Australians at War Film Archive

Well I was born in New Zealand and had

up to a portion of my secondary education in New Zealand. But then my parents were Australian and we came back here and I grew up on the Manning River and enjoyed life there. But when I was growing up with the Depression I had to do anything I could do so I was doing a bit of hawking

and I went up onto the Newington Tablelands. And it was from there that I became a minister of the Presbyterian Church. It was a big task because I not only became a minister of the church but I became one of the leaders in church union. And when church union came I became one of the

foundation members of the Uniting Church in Australia. And the word uniting being indicative of what we were looking for other ways in which we could form union in Australia. Three churches, Congregational, Methodist and Presbyterian came in initially and theoretically at lest we were open to receive any others.

I think that’s a summary of what I was doing. I did some writing. I wrote a book called Camel Train and Aeroplane, which was the story of John Flynn’s closest at iron. And I have written shorter length books. One about the church in the north of Australia, simply called it,

I forgot what we called it, but it was the story of the Uniting Church in north Australia. And also of Matron McQuaid White who was matron in the hospital up there during the really bad period of the war years. And more recently I’ve been scribbling a few of my own

memories and my daughter is processing an autobiography, not an autobiography a biography. Which will appear in due course, goodness knows when.

I was sent to the Northern Territory by the Presbyterian Church as a welfare officer in Tennant Creek. Tennant Creek was a

small community interested in gold mining. And from that I became involved with the army when it first started to operate in the Northern Territory. And became heavily involved actually in communication with the ordinary soldier.

And trying to serve their needs as far as I could.

Well the major task in the Northern Territory was the building of the Stuart Highway. And that I think is something of great importance as far as Australia is concerned. Because until they started that

there was no decent service, travel to the Northern Territory. And the northern forces that were being formed were dependent on shipping to bring supplies and everything else. And that was a great handicap that we were dependent on water transport where

we had a very large length of road that ought to be covered. And it wasn’t until the government had wakened up to that that anything was being done. And I was involved with the troops and with the road builders for the whole period of the war.

Well I was working as a chaplain with the services on the road. And I then went to New Guinea for the campaign on the northern coast of New Guinea. And also later still until the time of the disarmament to Borneo.

Balikpapan in Borneo and that was a big challenge really.

I stayed on in Darwin for a time. I took my discharge and went to Darwin and was involved with the re building of the town and also rebuilding, I didn’t do any actual

rebuilding myself but directing it and finding the reasons why we were needing the kind of building that had been put up there. And I suppose you could say I was a rouse about trying to get some sense out of the very heavy activity that was going on

in the place.

I went to Balikpapan, no, to New Guinea to the north coast where they were fighting against the Japanese. And when we settled back, came back and we were reorganised and we went to Balikpapan. And it was there that, of the surrender of the Japanese.

Yes, I came back to Darwin.

I went to New Guinea.

I went back to Darwin, yes, as a civilian minister in Darwin. And became involved in the work of the churches coming together in one force.

And we actually formed the first United Church in the Northern Territory in 1946.

I grew up in Taranaki in a place called Stratford. And Stratford was dominated by Mount Edmond. And the people there were very conscious of their heritage. And they provided a very good surroundings for a young fellow growing up. And I went back there a year or so ago just to have a look.

And I am very impressed by the quality of the urban life in New Zealand and particularly in the larger communities like Stratford, which is named for Stratford-Upon-Avon and Shakespeare and so on.

Very primitive, I can remember the first motor car

coming into the community where we were. And I suppose in the bush generally where there were people coming back from the First World War and became axeman, turning land and so on. And it was a very primitive kind of existence that some of them had. Because

quite interesting to see the way in which ex soldiers, many of them coming back with war brides from Britain and France. And settling in the real outback of the North Island of New Zealand.

Oh yes I remember very well

in 1921 I think it was going to the unveiling of a memorial to these men in a real scrubby area. And I think in many ways it was a example to me of what could happen. These men were coming back and earning money cutting down trees and so on. But they were spending it almost as quickly as they could get it on grog.

And it made me sympathetic with the needs of men who were forced to work perhaps at not what they wanted to do. And how they spent all their money and everything else to get it, because it left a very vital interest to me in welfare of people.

Well on that day we were living in Wellington, a place called Roma Bay across the bay and my Father told me that at 11 o’clock on a certain morning there was going to be a gun fire. And that will be the sign that the war had ended. And I thought he was a bit of a

magician to tell me that it was going to happen two or three days before. And sure enough it happened. And there was great rejoicing. I remember very well old motor cars with fold down hoods. And the fold down hoods covered with flags coming around and rejoicing in the fact that the war, that had been so terrible, had ended.

And it was about that time too that the bubonic plague became evident too, it was very much worse in New Zealand than here in Australia.

Not in any way, no, we didn’t have any sickness. But of course it affected everybody because the numbers of people that did have it were

per head of the public, much more so than here in Australia. Tragic stories of some of them, a little boy coming into a butcher shop and asking for some meat and he said to the butcher, “How do I cook it?” And he was only a child of five or six years of age I think. And the butcher said, “You ask your Mother to cook it.” And he

said, “I can’t wake Mummy up, she and Dad are both in bed and I can’t wake them up.” And the fact was that both Father and Mother had died of the plague. And here is this little kid trying to keep hold on life. It’s a tragic story really.

Well there were all sorts of ways, not assembling too much

and having to wear gas masks and things like that. I am very conscious of the fact that I was very young at the time and I didn’t really appreciate everything that was going on.

He was a vans man really, a salvation army vans man. And

he was an expert musician. And he worked with a special group that was known as a biorama. And it was through that, travelling in New Zealand that he met my Mother. And they were married in Wellington in 1910.

He was a good Father to me,

he was very keen to see that I learned what I could from him. He was a pioneer in the movie industry. Sort of something that you had grown up with. And he was an expert as far as photography, cinematography was concerned. And he taught me

the principles of movies, moving picture operation. And I was an operator of moving pictures before I went, came into the church.

Oh well much the same as it would have been in Australia. Dad in the very early days of movies

apart from anything he may have made himself, he had a had a mobile set up at some time, I can’t remember exactly what it was, but he used to travel around from Christchurch or in that area and showing moving pictures in the little towns and villages wherever he went.

First it was with the Salvation Army

and the Salvation Army having introduced the first moving picture, feature length moving picture, they discovered the devil was in the moving pictures. And then Dad moved out and was with the civilians from that time on.

Quite regular, Sunday school, fellowship.

Both of them of course. But it was very

important to me and I know I went to several camps and so on to build up a fellowship with other youngsters growing up.

I can’t remember much about what we did. We had talks of course, biblical talks. And

we learned also with the boy scouts how to look after tentage and the values of being able to live out of doors. And to live about, or to learn about the country.

Birds and animals and so on, it was a good usage of my time.

Well she was just a good old Mum, always there when you needed. And she was probably as good a missionary as anyone could have. She could talk about what the church was doing and to make sure

that we as children went to church for our instruction.

I’m the eldest of seven.

Oh yes a very close family.

There is still four of us alive.

That’s good question, we would eat, have our meals together. I’m sure that the influences of those years helped me when I became a missionary in Australia.

Youth camps, Presbyterian fellow youth camps, which were quite regular. And where we built a great atmosphere of fellowship. And doing things that meant something in the

community.

Because Dad said, “We are going to Australia,” that was it. He wanted to come back here because of his own family.

I was 13.

Thirteen years old.

Well like any other 13 year old I had to adjust to the new relationships and become a member of the local church and so on. And that’s what

brought me into the effects of the army.

Well the church had missionaries and youth work and well I became a missionary with the Australian Inland Mission, John Flynn’s mission. And they

appointed me to Tennant Creek and it was here that I became involved for the first time in any straight way with the army. And it’s a way of life and missions to the ordinary people.

On the north coast of Wingham, on the Manning River.

Well I didn’t go to school there. Couldn’t afford the time, I had to work for a living. So I had experience in

meeting people in the churches and learning to communicate with them what it means to be a Christian. And I think that was the most important influence that anything could have to me.

I was formally admitted as a candidate for the ministry

at the age of 23.

Very hard to remember. I was involved with other

groups along the Manning River from Gloucester North up to Kempsey. And we learned how to travel in the area. Motorcars were very scarce in those days. And we had camps on the beaches and that sort of thing. When I say the beaches, the beach areas. And these

camps built up a community of place in the end.

It affected them very much because there was a very high level of unemployment. And it’s no

secret that there were many, many men who travelled from place to place simply to earn a living. Travelled by trains, “jumping the rattler,” as it was called, a goods train that had two or three men in every truck. And when they came they would slide away

and try and get work. And it was very trying, difficult period of time for Australia generally.

It meant that my Father was unemployed and I was probably the major earner in the family for a time.

I was working in a motor garage simply as a seller of petrol and spare parts, tyres, repairs of tyres. And generally helping the farmers, dairy farmers mainly

in that area.

Well the church would help. The community would generally try and provide

help. Many men had left their homes in Sydney or wherever. And they were struggling to get the money to send back home. It was a very difficult and a very trying time for Australia generally. But it probably was the major reason why I became self confident

and when the army came along, I was able to fit in very clearly.

Well I worked in this motor garage and when I

failed in that I did a bit of hawking, mainly hawking of drapery and so on. And then of fresh fruit, taking loads of organs from the Manning River and selling them around Armidale.

Well I was unemployed and

when an opportunity came to come to Sydney I came down here to, so that I could do some preaching for the church. And it was through that that I was directed to Tennant Creek in 1939.

In Wingham.

Well you just had to be a member of the church and worker in the church, had to be recognised by the local community as someone who was worthwhile spending time to try and train. And

the whole process is as far as I was concerned, the Lord was pushing me along a road which ultimately lead to Tennant Creek.

I didn’t want to achieve anything. I just wanted to do what I believed to be the will of God. And that’s enough

of a need, pressing anybody can have.

Not exactly. The so called sufferings that you mentioned was gradually easing off. And by

1939 I think you could say that Australia had begun to recover from the Depression.

I was in Sydney.

I remember

two things. One was that it was announced that Australia was at war with Germany and Italy. And that I had just married. The week that war was declared I was married. And it was a time

to really feel it was worthwhile.

That isn’t what I came here to do. But anyway, I will tell you, I was married to a woman called Erla Bullock. And we were married

on the Saturday after the war was declared. So the fact that the war was on and so on, meant a great deal to me.

About four months. I was married on the 9th of September. And

I went to Tennant Creek on the 1st of December. So it was a very short time in between. But I think it was a real recognition by some of the authorities that I might be able to do. And it was undefined except that I was to be the welfare officer in Tennant Creek. A small mining area where the worst

of those who needed help were to be found.

Well Tennant Creek was a small community of gold miners. Most of them just in pairs or small groups.

And living under outback camping facilities. And generally having to battle so that they could continue to live and work.

Well it was a club. Sidney Williams Hut from Sydney was erected there. It had facilities for men to play games, table tennis, billiards, and get books, reading

and other, anything that we could get from them. And, well the welfare was in keeping them from the pubs, which was the way many of them would act if they had the opportunity. This was something that went back to me when I was a lad growing up in

New Zealand where the fellows would be out felling bush, and they would come into town with a cheque for so many acres or whatever they had done. And they would go to the pub and they would put the cheque down on the desk for the lady who was the publican. And she would feed them and give them beer until they had run out. And she would give them five quid to go back and

start it all over again. And this was a disgrace. And I found that the same sort of thing was happening, some variations, when I came to Tennant Creek.

Well they could come, we had a shower and toilets and we

had a library, and table tennis and various things like that. And just generally build a community and give them a seen purpose in their living.

Not a church building

as you would call it a church building. But a church is a group of people who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and gather in his name. And that was the way we had to do it. During the week the building we had was used for the purposes I had outlined. And on Sunday, Sunday school in the morning and a service in the evening.

Oh just a few, not very many. One group I remember came from one of the

public, public units for processing this old mining ore. And these were groups of people in themselves, brought together in the church form Ballarat in Victoria. And that became the sort of hard core for the church because

they could come in and come and have a shower, come and, to the stores and get their food and so on. And spend some time reading and so on, and just joining together in fellowship of activity. It was a very good example of what can happen

if half a dozen people put their mind to it.

Well there was a Roman Catholic Church, which was really the only church. The Church of England had

a bush missionary, and he used to have a small hall and that was it. I was the rest of them.

Well he was one of the

finest men you could ever meet. He grew up in singleton and he became a worker with John Flynn and the inland when he was finished at the University. He ended up a Master of Arts with honours and when he came to the bush the people fell in love with him.

And he became a kind of motto for me as to what a man should be in the bush.

Well it’s hard to say that, he was probably teaching me a lot of things. He taught me bushcraft for a start. He taught me

how to approach people and how to influence them. And I regarded him as one of the greatest men I have ever known with the possible exception of John Flynn himself. He worked with John Flynn for 27 years. And he left his mark on the whole of central Australia.

Well John Flynn was the son of a school teacher in Victoria. He became interested in the church and interested in things that the church would be interested in. And he was probably given the title, ‘Flynn of the Inland’ by

Ion Idriess who gave him that title when he wrote the story of what was supposed to be called Flynn’s Life. Actually it did more to teach people of Australia about Flynn than anything else.

I met Flynn on many occasions. He

used to get me to go and represent him at outings and so on. He would get a invitation from some pharmaceutical group to prosecute the use of their product. And he would simply send me along to give him a report. He

was a most wily minister you’d ever meet. He would never tell you why he was doing it, but it became evident after a while.

I don’t know that we ever actually discussed the spiritual side of things. We had a great deal in common about the people we were going to meet, their needs. And how we

would do it. And probably he was quietly moving me along the line that he thought was the right one.

You are a missionary if you are one to one. And you are not losing time by spending time with one man or one group of men.

No matter where they would be.

He once said that a man is his friend and Flynn found his real manhood in being a man with all other men that he met.

I think everybody that knew him liked him. There was never any doubt about that and he didn’t do so much in the bush as his men that he sent out, like Partridge. Partridge himself was an outstanding man.

I don’t remember having disagreements, I had a lot of agreements.

Well the lasting memory is quite a task. When he died I conducted his funeral

and I said to his daughter, “You will have to write your Father’s story.” She said, “I couldn’t do it,” “Well,” I said, “If you don’t do it I will have to.” And my last word is in the book I wrote - Camel Train and Aeroplane - but even that isn’t a last word, it’s a last impression rather.

The book is about 400 pages and that’s the story of Kingsley Partridge and his men. I believe that John Flynn was very wise in him using Partridge as he did. And the use he had to introduce the church as a serving

mission in their needs.

Who doesn’t? Flynn did frustrate some people because he didn’t do as much as they thought he ought to be doing for the Aborigines. But that was only just a small group.

It’s very hard to know. They expected him probably to join up as missioners do, go to church on a Sunday and the rest of the work week do as they like. Flynn and

Partridge would be like, if you said, “The chinamen secretly, secretly, catchy monkey.” And well, that’s about it. Partridge expressed Flynn’s life in a different personality.

I had really very little with the Aborigines. My mission was for the European or the western community in the bush and the work among aborigines came second. And in other ways became quite important. But it was

not so much with the Aborigines as with the white people. The government for example, John Flynn was very interested in what the government was doing.

Well in many ways nothing.

In August 1940 the government agreed to do a road across Australia. In August 1940 that decision was made in the cabinet meeting. In June of 1940 my group and others were invited to the opening of an inter church club in

Darwin. And this was a big event. And the army was very heavily involved in the nations activities, the moderator of the Presbyterian Church was superintendent of the Methodist mission and the Congregational Church were all there together with the army and navy and

air force and John Flynn was concerned that the words of the, [Adolph] Hitler [German Chancellor] and the north were not so much as action. And less than a month after the cabinet decision had been made the first army personnel arrived in Tennant Creek. And we

asked him what they had come for, because we had never seen anything outside of Darwin who were in uniform. And when he said, “We have come here to build a road,” we all said, “Well that’s what was needed,” and he said, “We are going to build it in 90 days.” And nobody would believe him, we said, “You don’t know what you are talking about, you will never build a road

through there in 90 days.” But that is what they set out to do and that’s what they did. And it was a marvellous task that they had to undertake and deliver to the people of Australia. More than anything else to the people of north Australia.

No, the Aboriginals were not involved in building it. It was built by three main roads authorities in Australia. The northern section as to be built by the Queensland Main Roads Commission. The central part was to be built by the New South Wales Department of Main Roads and the South Australia Highways Department. And these were the people

who built the road. And they were the people who brought the machinery and the manpower to do it. And the 90 days was beaten by about a day I think. They built the road and did it in 89 days. When I say a road it was from, just a bush track and sometimes there was no track, to a graded highway with a

five inch metal crown on it. And drainage and so on, properly installed. It involved the building of a large dam at Newcastle Waters because the area there was low lying. And there was one

length of it of a mile, which was about four or five feet above the rest of the community around about, which made it into a kind of a mill pond. But it provided a service for a road which began to be used by the end of the year. And that is the story that I believe we should all learn from.

It can be done that will be done.

Well the machinery, bulldozers, graders, loaders, trucks, many building materials which we had never seen before. And

whereas the Northern Territory had one grader and nothing much more, these people all brought their own equipment with them and they worked 24 hours a day for the three months to get the road operating.

The only people I’ve mentioned had been the road working, the civilian road working bodies in Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia. They were not Aborigines, they were all ordinary working men. They worked 24 hours a day and discarded any

worry about dust and grime and dirt. But they did the job and they did it well.

Distance mainly. But there was a lot of scrub, the scrub needed to be cleared. The road base had to be built so that it was

able to be kept to a reasonable grade all the way. And the surface had to be given a five inch mat of fine gravel. And in the heat of the day, it’s no easy matter.

Well they worked and it was highly commented on by their bosses because they knew what they had to do and I think it began to be appreciated that this road was essential for the future of the north. The

road itself was the only community, the only facility serving the community to bringing food and manpower and ammunition and so on to the north and Darwin. And I think perhaps they suddenly woken up to the fact that we had another

enemy in the area, the Japanese and the government began to bring pressure. And the road was finished, when I say finished, finished in the area where it was needed. It went to five inches and a gradient that could be managed and it’s

a tribute to the men, ordinary working men, the drivers of bulldozers and grades and so on. And actually getting the thing done.

I dare say there were I don’t know. I had a couple of

funerals, when you are stretching work across there hundred miles long and using machinery all the time it’s inevitable there will be casualties sometimes.

My first involvement was with the army troops who came to Darwin overland maintenance force, was a small section of

army personnel who were to come up there and stay there until that job was finished. And that job was to provide communication, food fuel and so on to the men who came to build the road. The army didn’t

do the building but they did the supplies to the builders. And to do this they established four overland centres. One near north of Barrow Creek, one at Tennant Creek, a place they called Elliot which was simply a number eight watering point on the road.

And that was named Elliot and then one at Daly Waters. And all of these were done with great credit.

I patrolled them regularly. It started in November and I worked until the

end of the year, November, December and into January of 1911, 1941.

I had a Dodge,

sorry, it was a utility, international utility with special facilities to cope with bad roads and I always carried a

winch to pull my self out if I got bogged or anything like that. I also carried tools for any breakages, replacing springs or that sort of thing. Made sure that I was always mobile and the places I have mentioned were places which

were centres from which the road building was maintained. It was also the principle of the government, they were building the road not to have it close to the local hotels. And the reason being that they were going to be moving troops. And the troops, they wanted them to go through

as cleanly as possibly and they would make a 20 mile walk or so from the bases to where they were encamped. It would be too far for them to walk to get a drink of beer. But that is the way it worked, and a very successful way.

Well, the worst would be your springs, there were others beside me doing this, and most of us had problems with springs. Maybe only just a leak or so but main springs very often would break and you’d have to

replace them. And there were other things like shock absorbers and steering gear, bushes and so on needing to be replaced. Not so much to the body but to the actual mechanical side of it.

Well I always had two spare wheels plus tubes and tyres in addition, in case I needed them. And I was always in a position that I managed to keep, if I had trouble on the road to get on the road again as quickly

as possible and not to have to be depending on other people to come and rescue me.

Well it’s simple techniques of how you replace these springs if they break. How to look after

your electrical equipment so that your motor keeps running. And to carry enough fuel so that you can do your job without having to have people bring fuel to you. I don’t think in all the years I was there that I ever had an occasion to get somebody to come and

rescue me. I always managed to get myself back on the road within half a day anyway.

Well Kingsley Partridge had come up to Tennant Creek to relive me in the club and so on. And

he said, “You go out on the road and I will get in touch with you if there is any need.” I went up to Elliot, I had arrived at Elliot in the evening of the first day and was met by a signaller with a message for me, “Would I return to Tennant Creek?” Partridge’s tyre had been burned and he had an urgent call

to Alice Springs, and old timer who had died. Well I just said to them, “Well I’ll have a meal and a shower and I’ll go.” And that’s what I did, but during the middle of the night driving along I lost my steering iron and I had no steering. And by investigation with

trouble lamps I found the parts that were broken and what I could replace them with and got back on the road, I called in at the army camp at Banka Banka and they were able to give me a proper part to fix it. And I soon went on to Tennant Creek.

I travelled then that day about 500 miles among other things. And at Tennant Creek, Kingsley was waiting for me and I showered and refuelled and we set off. And we drove to Alice Springs to the funeral, which we conducted that next afternoon. And then we turned around a drove back

and Kingsley carried on looking after the place until I finished my patrol. But I travelled about 1,300 miles in 38 hours. Well we made it possible to keep alive the work we were doing and conduct a funeral for an old bushman who lived in the bush all his life. That’s just one

very small sort of incident that I can remember quickly.

Oh yes, every year there would be someone would go out and

run out of petrol or something. And try to walk to the nearest place where they thought they could get help. And to only die in doing it. I could say that almost every year one or two people would be like that. I haven’t been in touch with them the last few years but all the time I was there, every year there would be someone

who would perish.

Well they were mostly strangers who came up there thinking they knew what to do. But there was one where two men who had been scout leaders in Sydney came up there. They got themselves bogged in

the gravel on the edge of the road. They had been unable to get themselves out and they decided to walk to the nearest place to where they thought they could get petrol. They were walking away from the nearest one and

two men died, two so-called travellers. And it was a very salutary result. Made me even more intent on building a road safety, and a place of safety for anyone in the Territory.

Well it was generally a matter of personal relations. In some cases I would have a service. In a case I will mention, I went to Elliot. I would have had a service after tea that night but instead of that I turned around and

came back to Tennant Creek. Mostly it was human relations, getting to know the people, the actual men that were being transported I only had a few of those where I’d get a chance for service because they were in to their camp, dirty and dusty at night, by the time they had a shower and a meal and a sleep, they were ready not to listen to me but to get onto the

next point. It was a very hard job to do and I enjoyed doing it.

I wouldn’t have said anyone gave me a hard time. I found that the hardest of them were always willing to give me a good time. They

didn’t recognise me as a Christian minister by what I said, but by what I did. And I think that something that the Christian church did have to learn properly. What you do rather than what you are.

I remember on one occasion I was going through, this is not in the centre,

it’s out far west, I came across a rabbiter who was camping with his wife and a couple of kiddies. And he was out setting his traps and collecting his scalps. And his wife was there with the kids, and she said, “Mr Grant, I haven’t had my children baptised, will you baptise them now you are here?” And I said, “I would but I’d like to have

your husband.” And so she said to him, “Well I don’t know what he’ll have to say,” but when the husband came in and told him she wanted to have them baptised, he was very critical of the whole thing. And it was only finally that I said I would go with him and help him with his traps overnight and we could do it in the morning. So I did

this with him and he went and trapped and I drove his truck. And we got all of his scalps and when we came back to his camp we had a Christian service, baptised his children, and that fellow who first wouldn’t want to talk to me, he

talked to me, couldn’t sit down. And finally he said to me, “Mr Grant, if you pass any camp where we are, you come in and see us.” And that’s the attitude that we tried to build up. We would come and meet people and maybe not talk about religion at all. But talk about their problems and their needs and they’ll then recognise that we are there.

And not for any other reason.

Well he just didn’t want to cooperate. He said, “Oh you can do it, I won’t be here.” I had to convince him that it was the Father’s responsibility as much as the Mother’s and it was probably more by simply

boring or frustrating you in your action that may make it difficult.

Well where the army camps were we certainly did. We gave them cricket bats and balls, and table tennis tables and equipment. And playing

cards, altogether just to try and take away the sense of monotony. And to give them something to occupy their mind. Letter writing was a thing they very often needed and always carried letter writing material. And reading material, magazines and things, short stories, they we the most welcome.

Well they only expected them to work eight or nine hours a day. And the rest of the time they might have a job to two to do. But mainly their time was their own. In fact a man’s work is 24 hours a day, so of that

eight hours for sleep, eight hours for sport, and eight hours for work. And we would always make sure the work was fuelled as well as any other.

Didn’t have much conversation at all. They would officially receive you. Sometimes ignore you,

but if anything, once they got to know you, then they would do anything for you.

No, there were an Anglican priest in Tennant Creek, he used to come up

and down the track a little but he was too busy on his own in Tennant Creek. But because I always had a back up in Kingsley Partridge or some one else, I was able to keep in touch with the people, get to know them, and to earn their appreciation.

The Uniting, Darwin work

was financed by the Inland Mission, Australian Inland Mission, and it was Australia-wide Presbyterian.

About 300 pound a year.

By cheque once a month.

Any income I got I remitted to Sydney with the receipts that I brought. And they would always pay me by the month. And that was one thing, I didn’t have to worry about where my money was coming from, if I got money in I sent it away. But if I got no money at all it didn’t matter.

Well the flying doctor service when I went to Tennant Creek was in its early stages. It had been tentatively started in Cloncurry in Queensland. And from there it expanded to Wyndham, Derby

Alice Springs. And then from there it’s gone down to, let’s see, Broken Hill,

then here to New South Wales.

Well you used to see it attending to people who didn’t have a doctor or a nurse.

For example Tennant Creek had a doctor and a small hospital. Alice Springs had a small hospital and I think a couple of doctors. Most of the other places had nothing. And the flying doctor became their doctor.

I had a bit to do with them, I filled in gaps where they didn’t, I only occasionally had occasion to use the flying doctor. Not for myself but for other people. And of course John Flynn established the flying doctor at Cloncurry.

And it became the model, the model of how to work, fly the airplane, the doctor to look after the patient. And the doctor always had to forgo his authority to the pilot. They weren’t going to affect

chaplain helping the sick and injured at the head of the aircraft. I knew most of the early men, of course today it’s such a huge organization, what’s the boss today, gone tomorrow. We got something to

be very proud of in Australia.

It depends upon where they were. Cloncurry is

fairly centrally located in western Queensland. But those plans travelled at about 80 or so miles an hour. And it was, say, 400 miles over

over four hours of flying. And depending what was wrong, had to arrange to carry that patient away, they would do so. But otherwise they might arrange for treatment to be given and the patient to be taken to a nearer hospital. But generally speaking

if a call was made there was a need for some sort of action.

Four cylinder, DC8 and 10 I think, I forget the numbers, they were mostly de Havillands. But the flying was

done by a flying company, a pilot, and the heritage meant that the flying was for doctors use. But not that he determined if the weather was bad or anything, no mater how much urgency was in it,

the need of a patient, the pilot always took precedence in regards to where they flew. But they were all small four cylinder engines.

Well yes, there was a case

where at Oodnadatta on the holiday period the local weather officer decided to walk to the nearest station to spend Christmas with them. And he didn’t make it, he was picked up and brought back into town. He was so badly dehydrated that he died before anything

else could happen. And we had to call the doctor in of course, pending his future.

Well

I wanted to visit the camps. And to do so I needed to be acceptable to the army. And as a civilian coming into camp fairly regularly I needed to have some kind of affirmation. And I then was

asked to become a chaplain and I was gazetted as a chaplain in 1940 in September, 1940. So I wore an army uniform from then on.

More or less the same

work, yes. Accept that with the army, had the stations and always knew that I would be acceptable there and I didn’t have to worry to try and convince someone else that I might cover, have a church service or go and see someone who was sick. It was acceptable immediately.

The indoctrination was the fact that I was an ordained minister. And that applied to all of them. The army provided assistance to ministers of religion

on the basis or their ordination, the Church of England, Roman Catholic, other Christian denominations, and these were divided up into Methodists, Presbyterian, Congregational and other Protestant bodies. So as long as you were one of these and your name was gazetted at the insistence of the head of the church, well you were admitted.

Just an army uniform. In the Territory the uniform was a pair of shorts and an open-neck shirt. And boots or shoes, mostly boots and stockings. And if you had served anywhere else you would put

up your ribbons or otherwise you, all you had, you recognised, in the rank of a chaplain you were a captain.

Well my epaulettes were always black edged and

if I was in a uniform where, full uniform, I would wear a Maltese Cross on the epaulettes.

That was optional.

I had worn a collar, you take a clerical collar as well as an ordinary shirt and tie. In the bush it was an open necked shirt.

There was Australia.

Well Alice Springs was a base of a telegraph line. Apart from that there was only Tennant Creek, Daly Waters and Darwin really. The

rest of the place was just either bush track or an occasional peg to show where it is.

What about it?

Like what you see anywhere in Australia,

a post a cross piece and however many insulators on it. In the original overland telegraph line there was only line. And in the early days it was only a fencing wire, iron wire. It wasn’t until after the Second World War that a copper wire was used, which made

the communication much more feasible and useful.

The road followed the non existing telegraph line. Where it had been surveyed and put in but it didn’t always follow it directly. In the

rough and tumble of life, it followed the (UNCLEAR) telegraph line.

Well we had a telegraph line from Tennant Creek south and

Barry Waters I think it was to Darwin. And the rest was just the staging points for the overland line.

At what stage?

Well the first road was from Tennant Creek to Alice Springs, it had been graded and one or two places it might be a bridge or something but nothing much at all. But

first attempt to start the road was in September 1940 and from there it started from Tennant Creek north, and that was 600 miles to Darwin virtually. And the existing line was improved from Alice Springs to Tennant Creek.

Distance, termites and well mainly distance.

Well the road came down and the rains came up and

you just lived with it as far as you could. If the road was covered with water you just did nothing until it was clear again.

In September 1940. That was the decision made by the Commonwealth Government.

The most interesting comment about communications with Darwin is that this year they had that new train. But when I said there was one

oh, I can’t think, there was one crossing, one, well one piece of line at Tennant Creek and that was the only piece. It had been a constant job ever since, but 90 days meant

that the road was built. And the single line between Tennant Creek and Birdum as it was known, and that connected up with other lines. One parallel with the railway from Darwin down to Birdum, and from Alice Springs to Port Augusta, through Port Augusta to Alice Springs.

To Tennant Creek. I never moved out of Tennant Creek. I went to Darwin during the war and came back to Tennant Creek.

In 1941 actually December,

January 1940, rather January 1941. I think it was the 30th of December 1940 that I actually reported for duty in Darwin.

Very tense. If you were looking at people who lived in Darwin, to know that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbour and it was going to do it again, they didn’t know how strong an answer was going to be given. But

the raid that came on the 19th of December, February 1941, 1942 was a sign that Japan was going to be a power to be reckoned with. So we had to reckon with it.

Well I was up there

in December and one of the first things we were doing was to build a big attack creek, to build an attack, oh lost the word,

a shelter, an attack shelter and we did that in the grounds of the united, sorry, forget it.

I can’t get my words out.

We dug a deep ditch about 10 by four and covered it with galvanised iron and reinforced it with railway girders. And this was to be first point of

safety for men at the club. Actually I don’t know if it was ever actually used. Because the heaviest bombing came through and bombs actually landed in the paddock where it was. And I expect some lives were saved. But it was the causality list of Darwin for that particular area

varied from 400 up to 1,000. And I think that most of us who were there and knew anything about it would go for the larger figure, 1,000. And know that there were many, many others, some taken out to sea on landing craft and

buried at sea because we didn’t have the facilities to dig enough trenches. And that was the way it was dealt with.

I don’t know that I saw very much, I wasn’t stationed in Darwin. I know that they were extending the airport, the airport was

being extended to carry the largest aircraft that were available at the time. And there was load work in the wharf. Building the working facilities for ships, but also the reinforcement of harbour defences. All of these things

were going forward at the fastest speed possible. There is no doubt about it that between August 1940 and September 1941 and then early 1942 the government of Australia was wakened up and they then decided that they had to defend Australia and they drew a little circle outside

of Brisbane and they called it the Brisbane Line. And that was where we were going to be defending the island. Those of us who were there at the time didn’t think very much of defending Brisbane as being defending Australia.

I was at Adelaide River, south of Darwin, I was there for quite

a while.

I was the area chaplain, cover a big base area at Adelaide River. And with limitations to the north, the local dam and to the south, Katherine, a very large area.

Anybody you’d like to mention except the fighting men. Large encampments of ordinance stores, of ASC [Army Supply Corps] stores and generally those connected with anything connected with fighting. Small groups, sometimes only eight or 10 men

in one unit doing a job. And the biggest job I did there was to take the picture theatre out of Darwin and build it in outdoor premises in Adelaide River. And

then run it myself for some time until I could find an operator.

Well we took all the plans out of the theatre, the outdoor theatre in Darwin and we transported it down to Adelaide River and re-erected it in Adelaide River.

The situation was that the Adelaide River was superior to Darwin because Darwin, it was an open air theatre and the bright light and cinema shining, a marker to any enemy coming in at night time. We don’t know that they ever did, but they were getting rid of it. So we built the theatre in

Adelaide River.

Well it looked like a screen and a box in which the cinema machines were housed. And the rest was the bush or the scrub that the fellows could sit. Gradually we built a few seats

for nurses and other like that. But for the most part it was just two buildings, a screen and a operating box.

Endlessly, there was no time limit because when I’d first wake up in the morning there would be job to be done. And it would go on until midnight.

Never been so busy in my life.

Well you’d get up in the morning and have a shower and have a shave, and have your breakfast. And then there maybe a dozen pressures come onto you

for help and it was to long a list to try and give it. I was fully occupied all the day, during daylight hours.

Well anybody, anybody that was in difficulties. It may be a soldier that got himself in trouble and needed help. It may

be someone who had been badly wounded. Or actually been in an air crash or something like this and they needed spiritual help and guidance. Anybody in trouble, usually I had to try to help them get out

of trouble.

Spiritual welfare 99 percent, one percent whatever figure you mentioned. You don’t go through life saying, “Is this

next job spiritual or is it natural?” You don’t ask those questions, you just do the job that’s to be done. The spiritual background is the reason.

Yes we had a whole slab of people who

came through from Darwin, escaping any further bombings. And we had to deal with them, any women and children or elderly men we tried to provide the facility for them to get away. And get them to the southern cities if we could. The rest

of the men that were there, they were hived off and if they were in good conditions, they were shanghaied into the army, if they weren’t they would need permission to go south. It was a big job a very constant job. Another thing I had to do was to build a

cemetery. The CO [commanding officer] said to me, “Padre, we are supposed to have a cemetery here, we haven’t got one. Take Sergeant McEwan with you and go down the river and pick a sight and mark a sight with some pegs, and I will get a grader to go down and clear it.” So that’s what I did, we chose the sight, pegged it out. And it was opened up as a

cemetery and it was used as a cemetery right up until the present time. As a matter of fact 18 months ago I was up there and I conducted a service on the anniversary of the opening of the cemetery which would have been 60 years. And I had a congregation on that occasion of about 1,000 men and women.

Well they tried to get out of Darwin as quickly as they could. They travelled on everything from a push bike to a sanitary contractor truck. And some of them came walking. Not all the civilians necessarily, there were some civilians, they didn’t understand what was going on. But there

was no clear distinction between civilian and the servicemen. They were both trying to escape the danger.

Well you name it. From a broken foot or something to a complete

basic injury to their living. You name anything it happened. In New South Wales roads for example, what kind of people are they that get these things? Is there injuries? Name them if you can, but you can’t.

Yes a couple of men who had been in an air force, an American air force aircraft, and the aircraft had been shot down. And they had been saved. One of them was injured so badly that was hardly a part of him that didn’t have plaster and

so on. The other one was very seriously injured that, in great pain, and calling for assistance all the time. But you don’t have to be injured to have need of care.

I was doing nothing

except praying with them or something. They had the best of surgery or assistance from both army and American air force personnel. They had been evacuated into our hospital and another one was four civilian lads, well not civilian lads, army lads of Australia, who had been

very badly burned when the bombing of Darwin was affected and bringing the oil tanks into the fuel. And the way which they were saved and serviced by the Australian army nurses is an outstanding piece of

nursing skill and sympathy.

Well there were people constantly coming. Huts were being built and used, but the most effective piece of building was not in Adelaide River or in Darwin but halfway in

between where two fighter strips were built parallel with the road so that they weren’t identified as parallel air fields. And the actual strips were camouflaged so that you didn’t identify them. I don’t know how many Japanese tried to bomb them, I know one or two did but

for the most part it was successful piece of work. You could divert any attack against our forces in the area.

Well the one of the first things, the Australian army did have a casualty clearing station I suppose you would call it. It called itself a General Australia Hospital. It was stationed in Darwin and actually it was in three or four different locations and they were all brought together in Adelaide River. One of

the first times they were bringing, we got word that a number of nurses, 26 nurses I think it was, were coming south and would we provide special accommodation for them. And so the CO said to me, “Padre, take the men out of number one and two huts and give them mattresses and tentage. You give them

beds and mattresses in there for these nurses.” And so I had to clear the two Sidney Williams huts of people that were in it and prepare one of them for nurses. The other one had been Small River nurses. And by the time the day was finished and the nurses were in, the bush around about intensively populated by Australian servicemen, anxious to see the sign of a female

figure. The second day it was gone. But I think it provided a little bit of entertainment for young a lonely servicemen on that day.

Good question. The AIF thought they were superior people and the

ordinary soldier, well the AIF thought they were much better than the chocos [chocolate soldiers – members of the militia]. It was very bad on the part of the AIF really. But the ordinary soldier

quitted himself quite well, other places where the AIF and the chocos came together. And the chocos usually came out on top.

I’m not in the position of giving examples of inter-service rivalry.

Most of them were excellent soldiers. And most of them ultimately became members of the AIF. Lots of them had because for example, those were trying to get out of Darwin after the bombing,

and we pitch forked them into army, later had the opportunity of transferring to the AIF.

Oh some did. Some people you can’t stop. But the first thing

that a soldier will do is talk about himself or his wife or family. Then he might talk about his own problems. But they don’t come along and say, “Padre, what do you mean by worshipping God?” “What do you mean by so and so?” And that’s very seldom, it comes much later on.

Well most of them were concerned with, concern about their wives or their children.

Concerned about their own livelihood of how they would behave if they were attacked and so on. And most of them would have other problems, they would come up

with, nothing at first to do with spiritual life. They would just talk about this and that, and then would just raise, “So and so happened to me, by the way, and my wife was worried. What do you think I should say to her?” “I don’t know.”

Oh yes, well they were quite significant I suppose. Very seldom can anyone come to pressure, bombing in Darwin. It was horrendous. But most men got the self control to feel well, I can only do my job here and

if I fail well that’s too bad. And they would do their job despite the danger.

Many of them. One man came to me wanting to be discharged from the army. And I asked him why, and he said his wife couldn’t handle it, she got five children or something. And I said to him,

“How old are you?” And he was about 27. I said, “You’ve got five children?” And he said, “Yes, padre,” and I said, “How come?” And he said, “Well, I was unemployed and there wasn’t much else to do.”

No, I recommended that he be sent south. A man who is as mad as that doesn’t need to be in the army, he needs to be in a psychiatric hospital.

Well there would be lots and lots of them but that’s not the subject of this interview I think.

Well I’m not one of them.

Was I caught? I was a failure, of course I was a failure, and when a bomb comes within about five or six yards in front of you, you are not going to be an ordinary twit and say, “No don’t worry about that.” Of course you worry about it, there is hot metal flying everywhere and you know that your life is on the end of

one of those.

Well the one I just mentioned. It was a Sunday night. I had conducted a service on one of the Bofors guns on the wharf in New Guinea. And

after the service was over I was just sitting around talking to the fellows and someone mentioned there was a picture show on in a quarry nearby. So I said to my driver, “Let’s go and see what’s going on.” So we went over and there was nothing going on, the fan wasn’t working, we came back and we were on our back I heard

a fighter aircraft going overhead and I knew they weren’t ours because they didn’t sound right. And then I heard a swishing noise and I said to my driver, “Those are bombs coming down, let’s drop.” And we dropped, and we tried to get somewhere where it had some shelter, and there was a big stack of bombs and we sheltered near these stacked bombs.

And a bomb coming down missed them and hit the ground just near where we were. And there is no doubt about it, had the Japanese bomber been more accurate we wouldn’t be here to talk to you today.

Mainly defensive. We had a fire started in the grass and set fire to the ammunition depot. And I was with the CO and I said to him, “What are we going to do?” And he said, “Come on we’ll go and see.” And we went in, he was walking, an old First World War [soldier] digger and he was walking along quite nonchalantly.

He saw me duck, or he thinks he saw me ducks when the fire got into the 18 pounder Australian shells. And all he did was, he said to me, “It’s no good you ducking Padre, the one you’ll hear you’ll never see.”

So it said, but it depended upon your attitude. Buildings had been damaged and probably timber or wrought iron or something was available, and certainly some of it

had been taken to help with reinforcements. But that doesn’t mean that it was looting, it was legitimate reuse of damaged buildings. And I know there was some looting. For example the picture theatre that we transported, one of the projectors had been stolen or looted. Certainly it wasn’t

any use to anybody who took it, but it was gone we had to replace it. But no I wasn’t like to try and talk about it, looting, it’s a subject which has been royal commissions and things and no successful answer was given.

I took some in the ocean.

No. I didn’t have any much in the sea it was all on land. I had to go by sea to New Guinea and by sea to Borneo and back from Borneo to Darwin. Only as a passenger in an aircraft.

I went out on the bus with 1,000 people and we just had a couple of television people there I suppose. And governors general and others just to photograph me. I was to give an address, the shortest address I suppose you can imagine.

Well it was done by the same Japanese squadron that bombed Pearl Harbour. It was totally unaccepted by the soldiers in the bay. They were overtaken, the bombers were overhead before they even knew they were coming. It’s a very big question as a matter of fact.

But there were certainly far more lives lost because of that. No one should have been.

Well it depends what supplies were. Supplies of petrol I think came from overseas. Food from Sydney or Perth, and

locally Darwin produced, Katherine rather produces a lot of citrus fruit and cabbage and tomatoes and things of that kind. Bread as baked locally and that’s about it I think. Well meat was all

sorted locally.

There was a number of chaplains, not with me, but all over the area, yes there were. And at the hospital and even with some of the units, they would have their own chaplain, depending on the size.

I cooperated and decided what we ought to do together or separately. But independently we were.

None at all.

Well they were the enemy, very nasty type of enemy. I did have the privilege later just after the war while I was still in Borneo, of interviewing a group of civilian Christians from Japan who had been captured

at Malumason [?]. And I was instructed to increase our people and for me to assure them that they would not be harmed in any way. And this I did in a special camp that they had set up. The major questions they asked was, “Will we be beaten?” Meaning beaten with rods or whatever, and I had to assure them that this was a

Christian company and they would be treated with all Christian circumstances.

Did any mention what?

Good question. We don’t have any records, probably the Roman Catholic and Anglican would be the ones that

would have the most initial contribution. The United Church or Methodist Overseas Mission would have some. I also represented Mission World in central Australia and I know that they had some very fine conversions from among Aborigines.

Yes we did. When Darwin was bombed it was bombed because a convoy was on its way to

Indonesia. And among them was a group of American artillery men and they had losses of life actually, the bombing of this convoy and they were brought back to Darwin. And the next day I think it was or the day after, two or there chaplains came down to Adelaide River to see if they could get

some assistance looking after their people. And one of them was an American named, well that doesn’t matter, he was chaplain to the American artillery. And he later came to see me because he wanted to contact the

families of the people among whom he was working. He found that they had left Vancouver or San Francisco rather to come to the east and had been diverted when they had to be sent to

Darwin instead of the Philippines. And the result of this was that they were getting no mail from any place. And he said to me, I have made enquiries with the army to revert and our mail away and they said it can’t be done it has to be done by the civilians. So the next day he came to me and asked me would I take him to a civilian post office.

Well the nearest civilian post office to me was Katherine, and that was 200 miles away. And he said, “Will you take me there?” So arrangements were made that I went with him and we contacted the civilian post office and the chaplain had written out on a long sheet of paper the names and addresses of about 60

families. And asking that, giving them a new address which would have got to them. And when we went to the post master he said, “I can’t accept them in that form, every one of those signatures has to bare the name of the sender and be signed.”

And by, subject to any minor matters of interest. So what we had to do, we had to use ordinary telegram forms that were used by the army.

And write out every one of those, I said 60-odd, I’m wrong. It was 300. And each one had to be stamped with an official stamp of either the American or the Australian army. And signed by the censor. I mentioned that, that is what they were they were censors. And we then had to sit down and sign these

300 messages and show that they, if there were any faults it couldn’t go ahead. So that was done and after the war was over I went to Katherine post office and I said to the post master that we had done this. And I said,

“Do you think it would be any kind of a record?” He said, “Padre, I’d say it was the best record that you would ever get to any post office in Australia.” So that was the Americans. We had some others occasional, but no other regularly with the Americans. There were some Canadians, though I had nothing to do with them.

I didn’t need to take part in their burials, they had sufficient staff to do it themselves. And they did. But as a matter of fact when the war was over the American policy was that all their servicemen would be returned to the United States for burial

so all the Americans who were buried in the Adelaide River cemetery were ultimately exhumed and returned back to the United States.

Well censoring mail was one of the biggest jobs.

The other was to care for the people who didn’t have a chaplain of their own and if they had any worries or anything they could come to me. They wanted to make access, the chaplain was the one who they would come and speak. And this didn’t only concern other people but even army men. There

was one occasion when some young soldiers came to me and they said one of their number had been shot and he’d accidentally shot his first mate. And he said, “They wouldn’t even let us go to his funeral.” And I questioned them for a while and then I made a report

of it, recommending that the whole matter should be reviewed and the guilty person given a clearance. And I was very heavily reprimanded for daring to question any decision of the court martial. And

behaviour as it were, a rap on the knuckles. However, about a week after being reprimanded I was informed that the guilty fellow had been forgiven and returned to his unit. I felt that it was well worthwhile to have a reprimand from a senior officer over

a crime that was committed by one of their men, and under the conditions and circumstance I was very happy.

Well it depends on how you went about it. If you went up to a colonel and he had no relation to you and made some complaints he wouldn’t listen

to you. You’d have to make your complaint personal, probably through a sergeant and then anyway, through a company or officer that was related to the man being questioned. And if it was necessary be referred on upwards. It ultimately, theoretically be paraded before a general officer of command, but that would

be very, very unusual circumstances.

I was paraded before the AAQ [?], the deputy of the army, questioned and that was the end of it.

Questioning the report I made about the fellow’s right to go to the funeral and their mate when he was shot.

No they didn’t have the opportunity.

My senior rank was chaplain 3rd class, which is the equivalent of a major.

No I certainly could not. It only gave me authority within the service where I was working. I might say something to a lieutenant or even a captain, wanting something too,

it would simply be a request.

About the army? Well lots of things that frustrate you. The biggest thing is the loneliness and isolation you have to other people. And the restrictions of where you can go and what you can do. I had a lot of

fun in a way while I was in the army, organising boxing rounds, football, cricket, baseball, anyway lace ball. And all under cooperation and good fun and

all the purpose of relieving the monotony of all the troops were subject to.

Not in the boxing no. I kept records of them. I kept records of swimming, swimming carnivals. But I wasn’t one to do it, other people were to

do it, I could just arrange it. Wood chopping for examples was another that individuals could compete in. But it was all to maintain and heighten the good will and so on of the troops. Just as we used to allow them cards and do other things like that.

Well it would be a very unusual situation to do it. I would never have had to do so. I might mention something to an officer and he might in turn come along. I remember one fellow who came to me to a service I was conducting

in the area between Katherine and Daly Waters. And one of the fellows who came with me got drunk and was helpless. He had to actually be lifted up and put into a truck to take him back. And when he came back to the camp and the officer in charge of the camp found out what had happened, he charged him with conduct unsurpassed or something. And

I believe he was fined some small amount of money, but it would go into his record and it would be there for while he stayed in the army.

Well get them to

sing well. If you had the opportunity I would perhaps do a service on tape or with illustrated orders of service. But in most of the ways we had our services, what we are and

what we do and say to make them interesting. And a man who can’t interest his preaching, can’t interest his hearers, he is wasting his time.

Well we didn’t need to be preaching on the war, we were preaching on man’s attitude to God, attitude to one another. This is the big thing,

that a man who had been free as a bird and he comes into the army, he is now in the command of various people under different circumstances and that’s frustrating for him, but he needs counselling, counsel to help him find a meaning behind it. And as a rule the troops respond quite freely.

Well obedience and taking initiative themselves at times, and bringing along other ideas. And cooperating in things like football matches and so on, this was all part of the good morale.

She was in Sydney.

Well she was pregnant on two occasions. The first one, my daughter who was born actually while I was still in Tennant Creek. And the second one, a son, he was born in Sydney when I was in Borneo.

By letters. There was no radio to talk to one another, there was no telephone to get you anywhere at all, but a letter would be suitably sent and posted and would be delivered within a few days anyway.

Very important. You don’t see her at all for weeks and weeks on end. I have on my record how many days a year I was out of Australia and that doesn’t include times when I was just out of Sydney.

It’s very difficult business to understand that a married man with children he goes away and he stays away for weeks and weeks and weeks on end. And goes to foreign places and subject to danger from wherever he is.

Nobody. If I was found breaking the censorship I could very easily be kicked out of the army. I had to be very careful. All officers had to censor their own mail and lord help them if they were found to be doing otherwise.

I don’t know of any, but they wouldn’t tell me.

Well first of all where are we?

Right, that’s one word, out it comes. Get out the razor blade and out comes the word Darwin. Or it could be, “We are going to Woop Woop,” and mention the fact that

“I was on the wharf the other day and I saw Jim, Jim was going somewhere.” All of this as censorable. And the weather even, anything that would give an indication of the place you are, where you are going, how you are going, and why, and other people

who may be prominent. If you told them that Joe Blow was your commanding officer they would know where you were and they would know the name of your company or your regiment. So the enemy could put little bits and pieces together and be able to say that such and such a unit was in such and such a place and was going to

so and so.

My word they did.

Well they were very foolish if they did because very quickly they would lose, the mail would be useless to them, it would just arrive, like one fellow that I heard of who used to be a bit insensitive with what he wrote to his wife or something

she got a little note, “Dear Mrs Joe, your son is well but he would be better using a,” what did he say?

A pianola, “He would be better using a pianola.” In other words, all the little bits cut out would be a word. And he would be very quickly shut out of the mailing altogether.

Everything that to me, would mean anything at all to the enemy or to any of the agents was censorship and the chance that it would ever get through, it had to be

censored at the unit where you were so that the unit knew what was going on. But if it continued he would be very smartly referred and the chaplain would be paraded out. And if kept in the army, he would be kept in a base somewhere.

It all depends on what you call their personal effects. I didn’t have any experience of having to bury men who had been killed in action. Because my unit was not such, it did have that, but for example we had one funeral

where five men in an aircraft had been killed. And it was some time before the wreckage was discovered and when it came in there were five of them, five bodies, and we only had three chaplains taking part and that was a bit unusual but

whoever was to dispose of the body at the time he would be responsible for all the items of clothing, of correspondence or anything else that was in their possession. And it was a very painful thing, I did have one or two but they were men who were killed in accidents.

I think the official record now is about 440 or something. But people like the chaplains on the spot who had to carry out the funerals

they agree that the number was lower than it should have been. Taking into account that they couldn’t dig graves and they just loaded the dead onto pontoons and floated them out and buried them at sea. But

then you get a large number of people being casualties under those circumstances the number can quite easily be overtaken. And this is what some of those who were involved in it themselves put the figure nearer 1,200. And I wouldn’t be authorising it, if this is the case. But it certainly is, it’s agreed now that the number is higher, much higher than we

have reason to occur before.

Well I didn’t have any of the dead from those raids, but there was proper forms you had to fill out with the names,

army or navy aircraft number and the name and, of the fellow who had been killed or whatever and the place where they were buried and any other circumstances. And in the event of gathering up personnel effects that was the job of his unit or

sergeants’ mess or something.

Only in instructing people generally in the way in which war graves should be conducted. Only in the effect of their programs of education, being known to the

the general folks of whom your working. It was regarded very highly, particularly when you are in close contact with the enemy and there is a certain process. Every servicemen wears his dog tags,

it’s usually two medals you hang around your neck. One simply states the name of the man, his regimental number and his

blood group. And one of these has to be nailed onto the coffin or whatever you us for burial and the other returned to his regiment so you have got the visual education saying what happened to such and such and such and such, secondly the rotation, that is the map reference, and thirdly the fact that

the body was found with one label and immediately returned to the unit from which they came.

I don’t know about most tragic, any of them is tragedy. Probably the most

tragic is the fact that when the first bombs fell they destroyed the post office but with it they destroyed the postmaster and his wife and I think it was two children. And they were very sadly mourned by those who knew them. And with them was another man who

had been a friend of mine. He was also killed by the same bomb. They were very large bombs, they weighed about 1,300 pounds of weight. And they’d have had about 500 pounds of explosive material in them.

Well mostly I didn’t have to deal with, one of my very close friends was in a ship that was sunk by the Japanese. But when the war was won you go one way and most of your friends go some other way. I didn’t have any close friends that I remember now

that I had to deal with, they were always over, “What happened to so and so?” “Oh he was killed, so and so.” And of my friends the ones that were killed or whatever, some of them might have been in the Pacific zone, some of them in Australia, some of them in Asia, some of them in the middle east and even some in

Britain. My younger brother who was 21, two days after he was killed in Britain. And I hadn’t seen him for months. And the only record I’ve got is that I have visited his grave in a cemetery in England.

I was in New South Wales as a matter of fact I had been in New Guinea and I had a news from him. We used to get our mail sometimes like a photographic postcard. And they’d photographed these things and instead of sending back a lot of cardboard they would simply send a 35-mill tape.

And when it reached its destination it would be printed and the print would be sent to the addressee and that’s how my Mother received the news that her younger son had been killed.

Well I was very sad because he was my youngest brother. I mean we couldn’t go to his funeral, to have family around him.

There was not much else we could do. My Mother had me, my two brothers and two sons-in-law all in the forces. All likely to be killed or whatever any day, and you lived in that.

Well of course it was. It’s part of my job, whether it’s my brother or whether it’s even a member of the enemy. The saving grace of God is there for all who accept it. And

whether its personal or de-personal it’s still a valid part of one’s ministry.

Particular reference?

Oh I don’t know if there is anything more hard than just living in the day. To be

a chaplain anywhere in Australia or anywhere else. It’s a job to be done and it’s a job which you are called to do by God.

Well I had been in Darwin, I came down south, I went overseas to New Guinea. I spent some months the and then came back to new South Wales and then went to Borneo which again, more than just going overseas, we’d go overseas to Morotai which in the Halmaheras group. There we

transferred into another aircraft and we, not an aircraft, to a landing craft and we travelled about 700 miles in this landing craft to Balikpapan. And they made plenty of trips, crowded in and very, sometimes uncomfortable

in the sense that you know that you could be the sitting duck.

Well I as transferred to be with the 2/1st Anti-Aircraft Regiment. And in the end, we were transferred first of all to a forward area

for training and then into the area where the Japanese were active and we used to say good morning to them.

The 2/1st Anti Aircraft Regiment was in camp out near Liverpool in New South Wales.

No I did not, I came down from Darwin and I was

temporarily stationed with another small unit that needed a chaplain and they needed somewhere to keep me. But you are never alone once you get into the army you can move from place to place but they don’t lose you.

Well

I was just a small infantry battalion, cadre strength, and in that I was keeping in touch and I was chaplain to some other units near by, which was down near

Wollongong and there was some men that I was transferred to 2nd ack ack [anti-aircraft fire] and from there to Borneo.

Well I didn’t worry about leaving the Northern Territory, I knew I would be going somewhere that’s just as dangerous and just as

hard put to it. To say you are leaving Australia is another matter entirely. And when you get out of Australia being paid in some foreign currency, in our case it was Dutch currency. It makes you realise that the world’s a big place and Australia is relatively small.

The very fact that it was AIF meant that you could go anywhere in the world as the government decides. You could tell if a fellow belonged to AIF or not because the way his name and initials were on him in the hat band and on other

markings.

The day we were put upon the boat. They don’t tell you, “Look we are going to take a nice little jaunt up to the Philippines, we don’t know whether you’ll be anything to do with you, we’ll just have to see.” You go from a camp in Brisbane perhaps to a railway station

then from the railway station you go to somewhere near Townsville and from Townsville you are put on a boat and taken to Morotai. And when you get to Morotai you are introduced to the Japanese who are just around the hill. And then you are put on a landing craft which has everything you are going to need when you go in

and it was 700 miles of sea travel with that. Until finally you go ashore and having been told that this is the most dangerous that you have been in, the beach you are going to land on has got telegraph poles networked to stop landing craft. The

beach is mined with land mines, the land immediately behind you is fitted with guns that can cut you down as you land and so on. And that’s the first thing you are officially told, where you are going, they didn’t even tell you then

where you were, it was just an enemy held property. It’s no joke about it, no good-time Charlie for you, its always mixed (UNCLEAR) for you.

Balikpapan yes.

Yes the higher command know where they are proposing to send you next and they’ll give you seven days home leave or something like that. And you take it and be thankful.

It depends who you are and where you are going. The ordinary soldier will be given seven days leave, it’s pretty horrendous, and it means that you are going somewhere to meet your fate or to meet a friend.

Yes I took my wife and daughter and son on a holiday to the Blue Mountains. Tried to forget the war was on.

The war wasn’t going particularly well and

while I was on the Blue Maintains a hospital ship was sunk off the coast. And I had the job of conducting a service for the friends and relatives and survivors of the 2/12th Field Ambulance. And that was a bad business because the 2/12th Field Ambulance had been in Darwin

and had worked, not as an ambulance but as a rock chopper. And the fact that we knew they were, knew where they had been and the ship was sunk and so many men form the 2/12th Field Ambulance were reported on it, it was a very salutary event to remember.

It’s just the way it is with, once you put your foot on one of the ladders to take you somewhere, it’s more likely that it will be taking you somewhere that’s dangerous.

Well if you knew that you were going overseas it meant that your unit meant something. We were at Morotai and 700 miles I think it was from Balikpapan. But when we were in Morotai we were called together by a senior officer who said, “Gentlemen, this is the most dangerous

task you are going to be on,” and he outlined the way the Japanese could land shells and so on. And the fact that they had a lot of land mines buried in the place. And he said, “This is the most dangerous task you have ever been on since El Alamein.” Then he went away and afterwards some one said, “Where do you reckon he’s going?”

And they said, “We don’t know,” but we got a very good idea the next day because they had a film on showing under the palm trees and it was a film called, I forget its name, but it was the story of two sergeants in infantry battalion in Europe

going ashore and how the three of them, well two of them were killed. That was the sort of briefing we had, we are going somewhere, the most dangerous since Alamein and when you watched the film, you see these fellows killed. That’s what,

they can come home a raise their flags and march to the beat of a drum, but nothing is quite the same as knowing you are going where a man of another colour has his rifle sights on you.

It was just a camp in an area that had been occupied by

the Japanese. It was jungle right down to the water’s edge and jungle back up to the mountains above. The north coast of New Guinea is a very narrow coastal strip and very jungle infested. So there was no pleasure about it at all.

A troop carrier to, I forget the name of the place in the southern part of New Guinea and from there we went on landing craft which were just

large motor truck which would carry our guns and everything else. The front of it was had a landing bin that dropped down on the beach. And you carried off what the army needed in the way of guns and things.

And every man had his job to do, well you just went ashore. And in the case of New Guinea it was a black jungle face that I could see. And the only thing I could identify was cigarettes being puffed away by people having no idea that 20 or 30 yards away, they were sitting ducks, the Japanese if there happened to be one there

and fortunately for them it was all Australians.

It was just deep jungle very close and tropical streams coming down to the beach. And behind near where we landed there was a steep

village on the high mountain and to get there the troops had to go on an S bend every, about every 100yards, swing right, you turn left and swing back, right and left until you climbed to the top of the mountain where the enemy had it headquarters and which

we wanted to get him out of it. We did but it was very difficult.

The one we were taking?

Well the whole of New Guinea was occupied by the Japanese except for Milne Bay, not Milne Bay.

Port Moresby yes, and it was only as little bits fell, Moresby never fell, Milne Bay was the first real success. And Buna and Kapooka were other

places on the north coast. And then there was Lae and, oh I forget. And these are all names on the north coast ending up Pacific and

it was at Morotai that we were taken off. And we were landed there by merchant ship converted. And from there we landed in Borneo, at Balikpapan. Balikpapan was an oil place. They

had, oh sorry.

Fighting the Japanese on the ground and in the air. We didn’t have a lot to do with them on the ground fortunately. But we had a lot of men who went down sick with malaria. As a matter of fact we had almost 100 percent of the total,

malaria or something similar in one unit. And this was very serious. And well, we, otherwise our fighting was with light aircraft coming in to attack us, and we had the Bofors light aircraft guns which we used. But the biggest

enemy we had in Borneo was, not in Borneo in New Guinea, was the mosquito. We had hundreds of men go down with malaria. I fortunately missed out. Because I was very strong in making sure I took all the

important precautions against malaria. And this included taking Atebrin tablets every day, having anti repellent or repellent, lotion to put on the exposed parts of your body. To make sure you used slacks with

sleeves and everything bound with attack with

the attack repellent lotion. And make sure that your face and neck and ears were covered. And that your sleeping bag and your aircraft mosquito band

is secured of holes. A hole which might only be one or two mosquito wide, that’s enough to give you a dose of malaria and put you out of misery.

I didn’t have any actual role but I certainly, by example, made sure that my

equipment was all properly used. And that the other troops shared my concern. And made sure that their equipment protected them. Malaria is no joke I tell you. You get high blood pressure and

aches and pains every few hours, depending on, 14, such and such, 14, every four hours you have a mosquito bite, the delivery, three times,

quinine and so on. And you get them mixed up if you haven’t been by two mosquitos you have a different feast before you, well it not so good.

Hot and steamy. You get, we were doing it in what you call the dry season. But it can be very wet and it’s

not so much the rain but the mud is churned up with the rain. And vehicles, driving along soon make the roads impassable. I think I went for about six months in New Guinea and never saw my boots, they were covered in mud the whole time.

Well usually you set up your tent so that it was free all around. And you didn’t touch the ground. And the tent fly and all the tent pegs were steel, and well generally it was

a mosquito proof building or not so much a building as a tent.

No well with the anti aircraft regiment, we were not on the move for months at a time perhaps. The individuals might be but the

main headquarters and so on remained in the one place.

Anywhere else I was exactly the same. The fact that it was anti-aircraft, 1,000 men doesn’t mean that, because you move even 100 miles that you lose track and you don’t. But when we went to New Guinea we set up in a

strategic position and control of our guns. And we took all the precautions we could against mosquitos and other insects and so on that were death producing. And then got on with the job. Because while we were in New Guinea there was no doubt we had more than 100 percent of our troops went down with malaria.

When I say they went down, they went down and had to go out to the hospital and they come back. But when you hear them say we had 100 percent, it means that if you had 1,000 men, that in a period of three months or whatever, you had 1,000 men go down with malaria. And that’s why having insecure coverings was

asking for a crime to be, brought up against you. And you would be charged with having holes in your net, something like this, this they would give you a fine, maybe five pounds. And if they had to

evacuate you and you lost time you could then be charged with being absent, not without leave, but because of not taking proper precautions. And again you were given some sort of a penalty. There is no snooker about it at all, hard work and sometimes

very disciplining, but it certainly a job for a man, particularly in a jungle. On the deserts it might be a different thing altogether.

Mainly we had moved the enemy on the land away from where we were and the main attacks came from

low lying aircraft. And that’s where our Bofors guns were so valuable, because they could cover from your level where you are up to 90 degrees. And they were a terror to the Japanese, the Bofors, Swedish production.

Oh yes there were several. You see

the action at Finschhafen was 9th Divvy and the 9th Division has three chaplains on strength. Because you see the headquarters and three

divisions of infantry which was over 3,000 men and, oh dear me, and mechanical affairs

mechanical, keeping trucks going and keeping guns working we just had probably 4,000. Then in addition to that every time we went anywhere like this we had a squadron of search lights. But we only, we didn’t use them against aircraft because they didn’t prove to

be a successful, but they were used as artificial moonlight. Instead of fighting in the pitch dark they could shine the rays of a searchlight onto over the hanging clouds and things. And you get like moonlight. And if the enemy trying any games you’d be able to see them. So that’s

just one, and apart from that there was other artillery units and various things like

Oh we did have a yarn with them. It’s not like, see Finschhafen was about 10 miles long, it might have been more. And you were crowded about like an

area of slums, the numbers of people there are. When you add to those the people on the ships who come in and the enemy with their personnel, they have PT [motor torpedo] boats and things like that, you get a very heavily populated area. Very, very

heavily populated.

I don’t know that I did. I was getting to know them, mixing with them answering all their questions. And if I can

answering questions even if I was outside my own responsibility. I think the Australian soldier is an inveterate gambler and you ask him what’s the next race that’s on or, they would pull your leg about something. But overall you’ve got to just trust

and one of the things I can say is that we have an annual reunion, getting smaller and smaller every year, but one thing is they’ve always tried to make sure that I would attend, they wanted me there.

They might spin yarns to you, talk you normally, whereas if they just trusted you they just answered your questions. It’s very easy to sense the attitude of a person.

Oh well

when the war ended everybody expected to be going home, but of course you can’t do that if you have 1,000 men and all their guns and everything like that. You’ve got to do it by degrees and at the time the people who were longest in the army or whatever, would be the ones who would get out

first. And we had people, were six years, had been overseas in six different degrees of being over. And there was a English flying boat came into Balikpapan and it was announced that

some of the longer serving men would be returning to Australia in the morning. And all our long service men got very excited and they were taken onboard and they were only taken back to Morotai and they were offloaded and the Americans loaded, and our fellows were very furious about it. And they had some very uncomfortable sayings for the people who were responsible. But

it didn’t make any difference, and they were offloaded again at Morotai. And they would then discover that American aircraft were flying to Morotai to Melbourne and they had one plane almost every day for some reason. And so one of the fellows managed to get hold of the ear of one of the crew and he got a ride, three across from

Morotai back to Australia. And when he arrived in Melbourne he went to the local command and he reported he was active without, he was absent without leave. And he was put on a charge and he was fined a pound and loss of wages for one day.

But the man who was charging him, hearing the charge was one of his former officers and as soon as he finished the court, the fellow said to him, “Well how are you, Bill?” “I’m okay, Sir,” “What are you doing now?” “Well I’ve got to wait until I get my papers.” And he said, “What about your home? How are you going to get there?” And he said, “I don’t know, I’ll get a lift in a

bus or something.” And he said, “Wait here.” He called up a car and he put him in a command car belonging to the regiment and sent him home. That’s what he thought, and it speaks something of the relationship between sergeant, the soldier and the officer, and it also means a great deal in regard to the general

attitude of the troops. They could trust the officer who was now a senior and know that he wouldn’t use his knowledge to any detrimental purpose.

Well I was one of them, so how else?

Not that I was aware of.

Just by getting to know them and talk to them. I don’t think I ever fell out with any officer. I sometimes had reason to feel disappointed in the behaviour of some officers. But never did anything detrimental.

Well some officers like other men, would be too gay if he had a bit of beer, and some don’t tolerate it very well. And one man I can think of who used to when there was a beer issue, he would buy all the officers, or others who weren’t going to drink their beer, and he would drink the lot.

And within an hour or so he was absolutely rotten drunk. And I had very little respect for a man who was as bad as that.

Well the gambling was very limited. They say that

during the First World War that men would bet on two flies crossing the wall, or two bugs crawling up a wall. A good deal of gambling goes on anywhere in the world. This place you’d find gambling, you got into the football matches or anything like that, there is always gambling. And

to raise issues with the troops about gambling you are just asking for them to cut you off altogether. And you soon find out which men are satisfied to leave the gambling altogether.

Occasionally.

Mainly about their children and Mother and Father. Not so much about their own personal affects but the result of their absence and its effect on their family.

Some of them form time to time. We tried to patch them up and treat them decently. And we were fortunate that our CO was also fair, he was fairly active in helping fellows like this. If by going home he could restore a girl’s trust in her husband or something like

that, he would probably make it possible. Or maybe only given a bit of special leave, sentimental leave. And oh, it’s very hard, and I wouldn’t like to be a chaplain in today’s army, but at last one thing they have, they have families who go with them. At least if

they are going to be stationed in Darwin, the station be down at Katherine and they could get a weekend leave to a man. It depends on where you are, what you are, how you are doing.

I can’t remember them now, I’m sure there have been some. I’ve mentioned one yesterday, earlier today, where a soldier wanted leave or to be discharged because of his family. And when I enquired how many children he had, he had half a dozen. And I said, “Well that’s a lot to do,” and he said, “Yes,

see Padre, before the war I was unemployed and I didn’t have anything else to do”.

Twelve hundred booby traps in the Balikpapan landing area.

That one squadron worked out you don’t try and delouse them, you simply made them inactive. And these where everywhere you could imagine. They had aerial bombs that were captured from the British in Singapore, they had these buried in the ground with a trigger on them

to send anyone up if they trod on it, it would be the weight of about three pounds weight. And that’s the end of them, about so many seconds, boom. The booby traps on all the tracks around about and on where the landing crew would come in, alive with them.

This was where the engineers were so important, they can identify these things and quickly just make them safe. But Balikpapan was one place where booby traps were there greatest danger. I know when I came back from Borneo and I was standing

in a room in Darwin and I was looking at two men walking through the long kunai grass, just treating it like any other place, an immediately I thought those fellows don’t know what they are doing, they will be killed. But they knew what they were doing, there was no booby traps on the main land of Australia.

Never. I’d be very quickly dealt with if I picked up some ones rifle and everyone, every rifle that’s out is in some ones possession. And nor would I be trespassing on the good name of the solider whose rifle I touched, because cause danger much wider.

Well I hadn’t been trained in the use of the rifles, I don’t know how to make it safe, and I might experience to discharge it and bullets go through anything that’s nearby, human flesh would be quite easy.

No I didn’t. Only I got to places where they were actually having firings, ah shooting, aim, target practice and I would then have to be invited to have a shot.

And there was no danger there at all, all sorts of safety involved. But one of the things that you’ve got to understand at the very beginning is that a rifle full of, in the charge of someone, there was someone who was personally responsible, and to leave any weapon with a charge in it

when they were not being used officially, either in training or in action, they could be heavily fined.

No I don’t remember any of that at all. They might have made it, in that way, but no I certainly didn’t.

I didn’t know anything of suicidal intent. I think probably they wouldn’t have got out of Australia if they had any evidence like it.

Well we didn’t have anything to do with them as individuals but we did in New Guinea when we officially had finished fighting and wanted to be a part, the general (UNCLEAR) of all these natives in the area, there must have been two or three thousand of them, he talked to them in Pidgin English and he told them,

he thanked them for their help that they had now finished New Guinea men house, and tell them they could now go home, make their garden and get their wife and make

chicken, maybe I can think of the word, in other words, have a family. And they were always quite friendly to us because they knew that we were there to save them from the danger.

Yes we spent about six months back in Australia.

From New Guinea we came back on a troop transporters, a Dutch ship, the Clip Fontaine [Sp?] and it was under charge of the American Navy.

And it was over crowded, they had it so crowded that they couldn’t give us three meals a day. All they could do was give us two meals day and they couldn’t give us so much to eat about breakfast time, probably about five o’clock in the morning. And then about 20 hours later, get another feed.

But that was from New Guinea to Brisbane I think it was. And then when I went back to Borneo, I went by ship to Morotai and landing craft to Balikpapan and from Balikpapan through Sydney by

Douglas DC transport [aircraft].

Oh yes, quite a lot to do with them. Sometimes men would be shot in rehearsals or training, actually they had been shot

and well as much as any man would, if anybody was in a uniform, had anything to do with it I would inevitably see that person.

Only when I told you about going and

putting up and he’d been accidentally shot because his mate had accidentally discharged his rifle, and getting a slap on the wrist from an officer who told me that I should only report them to the commanding, the court marital. And

he said to me, “Of course you are making your report to your senior chaplain aren’t you?” So I said, “Yes,” and he said, “I will explain to the CO that you were innocent.” And he did so and within

two days the fellow was out of jail. But I didn’t go chasing people who were getting themselves into trouble, I could get enough trouble alone.

Well the first thing to do is to get them the medical care. We had a doctor

on the site. And I would visit them as soon as I could wherever they were. If they were in New Guinea and then moved away I might not have the opportunity to see them until they either return or I had a chance to et to them. But you are in one part of New Guinea and the soldier is evacuated to another part because of

his illness or because of his wounding, I might not have the opportunity. But I did see every man as often as I could, but if you have 1,200 men on your list, it’s a lot of people to get around, catch up with.

Oh generally I would say they, wanted to get back on the enemy. It wasn’t their fault that they got shot and there was an enemy that caused, he would be angry and he’d wanted to get back into the fight.

A fair bit, they ran what we call their, that was it they called it? The Salvation Army can only have a few in as chaplains. They came in as welfare workers and they distributed coffee and tea

and so on independently. And they were usually very well thought of in the lines. Some very fine men went through the army ranks doing that sort of thing.

I haven’t got a dictionary of stories.

But there was one chap that I got quite friendly with who was here at Concord and he had been up in the islands and he had lots of stories to tell me about fellows that he had met. But their job was the well being of the men, and a cup of coffee or a bread roll or something like that,

was very, very important. Maybe more important than a copy of the New Testament.

Well they thought that they were getting undue precedence. Whereas we didn’t have enough chaplains to serve

all, sometimes inexperienced salvation army men would be put through, but generally we tried to keep a friendly working atmosphere with them. Interestingly enough I think it can be recorded that the Salvation

Army and the Roman Catholic had the most mateship and we reckoned it was because they were both founded upon discipline, the discipline of the Salvation Army officer, and the discipline of the Roman Catholic preacher.

And I think that generally that was fairly well known. As a matter of fact the Salvation Army as a chaplain had a vehicle, the Salvation Army without a chaplain had to get someone else to shift him from place to place. And very often the Salvation Army, the Roman Catholic

joined forces, moved up.

If I had them, tea and coffee, which I usually did have, cigarettes, we didn’t have the

system today where we teach that cigarettes are bad. Generally anything that we could assist with. We did a great deal of trade with the Americans. Americans loved beans, baked beans, and we used to

get so many beans that we reckoned that we were going to grow up like a bean. And always for case of beans trade it for three cartons of cigarettes, sometimes a bit less. And the same goes for chocolates, (UNCLEAR) and

they were the things that we had that the Americans didn’t have. On the other hand the Americans were doing very well with us, they always had watches to sell and on leave they could get as many silk stockings as they wanted. Buying them in

their own canteen, and that made them easy mark of the girls who wanted them.

Yes I did. We were coming home from New Guinea I had a loudspeaker system throughout the ship and I said that I was at the chaplains

office at such and such a deck, anybody that wanted a copy of the New Testament, would just parade, I would give them one. And there was also some other things that had been printed by the American Bible Society. And to my surprise and delight when I went to see how they were going, there was a crowd trying to get up to get the New Testament

first. And they cost me nothing and did a lot of work I think.

Oh yes they would read the New Testament. Why would you get into a crowd to try and get one if you are not going to read it?

Oh heavens no.

If they were watches or things like that they could buy for one thing and sell for another, but no.

Who was my senior chaplain? Well when I was in Darwin the Reverend CTF Goy

was my senior chaplain. But in a time, I’m trying to remember his name he was an Anglican priest, who was in Sydney for a long while, he died recently. It depends how many there are, and on that occasion they had a surplus of Anglicans

and a minority of Presbyterian.

No, no. No ordering around at all. He might advise you to do something, but any ordering, no, a senior chaplain would be within his own ranks. If I was in 2/1st and they wanted me on

the bakery well he would just say so, he would say, “Padre Grant, we need you to be the chaplain of such and such a bakery unit and I am sending some one else to take your place.” That didn’t happen to me, unfortunate.

Quite often, particularly when we were in base camp area and having troops that were close together. The problem is that once you get over 1,000 men you need more than one assembly. It’s one thing to say having a service, it’s another to having a communion service.

Then you might only get a third of the number.

We just coped with them. The booklets which we had with the hymn in it it’s also got the orders of service, communion, burial of the

dead and so on. Generally we didn’t have many opportunities for having communion. We have a service in a town where we are perhaps with the consent and arrangement with the local rector or one other, but usually the men who

were on leave from overseas or from up north they wanted to have a rest themselves.

No, I didn’t bury any Japanese dead, I saw one or two. Not too many. I also had

pasted into the back of my order of service, burial of the dead for Jewish. I had two or three men, one of them was very closely working with me when I was doing a picture show and he was a Jewish fellow, his wife was a member of the Presbyterian Church. So he used to come and

help me in all sorts of ways.

I never had any opportunity of the distasteful business of doing it. But they’d been cleaned out of the areas we were working. And we were

only dealing with them at long distance.

No not outside of the chapel in Sydney.

I don’t know, that the fact I was

really shocked by the explosion of around the shells from the one of our own army, well it was one of the Japanese shells that they dropped on us. I told you the one that I had at Finschhafen

but at the time I ducked and heard the whistle of the bomb coming. And Captain Levitt the officer in charge telling me it’s no good ducking when you hear it. He said, “What you’ve got to do is, you’ve won’t hear it,” and that was fairly true I think. You never know how close you might have been

when there is live ammunition around. Basically keep your head covered.

Well at midnight we came into Finschhafen and

there was an air raid in progress and we could watch it. We were outside of the area they were coming and we could see our three shilling shells going up to meet them and it made us realise that we were in the war zone. Earlier, I think the day before we had encountered a couple of Japanese sea mines and

these were floating and we had to deal with them. And the way that we were dealing with them was to try and hit them with a small arms piece and blow itself up. I didn’t see the thing blow up all I saw was the distant puffing of smoke as the rifles and other pieces were being

brought to bear upon the Jap U-boat [submarine].

Well we were posted at Finschhafen and when we were at seas, and if you look at a map where Finschhafen is and Halmaheras is not far away, you’ll see that it was fairly close to where the operations were going on.

As we were approaching the air raid was on. By the time we got there the Japanese had gone and we had to go ashore into pitch black jungle. But as we were going in I could watch others and

the area where we were going there were little yellow pom poms that were all along. And I couldn’t make out for a moment or two what it was, what it was elements of men wearing smoking cigarettes, and they just stood out as clear as anything in the blackness of the jungle.

I was frightened enough, goodness knows. Who isn’t? I was frightened by lots of things. But I think the worst thing is to try and not think of them. You go into landing craft because if you are on a bigger ship you get

fired at. So this smaller craft takes you along the coast closer in. And for all you know they might be within 100 feet with shells, they might have hit you with something because every vessel that’s at sea had some armament and

it was a point of danger.

That was when the, that’s where the shells on the,

in the, absent, under cover of our own shells being

set on fire. It as a relative high grass in the Northern Territory, it’s highly inflammable. And it so happened that in the Adelaide River area some burning off was doing to protect one area which was mostly

automotive fuel and stuff like that. And the other one was where the fire would come around and it came into a stack of ammunition. And I was sitting in the wardroom censoring mail, and there was a terrific whap. And the CO said to me,

“What was that, padre?” And I looked out and I said, “It looks as though the ammunition dump is on fire.” So he said, “Come on lets see what we can do.” So I went with him and we drove straight into where the fire was and every here and there would be a stack of shells of one kind or another. And he just jumped out of his ute [utility vehicle] and went

in to have a look and I went in after him. When I was about as far as here to the street outside with a mob of shells went up, and boom, boom, boom, and naturally I ducked. And he never looked around at me, he just sensed what I was doing. Because he was an old solider and had been in it many times. And he said, “It’s no good ducking

Padre, when you hear them like that, the one you’ve got to worry about you’ll never hear,” and that was it.

Well I don’t know, I didn’t count them but there must have been 30 or 40, maybe 50 ships of every kind scattered around near where we came in. And on the ground we were given a situation of where we were to be. And the officer

showing it to us, showed us where we were, where some one else would be, where the Japanese were, where the line where some Negroes were in the place. And he said, “This is your line,” and he was right in the middle of the (UNCLEAR) and we learned this later. We were

told it was the heaviest fighting since Alamein. They had heavy guns up on the hills and other sort of guns on the immediate vicinity of where we were going.

The shells were there but beyond them, between the heavier ones and where the lighter guns were, where there would be mainly, oh many for hand fighting. And then

there was sand bag area where there was all, anti-tank firing, and anti tank network across the beach. And tank enmeshing machine as well. So that we

had very little chance of getting through and not having some sort of problem. I was trying to see what was going on and I could see where our guns up on the hill were now firing away beyond. So that we wouldn’t have the immediate attention of he Japanese. And I was later able to see the way that the Japanese had to

flee and leave their guns and everything else. And we were very glad they didn’t stay and say hello to us. I really think that that was something worth while. Before that our three shelling anti aircraft guns had nothing to fire so they were given a target of Japanese infantry some

couple of miles inland. And the guns of our troop were immediately loaded and were fired on tragically and they would have given the Japanese a bit of a fight wherever they were on the ground. The blast from their funnels were such that

a brick wall which was between them and the horizon collapsed. Just with the blast of the guns. I’m glad that they weren’t firing at us.

I was just with all the others looking. And we

landed and the officer who was directing us, I think he’d gone now, he wasn’t resident in this place. I remember coming off the landing craft and this officer being standing over there saying,

“Take the left turn,” and he was directing all the people coming ashore. He had been a regimental officer before hand. What was it you wanted to know?

That’s right, he looked after us. There were

a lot of other people scattered about. And nearly everywhere there were landing craft, landing mines rather, and the danger for these was very great. And I said that one of the engineer units had to delouse

1,200 mines within one half day, and that’s a big job because each one involves delousing it and rendering it perfectly safe to drag it out and destroyer it later on.

Can you read it? That camel train and aeroplane doesn’t cover the war at all. Except a job I did for Kingsley Partridge.

Everything was a surprise and the biggest problem was the landing craft coming with these

shells, guns and everything else including men, couldn’t get in. The army had secured, well the navy I think had secured maps of the harbour and the depth of water and so on. And when we were coming in and we required five feet of water at the bow level. And

we were absolutely, no not bow level at stern level, five feet at stern level, and we were aground 50 feet in the bow. So that it was very frightening in the sense that there were a whole lot of these LST [Landing Ship Tank] landing ships

and we would have been a sitting duck to anybody who tired to do something. The Japanese did drop one on a LST near us but it only did minor damage. But that was a real difficulty.

But we couldn’t land, and the reason was that the Dutch maps of the water were inaccurate. And it could have been a disaster.

I don’t know I don’t think so. Not of enemy action or anything like that. We had

really fired so much stuff in at them that I told you the booby traps and everything else. But before anything else was done three cruisers standing off shore shelled the whole area where we were to go. And they also covered the landing, like the, telegraph poles placed in and out to stop landing craft coming

in and then there were concrete booby raps and then firing from the hill down onto us so that you didn’t have time to scratch yourself as they say. But anyway that was it.

It was no picnic.

None at all. You just did, you were with your men, and they were told what to do. Their commander takes a visit and

this chap just said, “Turn right, follow the path, or something, and we just followed. And we came to a wide beach area. And then we halted and the area where the Japanese were being covered by shells from the destroyer.

And he was just standing broadside on and he would fire a couple of shells and these would go up and over and as they came to the top of the height they would burst in flames, like you get on the Sydney Harbour Bridge on New Year’s Day. And this was to illustrate to the infantry on the ground where they might

find some Japanese. So that my experience of landing in daylight was lying on the beach and hearing this boom, boom. Then a second later something just kicked me in the back, and it was the blast from these shells. And then they landed about

200 yards ahead of us, and gave a very good definition for the flares and that that they threw up. It was a very exciting sort of business as long as you didn’t worry about who was going to shoot you next.

Well we just went up and installed our anti aircraft guns where we wanted them. We had eight 3.7 inch anti aircraft guns which were able to fire shells and time them to burst at 12,000 feet. And then we had Bofors guns which are entitled to fire on

ordinary parties of men or machine. And then usually the barbed wire before you come to the actual infantry is. But we just waited until daylight then we got our

three sevens and the Bofors into position where it had all been planned before we got there the next day. So that’s Morotai and I was I forget what I was doing but I know I had to actually, find out where our guns were going to be because I tried to

visit each gun site at least once or twice a week. But we had, I think it was something like 16 guns. It might have been more, and two three seven guns sites. They had four guns on a site. And then we did have small arms

protecting our tanks but we didn’t have to use them.

I’m not interested in looking after myself, I am interested in helping anyone else. The only thing is that if I,

a non combatant, if I was taken prisoner and given evidence that I had been playing active welfare I could be charged with, I don’t know what, probably be beheaded for it anyway.

I don’t know about keeping out of the way,

but keeping in the way so that I didn’t get lost. Some one in the front knew where they were going and all the blokes after didn’t, the same and so did I. I might have been without a rifle but it didn’t mean that, I had riles all around me.

Visit the guns, as a matter of fact I went to one of the heavy guns that I had never had anything to do with. And I was reminded of something that happened, my Mother had her sister over here from Geelong. And I met her and she said, “Oh you know Len Lennox is over there, you will probably meet him,” and I said,

“Is that so,” she said, “Yes.” I said, “What unit is he with?” She said, “I don’t know what unit but I know he is with the artillery.” So I said, “I will watch out.” Anyway I went over to this gun site and talking to the officer in charge and he asked me one or two things. And I said, “Where do you come from?” He said, “Geelong.” First of all he called it, “the pivot,” he said, “That’s

the pivot,” and I said, “You mean Geelong?” And he said, “Yes, the rest of Australia revolves around it.” So I said, “Where are you from?” And he said, “Geelong,” and I said, “I’ve got an aunt lives in Geelong.” And it turned out that this first cousin of mine, my Mother said, “He’s in New Guinea somewhere.” She had pinned him down to the very unit that I was going to which I saw quite a bit of him.

He helped me quite a bit preparing services, particularly the communion. I haven’t seen him since, he is dead now.

I didn’t know that we had any talk about it being a failure. There was nobody to fight us. The thing is the Japanese had very successfully got out of the area. It was while I was there that I was called on to and visit a group of Japanese

Christian missionaries, they were Japanese and they were covered about five or six denominations. And we had them in a pen with an EPIP [English pattern, Indian product] tent on which acted as worship, they had built themselves

a worship centre in this. And I tried to get something to talk about, I didn’t speak Japanese and one of two of them could speak some English. And I began to talk about the Japanese flowers and so on. And I mentioned that we

had, is it lotus? Anyway Japanese flower that grows here. And they became very interested. And I said, “Oh we love the fruit that comes on ours but we don’t eat it,” and they said, “You eat the fruit of the lotus.” It wasn’t lotus or something, and they said, “Yes.”

Oh they were very interested. But they were just held for a time and I suppose returned to Japan after a while. One of them was a Roman Catholic bishop. And on the Sunday after I visited them, our CO who was a chaplain

went in his headquarters of the division to mass with the rest of them. And he was telling me how they had had a visitor that day, it was a Roman Catholic priest bishop. And I said, “What bishop was here? I thought that

there was only one, the Japanese,” and he said, “That’s him,” and I said, “What do you mean? What’s he doing preaching to you?” And he said, “Oh that’s the advantage Padre of the Latin,” the Japanese could recite the whole of the mass in Latin and even an

Australian could understand it. So he said, “There you are Padre, that’s one thing I’ve always been telling you, it’s the Latin that counts.” But of course I didn’t believe him.

Well the end of the war was August, VJ [victory over Japan] was in February did you say?

We landed at Balikpapan in August I think it might have been. It was about the time when the war was being wound up in

Europe and I’m not sure whether it was September when we did get some information. And when it was finally arranged that the Japanese should surrender officially. We had a corvette up there.

And some of our senior fellows would go and watch the ceremony. I got myself onto a landing craft, terrible I can’t remember what you call them, torpedo, American torpedo boat. And we circled the ship while it was being signed and then when

it was finished it went off at high speed. And all of our landing craft, ah, fast vessels paraded with them. And that was the end of the war as far as we were concerned. And our chaplain, our

RSA [Resident Science Advisor], who was a scientific expert with explosives, he let off a whole lot of ammunition that he had or explosives he had. And they made one terrific bang. But it was a sign to us that we could go home now.

But not necessarily now because when you have got 1,000 men you have still got to look after all the equipment. It wasn’t till quite a while before I got away. And I finally got away, get home, about Christmas I think it was, because my son, who is now a 50 year old, he was

born at that stage. Should have called him Borneo shouldn’t we?

I was very glad to be coming home. I didn’t want to be in the army anymore necessarily. And they were wanting people to go to Japan. And I didn’t say,

“Yes please.” “No thank you,” I said, “No I don’t think I will be interested.” So I didn’t go to Japan. But that was the next step on the line to go over there and see Hiroshima and those sort of places and put it down that we were lucky not to have gone.

Well it’s made me much stronger on discipline and bringing my own children up I’ve tried to invent, envisage them in a life where they have a discipline, whether its through a moral walk or

a written war, or just be teaching of the Christian church. But yes means yes and no means no. And that if you hone your belief in the cause of Jesus Christ and the forgiveness of sin,

well then you are going the right way at least.

Well I don’t think the war has ended, we have continued to fight in

Korea and Hong Kong and various places. And it’s just a series of excuses. And I think perhaps America’s got too heavy a hand, that’s another matter entirely.

I don’t know about whether it was warning, should have never come.

But there is no doubt about it that what we had to get rid of at the time was necessary and it was necessary to do it with the course of arms. It’s been very expensive financially, it’s been more expensive from the point of view of its affect on young people. People of your generation have grown up without any idea of

social benefits and discipline. I know the family, my family, I’ve got eight grandchildren and the discipline that they have is something that I have tried to instil in them. And I think that a good many others are the same way.

It was well worthwhile of course and we have built a lot of good friendships. But I still regret the fact that we ever had to go to the war. The conditions under which we placed so many in at the end of 1918 was so harsh, it was inevitable that some one like Hitler would grow up and force war on us when we didn’t want it. And here

endeth the lesson.

Well young fellow, about 100 years ago when I was but a little boy there was a lot of people talking about war

and nobody was talking about peace. But I am not 100 years old yet. Thank you for putting up with me, I’ve been a bit backward in coming forward with some of my words.