been? Bush boys, never seen a thing other than their own tiny little town.

Even in my day as a child I didn’t see much either. Occasional trip to Bendigo twenty-eight miles away. I don’t ever recall going to Melbourne, I do recall going on a steam train picnic to Marmsbury, which was up past Bendigo. But getting back to my father he would have been like thousands of others, sea trips,

seeing foreign countries, seeing the way people in other countries operate, new ways, new languages, it must have been a great thrill for those people to get away from Australia. Particularly the fellows who left in the earlier days because they still didn’t realise what a terrible war the First

World War was, when thousands and thousands of people were being killed in a particular day. So I think his thoughts about joining the army would have changed dramatically and rather early once he got to Egypt and France and Belgium and some of those places.

I don’t believe so.

Mind you there could have been quite a few people who did that. In particular people with close connection to England. Now there were a lot of English people living in Australia in those days and they probably saw it as their duty to go and fight for King and Country. Even though the war was so far from

Australia it didn’t matter. As for patriotic fervour I don’t recall my father showing a lot of that. Mind you he was proud of his country but when you go walking around waving the flag and do this that and the other thing for your country, I don’t think he would have been that type.

Yes I was brought up in the Catholic faith, we used to have all sorts of holy days and processions and singing in the choir and being an altar boy. I was an altar boy for a number of

years and I was true to the Catholic faith until I was about fifty. And I decided that this was just not for me any longer. I think the fact that they brought in a lot of new things and it seemed to be that nearly every Sunday they were tacking on something extra and keeping you in the

church longer. So I could feel myself getting very tense and I thought this is not for me. So apart from very special occasions such as funerals I don’t think I have been to mass since I was about fifty.

I don’t think so. I think it was building up over a couple of years, whilst I appreciated all that the nuns and the priests had tried to do for me, I felt that it was time to sever most connections with the Catholic faith. I do in fact visit a dear old friend of mine who is eighty years of age and is still a nun,

but I knew her before she became a nun and you know things have changed dramatically over the years, there are very few nuns about nowadays.

Well it was a very big thing for all people I think. Most people had some sort of religious persuasion.

Mainly the Catholics, the Presbyterians, the Church of England and the Methodists in my town of Elmore. And I think all of those people were rather strong in the direction of their faith. I felt that on occasions this was evident because I

felt that perhaps certainly Catholics didn’t like those people because they might have been Methodists or something else and vice versa. The Anglicans weren’t all that happy with that. Not that they came out and said, “I hate you because you’re a Catholic.” They used to sing songs, “Proddie dogs jump like frogs in and out of the water logs.” That’s what we used to say to the non-Catholics and they used to call us “Tykes” and

all sorts of other names. But this was good banter I think. We used to play football against them at school. There was none of this business you’re non-Catholic or something. That didn’t worry us much as kids. It was mostly the older people are the ones who become

affected . You see children these days, wonderful they are kids, all sorts of denominations, colours and they are having a ball, it doesn’t matter what their colour is, where they come from, they are all in there having a ball. It is as they get older they see he is a bit darker than I am, don’t like him much. He has got an Asian face, don’t like him much, it is a shame that as people get older then the divisions come. But as

children marvellous . And we didn’t worry whether we were Catholics, Protestants, what the heck we were. So we got along well as children.

Well there would be the occasional punch up but that was nothing much. We used to have punch ups between ourselves at school. This fellow at school, I was a bit afraid of him, he chased me home a couple of times and gave me a whack or two. But no I don’t think that worried us a great deal.

Nothing as a child. I don’t recall hearing anything about what was happening in Europe. I don’t ever recall hearing about Hitler, Mussolini these people at school. We were probably too busy still learning our catechism.

Well when I started reading the newspaper I started to think, “Well something is going on over there.” Once again because Australia was such a long way away from Europe and I could never envisage myself being in Europe or even up in

Darwin later on for that matter, you didn’t think that much about it. You thought the Allies have won this town or that battle, that’s was about all. And you didn’t really hear a lot about Hitler. We knew he invaded Poland and annexed a few other countries

but I think it was so far away that we didn’t worry all that much.

Well I don’t ever recall him discussing it with me.

I don’t think he was a man who was all that interested in politics. He probably like a number of others read the papers, knew that some of our young fellows from Elmore and district had joined the army and had gone overseas. This is of course later on, this is in the early 40s

and everyone became much more interested in what was going on overseas then with the Germans in Africa, and a few of the fellows flying over Europe in aircrew. It because more interested and more aware of what was happening I think.

Yes, it was 1939, I was in Elmore and I don’t remember it very clearly except that they had mentioned that a war had begun in Europe and that was about it I think. I remember the occasion but

nothing much more except that England has declared war on Germany. And I think we might have read that in the paper or if you had a radio you might have heard it on the radio or the “wireless” I think we used to call it.

Well we knew of course that Australia had immediately volunteered to be a part of the group to fight overseas and they seem to do that a lot don’t they? As soon as there is a war on, Australians are off everywhere. That was

a war which was still a long way away and not of all that much concern to Australia except that our men were going to go over there and once again be killed in a foreign war.

I don’t think I had any great thought s on it as a fourteen year old. I don’t think I thought much about it.

Well it was pretty obvious that a war was on because there were soldiers everywhere around where I was working. Having seven army camps in close proximity to Rushworth it made you think a bit more about the war.

Our fellows over there, letters coming from overseas troops. I was delivering these letters and you know talking to the families of these people. I remember talking to a young woman who worked for a time at the post office and whose husband had just been

posted missing over Europe. Never ever returned, never discovered what happened to him. So they were sad things and they brought home to you the fact that this thing was pretty serious overseas, that Australians were getting killed.

No I went to Rushworth in 1940 so I was still in Elmore when the war commenced.

Not a lot, a lot more letters coming

through the post office and lots more food parcels going out too. And they used to have a way of doing those up. They would pack them either in tins or something to try and keep the old fruitcake moist for a few months and then they would wrap them in some sort of material and stitch them up. It wasn’t just a brown paper parcel they would have to

make these food parcels, tie them up in this calico or something and stitch them all up. Print the name of the soldier or airman on the calico.

None whatsoever except when you went out to

these army camps; they would have a look at you but they weren’t too concerned about it.

Well I had just turned seventeen. This was in 1942 and because I was learning the Morse code and because the postmaster in the post office was teaching young men Morse code, these young men who

had aspirations of becoming air crew members of the Royal Australian Air Force I thought that might be for me and I would probably do all right as a telegraphist, not thinking that the job was a wireless air gunner and that a wireless air gunner on those bombers was not a very pleasant job to have. So anyway I thought about that and the air force said, “No

you can’t get in until you’re eighteen.” So I thought well the navy will take you at seventeen and a half so I made approaches to Older Fleet Building in Collins Street in Melbourne and they sent me all sorts of papers and I thought I would join the navy. And I said I was a telegraphist of sorts,

almost qualified at twenty words per minute. You had to send and receive twenty words per minute, now that was words, not just from and to and like that, it was five-letter words, sort of as they used to transmit it in code in the navy. So you had to send and receive twenty of those five-letter groups.

I went down there and things were coming along pretty well and then I received a notice saying, and I still have it to this day, saying “Mr Browne because you are in a reserved occupation we are no longer interested” I you trying to get into the navy. Or words to that effect. I didn’t accept that but I am not quite sure how I circumvented it.

But it wasn’t long of course, a few months and negotiations got on track again and they eventually called me up into the navy. There was usually quite a wait to get into the navy, we people who joined the navy claimed that they were looking for the better type of person to join the navy. I don’t think that’s quite right but they were very

strict with the examinations, healthwise and eyesight and all of that sort of thing. And of course the navy being much smaller than the other services they didn’t require as many people. So I eventually went in just before I turned

eighteen. So I had my eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first birthdays in the navy.

Well it seemed an exciting thing to do, flying around in those beautiful aircraft, not thinking that someone might try to shoot you down. It is like some of these football coaches, you have got to have a positive

attitude, can’t be negative otherwise the club becomes negative you see so you’re always positive about these things. You’re always going to survive. You’re always going to have a good time you’re going to see new countries and you’re going to be the daring young flying man.

I have no idea. Being in the middle of Victoria, why would I be

interested in the navy? I don’t think I had ever seen the sea. I think the fact that I was keen to get into the services for some unknown reason and I could get into the navy at an earlier age. And I think I might have been the only, well for some time, the only one from Elmore to join the navy. My dear old friend

eventually joined the navy as a signalman, we were the only two from Elmore to be in the navy.

Because I was in the government service I suppose. I was speaking to a person recently my age. He was in England

during all of the war and they wouldn’t let him go in the services because he was highly skilled in making a particular part in the engine of the fighter planes. So they said, “No you’re not going in the service, we want you in that.” I am not saying that my job was that important but because I was in a Commonwealth Public Service area, maybe the navy were trying to shake me off because they had enough people anyway.

Or they had been told that anyone from the Postmaster Generals Department can’t go in the Royal Australian Navy.

No I didn’t have to go. I was a volunteer like most other people in those days.

I attempted to go straight into the navy as a fully qualified telegraphist being able to pass twenty words a minute in sending and receiving. I just failed to do that and I was rather downhearted about that, if you passed that you had a very short time in the navy depot

and then you were put on a ship because you were qualified telegraphist. But then they offered me a position that I could come in as a seaman and should they start a course for telegraphist I could immediately transfer. So that’s exactly what happened, I was in there in no time at all and they

started another course and I was able to join that. And I had a very happy time because I was almost qualified anyway as a telegraphist and some of these fellows were battling with the Morse code, and I had quite a good time. Perhaps too much so because

I might have played up on occasions and spoken out of turn because our chief telegraphist who was instructing us, a fellow named Vic Curtain a very nice fellow anyway, he said, “Browne, do you see that flag pole up the hill?” which was about a mile away. “Just run up around that a couple of times.” This was to regain a bit of discipline.

I trained at HMAS Cerberus which is down at Crib Point in Victoria and I was down there longer than I needed to be really, I could have been drafted as we said in the navy to a ship or shore establishment or wherever but I had to wait for the other fellows in the class to get their twenty

words per minute and then we were drafted. And in retrospect I think I was happy about going to what we termed one of the big fighting ships, a heavy cruiser the HMAS Shropshire.

Well it was a rather pleasant time.

The discipline was strict you had to do a lot of PT [physical training], even though I was a telegraphist or aspiring to be one, I still had to do a week at the torpedo school, a week at the gunnery school handling guns and firing the old-fashioned machine guns. A week somewhere else, go through the fire fighting

drills, through the gas chamber, it was all new and exciting stuff. We played sport. I remember playing football against one of Collingwood’s champions who kept me scoreless until half time and when the ball came down he said, “Your turn Frank, have a kick.”

I think it was

Marcus Boyle. He was one of Collingwood’s champions; anyway far too good for me.

I can’t pick up what you’re saying.

I think it might have been. The we were in the school in the wireless school and whilst the seamen did all sorts of

jobs and all sorts of unpleasant tasks, like well as they did on the ship they had to learn to scrub decks, to be out in the weather, tying up ships and doing all sorts of knots and handling ropes and different canvas things. It was a bit hard for them, easier for us, but this is where the Merit Certificate came in.

You had to have your Merit Certificate to become a telegraphist. According to some old papers, which I have here. Where as I don’t think it was obligatory for stokers and seamen to have a Merit Certificate but they still had to pass some sort of an educational test to get in the navy.

Well I had never used one of those old-fashioned 303s, when I say “old fashioned” they still used them in the Second World War didn’t they? But the Lee Enfield or whatever they called them. The ones we were using were certainly the First World War vintage ones. And the Vickers machine gun, which was a First World War machine gun. Actually I think I used to be afraid of those guns, they used to make a hell of a lot of

noise and you had to be particularly careful which direction you were firing it in. Firing the big Lee Enfield at targets I suppose was a bit of fun.

Well they probably were a little bit tougher to the normal say

wireless telegraphy course week. You had a lot of people there shouting at you and telling you what to do and trying to maintain discipline. But we used to live with the thought well we’re only here for a week and then back to the wireless telegraphy classroom. So it didn’t worry us too much. But there was a lot of discipline

and a lot of shouting. A lot of these sailors, particularly petty officers and chief petty officers, had been in the navy for some years. A lot of them had joined during the Depression days and risen through the ranks back in the 30s and they weren’t slow at showing their authority.

I think we used to think well we have got to grin and bear this. Try not to step out of line, there is always tomorrow and we won’t let them get on top of us. One interesting thing when I first went to HMAS Cerberus was that a

young fellow came down from Queensland and contracted pneumonia and died. So the petty officer, who was training us on the parade ground at the time said, “Troops this is a great opportunity for you fellows. I am going to teach you how to slow march. And then we are going to do it tomorrow or the next day at a funeral.” So we had to learn to

slow march very quickly, because we had to slow march behind this poor young fellow’s coffin. We marched for somewhere near the parade ground to the cemetery at HMAS Cerberus, it is still there and they still use it as a cemetery. But it has always been known as “Boot Hill” for some reason, I can’t imagine why a name like that should be in the navy but it is known as the Boot Hill Cemetery.

So we had to slow march all that way behind the coffin of this young fellow. And that was my introduction to slow marching, I had only been in the navy for a few short weeks.

Well I had a friend. I used to ride the PMG bike around and stop a bit longer than usual in front of her place when I was delivering the letters. We communicated during the navy, nothing too serious, it was just a contact back in Rushworth. I think I communicated with two or three different people. And this same person, my wife and I visit her when we

go up to the Gold Coast, where she moved to in recent times. So nothing steady, no steady girlfriends. But I was interested in meeting these people and talking to them and dancing with them and perhaps walking them home and kissing them on the cheek or something like that.

I was drafted to HMAS Shropshire, which is a heavy cruiser and a heavy cruiser was the largest ship that the Australian Navy had. During the war we had three heavy cruisers The Shropshire, the Australia and the Canberra.

Yes I was drafted to the Shropshire in 1944 and that gave me my longest train trip because I went on a troop train from HMAS Cerberus in Crib Point Victoria up to Cairns. That took days. We were stopped at sidings at times to let other

troop trains get through and passenger trains and so it took a long time to get up there. From Cairns, after spending a few days there, I went on a small troops ships called the Canberra - not the HMAS Canberra which was sunk in 1942, but a troop ship called Canberra and from there I went to Milne Bay in New Guinea.

I stayed there for one week I think and from there I went to on to a supply ship called the Merkur M E R K U R which was the last German Kaiser’s personal ship. It was a huge yacht type ship but we used it in the navy as a supply ship. That was a pleasant few weeks,

I had to do a little bit of watch keeping I think as a telegraphist but because it had a swimming pool on it we were able to have a swim occasionally in the hot tropical area. We eventually got to Seeadler Harbour I think it was and I saw in the distance this huge ship, which turned

out to be the HMAS Shropshire I had been on the road or the sea for about five weeks before I eventually joined the Shropshire in July 44.

Well except that it was a rather small ship, there was mainly soldiers on that ship, where they were going I am not too sure. They probably got off at Milne Bay the same as I did. I just recall lounging around on that, lying on the deck, playing cards, having meals, nothing much else to do really.

Well we knew that there had been a battle there of course, the place was still seething with troops around there, mainly Americans and a number of Australians. I recall very little about the place where I stayed there for a

week. I do recall however that it used to rain every afternoon, just pour down. And within a couple of hours the big transports would be sending dust in all direction once again.

Oh just to talk to them and of course they had the occasional picture show and that was good fun until it started to rain. We did very little else. I was in transit trying to get to the Shropshire. Some people took longer than that to get where they were drafted to, but it took me about five weeks

to get from HMAS Cerberus in Crib Point to get to the Shropshire.

Oh they were mainly soldiers, there were a number of ships in the harbour on which would have been sailors of course and I am not sure what they were all doing around there at the time

because the war had gone up the coast a bit, it had gone up past Lae and Salamander and Finschhafen and those places and it had got a bit further up where the Shropshire had been bombarding. When I got on the Shropshire we were still trying to knock the Japs out in certain places in New Guinea and I was

at a couple of places, Aitape and Cape Sansapor.

Oh no I had seen plenty of them around about Melbourne and in Cairns,

although I don’t recall much about them in Cairns. There would have been troops there I would think but I was in the navy depot and was only there for a couple of days I suppose. I wouldn’t have been out anywhere I think I would have been at the depot preparing to get on this little troops ship.

Well of the army or the navy?

Well I would have to say that the Americans were pretty good. Most of my service was with American troops. See the Shropshire was part of the American Seventh Fleet.

When you consider of the seven hundred ships or so that went to the Philippines later on I think there were ten or so Australian ships. People unfortunately tend to forget about the contribution that the Australian Navy made, because it was so small. I saw mainly American troops, American sailors. I

didn’t see a lot of Australian soldiers, being in the navy you tend to be at sea most of the time.

We were more or less jealous I suppose. They had more money than you could shake a stick at. They could win all of the good-looking girls, I suppose

we were a bit jealous. I never came to fisticuffs with them. There were no hard feelings as far as I was concerned towards them. And I think in retrospect you have got to say that they did a pretty good job coming out to Australia where other countries would have forgotten about us. Mind you, it was to their advantage to be in Australia too because of the program they had set.

To beat the Japanese. No I used to say things like “Damn Yanks” or something but I think it was mainly jealousy.

No I don’t recall really talking to any.

In fact I don’t recall talking to many Americans at all. Except that when I was in the navy and I visited a battleship at one time, they were very friendly fellows and helpful and generous. I think you would have to say they were very generous people, generous with their money and help to Australia. I think they would be

they would rank pretty highly I think.

Yes that was an interesting ship it was. I don’t know when it was built. I would say pre-World War I. When was the last Kaiser? Yes it would have to be pre-World War I.

It was fitted out nicely as I recall. It had a swimming pool on it. Mind you it was fitted out as a supply ship. So you can imagine racks and rooms and holds and all sorts of things, nothing like the original ship. So there was nothing very beautiful about it inside because they had to carry all of these stores. But we just

passed the time away doing the usual chores of a telegraphists and having meals. Doing your washing and writing letters I suppose. The ship itself - because it was a store ship - it had become a bit tacky and knocked about.

I don’t remember a lot about it. I think we slept in bunks but I am not very clear about that.

I don’t think it would be very big at all. They had gunners,

telegraphists, seamen, my estimate could be quite a bit out. It was only a small supply ship. Being formerly known as a yacht, not a yacht with sails but a motorised vessel, no I wouldn’t

know, perhaps fifty odd.

Well just I was in transit so they didn’t require me to do much at all. It was, I don’t recall doing much at all. Wandering around having a look at their wireless office, showing interest in that.

Perhaps taking the occasional signal with the headphones on.

Air raids? No not while I was on the Merkur no. In fact not a lot of Japanese aircraft activity around that area in that time.

It was later on when they got a bit angry.

Rather extreme. Although I had a couple of days in Cairns, although July in Cairns is not very hot. Yes it was quite extreme.

You get the humidity and then you get those terrible downpours of rain and then the humidity would rise. Yes it was quite extreme and quite difficult to get used to for a start.

No not at that stage, later on. It wasn’t compulsory

but it was strongly suggested that we take salt tablets. They were a tablet that you took each meal time or once a day whatever it was, and there were always trays of those near where you had your meal. That was to counteract the perspiration that you lost in the tropics and to build you up again.

No other medication.

Well I can recall really the naval depot really well. It is a boring sort of a time when you are sitting around in transit. You are waiting for transport to take you somewhere. It is not

much you can do. There is not much the people at the camp or depot want you to do except be there and don’t go AWL, absent without leave, don’t do anything stupid. So it is a boring time being at those places when you’re in transit. They usually don’t give you any duties or if they do they’re minor.

So I don’t recall doing anything much at all.

Yes I joined the Shropshire as a telegraphist. I served on the Shropshire for over two years. Shortly after I joined the Shropshire we were required to do a bombardment at Aitape on the north east coast of New Guinea and later on we did a bombardment at Cape Sansapor.

We moved on then. There are stops when you’re in harbour or you are patrolling and doing this that and the other thing. And we moved onto the landing at Morotai which is I think the Halmaheras group I think they refer to it.

That was mainly bombarding as far as we were concerned. The Americans landed there first. Later on there were some Australian troops and I think army and air force. From Morotai we knew that something big was building up.

Because there were oil tankers, there were battleships, cruisers, destroyers, survey ships, patrol torpedo boats, all sorts of ships assembling in this great harbour and we eventually found out that we were to invade the Philippines. I think our armada contained about seven hundred ships of all descriptions.

Now the real fighting ships of course are classed as battleships, destroyers, cruisers, mainly the sort of front line ships. Now we were part of the American Seventh Fleet. The American Seventh Fleet was split into three or four groups, they would refer to you as “task force seven point” something whatever it was. Or say

group seventy-seven point one. We were part of that. We arrived in the Philippines in October of 1944 and I think it was the 21st of October when the Americans actually landed their troops in the Philippines. A lot of Japanese aircraft

activity started around about that time. And it was around about that time the Japanese formed what became known as the “kamikaze special attack corps”. And although the Japanese tended to call it Shimpu [Shimpu Tokubetsu Kogekitai – Japanese Navy kamikaze missions], I think it was mainly in the west that the word “kamikaze”

was mainly used. The word Shimpu was named, or the kamikaze we are more conversant with the word kamikaze, the attack corps was formed for the divine wind, so called, which was called kamikaze or Shimpu which had saved the Japanese nation

from invasion by the Mongol forces in 13th Century. There were two occasions in that century that Japan had been saved from invasion by the legendary typhoon, which has been referred to as Shimpu or divine wind. Now that

corps was formed in late October, 1944. It was highly successful, eventually accounting for over three hundred allied ships sunk or damaged and over fifteen thousand sailors either killed or maimed. And that was mainly in a period of

six weeks in the Philippines and later at Okinawa, where there was a huge amount of kamikaze activity. I should explain that kamikaze corps consisted of

hundreds, thousands really, of these young men who had volunteered for the corps and they were required to fly these one-way missions, these suicide missions in bomb-laden aircraft to attack allied ships, to crash their planes onto allied ships. Now according to what I have seen the

Japanese thought nothing about these one-way trips. Being a one-way trip it meant their planes could fly a lot longer distance because they didn’t have to turn around and fly back to base. The Japanese saw the formation of this particular Shimpu Corps as a means of saving their land from invasion. Or at least

stalling it for a time. The thinking of the Japanese - and it is a bit difficult for us to understand their thinking - they thought nothing about going on these suicide missions. They were very successful as I stated, very frightening.

And the Shropshire alone closed up for action station on over a hundred and thirty occasions just because of kamikaze activity in its particular area. The name Shimpu the Japanese preferred that because it

it apparently a more of a spiritual thing. See even their special groups in the corps, this special attack corps, the groups were named for various things in Japan like the orange blossom or the Emperor or some divine wind or something else. And these Japanese pilots, who were all volunteers, they saw it as a duty

to their country to do this. To repay in some way what the Emperor had done for them, what their parents had done for them, what the country meant to them and the education that they received. So it seems to me that

hatred might have been a thing which was low on priorities in the mind of the Japanese, they did it for other very special reasons. We thought they were quite crazy of course. But hatred of course, it is hard to understand the mind of the Japanese,

I think we hated them because of what they had done. And we hated them even more after the war when we found out what they had done. But it was a very frightening time for everyone on the Shropshire. Our records show that we, when I say we, the Shropshire,

managed to shoot down eleven aircraft. Shared a number of others with other ships and of course drove off many more. You have got to realise that in the areas they were, there is not just the Shropshire but hundreds of other ships and on some occasions there were dozens if not hundreds firing at these

aircraft. It was absolutely horrendous. The noise and the activity that was going on during these attacks. The Shropshire as we have come to know it was the lucky ship. Always managed to survive. And yet the Australia, which was within six hundred yards of us, always seemed to catch the kamikaze aircraft. In fact

there was a bit of a joke, I think the Shropshire sent a signal to the Australia saying, “We’ll shoot them down you catch them.” Just a bit of levity in stressful times.

That was the start of the Leyte Gulf invasion. On the evening of

the 24th of October, 1944 I recall our captain, Captain Nichols who was an Englishman. I think he got command of an Australian ship because we were running out of captains. Captain [E F] Dechaineux had been killed on the Australia, a captain had been lost with the Canberra.

Commodore Collins at that stage had been wounded and perhaps the Australian Navy thought that they needed a person who was perhaps a little bit more qualified to be skipper of a heavy cruiser than the commanders we had in the navy. Anyway I recall him telling us on the 24th of October that we are going out to intercept the Japanese Fleet.

That was a bit of a surprise and we would have been quite happy to turn around and go back the other way but anyway that became the Battle of the Surigao Strait in the South Leyte Gulf. That was a huge affair, where according to an official signal which I managed to obtain on the Shropshire,

almost a score of Japanese ships were sunk. The allied forces which was the American forces plus two Australian ships, the HMAS Shropshire and a destroyer called the HMAS Arunta we were in that battle. And it was the largest ship-to-ship action that has ever taken place.

Fleet-to-fleet action. No aircraft involved. Certainly torpedoes were fired, mainly by the ships. There could have been submarines; I am not sure about that. Torpedoes were fired by patrol torpedo boats and Shropshire was credited with being responsible for sinking the thirty-three thousand ton Yamashiro, Japanese battleship.

It was a battle which commenced about three o’clock in the morning of the 25th of October on a rather still night. Dark night. And it was a hard to describe the sight. My action station on that particular night was in the remote

control office which is located just below the bridge. And when you opened the door you were on the upper deck. So that flimsy sort of door that was there was not going to save you from any sort of shell that came your way, it would have gone straight through it anyway and straight through the remote control office. So we were able to

open that door and view what was going on. It was like daylight out there. With all ships firing and ships being struck by shells, ships being struck by torpedoes although records state that the torpedo accuracy left a bit to be desired. I think only about ten percent of torpedoes fired found their target,

the ones that did find their targets were very successful. The Shropshire fired a number of broadsides. I think she fired continuously for about a quarter of an hour. Nineteen of those broadsides straddled the

Japanese battleship Yamishiro and I think sixteen made contact with the ship. So we were credited as mainly being responsible for the sinking of the battleship. Which was quite a feat for a heavy cruiser and an experience which I suppose few Australian sailors would have had. The day

after the battle which, there was some sort of mopping up to do and sinking ships and ships steaming off into the distance, I think in total it probably lasted about an hour, I am not sure of that. And then we retired

from the Strait, I think we went back to patrolling, I am not sure of that. Being on alert and helping the people ashore with special bombardments. There were many occasions where the Shropshire was required to, because of its accuracy with its gunnery, was required to fire on specific targets. So it had a very good gunnery record. And it was extremely good with its radar.

It used to pick up Japanese aircraft activity on most occasions quicker than the American ships. The aircraft activity continued around Leyte Gulf and

I am not quite sure what we did after that, except patrols and special bombardments and fighting off aircraft. Eventually,

There is a lot of that in the navy, a lot of patrolling and you’re wondering why you’re doing it, but you’re actually a support

force for the troops ashore and you’re trying to drive off any enemy aircraft that are about and also watch out for submarines. In fact the Shropshire had a couple of lucky escapes. I forget where it was but one torpedo passed about ten feet astern of us and another one passed

across the bow so, you have only got to be a few feet up that way and you’re hit. That was the Shropshire, she was just extremely lucky I think. I seem to recall a rather strange occasion where, because our captain was the senior captain, he

was on patrol with some small American aircraft carrier. That was exciting to us because we could see close up the aircraft flying off and flying on to an aircraft carrier. After these patrols and after things had settled down a bit around the Leyte Gulf area it

was getting on towards Christmas and I recall because there was some doubt as to where we would be on Christmas Day we had our Christmas Dinner eight days earlier, around about the 17th of December and there was always a little bit of levity on those occasions and a few liberties are taken. You’re allowed to talk to an officer

in a slightly different manner. And the officer helps out with handing out the food to the troops, a few little changes like that, so a little bit of humour creeps into things on Christmas Day. Although it was Christmas Day it was eight days earlier. After that it was time to get further up into the Philippines around the Lingayen

Gulf area. Now the Japanese Shimpu or kamikaze activity became quite intense around there and we were always on the alert. And it is not much fun being closed up at action station in the tropics, there is no such thing as air conditioning down below the decks.

And all of the port holes are closed and you’re dressed in long trousers and a long sleeved shirt and you have an anti-flash mask over your head and all that is showing is your eyes and your mouth and those above have gloves on their hands. So in tropical conditions

it is not pleasant at all. And on occasions we were closed up not only hours but days. And that’s when you get problems, heat rash boils, different other illness’ because you haven’t got proper air flow.

Particularly these people down below in magazines and shell rooms and cordite rooms, bad enough in the main wireless office, it is hot enough down there, the deck is extremely hot. Down below you have got steel decks and if you are anywhere near the engine room or the boiler room of

that it is very hot. I had a bit of an experience with the hot upper deck, I was racing to action stations one morning in the dark and I misjudged where the hole in the deck was, where a ladder went down to a deck below. This was from what they call B deck or gunnery

deck down to the upper deck. And I went skidding down that or I should say my shin did on the steel ladder on the piece of metal that was sticking out from that where the chain tied onto it., you would always run up a ladder and then you would run down a ladder on your heels, you didn’t go down that way. You went down a ladder on your heels. I

missed everything and my shin was cut open from the shin up to the knee and I recall this rather dark blood oozing out. It wasn’t spraying out, just oozing out and the first person who happened to see my predicament was the Catholic chaplain Father Roche so he said, “We had better take you around to the sick bay, Frank.” He knew my name because I was his altar boy.

So I went around to the sick bay and they patched me up and they tried something new they sort of thought that they could trial this particular way of attending to wounds. Now it was something like a plaster but it was a

rubberised solution that they put the bandages through. Now of course I have got this bandage right over the foot and up here to the thigh and I am trying to get along with that. But every time you would put that on the hot deck it would just stick to it. The bandage would stick to the deck. So they eventually thought that’s not too good in

the tropics, we can’t have this sort of bandage melting everywhere. So they did something else, I kept bandaging it and I was not allowed to work for six weeks. In fact the wound took four months to heal up. My only regret was that we weren’t closer to Australia; they would have sent me home for a few weeks.

That was my first action yes.

Well bombardments - if there is no aircraft activity and no gun emplacements firing at you - it is a pretty routine sort of thing. You just stand off and try to hit the targets that you have been directed to hit. Now they may be arranged for you by the Americans or in some cases the AIF ashore, that’s

the Australian Army people. The Shropshire was involved in fifty-six bombardments during the war. And it was required on a number of occasions to hit specific targets which the ship had been requested to hit by various Americans.

It was a very accurate gunnery ship. The County-class cruiser was regarded as a very good gunnery ship so we were called upon on numerous occasions to hit specific targets, not just landing shells ashore and hoping they are doing a lot of damage. Knocking out in one case the Japanese headquarters, I think that was at [(UNCLEAR)],

I am not quite sure of the name now. And mind you, on occasions, we were straddled by shores batteries but we were able to return the fire and of course silence them. At Aitape it was a fairly routine occasion, bombarding and giving the troops

ashore a bit of an opportunity to dig in and perhaps advance and take certain positions.

It was quite exciting to hear the big guns going off. I hadn’t heard the eight-inch guns going off before and they made quite a sound,

particularly if they were firing a broadside, by broadside I mean all four turrets firing at once. You have got - because the Shropshire was what they call an eight-inch cruiser it had four mountings of twin eight-inch guns - so if you fired the four at once from one side you certainly knew the ship was firing because it caused a

lot of movement in the ship and the sound was quite intense. I don’t recall whether we fired a full broadside at Aitape but we certainly fired a lot of eight-inch shells. And that was quite an experience for me. Although as it turned out that was a rather routine and safe exercise.

Oh no there would have been other ships but I don’t recall which ones. Those early bombardments there weren’t all that many ships really. As you got further up the coast and started to build up with General MacArthur’s

thought in the back of his head that he had got to retake the Philippines. The build up was intense and huge.

From ashore?

Yes there were occasion when they had gun emplacements ashore and they fired on you.

There weren’t many occasions but they did attack us a little bit like that on occasions, but it wasn’t too bad. Although it is rather frightening if they happen to straddle you, you were wondering where the next bombardment is coming from, because they could have your range by then and put one right into you.

Oh I would have been in the main wireless office. Now we operated three offices, there was the main wireless office, there was the remote control office and then there was what they called the radio direction-finding office. Now I have forgotten entirely what I did in the radio direction-finding office while I was up there, but certainly in the main wireless office and the remote control office

you had a receiver in front of you, you had a set of headphones on and you were taking messages all of the time. We would have maintained a number of frequencies on the ship so there would have been a number of telegraphists at any one time taking messages. And then those message were handed to decoders

through a little window into the decoding office and they would find out what the messages were all about. We never really knew what they were because they were all in code. So I would have been probably sitting in front of a receiver taking messages or an emergency somewhere or up in the remote control office or waiting for

things to happen. Not all telegraphists were working at the one time. We were watch keepers and so you would have four hours on and four hours off and four hours on and that sort of changed around when you got to what they called the dog watches which were two hour watches between four pm and six pm and

six pm and eight pm. That’s how you broke the shift up and you would get onto a new shift. That’s what I would be doing, taking messages or sitting waiting for something to happen. Replacing someone who may have been injured. And we had to take those messages by hand with a pen

or a pencil. It was only late in the war when they introduced typewriters and of course there was no instruction given .you had to in your spare time learn to type. But eventually it happened, you gained experience and became proficient in that and it was much easier to type the messages than to write them.

Because writing the messages, writing for four hours, the wrist starts to play up a bit.

No if I was in the main wireless office I wouldn’t know what was

going on except that I would hear the gunfire and you would know if the ship was turning or stopping or reversing or going forward or whatever. In particularly in the Battle of the Surigao Strait the ship did a tremendous amount of that, so you can imagine just how hard the

stokers were working down below to change course, change direction, change speed, stop, so you felt all of these movements, you knew what the ship was doing, but you couldn’t see what was happening outside. In the remote control office you could always see what was going on because you were virtually on the upper deck, you were just below the bridge

so you knew most of the time what was going on and you could see the action that was going on.

Some of those bombardments were fairly short and you might start off bombarding and then stop and then you would be recalled because there is

more activity a little bit further along the coast or something like that. I don’t recall them going on for all that long. I think the main thing was to drive the Japanese back from the shore so that the troops could get a foothold. You would knock over a few palm trees

and gun emplacements and stir up the sand a bit and help the troops to get ashore. But later on they sometimes got into trouble and they would call for assistance from the ships. “Would you please direct your gun fire at point” so and so. There were all sorts of codes and directions which I never understood or knew about anyway.

Well the next was just a small bombardment at Cape Sansapor, which was also along the New Guinea coast. And that was pretty much like Aitape as I recall and from there we moved from New Guinea and got a little bit further north. The next place of interest to us being Morotai.

And that was a bit larger landing and bombardment. A lot of these things are a bit hazy to me because being in the main wireless office you don’t see what's going on you just hear the main gun fire and you hope that everything is going your way. That it is not the

gunfire from the opposition.

Well it was the Americans who landed there for a start and later on from what I recall some Australian troops went in there, and they were army and air force.

I think for us it was just a pretty routine bombardment. Once again I don’t recall much in the way of aircraft activity or reports of aircraft. It seemed to me that the Japanese Air Force had gone a bit quiet there for a while. They made their big stand when we got

further up to the Philippines, where they were getting rather desperate and introduced the kamikaze attacks so that they might defend their homeland.

Look it is north of New Guinea near the Celebes [modern Sulawesi, Indonesia] I think it is. I think the group is called the Halmaheras Group. I think there is in fact a place called Halmaheras on an island next to or close to Morotai. It was

I think it was the Celebes Sea around that area.

Well I am not sure of that. Apparently you would get reports of that sort of activity but no submarine attacked us. Although

I know in our history we were very close to being sunk by submarines on two occasions. But just where that activity was, I am not sure. I think it was more likely to be up a little bit further, closer to the Philippines area. And one of those torpedoes, according to a report by the Americans, I think said

a torpedo has just missed your stern by ten feet. Well that’s getting pretty close and then there was another occasion where one just dived across our bow. So that’s too close for comfort but they missed and that’s the main thing.

Yes that’s right. Giving support to the troops ashore and

firing at specific targets that the Americans had requested us, or requested their own command to fire upon but the Americans often asked the Shropshire to fire because they were able to pinpoint some of these positions much more accurately than most of the American ships.

Well they seemed quite okay. Remember that we were a very small number compared with all of the ships they had. Most of the time

our cruisers for instance. Australia had seven cruisers I think at the start of the war. Three of them were eight- inch cruisers, one was sunk, the Canberra, the Australia was later put out of action for a time through kamikaze attacks, the Perth had been sunk, light cruiser, and the Sydney, light cruiser, had been sunk.

So some of our destroyers had been sunk., they were getting pretty old some of them. We had a couple of new brilliant destroyers called the Arunta, and the Warramunga , tribal-class destroyers that were fairly new. So when you add them all up it is a very small number compared with the huge number of ships that the Americans had.

We used to be just amazed to see the equipment and the aircraft and the ships and everything else the Americans had. It seemed fairly obvious in those days that the Americans with all of their equipment would eventually beat the Japanese, but of course there were a few rude shocks along the way yet. The Japanese thought long and hard

and introduced a few new tactics to try and deter the Allies and the American forces from invading Japan.

Japanese Air Force activity was a problem to us in the Philippines,

not so much prior to that, but particularly in the Philippines. Leyte Gulf. Up further north in Lingayen Gulf and of course we didn’t go to Okinawa but it was expected at one time that we would go there and that was a long bloody battle for the Americans at Okinawa and the Japanese sent in lots of kamikaze

aircraft into that area. Even at the end of the war the Japanese had apparently hundreds of the Japanese kamikaze attack planes in Japan. Some of them mightn’t have been in good order but the Japanese were still prepared to use this tactic to deter the Americans and other allied troops from invading Japan.

And I think that’s why the atomic bombs were eventually dropped on Japan. Because I believe that the Japanese would have fought hard and long and there would have been lots more suicide attacks from them. There would have been a huge loss of life to Allied troops.

And of course after Morotai we formed that huge armada of ships which was about seven hundred and proceeded to the Philippines to make the initial landings in Leyte Gulf.

Well the only; time I saw the Japanese fleet was in the Battle of the Surigao Strait. Which was a few days after the initial landing in Leyte Gulf. And of course I only saw them at night time. They were ablaze or firing guns, lighting up the sky or something and it was

just like daytime at three o’clock in the morning. That’s the only time I actually saw the Japanese ships, except after on when I went to Japan and saw some of their ships. But close up and angry that was in the Surigao Strait.

Apparently at the start of the war the Japanese had a very good navy, well trained, fine ships; but of course by the time the Philippines arrived they had been decimated

to a degree, the Japanese Navy. But I believe we were very fortunate to come out of it so well in the Surigao Strait because the huge Japanese force of ships came down towards the Leyte Gulf and they split for some reason or another. If they had have remained together there is every

likelihood that they would have sunk a number of our ships because they had a huge force there. And they split and we fought sort of half of this particular group that there was, we outnumbered the Japanese in the Surigao Strait with something like six battleships eight

cruisers a couple of dozen destroyers and about thirty or forty patrol torpedo boats which were fast, very small craft which sped in with a couple of torpedoes and let them go and then got out very quickly. But the Japanese were able to sink a number of those in the Surigao Strait but apart

from getting a few hits on a couple of our ships, they didn’t sink any of our main ships. But we managed to, I say we that’s the Americans plus two Australian ships sunk two battleships, two Japanese thirty-three thousand ton battleships. I think a couple of destroyers,

a cruiser, just from memory I think it was something like that. But we were able to drive them off, they just went their way and got out of there as quickly as possible, where they went to I am not too sure. But some of them were left burning, some of them were sunk, some of them sunk later, and we retired

back around the Leyte Gulf area to patrol that area and support ground forces. But that particular battle in the Surigao Strait is the largest fleet-to-fleet action that has ever been. And that is saying something, because they used to talk about Jutland in the First World War which was a battle between the Germans and the English and

there were a number of capital ships in that that fought, but as far as the number of ships, number of ships sunk, the number of men killed the Surigao Strait was the largest fleet-to-fleet action that has ever taken place. And the two Australian ships that were involved in that were HMAS Shropshire, an eight-inch heavy cruiser

and the HMAS Arunta, a destroyer which I think had five-inch guns. I am not too good on my gunnery.

Well it is pretty much the same old thing, routine, whereas some people on the ships, say cooks, stewards,

sick bay attendants, writers, supply assistants, some of those fellow might have to do different jobs at a particular action station. I knew that a steward for instance was down in the magazine room. Now that’s way down in the ship, no chance of getting out of there should the ship get hit,

they would get blown to smithereens., going from a steward, who only the officers had by the way, to working in a magazine would be quite traumatic I think. At least we were above the water line. However it doesn’t matter where a shell hits, does it? If you’re in

its way you’re in trouble. When I say that the job was pretty routine, we were still receiving messages, we were sitting to one side being an emergency in case someone got ill or wounded or perhaps we might have to even carry a message from say the main

wireless office to the remote control office. For various reasons I was caught on the upper deck on a number of occasions when kamikaze attacks were on. And that was frightening because you didn’t know whether to run or lie on the deck or what to do, but everything panned out all right.

Well that’s right. You sort of accepted it, particularly when you’re up in the remote control office, you know that you are at least on the upper deck and with very little cover, you have just got a bit of a wall there, thin metal, wouldn’t be

any armour support there I wouldn’t think. But of course some of the seamen were far worse off. They were out in the open at their guns. There were men of course inside the big eight inch turrets, but they had the four-inch guns or the pompoms or the Bofors or in earlier days before they took them off,

Oerlikons, those men were out in the open. Same with the people on the bridge, the officers up there, an open bridge. And of course the aircraft, the Japanese aircraft, they used to try and land in the bridge because that would put out a lot

of equipment . That’s going back a bit, the HMAS Canberra, when it was sunk in the Sunda Strait, it wasn’t even able to fire a shot because it was hit in a vital part which put power out of order, all sorts of things out of order and the ship was virtually unable to operate and became a sitting duck and was eventually sunk.

Those men out in the open were in a precarious situation.

No. It was straddled on occasions, when I say straddled that’s shells that fall on each side of it. And when that happened you

think perhaps the next one will be spot on and it will hit you. But no it was never hit by shellfire. Many times the shells dropped close by and I recall seeing shells drop close by in the Battle of the Surigao Strait because it was so bright out there you could see what was going on. You could see the flashes from the guns, torpedoes hitting ships

and all of that. I am sorry, what?

Well it was, I would have to say you would have to be a little bit frightened although I think that happens more later on, you think, “Gee we had a few close shaves there.” But when you’re in it you’re doing your job and you don’t worry too much about what's going on. You just hope of course

they don’t find their range and hit you. But I don’t think you are going around at all scared, I think it hits you later on. Perhaps there is an amount of excitement, if that is the word. You see all of this activity outside and you think, “My goodness fancy seeing that” and

but I don’t think you ever think they are going to hit you. You seem to think you’re immortal or something, no one is going to hurt you and I think that’s the way most troops go into battle. Perhaps if they have been in one too many battles they get a bit

not exactly frightened but their nerve might go a little bit. And there are lots of ex-servicemen who have suffered from that problem. Usually it comes on a lot later through perhaps… through nightmares and

post-war stress and then they some of them sort of become unhealthy they just crack up a little bit. But while the battle is on, I don’t think you’re worrying too much about what might happen. And I don’t think you’re too scared about it all, everyone has got a job to do and

you are sort of concentrating on that. And apart from gunfire and flashes and lights and all of this sort of thing you just get on with what you enlisted to do I suppose.

Oh yes in Leyte Gulf and in Lingayen Gulf, also with the suicide attacks by the Japanese every ship used to get into the action, there were guns firing off everywhere and the sky would be dark with explosions, black explosions

and different other colours. Everyone was trying to save their ship from this bomb-laden aircraft that’s approaching them at three hundred miles per hour or whatever it was. And I doubt very much whether there was much co-ordination between the gunnery on all of the ships, I am talking about dozens and dozens of ships in the area. And

there might be a ship a few thousand yards that way and so he starts off and the planes are still coming so the next fellow starts off and so everyone is firing in the finish and the noise is horrendous. As you have gathered my hearing is not the best but I

thought that was caused mainly by my work as a telegraphist because of the tremendous amount of interference we used to get receiving those signals. We used to get lots of sharp noises and interference and the signal would jump all over the place and so you would have one hand on the dial trying to keep the signal coming through and you would be writing with the other one, and cursing under your breath of course and at the end of a four-hour

watch your head was spinning and you just threw the headphones in the air and got out of the place as quickly as possible. Now I always thought that that caused my hearing loss. But I knew when I visited [Department of] Veterans Affairs or Repatriation as it was known at one time, they were more impressed that the gunnery had been so intense from

Shropshire that that could have damaged the hearing. I was on the upper deck on a number of occasions when the guns were firing and some of those sharp noises really hurt your ears. I have been caught behind B turret, my action station remote control office was just behind that, and a couple of times unfortunately I walked past when they fired and

that’s not too nice with the great woof from those guns. There were occasions when I said that “no shells hit us but Japanese aircraft landed” and on occasions you felt the thud as they hit the water beside you.

And I had a small souvenir for some years, which I have subsequently lost, of a Japanese aircraft which exploded beside us and rained all of this metal on to the upper deck. Some people divided up the pieces of aluminium or whatever the plane was made of.

So we were pretty fortunate really, as they often quote, “the lucky ship”. Without being hit by aircraft or shellfire or torpedoes.

Oh yes.

Yes there were a number of those.

Well I think we were all surprised on board at the tactic they were using. We found it difficult to understand that anyone would attack a ship

in a bomb-laden aircraft and direct that on to the ship. In other words committing suicide, so we wondered at the thinking of the Japanese, the way they operated, it was unusual but it didn’t take us long to wake up that they were quite happy with the situation, the

Japanese, and that we had better try and do everything possible to prevent these attacks, or prevent them succeeding. I can’t recall using the word “kamikaze” in the early days. It was a word which became quite well known and used in the west later on,

but we referred to the as Japanese aircraft activity or “suicide attacks”. Suicide pilots. And they were rather frightening because they were on a one-way trip and they were doing everything possible to land the plane on the

ship. So we thought they were extremely dangerous form of attack.

My first introduction to this sort of activity was when the HMAS Australia was hit by an aircraft. Now I recall reading some years ago a fellow writing and saying it was not a kamikaze aircraft.

And some reading that I have done about the Japanese special attack corps as they called it was that they only decided around about the 24th of October, around about that date that they would form this special attack corps. And it was formed practically overnight, their

high level officers decided that this was a tactic that they could go along with. I think it was introduced by Vice Admiral Onishi of the Japanese Navy and they were flying these attacks very soon after they introduced the tactic and on the I think it was the 24th of October when the

Australia was hit. There seems to be some conjecture about it. But it seems more likely that that plane had been shot at and hit and landed on the Australia. The fact that it had a bomb on it was incidental. Now I am not sure about that and I wouldn’t stake my life on it. And the Australia lost their captain, who was killed and

a number of other sailors. But the fortunate part was that that bomb didn’t explode; there would have been a lot more casualties. It is hard to imagine that a plane crashes into a ship with a bomb on it and the bomb doesn’t explode. So that’s my memory of the introduction of these kamikaze

attacks.

The Japanese certainly were desperate and when you try to analyse the thinking of the Japanese they were all tied up I think

in spiritual ways. They… you did things, you lived for the Emperor you died for the Emperor, you fought for your mother country and your family. As I said earlier it would appear that the hatred of the enemy was the thing that came into the equation at the

bottom of the scale. The thinking of the Japanese was quite different to ours and I think we too ka while to understand them. Now ashore the army troops… apparently the Japanese used to charge in and the Japanese they didn’t care if they lived or died, I think they knew if they died

they would be going to some sort of a heaven or become some sort of a God or something like that. So this was pretty much with all of these very young fellows who joined this special attack corps the Shimpu as I think the Japanese call it.

No I don’t think so. Whilst there are plenty of brave men about in Australia

I couldn’t imagine any of them getting in an aircraft and saying, “Well goodbye fellows. I have got a bomb under my aircraft and I am going to fly it out there and land on a Japanese aircraft carrier or ship or something like that.” I can’t imagine them doing it, although there are stories of brave men

who have done extraordinary things to win Victoria Crosses and other medals and you think why did he do it? But in the heat of battle you’re not quite sure what's going to happen. But with the Japanese it was premeditated of course, they knew exactly what was going to happen, and yet they didn’t shirk their responsibility to the Emperor or

the Land of the Rising Sun, the land they loved, or the parents they loved or anything, they just went out and did it. Hard to understand but it was different thinking.

Well you certainly fired off just about every gun you had.

If the plane was getting dangerously close to you and it was obvious that it was heading your way you would be firing Bofors, I forget what are they? How many millimetre but I am not sure, an anti-aircraft gun. You would fire pom poms, “multibarrelled guns,” the Yanks used to call them “Chicago Piano”

or something, they would be going bom bom bom bom, and we were able to put into at least one of our eight-inch turrets, maybe all of them I don’t know because I don’t know a lot about what went on with gunnery, but in one of them they were able to raise that turret to a rather high level and fire off

shells which exploded in certain ways that it would wipe out aircraft. So that was the last desperate measure the ship tired to knock down aircraft with four-inch guns, pom poms and Bofors.

Well they had a fair bit of success and

apparently the high command in American they anticipated lots of things that the Japanese might do but never in their wildest dreams did they anticipate that the Japanese would introduce this special attack corps which was the suicide attack corps. They were successful in that regard,

to my knowledge. The Allied Forces and they were nearly all American suffered losses in ships over there, hundred ships, all sorts all sizes were sunk or damaged, that

went from aircraft carriers to destroyers, cruisers, I don’t know precisely how many were sunk. But the statistics that I have seen said that over three hundred ships were sunk and damaged, and when you look at that and loss of sailors who were killed or

maimed the number was over fifteen thousand and that is not in a very long period from the start of the invasion of the Philippines, through Lingayen Gulf and up to Okinawa. They

certainly made the Allied Forces think and we certainly respected the Japanese because we knew they were desperate to put the aircraft on the ship.

They had all a number of names for their aircraft. Look the only one I can recall now

is Val, V A L. We had code names for them all and in a book I have somewhere there are pictures of all of these Japanese aircraft and namely the ones that attacked from this special attack corps were single-engine aircraft. There was a strange occasion once,

no one could quite understand why this happened. But there were actually two pilots, this might have been a small bomber or a two-man aircraft. Anyway and the plane had been hit and part of it went one way and presumably

the suicide pilot went the other way. But a few seconds later you could see one of the Japanese coming down in a parachute, the only time I ever saw that. A parachute. Now maybe he decided that he wasn’t going to be a member of this special suicide group, but he didn’t worry about it for long because he cut himself out of the parachute. Now that was a strange business. We could never understand that one.

Why put a parachute on if after you have been hit you open the parachute and then you cut yourself out of the parachute. And you could see this clearly, he wasn’t that far away. That was hard to fathom.

Well usually by the time they got to your ship they would be a single aircraft, a lot of the

reports that we got there would be dozens of aircraft, there would be two, single aircraft, ten or maybe fifty. But that could start off some miles over that way. By the time they got to us they had either been driven off and some actually did get driven off and because they felt that there were no targets left in the area

which were large enough to put their bomb-laden aircraft on they did return to base. Only of course to go out the next day or later on to try once again. So you would see a few aircraft around but you wouldn’t see swarms of therm. You would certainly see a lot of gunfire, I recall an aircraft one day it was heading straight for the Shropshire, now why I

happened to have seen some of these things is because I would have been moving maybe from the main wireless office to the remote control office or we suddenly got a call to action stations and before we could get there the aircraft is there in our area. And one seemed to be diving straight for our deck and for some unaccountable reason it just pulled up, saw this

battleship in front of us, the New Mexico I think it was, and crashed into one of their gun emplacements on that. Exploded on that. You see you wonder why the Shropshire keeps getting spared all of the time. Even in the Surigao Strait just to digress for a second, we had a battleship at least directing its fire at us

because they thought we were a battleship, the larger target firing at them and they would attack us. And it seems that because of the particular type of cordite we were using in our guns it gave the impression of a night time that it was an explosion for a much larger gun than an eight-inch gun. So that’s why we

drew more shells towards us that we should have. But once again they missed, so that was okay.

Well they did around the Philippines yes. By the time we got to the landing at Corregidor

which is just near the Philippines the activity of the suicide aircraft had abated quite a bit. But apparently it was still going on severely around Okinawa there were lots of kamikaze attacks around there.

Well that could be so. Although they still had, believe it or not, lots of planes ready to go of as a last desperate measure. When we left Leyte Gulf and did a little bit later on, we went to the landing at Corregidor that

was done by the Americans once again. Remember most of my operation in the navy were with American forces because the Shropshire was part of the American Seventh Fleet and that Corregidor was an American show and it was an airborne landing. So once again that was, it was very interesting to see all of these

troops jump out of aircraft and land on Corregidor, which as you probably know is just like a great rock in the sea. But unfortunately quite a number of those soldiers didn’t land on the rock, they landed in the sea and some of them would have perished no doubt. But that was an interesting landing because of the airborne attack and also the fact that the

Japanese had dug into the rocks gun emplacements and they were very difficult to knock out. Because of the way they were located in the rock and had lots of cover from rocks, it is like firing in a window or something you had to be spot on. But I suppose weight of numbers

eventually told and the gun emplacements were knocked out.

There were usually a number of frequencies that we kept. Now I am not sure what they were but they would be all geared to the American forces and

well mainly geared to those. We might have been keeping one frequency that was coming from Australia. We might have been perhaps receiving on five frequencies. And what those messages were and where they were coming from I am not sure. Maybe General MacArthur’s headquarters, maybe Australia,

maybe the admiral in charge of the American fleet, maybe some other land-based area. And all of these messages would be coming in all of the time and they would be handed to decoder to decipher them and the important ones would be handed to the captain. So things went on just the same when you were a

telegraphists anyway, whether you were in battle or you were in harbour. You still did your four hours on and your four hours off, and did your watch and received messages.

No the messages were nearly always in five-letter code. You might get, they divided

up into five letters and you might get C R Z K E. Well, that meant nothing to me. But it would to a decoder and then the next group and so it went on. And you just kept receiving these groups of five letters, the Morse ringing in your head all of the time. It is still there you never forget the Morse code, I haven’t used an

operating key for donkeys years, but you look at words now and you can still, Browne with an E for instance, dah dit dit dit – dit dah dit - dah dah dah – dit dah dah – dah dit - dit. It is always there, it never seems to go. It is always there, but of course I wouldn’t be able to receive Morse code at that speed these days, it takes a while to build up the speed.

Whilst we graduated at twenty words per minute that’s sending and receiving your speed increased the more experienced you became. Now in all of my time in the navy I never once transmitted a message. I was always receiving. The transmissions were usually done by petty officer telepathists or leading telegraphists.

Now in an emergency I could have done it if some of those fellows were killed, and remember that few messages were sent out in Morse code and you would never send a message out while you were at sea because that would allow the enemy to pinpoint your position and perhaps send a

submarine in to sink you or whatever. It was only in the time of contact with the enemy that the Morse code was sent out. There was a lot of talk between ships. But as for sending Morse you didn’t do that unless you were in a battle or something and it required the services of a telegraphist to send a message.

Yes it sorts of just sings in your head, well I suppose it had to be like that. You had to be proficient, you had to receive messages fairly quickly, you had to be

responsible and you had to be accurate. And I am sure that my chief telegraphist who I marched with only yesterday [Anzac Day. 2004], he will be ninety in June, he would not have tolerated any sloppiness, you wouldn’t have lasted long on a ship like that, the Shropshire, if you didn’t do your job properly, if you didn’t receive the

messages properly. I like to think that they did check the telegraphist fairly closely because it was an important job they did and if we got too many messages wrong you would be in big trouble. I am not saying I always

completed a message one hundred percent. And I am not sure what happened with those messages that weren’t completed one hundred percent, but you couldn’t always get it because of the interference that occurred on the frequency and the jamming of the lines and the noise that interrupted the message. I often wondered about that I knew I missed things here and there,

not through lack of skill, but just through the interference that you got.

I have no idea I don’t know how they did that. No doubt we were doing the same to their transmissions. I have no idea how it was done.

Yes dah dah- dah dit dah dah - that’s my. Name is dah dit- dit dah - dah dah - dit that’s name. Is dit dit –dit dit dit is. Frank, dit dit dah dit- dit dah dit- dit dah – dah dit - dah dit dah. That’s Frank. Browne, dah dit dit dit – dit dah dit – dah dah dah

dit dah dah – dah dit -dit. Yeah, ‘my name is Frank Browne’. It is always there and if you want to check that, that book over there has something about Mr Morse who invented it and it shows how he wrote it down.

No. If you transmitted something to me now I doubt if I would receive it unless you went rather slowly. Because it is different transmitting it now to receiving it. but I have no trouble seeing the letters and transmitting it.

No.

Never had any idea. The letters would be jumbled all over the place and we wouldn’t have any idea what it was all about .The coders never told us what the messages were all about

and I actually have a message there that was sent from the, I think from the American commander congratulating the Shropshire after the Battle of the Surigao Strait. Now that probably I don’t know how it was transmitted, it might have been a copy sent over with the mail

because it was a proper form, you know this message, something about on the 25th of October Shropshire was in Surigao Strait and helped with the sinking of approximately a score of Japanese ships. I didn’t think it was that many but that’s what the signal said.

I don’t think it was difficult at all because they had all sorts of books in there and they were very careful they way they kept the security tight on their books. I never saw one open. But they had no trouble deciphering them, that was their job

to do. To decipher the codes that we gave them.

No you had to be trained as a coder, what to look for, where to look and what it all meant.

I don’t know you would think if the same group of letters came through the whole time it would mean the same thing but I am not sure that it did. And possibly they changed the codes frequently or daily or something. I am not sure. No I am not au fait with that side of the business.

I think it was hand and book, I have never heard anything about a special decoding machine. Like they had in England when they used to decode the German messages. I don’t know.

They were particularly careful with the coding books I know that, high security there. Apart from the books I can’t think of anything else. It could have been but I am not aware of it.

I was either in the main

wireless office, which my memory was on the main deck. We used to refer to things like the upper deck and then the main deck and the lower deck and you had all sorts of machinery and stuff below that. I was either in the main wireless office, which was the largest office or the

remote control office which was located under the bridge and was a much smaller wireless room. I think the idea of a remote control office is that if the main wireless office is knocked out then all of the traffic would go through the remote control office and vice versa I think.

Certainly when we were on operations or battle it would have increased and I think we kept additional frequencies if you’re in harbour maybe you’re only keeping a couple of frequencies. And this became quite good for the telegraphist

because they maybe had more time to do their washing or write letters or ironing, general things that you have still got to do even though you are taking messages you have still got to do those things and you have got to eat and so there were only o many hours in the day but it used to be good when you would get into harbour and you would close down perhaps a couple of frequencies.

Well you know that if, you’re in the main wireless room you wouldn’t be able to see anything but you would know that there was a lot of activity going on. Particularly if

the guns were firing. In the Surigao Strait Battle there was so much movement of the ship. I saw what was going on, I was up in the remote control office but the people down below and not being able to see anything they would know that the ship is doing all

sorts of manoeuvres. It would be changing course increasing speed, decreasing speed, stopping, even going astern or forward, so the ship made a lot of changes of speed and direction in that battle but the people down below would be aware of that. They could feel the movements, the increase of speed or all of a sudden the ship

would stop and they would think why has it stopped, and then all of a sudden it would be off again or it would be changing directions, but they could feel the movements. And they could certainly hear the gunfire. And you would feel the movement in the ship if there were broadsides being fired, because even a large ship like the Shropshire you still

feel the movement when the large guns fire.

Well I suppose you do. There were no portholes in the main wireless office, it was just a wall or bulkhead, and

you’re there just sitting there. I suppose in a way you might feel as though you’re a bit of a sitting duck, but you’re better off than a lot of other people. Some of them are below the water line, you can imagine what would happen if a torpedo hit below the water line, people in there, water rushes in they have got [little] chance of getting out.

People in shell rooms, cordite rooms, ammunition rooms. They must have felt terrible. Cooped up in those places, some of them no possible chance of getting out if the ship gets hit. At least we had a bit of a chance, we were above the water line and the upper deck. In my memory

the upper deck was just one deck above us so that wasn’t too bad.

Well I hadn’t thought about that but always being exposed on the

upper deck certainly didn’t appeal to me and I got caught a few times up there and that wasn’t very pleasant. It is hard to know. The farthest possible point from where a torpedo or shell might hit.

We had a person with the rank of chief petty officer telegraphist. He had had a number of years of experience, went through the ranks from ordinary telegraphist to chief petty officer, then we had three petty officer telegraphists. Then we had a number of leading telegraphists.

I can’t recall how many of those, possibly half a dozen. And then we had telegraphists like myself. Maybe a dozen of those. I had a look in a publication which came out shortly after the war, it was called Porthole which was our

code name during the war. If another ship was calling us up by radio they would say, “Porthole I want to talk to Porthole.” However they spoke the message. Now in that it lists the names of I think forty-four telegraphists

but there were never forty-four telegraphists there at any one time. A number of those would have been on the ship and off again. But I think at any one time perhaps twenty or so a couple of dozen perhaps.

Oh well we went back the Leyte Gulf area and did patrols around there and we did the landings at Corregidor which I mentioned earlier.

And after that, because the guns on the ship were fairly worn by this stage we went back to Sydney for a short time to get some maintenance done. And I had a week or two of leave back to my little hometown of Elmore, this was travelling by steam train from

Sydney to Victoria and Elmore. And when I got back from leave my chief telegraphist said to me, “Frank you are leaving us for a short time; you are going to join the HMAS Hobart” I said, “But what about my week or two I was expecting to have in Sydney?” He said, “Well that’s bad luck. The commodore is transferring his flag onto

the HMAS Hobart in preparation for the invasion of Borneo so he requires…”

So I got back to the ship and I was told that I had to report to the HMAS Hobart. That didn’t sound so good at the time because we had just come back form a war zone and I was looking forward to a little extra leave,

but there was some recompense because I travelled for the first time on an aircraft. I flew from Rose Bay in Sydney up to Townsville on a scheduled airliner, which was a flying boat. So that was exciting stuff for me. Bouncing across the waves

and taking off and hearing this drumming on the metal. So we landed on the Brisbane River going up and that was quite interesting, first landing. Got to Townsville. And there I stayed perhaps a night and I joined up with the other members of the commodore’s staff. I wasn’t a permanent member of the commodore’s staff, but I was

placed on the commodore’s staff just for the short time on the Hobart because an extra telegraphist was required Now I then had my second aircraft flight which was on a Douglas DC2 which was an old RAF [Royal Air Force] transport plane which was rather unusual, you think that you would have flown by Royal Australian Air

Force planes. We stopped at Lae at an army camp overnight and we flew off the next day and on our way to Hollandia, which is northwest New Guinea there, we landed at an airstrip at Dagua and that was nearly the finish of the aircraft. We landed on a very dangerous and muddy airstrip and when the

plane come to rest after skidding all over the place the pilot, who was an Englishman, got off and certainly let the Australian Army officer know who met the plane in no uncertain manner what he thought of him for allowing us to land on the airstrip. I think he might have just been big noting himself to a degree because we had the commodore

on the aircraft and he might have just been showing what an important fellow he was. So we took off from there and eventually got to Hollandia and joined the Hobart and we went to the early invasion of Borneo, which was up at Tarakan, and around at Labuan. And after the Hobart had done the landings, the landings

this time were done by Australian Army troops, after those landings, I rejoined the Shropshire and I was with the Shropshire when they did the landings at Balikpapan, more Australian troops went ashore there. So it was at Balikpapan in Borneo that the Shropshire fired its last angry shot for the war and

then we retired from Borneo and went back to the Philippines. And it was in the Philippines that the cessation of activities was announced. The Japanese had decided that the competition had finished. And it was a date I remember clearly because it happened to be my mother’s birthday,

the 15th of August, and it is also I date I mentioned earlier in the interview, the day on which we used to get a holiday from the Catholic school I attended, because it was a Holy Day of Obligation. From there we immediately went to Japan via Okinawa. And we were anchored in Japan towards the

end of August, some days before the Japanese surrender was signed, which was on the 2nd of September. That was a magnificent occasions when you consider the number of ships in Yokohama Bay, the number of aircraft that flew over when the signing was being done. That was a day to remember.

And while I was there I was fortunate enough to visit the sister ship of the ship on which the Japanese surrender was signed on, the surrender was signed on the [USS] Missouri. I visited the [USS] Wisconsin and they were state-of-the-art battleships., they were only commissioned in 1943 and they were magnificent ships. I thought the Shropshire was a fairly large ship but when I stepped on the

quarter deck of the Missouri I was absolutely amazed. The Americans were most generous and showed us around the ship and we were startled to find they had an ice cream parlour on the ship and they filled us up with ice cream.

Oh yes the Yanks did, but we didn’t, we didn’t have any ice-cream making. The Americans certainly did on the new ships, I don’t know about the older ones but on the Wisconsin they did. And the Shropshire remained in Japanese waters until about the middle of November.

And we were doing patrols we were actually members of the original British Commonwealth Occupation force of Japan. While we were up there we experienced a couple of typhoons, which were extremely frightening. We had to put

to sea, get out of the harbour I recall on one occasion, because of the strong winds and the danger that ships would collide, being in close proximity to each other there was a danger they would collide and so it was better to be out in the open sea. So we did patrols around there and not much else really, we formed as I said part of the

British Commonwealth Occupation Force, because the Japanese in those days, we didn’t know quite what to expect, whether there would be an uprising or very proud people and didn’t take defeat too strongly. I recall going ashore on a couple of occasions and it was just terribly depressing to see the conditions under which people were

living up there. Mind you at the time we probably didn’t have much sympathy for them, but thinking back those conditions were terrible. They were living under sheets of iron. It was difficult to find a building which hadn’t been damaged. Another occasion I went ashore

at Tokyo Bay there or Yokohama Bay, at a former air strip to check on some radio equipment and it was interesting wandering around the Japanese air strip and seeing the equipment they had there. And that was an exciting little trip because in the motor boat that we

went from ship to shore on, we didn’t know what was under the water but we happened to end up on a sand bank before we actually got ashore, but the boat was moved off the sand bank pretty quickly because somebody pointed out a shark circling in the water not very far from where we, the more junior ranks, had to get out in the water and push the boat off,

so we got that off in a hurry. We left Japan about the middle of November to head back to Australia and it was whilst on that journey back to [Australia] we received a message to divert to Wewak to pick up six hundred Australian

soldiers. It was a very pleasant duty indeed to bring those fellows back to Australia. They were very thankful. They enjoyed our food they said, they were glad to leave Wewak and they were going home, they were tremendously pleased. And one of, a soldier, was a person from my hometown

and that was quite a surprise to find him on the ship. And we got back to Sydney on the 30th of November, remember that the war had finished on the 15th of August. Nearly it took all of that time for us to get back to Australia. I went on leave I think,

came back to the ship, we travelled to Hobart, Melbourne, maybe Adelaide, I am not sure about that and back to Sydney and then we were told that there was a contingent of Australian service personnel going to England to march in the victory

march through London, eventually I think about thirty thousand Allied troops marched through London. The Australian contingent consisted of about two hundred and fifty-five people. Nineteen of those people were women and it was extraordinary when you think about it that we had women on the ship. From Melbourne the

contingent joined the ship, we came around from Sydney and the main contingent got on in Melbourne. So that was extraordinary to have women on the ship and we had to be a bit careful what we said and where we went. They had an area to themselves. We visited Fremantle on the way over.

There was a march in Fremantle, I don’t recall whether I marched in it or not. From there we went to Cape Town in South Africa, we went around the corner and went up the west coast of Africa to Sierra Leone, Freetown and from there we went direct to England. The “victory contingent cruise,”

if you wish to call it that, trip, lasted about four months, it was about four months from when we left Australia until when we got back. We were in England for I think about a month or so. The victory march was held, those in the Australian Victory Contingent slept under canvas in Kensington Gardens.

And they used to drill every day and they got ready to march, which I seem to recall was around about early June. We had leave there, we were given a leave pass and we were able to state where we wanted to go to on leave. It didn’t matter. I chose Edinburgh because it was a long way away and it was my chance to see

a little bit of the English countryside and a little bit of Scotland. I went to a twenty-first birthday party I recall over there, at Hove next to Brighton. And Rita and I, Rita my wife and I did communicate with this person all of those years, until she died recently.

After the victory contingent was over and people had had leave, we got back on the ship and travelled back to Australia via Gibraltar, Malta, Suez, Port Said, Suez Canal, Aden in South Yemen I think it is these days.

Into the Great Bitter Lakes, which form part of the Suez Canal set up there. I remember swimming in the Great Bitter Lakes. We dropped anchor there and I had a swim. Rather interesting swimming in that lake because it is very salty and very hard on the eyes, hard to swim in too, it is strange sort of water.

And then we went to Colombo in Ceylon in those days, now Sri Lanka.

Still on the Shropshire, and then back to Australia. We dropped off some of the West Australian members of the contingent in Fremantle, came around to Adelaide

and Melbourne. We eventually got to Sydney. I was sent on leave I think, or we stayed in Sydney for a time and eventually was told that I had the number of points to be discharged from the navy. I went back to my home town in Elmore, still in the navy but with instructions to report to

HMAS Lonsdale in Port Melbourne for discharge. Two or three occasions I went back there and they did a bit of their paperwork and the said, “Come back in a fortnight.” Or something. Eventually I got my discharge which was in October of 1946.

Yes well I am not quite sure why we were doing those patrols. They were, just to keep an eye on Japanese activity I suppose.

Because troops had landed in some of those countries, such as the Philippines there were still Japanese ashore and battles going on on land. And it took some time for Manila to be occupied and then they had those landings up in the Lingayen Gulf and that took a

while for the Japanese to be cleared out of that part of the country. And we would have been patrolling up and down and around those areas, possibly to ensure that no other Japanese troops were sent on to help out their other troops ashore or to prevent Japanese war ships getting close to the place.

I can’t think what else why we would be on patrols, just keeping an eye on things I suppose.

There was some aircraft activity, a few attacks on [by] aircraft. We didn’t see any Japanese ships.

at that time. I only saw Japanese ships in the Surigao Strait Battle and later on in Japan.

Oh yes lots of

bombardments. In total I think the Shropshire carried out fifty-six bombardments in a rather short space of time. Not all in the Philippines, I am talking about New Guinea, Morotai and later on Borneo. And there were very solid bombardments before the troops made the initial landings in the Philippines.

I am not quite sure of the names of the places along the coast where they landed in the Philippines, there were lots of bombardments and we were required on a number of occasions for pinpoint accuracy to bombard certain areas which were giving the troops

ashore lots of trouble. So there were a lot of bombardments. It would be interesting to know the number of tons of shells that the Shropshire fired even just in the Philippines. That was one reason that after doing the landing at Corregidor we

hurried back to Sydney. I used the word “we,” I am talking about the Shropshire of course, we hurried back to Sydney to have some maintenance done and to have the guns, maintenance done on those, whatever they do on guns, rebore them or something. Because if they are not quite right you lose

accuracy with the shells.

That was a very interesting landing because it was an airborne landing. Purely American except for, American troops landed

there and I can’t recall what other Australian ships were there, the Shropshire was there, maybe one or two destroyers but I can’t recall now. And we did a number of bombardments there but it was extremely difficult to knock out the guns there because the Japanese had placed them in this very rocky island in such a way that they

were difficult to hit, very difficult to get at. As I mentioned it was like firing through a window, trying to hit the guns, they were so well placed in the rock. Corregidor being I remember it as a sort of a rock jutting out of the sea. And a number of the troops who were airborne

unfortunately landed in the sea, missed the island and some of those fellows would have died no doubt. With their heavy packs on and parachutes, so it was sad to see those fellows going into the sea. But there was no activity from Japanese aircraft as I recall. Otherwise

there would have been quite an upheaval amongst the airborne troops.

Yes well as far as we were concerned it was just another day at the office. I think because it was a bombardment,

the Japanese were shelling us but they weren’t having much success, and we were trying to knock those guns out. And those guns were eventually knocked out, the weight of numbers told in the finish with the weight of numbers there and with the help of the Shropshire of course. So it was

a landing, a bombardment and that was about it as I recall.

Hard to know but probably many hundreds of troops I would think. They came in on these American aircraft and

dropped out of them, it seemed a lot at the time but trying to estimate the numbers, no, I don’t really know.

Yes it was quite interesting to me, it was like the time we were in charge of these small escort aircraft carriers, to see the

aircraft taking off from them, coming in to land. Unfortunately I saw a couple of those go overboard and land in the water and I doubt very much whether the pilots would have got out of the aircraft, they would come in and miss the wire and go over the front of the aircraft carrier, a bit like the airborne landing some of the troops missed their target and landed in the water.

No. I didn’t, maybe they were bad shots or we were a bit lucky. But they did do the odd firing, I say the odd firing because nothing like continuous bombardments

from the shore onto the ships. They would probably more opportunistic perhaps, they would see a ship coming along the coast and they would fire at it and we would call in more support and put the shore battery out of action.

I can’t recall, I don’t recall seeing any ships hit by enemy fire form ashore. But no doubt there were near misses and perhaps a few scratches on the ships.

Well

it was just ships you know firing at these guns which were emplaced in the rock. Ships would be called in. I think some ships would perhaps fire. It wasn’t as if there were dozens of ships firing at once. I think they were more like trying to be more accurate.

I don’t think the Japanese were a great threat to us, our guns, because of our overwhelming firepower, so we were able to knock them out reasonably quickly. How long it took I don’t know. I don’t think we were in Corregidor that long, a few days perhaps.

Well later on in the war, towards the end of the war, we were in Subic Bay in the Philippines, that was a huge naval base and I think the Americans were there until very recent years,

they left there not many years ago. And I recall going ashore only the once in the Philippines and we had a bit of a look around a very battered Manila for a few hours and we weren’t there very long. But that was the only time I went shore in

the Philippines. When we were in a particular harbour, I have forgotten which one it was now. There were occasions when we got into harbour and we had quiet periods and we were able to perhaps go ashore onto some small island, and I recall going on

to one island once, just to break the monotony I think it was. I got ashore in Japan only a couple of times.

Yes just shortly after it finished.

Well we went back to Sydney for a short time for maintenance on the ship and then we went to Borneo yes. We did that. As I mentioned earlier when we went back to Sydney I transferred to the HMAS Hobart for the first two landings in Borneo at Tarakan and Labuan.

I was on part of the commodore’s staff just for a short time because an extra telegraphist was required. When the commodore was on board it was usually all frequencies received by telegraphists and that’s the reason why I went there, they just wanted an extra telegraphists.

I had a little bit of leave back in my hometown. And then I came back to Sydney and went straight off to the Hobart via two different aircraft which was quite a thrill at the time having not been

on an aircraft.

I recall that my dear mother was pleased to see me. She seemed to worry a bit about her young son being up there, and I have some old cutting from newspapers somewhere and I seem to recall that they had quite a bit to say

about the invasion of the Philippines and that the Shropshire had been involved in that and that she had been in a fleet-to-fleet battle. And I think that terrified my mother to think that her young son was up there with the risk that he might not come home. She was pleased to see me. And my

father, I think he was pleased to see me, not that he said all that much but you could see, the welcome was quite sincere. And I think I was a bit of a show case in a way, I am not saying this to boost my stocks, but the fact that I was the first person

from Elmore to join the navy. And you would wonder why a country lad would go and join the navy you would think he would join the army or something like that like most of the other locals did. The locals were interested, I think, in the different uniforms. They would ask a few questions and you could tell them a few things, not too much.

Yes it was nice to get home on leave and be with your family and remember that I am one of eleven children, ten of us are still alive at this stage. It was nice to get back in the warmth of the family. But it didn’t last long, I was back to Sydney and

off to the HMAS Hobart. Finish off Borneo, to Japan and then back to Australia again.

Once again a lot of shells fired

ashore. A vivid memory at Balikpapan is seeing smoke emanating from the oil wells and the oil tanks. There is lots of oil apparently around that area and the tanks were blown up. They were Australian troops that landed at Balikpapan and also, I am not

sure about Tarakan and Brunei, whether they were all Australian or not, anyway at Balikpapan they were nearly all Australians. And I recall after the war a friend of mine from Elmore said to me, “I recall our assault craft going right under your bow as we went ashore at Balikpapan.” He said, “I was wishing at

the time I was on the Shropshire instead of an assault craft.” But it was mainly firing. I don’t recall much aircraft activity from the Japanese. We stayed around there for some time. Called on at various stages to carry our special

bombardments. The Australia troops ashore I think were having it much harder than we were.

It was I think spasmodic would

be the word, it wasn’t a matter of going in there and going madly, all guns firing for long periods, I think you would do a bombardments for a certain time and other ships would join in and you would get your turn again later on on specific targets after things had been sorted out a bit on shore. The

first bombardments were usually to bombard close to the shore and to give the troops a chance to get ashore by driving the Japanese back a little bit and allow the troops to land and get a foothold, prepare their equipment and advance on the Japanese. I think that was the theory.

We certainly knocked over plenty of palm trees in the process. And I would like to think we were rather effective in giving the soldiers a chance to get ashore.

I don’t recall much at all. There were occasions

when the ship was fired on by batteries ashore but I am a bit hazy as to where those places were now. There could have been some in Borneo, Morotai, Philippines I am not clear about that one. But I know there were occasions when the ships were fired on, and I think some of the old records

or articles that have been written about the ship suggest that so many bombardments or batteries fired on the ship, so many were retuned and we knocked them out.

The Shropshire?

Well the HMAS Shropshire was an eight-inch cruiser, termed a heavy cruiser, her main armament were eight-inch guns. The main armament on

a light cruiser was I think eight six-inch guns. And there were secondary guns on the Shropshire they were 4.5 inch guns, and I am not sure what the light cruiser had.

Of course the heavy cruiser, in our case the Shropshire, the highest number of people we had on that was twelve hundred and eighty people. I think a light cruiser had six to seven hundred people. The HMAS Sydney, which was

lost with all hands, I think their complement was six hundred and forty-five. That was a light cruiser like the Hobart. Earlier when the HMAS Canberra was sunk in the Sunda Strait [Savo Island] in 1942 she carried a complement of only eight hundred and nineteen and compared with the

Shropshire, the same type of ship we had twelve hundred and eighty. But the war had changed by that stage. There was more aircraft activity, we, even towards the end of the war, disposed of our torpedo tubes off the ship. we had torpedo tubes each side of the ship. We got rid of those,

I believe it was to counteract the weight of the extra anti-aircraft guns, which we put on our ship because of the extras Japanese aircraft activity. And the way they were operating their aircraft, you know, the kamikaze attacks.

Well

I was a little disappointed because I expected to have a little bit of leave in Sydney. That was the only disappointing part. I knew that the Shropshire was going back into the Borneo area eventually and it was only a matter of being up there a little bit earlier than I would have been had I stayed on the Shropshire.

And it proved to be quite interesting. As I said earlier I managed to have a couple of flights on aircraft so that was quite exciting for me.

I did because I had been on it for a

couple of years by that time and it was a long time to stay on a ship. I used to wonder was I doing the right thing or were they keeping an eye on me, or were some better than me? Some would be on there for a few months and off they would be on another draft, somewhere else and it used to intrigue me why some stayed a long time and some didn’t. And

my dear old chief telegraphist, he assured me that I was doing the right thing, it was all right he said, “If you stayed on that long you must have been doing something right. I think I would have got rid of you if you hadn’t have been.”

No he sat on the same aircraft

as I did from Townsville to Hollandia but he didn’t say, “Hello” to me. I think there was certainly a division there and a little gate was there and you didn’t open it unless you were charged with something very serious and perhaps you would see the commodore or the captain or the commander, whoever.

Well it was important in that the commodore was in charge of the Australian Navy operations. Of the ships in that area. So he was the chief,

he was the number one man and he had I suppose a lot more things to worry about than perhaps an ordinary captain of a ship. They used to talk about the commodore’s flag, he transferred his flag from one ship to the other. The flag being a sign of authority and being in

charge of the Australian Navy up there.

Well it was only a temporary draft for me from the Shropshire to Hobart to help out in the communications branch because of the larger volume of

traffic which would occur because the commodore was on the ship. So he needed an extra telegraphist and it just happened to be my turn I suppose.

Well as soon as the Shropshire came back as I recall the commodore transferred onto the Shropshire and I just

went back to my normal duties of being in the crew of the Shropshire and being in the communications branch and receiving message, not specifically on the commodore’s staff.

I don’t recall that but I was quite happy to be back on the

Shropshire, because I felt comfortable on the ship and it had had such a marvellous record during the war. It was highly regarded and it was a wonderful crew .I felt comfortable there, not that I wouldn’t have accepted discharge if they had offered it to me as soon as I got back there. But the war was still going on and I knew that I

still had to go to the end of the war and at the discretion of the navy they could keep me in I think for another twelve months after the war. They didn’t keep me quite, well they did, it was October 46 when I was discharged.

I think it is the perhaps it’s the discipline, a number of fellows were a bit petty in some ways. To give you an example: when I was say working on a late watch, maybe eight to twelve at night time

or midnight to four am something like that, whoever was working on the watch, one of the telegraphists would go around to the bakery and just take a loaf of bread off the rack. That had always been done. And we had some butter or something like that that we would put on the bread and have a cup of “ky” as they called it, thick cocoa stuff. Or

the Yanks had generously given us, and it was the first time I had ever seen one, one of these coffee heaters, one of these glass ones. We couldn’t imagine that glass could sit on a hot plate and not crack. But of course it wasn’t glass it was something else. Apparently we got the coffee from somewhere, maybe from the Yanks. We did have

some American Navy fellows on board, some officers and they were co-ordinating things between the Americans and us. Anyway in the process of taking the loaf of bread I was seen by the chief petty officer, who had a position something to do with the food

area and I just ran off, why was he looking at me and so I moved off. And I was way up in the, I think, the radio direction-finding office, way up above the bridge and he happened to see me go up there and he said, “Right I have been looking for you.” And I said, “Why is that?” and I felt like I was back in the

old days where that was a flogging offence or perhaps death. And he said, “I am putting you before the commander; you cannot steal a loaf of bread.” I said, “I wasn’t stealing a loaf of bread. Just doing what we have been doing ever since I have been on the ship.” Up before the commander and the commander who was a fairly tough sort of a fellow, he had a wry smile on his face as I recall and he

said, “Telegraphist Browne, don’t do that again. If you want some bread you had better ask the baker first.” So that was the end of it. You could see how petty some people could be. And I explained to him who I was, what I did watch keeper and we had been doing the normal sort of thing to get this loaf of bread. So some petty things did crop up like that and I suppose you get sick of all of that silly rot.

Well I was interested in them. I don’t know whether I really

loved them. I thought it was a better place to be than perhaps foot slogging ashore. And I would mention this to a soldiers, “Oh no,” he said, “I would be a soldier any day. I wouldn’t stay on one of those things. What happens if someone put s a hole in it?” I said, “I don’t know. I suppose you go to

the bottom.” “Oh no, not for me.” But you didn’t think about those things anyway. And there were occasions on the ship when you thought that that life was idyllic with those lovely tropical nights and you would be steaming long and see the phosphorescence. I think it is coming up off the bow and lighting up around the ship.

And your hammock was slung on the deck and you were just moving in the hot tropical night, it was rather idyllic in that way. But there weren’t many of those occasions of course when you thought that way. If I was on a particular late watch, say

the midnight watch or the morning watch I put just a sheet of canvas on the hot deck just outside the wireless office, just have a pair of shorts on and sleep on that, it is hard to imagine these days, a hard steel deck. And I remember I used to use my life belt, not that we

were worried about being sunk, but it was the softest thing, it was such a small thing and you blew it up and it was a soft thing to put your head on. So there I would be lying on a sheet of canvas on the hot deck and put my head on this life belt, and then when it was my turn someone would say, “Come on, Browney, it is your turn to come and sit at the radio.”

Or the receiver.

Oh yes, you slept in a hammock or you slept on a steel deck, that was so in the tropics because it was extremely hot below decks on those ships, the county class cruisers,

I believe because they were an English ship and made in England they were made for around about England , perhaps the Atlantic and North Atlantic and those colder climates.

No I think perhaps we well we knew there were Japanese there but because of the strategy adopted by General MacArthur of this island hopping, going from island to island to island and leaving some islands in between,

that had Japanese on them, he we shouldn’t have been worrying too much about those because they were going to wither on the vine, they were cut off from supplies, whilst they were fanatical fighters, they were cut off there and you would have thought that eventually they were going to surrender anyway.

Why send our Australian and American troops in there to be killed fighting these people on islands that weren’t of any strategic importance? So I think we began to think that some of those other places we were going to were unimportant and you wondered why troops were going ashore there to be killed.

It was so late in the war and at this stage it was pretty obvious that the Japanese were more or less defeated and making last desperate efforts to save their homeland. It would have been a much different story I suppose if there had have been an invasion of Japan because they would have been most fanatical

in their efforts to save their homeland and many of the Allied troops would have been killed. But the islands there were a number of those, and we learn more about them as time goes by, that they were of little strategic importance and there was really no necessity

to make landings on them and risk lives of thousands of men and have thousands of people killed. Because we had the Japanese bottled up, they were there on their own, they had no ships, no aircraft, they were just living off the land.

More or less starving to death a lot of them and because of their upbringing and the way they thought about things and the military code, they were going to fight desperately and bravely, and they were not concerned at all whether they lived or died and in the process they were going to kill off a lot of

good men who really didn’t need to be there.

I think they thought he was a bit of a show pony. They had reservations about him I believe because

of the way he exited the Philippines in the early days. He left Corregidor I think and left his chief of staff or someone else there. MacArthur managed to escape from there by some means. People will argue that it is the responsibility of a person in charge to

escape anyway, but there seemed to be a cloud over the way it was done, that was all. And I think that it might have made the troops think that perhaps someone else would have been liked a little bit better. And I think that cap that he wore got a few people in, it really was an outrageous sort of thing, it had

more gold on it than you could shake a stick at.

Labuan I don’t recall a great deal about that landing, I was on the Hobart and didn’t see much being in the main wireless office

there, the first landing was at Tarakan and then later on, not all that much later went around the top of Borneo to Brunei Bay, just in that area in Labuan. There were probably more troops went ashore at Labuan, but I don’t

recall a lot about the landing up north there Labuan.

A lot of the… a number of the Australian troops were killed up there. I believe it was a fiercely fought occasion for some weeks. There were

a number of bombardments made of the place. I suppose that was important because Borneo had a lot of oil, although after the bombardments a lot of it would have disappeared because the oil tanks and the oil wells

I think were set on fire. You could see a huge pall of black smoke all over the place there where the oil was burning. That’s my most vivid recollection of Balikpapan: seeing the smoke. We did our usual bombardment, it had become second nature to us by this stage and we fired our last shells in

anger at Balikpapan and that would have been our fifty-sixth bombardment.

No I don’t think we did because there was little aircraft activity

if any. There could have been reports of aircraft but I don’t recall much activity there. I might say I saw one aircraft and someone else had seen ten. It is a bit like that you don’t always recall exactly what happened in these places.

I suppose we had been operating as a team for so long and it was a very good team and with a proud and very good record and so I suppose like some of these football teams, we will be all right. I don’t think we worried a great deal at Balikpapan,

there was not a lot of threat for us anyway. Although there could have been a few shore batteries fired at us but certainly no enemy ships to worry about, could have been the occasional submarine around. But threats to the ship come in different ways. I recall when we were heading up towards the Philippines a rather hairy occasion

occurred. We used to trial paravanes which was a sort of instrument that floated out from the side of the ship. They were out on steel wires and they would go along just under the water I think and the idea of those, they had large jaws on them and the idea was to cut

the cables of the mines which were just under the surface and the mine would float to the top of the water and our gun fire would blow up the mine. But on this particular occasion one of the mines became entangled in the wire on the paravane and we because we were going along with all of these other ships

we had to keep going and we dragged this mine along which I believe was only ten to twenty feet from the ship, and we dragged this mine along for six hours before it eventually floated free. There was much anguish and talk between the officers as to how they should disentangle this mine

but I think in the finish it freed itself and it was eventually fired on and sunk by the ship behind us. Some of our marksman with rifles tried to hit the horns of it but missed and someone else opened up and sunk it. So that was an occasion where that mine could have just come clear and just

hit against the ship, one of the officers was reported as saying, “That mine because of the size of it would have blown a hole in the Shropshire the size of a Bondi Bus.” That was his terminology. So you can have some exciting moments without being close to either ships or submarines or

what have you. And that was a bit of a hairy occasion and troops were well we on the ship were told to keep away from the port side as much as possible in case the mine did float free and hit the side of the ship.

We used to think, “Well, better them than us.” We were quite happy to be on the ship. At least we felt far enough away from the action to be safe even though if there were enemy guns that could have hit us of course, I always felt sorry for these troops going ashore.

Some of them would be slaughtered straight away and others had to put up with difficult conditions. Carrying those great packs around didn’t appeal to me either, the things that they used to carry. And there were a number of those poor fellows who were taken into shore presumably expecting to step out onto sand

or something where the ship or the landing craft opened and they stepped into deep water and because of the weight of their packs they were drowned. That’s a terrible way to be killed isn’t it? Perhaps the landing craft has gone to the wrong spot or hasn’t gone in far enough to let down its door at the end.

Well we were usually a fair way back from it, but the landing craft would pass us you know we would be standing a fair way out to sea because we could fire I am not too sure, I think in the Surigao Strait our opening fire was from about fifteen thousand yards, now

that is some miles, we closed to about twelve thousand yards which is still six miles or something. Probably seven or eight miles, those guns can fire long distances and of course battleships could fire much further than that.

No I don’t recall that. Our ship was in close contact with spotters I think they call them, people ashore who would spot the shells we were firing and instruct us where to fire, fire longer or shorter, things like that.

Some of them might have gone ashore for conferences with people ashore but I don’t think they went in too early, it was after something had been established ashore. Certainly none of the junior ranks went in there, there might have been some of the senior officers or one of the senior officers

who might have been the intelligence officer or gunnery officer, something like that but I don’t really know.

I know in Balikpapan our

ship had a number of Australian Army officers on board. Now they were in close contact by radios or whatever means with people ashore. And these army personnel, some officers, a couple of sergeants, bombardiers what have you, they were from the Australian Army

Artillery unit and they would be to help direct fire ashore. So there was close co-ordination between the army ashore and the army personnel on our ship and our gunnery people. We also had some American officers, not many, half a

dozen and they were there because of the close liaison between the Americans and the Australians, the ships.

I don’t recall them having… really what they did, they were probably co-ordinators of some description,

communicators or something in that line. I do recall on occasion seeing one or two of them in our main wireless office, so possibly they had something to do with communications between the fleet.

I would have

thought that our captain would have taken his orders from an admiral in charge of the group. The American Seventh Fleet was divided into I think they called them “groups, task group” I think they called them. We would have formed a

task group, maybe a group consisting of a handful of battleships and cruisers and destroyers and some other ships. So I would have thought that our captain would have taken his orders from a senior officer who would have been an admiral on one of those battleships in the task group.

Those, any American officers who were on our ship were rather junior officers, maybe lieutenants or something like that. Or ensign.

We went back to Sydney, no I am sorry.

We went back around to the Philippines as I recall and there were negotiations going on not long after this about ending the war and we were anchored in, I think it was Subic Bay when the notice of the end of

the war came through and from there we went to Japan.

I think the usual patrols. I am not sure at that stage whether the Philippines campaign had finished completely,

I think we were just wandering around the ocean making sure things were safe for the Allied troops. You would keep an eye out for any Japanese Naval activity or aircraft activity. I don’t think a lot went on for us, the

Shropshire, between the end of Borneo and the end of the war. We were around the Philippines area.

I think we thought it was certainly approaching the end. We still felt that we would be involved in other actions.

There was some talk of us helping with the Okinawa operation. There was some talk of us even going across to China for some reason, but those things didn’t eventuate and eventually Okinawa was secured and the Japanese

defeated there, and negotiations I think started soon after that to end the war.

I recall the night before the official announcement was made, we had some information that the

war was about to finish. We had heard that bombs had been dropped on Nagasaki and I forget the other, the two atomic bombs had been dropped and we were looking for surrender from the Japanese. There was every likelihood that it would come the following day,

and I think we charged around the ship, just ran around and said, “That’s good.” Or something and I think they even put on a picture show that night, that was the night prior to the war ending. And the next day it did end and only a matter of days after that we headed to Japan.

Yes I did some people had leave to go to some other area but I a, not sure where that was. I only went ashore on two occasions. One was just to have a look around Tokyo area there and at that time someone in the party had to wear side arms,

because we weren’t quite sure how the Japanese would react when they saw we allied troops on their shore. But they appeared broken in spirit at that stage. Their buildings had all been damaged and lots of children, women and older

men were living under sheets of iron. So that was what war can do to people. I am not saying that the Japanese didn’t deserve to have a bit of damage done to them and their country but when you see it after it has been done you reflect on

it and think, “What's the point of it all?” They of course were a threat to Australia and something had to be done. Everything seems to heal, even rifts between nations and this has happened over the last fifty or sixty years and some of these countries that we detested at times

have built up again and flourished and more or less have become our friends and allies. So you wonder about war, there is a lot of futility about it. However there are occasions when you have got to react, some of these distant

foreign wars, you wonder about sending troops to fight in those countries.

Yes that could be an example. You get rather cynical after a few years and you wonder why all of these things are happening.

Why we meddle in other people’s problems. Everyone has got an opinion on these matters and no one seems to be able to solve the problem. You can only have an opinion and hope that people learn to live with each other. In my time on this

earth you think of all of the wars, rumours of wars, conflicts, civil wars, that have taken place and they are still going on to this day. And you hope that people will live together but it seems to me that it is the most difficult thing for people to do that. It must be the way that human beings

are made, they have got to be antagonistic towards certain people. It is a shame but it seems to be the way the human being is. I am not going to solve any problems and it seems to me that most politicians can’t solve them either so it’s a

depressing thing to think about, but there are a lot of great people in this world and they are the ones we want to meet and be with, no matter which country they come form.

We would have been pretty angry towards them for things that they

had done. The underhand things that they had done. They felt I think that they could justify their actions. They felt they had been treated badly over a long time. Once again it gets to countries and commerce

and money and all of these sorts of things that put people offside and get them all angry and want to invade countries, because they felt that they have been wrongly done by in a certain area or perhaps by a certain government. No doubt the Japanese felt they could go ahead and bomb Pearl Harbor because of

things that had happened earlier, they did terrible things in China. It took a while to learn about all of those things. Today you would know about them in a matter of hours because of communications and the media equipment that is available and the way countries can communicate with each other via satellite and every other means of

communication. We did not like the Japanese for numerous reasons, Pearl Harbor, China, bombing Darwin, we certainly didn’t know much about the way they treated prisoners of war in those days and that amplified our hatred of the Japanese but of course that was post war.

Hate can’t go on, you just tie yourself in knots if you hate things. Perhaps you can say, “Well they are not going to be my friends any longer,” but I think hate just boils you up, it is not good for you.

I believe our situation in the navy was different to what the Australian Army personnel witnessed. Our war was a bit

different. We were sort of distant from their troops and from their navy. We fought with guns but from a distance. We tried to sink each other, we tried to blow them up and torpedo them, but we weren’t in that eyeball-to-eyeball communication where you were

killing each other and seeing what the Japanese had done to their troops. So I don’t believe that the Australian sailors hated like perhaps the Australian Army troops did. Because our war was a bit different and much more distant that the soldiers who

had to come to close encounters with the enemy and saw what fanatical troops they were and what they were capable of doing. I don’t recall any hatred shown by the sailors but I have no doubt that some of them if they had have

been closer to the Japanese might have done a few things that were perhaps taboo. You will hear reports of “take no prisoners” as far as army people are concerned, so if that happened you can only imagine what might have happened between the opposing troops.

It becomes a rather dirty sort of a war in those instances.

That was in August I think wasn’t it? We were around the Philippines area, not sure what we were doing but we were in the Philippines the day the war ended, which was the 15th of August 1945.

It was joy, it was excitement, my mother had done it again, it was her birthday and we were celebrating my mothers birthday, just being funny. We were pleased that it was over, we thought that we were going

back to Australia and that would have been good because we had had enough of tropical weather, but we didn’t know at that stage that we would head straight to Japan and that it would be the 30th of November before we reached Sydney. It was three months after the war before I actually got back to my hometown of Elmore in Victoria.

Whilst I was pleased to see the war finish I was disappointed that I didn’t get home a little earlier.

I think it would have been some time later when I started reading about the devastation that they had caused, a little bit about how they were made, atoms, they didn’t mean much to me. Why it was dropped. It was to save an invasion apparently of the

country of Japan. And then as time goes on you start to think, well you hope that no one else drops these things because of the devastation that they can cause. And fortunately to this date no one has done that, although

there have been rumours and actual reports that people are making atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs and all sorts of bombs and what they could do. And perhaps end life on this earth: it is frightening to ponder. But at least people who have the

capability to make these things and drop them have seen fit and used a bit of common sense and not done anything about dropping them on other countries.

Now I certainly would. Yes, it is a frightening weapon. But at the time it was dropped, really not understanding what it was all about, it was just another bomb, a little bit larger that some of the others that had been dropped but it was probably a good idea at the time.

They could have dropped other bombs perhaps. They had been bombing Japan for some time and the Allied forces and they could have bombed Japan into submission I feel without creating that

monster of an atomic bomb. This is with hindsight, of course, that I make these remarks. I feel that the Allied forces were a bit afraid of making a landing in Japan. They felt that the upbringing of Japan would

have brought too many casualties for the allied troops to think about. I think the thinking and I didn’t know at the time but I believe the thinking at the time was that there would be just too many casualties in an invasion of

Japan because the mind of the Japanese suggested that they would fight to the last man. And that would have been a very bloody conflict.

There was a… no I don’t recall coming into contact with Japanese.

Certainly I didn’t see any up in the country areas where I lived. So it was a strange sensation I suppose meeting Japanese close up and I only met them close up and brushed shoulders with them when I went ashore in Tokyo Bay, into Tokyo

and they were very friendly towards us. Everyone bowed to you, which was a new experience for me, for someone to be bowing to me, but that’s the way they were then. I suppose it helped them to get on more friendly terms with

the people who had invaded their country.

Well I felt they were no longer a threat to us. I

had not encountered the terrible atrocities, the way the Japanese soldier fought, the way the Japanese at, you know bombed Pearl Harbor, I had never experienced any of that, so there was not that great hatred from me for the Japanese, that could have changed

dramatically if I had have experienced what a lot of other people had experienced. The Chinese for instance, the people in Pearl Harbor, the soldiers fighting the Japanese soldiers, the prisoners of war in the Japanese camps, they certainly had a lot

to make them feel anger towards the Japanese.

Well I don’t know whether it changed me a lot.

Other people might disagree because it affected my hearing, I injured my leg, I had lots of nightmares. The doctors agreed that there a number of minor things that I

suffer from, I have post-traumatic-stress disorder, but who hasn’t I suppose? However I don’t worry too much about any of those things. I am still vertical, I can still walk around quite okay. I can still take my wife Rita out whenever I feel like it.

I can still enjoy the company of my children and nine grandchildren. Like the Shropshire, which was named “the lucky ship” I consider myself to be a very lucky man.

Sorry about that.

Well I have remembered a lot more today than I have thought about for many, many years. There were lots of

good times in the navy, I used to enjoy my leaves and even though the Shropshire was in a lot of action I feel that I have been rather fortunate in serving on that ship.

I never thought that I was going to get killed while I was in the navy, I never thought the Shropshire was going to get sunk. You never think those thoughts. The experience was certainly an eye opener for someone like me who spent their

eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first birthdays in the navy away from the guiding hand of a mother and a father. You had to certainly learn fast what was right and what was wrong and use common sense which is a great

thing to have, I believe. Not sure that I always had that but I try to work on the theory that common sense is one of the best things you can have and try to use it in all occasions.

Yes well I had a number shortly after the war, because we were such a large family, we didn’t have our own separate bedrooms in the country and my late brother Kevin who was the next one after me in the family used to sleep in the same bedroom and he demanded of Mum that he be moved from

that room because he was sick of being woken up each night. Yeah, but of course that didn’t happen for too long. You get the occasional one, not too serious, just get woken up and go back to sleep again. Nothing horrific it is just that nearly always seems to be for some reason,

it could be anyone trying to kill me. Push you off a cliff or knife you, shoot you, run over you. Just those sorts of things and not always connected with the war.

They have sort of petered out, that’s doesn’t worry me much. On reflection I think

perhaps the Japanese kamikaze attacks got to me a little bit. According to my brother I don’t remember but he used to say, “Oh, Frank’s fighting a war again,” “Fighting off those aircraft.” Something like that but I wouldn’t even remember what was going on, but apparently I would call out in the middle of the night and wake him and that’s the thing that upset him, he was missing out on sleep.

I don’t think so. I don’t think they worried me too much.

Well it is probably a combination of things that happened during the war, I am supposed to have a little bit of high blood pressure, a little bit of tension, a bit of post traumatic stress disorder, a range of things that sort of probably build up to upset you at times. I am probably

a bit quick to fly off the handle at times and I get frustrated and I believe that mainly when I am upset it emanates from the fact that my hearing is extremely poor and I don’t always hear what people say to me and I only pick up part of the sentence and I might take umbrage to a particular part, but when you see it in context the whole sentence, it

is a completely different thing. And I make a fool of myself on occasion by picking up the sentence in the wrong way or getting agitated over something where there is nothing to be agitated about. So perhaps I don’t know,

perhaps anyone who has been in action has been upset to a degree but I don’t think it worried me too much over the years.

Definitely the fleet-to-fleet action because that, I nearly said highlighted, hardly

the word you should use, but it is something memorable and it is something I think when people join the navy in the back of their minds they hope to be involved in a ship-to-ship action. It is something that in wartime that you expect to see but not a great number of sailors

really end up in a ship-to-ship action. Well they didn’t do in the Second World War, they were a lot of them were bombed, strafed by aircraft, suffered all sorts of problems. But straight out ship-to-ship action, that’s rather unique and that’s a memorable occasion in the navy.

I don’t believe so. I came back after the war and went back to the Postmaster Generals Department [in Melbourne], I refused to accept the position of telegraphist because I felt that had affected my hearing to a vast degree

and I had had enough of that. So I then went into the administrative area and I worked there until 1978. But I don’t think the war or the after affects were [sufficiently] severe to worry me too much. I think my wife Rita thought I acted in a reasonable way, and she has been

good enough to tolerate me for fifty-three years.

We were married in 1951. I actually met my wife in 1947, but the fact that money was hard to get and certainly housing very difficult to get. Not only because of the lack of funds, but lack of supplies.

I bought this block of land in 1950 and we didn’t have the house built until 1955. So we had to wait all of that time to get a deposit on the house.

Well they would ask me where I had been, I would tell them that sort of thing, been to Japan, the Philippines, England or Sri Lanka or somewhere like that and I think that used to satisfy them. They would think well he has seen everything, but you didn’t go

into great detail about actions. They would read something themselves and say, “Dad you were there. You must have seen a few of these kamikaze aircraft?” I said, “Oh yes I saw a few of them.” Just pass it off, and that’s about what you told them. where you have been, the navy was like this that and the other

thing, a couple of rides on aircraft, just the exciting bits. Not too much detail.

I think they found out a bit more, they have I think they know where

I went and what happened. But as far as battles like Surigao Strait goes you just say, “Oh well it was ship action and that was about all.” Just pass it off. “A few shells around.” You didn’t emphasise, “Oh I am lucky to be alive. That shell could have hit me.” You don’t say things like that. You just mentioned it and that

was about it.

I don’t recall dreaming specific things such as the

Battle of the Surigao Strait or the bombardments or a few of those things. It was all a bit of a muddle I think perhaps I still might have been a little bit tense when I was home on leave and it brought on these dreams and jumbled sorts of things. No I don’t ever recall seeing

acutely something that happened during the war, it was all a bit of a jumble.

No I knew people

who had been killed on other ships but because we were such a fortunate ship we didn’t have anyone killed on our ship. There were some casualties but they were from accidents or drownings or something, I have forgotten the details. Not many. We were fortunate not to have any casualties caused by aircraft

or shells or torpedoes or anything else. So that was why the ship of course has always been referred to as “the lucky ship”.

I don’t recall anyone who had to be

put ashore for mental or psychological reasons. People did funny things at times, it was a bit of a joke they used to say, “He has gone troppo” or “He has gone around the bend” but nothing too serious. It was just in the nature of some people to be a bit

of an actor and carry them on and we would say, “He is a bit of a character, he has gone around the bend.” But that was just the nature of the fellow being a bit outgoing. You know putting on a bit of a turn at the drop of a hat. Not to secure his discharge from the navy, just fun I think.

We didn’t end up with any mental cases to my knowledge. I don’t know of anyone who needed psychiatric treatment, I know of none.

The pressure?

Well it would appear that there was some pressure but I didn’t consider it as being under pressure at the time. I just carried out my usual duties, just went on my, different watches and received messages

and I suppose all of those other things were part of the job and what you expected anyway joining the navy and being on a front line ship, a heavy cruiser, you expect to encounter some action. And that was the wish of a lot of sailors to get on a ship such as the Shropshire because some of the

sailors ended up in back waters, whilst they loved the ships they were on, but they were in a lot of cases a long way from the war. Still subject to torpedo attacks and perhaps aircraft attacks but on small ships that weren’t really ever going to be in ship actions.

Well I am happy to have had the experience. I am happy to have served on the Shropshire. She was a gallant ship. Had a lot of experience a lot of action.