Australians at War Film Archive

I was born in Richmond, I’m not too sure what street, I get them mixed up because my people lived at Richmond when I was born. But I’m not too sure if I was born in Coppin Street or Atlantic Street.

I’m not too sure about that either.

I think that either one of those streets must have had a hospital in. I have got an idea we might have been living with my grandmother, I’m not too sure about that either, but they lived in Lennox Street. I sort of get a little bit confused where I lived. My mother used to speak about the two streets, so I’m not sure which one is which. We stopped in Richmond until I was about three, and we then moved out to

Yarraville. They rented a house in Fredrick Street, Yarraville. They got a house built in Blackwood Street and that is where I was bought up.

Yes.

I had an elder sister and an elder brother, so I was the youngest of three.

My brother was born in 1919, so

that’s four and a half years and my sister was born in 1914.

Yes.

My father never had a real job, he was out of work a lot of times and he used to have to go and weigh, and in those days they had a scheme, you sort of had to work for the dole.

I’m not really sure about that now, but he used to go away and work with the state rivers, building up the viaducts where the water comes down. I think they used to get three days’ work a week. He was in and out of work at different times. Whenever a job came up down at the ‘Vacuum’ oil company, it didn’t matter what he done he used to always take it.

Then the job would finish and then he would go back unemployed or with the state rivers or try to get another job somewhere. In 1939 he got a permanent job at the ‘Vacuum’ oil company. So he stopped there until he retired.

Yes, they were.

We never had any money, anyway. I can’t even remember having any pocket money, except when I used to sell papers. My brother and I would sell papers of a morning round and an evening round. We would often get a few tips and you would go down and buy a threepence worth of fish and chips. My mother was always frightened about losing her house.

That was her biggest worry.

I’m not too sure really about that. She used to walk from Yarraville to Footscray because down at Footscray they used to have a lot of cheap butcher shops

and I used to say to her, “Why don’t you go down on the bus, Mum?” And she used to say “Walking done me good”, but I think it was to save the fare to be honest with you. When my brother was missing she started to work.

Yes. One job she wrote to me and told me “She was making coals in Bourke Street at a cafeteria”. Then she got a job with my sister down at the pottery at Yarraville. She worked there all the time during the war and even after the war. In 1942 she went to inquire how much she owned on the house and they paid

one hundred pound in 1926 and she went in and she still owed five hundred pound.

Well, they were lucky not to lose it. The money they were paying off was the interest. She went to work and she had it paid off in a couple of years.

Yes, very strong.

I can’t really recall much about that, actually. We used to have vegetables and things like that, probably chops. I think we only ever had WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK s, as we used to call them in those days, for Christmas. The chap across the road

used to always give my father a WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK for Christmas. He used to have a bit of a poultry farm. I always remember getting a WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK from him, for Christmas. That was in the poorer days, but once I’d left school and went to work and Dad was working it was much different.

Well, I suppose, we used to play cricket out in the street, kick the football. I don’t know if you have ever seen them roll up newspaper, have you seen that?

We used to kick that in the street. Play hopscotch and things like that. They were the main things. We never had any organised sport like the kids do today.

We used to play football and kick it to each other up in the park, you weren’t allowed to kick it, and things like that. They were probably the main games that we played.

No, there weren’t. You could play out in the street pretty good. Of course up the street they had a light, a streetlight and we used to play cricket under there.

I think the neighbours used to get annoyed with the balls going over the fence and we used to think “They were old narks”. I guess they used to get pretty annoyed with us, hitting the ball over at different times. They were the most things that we played when we were young, I think.

No, when I was young

we used to, you won’t believe this, we used to walk down from Yarraville to the Williamstown beach and it used to take us over an hour and a half I suppose, then we’d have a swim and then we would come back. When it was show time, I’m sure school holidays was at show time in those days, not like they are now. We used to try and find all the beer bottles and sauce bottles and get a shilling

and then we would walk to the show grounds from Yarraville, and if we couldn’t get in for nothing we’d come home. There was no good getting in if you had no money, not that a shilling used to buy you much. In those days you used to get a lot of things for nothing. Especially from the Commonwealth Bank. You used to get rubbers, pencils and rulers and different things, and sometimes you’d get free tins of biscuits and you’d spend your shilling on some

sort of a show bag or something and then you’d come home.

Yes, they used to give things away, that’s right. There’d be a long queue. They wouldn’t be giving it away all day, it might start for an hour, or when the hour or when they’d run out, you’d find somebody else now was giving something away. Of course you could buy something too, there were lots of things for sale. All the biscuits used to be in little tins in those days.

About that big, about four or five inches high. I’m not too sure how many biscuits they had in them, but they used to have Swallow and Ariel and they were the ones there, mainly.

Yes. I couldn’t go on any of the rides, I used to get terribly sick. The only thing that I could remember, and I couldn’t go on to many rides,

the only thing I could go on was the merry go round, I think. Any heights, I used to get sick or any movements I used to get sick.

I didn’t have any choice really, I got called up as soon as I had turned eighteen. I never actually ever thought about going into the services

when I was young. My brother got called up, and naturally when my turn came around I got called up as well.

I went to Francis Street State School, to the sixth grade. Then if you had any brains and done well you got sent,

you didn’t get sent, you went to the Williamstown High School, Or if you didn’t want to go on, that school only went to sixth grade, you went to Powel Street to do your 7th and 8th year, but I went to the Tech [Technical College]. I wasn’t very good at school, at all, actually. My English was very poor and my history and geography and those things, and I seemed to manage science and the practical subjects pretty well.

During the day? It would be English of course, history and geography, science and I think they were the main things. There were all the trade subjects, there was sheet metal, blacksmithing and woodwork, and they were the three trades, and I think that was just about the whole curriculum I think,

in those days. I didn’t do too good at the Tech and I actually failed my junior certificate and I got an idea I must have failed at the half year exam, because they must have said to my mother, “There’s no good him completing his service, he may as well go out and get a job.” They said to me,

they probably said it to my mother, and I was involved, “If you got back to night school, you can get what they call a trade polarity certificate”, and it involved science, drawing, and I think there might have been only three or four subjects. But anyway I passed, but I had to go to night school. Once I passed those I then went and studied carpentry and joinery.

Then I couldn’t get a job as an apprentice, because I was getting a little bit old and they were taking all the kids with the highest marks. After I left school, I got a job down in Footscray in the RVB Engineering… no I’m sorry, in the Melabal [?] Engineering place, in Gordon Street. I went down there and started, you didn’t have to fill in any forms,f you just went and started.

Not like now where you have got to fill in a lot of forms. I went down there and they gave me a job. They used to make a lot of hangers to put coats on, the coat hook, the whole thing and I used to have to buff them up. Next to me was a machine that they put them in a big rumbler and made a terrible noise and I couldn’t stand this and I only lasted half a day. So I went home and told Mum

a few fibs. I don’t know whether she believed me or not. I couldn’t put up with the noise. So I got another job the next day down at the RVB in Spotswood and they used to make different things down there. They used to make motor car horns, and I got a job and right next to the fellow who used to test them all day and they had no ear muffs or anything like that and the noise just about drove me silly.

So I didn’t last, I didn’t go back to that job either.

A terrible noise. This bloke was testing them all day, every couple of minutes he was testing them. They were probably making them war tight and they were probably making them for the army, or different things anyway. Then I got another job over where a lot of my friends were working, over at the Victorian Woolen Mills

and I don’t know whether you know when they make suit material, have you ever heard of a thing called “Double web?” They spin the wool and then they twist it together and they make it double width, that’s the material they make two suits out of. I was on the machine called the “Twister”, all the bobbins go along, it was automatic virtually, but you had to replace the bobbins and things, there wasn’t much noise, so that was alright.

I went home and told my mother and said “I’d got a job at the woolen mills”, and I said “I was a twister” and she said, “Twister by name and twister by nature.” I stopped there and my mother used to always look in the paper for carpentry jobs, for a young fellow. She picked up one day there was a fellow out at Carlton, advertising for an improver. In between time I was doing night school doing carpentry and joinery. I used to go over there two nights

a week or three nights a week, I’m not sure now but it was a great Tech. We went out and seen this fellow and he gave me a job with him and I stopped with him right up until I got called up.

Yes, I think so, I rather liked it.

For the first six months, I suppose I was just the handy man. I’d be out with the boss and he used to do a lot of renovation work and he’d go around and we’d have to put a new sheet of glass in a broken window or something like that or fix up a back fence, and I’d help him until I got going, until he would leave me on the job on me own. There was a terrible lot of repair work.

He’d done a couple of house hold alterations, but in those days there wasn’t too much housing, not in his area anyway. There wasn’t anything getting built and this was in 1940 and 1941.

I wouldn’t really know that, I’m talking

about after the war when the materials were short. They probably would have been short during the war but not as bad as after the war I don’t think.

That’s right.

Under size, that was eleven square and then unless you had a big family you had to apply for a special permit

to get extra rooms put on. When I came back, I had to go to the people in the discharge thing and they said, “You can go out and work as a carpenter”, because that was what I was doing, “Or you could finish it under the post war reconstruction.” The fellow said, “If you go out and do it on your own, you had to have a certificate”.

I finished it under them and I’d done some night school and a few other things and I finished it under them and ended up with a certificate to say that “I completed all my training”.

Yes, of course it was. It didn’t make any difference to the wages. I went for a builder, and I only had to do nine months, and they paid half and the government paid the other half, until I finished my time.

He was doing all right and so was I, I suppose.

I got called up as soon as I was eighteen. I was eighteen on the 18th November, 1941, and I had to go down to Newport and there were thousands of

fellows my age down there, there were absolutely thousands of them. They got everybody from Footscray to Williamstown. You had to have a medical examination and anyway I passed that. I went home. Sometimes I got a call up. I got my call up and I was surprised I was… it was Boxing Day 1941, and I thought that was strange,

Boxing Day just after Christmas. Things were desperate. I got a letter the next day or a couple of days after and it was going to be the 3rd of January 1942, and that was the day that I got called up. I went to Royal Park, and I had to sleep in between blankets, and on a palliasse, and what a terrible night that was. It took a bit of getting used to.

That’s right. We were there for two or three days

and we got shifted down to Mount Martha for a month’s training down there and we got a lot of the needles and things like that. Then I got posted to 2nd Field Company.

Infantry training.

We used

to do a lot of marching. There was bayonet drill and that sort of thing. Every Sunday morning they used to march us from Mount Martha to Mornington for church parade. I think that’s about five mile, I’m not too sure how far that is. This was in the summer mind you, and we’d have our

uniforms on and we used to have our gas mask, and we would be marching along the road and they’d call out “Gas” and you’d have to put your mask on and walk for about half an hour with that on. Then they’d say “All clear” and you’d take it off and you’d be all sweating, and things like that. We go to church and then we’d come back and get the rest of the day off, on Sunday. A lot of people,

if their parents had cars and they’d come down and visit them.

No, not much at all. I can’t recall, I probably went home from leave once or twice from Mount Martha and then after that I got posted to Red Hill and we were put into fortifications down in the Mornington Peninsula -

slit trenches and barbwire entanglement and all different places down there and Flinders. I must have went home from Red Hill because when I got home, because you are not supposed to tell your parents where you are. When I got home… I used to write to my mother about once a week. She’d say, “I know where you are”, she said, “You’re at Red Hill South”,

because it had come home stamped on the letter, where the letter was posted. I got home once from there. Then we got shifted around to Geelong, only our section. Our section in those days were about, the full strength was about sixty men. Number two section went around to Geelong, and down there we had to

put in fortifications down at Torquay, slit trenches and barbwire, and dig outs for twenty five pounders and things like that. We were camped in Highton. Do you know Geelong at all?

We were camped there, and I always thought it was a church ground, but someone said to me afterwards that “It was an orphanage ground”. It was about two mile from

the main street. After tea we used to nick off into Geelong, and as long as we were back in the camp by six o’clock I don’t think they worried much about you, as long as you weren’t on guard duty. We used to get the last tram back, the trams used to run in those days, down Geelong. The last tram stop was at Belmont. We’d get out at Belmont and we used to have to walk back to camp.

I’ve been back several times to find the place but I can’t find it, it’s probably had all houses put there or something. We were there for about one month, and I’m not too sure if they took us back to Royal Park, or whether we got our leave from there, I just can’t recall now. They gave us three days’ final leave.

I took an extra three days and got fined one pound a day and three days’ pay. There were quite a lot of us who were AWL [Absent Without Leave]. They put us on a train and we didn’t know where we were going and we went north of course and changed, and we pulled in, it was a Saturday night and I remember that and it was dark, and the train

pulled in along side a wharf and we got straight out of the train and onto a boat. I always thought “It was a four or five thousand ton boat”, but a bloke said to me afterward “It was a ferry”, but he could have went on a ferry to… but as far as I’m concerned it was a pretty big boat. We went under the bridge, and I remember looking up under, because I hadn’t been to Sydney before.

I’d seen the bridge there, and we went under there and anchored out there in the harbour, it wasn’t outside the heads, it was inside the heads. There was a great big gray boat and it was the [HMS] Queen Elizabeth. They had an opening in the side where they put the gangway, and anyway we all went on board the Queen Elizabeth. We get there, and we have a meal. Then we ran all over the boat, where we could - there were a lot of

places that were out of bounds. We ran all over it and had a good look at it. We went to bed that night, and there were many Australians on it. There were less than one thousand Australians on it. What it was doing was it was picking up the American wounded from the Philippines. I didn’t know that at the time, but they told us that afterwards. During the night it sails. We wake up and we were out at sea.

No, we had no idea where we were going. We were out at sea, and we were up, very high up, up near the top deck I think we were, and the officers were giving us this life belt drill, showing us how to put our life belts on and everything. The next minutes I’m over the side sick, and he’s hanging on to my belt, over the side. That was all

over and we went back to our cabins. Seasick, I’ve never been anything like it. On the Queen Elizabeth, I suppose like on war ships, I don’t think you have seen them. They have these doors that they lock, they are water tight doors and they had the troops guarding them all night, in case they got hit by a torpedo and you’d have to lock the door, which side it was on, I don’t think it mattered,

you just had to lock it. They put me on duty, and I was doing one of those, I was sick there, laying there just about in my puke and the sergeant came to me and said, “You can go back to bed, you don’t need to bother doing it any more”, so I got out of that. I never had another meal on it, I had a couple of times to get down into the galley and as soon as I opened the door and got the smell I’d have to run into a cabin and be sick. I was really, really crook.

No, I don’t think so. I didn’t worry about anybody else, I was looking after myself. It wasn’t too bad once I was laying down but once I got up and moved. The worst part of it was dry reaching. Have you ever been seasick? No.

You bring up all the bile and stuff. You’d think that someone has put a knife in your stomach actually, it’s sort of, anyway that was alright.

Then we got off, and another boat, and we got out near Rottnest Island, and then another boat came and picked us up and put us into shore. We landed in Western Australia.

I don’t think I felt nervous, no. This time we never, never had a rifle. At Mount Martha we only had, the rifles belonged to the training camp. We were never issued with a rifle, up to this stage.

The 303, that’s all, that’s the only one.

No, not there, no I don’t think so. I don’t think we had any Bren guns, I might have had a bit on the Lewis Gun, but I can’t remember, actually for sure. I think I was only the rifle, we had. We probably had dummy hand grenades, throwing them around, I forgot about that.

Yes, and the bayonet, and that’s about all.

We were camped at a place called Melville, it was just out of Fremantle. We were probably there for about two or three weeks,

then we got leave and went into Perth, and we got into there twice and had a good look around. I think all our trucks and equipment came across by rail. There must have been a bit of a delay

in that coming across. We waited there, and then we got those and we had to move up. We went to a place called Mundaring. That’s where the big dam is that supplies Kalgoorlie, we weren’t near the Weir but we were camped at Mundaring, I think for a while, a couple of weeks.

We went up the Northern Highway, we camped at Moora and Gingin. What we had to do over there was we had to prepare all the bridges along the Northern Highway for demolition. They were all wooden bridges and when I say prepare, we didn’t actually put the explosives in, we had to cut down saplings and make scaffoldings. All we had was crosscut saws

and axes, and rolls of fencing wire and we used to have to make a scaffold underneath the bridge and bore holes in the stringers with hand orgers, long enough to get two sticks of gelignite into them.

No, no, we didn’t put the gelignite in, we only prepared them, and they told me “The gelignite was left at the police station, in case they had to pick it up in case the Japanese came”.

I think we had done all the bridges, or just out of Midland Junction, up the Dongara.

Yes, that’s right.

They didn’t tell us anything. We just did what we were told. There was no reasoning with us, we just had to do as we were told.

They just said, “You go and do this,” and I was just a sapper, they might have told the sergeants or the corporals but they never ever discussed that with us.

I will tell you a funny one. We got to Dongara and it was a concrete bridge and anyway, all the officers, they’re all

qualified engineers of some description, might be mechanical or electrical or civil engineer, I’m not too sure. They were all engineers. We used to have a compressor but it probably was on another job, so we got the compressor this time and we had to bore holes in the concrete floor, because he worked out how much explosive, I don’t know how they did it, but they worked it all out.

We had to drill these holes with a jackhammer. Well that’s all right, we put two or three in and the next lot they got stuck behind the reinforcement. The bits, they couldn’t get them out. I think we just about used all our bits, as far as I know we just walked away and left it, and they were all sticking in there, all these jack hammer bits.

We didn’t know what they were going to do about blowing that one up if anybody comes.

I think so, yes. When we went over there, I was part of the 4th Division or 2nd Brigade and they had the 5th Battalion and that’s the Scottish

Regiment and they had the 6th Battalion, which is the Melbourne Regiment, I think it’s called. They were over there and we got reinforced by the 2/11th AIF [Australian Imperial Force] Battalion. They had a pretty good force. They had artillery and tanks and they used to go up, and they had a special mobile force doing the different things and sometimes we would be part of that force in manoeuvres and things like that.

You did a lot of fixing up drains and all that, so they could get to the coast in case they had to do things like that. I think in the whole thing, this is my own thing. I think what we were doing was we were guarding the Pearce Air Base. Because there was a big air force base at Pearce, and I think that was to stop the Japanese, if they landed, to get to that. That was a very

important base there.

No, it didn’t mean much to us at all. We were just there in case they landed I suppose.

I’ve got no idea, really. They had to do something, they put the fortifications in down Mornington Peninsular around the Geelong side in case they did come, and they were going to be a bit ready for them you see.

We did a lot of training, like in use of explosives and that type of thing. How do the explosives work on metal, the difference between a cutting charge and a charge you put in, gelignite was really only for

where it is compressed. I don’t know if you understand it? If you put gelignite in you have to ram it down. If you’re going to cut steel you use, the Australian Army used to use gun cotton slab. They were a slab of about that long, about that wide and about that thick, an inch they were. That was used in cutting steel.

It was like a slab and you pushed it against the steel. For instance, we used to experiment on railway lines, and you would put the slab of gun cotton along side of it. They had a special primer, they had what you call CE primer and I’m not too sure what the C stood for. You couldn’t set it off, if you put a stick of gelignite against it, it wouldn’t blow up the

gun cotton slab. We used to experiment with a lot of that. Test different things. All sorts of things like that in our training, and a bit of bridge building too.

I don’t think we did. I don’t think we got any Bren guns when we were over

in Western Australia, I think the only thing we might have had a go at was the Lewis gun. We got our rifles after we were over there for about two months, I think we got issued with rifles. They used to send us down to Scarborough, down to the rifle range down there, I suppose you’ve heard of Scarborough, that’s supposed to be the nude beach. I don’t know where it was but the rifle range was there and we’d fire one hundred rounds

or something like that for the day. Then we had to go and throw hand grenades there, live hand grenades. That was a little bit of a nerving experience to start with. You’d throw them and you’d hear the thing go off and it was up in the air and then three seconds later there was the explosion. I don’t know whether you know how they work, do you?

It’s got a little clip in the handle. You can pull the pin out

and that doesn’t set it off. When you let them go the thing flies up and sets a 22 in there and sets the fuse off and you have a bit of time.

I thought “It was only three”. I always thought “The rifle grenades were the seven seconds fuse”. They used to have a special thing they used to put on the rifle and

it was, fired a special bullet. There was no lead in it, it was just a cartridge, and that used to fire them off but that was a seven second fuse because they went a bit further.

Yes, I think so. As far as I’m concerned it was only a three second fuse, but I might be wrong.

Yes, there were a terrible lot of injuries. They told me that the fellow that supervised the…

now this is only second hand information. There was a bloke used to sit up in on a perch and he used to tell you what to do. He said, “Pin out, hand back, and throw”, and they reckon one block threw it up and killed him. That’s the story that we heard, whether it’s true or not, I don’t know.

You used to hear stories about people being asleep in manoeuvres and tanks would run over them. There were a terrible lot of accidents.

No, no not really, we were very lucky, not that I know of. There were a few accidents, but not so much in training. I had a trip into hospital.

I think we were up at a place called Three Springs, and there was a water hole there and of course we were out working, I don’t know what we were doing but it would either be bridge building or road construction or something like that. You’d come home pretty dirty, you used to come down and have a bit of a swim and a wash.

It had a little bit of a log on the edge of the swimming hole, a block went in and I’d come out and I stood on it and I’d slipped, and I slipped right down and there was a stick sticking up and it cut my leg, from there right up into my groin. It wasn’t very deep, but it was more deep in my groin. So I went to the RAP [Regimental Aid Post], the “Aspro Jacket” we used to call them, and he put something on it. I think he put it, they had three dyes, valvoline, I don’t know what ever it was.

He said, “You’ll be all right.” It started to get a bit infected. He kept putting more on. In between time, after that had happened, we went on manoeuvres and different things and people would come down and give you a ticket to say that you are wounded,

can you understand that? And they’d take you off. The fellow came to me, and he was one of my blokes, actually, and I think he got given it to him but he said, “No, this one’s for you boss”, so he pinned it on me. So I had to go off to the sort of field hospital. While I was there I said to the fellow, “Do you think you can put a bit of stuff on my leg here”, he had a look at it and said, “Oh, it doesn’t look to good, does it?” I ended up in hospital

for about one week. I think they put sulphanilamide on it or something. I was in hospital for a week. Then I had to go down to rehabilitation place. I was in the big Army Hospital at Northern and there were blokes there with broken legs and I had only a bit of a scratch on my leg. I went down to Naragin, I was down there for about a fortnight for rehabilitation and I finally came

back to my own unit.

You used to make things like, leather handbags and things like that. There were all sorts of different things that you could make. They would sort of give you a bit of walking and bit of marching.

Yes, that’s right. They were getting you fit again.

Then I had a couple of trips in the army into the hospital with my eyes. I used to get conjunctivitis very bad. They ended up fixing that up.

I’ve got no idea. I wore glasses before I went into the army.

I will tell you a little story about that. I used to wear glasses before I went into the army. I was playing football one day and of course I had the glasses on and the football hit me in the face and broke my glasses. So I go up to the RAP and the bloke said, “I don’t know what you are going to do about it.” Anyway, I went to see the doctor and I said, “Can they fix them?” And he said, “No, they won’t fix them”.

I ended up getting sent down to Hollywood hospital at Perth for the day. I think we were at Gingin at the time and that wasn’t very far out of Perth, probably a couple of hours drive. I went down with a mob down to the Hollywood hospital and seen a specialist there and he said me, “You don’t need glasses.” He tested me. I said, “I couldn’t be without them.” He said, “I’ll make you a pair up with the same prescription”

and I thought “That was all right”. I went back to the camp and about two months later my new glasses came up. Do you know what they were? They were little round things and I was trying to find them, they are around home here somewhere. I will look tonight and see if I can find them for you, I’ve still got them. They were little round things, silver things they were, so you could put them on and wear your respirator over the top of them. I never ever wore them.

I didn’t want to wear them, these little things they looked like little Jap things. Anyway, he said that “I didn’t need them in the first place”. I never wore them after that.

Apparently I have a stigmatism, do you know what that is? That’s what’s wrong with my eyes. In my younger days

I used to get terrible headaches. I used to squint up and things like that. My mother took me to the optometrist and I got glasses, when I was about eleven, I think.

That’s all right. When I came back after the war, I was working outside and I started to get the headaches again. I went back to my optometrist. He said, “You should have been wearing them all the time.”

I ended up getting another pair.

After the war.

No, no. I could see all right but it seemed to be a strain. I think they refer it to as eyestrain.

About fifteen months I think it was.

We had done a lot of training there. They sent us down to a place called Point Woba, and it’s on the Swan River. We had to swim with all our clothes, boots, for twenty-five yards and tin hat and everything. All sorts of things they had down there; landing strips, they didn’t actually have any landing craft, sort of jumping out of boats and things

like that.

I think so. It was all preparation but we were a bit lucky we were sent to Western Australia and the other poor devils got sent to New Guinea. We were very lucky.

They never told us anything, not a thing.

We very seldom saw a newspaper. Most of the time we were in Western Australia we were out in the scrub, really out, away from civilization, any towns were well away. I never ever got a chance to get in there because you were out there and you had a job to do and that was it. The truck driver

probably could have got in. At one place at Moora our rations got cut to about one third, and he used to go into this town and we used to give him money and he use to come out with saveloys. We used to cook them.

Saveloys, it’s like a

hot dog, in those days they were called saveloys. It was a frankfurt and saveloys and saveloys were cheaper.

That’s right.

Of a night time? All we had was hurricane lamps,

we never had any electricity in the tent. We used to play cards and we’d gamble all our money away. That’s honestly. I used to get paid at about four o’clock and by seven o’clock that night all my money would be gone.

Two up, crown and anchor, or cards. Anything at all.

Just about every week, yes, just about every week.

Never had much money.

Just enough to buy cigarettes and a bottle of beer or something like that.

Yes. Actually, we were always in the scrub.

Where we went? I’ll tell you

we were in Western Australia. When we were in Western Australia we went down to a place called Mandurah, now Mandurah, I did know what existed at Mandurah but when we were, the ocean was there and we were over in the sand dunes, camped there. Every morning you used to have to get up and go in for a swim. People that wouldn’t go in for a swim, the officers would take them for a run down the beach. They would take them for about a five mile run down the beach.

We’d all go down and get in and he would think we were in the water and as soon as he would go, we’d go back to bed, and that’s honest. We had done a bit of training there, a bit of running around and things like that. Then we went to a place called Chidlow. Chidlow’s on the railway line to Melbourne, or back to the east.

We used to train there, we would go on night marches. It was all training there, we didn’t actually do any work there, it was all training. They would send us out on night marches, by the stars. They’d take you out in the truck and dump you and you had to get back to your camp. Some of them wouldn’t get back till seven o’clock in the morning, they’d get lost. What the idea was, if you could find the pipeline, we were near the pipeline into Kalgoorlie, there’s a big pipeline that goes up there.

If you could find that you could get back to your camp. Providing you went the right way. We had terrible long night marches, through paddocks and through orchards and everything. We go through the orchards and the officers would say, “Don’t touch the fruit.” We’d get to the other side and we would have our pockets full. Then they put us on a train and brought us back to Melbourne.

We used to stop in the Nullarbor, and they’d take out the copper, off the train and they’d light a fire and they’d boil it up and that would be our tea, and we’d have the bully beef or biscuits or something like that for our meal. Porridge in the morning, I think, I just forget what we had but it was pretty rough.

Yes, it was a portable copper. They used to light a fire and pull up and make a cup of tea and wash our dishes. They were always very clean. Before we had a meal they always had a, they were actually four gallon drums cut down the middle and they always had those. We also had to put our dixies, that’s what they were called, dixies.

We always had to put our dixies into the soapy water first and dip them in the fresh water to wash, to soap off. After and before we had our meal, so we were pretty lucky.

I’m not too sure, they didn’t want you to have any diseases and things like that. In Western Australia it is full of flies.

Yes, I suppose I didn’t know a few, I can’t personally remember. Over there we used to get a thing called impetigo, and that was a thing and you would come up with little blisters on your skin and they reckon that was a lack of vitamins in the food. I don’t think I was in hospital with that, but we did have an outbreak of it.

I will tell you a little funny story. I used to write to my mother about once a week and I used to tell her, “The food was all right, but”, I said, “We don’t get much fruit.” We were working out in the bush, and a fellow out there had an orange grove and we go and buy some oranges from him, that was all right. So we buy

the oranges off him, we bought quite a lot of them, he had them. About a week later I get a big parcel from home. I thought “This would be all right, a nice big fruit basket”. I opened it up and there were a dozen oranges in it. My Mum had sent them over to me.

We were coming back

on the train, we stop at Adelaide, and we have a night in Adelaide. I think we changed trains at Port Augusta, I’m not too sure about that. We spent two or three days across the Nullarbor, we had lots of meals on there and things. We get to Port Augusta, I think that’s where we changed trains, and I’m not too sure about that but anyway. We get to Adelaide

and we get on the train and the train leaves Adelaide and it comes through and it goes via Geelong. Ballarat is only a single line, did you know that? The trains come via Geelong, there were a lot of people in our unit that came from Geelong,

they were down that way anyway. The train line crossed over the street I lived in Yarraville. I’m standing at the window waving and there’s a kid, his uncle got called up the same time as me. It’s his sister’s child. I knew him and I waved to him.

He goes and tells his grandmother and she tells my mother and they expected us home. They take us to Royal Park. It pulls into Spencer Street and we get an electric train out to Royal Park and I thought “We were going home”.

Another train picks us up and takes us to Spencer Street Station and another train to go north. There was another fellow of mine and his mother, he must have contacted his mother because she was in there and she had seen us off. She went and told my mother that “We weren’t coming home, we were heading north”.

We changed at Albury, I’m not too sure what town it was. The older soldiers in the unit got out and got on the plonk, they all got drunk and the train stopped at Cootamundra and they wouldn’t get back on, they wanted to go home. They had to get the provos [Provosts. Military Police]

and anyway we end up going. That was the story, they got off the train and they wouldn’t get back on.

Yes, they were.

No, not there. We kept going, and we thought “We’d probably go to”, the troop trains never pulled into Sydney, and I don’t

know if you knew that? They went via Liverpool, and straight up to south Brisbane. We get up to south Brisbane and I think we might have had a night in Brisbane. We get on another train again the next day and we keep going and we keep going until we end up at, I think we might have changed trains at Cairns, I’m not too sure. We went on the one that goes up to the Tablelands, that fancy train now that

they have. In those days the water falls, the ground falls were like that and we got a good view. We ended up at Atherton and we then got transported out to our new camp at Wongawallan and that was on the Atherton Tablelands.

It was good, it was pretty big. They still had the palm trees at Canungra, I think it’s still called Canungra.

They had all the fancy trees there, all the ferns and everything. I thought “This train was going to go over”. It sort of goes around the edge of the mountain pretty close.

I had been to Tasmania when I was very young they tell me, but I can’t remember. No, I hadn’t been out of Victoria, actually, that’s right.

I didn’t feel excited, I thought more disappointed about not getting home I think.

Yes, some blokes went AWL. One fellow lived at Havilah

and he went AWL and he was away for four days and when he came back they charged him because it took sixteen days to get back to his unit. They charged him AWL that time. He ended up in the Field Punishment Centre for sixteen days. He reckons that was the worst of his life, he reckons, in that, because you have to run everywhere.

Yes.

No, he did say, “But they had to run everywhere”, that’s all he said.

The fines don’t matter, because they take it out of your pay automatically. They just take if from you. We went up to the Tablelands and it was a place called Wongawallan.

We did a lot of training up there and built. We were more or less a workforce, I suppose we were called. We built the camps for the 7th Division to come up, at a place called Kairi and Maypee [?], and now that is all under water with the big dam. There’s a big dam up there, Tinaroo, the army camps were there all along

the water. We worked on the Rocky Creek hospital, we did a lot of it there and built bridges and things like that and a lot of training, night marches through the jungle. One night we went for a night march through the jungle, it was a rain forest really but it’s like a jungle. We were walking down this track

and I was usually last, not that it matter. There was a great big snake and he was about that round, a great big carpet snake. You couldn’t see he head and you couldn’t see his tail. When you are in a night march they pass messages back to you. A message came back, “He won’t hurt you.” It was a bit funny,

I hit him with my rifle, but I missed him. I’d slammed my rifle down like that and missed him. I broke my rifle in half, fair dinkum. I didn’t know how they were put together, but it has a 38 bolt in it, a bolt in the two sections, and it snapped off, clean as a whistle. I got this rifle and it was broken in half. I thought, “If I tell them I would have to pay for it” and I didn’t want to do that.

I could put it together, it’s got a strap and I could put it together and tighten the strap sort of and that would hold it together. I get back to the camp and thought, “What am I going to do with this?” Then I’d go out on guard duty I’d borrow somebody else’s, and I let it sit there, and this went on for about a couple of weeks, I just forget now.

We were working during the day and doing the night marches as extra work. Then they put us in the bullring, where you jump over hurdles and things like that, bayonet charges. I go out on this and I jump over a hurdle and I fall over and I threw my rifle out and make out it’s broken. I take it to the sergeant and I tell him I said, “It’s broken.”

And he said, “You’re a bloody lair”. So he must have known about it. I took it up to the Q [Quartermaster] store and I got a new one.

No, I never hear another word about it. I ended up with another rifle.

Yes, I didn’t want to have to pay for it.

I don’t know, it’s a bit hard to say. We were on a three-day march once, and we had to cut our way through the rain forest. We went

out from a place called Yungaburra down to a place called Babinda. Now Yungaburra is in the top of the western tablelands and Babinda down on the coast. We followed some track that was cut there in 1918 or something. It was overgrown. That was pretty hard, it was wet all the time and all we had was our ground sheet to keep

a bit dry of the night time. You weren’t allowed to sleep on the ground, you had to cut down saplings to make little beds to sleep on because of the scrub typhus, because that was pretty serious.

We just used to cut a couple of saplings and get near a tree and put a thing like that and put a bit of string around it and make an A frame and put a couple of long trees along and cut little pieces on top and make a little bed out of it, anything to keep you off the ground. It used to take us about an hour, hour and a half to do these. Everybody had a machete and some people had tommy axes and things like that with them to cut them down.

We had to do that for either two or three nights, each night we had to stop and do that. We would always stop. I think it was the South Johnston River, we crossed that about ten times I think. We would always stop the night before, and first thing in the morning we would get across instead of going through when you were always wet. We were wet all the time, so it didn’t make much difference.

A bloke cut his arm with a machete and he stitched it up himself. We didn’t have a doctor with us, we only had a RAP bloke. “This bloke stitched it up himself with a bit of thread”, he said. I didn’t actually see him but that’s what he told me that he did. When he saw the doctor, he said, “You’ve done a good job.”

No, to Hollandia. That’s further up than Madang.

I can’t remember, all I remember was being sick. I’m not too sure whether we left Townsville or Cairns, it has slipped my memory where we left from.

The tablelands is sort of south west of Cairns, it might have been easier to have come down to Townsville than what it was to go to Cairns, because the only way down to Cairns I think, is what they call the Gillies Highway. The Gillies Highway was a very treacherous road. The provos would only let so many down the one way.

They’d go and it would take about an hour to get down and then they’d stop them and then another lot would go up. I think we might have gone from Townsville, I can’t remember where we left from. I can’t really remember the name of the boat. The seasickness, as soon as it got outside, I was seasick.

No, not too good of a journey. I have had a worse one than that.

We ended up at Hollandia, that was a big American base. We didn’t go away till January 1945. We landed at Hollandia and we made camp there for the 7th division. The story was we dug 999 latrine holes.

But that’s not right. That was only a bit of a joke. We were only there a couple of weeks and the war was moving pretty quickly. They packed us up there and we didn’t know where we were going, of course. We were on our way to Morotai. That was another big American base. We went up on the ship called the Gorgon.

The Gorgon was a

passenger cargo ship, it had accommodation for passengers but the officers got that, and of course the ORs [Other Ranks] got the cargo parts. As soon as they took the rope off I was sick, that’s honest, as soon as the rope come off, and the ship moved I was sick. I got a thing behind my ear, a big rash came down behind my ear, here, it started up there and it ran down here. I used to go up and see the aspro jack and he used to put these three dyes I think, valvoline dye I think it

was called. It kept getting worse and getting worse. I used to be laying down, not in the holds, and you used to lie up on the deck. The officers used to come pass, my officer, anyway, and he said, “You’ll be on the first boat home”, with this

thing on my neck. There was no army doctor on board, but a civil doctor. I said, “Can’t I see him?” He said, “No, you can’t see him.” He kept putting this thing on and it went for days and days and the boat pulled into a place called Biak, for the night. I sort of got a little bit better and I don’t think I had anything to eat and we left the next morning and the waves were rough.

I thought that “I’d nearly died”. He still kept putting this stuff on, the more he put on it, the itchier it got and down my neck down there. I hadn’t had a shave or a wash, I couldn’t do anything, virtually. I finally got to see the doctor, and he was a Dutch doctor. He looked at it and said, “I’ll fix it up”, and he put special ointment

on it, and within two or three days it was gone.

Yes it was. Anyway, I was sick all the time and then we landed at Morotai.

We landed at Morotai, we got our tents up one day and it started to rain the next and it never stopped for over a month. Morotai, is a coral island and it’s got about eighteen inches of dirt on top, so you had to go through all this mud, because there is coral underneath. We were there and we

set up our camp. The job that we had to do was we had to make up buildings for all the stores that had to come up. That was my particular section job was doing, I don’t know what the other sections were doing, they were probably making camps for the 7th Division or something. Our job, we had to build these great big buildings. They sent up all the timber from Australia.

Nine foot lengths and we had to make them up in a truss. I don’t know if you know what a truss is?

These trusses they had centre piles

down there and another one outside and the gable roof comes up like that. They were about thirty or forty feet across. All the timber that came up was about nine lengths and what we had to do was we had to nail one after the top of each other, lap them over. The whole thing was constructed together. The timber was that hard, and the nails, we used to have so much trouble getting the nails in.

We got all these things built and we’d stand them up and of course it probably was raining at the time too. We got these up, and then we had to put the pearlings on the roof, to put the iron on. The iron they gave us was black iron. It was corrugated but it had a material in between it to stop it from going rusty on the way up.

It was sort of a black carbon sort of stuff in between it. With every sheet of iron you ended up with black all over you. We ended up putting all these sheets of iron on the roof. There was nothing on the sides, it was all opened at the sides. We built about one dozen of these over a couple of months. The Yanks said to us, “You are working outside our perimeter.” They had a perimeter going,

and the camp was outside the perimeter. They were all Americans there, and they said, “Don’t touch our stile.” They must have had a stile out there, we never had a stile. He said, “If you touch it, we will booby trap it.” We were not looking for it anyway. We got all these huts built and it took us awhile.

When the

huts were built, then they started building all the stores, off the ships come in, it was stores, food and all that type of stuff. They had the Provos guarding it, so that nobody could pinch anything. We finished all of those and they said, “You have been working that hard, we are going to give you a spell down the beach.”

We packed up our gear and we go down to the beach. What do they do, we get put on a landing craft.

We were on the landing craft for a couple of days and then we moved off into the invasion of Tarakan.

No idea, that’s right.

We were there sometime in late February until about the last week in April.

It was pretty all right up there, they had a few fights in Australia but I don’t think they had too many fights.

No, I didn’t see too many Americans the first time because I think we were working seven days a week, I’m pretty sure we were. There wasn’t any rest days, I can’t see what we were doing on a rest day. I’m not too sure whether it was the first time or the second time

in Morotai that we used to use the American PX [Post Exchange] bars. That’s like our canteen. They sell everything in there. It was unrestricted on what you could buy, you could go and buy a whole carton of cigarettes.

I’m not too sure about that, if it was the first or second, it could have been the second time. I just can’t remember whether we used the PX bars the first time or not.

We used to get two bottles of beer a week. Two ounces of tobacco, through our canteen, I can’t really recall the actual facts on that. They put us on the ship.

Yes, that right. We were on the landing craft for about three or four days, it might have been longer than that. I think they might have forgotten about us.

What happened on the ship was, we were on what they call a LCM [Landing Craft Mechanized]. A LCM is not as big as a LST [Landing Ship Tank], and it carries vehicles, and it’s about the third of the size of an LST. We had a copper and we had to make our own meals on there. The Yanks said, “No, you’re not,

we supply you with all the meals.” We lived on Yankie meals for, and I reckon we got as fat as pigs, because they had forgotten about us. The sergeant came around one day. It might have been on the way up, I’m not sure when this happened. He said, “This group, we have got to go in the day before the landing,

and blow up the railway lines.” The Japs had put a lot to stop the landing craft. He showed us the bags of explosives that we had to have. I thought they were sticks of gelignite. There were three sticks of gelignite in these rubber bags and they had this fuse coming out. I said to him, “Gelignite is no good against railway line, it’s got to have pressure.”

He said, “The sea pressure will work that.” Whether it’s gelignite or something else. There were a lot of explosives around in those days, but we never seemed to get to handle them. We could have had a little bit when we did our training. We got these bags. He showed us these bags of explosives that we had to carry on our backs and go in the day before and blow up these obstacles.

We were sailing down to Tarakan, the sea was as flat as a board, and there wasn’t a ripple on it. They gave me a job, we were toeing a landing craft at the back, and what you had to do was you had to have ear phones on, to watch the landing craft that didn’t break away. They put me on there and I didn’t have my hat on,

and oh God, I got sick again. I think it was more sun struck than seasickness. I was sick again. We were going along, and it was all in convoy, ships everywhere and it wasn’t only our ship, there were dozens of other ships and war ships and everything. There was a fellow who had fallen of a boat, he was in the water. Of course, they won’t stop to pick him up.

He was pretty close to our boat about one hundred yards away. He had about one hundred life belts, and every boat that went past would throw him a life belt. We just sailed past and we didn’t stop either. They don’t stop to pick them up if they’ve fallen over board when they are going to an invasion.

After the ships went past, about five miles past him we would see a destroyer come in and pick him up. They’d sent someone around to pick him up. They told me he was a sergeant, they ripped his stripes off him. I don’t know if that’s true or not. That’s what happened. He had a hell of a lot of life belts around him, every boat that went past him would throw him one over.

He was sitting in the middle out there on his own.

I think we were laughing more than anything else. He seemed to be safe, he didn’t look like drowning, he was swimming. He was just sort of in the water, or what I can remember anyway. They all yelled out to him different names or different things,

I forget now.

We anchored off Tarakan the day before, and we expected to be called up to go in and do this job, and they didn’t come to get us. The morning of the invasion, I didn’t know what day it was, they didn’t tell us that.

A heap of liberators came over, we were standing about two mile off the shore, and it could have been a little bit further. You could see the shoreline quite clearly. The liberators came over and they dropped bombs after bombs, altogether, and they saturated the area. You could feel the heat waves come out and you would feel it

from the explosions. The landing craft went off and about half past nine we went in and I can’t recall exactly how we landed. A friend of mine said “He had to climb down a rope ladder to get into the landing craft”. I said “I can’t remember doing that”, I’m not too sure whether

he was in the same boat as me or not. We ended up hitting the shore at about nine o’clock or half past.

I can’t recall if we were in the little landing craft or not. I can’t bring back the memory whether the big one landed in the shore and we got off that way or on the small one, I can’t recall, I’ve got no idea.

We landed, because there were people on the shore to tell you where to go. It’s not just higgledy piggledy, they called them something but I forget now. They put us in a part, Tarakan was an oil island, it was great for oil and that’s what the Japs had it for.

They put us in amongst

a lot of pipes. I thought, “This is pretty safe anyway, a bit of shelter”. The pipes were about that round, about eighteen inches or twenty inches round. They camped in there and we put all there. We probably sat around for about twenty minutes or half an hour, I don’t know if whether they were deciding what to do with us. Somebody came along and told us and said, “You have got to go down and fix up the pier about

a quarter of a mile down.” I don’t think we took our rifles, I think we left all our gear behind, like personal gear and our rifles. I don’t think we took our rifles or webbing equipment. We go along the beach. At Tarakan they had a lot of made roads on it, it wasn’t just jungle, there were a terrible lot of made roads on it.

We walked along the road and we get down to near the pier and there was a provo there and he said, “Be careful, there’s a Jap sniper up there,” he said. “You’ve got to duck down.” We ducked down and got across the road and he said, “This Jap has shot eleven American sailors, in the time he was there.”

We go down and get down near the pier and walk out through the water. This time when the landing took place it was high tide, it goes out very far and very quickly. It’s getting near low tide by the time we were getting out there, it probably about half past ten or something.

We walk out to the end of the pier and we were all standing around

seeing what we had to do and all of a sudden there were these big raindrops, hitting the water. We thought “They were rain”, but they were bullets. They all ducked, it took a split second to wake up, and can you understand what I mean? I dived on the right side of the pier,

on the right side of the pile, because I thought they were coming from the shore and others got around the other side. He didn’t hit anybody thank goodness. He fired probably about twenty or thirty. It was a machine gun, it wasn’t rifles, unless it was several rifles. I’m sure it was a machine gun. We got up on the pier and had a look at what we had to do and we didn’t have many tools, just a few bare hands

and things like that. What had happened was the Japanese had driven a barge underneath the pier, and set fire to it, they had it full of oil, with a pretty big gap in it. They didn’t burn the pipe, the pipeline went across. You could get backwards and forwards over the gap all right. We get up there and start pulling a bit of timber out and started working there and he opens up again.

We are only presuming it is. I think it was, I don’t know. They had a gun fixed especially for this job. They’d burnt it purposely and set a gun on it to stop people from working on it. The infantry walked across and didn’t get shot at. As soon as we started working he shot and we ducked and there was a lot of debris there and we ducked behind it. He didn’t hit anybody that time.

We kept working and about every half hour he would open up and have a go at us with these machine guns. He ended up hitting one bloke and he was standing next to me and he hit him in the leg. Another bloke jumped off the pier into the water and he landed on a bridge spike. A bridge spike went through his leg. He was worse than the bloke who got shot. We kept working all the afternoon.

We ended up getting a few axes and crosscut saws brought out to us. They said, “Go back and get an axe and a crosscut saw.” I sneaked back along the thing and ducked down underneath the thing and came back with a crosscut saw and an axe and I brought it out. I’m walking back from one side and I’m on the pipeline. The pipeline was like a,

if I remember it was like a V, either that or an A, I’m not too sure which one it was. I’m walking along this pipeline and he opens fire and I could hear the bullets hitting the pipeline, ricocheting and I’d ducked and got down behind them. Anyway, I got across there all right. He only seemed to fire at bursts. It might have been ten or fifteen, I’m not too sure how many, but it was just a burst and then he would stop.

He didn’t want to get picked up, because the infantry would be somewhere near him. It went on all the afternoon and every now and again he’d open up. We only got one bloke wounded. About five o’clock the officer comes out, Joe Brittle his name was, he was our officer. He comes out and he struts out along this and I said to the other blokes, “This

fellow’s going to make us work under fire”, because in the training you have to work under the fire. If someone is shooting at you, and someone is shooting at you, you don’t actually duck. He came walking out and he’s going to make us work under fire. He gets out there and as soon as he arrives, the Jap must of spotted him, and he opened up. We all ducked and he ducked with us. When it all

quietened down he said, “I think you better go back and have some tea.” I think that was the best thing that an officer said to us. We went back and had a bit of tea and came back after dark. We brought our rifles back with us after dark because he might of swam around or done something, pretty cagey sort of a place. The next day they were gone, he was gone. He didn’t worry us anymore.

I was there from the landing right up to about the 18 December.

Yes, six months, it would be over six months.

We were

fixing up bridges over creeks and things like that where they had to get the traffic and all the supplies up to the front line and that was one job that we worked on down there. We end up fixing the pier up and that took us a week or two to get that done. We were camped on the

beachhead for about four days, that was about four or five days. There’s a story in there, it’s written down and you can have a look after. What happened, the second night we were on there, at the beachhead, they reckoned the Japanese had broken through. It caused a bit of a panic.

The Yanks had their “Alligators”, I don’t know if you know, it’s an amphibious tank. It used to take some of our soldiers in, or they went in with them. All the landing craft was American. They had these amphibians just camped near us and a bit of panic and they’re off out to sea. I thought, “The cows have nicked off and left us”.

This went on for about one hour and a message came back and it was only just a false alarm. The Yanks came back, and they had radios and things, and they come in. They said, “The reason we are going to sea is because these blokes had just come down from the Philippines and they needed the experience.” They said, “The reason we go to sea is because the Japanese have bombers, and they strap and jump onto the

carriers, before we can shoot them.” He said, “When we are out to sea we can pick them off when they are in the water.” That episode had finished. A couple of nights later, or it might have been the next night, the petrol dump catches on fire. The petrol dump was just near us and it catches on fire.

Our trucks are pretty close to us, I don’t know why they couldn’t start them up. I couldn’t understand why somebody didn’t get in them and start them. They tried to push them away and the fire was there and the trucks were there, they weren’t far away, from about here to the end of the building away from the fire the one truck was. We got one out of the way and the next one we seem to have

a bit of trouble moving it. I got on the right side of the truck, I wasn’t going to get between the truck and the fire. I don’t know if you have ever seen petrol drums go on fire. These are four-gallon drums and the ends spill out and then they burst and they go up in the air, it’s terrific flame up in the air and on fire. Then they get out to a certain, and then they explode.

About ten or twelve metres, they would go up a long way. Anyway the first started there and the fire was going. Two of our blokes got between the fire and the truck to try and push it out, and I thought, “I’m not getting around there”. Up goes the explosion

and comes all over them. They rush around to us and we drive on them and we were trying to put the fire out and you could feel their skin coming up. They took them away to hospital. I can always remember pulling, their flesh was coming off, we were trying to put their clothes over them and they were all burnt. They survived,

they didn’t die. They ended up putting the fire out, somehow or another, I just forget now. It wasn’t only our group, there were other groups fighting it. They ended up putting it out. That was that story.

Yes.

I think you just took it

as something that was happening, it didn’t affect us at the time. After that we were down on the beachhead for about four or five days and then we moved up to what we call “The perimeter”. The infantry had been there before us, and they put up their barbwire entanglements. As we

go up to take our positions on the perimeter, we came across

all the people that had been killed. They’d been buried, and they had a bayonet stuck in their grave and they used to have a

piece of tin, I think it was either the top of the operational ration tin. The operational tin was a four-gallon tin and it had rations for so many days, for four or five people. I think they used to cut the tops out with a nail or some machine, but it looked like a nail and engraved it with the name of the fellow who had died.

These would be buried all around the place, and in the end I wouldn’t go over and look in case I knew somebody. We would go up and take our positions on the perimeter. The other side was if there were any Japs there, that’s where

they’d be. You’d get into our slit trench and set up our booby traps for the night and collect them in the next morning and we did that for a couple of days. Then we moved up into the oil fields. Our camp moved up there. We got up there in the dark one night and we set up our little

tent, I think we were in a hut, I’m not too sure at this stage. We set up our thing and they came around to get me and Bailey, Monty Bailey and myself at four o’clock in the morning. They said, “You’re on guard duty.” The other blokes had done it before, the corporal comes around and wakes

you up and you get your gear and you go out there. We had no idea where we were and there was this little brick building. He said, “This is your spot here.” He was looking one way and I’m looking the other. We didn’t have any cover, can you understand, there’s no cover or anything like that. We were sort of out standing up. We were standing

there and we hardly made a noise all night, all the time we were there looking in case there was anybody lining us up. You couldn’t see a thing, it was that dark. It was that dark in front of you. The sun starts to come up, we were on the last shift and the sun comes up and here we are stuck behind this little building, right

out and there was no other buildings around. That was all right, we didn’t have any trouble.

You couldn’t have anything. You just stopped there and you didn’t make a noise. You tried to stop as still as you could. We ended up building our camp there. We were right on the edge of

the perimeter. Whatever was outside was sort of no man’s land. There wasn’t too many Japs out there, though there were more in the hills, this was a bit flat country out there. We used to have to go on guard duty every night. Every night there would be an air raid. The sergeant used to say to us, “Get dressed, don’t go out with no clothes on”, he said, “And make sure your caked

in mosquito repellent.” That was what we were doing. There would only be single or two planes, that was all. They weren’t big raids. He said, “All the Japs were doing was get you out of bed, so the mosquitoes would get you.” I think he might have been quite right. We get up and get out there and get into the slit trench and the first thing we get into the slit trench and you would get down the end and have a smoke, because you weren’t suppose to do that.

We used to dig them, so they weren’t straight. They had little kinks in them, so if they dropped the hand grenade it went down there, it wouldn’t get you down the other end.

No, not a zigzag, more like a V. They didn’t go another way they only went the two sides.

You could see them in the night time going over. It was really only one or two, and they’d go over, the anti-aircraft guns would open up and the search lights would go up and about a quarter of an hour after, the black widow would come over, and that was a night fighter. There wasn’t

many Jap planes at all. Not in our area at that time.

Yes, they dropped bombs. We used to have an anti-aircraft battery, I’d never ever seen it. It was on the right hand side of us, it was in front of us and at Tarakan, they used to use the anti-aircraft gun for knocking out the pillboxes.

They reckon that was better than the artillery, because it would fire further and they used to use it for artillery. At different times of the day, they’d fire right over our camp and we could hear the shells going over and above us, and I thought, “I hope to hell they don’t drop one short”. You’d often hear about one dropping short. This anti-aircraft battery down there, I don’t know how many. I don’t know where it was, we never ever

seen it. It wasn’t far away because you could hear them taking off. It was in amongst the jungle somewhere. This night an aircraft came over and we were all out in the slit trenches and we see three flashes about, might have been four or five hundred yards away, and I thought to myself, “Thank goodness they’ve moved that anti-aircraft gun”, with that they dropped three bombs.

Nothing much. There was only sort of jungle out the other side. They missed us, altogether, they didn’t do any damage.

That was the only time that they dropped bombs near us, they might have dropped bombs from somewhere else from the air, like the airfield or somewhere else. That was the only time that they actually came out. You’d hear them coming over, they might not have been a couple of hundred of

yards or maybe a mile away, it’s hard to say .As soon as you hear the air raid siren. With the air raid siren they used to fire the Bofors gun, they use to fire three shots. It didn’t matter if you were asleep, you’d hear these and you would wake up straight away. You seemed to be listening for them. I think it was one red and two green or something, they were sort of tracer shells,

I think. They’d get you out of bed.

No, no, plenty of supplies at Tarakan. There were plenty of supplies. We were on the offensive now.

For the first four or five days we had operational rations, now that was a four gallon tin. I think there were two in a crate. In that you got bully beef, tinned stew and gold fish, that’s honestly, and biscuits and you also got tinned fruit.

Orange juice, I think there was a can of orange juice, or a couple of cans of orange juice. Each can do so many men for so many days. I mean you had tinned fish for breakfast, and you’d have bully beef for breakfast the next day. That went on until the cooks got there, I’m not sure how many days. That’s how the operations were.

They arrived with the landing. They would have been fighting until they got the cookhouse going, or whatever jobs they had to be doing.

As far as I know there was no rock on Tarakan, not on the particular parts that we held. They were having a terrible lot of trouble with the airstrip. They decided to send us to a little island, a group of men, about

ten to twenty I think it was, to this little island and there was a quarry there. We go down and get on the landing craft and off we go. We go about a mile I suppose out, the captain of the landing craft, which was American, he said, “There’s a Jap getting away up there on a canoe.” You would just see a speck on the horizon. He opens up with the forty-millimetre gun and he said, “That’s turned him back.”

I don’t know what happened to him .We finally land at this island. We get off. The night before a Jap had got in and killed the head chief of the island; these are not natives, these are civilized people on the island. They are not natives, they are civilized, they are sort of a cross between Chinese and Indonesians. They were trying to tell us which

way the Jap bloke had gone. They said, “The Japan man’s gone that way”, we weren’t interested in that. We went the other way. We must have had a guide to take us, I can’t recall that. The landing craft let us off at the end that was going up to the creek, up to the quarry. We marched up there, up to the quarry, we get up there and I put my rifle against the tree there and

they said, “Boss, you have a sledge hammer,” and brake all the rock up. That’s what we had to do. We were breaking it up, and it got that hot, the sweat was pouring off me. I took off my shirt, and that was the first thing off. Then my identify disc was getting in the way, because I was swinging this sledge hammer, and I take it off and hang it on a little branch on the tree.

I’m not too sure, we must have had wheelbarrows. I didn’t do it, we must have had somebody else come along. We had quite a lot and they picked it up and wheeled it into the landing craft, which was about one hundred yards away up to the creek. We worked for a few hours there and we got a good truckload, three of us, or five or six Scooby metres. They said, “Righto, pack up we’re going.” I was the

furtherest away and I just grabbed my rifle, I couldn’t get back quick enough and I didn’t want to be left there. I get back onto the landing craft and I had left my dog tags hanging on the tree. I thought “Will I go back and get them?”, for a split second I thought “No, the buggers might go and leave me behind”, because the Yanks are a bit like that. They had a bad reputation. So anyway, I left them there

and I didn’t bother going back and getting them .When I got back I told the sergeant, he went crook. A couple of days later I got a new set, the ones that I’d left behind were a fiver. The new ones I got were stainless steel. So, I’m waiting for someone to find them.

Did I tell you about teaching all the other soldiers on the woodwork? Anyway, when the war ended, the army came up with a thing to keep them occupied. They had games going and different sports and all that type of thing. They also had classes to learn things.

I was helping one of the classes to teach them woodwork. That went on for a couple of months, a different lot of blokes came in at different times. All of a sudden there was a rumour going around that “The aircraft carriers were coming in to take everybody home”. The corporal came to me and said, “They’re putting all the tools on trucks, and driving them into the sea off the

cliff”. He said, “I’ve got a few here and I want a little box to fit them in.” We measured them all out. He had a plane, a hammer, a square and a few other nice little wood working tools and a couple of chisels and we made a little box. I’d put them in and nailed the bottom on and packed them nice and nailed the top on, so it couldn’t be opened. We found a handle from somewhere and put a handle on it. It looked like a little case.

I thought, “I reckon I could do with a few of these myself”. So I went and made the same thing, for myself. The aircraft carriers came in, the officer came to me and said, “You’re not going home, this lot, you’re going home, the boats coming in, in four days time for you.” In between times, after the aircraft carriers went

and they said to me, “I’ve got a sword”, give me a sword, a Japanese sword. I don’t know how they decided, whether they picked them out of a hat or not. There was one for me, and that was all right. The next day, four days time the boats came along the [HMAS] Kanimbla it was, you got on the boat and off you go. I was seasick again. It gets to Morotai, there was a bit of a riot on there.

They decided a certain number of points had to get off. All those that had to get off the boat to go to Morotai. I got posted out to a RAEME [Royal Australian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers] Unit. I was there a couple of days and somebody pinched micrometer, I didn’t know what micrometer was, but I do know now.

Unexpectedly, they came around and had a kit inspection. They had to come around and take everything out of our kits, and the officer inspected it, so I’ve got my box of tools underneath my little cabinet. My shaving gear and my mess kits, dixies in there. I get past that all right, but I never got caught with the tools. After he went I thought, “God,

if I get caught with these I might end up in jail”. So I was starting to get a little bit superstitious. I thought, “What will I do?” So anyway, that night I grabbed the tools and the sword and walked into the jungle and I threw them away. I thought about it, I didn’t

really want to take the Japanese sword home in a way, only because my brother had been killed. I ended up throwing them away, they might still be out in the jungle in Morotai somewhere. That was it.

That sort of entered my mind. I thought “I get home and my father might say it might have chopped somebody’s head off”, but anyway it didn’t get home.

It stayed in the jungle .A friend of mine, he got a sword too, somebody had pinched it off him on the boat and he lost it, it didn’t come home either. I made the original box for tools, and he got his home.

Not really, no. I wouldn’t have minded the tools.

They were American tools, there were the best, the chenny hammers [?] and Stanley and all American tools they were.

I’ve got no idea. It had something to do with the Lend Lease. That was the only reason. They were driving the trucks and all over the cliff, this was the story, I don’t know if it was true or not, that was all that was told.

Yes. Didn’t you know that, didn’t you now how the lend lease worked?

I’m not too sure either but once the war was over they had to destroy all the things. I think they dropped a lot of airplanes into the sea in Australia.

I think so. I don’t really know, that’s the idea I sort of got with it. That’s what they told me, why they can’t take the trucks? They had to drive them off the cliffs into the sea. I don’t know, I didn’t see it.

Not really. People used to make rings and everything out of the crashed

airplanes and they’d get the duralumin and the perspex and they used to do all sorts of things. They must have had a bit of time on their hands. There were plenty of tools available.

Yes, probably after, but probably some during the war I suppose. They had a bit of free time and would do it. It was a

duralumin ring, you’d often see with them. A different perspex and things like that.

I don’t know, I wouldn’t have a clue about that.

The day the war ended. I was at Tarakan. I remember, it was quite clearly. I can remember the first atom bomb. Actually at

Tarakan they used to have a little newspaper. It was sort of one or two sheets about a small thing and it used to come around and we used to get so much for each unit. I just forget the name, it might have been the Tarakan News or something like that. This come on the news that they just dropped an atomic bomb. I didn’t know what the atomic bomb was, I just thought “It was a big bomb”. I said, “I hope they drop another one.”

It was only a couple of days later and they dropped another one and all of a sudden the war’s over. That was it.

I don’t know, I was just glad it was over. I don’t suppose any special feeling. Very soon after the war was over,

before the amnesty was signed, it was signed sometime in September, I’m not too sure. This was very close to the day that the war stopped. I was in a group of soldiers and we had to go to Sandakan, or “Sandarkan” it was called. To make camp for all the prisoners of war.

I was given the job by the sergeant and he said, “Your job is to purify the water”. We used to have to do this in training, there was a thing called “A horex box”.

I’m not too sure how it worked .He was trying to explain to me and I had no idea what he was talking about. The more we talked about it, the more I got confused. The tanks to put the water on, they were sort of a canvas, and I think they held five hundred gallons. You had to work out the

ratio, because the chlorinated water is one part per million, and in the tropics it’s super chlorinated and it’s two part per million. I had no idea what he was talking about. He had me there for about one hour and I said, “I don’t understand.” He said, “I’ll help you.” I said, “That’s all right.” We get up the next morning and we go down to get on the boat,

the destroyer to take us up there, we get down there and we were waiting on the bus and we got off the trucks. Someone came over and said, “No, you’re going home, go back, there’s not enough life jackets, the captain’s not taking you”, he said “Come back tomorrow.” I go back to the camp. I thought my brother, and he was a prisoner of war, and I thought “He might have been there”. This goes through your mind.

I go back to camp and I thought “I better do some washing because I won’t get a chance where we are going”. The natives had this oil well place going, and they had a steam iron and someone would tap into their steam iron on, so we could do our washing, and I hadn’t used it before. Someone said, “Go get the hot water over

at the steam iron.” Ok, I get my bucket and put the water in and put the steam iron into the bucket and turn it on and you end up with hot water. I go over there and stick it in and turn it on, and I’d turned it on too full, and the steam thing shot out and scolded all my legs. There was skin coming off everywhere, but it wasn’t a very serious burn thank goodness. I was lucky I had long pants on. In those days short pants were out,

it was the jungle greens that were in .He said to the RAP, “God, you have to go and get the doctor.” I’m not too sure of the circumstances now, when I’d seen the doctor, I had to go and tell him. He said, “You won’t be able to go tomorrow, up to Sandakan”. I thought, “I’ll have to go and tell Jonesy”. Well, I go and tell Jonesy and he went a bit crook. Anyway, I saw the doctor the next day, and he put me on no duties.

All the fellows went down to go and the rest of them went down there and in about an hour’s time they’re back. I said, “What’s wrong this time?” They said, “We don’t have to go, all the prisoners of war are dead.” There were only four or six alive, so they were going to fly them out. That was the end of that story.

In between

time where our company was building an entertainment centre on the island and they had been working on it and with the natives helping. Gracie Fields was coming and her troop. They had got it all pretty well in hand,

the corporal came to me and said, “You’re on no duties, aren’t you?” I said “That’s right.” I was only just hanging around the camp, I wasn’t in hospital or anything, I was just on no duties, I could walk around or anything like that. He said to me, “Do you reckon you could make a toilet seat for Gracie Fields?” This is fair dinkum and I’m not joking. I said, “Yes, I’ll have a go.” He got bits of flooring board from somewhere

and because we had plenty of hand tools and I set to work and I can’t remember how I glued it up. I don’t think we had any glue, we must have had some paint or something to stick the dowels together, I just remember how it was made. I went out and rasped it all up and done every thing like that. He took it away and I don’t know if she ever used it or not,

or if she ever got it. Anyway, that’s the story .She arrived a couple of days later and it was a great concert too.

I think it was a bit rough compared to nowadays. It was all right. Have I told you about

the blokes that I was teaching woodwork?

We taught all these different fellows woodwork. I told you about the box and tools.

There were three or four of us, with a few benches and things like that.

There were probably about twenty at a time. There would be three or four of us in the same room. It wasn’t actually like a classroom, they just came down and did their work and we’d have a talk to them and show them what to do. Because later on I became a woodwork teacher.

Yes, I think so. That was pretty free and easy, you didn’t have to control.

Mainly building construction, there wasn’t any furniture made, we made actually little models, because we had our own sawmill going.

Yes, there was plenty of timber on the island. One job that I had to do,

this was during the war while the war was on. I was there to do lots of jobs but this was a particular one and they’d bring in what they call invasion tanks to store the petrol. An invasion tank is about twenty thousand gallons, I don’t know the size of them. They come in big sheets and they are all got holes in them,

all pressed out and they had holes in them and they bolt them together with bolts and a seal in between them. They put them up in the hill and then they put a pipeline down to the road, this was at the beach end of the road. Then the tankers from the airport come up, and pickup their fuel and the drivers from the trucks would pull up and get

their petrol in there .There was an avgas and no gas point. They had two lots of tanks up on the hill, they might have had more than that. Our unit put it together. They couldn’t actually get in, because it was so boggy, where they would pull it, because it was off the road. I got the job with about

ten natives and we used to call it a very unsavoury name, we used to call it “Bung bashing”, not that we ever used to bash them. That was just the saying that we came up with, it was an unsavoury name but it was just the way that we spoke. I had ten natives working under me and they used to get paid.

When we had the saw mill going, they would cut down sort of sleepers, they were about twelve long, there wasn’t any particular length but they were all about the same about two inches thick. Some were six inches wide, some were eight inches wide. What we had to do was we had to deck underneath where all these petrol bowsers were, so the trucks could come off the road and just get in there and then just drive out and they wouldn’t get bogged. That was my job there.

The officer came to me one day and said, “You’ve done a good job here boss, how would you like to be a lance corporal?” “No thanks”, I said. The blokes wouldn’t have taken any notice of me. I didn’t want it anyway. They put all these tanks up on the hill. One day, I don’t know what I was doing but I had to go up there one day and

they were all full of petrol these tanks and I had to go up there to do something and I just forget what it was. There was an air raid on. I think I must have just had to pick up some tools. There was an air raid on. The Jap planes up there, I could see him up there and I thought, “He’s going to bomb these tanks”. And they were waiting for me down in the truck to pick me up down the bottom.

They were saying, “Come down”. The tanks were full up there and down there was a valley, and I thought “If he bombs that and I’m half way covered in petrol…” and I went the other way and went down the other side. They thought I was a bit silly.

No, they weren’t. They chased him away I think. He didn’t

bomb, he might have just come over to have a look. It was a Jap plane and that was all.

All right, no worries. What they were, they were Javanese most of them. They’d be bought there by the Japanese as labourers and most of the ones I worked with were Javanese. They worked all right. They used to sit

down to saw the thing.

I could speak a little bit of Malayan, and I could count up to ten and a few words. You seem to get to know a few words with them. I’ve forgotten a lot of them now of course.

Not really, I’d just show them what to do and they would go ahead and do it. Mainly they were carrying stuff over. We had a fellow there and he used to weld. He uses to make his own setaline. They had oxygen tanks but he use to make acetylene, or is it carbite [?]. They put it in and put water with it and it gives off the acetylene. In my younger days

when my father used to have a carbite [?] light on his bike. People used to sort of make bombs to blow up fish with, they’d put a bit of carbite [?] in a bottle or something and let the water gradually drip in, and when it got to a certain thing it would cause an explosion.

Down at the local rivers, this was the story around, I’d never actually seen it done.

It was often a little bit crook because sometimes the fellow from the comfort fund would come around and would give us a cup of tea and of course he wouldn’t give it to the natives. It was embarrassing sometimes, probably a bit embarrassing for him too because if he started to give it out

to the natives… I think it was a bit embarrassing on both sides. Sometimes I would give them a few army biscuits, I used to give them. That sort of pacified them a little bit. They used to have their meals. They were in camps, they used to go back to a camp every night.

Only drove past them, that’s all. The natives didn’t like the Dutch.

They said the Japanese were “Tiggybargush”, the Australians were “Tiggybargush” but the Dutch were, I forget the word they used to say but they didn’t like them, they didn’t like the Dutch at all.

They were all right, the Australians were all right, but they didn’t like the Dutch. I just forgotten what, it was

some phrase before tiggybargush. I might be wrong .They had a riot on Tarakan after the war had ended.

Yes. The Australians had to get the tanks out to them and this was what I was told. I didn’t actually take part in it but it wasn’t long after that, that they had an uprising in Java too.

No, not really, no. That’s the only thing I ever did with them. They had a lot of them working on the Victory Theatre, it’s an open air stage,

a lot of them over there. They had a lot of natives helping them, digging holes and putting things in. Sappers would supervise them, or sappers would be doing to work too. I don’t know how much money they got paid buy, what they call a Nica, Native Indies Civil Administration [Netherlands Indies Civil Administration] I think it was. Of course they had

Javanese soldiers too, or Indonesian soldiers, I don’t know what they were. Some of them landed there with us and they were in the Dutch army.

I never had much to do with them, I just seen them.

I never had anything to do with them. I’d just seen them, that’s all.

We didn’t see too many animals. I never noticed any animals, no. I never saw any snakes or anything like that.

Yes, that right.

No, we didn’t have any pets or nothing.

No, I was pretty lucky,

the only thing I got was the thing on my neck. That got cleared up pretty well. I didn’t get malaria, I didn’t get dengue. When we went away, malaria was supposed to be a self-inflicted wound. Of course we were taking Atebrin. That was only a suppression that only suppressed the Atebrin - that was the best against malaria. We had to take it three months before

you went and three months, and so many days when you come over. We used to take that every day and the officers used to come around to see that you were taking it.

It didn’t make much difference to me, a lot of married men who were crook on it reckon it made them sterile. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know.

I don’t know, I’ve got no idea.

Probably got it from the Yanks somehow.

No, I can’t remember any of our fellows getting malaria. I will tell you that of night time you had plenty of mosquitoes. Mosquitoes only seem to come out of night time. We had plenty of

mosquito repellent. If you had to go out on guard duty during the night time we used to put the repellent all over you. You’d do the shirt up to the top button, or the next one down. You had long pants, you’d put it on your hands, and you’d hear the mosquitoes come up, buzz, buzz and they wouldn’t land, they would go away. We used to sleep under mosquito nets.

Yes, it was made by Johnson & Johnson. I had a little bottle. It was a bit hard on the skin and it stung a bit.

No, I didn’t.

Never seen it.

I wasn’t in the medical side .I will tell you something that was a bit funny. One of our fellows, he was doing some work and he cut his foot with an axe, right here.

Right across the foot. It was a nasty cut too, we had to cut his boot off to get him to the hospital. He got to the hospital somehow, I’m not too sure how,

but he got there anyway .This was at Tarakan, and this was when the war was on. A couple of nights before the Japs had got in and caused the haywire with the wounded blokes somehow. It was the rumour going around. I don’t know how true it was, but it was to have supposed to happen. He was in hospital. In those days penicillin had just come in.

What happened was, and I will never forget this, all the patients and they were wounded, and they all had to turn around and show their backsides. Have the backside up, they had to lie and I was just visiting this fellow. A fellow came along, an orderly, and he had a series of syringes and he must have had twelve in a little packet. They weren’t in a packet, they were out in the open, but they were in some sort of a container.

He walked along in the middle of the thing, I’m not joking, he threw these syringes, like that, into the fellow’s backside, that’s honestly, and then another bloke came along with a syringe and connected them and the next bloke took the syringe out. That was the first time I’d seen penicillin used.

He was a good shot, yes he was.

It was just like darts going in, I will always remember that. This fellow got better and he wasn’t in the hospital more than a couple of weeks and he was back with us.

Yes I did. There were two or three of us there and we were laughing.

No, he came back again. He was probably in there about

a fortnight I suppose. So was the bloke that got wounded, he came back. He thought “He was going home”.

I don’t know, I have no idea.

Yes. There was supposed to be a fellow in our unit, he was in our section actually and he shot his toe

off cleaning his rifle. That’s what they told me anyway. I will tell you what, we lost a few fellows who went off their rocker. Fair dinkum too, you could tell they went off. I remember one fellow and I was working on this avgas and no gas point, he came up to me, and I won’t tell you his name.

He came up to me and he had about twelve hand grenades hanging all over his body, he had all these hand grenades. I thought, “He’s a bit strange”. He walked up to me and he was looking for a big Stiltson spanner or some, he said, “Have you got one here?” And I said, “No, I don’t have one here.” He said, “I’ve got to find one.” Anyway, he ran away somewhere else. The next day he was locked up or they’d done something to him anyway. I struck him in Melbourne after the war and he was as good as gold. I didn’t mention anything

to him of course. He was fair dinkum, you could see it in their eyes.

There were only two or three instances in our section. When we first went to Queensland after not being allowed home. We had a corporal and he’s got a famous name too.

His mother was sick, and he couldn’t get home, to see her. He was actually in our tent. We woke up one morning and he was gone, we’d only been there a couple of days. None of his equipment’s gone, the only thing missing was his tobacco - we didn’t have cigarettes then, we used to have to roll our own mainly.

His tobacco and matches were gone. They sent a search party out looking for him, they take their shirts off and they go looking through the rain forest, the rainforest was actually jungle, virtually, but they call it rainforest in Queensland. In there they have got a lot of “wait a while” bushes there like fishhooks on the end of things. Have you ever heard of people speaking of them?

Ever heard of the Gympie Bush? There was a Gympie Bush up their and all the tracks there and they get all stung with all this Gympie Bush and the next day they are all puffed up and it is a hell of a thing. The next day they met some locals and they said “You don’t go in there without your shirt on”. They found this bloke about three days later just sitting there, sitting in a little clearing,

he’d been there for three days .He went home. I saw him after the war, and he seemed to be all right after that. He was fair dinkum, you could tell. I didn’t actually see him, but they tell me that.

I think just worrying and things like that, I’ve got no idea. We used to call that a “Homer”.

I got pulled off the boat, not pulled of the boat but ordered off the boat, and they posted me out to the RAEME unit, after I got rid of the

box of tools and the sword. I was posted to RAEME. The job they gave me I had to pack up all the equipment because they were going to Japan, they were part of BCOF [British Commonwealth Occupation Force]. I had to crate them all up and that was virtually all I did, but the evenings I used to go down to the PX bar and there was a fair amount of freedom after that. I mean there wasn’t much discipline, and we didn’t have parades

or things like that. We used to go down and watch the movies and different things like that. I’d spend a bit of money in the PX bar. It was really, really relaxing. I finally got it all packed up and went to Japan and after that they sent me home. So I came home on the Kanimbla, I had two trips on that one. One trip really, there was only one trip.

From Tarakan to Morotai. We came home and I was sick again on the boat coming home. We pulled into Sydney. My mother had a sister at Sydney, I rang her up and went out and seen her, and we had a talk and I had to be back at five o’clock to get the train to Melbourne. We had to change at Albury, we got to Melbourne and we were at Royal Park,

and I’m not too sure what time. There was a little bit of paperwork to do and they gave me a leave pass for twenty-four hours. I went home, and of course my mother wasn’t home. I knew where the key was to get in, so I go inside and leave my kit bag inside and went down to the factory where she worked.

Somebody seen me there and they went and told my Mum and out she came and home we went. Then when I went back to the camp, I think I went back either the next day or the next day. They stationed me out at Broadmeadows, that’s just up here. That was virtually like a day job.

I could sleep at home and I had to go out there every morning, except when they put you on guard duty once a week and you had to stop in the camp over night. Out there I was doing all maintenance work on the building and things like that. Virtually filling in time I think. In September I got discharged.

Yes it was. When you sign up,

you sign up for the duration of the war and twelve months after. Being single, and we used to reckon they kept the single blokes in because it wasn’t so much expense, if they keep a married man in, they have to pay his missus a certain amount. I got out in September 1946.

Yes, I’d just about had enough of it.

There were two ways you could get out. I had a terrible lot of leave owing to me, you could have taken your leave and come back and then get discharged. Or they paid you money for the leave, so I took the money for the leave. That’s how I got out.

By my mother. They used to take it out of my pay. It was called an “Allotment”. They automatically, I don’t know if it went to the post office or not, my mother used to collect it and put it into the bank for me. Married men had to pay so much allotment and then the government paid so much, for their wives.

Yes, I think that was the really deal.

They got so much for each child too, if they had children.

No. Mum didn’t need the money in those days, my father was working and she was working. She used to put it into the bank for me, that was the idea, she used to put it into the bank for me, which she did of course. Most of the single fellows did that too I think.

Yes, I don’t know what it was, it was a couple a hundred pound I suppose, I don’t know really. Of course then we got the third pay. We got, I think two shillings every day we had overseas, and six pence for every day we had in Australia.

We got that when we came out. Then five years later on we got what you call “Maturity payment”. It was another two and six per day. I’m not too sure if it was two and six for the whole year or just for the time you were overseas. Just forget about that. I think that mounted to about two hundred pound too, I think. They were a couple of “Good dividends” I suppose you would call them.

Not really, just go back to work that’s all. I told you I finished under the post war reconstruction scheme. I lived in Yarraville and there wasn’t much work around and I used to like to put my overalls on in the morning and go to work and come home in my overalls, without getting changed.

Like trying to get local jobs. Somewhere where I could ride my bike. That went on for a few years and I worked for different builders, mainly on houses, sometimes on construction jobs, just all depends. Sometimes a job would cut out and they would want you to go to the other side. “No, I’m not going out there.” Then I’d get another job. That went on for many years ,

I started to build a house here and I got engaged and a month before I got married I got the sack. There was a terrible recession in 1951, 1952 - there was a terrible recession. Money was hard to get and every thing like that. The firm I was working for ,

my mate and I were the last two on, so we had to be the first two off, when I say sack, it was really that I got put off. I had to go and tell my future wife, that I had the sack. She wasn’t terribly happy about that I don’t think. I rode my bike around for two or three days looking for work, and I finally got a job on the housing estate at Ascot Vale, down here, so that was all right.

Then I’d only been there a couple of weeks and I had to ask him “For a week off for my honeymoon”. He gave it to me. I went back and I stopped there for about six months, then I got a job, maintenance at the Royal Show Ground. Anyway, my wife said, “I’d soon you had a permanent job, this business of starting and stopping.” Her father had

the one job since after the 1st World War. He had virtually constant employment. I said, “ok.” They advertised in The Sun or The Herald newspaper that they wanted a carpenter at the DCA [Department of Civil Aviation], I put in for it and I got it, then I was working down at Port Melbourne.

DCA.

DCA. The Department of Civil Aviation,

they call it now. It’s probably, that was the name of it in those days. I was down at Port Melbourne and then I was stationed over at Essendon. A friend of mine, he worked for the DCA and he was in the army too and he got a job as a woodwork teacher. He said, “Why don’t you put in for it, it’s not a bad job?” I went and seen a fellow in town and he said, “Put your name down and there is two hundred in front of you.”

So I said, “That’s all right, as long as I’m on the list.” I’d only been back at work for a couple of weeks and I got a call from them to say “If I was interested in a job at Oak Park?” I went in and saw him, got dolled up, and take all my papers in and I was accepted and got the job at Oak Park High School. Then they send you to school for twelve months.

No, the

education department paid for it all .I think once they paid you were sort of on a bond. You had to stop for so many years after it. I’m not really sure about that. Because they were always talking about bonds and different things. When teachers came out from training, they would put them on bonds.

Yes. There were a terrible shortage of

teachers, they were bringing a terrible lot out from America. Here we had two or three Americans teachers over at our school.

In 1960.

22 years.

Yes, I rather enjoyed it. In the end they got a bit of out of control.

That was the way things were going a bit. It was a pretty good school and the kids were pretty good.

No, it never entered my mind. I hadn’t actually given it any thought as to what I wanted to be. I was just so glad to be home

and get out working.

The Chemical Warfare Experimental Centre.

It’s on my sheet in there. They must have asked for volunteers about October 1943. They came around and asked

everybody, and they would get you into groups and ask “If you wanted too become volunteers?” They called it the “Gas experimental” they said. A friend of mine, he said, “That’ll be all right.” We hadn’t been home since April 1942, that was only about eighteen months I suppose, since we’d been home, about that.

He said, “What about doing it?” and I said “ok.” We put our names down and there were several other people in our unit. We didn’t hear anything for a while. And in between time the married men started to get leave to come down to Melbourne. Some had been down and come back and others would go and the sergeant said to me one day, “You’re going on leave next week.” And I said, “ok, that’s all right.” Then he comes to me just before we were to go him, he said,

“You’re going down to Innisfail, down to the chemical warehouse”, and I said, “I’m going home.” He said, “No, you volunteered for that, so you’re going down there.” We went down by truck, there was a truckload of us. They picked them up from different units. It was down at Innisfail, in the showgrounds. As soon as we drove in, you see all these blokes in their long pants and their shirts off. All

their skin is off their back. Not virtually off but all like sun burnt. There are patches of all this stuff coming off their back, it’s off, it’s all disfigured and it looked pretty crook. We’d driven past and they’d say, “You’ll be sorry.” That was a real turn that.

We get off the

truck and a sergeant came up and explained what sort of tests they do. These fellows that got burnt, they had to go into a test chamber, I forgot what it was but anyway I said to my mate, “I don’t like that.” He said, “We’ll try and dodge that.. Because you were down there for three experiments”, they said.

They said, “We want some people to put a drop

or two on your arms, of mustard gas”, and I said, “That sounds easier.” So we volunteered for that part. They ended up putting drops, there’s my mark there if you can see it, and can you see it just there?

I don’t know whether I can. Can you see it there?

That’s it there. That’s one on that arm. This one’s just a little bit harder to see, it’s just about there, because this one was deeper, it’s gradually fading, it took years for it to fade. They put a drop of mustard gas on there and waited a while and then they put some ointment on it.

It was all right. Off we go back and do our duties. Everyday, we’d have to go up and put our arms down like that and they used to photograph us, they would photograph the sore. Everyday, it got a little bit bigger, a big more reddish around it. About the forth day, I started to get things underneath my arm, lumps and things. It started to get a real scab, it really looked nasty.

So on the forth

day, I think, and they said, “You’re out of the experiment.” The doctor said, “We are going to put some magic powder on it.” I don’t know whether it was penicillin or sulphanilamide, they used to use that in those days. He sprinkled it on and after about three or four days it got better.

That was that experiment .The next one was that we had to wear impregnated suits. Now impregnated suits were impregnated with as far as I know, with chlorine. Have you ever smelt chlorine? I was impregnated in that and they had double flies, double collars,

things here, so nothing could get up your arm, so we had to wear those for a week.

No. We used to take them off at night time but I don’t know if we were supposed too. We weren’t supposed to have a shower with them. They reckon they wanted to test the perspiration. I’m not too sure if we used to take that off at nighttime now. We wore them for a week.

They took them away and they probably thought that “They gave us a hard time”, so we didn’t have to do a third experiment.

Did it affect me, no, no, no.

No, it didn’t seem to do that. You could smell it, the

chlorine.

No, they didn’t tell you much at all, actually. I think the idea, there were a lot of rumours around and they thought “The Japs had mustard gas” and the ordinary ointments we used weren’t any good in the tropics apparently. They were testing out all these new ointments. When they put the

drops on your arm, I think they wanted to know how many days you could be in the field before they would have to relieve you. They didn’t tell us anything at all, virtually.

It stung a little bit but it wasn’t that bad. It was more painful after it sort of got poisoned. I would say that I had two poisoned arms or two.

They weren’t that bad. I was glad that they fixed them up, that was all.

No, not really. The last week we virtually done nothing, we used to go off tripping everyday, and we used to go down to a place called Flying Fish Point. It’s on the sea down at Innisfail and it’s about four or five mile, we used to walk down

and sometimes we would get a ride .Down there, there use to be a coconut plantation. They told me that the Levers brothers started it up many years ago. We used to go down there and get the coconuts, because there was nobody living there. We used to get them and bring them home and send them to our families. Put a note on the outside with an address and send them home. That ended and we went back to the unit .

Then I went home on leave, for twenty-four days leave. I was down in Melbourne and I came back again. I was only back about a month and I got sent home again for another twenty-four days’ leave. It might have been two months, they were pretty close together.

That was my final leave, they were packing us up to go overseas. That was how much leave they owed you.

I often think that. The first time I went, I think I painted my father’s house, during the day. There wasn’t much to do during the day. I used to go out at night time to dances or up the pub somewhere or something like that.

Yes, I used to enjoy the dances.

Not really, no. “If I’m in the Mood” was one, have you heard that one?

I couldn’t tell you. I’ll know it when I hear it. That was a famous American one. I couldn’t recall what they were. If I heard them I would know them. Most of the dances in those days, they used to

be ‘fifty-fifty’ dances, do you know what that means? Fifty-fifty means one old time and then one modern dance. The modern dance was the fox trot, the slow fox trot and one modern waltz and the old ones would be the waltz, the tango and all those sorts of things. They used to have one, one and the next one would be something else.

I didn’t mind the fox trot, I wasn’t too good at doing the slow fox trot, I didn’t seem to get into the right beat, but I didn’t mind the old time ones.

No, not in those days. On the second lot of leave I met the girl I became engaged to, and we used to write to each other and when I came back we got engaged.

We liked each other and we saw each other when I came back. Anyway, it didn’t work out that way.

At a dance, yes. I met my future wife at a dance too. That was many years later. Do you know where the Masonic Hall is in Melbourne?

It used to be up in Collins Street, it was a pretty popular dance hall

and she didn’t like it. She only went there this night only because her girlfriend wanted to go. I had a few dances with her and had a soft drink together and went and had a little bit of a talk, chatting them up as we use to call it. I said, “I’m working at Yarraville” and she said that “Her father worked at Yarraville”. I thought, “I hope it’s not my boss”.

I said, “Where does he work?” She said, “He works at the Vacuum Oil company”, and I said, “My father works there too”. I ended up taking her home and that was it. Because I lived at Yarraville as well.

I think I was about 26, I met her and I think we went for about twelve months and then we got engaged and I was engaged for over twelve months and then we got married. I was about 26.

No, not really. I didn’t find it hard.

There was one chap in our street, I was very good friends with his brother. He went away and he came back and he committed suicide. He jumped in front of a truck, whether that was suicide because of the war, I don’t know. They were always a little bit doubtful. That was the only case that I knew of anybody.

I’m not really sure about that, I couldn’t say, it was a pretty sad thing.

Not really at all. As a matter of fact, I never knew what to say to my mother.

No, I didn’t say much about it at all to my Dad, no, no.

My mother didn’t like Anzac Day at all. She said “It brought back too many bad memories for her”. After we had children, most Anzac Days were a holiday.

I quite often used to take the children out to see it on Anzac Day.

Yes.

Yes, I went to the Dawn Service for the last ten years or so,

since my mother passed away. I’m pretty sure I didn’t go to a march while she was alive, I’m pretty sure about that. The funny thing is my father-in-law, he’s an Anzac and he never went to an Anzac Day march either, because he lost his only brother too.

I don’t know, he never used to say much, he never used to say much.

He didn’t bother going, that was all.

That’s right, yes. It didn’t actually come to me, it came to my wife, and it belongs to her. It was handed down from her grandmother, I suppose, it ended up being my wife’s property somehow anyway. She has got

a few little things there.

He only said that “At one stage we worked with Simpson, in Gallipoli”, that was all. He was in the Field Ambulance and that was the only thing he ever mentioned about it.

He didn’t say anything at all, “Only that he worked with him one day”. It must of come up in conversation, but I forget now. It was the only thing that he ever said.

They’d probably seen too many things I suppose.

Pardon?

The things that we talk about most are the funny things that happened. The funny things that happened more than the serious things. I remember once when we were at Tarakan, we were working a pile driver and the

“Snatch box”, I don’t know if you know what a snatch box is? A snatch box is when the rope goes through a pulley and we kept breaking these and we ran out. The job we were doing was very important because the ship was coming in a couple of days’ time. They flew one down from Morotai for us, to get it out and we were working in the sea on a pontoon

and the sergeant brought one out in a kayak. He was handing it to the bloke and he dropped it, and it went into the water and everybody sort of just stood and laughed. That was always a bit of a joke, that he brought this thing out and then he dropped it into the sea. They got another one the next day, or they got several

of them the next day. We finished the job on time, different things like that, that happened.

I think it’s just one of those things that happens. It seems to be more on their minds than the serious ones.

There were lots of little things, I can’t remember them all, but I will always remember that one. They used to call the sergeant “Winnie the Womanizer”, I think it was. He had some name like that and it was his nickname.

There were nicknames, yes.

A lot of them use to call me “Connee”.

Do you want to know why?

Have you ever heard of the Boswell sisters?

Yes, she was the lead singer. This was years and years ago and they were American and they used to sing in America with Bing Cosby in his earlier career. I’m sure one fellow thinks it’s my name because he keeps calling me that now.

Yes, that’s quite right.

There’s a list of them over there, but I can’t think of them. There were all sorts. “Honker” was one, and “Monty” was another one. “Ace”. “Snowy” was another one and you can remember them after a while.

No, it didn’t make any difference to me.

I’ve got no idea,

who my favourite singer was, I didn’t mind Bing Crosby, he was all right I suppose.

Gracie Fields, yes, and she was pretty good too.

Yes, I can remember the night. Naturally she sang “I Wish this Luck Goodbye” or something like that.

That was her last song for the night and I can’t remember the other ones. There were other acts on there with her too. I just can’t remember what they were. Most of the entertainers, we had a few concerts and most of the entertainers were female impersonators. They had a unit, the Australian Entertainment Unit, and most of them used to

take off female impersonators. Most of them were female impersonators and they used to put on a list of acts and things like that.

No, not bad. I don’t think it was anything. There was a show just after the war and they came out here and they were all female impersonators and I think they were from New Zealand and they were called “The Kiwis”. They used to put on shows

in Melbourne and things like that. It was all funny sorts of things and acts like that, that they used to do, sing a few songs or tell a few jokes for the blokes.

Yes, even though there might have been a few boos, I suppose. They were always pretty packed out. I think they used to send them,

you just could go, they had units to go. Our unit might be tonight and another unit would be the next night, or two or three units each night, it wasn’t open slather. They just didn’t go up and get in. It was all out in the open.

At least a thousand I suppose, at least a thousand,

it might have been more .You used to take a little seat, they used to make little seats, with just a couple bits of board and you’d cut a piece out, the board would be about that wide, and you’d cut a strip out of the middle, and you get the other piece, it was like a tongue and it would fit in like that. Then you’d have a bit of canvas across the top.

That’s how they fitted in like that, and have a bit of canvas across the top. We used to roll them up and there you have it, you have a seat.

Yes, several concerts. When we were up in the Atherton Tablelands

and every now and again we were able to go to the pictures in the theatre in the town. The trucks would take us in for those particular days. All you could get to eat in there would be peanuts. Because they used to grow peanuts on the Atherton Tablelands, I don’t know if you knew that, and that was a great thing. The picture theatre at the end there would be an inch deep in peanut shells, that’s honestly.

No, I’ve got no idea. I can remember one movie I can tell you that much. One movie we went to see and this was at Tarakan. It was Bing Crosby in Going My Way. Have you ever heard of that? I didn’t know and I thought “This was going to be a good thing”, but it was a religious picture, about him becoming a priest. Anyway, I didn’t like it

and I walked out half way through, nearly three quarters of the way through, I didn’t like it and I came home.

Not my cup of tea. We never ever seen Bob Hope, but we did see some of his movies, and different things. I just forget all the ones that we’d seen.

Yes.

Yes that’s right.

I can’t remember. It didn’t mean much to me at all. I would have been going to the Tech; I would have been selling papers, I suppose. I had a Herald around all the time I went to the Tech. It didn’t really mean much to me, I don’t think.

No, not really. I can’t recall that at all.

I don’t think until the Japanese came into it, that was the first thing. Then my brother got called up, he got called up in 1940, I think, that would have probably been the first impact.

Yes, that’s right, he got called up. Same as I did, I got called up into the militia [Citizens Military Force]. Do you know the difference between the militia and the AIF? You do, OK.

He went down the Queenscliff. He was on the big guns at Queenscliff. I don’t know whether he volunteered to go to Rabaul, or whether

he was sent there, I’m not too sure, I don’t know about that.

There is a lot of dispute about this. He was given an AIF number, a VX number [AIF prefix for Victorians – Victorian Expeditionary], it was sort of given to him after he was killed, like after the end of the war. According

to the thing, they found papers in Japan where he’d signed to become a member of the AIF. That was the story that my mother was told.

As far as I’m aware he was, that’s right. I don’t know if he was sent or volunteered.

To be honest with you, I couldn’t

understand the difference for a while .I will tell you a few instances. I got called up, and I went and done my training in the army and Japs were there and if we were going to go away, we were going to fight the Japs, we weren’t going overseas to fight the Germans or the Italians, that was in your mind. When we went to Western Australia ,

we got reinforced by members who had joined the AIF, can you understand what I mean? They got straight off the street and joined the AIF. They got posted to our unit which was a militia unit and of course they didn’t like it, well, which is fair enough, I suppose, I’m not saying that. They weren’t crook on us personally, but they were crook on the army, can you understand? Half a dozen times different ones told me that “They tried to get out there,

but they never ever got out”, they stopped with us all, right through.

I think their objections was being in a militia unit that might have been a bit of a come down to them. They never ever said what their objections were, they just didn’t like it.

I don’t know, I’ve got no idea. I couldn’t understand. Later on, as the war went on, they wanted everybody to be in the AIF. The militia people could only serve in New Guinea. Did you know where they could serve? The Solomon Islands and New Britain,

they could only serve in what they call “A mandated territory”. I only learnt this later on, I didn’t know this at the time. The recruiting officers who used to come around to our unit, he wanted everybody to join the AIF, so he came around and gave us a pep talk. We always had a few smarties in there and they used to say, “We want to get out, we don’t want to get in any further.” They used to send people around to get us to join the

AIF. A lot of people did and I couldn’t actually join up without my parents consent. What they were doing, I think I’m right in saying this. If a unit had 75% members of the AIF in it, it became an AIF unit. What happened is that when it became an AIF unit all the people that would join, they took them and put them somewhere else,

they took them out .I wrote to my mother and said, “Could I join the AIF?” And I explained it to her, and what’s going to happen, and it’s a pity the unit is on (UNCLEAR) and I would like to stop here. She signed the forms. So I joined the AIF, that’s how I got in.

No, she didn’t say that at all,

in the letter .Do you know what they used to call the militia people?

They call them “Chocos”, so that was all right. If you were a choco and you joined the AIF, do you know what you became? You became a “Rainbow”, because you came out after the storm. That was only a slang term,

so that was all right.

When we went to Queensland, there used to be a few fights between the militia and the AIF in different towns. They’d go in there and our blokes would come back and we had a couple of blokes in there that used to seem to always get in fights and they came back with bloody noses and split lips and everything. They had fights with the AIF blokes, I don’t know how true it was, but that’s what they said.

Yes. That happens anywhere. I think it was only they got half full. I think that was the cause of it mainly. They might have been fighting over a pot of beer or something, I don’t know.

No, I never heard from him at all.

Actually,

when I got called up, I came home from leave the first time, I got a night’s leave and it would have been within the first week or fortnight and I got my brother’s address off her and where to send it and I wrote him a letter and I don’t know whether he ever got the letter or not. My brother’s last letter is there from my mother. He has put the wrong date on it, actually.

Would you believe that, but it is easy to do. He’s put the 14th January and he’s got 1941 and he was describing how the bombs were falling around him. It should have been 1st January 1942, on his letter. Anyway, I wrote to him and I never ever got an answer, he might have been captured by the time they got the letter there.

I don’t know really what happened.

No. I’m not certain about the number but about one hundred and fifty or two hundred people got out, I’m not certain, that got out of Rabaul. Mum told me “That someone had come around to see her, a fellow that got out and said that he was alive”, they knew that much that he was alive

and that he didn’t get killed in the bombing .I always thought “It was a certain person”, and my mother said, “No, it wouldn’t have been him, he didn’t go there.” I don’t know whom it was that came around and told her.

My brother?

Yes, he was. He was a prisoner of war.

In either January or February 1942.

What they did was they separated all the officers from the men and all the ORs went on one boat and that got sunk and they all drowned. There were one thousand and thirty four altogether, there were eight hundred and forty nine soldiers and one RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] person,

one RAN [Royal Australian Navy] and three unidentified, they didn’t know what they belonged to. There were a lot of missionaries on that boat too. They all got drowned, the whole lot of them. That happened on the 1st July 1942 .My mother didn’t know all the time during the war that he was a prisoner, they didn’t tell her that till after the war.

No, he was just formed missing, a prisoner of war,

that’s the only thing that they got.

The (UNCLEAR) Maru [Montevideo Maru], that’s it.

An American submarine. There were a lot of ships that got sunk with prisoners of war, and especially over near Singapore in 1944. When we

started winning the war. They were taking all the prisoners back to Japan to work in the coalmines and things like that, I think. All the officers, they went on another ship a fortnight later, and they got through to Japan.

I had no idea, that he’d been killed,

no. He was just one on the casualty lists.

I just used to say

nothing much. The letters to my mother were very standard, they were virtually the same letter to her each week, to be honest with you.

“I’m pretty well. I’m getting plenty to eat”, and things like that, very general like that. I was a poor letter writer, and there would only have been one page. I probably used to mention Charlie a bit but not very often. I don’t know if they ever heard from

him, or heard about him and she’d write back and say “She’d hadn’t heard from him” and things like that.

Probably once a week, that’s all.

Not many I suppose. Well, it might have been only once a fortnight. I would say roughly about once a week. It all depends where we were too.

If we were in the scrub in Western Australia, they used to come and collect the mail every day.

No, not really. I can’t recall anything at all.

The fall of Singapore, I would have been in the army then, was that in February?

Actually, I’ll tell you what, when I was in the army, that wasn’t news at all. We didn’t get any newspapers, it all depends where we were. When I was in Victoria, we were either stuck

down Red Hill south or down at Geelong working at Torquay and things like that. We never seemed to get too many newspapers. I suppose we could have went and bought one, but we never seemed to get the opportunity to buy them, can you understand what I mean? If we went AWL after tea, all the shops would have been shut.

We heard about it, that we heard about it and all that type of thing. We didn’t realise how serious it was over there.

I had no idea, no. We always thought “That from Tarakan, that our next move would have been to Singapore”, that’s what we always thought, it seemed to be the rumour going around. The next move we were going to go to Singapore.

It would have been a blood bath there. Anyway, it ended.

Yes, it was all over.

I think so. I think we had confidence in them.

No, that never ever entered my head.

I didn’t really have much to do with them. There was

a bit in the papers about them going to China, that didn’t seemed to affect me at all. That was a long way away, I didn’t have much to think about them.

I don’t know if we were ever told anything about them at all, to be honest with you. I can’t really recall that. They used to have signs around, “Keep the

Nips at your bayonet tip” and that sort of thing. I can’t really recall anything.

“Keep the Nips at your bayonet tip”.

There were all sorts of things. That was the only one that I can remember.

Yes, they did.

I don’t think it left an impression on me, really. It was sort of propaganda thing. You sort of take it with a grain of salt.

No, not that I can recall, not that I’m saying that we didn’t, but I can’t recall it.

I can’t really recall anything at all. I can’t recall that at all. Don’t forget when we went away, we didn’t go away till January 1945. Things were a lot better then than what they were, 200% better then than in 1942/1943. We had it pretty easy

up until then.

Yes. Very lucky. I think our whole unit was lucky. I’ve always said that we were the luckiest unit in the army.

It’s not luck so much. You have got no control, you just have to do as you are told.

Our unit just happened to be sent to Western Australia, we were a bit lucky there. Then we went to Queensland and we used to say up there, “Till one old score would have us then one old score wouldn’t have us.” That’s what they used to say, so I don’t know whether it is true or not. A funny thing. We had a Major and his name was Major Headley.

Major Headley, he was an engineer originally from the water works, this is what I’m told later. To me he was a pretty old fellow, can you understand? To me anybody over twenty five were old to me. I would say that he was about forty. He was in charge of us in Victoria and over in Western Australia. I’m not too sure when the change over was.

I think he got discharged. I’m only surmising this, I don’t know. We got another chap in charge, a Major Boomgardner [?], that’s right, something like that. This fellow came from the 9th Division, from Tobruk, and he was suppose to have

done a lot of the mines, putting mines down and then taking them up to Tobruk. That was the story that we were told, it probably was true. He used to get up and tell us, and give us a bit of a pep talk to the whole company. He said, “I’ll get you a fight”. We used to say, “But we don’t want one.” They didn’t tell that to his face but underneath their

breath they used to say “We don’t want to fight.” That was his story. Anyway, he was with us when we went to Tarakan. He got his way I suppose.

I had no idea, no idea at all.

It didn’t worry me, it didn’t worry me at all. I just went in and done what they told me and that was all to it.

Yes, I think so. We had a terrible lot of training in our unit. We had months and months and months and years. All sorts of things. “We were very well trained”, I thought, the whole unit.

I really haven’t got any idea, about it at all. The only people who would know that were the people up brass and get all the information, where there fleet is and all that type of thing.

We were waiting for them if they came.

What do you mean? Like, you mean for your country or what? I suppose that was what we were at war with.

Those things didn’t, I just got called up and that was it. If you didn’t go in the army or if you were entitled to go in the army, and you didn’t go you probably went to jail. They would have done something to you anyway, I’m not too sure. There were all sorts of tails about blokes being AWL,

getting caught and going off to jail and different things.

No, I hadn’t seen any Japanese booby traps.

I don’t think so. There were two hundred and twenty seven in our unit, and it’s split into four sections. I’m only in one section of about fifty, fifty-five men, and then that’s split up into different groups of about ten or twelve, so no. I don’t know whether they came across bobby traps or not. They could have quite easily.

I know of one instance when they were doing something along side a road, the Japanese used to have these great big drums full of explosives. I think they used to use picric acid as their explosive. This was along side the road, and our blokes were doing something with them. There were four American newsmen, they said, “Don’t go there”, and they

just drove their trucks there and got blown up. That’s about the only thing I know about booby traps. I never personally had anything to do with them, I was very lucky.

Yes.

Picric acid. I think that’s the explosive that the Japanese used.

I was just an explosive.

As far as I know. That’s what they used to say that they used in their explosives, picric acid.

No, this was in a drum. It probably could have, but I’m not too sure.

I only dug the holes.

When we built the camp, if a division were coming up we would only put up the shelters for the cookhouse, a small shelter, they used to come up pre-fabbed and we used to put them together. They might have dug a

latrine hole. When the battalions came, they had their own blokes to do all that sort of work as well. It was sort of a combination, it was just for them to get started. They would have a bit of a shelter over where they used to do their cooking and things like that. That’s about all I can explain to you. I forgot one story. We worked on the invasion boats to go up the islands

and this was in late 1944 or it might have been early 1945. I think they were either liberty boats or victory boats, I’m not too sure which type they were. They got us down from the tablelands and we had to work all through the night, no day work, and all night work. On these liberty boats and we had to put on, and they were pretty rough toilets I can tell you. They were

sort of tin things and they used to just shoot over the side.

Round galvanized things about a foot or eight inches semi-circular round, wooden frames and all the mess would just go over the side. That’s what they used to use. They had coppers on

there, they’d boil up and cook their hot water, I suppose they lived on bully beef and biscuits and I’m not too sure what else they had. They were pretty primitive. They had showers up there too. Bits of showers, bits of screen around them and that’s all. We had done two or three boats like that. I only presumed that the troops went on them, somewhere.

These were big ships,

eight or a thousand ton. They were either the liberty ship or the victory ship, I’m not too sure which ones they were.

Yes, that’s right. They were sort of cargo ships and they were taking troops up.

Yes, we would go and work on board and fit all these bits and pieces on them.

Yes, that’s right. When they finished we would go onto the next one,

I think we’d done two or three .A funny thing. It was down at Cairns in the night time and it was down right on the water and when I went back there with my wife in 1989, I think it was. I said, “We’ll go down to the beach and have our lunch down there.” We go down to the beach and there’s no beach at all, it’s all just mud. Did you know that? I didn’t realise that there was no beach their, even though I had been there before. We worked all though the night.

We never had much to do with the Australian Navy. I can’t remember ever having anything to do with the Australian Navy, probably we did. It was more with the American Navy.

It was only that we went on American boats, like in the invasion there was

an American LCMs or LSM [Landing Ship Medium] that we went on and they were all American sailors. The American SeaBees [US Naval Construction Force] were on the landing too, and they took part in something on the ground there in Tarakan. I can’t really recall having anything to do with the Australian Navy.

In Queensland, I believe there were plenty of fights. I think in action they were all forgot. Besides that they were fighting on the same side. The Americans that took us in down at Tarakan, they very keen to get down and help us, they used to tell us. They came down from where the kamikazes were up in the Philippines and they didn’t seem to have

that trouble down here. They seemed to be quite happy to come down and help us.

I never had any trouble with them. I never argued with them, if they asked me to do a job I would just do it, it was as simple as that.

I’ve heard a couple, but most of them did what they were told. I’ve heard of the occasionally one but most of them did what they were told. I didn’t have any trouble with them.

I can’t really recall anybody. I heard a few tails but I can’t really recall that happened to anybody. Except when you went AWL. I only went on leave three times, and every time I went home, I went AWL. I was a bit lucky, all I got was fined.

I know of one case. One fellow, when we came through Melbourne we went AWL, and they charged him for being AWL for sixteen days and he ended up with sixteen days in the Field Punishment Centre. I think I mentioned that before. That was about the only case that I know of.

That’s right, he did say that.

“Mainly that he had to run everywhere”.

It didn’t matter what you did, you had to run everywhere, and they probably hounded you a bit too.

I’ll tell you a funny little thing. In our training when we went to Mount Martha, if you were late for the parade, sometimes you might be a minute late or half a minute late. Next time, what you would have to do was chase

the bugle. When they sounded the bugle you had to go and report to the bugler, I think that was right. Then go back and get to the parade ground on time. That was one way of getting you there on time.

I think that was right, yes. I can’t remember if it was anybody there. You used to call it “Chase the bugler”. You had to do that first, then had to get back to

where you were in the parade. It was along those lines somewhere, I just forget what it exactly was. I will always remember that. I think I had to chase him once or twice.

Fit, yes. There was a terrible lot of manual work and things like that.

Yes, I probably did. Especially lifting bridges and things like that.

I suppose it would have. We were sort of doing that sort of work during the war as well, it wasn’t

anything new. We were using a lot of timber from trees, we used to make huts and shelters and that for the cookhouse.

I’m not too sure if it did or not. I suppose it did. It was pretty hard

to compare. I wouldn’t have know what I was like if I hadn’t of went into the army. We used to play basketball and football in the army, we were pretty fit. You used to have to run around with a bayonet over hurdles and things like that, in the “Bullring” we used to call it.

Not so much while the war was on, after the war ended we did, when the war ended. We used to play mainly basketball. We used to play with the Yanks, and our Australian team used to play Australian teams.

I’m not too sure how we got it, but the courts were pretty good, I think they were on sort of a sandy sort of a soil.

Yes, it had a metal ring. I played with the RSL [Returned and Services League] when I came back, basketball.

I think I might have played in the centre, I forget now.

I think I was on the centre. Either centre or on the back line. In basketball, anybody can have a shot for goal.

I think the Yanks brought them. I’m sure they did.

No.

I used to like football but I couldn’t stand the knocks. We had a fellow in our unit and he was a league footballer and he used to roll himself up into a little ball and bump you, and he’d bump you down and your bones would shake. I couldn’t stand that. So I took on basketball, but I wasn’t a very good kicker, I wasn’t very fast.

The bumping seemed to knock the hell out of you.

I don’t ever think that I got home sick. I don’t think so.

I’ve got no idea, but I don’t think that I felt home sick.

As a matter of fact I don’t think I know what home sick is.

No, I don’t think I was ever home sick there. I didn’t ever feel that way.

I don’t think they ever complained about being away, I don’t know whether they would complain, home sick or was it just something that was deep down in your mind. I’m not too sure.

No, that never entered our heads. When we were over in Western Australia, we could have driven up there, we could have picked all those beautiful wild flowers, that people would go over and see and it wouldn’t have meant anything to us, to me anyway. The beauty didn’t look into it at all.

It didn’t enter into my mind. The only thing in Western Australia that I liked was the caves, it was probably the first time that we had been in a cave anyway, and seen the stalactites and the stalagmites, up and down there. That was probably the only thing that took

my eye I suppose.

It would have been sometime during 1942.

Yes, I will tell you what they use to do. In the Antsip caves [?] there used to be a big dance hall, in the cave.

In the caves, yes. They used to have hostess come up from Perth somehow,

they used to come up there and they used to be up there. They used to have certain units that would come in there. I went in there once for a dance and I was quite enjoyable and we just packed up and went back to our camp.

Yes, there was a band.

They were hostesses, we weren’t allowed to make arrangements with them, or anything like that,

you weren’t suppose to anyway, to put it that way. They came up from Perth I think, they belonged to some YWCA [Young Women’s Christian Association] or something like that.

Well, you could have, but I didn’t.

Yes. Houses of ill reframe, yes.

I will tell you a funny story now. When we first landed at Fremantle, we were out at Melville, and I think we were waiting for our equipment to come and we were there for about a fortnight or three weeks there doing training. We got a chance to go into Perth, just a day leave into Perth. We were going in, and all the blokes

were seeing, I reckon I was the youngest fellow in our unit, or very close to the youngest anyway. They always used to have a bit of a go at you.

To tease you, to sort of half tease you, to kid you along, put you down sort of thing, can you understand what I mean? We were going into Perth.

We were at the street where all the brothels were, and I think it was illegal there, and they said to me just before we got there, we go past the train line. They said to me, “Watch when you go past here boss”, they said, “You will see all the soldiers and all the Yanks lined up and if you want to make yourself ten pound go and get in the line.” Then someone else would come and take over your spot and pay you.

I thought “They were pulling my leg”. When we went past the street they were yelling, “Look at them down there”, no, not me. I’m not looking out the window, I wouldn’t look, I looked the other way. I go to Perth, I go home, go back to camp and go in next week and I’m with another lot of fellows, and I happened to look out the window this time and it was true, they were all lined up.

That’s what they tried to tell me that. So they would let the Yanks in and the Yanks would pay you to get in the queue. I could see them out there and I could see them all lined up, and that’s where they were.

I think they went in their own, I don’t know about that.

That was something that I learnt.

No, no, not me, not tempted.

VD. Yes, of course there was.

I’m not too sure if they told us too much about it to be honest with you. I really can’t recall that. But they used to have blue light depots outside Flinders Street Station, do you know where the blue light depot is?

No, it’s not red light. I thought the red light district was where the girls hang out, is that right?

That was what they called, and I’m not too sure of the right word, but it was a prophylactic centre, would that be the right word? That’s where you went in there if you thought you’ve got something, you went in there and seen them first and they’d done something to you or you go in there and pick up condoms, that’s the idea of it I think. There was always a blue light out there. I think it was down in,

I used to see it. I think it in, do you know when you come down into Flinders Street Station, at Elizabeth Street and you go downstairs to them, and they sell model airplanes now? But I think they were in there, I’ve got an idea that’s where they were, around that area anyway.

I don’t think so, I never heard anybody boasting. No, no.

Don’t forget all our group were pretty young men. A lot of them had girlfriends and some of them had wives at this stage. There were a few married, there were probably quite a few married but not many married.

Yes, of course there would be.

Yes.

I’ve got no idea about that. We used to have a sergeant in our unit and he had eight children, and I used to think to myself, “Fancy having eight children”. As I got older

I had six myself.

Your pack on your back you are referring to, are you?

First of all there would have been a mosquito net, I’m not too sure if that was in the pack or not. We used to have our blankets rolled up on the outside I think, and a bit of a thing and in sort of a horse shoe, I think that’s how they were if I can remember correctly. Inside the pack? What would be inside the pack? All my under clothes, because we didn’t have pyjamas, of course, you know that, did you?

We didn’t have pyjamas. The officers probably did. It would have been my under clothes and my socks in there, in my pack. Two towels, I suppose I would have had. A couple of pairs of socks, probably two pair of underpants, a couple of singlets, probably a couple of shirts, I don’t know if we had another two shirts or whether we had three shirts or t-shirts.

I think we had another pair of jungle jeans, I don’t think we just had the one pair, I think we probably had two pair. That would be about all, I would think. There would have been a bit of shaving gear in there. Then we had a little pack on the side. A haversack that was called. It was about that square and about that thick. In there we used to keep our mess tins and

that was about all that we used to keep in that pack, our mess tins. That’s about all I think we had. Three blankets I think, and these mosquito nets in there.

No, I don’t even think I had a photo of my mother.

I didn’t worry about those things. I didn’t have many personal items. Are you talking about when we went away?

Ok, right. When you went away and you know the kit bag, you didn’t take that with you. What you had to do was you had to put your uniform and that’s your going out uniform and put that in there and your grey coat went in their,

and any personal items went in there too. You had a little D lock and you’d lock that. You had your name on the bag, somewhere at storage for when you came home. That’s where any personal things that you wanted to keep would go in there. Other people might have taken things but I didn’t have any.

No, your jungle greens.

They were just the long pants and they were green. What used to happen, when they manufactured them, this only happened in some circumstances. When they manufactured them, I only presumed that they, only one lot of material and another lot

on the same pants. Can you understand that? When you washed them you would get one side and it would be green, and the other one would be light green. The dye would be different after you washed them.

Yes. You would see that quite often.

That’s the only thing that I can see.

Yes, occasionally, but you sort of didn’t take any notice of it. It might have been that the shirts were green too. I might be wrong in saying that, they might have dyed them. I think at some stage we had to dye them from khaki to green, I just forgot about that, that might have been the cause of that, they dyed them and they might have come out that way.

You were in amongst the green foliage.

Yes, that was the idea of it.

No, we weren’t allowed to wear shorts, they were out.

Well because of the mosquitoes, I suppose. Originally when they first went to New Guinea they were wearing shorts, and you might see photos of them, but when we went away it

was all long pants and it was no shorts at all. Because when we were in Western Australia we had shorts.

I didn’t seem to have any bother with it, no. You mean by going rotten, no, it didn’t seem to worry us.

There probably was. But the main thing we needed was more compressors.

The Australian Army didn’t have any electric compressors, you know how you get a portable chainsaw now, and we didn’t have any electric ones, not that I knew of. Not electric ones, motorized ones, but they used to run off a compressor. They were air driven and different things, they had jackhammers, pavement breakers, they had compressor driven

saws on some of them. That was the thing. If we had of had more of them it would have been a lot easier. We done most of our work with the ordinary hand crosscut saw. One man each side.

Just regular petrol.

They had the compressor, there were two lots of compressors, and there was the Australian

one, which was, call the (UNCLEAR) trailer, you might see people towing them around now. The Americans had one and it was a Leroy and that was fitted on the back of a truck, that was the better one of the two of them, that one was more powerful. You would use to for boring holes, if we were making bridges, you would put bolts in and that sort of thing. And not only that, they came up with an idea .

We had to do a lot of work over the sea, and not only that but up at Lake Eacham, in Queensland, because it was very steep down there. We had to put in recreation piers for the troops to come up and have a swim and dive off. The idea was we would put piles in, in the shore and as they go out,

the banks of the thing of the old volcano was about this steep. What we had to do was we had to put the piles and we couldn’t get them down very far, so they had to be braced to the shore, with braces. They come up with this thing and it was made from a gas mask. You would put it on your head, put it on your face and it had a gas mask and it had a tube going to the compressor, so that you got compressed air.

They used to send blokes down

in the water and use the air drill to bore holes through the brace and though the piles, so they could put a bolt in it.

Yes, but it was run off compressed air. I don’t know if the compressed air done them any good or not. It would have been pretty dirty sort of air I suppose. They used to put them and go down and bore these holes.

One day I dropped a spanner down there and the sergeant was going crook about dropping all the tools down there. I was standing there and I could see it and I thought, “How am I going to get that?” It was only down about four or five feet, I wasn’t too good at duck diving. Anyway I thought that “I would put this thing on” and I got it on and started it up and the noise - it nearly drove me silly. All the air, bubble, bubble, bubble. I got on the ladder and I go down and I don’t reckon

I took a breath, I reckon I went down and grabbed the spanner and came straight up again. Anyway, I got the spanner back. That was one of the funny things that happened when you do those things.

No, no, no I don’t like putting my head in the water. I never liked that.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes, sometime in June. It was the 1st July the boat got sunk.

The American submarine, [USS] Sturgeon was the name of the submarine. It was a well-known fact. They haven’t tried to hide anything like that.

I didn’t find out until after the war had ended, and she didn’t find out until after the war had ended.

Somebody came around and told her. An official came around and told her. They came around and had talks with her.

She told me “She got very upset” .

Different people from the department army came around to see her, which was fair enough. They came around and they wanted to know “Whether he had any children”. Of course Mum got a bit upset about that, anyway that’s all right.

When I tell my friends they say, “They asked about the wrong bloke.” It’s only a joke.

They asked about my brother and they should have been asking about me whether I had any children,

that’s all, and it’s only a little bit of a joke .Anyway, Mum got a bit upset about it. I often thought after that “It was a pity that he didn’t”, wasn’t it?

I don’t really know. I didn’t think “It was in bad taste”, I thought that “It was something that had to be known”.

If he had of had a child, he would have been looked after and that was all that they asked for, that’s all. But it just upset Mum, that’s all.

He would have been enlisted as single, on his papers.

Ask the question about me, there wasn’t anything wrong with it.

It was only a bit of a joke.

She was the one that told me, yes, she wrote to me and told me.

Yes.

Probably at Tarakan. It wasn’t long

after the war that they found out. They found out when the officers came back from Japan. They would have expected them to be out there and they didn’t arrive. That’s as far as I know, I really can’t say much else about that, that’s all I know.

Yes, it is.

Just after we got to Western Australia, there was a chap in our unit, he was actually in my tent, and I knew him pretty well and I used to go out with him a bit, together, and we’d only been in Western Australia for about a fortnight and the Japs attacked Sydney Harbour. You heard about that? I always thought myself that they were after the Queen Elizabeth

and that was only my opinion .This fellow’s brother was on the Kuttabul and he got killed. Les Gardener was his name and he got sent home, that was just another sad story. Les got sent home.

Yes, and my Mum.

Yes, my Mum was the first one to see me.

Yes, that’s right.

It was a factory that had a big opened door, and they used to make insulators. These three insulators,

they had different things there and Mum used to do something, I’m not too sure. I knew a few of the people there and I went to the door and someone must have went and told the boss and Mum came out, and home we went.

Yes.

Yes. I think that I got around there at half past three, and I think Mum finished work at about quarter past four, half past four, it wasn’t that long. I was going to wait for her.

Well Dad came home from the vacuum and we just shook hands and we didn’t say too much. I can’t remember much about that really, he was just glad to see me home I suppose.

I’m not too sure if she was still living at our place or not. Originally had a house in Frederick Street,

and she came around to live with us, and they built their house over at West Newport. I just forget whether she was living at home or not. Anyway, I would have seen my sister down at the pottery, where she worked. I can’t remember if she came out to see me, or whether she just waved to her, I just can’t recall that.

I can’t really say that it really did change my life. What would I have been doing if I hadn’t have been there? I really haven’t got any opinion on that.

I certainly learnt how to use the explosives, that’s one thing. I didn’t particularly like it but I learnt how to use them and how not to use them, all the safety things about them. I learnt how to use a crosscut saw, I learnt how to use a broad axe, I learnt to use an adze, do you know what an adze is? That’s like an axe with the blade going at right angles,

that’s for cutting off, for making piles level, for levelling off. In those days everything was timber, now everything is steel. You would get a log of wood for a bridge and you would have to cut the top off to make it level. You would chop it roughly with the broad axe and level it off with the adzes. It’s a

blade about that wide, about four inches wide and it’s got a handle that comes up the middle there and you sort of stand and you use it that way.

Yes.

You chip it off with a sharp blade.

We spent about a month with the company Rosebud in Queensland down at Yungaburra, the carpenter fellows, and the blacksmith fellows went down there too. We worked for about three or four weeks with these country roads boys. Teaching us how to point piles and use broad axes and also crosscut saws, we already had experiences with those, and also adzes.

Do all the things with the adzes. I forgot about that. I learnt something to do with that. We learnt to use the jackhammer, have you ever seen the fellows breaking up the pavement? We used to have to use those for different things. I forget what it was called now, the thing for boring in holes, in the

concrete. That’s the jackhammer and the other one is the pavement breaker. All different boring instruments on it. I got a lot of experience that way.

No none, not really, no. The teaching I’d done, it wasn’t the Technical School, and it was a Secondary School.

We used to teach them how to use the tools and they used to do smaller models and the kids in Form 3 and Form 4 used to make bookcases and small things like that. It wasn’t like an apprenticeship. Can you understand what I mean? It was a bit better

than a hobby course.

Yes, that’s right. Because I used to teach drawing as well.

That was mechanical drawing. That was partly plain geometry solving, and mechanical drawing, the whole three were named under the one thing. Then later on they changed it to graphic communications,

that was instrumental drawing, mainly. That was part of my course.

Yes, they were, yes.

They were cheekier at the end. I was just getting a bit older. I was looking for retirement, I think.

Actually, I went off sick from teaching and the kids used to say to me, “Don’t you ever get the sickness, Mr Boswell?” And different things and I said, “No, I’m all right”. Other kids would say, “We’re going on strike tomorrow, Mr B”, they used to call me.

And I used to say, “That’s all right, I’ll be here.” They were looking for someone to give them a bit of encouragement to take a bit of action. I said, “That’s all right, I’ll be here.” It was the last day of term one in 1981 or 1982, I’m not too sure but it was the last day and I had a woodwork class and it was the last time I had these kids.

We used to have them for a term and we would get another group the next term. It was in the morning, it was before recess and I thought, “I’m not feeling too good”. I sent them all their work and told them what they had to do and they were all working pretty well, and I didn’t feel too good and I went and sat down in the model room. I thought, “I don’t feel too good”.

I must have went out to it, I’m sure I did .I woke up and they were all packed up and ready to go to recess. I had this rotten head and things and I was sort of shaking and everything. I had a drawing class, the next class and I went over and told the senior mistress and said, “Look, I have got to get to the doctor, I feel crook”, and I gave her all my folios and things and

she said, “I’ll drive you down”, and I said, “No, I don’t worry, I don’t want to leave my car here.” I drove down to the doctor, and it was about a mile away I suppose from there, and my wife’s there, at the surgery. She said, “I’m not ready to go yet.” She thought that “I’d come down to pick her up”. I said, “No”, I said, “There’s something wrong and I’m not feeling too good, something happened at school.” I said, “I don’t know what happened

but I think I went out to it.” As soon as I said that she got called into the doctor. He was my doctor as well, just around the corner. She told him and he called me straight in. He took my blood pressure and I think I’m right in saying this, my blood pressure was 210, I think it was. He put me on tablets ,

and I’m sure he said “It was 210”, I might be wrong but that’s what I reckon. He put me on tablets and he put me off work. He gave me three months off work. He put me on these tablets and they were dusceen [?]. Do you know what dusceen [?] tablets are? I didn’t know either but the lady next door was a triple certificate sister, and she told me they were Valium. He put me on these

Valium and I go to bed there. He said “Take these and go to bed”. I will tell you what -they made me all delirious. I took them for a couple of days and my wife had to go around and tell him “To take me off them”, it must have went down. He gave me three months off and that was all right. Then I had to go and see the state doctor .

In between time I’m getting near sixty. I went to the state doctor and he gives me six months off. My blood pressure comes good and I go and see this fellow and he said, “How are you?” I said, “I’m pretty good, pretty fit.” He said, “You can go back to work”, I said, “I’m not going back to work.” He said, “Why not?” And I said, “I’m going to retire”, and he said “You’re only fifty nine,” and I said, “No, I’m sixty”. I think I had a couple of weeks to go and he

put me on sick leave and then I retired. That was when I retired.

Yes, yes it was.

Yes.