Australians at War Film Archive

Well, I was born in Perth in 1933 and my father had been an ex navy guy, one of the originals in the RAN [Royal Australian Navy].

And became a farmer. And very unsuccessful, and moved back to Queensland where his mother was. And I grew up in the Fassifern Valley, south of Brisbane in a very German type district. And I was moved to Brisbane to take my scholarship and entrance to the Royal Australian

Navy, which was a family influence I suppose. And at the age of thirteen I joined the navy and became a cadet midshipman. I spent the next four years in college in Victoria and then was shipped to UK for further sea courses. And then after that I had a series of transits back to Australia, to UK as my

education in the navy continued. And I was posted after my first series of trainings in the UK to Korea. My ship then, troopship from Liverpool to Japan which was quite a memorable experience. And then joined the Sydney and – that was Sydney 2

and promptly went into operational service in Korea. That lasted for some four months, four or five months and then we returned to Australia. After that there was the Montebello explosions and first explosion of an atomic weapon in Australian waters at sea. And then I graduated to sub lieutenant

and again, to the UK. More courses in the process of which I was able to do a lot of travel around Europe; I was very taken by travel. And after that there was a steady progression of sea time and promotion. It came rather slowly in my case.

I specialised in signal communications, again back to UK. And subsequently I served in a ship in Western Australia, the Diamantina which of course is a memorial if you like to the navy. World War II ship used for CSIRO [Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization] research.

And that was fascinating experience working in an almost non-naval environment, exploring the oceans. Went back to Montebello to see the results of the earlier nuclear explosion and that was an eye opener, to see the remnants of a ship which was detonated with the explosion. It was splattered all over the Montebello.

And then I was posted to the joint anti-submarine training establishment in Naval Air Station, Nowra. And shortly after joining there I was, I was a staff officer by then. I was to join the Voyager for her final work over, a week after she was sunk, so I had a lucky escape there and subsequently I was

to be the fleet communications officer in the Melbourne. And we had another rather unpleasant experience when we hit and sank the front end of the Frank E Evans and that was almost a replica of the Voyager. And I was to be a witness at that. After that I had a number of postings in Canberra. Became the director of naval communications. And then

was posted to Paris as the defence attaché which was another busy experience. Nobody would ever believed that I worked, but I don’t think I worked harder in my life than I did in Paris and also in Berne, where I was also the defence attaché. And then I retired and have been living a busy life ever since.

Well my father’s side would be largely English with a French background. And my mother was Scottish background but Australian. And

I had two brothers, two younger brothers. I was a very innocent country boy. But I hated milking cows so the thought of moving into a maritime environment was always an appeal to me. And

I married a lass I met in France during one of my ship postings in the RAN and that’s been the most pleasurable experiences of my life, to have this partner and three children. And now a small number of offspring from them.

Yes, my father was a 1916 entry at Jervis Bay Naval College, so he’s one of the first entries. He had a trunk of the old gear that they used to wear, the epaulets and all that garbage that we once had.

And that fascinated me as a young boy. I used to open this trunk up in my parent’s farmhouse. And for some reason it gave me some idea that this was what a sailor was being all about. Of course, it wasn’t. But my father did tell me one thing, which impressed me. He retired in 1922 and he was a midshipman

himself and about to be a sub lieutenant in the Warsprite, which was a British battleship, with three other Australians as midshipmen. And they were visited by a soldier from Australia House. And of course the war was well and truly over and they were disbanding. And the soldier spoke to the four Australians to the effect that it was stupid to remain in the services because there’d never be another war and why don’t they make a life of it and

try something in civilian life. So they all resigned and my father said subsequently that what a foolish mistake that was. If only he’d had the experience at that age to realise that to go to the naval college at Greenwich, which was really a finishing school for sailors, he would’ve woken up to the real world and he would have probably stayed and made a career in the navy. To his sadness.

Well the only stories he told me were the typical stories that a father would to his children, which were meant to be amusing and derogatory and put you off at service in that environment. Such as, the weevils that he used to get in his porridge. And of course that appealed to me immensely. I’d never seen a weevil in porridge. So it went the wrong way. It got me interested.

Well that’s an interesting question. I think that life was pretty tough at sea. We joke about it but life under sail was very tough. It was certainly – it had its pleasant moments, but the sea was not kind.

And conditions were pretty horrific but it was better than living in a city environment without sewage for example. So it was understandable that people went to sea. But later on in the early days of the navy ships were steel, they were hot, there was very little ventilation. Food was never good.

And discipline was tough, very tough. And today it’s a great change. Discipline exists but the conditions are palatial.

Well that again is an interesting question. I think a lot of sailors, so the story goes, when they decide to retire often take an oar, put it over their shoulder and walk inland to where nobody can recognise them and that’s where they establish themselves or that’s the story. And I think there’s something in the sailor’s mind, they like tidiness and they like a farm or a country environment. Fresh air cause the sea is full

of – a marvellous environment, fresh air. And they set themselves up and I think they do enjoy the – a relaxed environment, away from the discipline and the twenty-four hour continuous activity that a ship requires.

I grew up in the Fassifern Valley, which was south of Brisbane, just close to the border. That was where I first went to school. It was a one-teacher school, I think there were eight classes. And a great number of my fellow students were from German

families. Which is understandable because when the American cotton fields were no longer available to British industry with their civil war, a lot of German farmers were recruited to Australia to start cotton farms. And of course when the war was over these people were left

to fend for themselves and they became naturally farmers and they spread off the Darling Downs in Queensland and into the wine fields of South Australia. So a lot of them were farmers, natural farmers.

Oh quite a few yes. And when World War II began I used to bring stories home that really irritated my father such as,

my little friend X says, “Da Hitler is going to vin the var.” And my father used to fly off the handle. But we were young. And my only experience of what the war could mean was probably one day when my then teacher, a Mr Storer, who

smoked heavily, very tall, straight looking fellow with an Irish background. He was standing at the top of a little stool in Bunburra smoking, and I noticed that he was crying. Which I’d never seen a man cry before. And I went up to him and asked him if I could help and he said, “No it’s all right, I’ve just received news that my brother’s been

killed over England. He was a pilot.” And then I realised well things were not easy in the military.

I thought it was a bit of a sport. I had no realisation it was a serious matter. But you saw people in uniform and I do remember an incident. Because we had a dairy farm

and one of our neighbours had been killed and I remember my father loading his cream can into a little wagon. Driven by, again, somebody of German parentage named Mr Zup. And Zuppie was helping my father load the can and my father tipped

one of his cans into another can and he saw me looking at him and he said, “You didn’t see me do that.” And then I realised that it was the can belonging to the farm where our neighbour had recently been killed. And those were the sort of things people did.

No, none at all. I was born just after that. I heard my parents tell stories about the Depression and they were not pleasant. You know impossible for people today to understand how difficult it was. There was little social support. People eked out.

Sometimes there wasn’t enough to buy a thrupenny packet of peppermints. It was a very difficult time and it’s amazing that our grandparents when through it so well. I think it gave this country, it gave those people, a sort of fibre. That I wonder

maybe doesn’t quite exist today. Except cause I’m involved in refugees. And I see a lot in refugees who’ve suffered. A certain fibre, which I think is introducing something to this country which is good and which isn’t written about.

Yes they did. They had a farm

in Orange when they were married and I don’t think they were very successful like most farmers, it’s a very hard life.

Not really. I did what all children would do on a farm but I didn’t enjoy milking cows.

You got up quite early yes.

Five o’clock and you had another chore in the evening. Animals of course are an unusual lot. They depend on you.

Two, two brothers. One who was two years younger than I and another who was eleven years younger. so there was quite a separation.

It was, in the country you were separated. Occasionally you met at weekends with a neighbour. There were occasional functions, church function for example where you met others and had some enjoyment. But at school we played simple sports. Rounders and

cricket. And athletics which you entered each year. I enjoyed that sort of sport.

Oh no, no. I think there was a certain separation between my family and perhaps two or three others that were –

who had Australian British names as opposed to others. Very interesting. Because it was felt that there was a – something distasteful about anybody who had a background that might have been German.

There is one – I remember there was a suggestion once that somebody was transmitting information to Germany and I remember there were a number of sweeps by aircraft which we were told were to attempt to locate transmitters. I think that’s a lot of garbage but it made a good story at the time and the local Lutheran minister was

incarcerated about printing some infamous statement about Germany. But I suspect that these are exaggerated stories.

No I don’t recall any stories of any local being interned. But there is something interesting.

A few years ago I went to Potsdam, which was in East Germany, west of Berlin and that has the repository of a lot of information intelligence that was stored pre World War II from German families. And I am told that when one day the stock of this information is revealed there is a (UNCLEAR) from Australian families with German

origin. Including information on ports and other locations, which we sent to Germany probably innocently, but have been compiled and reside in Potsdam.

No I think that particular conversation

and subject terminated, right there and then. I never broached the same sort of question or comments subsequently.

Oh yes very much so. In fact I saw him probably about ten years ago when I revisited the area and there was a

research back into the early settlers in the area. And I did meet a number of my earlier classmates. How we had changed.

Not specifically, no. I think that – I can remember The Courier Mail producing

a full two-page spread of photographs of all the men lost in Sydney 2 the cruiser that was lost in November 1941 off the West Australian coast which is a subject that has interested me today in research.

Well I wasn’t particularly bright

but I apparently did reasonably well and the teacher one day gave me a note to take home to my father. And my father accompanied me to school the next day and a week later I left. And was shipped to Brisbane to be with my grandmother on the basis that they thought I was wasting my time at the school. Which I thought was a bit sad. I

subsequently went to a state school in Toowong here. And took my scholarship.

Well I think, you know if you went to school there you did farm studies as a prime subject on the basis that you were going to become another member of the farming community. And maybe my parents felt that I really wasn’t

inclined to live on the land. Ironically when I retired some forty one years later I did have a inkling to return to the land and I would have if my wife had encouraged me. But that didn’t happen.

Oh I think they just

wanted me to perhaps optimise whatever academic skills I might acquire. But I don’t think my mother was very happy about me joining the navy. She had two brothers who went through World War I and both were badly wounded. One was gassed and the other carried a sniper’s bullet in his knee all his life. So

she didn’t have a very happy memory of World War I from her brothers. But my father was a bit laid back. He thought it was a – if I succeeded into the naval college it was a good start, a free education I suppose.

Thirteen. And of course I turned

fourteen a couple of months earlier but it was a bit of a shock coming from the country and then a state school in Brisbane and then, into a college where most of my comfreys were from private schools. Had a different education. There were two of us from Queensland out of twenty-four.

Oh impossibly young, a ridiculous age in fact to join the military, to be wearing uniform. But that was what happened. We followed the British system and the British system was to recruit young future officers at thirteen and then to train them in the mould, rather like the priesthood, keep you for a lifetime.

And I suppose that has some method because the naval life as it was then, required a lot of feeling in the water, about anticipation. And of course I think this is the success of the British, they were great sailors. Their navy – look at history:

the number of battles they lost are relatively few. They had a great sense of the sea, how to manoeuvre and how to manage men. Nelson, the greatest sea general of all time, remarkable man. Created peace on the oceans for a hundred and nine years. British navy and we inherited some of their origins. That has changed.

I think the decision was really made for me. And I think my grandmother, her portrait’s just there – was the eminence grise in the family. And I think she spotted me and thought I should have a military career.

Well she wasn’t very popular in the family but I thought she was a remarkable woman. She lost her husband very early. She was a journalist. She was a Tasmanian. Had some fortune in being able to travel back in those difficult days of sailing ships

to England a few times. Met her husband in London, England. Had a family of four. He became critically ill and was shipped by family decision back to Australia to a warm climate. And he didn’t live long but my father then joined the RAN as a cadet and my grandmother

was a woman who entertained us when we as boys came in from the country. And that’s where I first learned something about the finer side of life. She had a lot of character. Probably the reason why she wasn’t so popular.

Well there was a little grace

in her household. She taught me manners, which I’ve never forgotten. I may not have always applied them. She had distinction, she had an ability to be incisive. She spoke well.

And she was a golly good cook.

I think there was a certain élan, considered in families that if – and of course families used to be quite large and my grandmother was one of sixteen.

So inevitably somebody would have to be a religious person, somebody would have to be in the military and then the others would follow. And so I suppose it was quite natural to expect that somebody in the family would have military background.

I can’t

answer that question. I think the navy always had some – as a senior service – historically that is, simply because they were the first, the earliest soldiers if you like at sea. But I suspect that travelling back to England a couple of times and the sea environment may have had something to do with it, even though

it wasn’t the uniform navy, it was the merchant navy.

No I don’t think so. It was only the army or the navy. I really can’t – although

in her family there were people who were army.

Well I found it rather traumatic. The shift from sort of country environment into which I’d been brought up and a reasonably relaxed family, to

the rigid discipline. Having to run everywhere and everybody was called “Sir” and you had to excuse yourself to pass in front and so on. And the rigid hours. The scholastic hours that went into the late hours of the evening, you know nine o’clock at night.

Regimented sitting at desks doing prep. Quite different, quite strange and I found it rather difficult.

Well that went reasonably comfortably. We, two Queenslanders met with some eight New South Welshmen and then entrained

to Melbourne. And these are my first memories of travelling outside Queensland. Met with others from Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria. And then shipped by rail to the naval college which is at Flinders. And we were then measured up and put into

rough serge uniform. And we were deliberately brought in a couple of days early so that we might acclimatise. The shock came when the rest of the college, the three senior years arrived and we were dealt with somewhat harshly. People were beaten and things which I couldn’t believe would suddenly occur.

We’d be shouted at and forced to stand to attention and things like that, which was just part of a learning process. But at the age of thirteen and fourteen it was a little bit difficult. And I think too there’s a bit of method in that because very quickly they knew you had to identify whether you could take it. Because if you couldn’t it was time to leave.

Oh well the senior

cadets. I might say though that my term, which was known as the 1947 Flinders year, was called “an iron term”. We didn’t like this performance and as we progressed through our four years we made, as a term, conscious effort to avoid this kind of treatment to our juniors. And I think that was successful.

And you know bastardisation had always existed and occasionally it breaks out again. And it’s not just in the military, it’s in schools, even state schools. But it’s an unpleasant characteristic and needs to be eliminated. And we saw to it that it didn’t occur in our time.

Well yes you had an event on Sunday evening, which used to occur which was a bit unpleasant. Sunday evening was a time when you had – you were fattened up on a few things that you normally didn’t have during the week. And you had a full stomach and unfortunately

we would be herded together into a “gun room” as the common room was called. And the senior term would or might, it didn’t happen consistently but it often happened, enough to be a bad memory, of being forced to do press ups on a table. And you’d be blind folded and you’d be told that someone was holding a

needle under your stomach. So you had to keep pressing up but avoiding the needle. And you never knew of course that there was no needle there. But it was that sort of treatment. Mid term camps for example ended up as being quite often events of bastardisation. But it wasn’t all bad. There was some humour in it.

Certainly, certainly.

Oh it’s occurred for centuries and probably still does: schools, institutions and even in the military. But in the case of the military I

have a personal view that it is especially important to root it out early rather than allow it to continue to affect the mentality and the training of minds of young men and women. Because you’re going to be left in very important positions of authority, of regulating

other men and women. Setting standards and I think in society the military has a very special role in that we all go back into civilian society eventually and I think we ought to take back the best that we can. There is the possibility that if the military allows that sort of treatment to be part of its culture, that

it can lead to very serious breakdown, very serious breakdown of authority and standards. Such as we’ve just witnessed in Iraq, which normally would not occur [2004 reference to brutality by US service personnel to Iraqi prisoners].

Well I don’t want to be specific because I think the person’s still alive but it was an event that occurred, involving a person in a senior, term senior to ours.

And resulted in his being withdrawn from the college.

Unfair?

Well the parents withdrew him.

Well I’m not aware of what happened. But I believe

that the matter was investigated. Whether it was investigated as thoroughly as you’d investigate something today is another question.

Well most of the time I found a mechanism to cope with it. But I

really didn’t enjoy it. In fact it would be truthful to say that I loathed my four years at naval college. And when I eventually graduated and bust out, I remember passing the college and not even looking at it, I was so pleased to leave. But life changed after that.

Very much so, it was very formal.

Well that’s a good question, I hadn’t thought seriously about that. But I suspect that having moved around the world a lot and having seen a lot of some of the problems in Asia and the Middle East, and in Central Europe, I’m very

attracted to the refugee. I almost feel as though I’ve been a refugee myself. But I think refugees have very special qualities. And I think my – the principle value that I obtained out of the navy other than loyalty would be

values, values that enable us to live a better life. I suppose that’s what the military’s all about, providing a backdrop so that we can be assured of enjoying the most in life, in a free environment. It’s not possible in some countries.

Yes I think we are so lucky, we don’t know how lucky we are.

Values definitely, definitely.

Well I think role model is certainly. You know I can remember some quite remarkable people as role models. And I think in meeting people,

so many people. I mean I’ve met people all over the world having travelled all over the Pacific and all over Europe and the Middle East. And I see enormous value in so many people who are never recognised. And I think it’s from them that there’s the wellspring of goodness that prevails

in the world. And there’s not much evident when you look at the media, what the media produces, but in fact there’s an enormous amount there. Even in the countries that seem to be the origin of so much terrorist difficulty in the world today. They basically have a wellspring of wonderful people.

Yes I think that’s true. I recall an incident, not an incident but a period when I was with my wife in the Czech Republic a few years ago.

And we noticed this country coming out of communism and the evil of communism was so evident in the faces of the people, who, no matter what you were talking about or asking for information, wouldn’t look you in the face. They would be looking down and it is the evil of having to relate

that you’d seen something, that somebody was doing something against the state. But the interesting thing was to see the young people. Young people were joyous, laughing, entertaining themselves, the new generation. And you know they were providing the future Czech

Republic, in this great United States of Europe. And their contribution is going to be in the years ahead, enormous. And it’s the young people who are going to do it. The old people who’d gone through the terrible period, the evil period of communism haven’t killed that spirit, which is coming up.

Got to be.

I think in a certain sense it may have, because I

joined at a time when we were still imbued with the British system. Which was pretty strait laced. Yes I think that is correct. I think too, you see, part of the training was to get you into the mindset that you were going to have to lead, lead from the front and not from underneath.

So your relationship was always somewhat difficult. Your personality of course has got to come through. I’m not sure my personality really didn’t come through until I was in my mid thirties. I think I was not relaxed but I think the

experience of managing men and women eventually changes you.

Yes, oh absolutely, absolutely. I think if I had joined the navy at the age of sixteen or seventeen, which is the custom today, which is sensible, I would’ve been quite a different person earlier.

No we used to have term dances and our sister college was the Toorak Ladies College in Toorak. And I remember those events when we would be shipped

to Toorak College for a dance or they would be shipped to the naval college. That was my first contact with females. I think there was a message there, we were probably supposed to be looking in a different direction. I don’t think we did later on but we were confined at that stage.

No it wasn’t.

No we learnt to dance at these events. No I think the social side of meeting females, if that is what you’re suggesting, was somewhat constrained. And I think too, in those days we were meant to keep our eyes on the ball and not get distracted

too early because there wasn’t time, you were too young, you had a long way to go, you were still training at the age of twenty two, you were still on courses and doing exams. I had, in my service career hundreds of examinations, probably something like three hundred examinations. And you were expected to proceed through those examinations.

And of course there wasn’t an allowance, a marriage allowance either. So if you ended up getting married very early, at the age of eighteen, life was going to be very, very difficult. So there was some methodology there to get you pointed in a direction where you didn’t get too socially involved with young women. But inevitably you do.

Well the priest. We had an Anglican priest, actually he was quite a decent guy. Who used to be the

guy who would come and talk to you seriously wearing his dog collar, about priorate matters. Yes we had these lectures. Especially the last lecture before we left the college to go overseas. And we were told by a serving officer, a young

officer, how to avoid getting involved in the brothel life of ship visits to ports and a number of ports were mentioned where we would be going. And this was all a new experience. And of course I think all it did was get you interested in finding out.

Yes well I think in my case I had a – my grandmother had some influence on me. I was addressed as to responsibilities and the responsibilities required

recognising that women needed special treatment. She was right.

Yes it was and of course it really didn’t mean anything, except it sounded like some dreadful problem that was to be avoided.

But it was much later in my training in UK that I was given a very detailed lecture with pictures of gonorrhoea and syphilis and things like that, which were pretty sickening I must say. But necessary.

Yes quite so. We were doing the Victorian Higher School Certificate at the same time and overlaid on top of that were

chemistry and physics of three or four different divisions. And navigation in three divisions. Mathematics in three divisions. So in fact it was quite complex. And seamanship, of course, seamanship was a subject that I was most unsuccessful in, I think I graduated last in my term in seamanship. I did

slightly better in other subjects. But later when I was midshipman I graduated second in my lieutenant’s exam for seamanship, so I think I made up.

Well navigation at that stage involved a lot of arithmetic

and spherical trigonometry, so you progressed through a number of, different forms of mathematics. So it was subdivided and you had, I think I recall three maths exams. Three different sub subjects. Physics was three. I think chemistry was at least one subject. English had a couple of variants.

We learnt one foreign language for one year, which was pathetic.

That was French, yes.

No it’s certainly not. It would’ve been sensible to have introduced us to Indonesian or a Chinese language for example, or Japanese.

Instead of learning pillow talk later on.

Well in fact we did some practical subjects as well too. Some of us were meant to be engineers and I put my hand up to be an engineer. We had engineering subjects and in fact I didn’t become an engineer because I was talked out of it. We were told that that was a useless profession, specialisation. The seaman profession was the way to go, the bridge officer, head for that.

And like an innocent young boy I accepted that. In fact I was a natural engineer. I should have stayed an engineer but there it was. So we did engineering, we did some practical electrical work like making little electrical motors and things like that, which was good fun. But no art. There was not one art subject

which I was sorry about because late in life I was to discover that I was a natural sculptor. I’m an unnatural artist but I like painting.

Yes you had to continue to pass your

exams. I think you were allowed a little leeway to fail a subject in your first couple of years. But you were expected to make up and continue. And the subjects of course progressed towards the Higher School Certificate, Victorian Higher School Certificate which was obligatory. And people began to fall away as the four years progressed.

So that four of my term had departed by the time we graduated. So you’re right, we moved into more complex mathematics or chemistry or navigation for example.

Yes, yes, oh several.

Sadly he’s passed on. But yes there were two of us who were often together, we were posted together at one stage, on two occasions in fact. Yes that’s so. Others were – I think we were all friends because

we met every few years, so we still meet. One person became a full admiral, chief of naval staff. One become the governor of New South Wales and then he passed on, he was knighted. One became the administrator of the Northern Territory and he has passed on. So there were, and another one became the vice

chief of the defence force. So it was a pretty strong term. I was slightly down in the pecking order.

Yes.

No all the same age. But promotion of course is – has statutory limits up to a certain level.

It has changed somewhat now but in those days, you migrated in the – if you were a college officer towards lieutenant commander by the age of approximately thirty. There was a bracket of eight years from lieutenant to lieutenant commander. And after that it was by selection. So selection to commander, you know a brass hat, might occur say three and a half years after promotion to

lieutenant commander up to the age of forty. And if you didn’t make it by then that’s it, finished. And then of course promotion to captain and in my time there were no commodores as a permanent rank. That was a later addition. And people were selected for admiral. It was a bit like a pyramid.

You know it got smaller and smaller and smaller. So if you weren’t promoted, as I said, by the time you were forty, you know you weren’t going to get promoted and most people would probably retire about the mid thirties if they weren’t selected for promotion.

Well it’s young but then again there’s a bit of sense in that because you’ve still a life to live. And it’s important that, if you’re not going to get promoted, the system allows you to stay on perhaps as a retired officer, not as a retired officer but as a non-promoted officer. And even as a retired officer there are certain postings. But that’s your limit.

And it gives you a chance then to change direction in civilian life and I think that’s sensible. I mean in my time we weren’t allowed to go to university. That was the idea was getting you young at the age of thirteen and now it’s quite different. Now you’re encouraged, pleaded, “Please would you start a course, would you take this particular, would you go to this university.” And that’s right. It’s very sensible.

No that was a different, that’s really not in the officer’s stream. There’s a limit. You’re really equated with I suppose university graduates and today you would be.

But in those days apprenticeships were restricted to people who were in an engineering or an electrical qualification, as a sailor for example or a soldier or an airman. You’d be sent off to an apprentice school to learn how to be an electrician or a radio mechanic. Or an engine room artificer. That’s a different category and they could

still be promoted to officer, and many of them are. And it’s very sensible that they do that because they are deep specialists.

Well

obviously there were management – there was management instruction because, and the navy is very particular about this, it was especially important that you were a divisional officer. That’s a term meaning that you looked after a group of men, a division, or a number of men and you were their father figure. You handled their documents, you got them orientated towards

promotion courses. You knew how to deal with them, if they were deceased. I mean their effects and how to correspond with their next of kin and so on. So yes there was a special you know, element of your training to do that. I quite liked personal contact, I enjoyed being a divisional officer. It was, you know that personal

contact that I enjoyed often in life as I progressed.

Well I don’t know whether we can grade ourselves. It’s true, I’ve seen some appalling cases. The best managers in my view were people who were strict, had standards and a sense of humour.

I always admired my British forebears, especially the seniors. The senior officers who had a sense of humour in a crisis, because, for me, that identified the real man. A man who had the ability to synthesise, to arrive at the right answer or the best answer. The best tactic, the best strategy. And how to deal with men.

Mm hm.

Yes it requires a bit of humility as well. I don’t think naval officers are particularly noted for that but it is important. Yeah.

No, no she was then in dementia.

But none of my family came to my graduation. I had a Melbourne relative who did, yes.

Yes. Yes.

Yes. You graduate with a

first or second or third level of pass. I think I was a second level pass. And it was very formal, it was just like a university graduation: scrolls being handed out and so on.

It was very reserved and there was no cap throwing performances, I notice that occurs today. Well you know, everything changes.

Yes that … I think riding a motor bike was frowned on in

my day. Riding a bicycle was frowned on too. There was an incident in my naval career when I really did decide that I was going to leave the college. And I had a bicycle, which I brought down from Queensland. And I had an aunt in Melbourne and during the mid term break we were confined to the college for some reason.

We didn’t go to some location and spread tents and have that kind of mid term event that usually occurred. And I decided I’d had enough. And I needed five pounds to get to Queensland. And I hopped on my bicycle and I drove to Frankston where I got on the train – with my bicycle. Got to Melbourne, rode out to Hawthorn. Presented myself

to my aunt who was quite shocked to see me. And to ask if I could borrow five pounds. She eventually sorted out what I was trying to do and convinced me to return to the naval college. Which was probably very wise. So I hopped on the train, got out of Frankston and I was cycling through Frankston on my way back to the college

when somebody spotted me in my little naval cap, peaked cap. And realised it was a cadet who shouldn’t be out of the naval college. And you were never allowed to do those sorts of thing, and contacted the naval college. When I arrived back at the college, there was a general muster and I arrived hot and bothered and sweaty. And was immediately identified

as being the errant cadet. And I was put under arrest and duly punished. But I very nearly escaped.

I did. I explained all that.

I said that I had decided to leave the college, created an absolute ruckus, an enquiry as to why I’d suddenly arrived at this state of mind. And a priest was called in and – but that was duly sorted out. And my father was contacted and he came down to see me and he’d had obviously with his naval experience,

took me for a walk in the gardens and asked me, “Do you want me to withdraw you from the college?” And at that stage I had begun to realise, because everybody had been breathing down my neck, realised that so many people had invested you, and the taxpayer and so on, and I was letting them down. So I didn’t have the courage to tell my father that,

“No I wanted to resign.” So my life was sealed, from then on.

Well that was a close shave that one. I had some other close shaves later on too.

No not at all, not he was quite laid back. I think my mother was pretty keen to see me leave. But no my father left it entirely to me.

As a cadet midshipman. I went to the UK as a cadet midshipman. That was a voyage across to the UK on a

great steamer Stratford

Well you mean posting in an Australian ship?

Oh well it was only a month. So we left the college, we had pre-embarkation leave as it was called. I think it was a

fortnight. And I joined the ship in Sydney and sailed with my colleagues under a supervisory officer who was also going to the UK for some posting. And away we went. And that was an eye opener. That was a wonderful experience.

Yes I did and my father bought me my first suit.

Yes.

Well he went to the local tailor in the Boonah district and I was duly kitted up and I said goodbye to a few people and away I went. My father gave me five pounds.

Five pounds in my pocket and I think the grateful navy gave me a sum of money which I’d never seen before, something like thirty pounds. With the two I went off to England and survived the trip.

Well I think it was something like fifteen pounds I think it cost. Good quality suit.

Well I mean for a young boy of seventeen and a half it was one of those tremendous experiences. Joining a ship as a first class privileged passenger and transhipping all the way

to Europe. And of course visiting the Australian ports on the way and then transit over the Indian Ocean, Colombo, Bombay, Aden, Port Said, Marseille and London in the snow.

Oh everywhere, every time. We were actually being given

some kind of training on our way too. We were required to do watches with the merchant naval crew, bridge watch. And that was a great experience. You know a huge ship and you know the form of navigation is different between the navy and the merchant navy. I don’t think we ever caught up with the way the merchant navy

runs the navigation practices, but it was interesting.

I don’t – well, their form of plotting and their use of compass, magnetic compass which they then used quite often wasn’t the sort of thing we would use. We would

always use a gyro. They too, but they were consistently using a magnetic compass for bearings and applying what is called variation and deviation. Things we really didn’t have to worry about. And of course they took sights, they were always taking sights, navigation sights by sextant and their form of plotting and their writing up their star in some sights is quite

different to ours.

Well they’re certainly laid back; their discipline was interesting. Because when the chap on the wheel would chiack with his officer or quite often there was a first name basis. Yeah interesting. I had one interesting experience there that I relate.

Some of the officers were – had contacts, made relationships with passengers. And I remember an officer I was on duty with who had a girlfriend and he wanted to visit her and we were about to chance it in the Messina Straits between Sicily and the toe of Italy.

And it was the first watch, that is eight till midnight. And he said, “Look you take the con,” and I was a boy of seventeen and a half, I hardly knew what was port and starboard. And the officer said, “Look I’ll just duck away for a moment, I’ll be back in two minutes.” And at this stage

I could see shipping in the distance starting to appear, you know it’s a very narrow strait. And then the quartermaster said, “Look just take the wheel,” and I was just learning how to handle the wheel. And that’s on the bridge of course. And in the normal naval course the wheel is off the bridge. And so I took the wheel and he said, “I’ll just be away a moment.” Well he was away for a good five minutes. And

shipping was starting to appear. I had no idea, you know what I should be doing. I couldn’t leave the wheel. I couldn’t call for help. And I was almost perspiring when eventually these characters came back on the bridge. And we went through the Straits and it was an horrific experience for me. I think after that I was always aware that

living on the bridge required a lot of vigilance. But it was a horrific experience. If we’d had some incident the mind boggles as to what would have happened.

Well you had a senior officer, captain I think at that stage who was going to UK for posting.

No not at all. He was

a very fine officer, became an admiral. He had quite a famous war in the Pacific and no he was a good leader. Very relaxed.

Well I mean Bombay, Aden,

Colombo where a white face was rare. And you know the duty free goods, which were increasingly available, were evident for the first time. Great temptation.

Well it was just

- it was seeing a picture in a history book become real.

Oh that wasn’t difficult. You know we were quite young and innocent. And normally you would team up with one of your chaps or a couple of other people you met on the ship and just become a tourist.

Oh we didn’t wear uniform. No actually you’re right, we did wear uniforms on these bridge watches. You’re quite right. Otherwise we were in civilian clothes.

Well we were in civilian clothes of course and we were tourists.

See quite often you would join a tour. There would be a little tour organised on the ship and you would put your name down and pay your one pound and away you’d go and spend the morning visiting Colombo. So it was all regulated.

Well

temples – I was always interested in history and stone, anything that was built in so. Well you can see it here. So I was always – and museums and art galleries, that sort of thing fascinated me. A cathedral. I’d always wanted to see the way in which

a – if it was a catholic cathedral or a – in fact I even visited a couple of mosques and a synagogue just to get an idea of how people had a belief, if they had a belief. I know it’s very easy to slip off to a bar and grog up. But I never

had that in my mind’s eye.

Oh no. No but it happened once or twice but I was just able to hide my disgrace.

Well nothing happened then and nothing happened until I was a midshipman

when I was in the Sydney in fact, in Sydney Harbour when I met a merchant navy guy in a ship moored close to us whose father had driven my father’s product to market. And a bottle of gin disappeared. And when I got back on board my ship,

it was a hot environment and it went to my head and I think I went to the toilet and was violently ill and spent an hour or so collapsed in the toilet. That was a rude awakening. And I think that was my first experience of excessive alcohol. I was slightly more conscious of what I was doing after that.

Yes Tilbury Docks. Well that’s always an experience to travel up the midway into the Thames Estuary. And we arrived early in January and I remember going on the upper deck and seeing snow, I might say dirty snow, on the railing. And there it was, the ship was

covered in a sprinkling of snow and London was dirty, very dirty. Piles of rubble, bombed rubble. Streets still flat around the wharf district because obviously it was a target. And we were accommodated in a hotel,

I think the Bernard Baron Hotel in Kangaroo Valley, Knightsbridge. And we were then taken care of by the Victoria League, which was known as the Society for the Seduction of Silly Sinful Sailors, no that’s not true, they were a very fine group of people who were started in the Boer War, looking after young officers I suppose. Try to keep them on the straight and narrow. Perhaps

they led us astray too. But then we were shipped out into the families of England and I and my colleague stayed with the Adams pottery people in Staffordshire which was another great experience of being met in heavy snow and very cold conditions by the family’s Rolls Royce and being taken to this chateau and accommodated for a week. And meeting

people in a new environment. After which we then met in Plymouth, joined the training cruiser and began our first cruise to the West Indies. And that was an experience. And my wife and I went back to the West Indies last year. To the French West Indies, where we didn’t go in those days. To see the changes.

It was a

cruiser, the Devonshire was a very well known county class cruiser in the Royal Navy where cadets from the British Royal Navy, the Australian navy, the New Zealand characters, many of whom had trained in Dartmouth, Burmese, Pakistani, Indian

cadets and there were two terms. And we cruised, the first cruise to the West Indies. Three months there. And then there was a term break and then we had another cruise, this time around northern Europe, Scandinavia, Pacifica, and what did we do then? We then took our exams.

At that stage I was posted to the Sydney, which was then heading for Korea.

Well it was the way it was. It was a remarkable training environment to meet cadets from different nations and to

be specifically trained in the seamanship aspects. Driving a small motor boat, or a motor cutter with kitchen rigged gear which is a very specific kind of equipment. Navigation. Practical navigation. Lowering and hoisting sea boats, which can be a quite dangerous operation if you lose control of a halyard. One of the falls for example of a boat.

We fired, we did our gun training at sea for the first time. There was a two-year period where my deafness began. And you visited lots of ports, great experience.

It was horrific. We had a gale

all the way across the North Sea. And I recall having a bucket to be sick in and a bucket for scrubbing when I had scrubbing duties. And I used to get them mixed up. It was a dreadful experience. I was dreadfully seasick and took some years to get over being seasick for me. But we had specific duties and you rotated. Very interesting.

Life as it is opened up.

Well the West Indies were most interesting. I had a – we visited a number of ports. We went to Trinidad, we went to Granada, Tobago, St Kits and

a few other islands. And a little bit of shore time to experience what the environment was like. We did a lot of navigation between the islands and a lot of sea boat work. And of course it was a good season, supposed to be a good season, and generally it was in the islands, you know where you could drop boats and raise them and do other seaman-like activities. You know

moor the ship, both anchors out that sort of thing. Yeah it was a great experience.

Well that was interesting. We went to a place called Christensen South in Norway and it was the three hundredth anniversary

of the establishment of the city and I’ve been back a couple of times and that’s where I first met a number of Norwegians, some of whom I still correspond with. Wonderful people. Some wonderful young ladies there too I might say. And then we went up to Tromso in the very north, which is in the Arctic circle. That’s an experience, to see the sun that never

sets. And in Tromso we opened the most northern Commonwealth war ceremony with King Haakon and that was another experience. And we saw the – a couple of German ships that were sunk up there which were most interesting as well, lying on their side.

Well I’m not very sure I can tell you very much. My wife mightn’t like me to recall. But we had a ball and I mean a properly organised ball. A city ball and there was a young lady for every

cadet including the Burmese and the Pakistani and the Indian and so on. And I remember the story that’s often told by girls colleges when they’ve had their events and you know

the guys say in their corner, “I’ve got the girl.” “Oh the blonde one in the top left hand side.” And size them off. And the girls then say later as somebody did to a friend of mine, “Well we’ve sorted you people out and I’ve chosen you.” And the person was not a particularly attractive

young man so he realised that he’d been taken for a ride. But in our case we met a bevy of gorgeous Scandinavians; they were just beautiful. Blue eyed blondes. I married a blue-eyed blonde. So I think it had a galvanising influence on me.

They are. They’re very open yes.

Well of course my Norwegian is pretty marginal but the Scandinavians do speak English remarkably well. They’re like the Dutch, they have a brilliant ability to speak languages. So most of them can converse

in American English quite well. No difficulty in that department.

Well I suppose as the evening progresses you always find that the person you’re dancing with is more entertaining. Frankly I don’t

think that language is – I don’t think that language changes from one country to another. I think we all have the same common subjects.

Always. It was always an education, yes.

Oh yes, yes we did.

And I for my part was always interested in travelling and I know that it was quite a regular feature to stay with a family or friends in a certain area. I just liked travelling. So for me I travelled all over England and Scotland and another occasions Wales and another occasion Ireland. And eventually I became more daring and I moved into the continent.

Yes three weeks between cruises, yes.

No. No. I really – I was fully aware of some of the warnings we had. To be very careful cause as a young officer I was under the impression that

you know officers never caught venereal diseases and so on and it was just the end of your life if you were caught as a result. And I think that was an inhibition that constrained me fortunately. I was just more interested in seeing things. You know the visual experience. And I still do.

Well I really can’t answer this one because it never occurred to me. But I was aware that it occurred with a number of others. And I was under the impression that it was on your records and the – when

your records were examined for the next posting or promotion or so on, it was a black mark. And it may have been, I can’t – I think today it’s tut tut, silly boy or silly girl but in those days I think it was a little more strict or rigid. Sailors on the other hand, it was quite different.

We had in ships what was called the CDA list: the Contagious Diseases Act list. And it was common knowledge that when you did your daily rounds. The officer of the day or whoever did the rounds would write up certain things, including fresh water, oil, fuel, anything else. The temperatures in magazines. And down at the bottom was

CDA list, which people who were under treatment were listed by name. So you knew all the chiefs or petty officers or sailors who were on that list. But you never saw an officer’s name. Or at least I didn’t. Of course it was treated separately I suppose. And today I don’t imagine that that’s

treated in that way at all because ships now of course are male, female. I think it’s treated more discreetly. It’s a pretty indiscreet way of dealing with the matter isn’t it? And it didn’t occur to me that it was indiscreet until many years later when I realised that this sort of information could easily get to next of kin.

Why? Well I think it was a formality. You know after all if somebody was being treated for a disease they normally didn’t mess in the same – mess table. Contact was different.

And they presumably didn’t have certain tasks.

Oh no, no nothing like that. It was simply a regulation, a formality. But when I used to think about it years later it was pretty indiscreet.

Oh. In fact that was my first experience of mixing with people of different races. They were great news. Very entertaining. Some of them had very bad tempers and I remember one or two Burmese losing their tempers and throwing knives at people in the mess deck of the Devonshire, which was a bit tense.

No they were generally the cream of their countries.

Oh no, no fortunately. I remember one incident very vividly cause I was very close to the person being aimed at who was a British colleague, who was being a bit stroppy. But the knife was a little direct.

Oh I think he was counselled.

Well it was just a table knife, it was just a table knife.

No but I did notice that the Pakistanis and the Indians didn’t really communicate. And of course not surprising because they had a couple

of border clashes. And there’s a religious difference for a number of them as well.

Oh with the –

crew, you mean in the training cruiser. Oh no I don’t think, they were really selected. I mean anyone who couldn’t take that sort of environment would be very quickly shipped off and it was really a selective crew for training purposes.

Well I enjoyed it, I enjoyed it.

It was a great experience in making new friends. Because a lot of them you see, you saw later on as they moved up in life or you may have visited their country and you write to them and say, “Where are you and any chance of meeting up in Bombay or Calcutta?”

And I served eventually in a RN [Royal Navy] squadron that – there were six ships that moved from the Gulf of Aden all the way through, Pakistan, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan. So yes you saw – it was a good encouragement to communicate with people. After all you mightn’t agree but you have to get on with people.

You mean operated, you mean communicated?

Well the Royal Navy I think was at a point I think when it was starting to move out of the sort of upper class bracket officer only to a general. And after all

there are forty four accents in Britain. But it used to get up our noses that we used to be ostracised as colonials because of our accents and so on. But at my time I was conscious that we were meeting more and more British, not English British cadets who were speaking with pretty unusual accents. And that was where I was learning that the English

or the English language was spread over a great variety of people with a great number of accents. You know you began to identify someone who came from Yorkshire, a Scot for being a Scot, an Irishman for being an Irishman. A Welshman with their particular twang. But I don’t think we entirely enjoyed our time with them. I don’t think in my term that many

of my term still maintain contact with our original British colleagues. And they were quite numerous. I have maintained contact with, good contact with two, three in fact. Three I have met many times. But a number of them we disliked intensely.

There’s a common misunderstanding in the European structure that the British are chauvinists and the others are arrogant. In fact the British can be arrogant and it’s the Continentals who were chauvinist and you begin to see that.

I think the practical skills. I mean I became a good boat handler. I thoroughly enjoyed sailing, manoeuvring a boat and in fact I think probably

that was one of my better skills. I was good at manoeuvring boats. I think you learn to anticipate something that might go wrong. And I think that’s a key aspect. Anticipation is essential to avoid incidents. Sometimes people have accused me of being a pessimist. Not so. I’m a realist and if you don’t think ahead things

can go wrong. You know you could be lowering a boat and if you don’t watch the way the falls are being handled you could have a man’s hand cut off. Hm, handling wires that suddenly get strung taut. Violin taut. If they snap they can take a man’s head off.

In the training cruiser? No I think it died like a wimp. I think our names appeared on lists of those who graduated and those who failed. It was at that moment that I discovered that there were something like twelve or fourteen who failed including three Australians.

The penalty was to do another cruise, which I thought was a great shame. If I’d realised that all I had to do was simply fail an exam I would have done another cruise which would’ve been around the Mediterranean. I was very sorry not to have done that.

Well I mean all you had to do was pass the third cruise. And you were through. It just meant that you were

three months behind the others.

Oh after graduation. Oh well before graduation I and four of my colleagues received a notice that we had been posted to the Sydney which was going to Korea as part of the United Nations set up in

trying to restore normality to South Korea. And we were posted – to get there we were posted to a merchant ship, the Empire Pride which was a German reparation ship from World War II taken over by the Bibby Line and we had a couple of weeks leave and then met up

at St Pancras Station in London together with the replacement as we discovered for the Gloucester Regiment. You may not remember but the Gloucester Regiment were really badly cut up on North Korea and the replacements were going out in the Empire Pride. So we joined this ship and away we went. Shipped out – which is an unusual experience. St Pancras was another realisation

of the brutality of war. I’d never before seen red caps in action. And it was at that stage when men were either full of alcohol or being torn away from their families and their girlfriends. And some of them were running and jumping and being tackled, literally tackled and brought to the deck, you know on St Pancras Station. As a young seventeen and a half year old midshipman

I’d never seen anything like this before. And being forced into carriages and the carriages locked and the shutters pulled down. It was quite an experience. And off to Liverpool and join the troopship and marched on board and the ship sailed. All the way to Japan.

Oh it was exciting. It was the first real posting. Exercising with my colleagues, my army colleagues on board was another experience because they obviously were doing rifle drills and a number of other activities to try and keep fit. And I suppose a lot of those boys died subsequently.

I remember meeting a major, a Scotsman who had been taken prisoner in the first fortnight of World War II. Spent the rest of the war in a prison camp and he was an awfully nice guy. And he went off to Korea and was killed. So that memory has always stayed with me of transhipping with this

jovial little Scotsman who’d had a hell of a life and was not to survive.

Well I was confined to my apartment with my colleagues for the entire four-hour trip up through the countryside to Liverpool to the wharves. But I don’t think it was very comfortable.

There were red caps in every carriage. After all it was a pretty stressful situation, having left your family and there’d been some terrible problems in North Korea. And as I said, the Gloucesters had had a terrible time and a lot of casualties. And a lot of prisoners. And many of those men would’ve been through World War II. So for them it must’ve been pretty

uncomfortable. But I was certainly unprepared to see or to realise the crunch point when men were being – many of them national servicemen – being obliged to, by direction of course, to go off to defend a principle. And at the last moment these things

were happening.

Well they were already fighting of course. I knew nothing. I was an innocent. I read a newspaper. There was no history. But when I got to Japan I began to see – I went to see the effects of the first nuclear atomic bomb,

Hiroshima. You know that’s when you begin to see you know – and of course London itself and Portsmouth and Plymouth were themselves absolutely full of rubble and the main street of Plymouth was rubble. And you wouldn’t believe it when you go there now. I was subsequently to

go there a couple of years later in 1951. But in 1951 there was rubble everywhere. And I can remember flowers growing out of rubble near St Paul’s Cathedral in London. And experiences that you can only talk about. In this country we wouldn’t know what it meant to be bombed.

And of course to be there at the time means that your mind set is conditioned differently to all the rest who haven’t been there

for the rest of your life. So for those few people who were around in New York at the time, I can understand that that will live as one of the most horrific memories in their lifetime.

Empire Pride that’s correct.

It was a German passenger ship that was

taken over at the end of the war and was part of reparations, yes.

Well it was a passenger, it was not particularly large. But it was comfortable. The men were in large mess deck areas, large areas and they had to sleep in hammocks. And it was pretty fragrant. Stank in the tropics.

There was no air conditioning. I remember doing rounds and part of my ship duties with an army officer and the stink in the mess decks, where seasick mean were puking out of their hammocks. It was an unusual experience.

Well I haven’t been aware of that but certainly I was aware that modern underarm didn’t exist in those days and it was pretty powerful.

Well an exotic country.

The Kure Harbour was full of wrecks, absolutely full of wrecks. There were still wrecks alongside part of the wharf area and we got taken off and the army guys went off to their training camp and we were sent off to do some small arms training, hand grenades, guns, weapons.

And in the Australian Army’s training area just outside Kure. And after about a week or so Sydney, the carrier we were to join, came in from her first patrol. So we joined them, just fresh of f the line and looking at how they performed.

And improving some areas of air operation. And we joined as brand new midshipmen and after the week the ship sailed and it was full on.

Well it’s a bit heart throbbing of course. This is it. First post.

First real posting. And responsibility. As a midshipman you’re usually forgiven for most of the stupid things that you do because at that stage you were expected not to make too many mistakes. And I was assigned to a particular part of the ship. I had a boat

that I was to be the coxswain of. We did duties. Quarterdeck duties, some of which were a bit unusual. I remember being the midshipman of the watch on the quarterdeck during this first week

when I saw a child’s head bobbing in the water. And I called the officer of the watch’s attention to it and sure enough it was a drowned child. And I was then directed to go down the gangway and as it drifted into the ship to put it in a bucket. Which was a really sickening experience for a boy. And I’ve never forgotten that

little naked Japanese girl. And of course it’s a thing that often happens with female if you know in Asia where they’re unwanted, they were quietly put away, drowned. And of course the local Japanese police arrived, took the bucket. I had to mount guard on the bucket, which was not a very pleasant experience and the bucket was taken away and that was

the end of the experience.

Baby child, brand new baby.

No it wasn’t pleasant. So then we sailed…

Well this

- well of course we were aware of the event because it was part of my training to see films of the bombing and the aftermath and so on. But to see the wreckage, the absolute destruction and the bomb centre building, which is a memorial today

was interesting and we saw a few of the locals who were still… You know you could see that they were scarred. They had scars on. Great number of people had been affected, so it was an experience that very few people said anything, it was pretty horrific.

No, no, absolutely flat. There was no crater. The bomb exploded well up and it’s the blast effect that does most of the damage. The radiation with people in a certain vicinity is total, fatal of course. But a lot of people died from fire

the effects of fire and so on. A lot of burning. Yes. So quite an experience.

Ah that was interesting. I was only a boy of course but they were very submissive, subservient,

always looking down when you spoke to them. I remember going into a chemist shop to ask for something for a cold and the pharmacist’s daughter was in there with a kimono which was a bit unusual cause they were going into the western side of clothing. And she spoke a little bit of English.

And he the father, intercepted what I was trying to say and I pointed to his assistant, his daughter, meaning that she could understand what I was tyring to say. And he immediately thought I was trying to proposition her and he was saying, “No, no, no,” or words to that effect. And eventually she convinced him that it was all right, I was only asking for

some common cold supplement. And it was obviously a concern that a lot of the military were just having free ball with Japanese women and I saw it happen.

Well it was a huge

number of Japanese girls had tattoos, a number on their thigh and they were prostitutes or just auctioned off. And it was a common thing. Soldiers or sailors or airmen would go ashore and I know the Americans had quite an impact because they set the rules. But you would go to a bar and quite often the bar would have two or three girls who had numbers.

And if you wanted to be sure that they were being regulated, you asked for their number. So they would just show their number, or it might on their arm.

Right. Right. Would be inspected regularly. But in spite of that we had very, very high incidents of venereal disease.

I can’t speak for my colleagues in other areas but I know that in Sydney there was a very high proportion. And I was somewhat innocent, I thought the officers were exempt but apparently they weren’t.

I think we do, I think we do, I think we’re all very human.

Oh a huge number, five hundred or so.

No I really didn’t. I began to realise what sort of impact the war was having when I did my small arms training with the army just outside Kure, and they lost, they had a casualty. Part of the exercise is to advance

over ground and you drop and mortars are fired ahead of you and you’ve got to be on the ground. And mortars are fired a certain range ahead. And everything’s okay. But if a round is short charged by accident and lands in amongst the team there’s going to be casualties. And they had a casualty just before we arrived. So you know I was aware of how messy it is when you’re trying to pick a man’s body up and he’s

in lots of pieces. So, yeah.

Well we were waiting for our ship and I think the authorities thought this is what we’re getting you a little bit orientated towards self defence. And it was very sensible. I had never handled a hand grenade before.

I found it quite interesting. Various weapons. And tactics that you deploy to manoeuvre between small valleys and the tactics that you would have. And of course it made sense because later on, although it didn’t eventuate. On one occasion I was sent off in a boat

to pick up somebody and I would’ve in fact been entering inshore waters. But what I was doing was aborted because the person I was to find was found on a mud bank and the helicopter had picked his body up.

Oh he was shot down. He

was a pilot, Sinclair his name was, Sinclair. He’d bailed out and his parachute and body were seen on a mud bank and it was very difficult to get to this character. And the helicopters eventually – cause we had an American helicopter on board. And he actually went out

and I think it was he who picked up the body. He was then brought back and given a burial. The only one of three. But the idea of the training would’ve given me some idea of how to handle a weapon.

I didn’t enjoy it but I did it. I don’t think anybody in the military enjoys the brutality of it.

Oh I really did and I’ve always enjoyed working with the army. I’ve had a very close relationship in several postings with the army and I had experienced later on in Malaya when I served with a British battalion in the border region of Malaya. And

carried a gun.

Yes, yes, I do. I think I would have been a better soldier than a sailor.

Laden with aircraft.

Well it had

two types. The Sea Fury was the fighter, single engine. And the Firefly was the twin crew anti-submarine aircraft, which is used for bombing purposes as well. Both aircraft were interoperable but of course the Sea Fury was faster and more manoeuvrable. So they had different tasking.

Yes a fighter.

Oh enormous, there has to be.

Oh yes they’re all sailors, there’s no airmen. They’re all pilots, were all navy. Everybody on board was navy except for two, maybe

three soldiers. Two majors. One of whom has just passed away last year, a brigadier. Brigadier Sincombe. So they were the liaison for tasking purposes as the pilots would be briefed, the army would sort of give technical advice on targeting.

So the aircraft were all serviced, fuelled up, armed by sailors. And they did a damn good job, really good job and in conditions that were pretty difficult and cold. Although when I discovered how cold it was with the army guys ashore, I think I had the better job.

It was cold, it was cold.

Well it was pretty cold at sea as well, mm.

We had our own fleet air arm you see. That was the idea of the carrier. The carrier was the core of the fleet air arm.

And the naval air station at Nowra was the shore base where all these aircraft were kept and pilots were trained and recycled. And the squadrons would then, when their pilots were competent to fly their aircraft, would then go to sea and land on and start their sea training which is a totally different experience to flying off an airfield. Totally different. And the other experience which is totally different

for a pilot is flying over the sea. It’s quite different and very lonely, to flying over land. And it requires a certain skill.

Oh absolutely and in fact one of our pilots who was lost, probably was lost because he was disorientated in cloud. In a formation and must’ve drifted away and

before he realised, upside down and disappeared.

Well you know midshipman is the – not a very highly regarded position in life. You normally

get the dreg jobs but other than that we used to be in the operations room, where we would learn with the sailors to operate on the radar plots. And in those days we used grease proof pencils and everything, all the raids, all the sorties would be marked you know with grease proof pencil so that the supervising officer sitting in the back there, looking down rather like an air direction room,

would be able to direct the aircraft to investigate contacts or to go in inland to start the sortie. And of course the targets would be, would vary all the time. It would depend on where you were on the coast of South Korea or what your target was. For instance quite often we were providing self defence for our own formation. Some thirty, twenty, twenty-five

or thirty per cent of the tasking I believe was self defence. And sometimes there were convoys, you know the Americans would, even in a convoy of troops… And there were twenty one nations in Korea. Twenty one nations there, so a lot of troops were being recycled backwards and forwards between Japan and South Korea. So when you did that and you recycled it would be pretty important to make sure that your

vessel, transporting a thousand troops wasn’t sunk by an enemy submarine. Or intercepted or something. So a lot of time was spent in convoy, surveillance as well as targeting.

Yes I did. Well it was real activity of course. And

you could hear what was happening and you were learning. You could hear the noises of how people operated, co-operated. And there were some incidents for instance, aircraft were hit ninety-nine times. I read that, I’ve just been reading up on the Korean War. And nine aircraft were shot down. So there was always something interesting happening.

That you could participate, I didn’t have much impact but you were able to assist with you know, plotting and advisory roles and so on. That was one job. And that was comfortable because you were warm there. The job which was most uncomfortable, where you were bitterly cold, was as the midshipman in charge of the lookouts. Right on the top,

right of the top above the bridge. And it was open, bitterly cold, windswept, rain swept and in the broad winter I can remember the coffee coming up, or the cocoa rather. Called ‘kye’ in the navy, the cocoa would come up and be put into mugs and if something distracted you and you were two minutes or three minutes

getting to your cup it was getting pretty chilly. It was as cold as that. And sometimes it was so cold one or two of my colleagues had to be lifted in a stretcher off, they were just so frozen up: an interesting experience. Because lookouts, you know, and your glasses would fog up and I really don’t think we would’ve been much use if we’d been

attacked.

Yeah well sometimes that happened. Exactly that happened. The bridge would say, “Send somebody up to relieve that unintelligible person on the microphone.” That’s right.

Oh things are different, the situation is different now, as we don’t have an aircraft

carrier. We’ve got some reasonably large ships but we don’t use them for the same purposes. But you know the visual lookout is always essential. Radar is now such a magic weapon that you virtually know everything around you for hundreds of kilometres. And you must know. Satellite communications now provide assured communications, which we didn’t

have in those days. And so much of the ship is now enclosed. You see in those days, gun direction platform was open and many of the ships that I served in, the bridge was open. Today they’re all enclosed and you can just shut the scuttles and shut the doors and put the heater on and everything’s tickety boo, it’s marvellous. But

we had a hurricane, more correctly a typhoon, just after we joined the Sydney which was an experience in itself. I’d never experienced extremely rough weather and I’d experienced gale conditions as a midshipman. But a typhoon was something quite unique.

And we were sailed from what turned out to be the best protected Japanese harbour, we were in harbour at the time, by the British admiral in charge of the Commonwealth formation. And the Americans stayed in harbour and they were right on this occasion. And the idea that it’s best to be at sea under typhoon, hurricane conditions, than be in harbour and be

forced in your mooring to be dragged and go aground and be wrecked. So we were at sea. And this typhoon rolled the aircraft an extraordinary amount. I can’t tell you how much it was but it felt like a right angle but it was obviously less than that. And probably about eighty degree, maximum roll. And four aircraft were swept over the side. The water

used to come over. And the entire outfit of aircraft that were left had to be worked on for two days to get the salt water out of them. It was quite an experience. Even a tractor was swept over the side.

I was, on one of these occasions I was in the gun direction platform. And it was so

cold and windy that we were obliged to vacate the gun direction platform. And the eight lookouts and myself had to go down the outside of the structure and as the ship would go over to starboard you could see the sea underneath you. It was you know, interesting. So when you made your exit down the ladder you made sure that

the ship was going to port. Which of course is rather ironic because if we’d slipped we’d have had a really nasty fall onto an iron deck.

Oh I’d hope so.

I don’t think so. You would’ve been a very lucky fellow to be picked up because they couldn’t lower a boat.

And one of the supporting destroyers would have to try and steam into the wake to locate the person but none of us were wearing life jackets so you wouldn’t have been there for long, a minute.

Because we were – there were no life jackets in the gun direction platform because that wasn’t a position from where she exited into the sea. If you were in a boat,

you were already in the water, and you would have a life jacket. But you didn’t wear life jackets normally. But clearly you know in view of what was happening it might have been prudent if we had been wearing life jackets because we were certainly moving through the swing.

Well it was the attack carrier for – deployed with an American some distance away. But we didn’t inter-operate, we occasionally passed in the night or at refuelling or replenishment, you know to fuel up or load up with bombs and

rockets and that sort of thing. Yeah but it was the main at sea force supporting the effort on the west coast. We occasionally went to the east coast but very rarely.

Yes that’s right, that’s correct.

Oh you mean sorties from the ship to the shore.

Yes well you saw and quite often you were involved in the briefings, not as an active player but perhaps you were carrying some document or writing something down. Debriefing somebody. Especially after

an incident when somebody had been shot down or having to land at another air field.

Yes. I did get to know – because I joined late I don’t think my group of midshipmen got to know the pilots terribly well. I mean we did in a subsequent mission in South Korea.

But I did meet one of the pilots at breakfast because as midshipmen we were normally required to mess, as you call it, mess in the gun room for the midshipmen. Kept separate. But because we were in an operation situation, all the midshipmen were taken out and put with the officer in the wardroom. So not surprising that one day,

just after we went on patrol, I happened to be sitting at breakfast with a young man with a slightly burnt face from bailing out of a Spitfire from the Battle of Britain. He’d joined the RAN. Should be sitting beside me and in a very relaxed style conversed with me, which I found very interesting because I was a midshipman, you were the dirt of the earth of course. And we had a little conversation, he had his breakfast

and he went off. And I was in the operations room a little while later to hear him being shot down. And that was the end of him. He was our first casualty. Lieutenant Clarkson.

Clarkson.

Oh about weather in England.

I don’t – breakfast, what he was doing. I think he might’ve asked me a question or two about what I was doing. But I had seen this chap before but I’d never seen him intimately you know face to face or side by side. And so that shook me a bit. It’s almost like hearing it happen. I could hear his number two

reporting what was happening. And it was almost like being there, witnessing it.

Well yes his number two saw him starting to go out of control and he immediately reported back you know,

spinning out. I can’t remember what he said exactly but it was something to do with, “Leader is spinning out and he’s going straight in.” And then saying he’s crashed. And I remember the flight direction officer, who become the Governor of Victoria, this Admiral Murray saying, grabbing the microphone and saying at the time, “Two,” the number two, “Can you see any sign of

life?” Which was the sort of comment that you would make, somewhat innocently and of course the person witnessing it and flying above realising that his plane is just a burning wreck, there’s no question of survival so of course all he could do was come back with a series of expletives, you know to say how could he possibly be alive.

And that was it. So yeah and it galvanised the entire operation, as you would imagine. Everybody.

Oh he flew back on board. He was debriefed. I wasn’t there for the debriefing but that was our first casualty so of course it would have an effect on the entire ship.

But we were very lucky, we didn’t lose many, only three. But there were a number of close shaves, very close shaves.

Well of course I can’t give you a precise strategic overlay because I was not very high up in the structure of things in those days. We were about the level of worms. But

Sydney was posted off the west coast of Korea, most of the time. Occasionally there was a sortie around to the east coast. And some time spent covering convoys that were taking troops backwards and forwards to the Japanese islands and the South Korean mainland.

Quite a few. Depended on the weather.

On one or two occasions they couldn’t operate at all it was so rough. On others they excelled. But the average was one and a half sorties per pilot a day.

Oh I can’t tell you that exactly. There were several squadrons, three squadrons at least, air squadrons. I suppose about forty-five.

They’re in the records.

Well I can recall vividly the thump that used to occur on the back end, and of course the ship would shudder. And midshipmen tended to live in the back end of the ship beneath the flight deck. And whenever aircraft came into land you could hear the thump and you knew somebody was on,

onboard okay. Occasionally if they didn’t make it they had to go around again or they missed the wires and you could hear an engine reeving up, screaming in order to get off the deck again. But that didn’t happen often. They were damn good air crews. They did well in fact, they ended up with a commendation. And we all got the commendation medal, 7/3 commendation medal.

Well very little at night but occasionally aircraft would have to take off to take someone into the South Korean mainland. Occasionally if there was an ill person or somebody coming back on board, or there could have been a self protection requirement. As I said, some twenty-five-ish per cent

of sorties were self defence.

Well it was just an open space and we slung hammocks between hammock bars. Made them up in the morning, messed in the wardroom because it was an operational situation and we didn’t mess as a group in the gun room. Which would’ve been the norm.

And we had our own bathroom, toilet area. Yeah it was – for the time it was reasonable. What I do remember though is the amount of asbestos that used to drop onto us during the night in our hammocks, you know from the movements of the ship with all those landings. And even the take offs of the forward end, the catapult would have a reverb effect through the ship.

So it was quite common to wake up with grit in your mouth, from asbestos. But apparently you can eat this stuff. It’s when it gets into your lungs it’s not so good.

Well one of my term mates died, Admiral Martin who was the Governor of New South Wales. He is alleged to have had asbestosis.

Again the records will reveal the details.

I think over eight hundred. So you had a ship’s company who would do the normal seamanship running of boats and painting and cleaning, maintaining, cooking. And you had the air crew support doing all the aircraft operations.

Cleaning aircraft, patching up holes in them. As I said there were quite a few that were hit.

Well, most of them are done by little pop rivets around the area, unless it’s of course a component that can be replaced entirely. And after Cyclone Ruth I think at least seven aircraft had to have either wings or fins, rudders replaced

which gives an indication of how much damage the sea can do, when it’s angry.

No. But you see we had divisions in the ship and I was allocated to the fo’c’sle area and I had a motor cutter associated with another part of ship,

so I got to know the fo’c’sle or the fore part of the ship, seamen. There were sixty and I used to be their assistant divisional officer. So that was an interesting experience too.

Well you’re maintaining the records of the individuals. Identifying when they’ve got training elements that should come up.

Prepare them for certain other courses. Identify one of two who come up as being officer candidates and try to stream them, and that’s not so easy because you know, easier today. Because we’ve changed. Our mental ships are different. But in those days it wasn’t a popular thing to attempt to make officer category in the special duties list. Other things.

They come up for onboard courses, to elevate their status, promotion exams. And you normally get involved running those sorts of things. And then there are always problems that they come to you with family problems. “Can I go home, my brother’s been killed in a car accident.” And in that situation

it was impossible but if there was you know kids involved, your own family, quite often there were special arrangements to cater for the compassionate side of life. And you’d get involved.

I think “middies” as we were called were accepted because we were between,

neither fish nor fowl. We weren’t quite there and we weren’t with the lower deck but we were making our way. And I never found any difficulties. I thought that the sort of respect that existed was profound and in one role that I was learning to operate a motor cutter, which I enjoyed, boat operations. I had a

tutor who was a leading seaman and he was a very experienced, what we call a ‘three badge’, you know he’s got twelve years service up. Pretty hoary type. He was most respectful and he taught me well and I much respected him.

Well you always had, you know, one or two officers detailed on for certain supervision.

And we were even doing training at the same time. We were preparing for our lieutenant’s examination in seamanship. And that came up a year later. That was a very important exam.

Well I think you made your way. You saw your life. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist

to see the way in which you should be heading.

No, no. Do you mean reprobates or do you mean people who were bad bad examples?

Oh no, no. There were a few events that obviously went on that weren’t the best. Discipline was interesting. It was most first experience of warrant reading although perhaps in the training cruiser there may have been a warrant read there too but certainly

the commander used to read the warrants on board the Sydney and there were quite a few. Usually leave breaking and a few other types of incidents. But it would end up with somebody being put in the clink. Maybe for a week or so. Or getting his leave quashed for a few weeks or docked pay. No I can’t say

that I have any memories of being warned off people. I don’t think that would happen. I think you’d certainly know if there was a reprobate in the area and you obviously have a run ashore with him unless you were so inclined.

A warrant is a special form made up, you know follows

a Royal Navy tradition of sentencing a man, a sailor that is, to a form of penalty and it’s read in front of his mess mates and a large amount of the crew who are not on duty at that time. And it’s – if it’s read by somebody who sounds like a prison warden

it can be, you know it has an impact. And I suppose it’s all part of the discipline thing. You know years ago they had things called mutinies.

Oh no well we’ve changed. We’ve changed but you know it’s not a joke, they did exist in World War II and I think once or twice there have been incidents in our

navy that are very similar to a mutiny but not quite.

No I accepted what I was given and I think I survived. I think that’s the name of the game, survival. And I think, after a while you

have to be a pure idiot not to find the way in which to conduct yourself and your affairs. And maintain your self respect.

Well I’m sure everybody’s seen war movies of people in operations rooms where there’s a lot of plots,

you know plotting boards, radar equipment, people with headsets. People writing up material. Well of course now it’s changed, a computer does it all for you virtually. And the decisions are fairly elementary. There’d you have a couple of processes and normally you have time. If a raid was coming in you’d have time, perhaps twenty minutes to make a judgement on whether aircraft airborne could be diverted to intercept or whether you’ve got to launch aircraft. And that

means the whole process of getting pilots into cockpits, briefed and so on. And it means getting the catapult crew ready, perhaps ahead of time, all that sort of thing. There’s a whole process of things that have to be done. And it takes a lot of training to get it right.

How did I fit in with the

operations room?

I think I had just a lot to learn and you know by observation you pick a lot up. You know when I started plotting with a grease proof pencil, backwards for the first time it was pretty difficult. By the time you’d finished a couple of months you were not only plotting backwards but with your left hand. So you know you pick it up.

Well you must observe whilst you’re in position. I mean my first occasion was to be put behind a plot and handed a pencil. And I just looked at the pencil not knowing quite what I was supposed to do with it but I very quickly observed what was happening. So I began to put arrows on marks and somebody would plot a position. And I began to then identify that that was an aircraft or a bogey or a North Korean aircraft coming down

to intercept somebody or our own aircraft taking off. So you learn, you learn.

Well there might have been. I think I was too young to know what was terribly serious and what wasn’t. I know that the Americans were losing a lot of aircraft and quite often we’d be sent to an area to try and find pilots who’d bailed out. I think we only found one.

And he was picked up by an escort. Yes there were a number of events but we were never attacked. But we never knew. And I can remember the gunnery officer coming up onto the gun direction platform once or twice with a threatening scenario, which was probably exaggerated just to keep us on our toes. But the only incidents that I

can remember well were fishing boats. Because some of them used to sail across your bows, you know get involved and mess up your manoeuvres to get aircraft airborne or so on. And I had to fire weapons cause you also controlled, which I didn’t mention previous, you also controlled the air defence of the carrier with a number of Bofors gun positions that were around the ship.

And occasionally you’d be directed to fire a burst ahead of a fishing boat to make sure they steered away. Because you never knew they might not be dropping a mine or two.

Yes. Certainly. Usually when aircraft

would make their last call to go in to make an attack, or make a sighting report. Or an aircraft had gone down, that was very tense. Especially for the air direction officer.

Well I think everybody smoked furiously. That was something which I found hard to grip, I think I got a lot of headaches and I think others did too from the intense cigarette smoke environment. Ash trays existed in almost every position. Everybody smoked. I think even

I began to smoke in an effort to cope with it. But I think that may have helped people ease their nerves a little. But when – in normal operating when there’s no noise, it was calm, people just plotting or standard radio calls, everything is

quite reasonable. It’s only when there’s a, you know a nasty incident that, everybody is head down watching what they’re doing, concentrating and of course you can’t help but hear. Because the loud speakers are inevitably operating, including the distress frequency. That’s the worse one.

Well I was there for two of the three, in the operations room when two of the three went down. I was also coming on duty when another incident occurred where a Firefly, which is a two-seater,

went down and the pilot was I think McMillan, something McMillan, I think it was a petty officer, later Lieutenant Hancock crash landed. And the North Koreans were coming in too. Obviously they would’ve killed him. Most pilots, not most but a great number of pilots, were killed on capture. And

you know air crew were rotated above. And the Australian air force got involved and I think the Americans may have got involved, strafing to keep the North Koreans away from these two pilots who were hovering beside their aircraft. And Hancock as I recall, at the last moment, as a helicopter was actually coming in and it was the helicopter we had on the ship, piloted by an American named Babbitt.

Yeah, waka, waka, waka-d into their position and Hancock picked up a Sten gun that he had and shot a North Korean who was ten metres away. And then they hopped in the helicopter and survived. Great story of recovery and I remember when the announcement was made in the ship, the cheer in the ship reverberated. A great morale booster. And that pilot, that

chief petty officer, was awarded one of our medals and the Distinguished Service Cross. Outstanding.

I think celebrations were fairly much left for harbour duties. I think people kept their cool on board ship. You had a beer issue occasionally from the ship’s company but it was all regulated and not a continual

event.

Well I think the risk that they were taking, cause they were the ones who put their lives on the lines every time they hopped into an aircraft and took off. And occasionally something happened and they didn’t take off, they went over the side.

Or didn’t come back. But I think they were respected because it was the dangerous job they were doing. But as time went on and the number of successful sorties were repeated back to us by ground reconnaissance people and photography, they were even more highly regarded.

Pilots tend to be a bit different. So they’ve got their own character. No it’s a pretty scary life. Today the survival rate is much higher than it used to be. But during World War II the survival rate was something like one in three.

No not especially, no, no. I think there

may have been individuals who were very highly regarded. I know that two of the squadron commanders were very highly regarded and both did very fine jobs. And that’s all recorded.

Well you’re very vulnerable of course in a carrier, because you’re obviously the

principal target. Well you would be, you’d expect to be. And submarines have got a phenomenal kill rate, even in exercises for penetrating screens and you know, zipping, firing a simulated torpedo right on a main body, an aircraft carrier. So you’re awfully vulnerable and of course you’re sitting on a huge amount of octane and a big oxygen tank.

So it could be curtains. And if you have a fire on board it’s even more serious. Aircraft carriers. You then drift onto whether aircraft carriers are really worth it or not. And it’s a hard one. I think I’d be a fifty one per cent supporter of the aircraft carrier

concept. They’re not costly relatively. They’re mobile platforms. You can hide. Very well, submarines can hide even better but providing the escorts are good and the scenario as we had supported an aircraft carrier where you could

deploy your airfield away from an area where fog has held shore-based aircraft down, you can zip into an open space, you can operate. So aircraft carriers have got a lot of pluses. Even today. The Americans with their huge aircraft carriers of course prove that wherever they operate in

the Gulf of Iraq and so on.

Well we never heard that. It was alleged that they had submarines but you had to operate on the basis of the best intelligence you had. It’s like every military scenario.

You’re dominated by your intelligence and if somebody says to you, “There is a threat, there is a submarine threat,” you have to assume the worst: that there is a submarine threat. And you’ll never know until you’ve proved there is one that there isn’t that threat. So we were always operating as though there was that threat. Mines were an even greater threat. Mines floating down the estuaries. For the escorts they had to go in close and do shore bombardments, they were very vulnerable.

The Americans had a couple of ships that were mined and even in Vietnam they had incidents. So it was always possible that a fishing boat or a drifting mine might find itself in your path. So the bridge staff were constantly looking ahead or watching the radar screen.

Oh yes I did my time in the bridge as well. But not as much – I did later when we left the operational theatre and I started doing standing midshipman type operations. I did a lot of bridge time. I’d have had to because bridge watch keeping was a fundamental skill.

Absolutely everything. Yes you did time in the engine room.

Boiler room. Ammunition spaces.

Well it varied depending on where my primary – if I was watch keeping, that is every four hours or so, if I was operating in the operations I would end up there during an action station. But that was exercised quite often. Either due to incidents or

pure training run. Or if I was on the gun direction platform I would end up somewhere in that vicinity.

Good question. I would say about twenty. Permanently.

Well we had about eight or nine lookouts scanning.

Just keep an eye, see that, you know there wasn’t some low flying aircraft coming in or spotting aircraft returning from a raid. Your own aircraft, identifying them. Because it’s a trick to latch yourself on behind. Japanese are very clever at that.

Communications?

You had – it was voice communications. You’d shout at people, who were on a pair of binoculars, high powered binoculars or you had a microphone system to the bridge.

Survival it was.

Well I would say that when

Clarkson died, I would say that I went through a metamorphosis. Yeah. Certainly.

I think understanding how serious life is, especially in the military.

Well my term, my own term of course.

So we remained fairly closely together.

Well you had occasional news sheets that would – well I suppose almost daily news sheets that would tell you what the ship had been doing, what others had been doing. And of course there was a time when the Americans were having a hell of a time, a bad time. And

then there was Inchon and so on. So you heard about the build up. I think when you got back into harbour from the breaks at the end of a patrol, that’s when you probably caught up and mail would come. Well mail was always coming on board but the heavy mail, newspapers and that would come in and you’d start to read.

But Australia was a long way away.

Well I don’t think it affected people terribly because you were so busy. We were surviving. We were doing what we supposed to achieve and the air crew were performing

extraordinarily well and they were getting results, so we were getting a feedback from that. And I suppose the propaganda was mainly based on our commonwealth force role. And I think it was quite significant. So that was our centre, you know our observation of the activity.

Not really. As midshipmen we were usually detailed off to have a visit to some geographic spot or occasionally we took a boat somewhere or visited a port area. As I said there was an awful lot of wreckage around so you had to be careful. And it was strewn with stuff. It was incredible the amount of damage that was done around the harbours in Japan

at the end of World War II. But you know we’d go shopping occasionally. Everybody had to have a Japanese Noritaki tea set. I remember bringing one coffee set back for my parents. Things like that.

I was a bit surprised.

A – I hadn’t realised there’d been so much damage inflicted and secondly I was surprised that the Japanese, who are known for their ability to you know, dig stuff out of the bottom of the sea hadn’t really tackled all this. I suspect it was the occupation was still settling down a new Japan.

Changing them into a more of a Western style and I suppose that, there was only so much they could do. But that’s certainly gone and I went back to Japan some six years after that and it was almost all gone. So yeah, it totalled the place. Even Hiroshima has changed.

Well I was there for about five months and the ship was there from, I think it was allocated operational service from August ’51 to February ’52. I joined them. I joined the ship as I said before in Japan having trooped out from UK.

We came back to Australia yes.

Oh it was a great relief. I think the ship’s company were so pleased to get back. Back to families and normality and away from that dreadful VD scourge.

Well it obviously affected a lot of the ship’s company and so you know

we were reminded by the captain, the moment we left the operational area, that from now on it was, watch your personal habits or your families will sort you out.

Oh no I think everybody was pretty straight by the time we got back to Australia. We did lose somebody who caught some dreadful disease, which I think you’d almost call AIDS [Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome] today.

And he was put ashore and I think died, months later in Hong Kong. But I’m not familiar with all the details.

Well I didn’t know what it was. It was a pretty prurient disease that incapacitated him and he had to be put ashore.

Well I think the records will tell it better than I can, but it was a very serious problem.

Penicillin and you know it was a hopeless task for the poor old religious fraternity on board. And I remember sailor I had who had caught it nine times. And he was an awfully nice guy and he was one of my lookouts too at one stage. And I

tried to talk that this was a ridiculous situation and how on earth could he face up to his family responsibilities. And I cannot remember now whether he was married. I’m not sure. But I remember him looking me straight in the eye and saying, “Sir there’s nobody purer than the purified.” And I was lost. I was lost, I had no response.

I suspect, I suspect. I think they would’ve to have been very tolerant wives and girlfriends.

Well my experience was where they didn’t go to sea. That’s more recent evolution. And as I was the corps director of naval signals at one stage and I was also

OIC [Officer in Charge] at the signal school in Victoria once, where we trained the women too. It was my belief that the standards could be improved. The standards were very high, they always have been. Cause they’ve got to be high because communications is so nitty gritty and everything’s got to be a hundred per cent. You can’t have one per cent of signals constantly failing, not arriving. You lose the battle. So women do a lot

of that in shore stations. So it seemed to me prudent to try and put women and men together. There was a tremendous ruckus amongst the male hierarchy to keep them separate. But the training establishment agreed and the courses were amalgamated. I have to say that the standard went through the roof. It was some chagrin

if you like but the women always topped the course. Not always but nearly always. But their example enthused the men and I think communications, which do require exactitude, precision and a lot of detail. Constantly changing detail. It’s like email today, there’s always something changing. A new format’s coming in, it’s the same with signals.

And I’ve always found the women are so good in leading from the front in this sort of thing. And now that you have women in ship, it’s across the board. My experience of seamen in a submarine was impressive. I’m told that in ships they perform in the communication area at least, very well, doing all the things that men did. So I’m confident that

the standards are certainly going up. I once asked a French colleague when I was defence attaché in Paris and I still see this chap from time to time. I asked him, “How the French were coping with women in their navy?” Because they likewise have introduced women about the same time as we did, to go to sea in ships. They have commanding officers of ships already who are women. And I guess we’re about to have that too.

And this is 2004. And he said to me, “There will be no problem in our western navies having women at sea providing the enemy does too.” And that’s a very interesting comment and needs quiet analysis. Because there is a subtlety in the mindset change between how we operate tactically

at sea today with how we did before.

Well the army has a problem there. I’m very sympathetic to some of the army problems that

women can operate anywhere in the army. I think it’s not too good operating in a tank. A tank or vehicle like the Humvee in Iraq at the moment. When they get hit they suffer, almost total casualties. And men don’t like picking up pieces of women. Likewise in a deployed patrol formation where they’ve been ambushed and a women is seen to be hit, men are

likely to lose their cool, or could be likely to lose their cool to try and recover her. Whereas they might have left a man alone. And in so doing they might lose the action and that’s a bit of a worry. So I think all these people who have stories about, and women especially who argue there’s no reason why a woman can’t do anything, need to be very careful about aspects like that. Cause they can have quite serious implications.

Men generally don’t like to see women hurt.

It’s in their nature. They all have mothers and sisters and wives.

Well they’ve taken women out of the front line.

Mm.

When I say that, they still do patrol work.

But they don’t put them in the forward trenches, which they did once. A man doesn’t like to see a woman bayoneted. And you’ve got to be careful about how you train, where you put women, because they do have a role, a very important role and I think they’re good for morale but you could put them in position where

more damage is done than should be.

No it’s not pleasant but unfortunately it can happen.

For fun?

When I came home.

You mean I came home and took leave with my parents.

I always came home to my parents, yes who lived on farms in southern Queensland. Dramatic change. I really didn’t do anything extraordinary. I can’t say that coming home was always the fun of

visiting a foreign port. But the break was always enjoyable.

I didn’t

notice that. I came home to my parents on one occasion after this particular service in Korea, and the local RSL [Returned and Services League] sub group in the Boonah district sent me a letter, which was very nice of them. And they heard through the grapevine that I was home and invited me to come to one of their meetings and they inducted me and gave me an RSL badge. Which I thought was very nice but I’ve heard different stories

about Vietnam. About some callous treatment of men and that’s one of the reasons why a lot of them have not been able to settle. Because a lot of people I think since Vietnam who’ve had military experience do not settle well back in civilian life and I think it’s going to show up again when people who served in Cambodia, Somalia and even in the Gulf. I think things have changed a lot

in the way people’s sensitivities react to the civilian situation. That’s my perception and I think that you’re going to have many more people involved with the department of veteran affairs on pensions or looking for pensions or being pensionable because of something which has identified or related to war service, or operational service.

But there was one incident that I do recall. I was in London and I was about to join the Royal Navy College Greenwich for a course and I was with this colleague of mine. And we were sitting at breakfast this morning in this hotel about to go and join the college at Greenwich. And

sitting at the table and I had my jacket and I had this RSL badge that I’ve just talked about, showing. And a young lady, probably thirty-ish. I could see that she was talking to her friend and looking at me with a finger pointed. And she came over at one stage and it was too much, and she said, “Where did you get that badge?” And I – it was 1953-ish,

and she was Australian of course. And I had to say, “Look there’s been another war.” And she was very embarrassed and apologised profusely when she realised that I was a Korean veteran. And I realised then that there was this, them and us, this division. People hadn’t realised.

Well it took my breath away a bit too. I wasn’t quite prepared for it.

Oh some years. I

did more specialisation – some specialisation courses and then went to UK. I came back to Australia and was posted overseas to do a sub-specialisation course in signal communications. And then had three years service in the Royal Navy on exchange.

In other words I was exchanged for one of them. One of them came out and replaced me over a period, there were two of them in fact, over an eighteen month period. And I had three years away. So I then joined a squadron, the 3rd Frigate Squadron and we were based from Aden right through to Japan, we had six ships rotating between the areas. And one was doing Korean services as well. So being a staff officer then, a new

specialist, sub specialist, I would rotate with another officer, perhaps rotate between ships. Just looking at the departments and standards and exercises and exercising. And it was then that I was in Malaya. Malaya before it became Malaysia.

No, promotion was really on recommendation. Promotion above lieutenant commander. All the normal promotions follow period in that previous rank.

You gain seniority depending on whether you get first, second or third class passes. Mine seemed to be all about middle. And a couple of first class and a couple of third class passes. When I drank too much and returned too late at night before the exams. But promotion beyond lieutenant commander was by selection, and you were reported on annually.

And there’s a number to score in there out of ten. A sort of grading. And nobody gets ten. Normally nobody gets nought. Or you don’t stay for long. The average is about four and a half. And that’s a reasonable officer. To get promoted you’ve got to start hitting sixes and sevens.

No, no I was a lieutenant then.

Sub lieutenant and then lieutenant.

It had its moments.

No, no I was a

permanent. You see as a cadet midshipman we were different, we never took an oath. I’ve never taken an oath in my forty one years service. Except when I’ve had to appear to give evidence for some reason. But now when you sign up you take the oath of allegiance. And mine was a continuous period. So in the normal course I

would’ve reached retiring age at fifty-five. If you make admiral it’s extended by about three or four years. And if you go to the top of the admiral’s rank they might tolerate until you’re just about sixty plus. But normally that’s the end of your career. So you leave rather early. And sailors normally wouldn’t stay beyond forty five.

Some in special categories might.

Done my specialisation, in one particular specialisation. In other words it’s a deep specialisation. In other words you become versed in a lot of intelligence, crypto radio

operating. Morse, we were trained in Morse in those days. That was one mechanism, we used it to pass messages. Very soon it became coded, mechanical coding and now of course it’s everything, it’s high speed electronic mass information.

No, finished.

No we don’t teach Morse code, it’s dead, it’s finished. It’s an optional subject that you can be taught or you can pick up, but nobody uses it today. And semaphore is dead as well. I was trained in semaphore so we wig wagged and it’s a very useful silent, lines of sight operating. And that’s only taught by one or two sailors now. I don’t think any officers teach it.

Some ships still have people who can use semaphore for wig wagging, little messages between ships and manoeuvring and you don’t have to get on the radio and broadcast to the world and his wife, and so on. So it’s still a useful mechanism. Flags are still there, flag signalling is still available because the merchant navy you see uses flags to an extent. But even they are almost dead. So the skill area in

communications has shifted enormously.

And sailors.

Cryptography. Yes well that’s the – a process by which you disguise information so that hopefully the person, any person

who intercepts it who shouldn’t make use of that information, can’t understand what it is that you have been transmitting. So you’ve got simple codes. And in my time we had book codes where you changed the “cat sat on the mat” to X Y Z / B X Y P. And you wouldn’t be able to break that unless you had my code book. So that takes us back into World War II scenarios and compromising. But today you have machinery which you press a button

and put in a piece of card, processed card, just like a bank card. And that’s your code for a period of time. And whatever you say into that comes out as all that garbage of commas, burbles, and even voice communication is cut up into garble. So that’s what happens today. So I arrived into the communication world at the very moment these changes were starting to appear.

But I was never taught the depth in these new systems which people have today. I was brought up in the old Morse code era.

No not at all but it was something that appealed to me because it was a bit like a crossword puzzle. If you like crosswords there is a sort of analogy. And

in the early days some of the cryptographic systems that we used could be broken by a process of extrapolation and that’s how the code breakers would operate during World War II. But of course everything’s changed now. Nobody – you wouldn’t have a hope of breaking the stream of high-grade code today. You just couldn’t do it. You’d need all the computers in Brisbane. And that wouldn’t do you.

To try and provide permutation, combinations to get intelligence out of rubbish. So security is now a new game. Now you have to look at other ways at signal communication to try and identify information because you can’t crack the inside of a message.

Yes well I can understand the morality of that and I can understand that some religious

beliefs would find that reprehensible to have their women, for example, stripped by the electronic readers.

Well it does touch on personal issues but then again you’ve got to look at the big picture haven’t you? You know what are you trying to safeguard.

It’s the same thing in banks you see. If I wore a caftan or a burka and walked into the Commonwealth Bank and said, “Here’s my – I want a hundred dollars.” Would you like to see my face to be sure that the person is photographed so that if there’s any comeback you know who it is, or to be sure perhaps if there is a photograph evidence of

your driving licence that it is you. It’s pretty difficult.

No.

Oh probably no more than a month. And then I’d move back to

what was called the squadron leader. That meant the ship in which the captain of the squadron resided. And so I’d go back perhaps for two months and then move to another ship and so on. And then that ship itself would do refits. You know you can’t steam away forever and ever and a day. You’d got to go to port, you’ve got to open up the boilers. You’ve got to get the defects out of the system, leaks occur in high pressure steam pipes.

All that sort of rubbish. And it’s when you’re in port with little to do except you know booze up or play bowls or tennis or get your sports percentage up. It can be very boring and I used to find that situation boring. So on the 3rd Frigate Squadron I volunteered on two occasions

to join the military, the army in Malaya and I went to Ipoh, was posted out to Ipoh. And joined the field foresters and that was an interesting experience. That was the real thing.

No I was already in the ship that was in the Malayan – but they were refitting. Refitting means that you go into harbour and you know people start to clean up the ship because things go wrong. So whilst they waiting for six weeks

to sort that out in the dockyard, even merchant ships have to do that. I managed to escape and go off and join the army.

Well we were able to do that in those days. You could insert yourself or be inserted into an army or air force squadron depending on what the vacancies were. And there was one vacancy in this regiment. And I

trained up and joined them and a few days later after a bit of small arms practise I was given a sawn-off gun and sent off with this patrol into the jungle for a fortnight. For a couple of fortnight periods and I came away slightly more wise.

Well I mean all your military people you’re interviewing

in Malaya will tell you the same sort of thing. But during insurgency, communist insurgency after World War II, the British were trying to rid northern Malaya of the communist influence. There were little groups that were inserted in the jungle, were developing or growing up, practising, training, doing activities that were destroying morale

in the countryside. So the British forces went in. And the Australians had forces up there as well. But I joined a British group and that meant having people continually patrolling people on the jungle. A lot of jungle in Malaya. And that meant setting up camp and little sections would go off and set up ambushes. So I was involved doing

the same things as they were doing. Very interesting too because just after we got into the jungle, the officer in charge was a national serviceman named Howard, Esme Howard, Second Lieutenant Esme Howard. I discovered he was a relation of mine. So you know, very interesting experience. And sitting up there on ambush during a night patrol. So I think until

you’ve done it, you can’t explain it. So I have a high regard for my army colleagues, for the way in which they do these things.

No I didn’t, not in that posting. I also joined an air force squadron briefly to fly up in Lincolns

because they used to do surveillance, monitoring of certain frequencies, radio slices. A number of radios were known to be captured or compromised, or used by the communist forces. But we didn’t really detect anything at all. So I did that. The army side liaison was pretty harmless. I think the only incident was where somebody fired a rifle by mistake in the camp. The army takes those things very seriously.

And I remember in the camp one night fireflies started coming through. And I had never seen fireflies operating like that and suddenly a swarm of fireflies came through the jungle, over the camp. And for a second or two it was not frightening, but it was, yeah it was an unnerving experience. And shortly after that a

huge snake found its way through the camp. And I remember one of the soldiers shouting out in a high pitched voice, “Snake!” and I didn’t react. And we had Ibans, they were Borneo natives who were very good trackers. And you know, very good with a knife. And this Iban leapt out of his

basher, his little hut with his knife and chop, chop, chop. And the snake was in several pieces. And he had snake for the meal that night.

No. I have eaten snake but not on this occasion.

Oh it’s got a ground taste. I don’t think it’s particularly delicate but you know

some people like it. I think you’ve got to cook them well. I don’t think this one was particularly well cooked. Anyway digressing.

Well the squadron leader, that is the lead ship of the squadron, where the squadron captain lived. All the others had commanders in command. Understand the rank structure?

Captain is senior to a commander, three stripes is a commander, captain is four. And the squadrons normally had a captain in command. So I was in the command ship because that is where the specialist officers for the squadron would be. Each ship would normally not have specialists you see. Just maybe a navigator, the navigator would be a specialist cause navigation’s a pretty finite skill. Alright so then there

were other ships in the squadron. There was a New Zealand ship which rotated and then the others were ships that were, Cardigan Bay which was in Korea by the way, when I was there.

No at that stage. It was just an independent ship operating in the Commonwealth group. So yes, there were other ships of the same category, same

capacity if you like, capability. All small frigates.

Cardigan Bay. It’s a Welsh coastal name. And there were other ships like St Bride’s Bay, Crane. And the New Zealand was either Pukaki or Rotoiti.

Yes, yes mid twenties that would be correct.

No. I had met her in between being – the end of

my time as a sub lieutenant. When I finished my course in the UK, I came back to Australia overland through Europe and the Middle East and met the ship in Cairo eventually. Came back to Australia and then promptly joined a ship – unbeknown to me, I mean I was only a sub lieutenant, which was leaving a fortnight later

for Britain. And it’s very unusual for the Australian navy to send a ship overseas for more than a few weeks, or in the ocean area for a few months. But this was a full year away so I went back to Europe and we had a new weapon system on board which we were having some difficulty with and we were trying to train up a new team of specialists so we went to Northern Ireland and spent our time there and

enjoyed a break. We went to France with another squadron ship and we went to a port called Knott in Brittany, and of course being a sub lieutenant as I was about to be made lieutenant I still had, no I had really elevated in life. I’d moved from being you know, the dregs of the ship in a big ship like a carrier to being the sports officer,

the wardroom water caterer. And I think I looked after confidential books. And so I was the sports officer and I had to organise some sporting events for we Australians. And soccer in those days was a name that people had finished looking up in the dictionary, they knew what it was about. But very few people had ever played it. So we had to find a soccer

team and a golf team and a tennis team. And the deputy mayor of this city, about the size of Brisbane, was looking after sports and he himself was a – quite a well-known sportsman. So I liaised with him and inevitably as these things are, when you show the flag, inevitably you have these cocktail parties. And he was invited on board with his wife but since

his daughter had just come back from being a mademoiselle in Ireland, she came on board. And her English was fluent. So you know I met her a couple of times and then when we left, I wrote the usual thank you note. And mademoiselle

replied. And so there was an exchange of cards and letters, you know pretty spasmodically after that. So when I specialised later as a signals officer, I on one occasion sailed a yacht across from England to Cherbourg and while in Cherbourg, I think the wine was good, I could remember the address.

I wrote a card saying, “Back in this part of the world. Enjoying Cherbourg.” Which isn’t really an enjoyable port but anyway the wine was good. And I got a reply. And we began to communicate and we met briefly once more. I then went to this squadron and as things would be

in the fullness of time, wisdom descended upon my soul and I realised that I couldn’t carry on the way I was going. That there was a young lady for whom I had high regard so I proposed to her from Hong Kong and met her again nine months later and we got married.

By letter. In those days we still wrote letters. So I’m a very lucky fellow.

It works.

No, no, we had a crew of about six. I might add on the return trip we ran into a gale and broke our mast so it wasn’t – I think I got duly caned for arriving back late. The fact that the mast was broken was no excuse.

Oh well I think people you know, people who

like sailing are always there to put their names on a list. And I acquired a crew, one or two had sailed before. Most interesting.

Oh no, no, well we just visited for the mid winter break, a long weekend. Sailed across on the Friday, got there on the Saturday

morning and returned on Monday. I might add we didn’t make it back until Tuesday so we were slightly late.

Oh well that was simply to go to France. There was no other motive. It was really the red wine that got me to remember an address and to write a card. At that time.

Well six weeks later a response came. A very nervous letter opening. I was in Singapore then.

Well,

a serious consideration of course and a seeking of advice, parental advice and so on. Of course we were of different cultures. We had a lot of common elements in the culture. I had no French to speak of, no language. So

I was looking at a family to whom I couldn’t communicate except for my future wife and father-in-law and mother-in-law in fact, in a way. There’s a shot of her over there. And I knew that some members of my family were not too fond of the French. So it was a big gamble. And I

- you know by that stage I had met and parted company with Norwegian, English and Australian girls and – but none of them had the sort of character – and here was a person who had gone through Nazi occupation and who

had a lot of resilience, and ability to bounce back in all situations. And being a wife of a sailor is not easy. And I think that’s the thing that I could see myself, being a divorcee time and time again, with other people with whom I’d had an association. But I felt very confident this person was unusual and I was right.

Well rather than getting married in France a decision was made to be married in London and a whole tribe of French people came over to London. And I had a lot of my colleagues who were doing specialisation courses or finishing them as I had. I had just finished exchange time. I was coming back to Australia. So I had a full team of friends

but none of my family came. I had some English relatives who were there. But again distance and costs no doubt, economic considerations. And in those days travel was not easy. So yes.

Oh yes we were married in Leicester Square.

In a lovely little French church which had been beautifully done – some very fine sculptures and painting, an extraordinary place. It has a brothel on one side and a restaurant on the other. And I’m not sure if that makes the church any better or worse. But that’s where the event occurred in Leicester Square.

Well that had to be somewhere else.

Yes. Oh yes the full performance. I’ve got it around the house. A bit like the one we’ve just seen in – of a certain young lady in Denmark [2004 marriage of Mary Donaldson to Prince Frederick of Denmark], similar sort of performance.

Less the carriages. And the beak horns.

Well we understood quite clearly then that we were to be the control ship

for the sea control area around the Montebellos to make sure that when the bombs were – or where the bomb itself was to be detonated – that no fishing boats or others were in the vicinity. So aircraft would do sorties to patrol the area and we had a few, one of two frigates I recall also there to assist or intercede and when the weather was right.

And I think it was the Narvik, I think it was the landing ship tank the Narvik as I recall, which had the bomb. And the day came and the day before I was sent for and told to take a package, a sealed package to the Narvik and so I took it by boat, a pretty choppy sea. And not realising that it was a classified

document. It was the orders for the final operation. And – because nobody had told me and I hadn’t learned as a silly midshipman that in fact when you take classified information like cryptography or codes from one ship to another, from one authority to another, you exchange with a document signature. Nobody gave me the document to

sign and I just handed this piece of information to some sailor on the landing craft and came back. And the following day of course people realised there was no receipt from this ship. But fortunately the document was located in a moment of time and it all went ahead. And we sailed. I think I was duly reprimanded for something I didn’t understand at the time.

And then we all stood on the upper deck miles out to sea to the south west. And watched with smoke glass for this massive explosion and eventually we saw a pinprick on the horizon and that was the Narvik being blown into little pieces, and splattered all over the Montebello Islands. And there now is a little hole

and I think it’s called the Narvik Hole, I’d have to check my facts but I think it’s where the bomb was detonated.

Yes it blew the ship up.

Mm and there was a huge column that came up afterwards. And aircraft were then, Royal Australian Air Force craft were subsequently flown through and I think you know the stories, you probably

interviewed some people who, if they’re still alive, cause most of them developed cancer radiation, and eventually died.

To take samples and became red hot. Some of them and they’d still be buried out near Amberley for all I know. But we did some stupid things. But I know that

people say to me who were involved in that operation, that they have a cancer condition as a result of that explosion, I’d had to say that’s garbage. We were so far away from this and the wind was in the other direction. We couldn’t possibly have been affected. So I hope that one dies a natural death if that’s the right phrase. Except for the pilots:

the pilots who were obliged to fly through. I think they had a very sinister end.

Oh probably twenty miles, twenty sea miles. You know the Montebello Islands were just a faint smudge on the horizon.

In the north west of Western Australia. The other detonations were done in

South Australia of course.

Now that’s a good question. I don’t believe that any would have been there then. I think it was fairly well cleaned out. But fishermen often came by and a lot of foreign fishermen came there. And years later I was in a ship called the Diamantina, which is now a museum piece here in Brisbane.

And I was the jimmy of the ship and we went to that island to replace the signs that were put in after the campaign, after the event. And as I recall the signs were in English so it told a lot to Indonesian fishermen. Very clever. And we went around with our geiger counters and monitors and frisked stones and bits of metal that were still hot. And I remember

a big gear wheel, I can’t imagine where it came from but it was complete. Except it wasn’t on its axle. And we brought that back to my ship, which was the Diamantina and lashed it down on the upper deck having put a geiger counter on it and it said it was harmless. And we sailed back to Fremantle and a team came over from Sydney

from the damage control and nuclear school in Sydney. And put their geiger counter and their geiger counter went off the board. So I, as it was outside my cabin for a couple of weeks I sincerely hoped that really I haven’t been too badly radiated.

No we were told as long as the geiger counter was used, so long as the meter didn’t go into the red you were right. And it seemed to be the case but the island still has a few hot spots.

Oh I can’t recall exactly but I think they were warning signs of ‘Keep Away, Danger, Radiation’ words like that.

And a skull and cross bones sign.

But they weren’t in terribly useful languages like Bhasa.

None at all, no. None at all.

No. No. Other than to hand over what we had

picked up to the decontamination team that came over from Sydney. Interesting time. I’ve often wondered whether any member of the ship’s company suffered from cancer conditions that might have been associated with radiation, which can be quite severe of course. We’re a little wiser today but in those days I think we were a bit blasé.

Mm. Mm.

Well I was a bit disappointed. I thought it was going to be a huge detonation, a great big blinding flash in the sky. But I suppose because we were so far away, the distance it confined it. As the explosion was inside the hull, I suppose a lot of the flash was contained. I suppose

that may have been part of the idea, concept. To assess blast effects and I wouldn’t think there was very much of the ship left.

Well we had surveillance on the area but it was mainly a British operation. The Australians were very heavily involved with control.

But mainly back on the mainland, back in Woomera.

Do you mean as a young boy or a lieutenant?

Sub lieutenant doing sub lieutenant courses?

I have to say that it’s not easy

to explain but you continue to go through a process of courses and examinations and some are theoretical and some are practical. And they eventually get a bit more serious or arduous and go to another level, and include more aspects. And so there were courses – your time in college that speaks for itself. As a cadet midshipman, as a midshipman. With the lieutenant’s examination at the end of that,

which was a major seamanship and then you had sub lieutenant’s examinations when you really gained the knowledge to which specialisation you might head later on in life. And then you had, if you were selected, your deep specialisation course and for me it was signal communications.

Well the principal task is ensuring that the teams in each ship, signals teams, communication team are competent and able to receive and transmit this information to and from ships, commands.

Not just to the naval side but into the joint army, air force side if necessary with aircraft. Training, constant routine of training. Every day there’d be some training routine. It might be semaphore in those days. It wouldn’t be today of course. It might’ve been Morse operating. And there’s various different exercises that you need

to specialise in to be up to speed. Sometimes you’ve got to work with an army team, sometimes it’s an aircraft. Sometimes it’s encoded, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s in a merchant ship mode. Sometimes it’s with a shore establishment where you’ve got an urgent medivac [medical evacuation] case. And that can be quite tricky.

There wasn’t much at all. We did a lot of coastal surveillance. We stopped junks and small boats on the west side of India. You went over with a pistol on your hip and you know shook it sometimes to get a point across. Had a good look. Usually they were

fairly clean but there were things that were going on that clearly needed to be controlled.

No I only saw a couple of dead ones. The British had a rather gruesome morgue scene that they used to pass you through.

I’m not sure how old the bodies were but they’d bring these out on a trolley and show you one or two of the victims. But really the only close shaves I think I can recall when I was working with the army was of Aboriginal Malayans who strolled into your trap by accident. And they wore the same sort of gear. The insurgents had a particular kind of khaki shorts

and possibly a shirt that identified them. And the Aboriginals quite often wore the same gear or at least the trousers. And I remember one patrol, one ambush where we nearly shot an innocent Malaysian Aboriginal. Fortunately they used to scream something at you which indicated they were Aboriginal.

Oh I think they used to say, “Abo, Abo Abo!” or something like that. But I think they were more worried that there’d be an Iban in the team. I don’t think they wanted to be chopped up by an Iban. But you know a soldier was likely to be reasonably approachable.

Just

a good looking dark skinned Malayan.

Well I think the RN’s always been and probably still is

to a large extent very traditional. By that I mean they have a lot of traditions that go with the way in which they relate to each other. Rank structures. Communicating, talking. The mess life is more formal. It’s – yeah.

Well look as time advances I think I’m left with the impression that change is inevitable. I think the essential thing is to retain sufficient traditions to hang the values on. And

I’m not sure that they’re still being maintained in our navy and that worries me a little. But then again I do hear some remarkable stories about how young men and women, in the [Persian] Gulf for example, are performing. And if they perform as well as they are and I’ll give you one example, I think they must be doing rather well. The Americans

who control the maritime and land areas, that’s inevitable, never as a rule give operational control of any forces to another nation. What have they done at the height of the war in Iraq last year? And earlier this year. They gave control of the naval formation

outside their battle group, which is their aircraft carriers. And all the operations off the coast to an Australian. I think that’s remarkable. Remarkable in that it’s a genuine – you see this is a thing that you don’t hear about in the newspaper and Howard [Prime Minister] and Latham [Leader of opposition Labor Party] don’t talk about it. But it’s so important in order to interoperate and to be able to have this stream of information about the nasties coming forward.

That if they can do that, it’s so important to sustain it and encourage it; because one day we might need it desperately. But if it’s suddenly cut off, the door is closed. And it means your crypto systems will change, the machinery that you need to interoperate electronically with cryptography might change and that means the door is double closed.

And for somebody who’s had a life in command and control exercise and intelligence, I would be most concerned about that. Because there’s no doubt, if we ever got into trouble and we needed help the Americans are the only people who can provide it. Europe is a long way away.

Culturally too. Culturally and socially. And I think we are probably getting closer to the Americans, not that I particularly

like that, but I think it’s inevitable and it does have some value.

Yes I had a lot of work with the American navy. I worked with them as the fleet communications officer which happened eventually further down the line. And

you know they have some aspects which are not very pleasant and others that are admirable.

Well after this period you’re talking about – did you get enough about the time in Montebello and, moving on?

Well I’m married, I’ve come back to Australia to specialise as a specialist

for the first time. And of course I got the usual Canberra posting like most people who do what I did. Nothing special in my case. And then after a short period of time I was posted to Diamantina for general experience away from communications. So I became the first lieutenant of the ship. I went to Sydney to do a diving course. I became a shallow water diver in a month and I was to return to Canberra

on a Thursday I think it was, and I was booked on this aircraft and our twins had just been born. And I’d witnessed the birth and seen the doctor. Back in Sydney finishing my course and flying back to Canberra and the aircraft booking was changed to the Friday, two days before it crashed. So I was very lucky. And

we lost the surgeon for our children in that aircraft. So that was a bit sad and also I was involved diving on the wreck, so it brought home a message.

Yes.

Oh I was really training, I was just learning. We were just scouring for bits and pieces of the aircraft and passenger seats and clothing. Fortunately I didn’t find things that other people found.

Yes I was one of the divers on board the Diamantina yeah.

Oh only a couple of years. It was really for the posting, I was really meant to be the diving officer in charge of the diving team. But I subsequently handed it over to another officer.

Well I went to, I

was posted from that ship to the joint anti-submarine training school at naval air station Nowra. And a month or so after I arrived there my brother was staying with me and he called me out one night and said, “Look, there’s a search light out at sea.” And I had a look and I thought that was most extraordinary. I didn’t have the wit to ring up the base to enquire if there was a problem. Cause I really wasn’t involved in station communications.

I was in a school training people on anti-submarine warfare. And the following morning it was on the news, that the Voyager had been sunk. And I was to join that ship a week later because it was the end of her training period and she was going to be assessed to go up to strategic reserve support. Because we always had a ship in South East Asia in

those days. And so I lost a lot of my mates in that ship and so did the ship I subsequently joined to replace her. And I was pulled out of that job and put into the Vampire, which went up to replace that ship in the Far East for a full year.

Well I would have only been on board for a weekend but you know it’s an irony

because I often thought about what might happened had I been on board as a signals officer. Not that I had acquired a great amount of experience but what is accepted to have been their mistake was that the officer of the watch was distracted, probably by the captain who may have been angry at the time. Had his head down in the chart table and the officer of the watch was distracted.

And didn’t see that he was heading straight under the bows of the Melbourne. Whether one would have been on the bridge observing and had the wit to do something is another question. But I find it a very lucky break and sobering too.

Oh I think the navy was very hurt. We all lost a lot of friends. I lost – the first lieutenant was a friend of mine, the navigator was a

close friend. The communications officer I knew.

I knew two of the sailors. And years later, I was to serve with some communicators who were on board and I know that two of them have been very badly affected. Affected to the point of suicide. Mm.

Oh it was

- the base was like a mortuary. Cause the helicopters were used extensively backwards and forwards. And they did a wonderful job trying to search and locate remains but you know, it all went down. I think the only bodies recovered were the captain and possibly one or two others I just don’t recall exactly. The captain’s body was recovered.

Well I mean you know there was two royal commissions. Oh we think – the story is well written and I can’t contribute to it because I’m not intimate with the situation, but I can say that one of my term mates was the gunnery officer on board in the previous commission so he’d just left as the ship was working up a new team, half old half

new crew. And he was the chap who became governor of New South Wales. And he said after the enquiry that he hadn’t been able to tell all the truth. And I suspect that alcohol had something to do with the irascibility, the condition of the captain. Not that he was intoxicated but that it might have upset him.

Cause I think he was suffering from an ulcer condition. And that may have been the cause of distraction. The officer of the watch was an RN officer, on exchange you see. Much as I’d been in the RN so I felt a lot of sympathy for this poor fellow. He didn’t survive.

Oh almost immediately. A fortnight later.

Vampire had just returned from the Far East having been first ship up there. And was doing a refit and we were, you know everything was slapped back into place and she was pushed back out into training in Jervis Bay and we went up to South East Asia very quickly. I had to. You know I’d just moved my family across from Western Australia. I had three little kids by then.

They were just settling down and I had to sell a car and fly my wife and three children back to France to stay with her parents for twelve months. Very difficult.

Oh no I didn’t find that too difficult, although I know it did affect some people.

It depended where you were in the ship. If you were in the upper deck you could breathe more easily because you could see what was happening. But if you’re down in the bows of the ship, and I can understand that some people in the Vampire, the ship I was then posted to, have had conditions recently that have come to light and they put it down to being locked up in compartments where they couldn’t get out and hearing all the

racket and the noises and alongside and occasionally the guns would fire. Perhaps they hadn’t been able to hear what the broadcast was and memories come back of Voyager and being locked in a compartment and drowning. As you know the story I presume of the forward mess deck. As it was on its side and filling up, a Chief Petty Officer Rogers who was given the George medal, the George Cross, eventually decided that no more could get out

and he was too big so he pulled the hatch down and they all sang “Waltzing Matilda”. And that was that. The people in the water could hear this going on. So that had an effect on quite a few sailors. I understand it.

Absolutely. There is absolutely no room for error

on the bridge.

Yes. Well by then you know you should have also acquired that feeling in the water that tells you that perhaps something’s not quite right. And I think that’s something that we probably still have and I hope we’ll always have, a skill. And that’s a British skill.

Yes exactly. You know the story about the escape from Apia in whatever it was, 1893. There was a British ship, an American, a French and a German. And there was some ceremonial event. And a hurricane got up, a cyclone got up, and the British captain read the advice given to him that the barometer

was dropping and that it meant something serious. And he extrapolated that there was a cyclone about to hit and he sailed his ship and the cyclone hit and the French went aground, the German went aground and the American sank I think. And as they cleared the harbour, the sailors on board the ships

that were then stranded, because they hadn’t raised steam, cause he, the Brit, raised steam in anticipation. And as they cleared the harbour those ships that were grounded cheered the sign, as the British ship the Calliope made its way slowly up harbour into the open sea and survived. And that’s a lovely story. And it’s a true one and that the sort of anticipation thing that I’m talking about.

Well again you see I was a signals officer. We had a very small squadron. I’m now back in the RAN. We had no more than three ships in the squadron, or maybe four in those days. And my role was just to establish the best

communication possible. And we used to have our annual tests, examinations between all ships in the RAN. And I’m happy to relate that for the next two years we won the efficiency medal for all ships in the RAN and I had a very good team of sailors, first class.

Around Malaya, Malacca Straits and

Borneo. Of course we had a visit to Hong Kong or two, and we had a Japan visit scheduled but it was cancelled when we had to prepare to go to war, because it looked as though we were going to war with Indonesia. And so the entire Commonwealth force went to sea and began to train in case we had to go to war against the Indonesians. Fortunately it didn’t happen.

I think at the last moment the New Zealand prime minister dropped out. I think Bob Menzies [Australian Prime Minister] then dropped out as well so – but the Brits, I think were pretty keen to do it and it was looking very very serious. They had three aircraft carriers and the Admiral was getting very serious.

Oh yes. You read the story about what happened at sea you’ll

know that we were all at sea preparing just in case the political decision was made.

Well I didn’t see my family for a year.

Well no worse than people who have had the misfortune during the war to be away for years or even prisoners. But this was because we lost Voyager and there had to be a ship to fill a space.

So we had double whacks of service up there to fill that period. Yes. It was normally – no more than a six-month period. Normally a ship would return after five or six months, maximum. We had to fill a slot until the RN gave us another light destroyer, which was the Duchess.

And that took some time to get out here.

Quite young. About – what year are we talking about now? We’re talking about ’67 or something like that. Well they would only have been five and four. Very young and impressionable.

The twins were the oldest, twins girls and a boy. Chinese mathematics, three in fifteen months.

I think it was the salt water.

Yes, it didn’t make an easy and she had no relatives in this country.

Oh well yes, well we were patrolling off the west coast of Malaysia, during Konfrontasi and the Indonesians had lost a Hercules full of troops that were going to be parachuted into Malaysia at one stage. And they’d also done something

a bit silly I suppose. They had captured a little green tug and taken it back to Sumatra. And one day, and we were all warned about it of course, intelligence – this tug has been hijacked. If you ever see it, report it in. And one day – they didn’t even change the colour – one day it was seen chugging across the Malacca Straits laden with Indonesian soldiers. And a Malaysian patrol boat spotted it.

And sank it full of – so we were patrolling to the north of this general area of the two incidents. And I was the officer of the watch and we were steaming at about eighteen knots south and suddenly I saw what I thought was jelly fish in the water, very white jelly fish. And I called out to the lookout, starboard lookout to tell me what it was and

then we passed it and I could smell it. I realised that it was a corpse. And then there were dozens popping out of the water or in the water. And I called the sea boat’s crew away, captain to the bridge. And we then went out, put the boat out and they picked up some of these – oh we had to wait for instructions from the authorities ashore. Military

authorities – whether we would just stay there until another boat came out and decided what to do with all this human wreckage. And then we were directed to pick some of the bodies up and see what they were, if they were military try and identify them. And we then did that. By this stage I’d come off watch and I went down to the quarterdeck cause I could see that one of my sailors in a boat was retching and having some difficulty.

So I went down to the quarterdeck to try and talk to him. And eventually you know the bodies started coming inboard. And they were fully belted, names and so on. Indonesians. So this information was passed ashore and we were obliged to cut the straps off them and the name tags to identify and then to hand the bodies over to, or three or four bodies, over to a

Malaysian patrol boat which was ordered to proceed to our location. At this stage of course the quarterdeck was smelling like a morgue, you know, a frightful smell and I had helped with this operation so all my clothing was reeking so I cut it all off, pulled it off and threw it over the side. And I was in my underwear. As a result of which

I got horribly sunburnt. And this Malaysian vessel was ordered alongside and they refused to come alongside. And I think the crew, religion one thing and another, didn’t want to get involved with rotting bodies. And we had to put a gun on them and order them to come alongside which they did reluctantly and eventually off loaded a few bodies. And the straps and things like that.

All this was seen by the ship’s company who had formed on the quarterdeck, or above the quarterdeck until the wind shifted, and then there was a general evacuation. And a couple of them were vomiting. It’s a pretty unpleasant experience. So that was that and we went on our way but the quarterdeck reeked for weeks. We used to wash it. We had a hose on the quarterdeck trying to wash it down to get the smell away.

But it was always there and we always had a life buoy sentry at sea on the quarterdeck. We had to move him up one platform cause of the smell. Recently I’ve been asked, because of my involvement at that incident and with the veterans’ review board some years ago after I retired, to write up the incident because there are apparently some sailors who have been claiming a post traumatic

stress condition, and claiming that to be one of the incidents. And my – I believe that the case that is now written up is a case study, accepted case study. But certainly it could have affected a number of young men.

Yes there was no point in doing it any more.

Well we just left them there. Left them.

In the sea. I’ve no idea how many there were, there could have been a hundred. They were coming up obviously from the wreckage. And I’m not sure but I assume that they were all from that tug because so many of the bodies were in the same area. If it had been an aircraft very few are likely to have come to the surface.

Oh well we did off the three. No, off the three.

At times like this that you really admire ambulance men and people that work in morgues. Because none of us were prepared for that experience.

No I think there’d just be a bottle in the sick bay.

Just under a year.

Well as we were operating in that area there was no question of having time to visit Australia. I mean a couple of people would return on the usual compassionate grounds of a death of the next of kin or a serious illness. That is a normal situation. One of my sailors did under those conditions.

And then would come back to the ship. But occasionally when we were in Hong Kong or Singapore in a refit situation say for a fortnight, some families, wives would fly up and join their husband just for a – they’d stay in a hotel and the husbands would operate from the ship and they’d be given two days leave or something like that. But today it has all changed. Now there’s a much more reasonable approach

to flying families to be with their husbands. And I think that’s very sensible. I know it costs money but it’s great for morale.

Well that and I think depression also develops out of the traumatic experiences that people often have. I mean I think army, you know army chaps have had

some pretty horrific experiences and you know very unpleasant at time so my sympathy is with them especially. Some circumstances with the navy mm but they’re not often, fortunately.

Well I did other

jobs as well of course. And at one stage I was the first lieutenant of the ship when the captain was hospitalised and the first lieutenant became the captain. And I became the first lieutenant. So yeah I did other things as well. We all do different jobs.

Being first lieutenant? I thought it was the best job I’ve ever had, being either the first lieutenant

of a ship or the second in command of a large establishment, where you’ve got lots of men, women and families. Great experience. Not many people have the fortune to have those experiences. It was great. You can measure your progress whether you’re in the right direction or not. And if you’re not moving in the right direction you have to exit strategies with staff.

So that they can get you on one side and say, “Hey look I think there’s a better way of doing this,” or “Something’s not going well and suggest we change direction and you can think about it.” When they give you advice like that they’re usually right.

Well I had a little

difficulty when I was in Vampire because Vampire, I think I say that honestly, was a most efficient ship. We had a top-notch captain who was inordinately tough. But because of the strenuous work that was going on and the time away, it was not a happy ship. And when I was acting as the first lieutenant I was coming into contact with a lot of these personal

problems. And I felt that we needed a break. And we needed a break and we needed to get a couple of sporting teams ashore and to exercise. And to take a number of the ship’s company with them as witnesses or observers, if not players.

I had some difficulty getting my point across. Eventually it was conceded and we did this. And I could measure the change in the spirit almost overnight. But I was only in that position for a month and then moved back into just being the staff officer.

Not a cent.

It had never occurred to me. I’d never thought about a financial advantage in my military career. I would like to have the pay of a captain today. When I left the service it was fifty thousand dollars a year, it’s now a hundred and twenty thousand dollars. So times have changed.

No I think they were the enemy. I think it was the continuous service of operating in the Straits of Malacca and the Straits of Singapore where you’ve got

islands, Indonesian islands. Very close. So close sometimes that they could fire a bazooka almost directly into your boiler room and make an awful mess. And I think that it was times in making these passages that I used to think to myself, “Well I hope it’s not this time,” because if they’d had their wits about them, the enemy, as you see happening in Iraq today. You know where all these poor young Americans being trapped by roadside bombs.

We could have been hit by bazookas and goodness knows what, serious damage. There was an incident during one of these passages and I had the watch. It was a middle watch between midnight and four and we were just to the east of the straits and I saw on my bridge radar two contacts very close together moving fast across my bows. And I called the

captain, got the guns crew up because I instinctively thought it was a couple of Zodiacs because they used to do that, use Zodiacs to zip across with half a dozen insurgents, drop them off, come back with maybe information. And I’m convinced to this day that they were two Zodiacs. I was ready to open fire. I had ranged

the targets and I was ready. And the guns crew were there. And the captain jibbed and thought that – and I can say that because he’s passed on now – he thought they were birds. You know a flock of birds. Birds don’t fly in a straight line and then change direction and then move in a straight line for another island which was used as their sanctuary. And I always thought that that was an incident

where the navy, the Vampire, the ship could have shone that night. It would’ve been the proof for being up there, as I believe we would have intercepted two Zodiacs full of insurgents or returning intelligence. So they got away in my way of thinking.

A Zodiac is a

small craft. Very light skinned craft with blown up air bags supporting it and with a couple of outboard motors. And quite often they had three outboard motors and they could travel at about thirty five knots. These were travelling at that speed which is slightly faster than a bird.

Oh very slow, I was very slow.

Well they returned to Australia about the time I returned to Australia. So we re-familied again. In fact we passed through Hong Kong and my family met me there on their way from France. Yeah, very, very, touching, emotional moment.

See little kids.

Well I don’t think they – I think they had a memory but they didn’t realise what was happening. You know it was all nouveau. Yeah, but great.

Eventually I was obliged to.

When I had finished my time at sea I subsequently had staff jobs in Canberra. I became the commander of the OC [Officer Commanding] signal school – officer in charge of the signal school and then the commander of Cerberus, naval base with eighteen schools. And then I went to Brisbane. I came to Brisbane. I was at the point of retiring as a commander and I was posted to the naval base here

in Brisbane which, I then had command of the amphibious squadron. We had six amphibious ships. That was a great experience. They were all over Australia of course. And then somebody said, “Oh we’ll give him another chance.” So I was promoted to captain and I was posted to Canberra for my sins. And I had some interesting communication postings there. I tended to recede into communications away

from – even though I tried to escape a couple of times, I found myself back in communications. And I then moved in from being the deputy director of joint communications across to being the director of joint communications. And after finishing two years there I was hoisted up to be the defence attaché in Paris. And because I had a French wife,

originally French, I suppose it was thought that I had half a foot in the language, which wasn’t true. So I went off to the language school at Point Cook in Victoria. And I had six months there. And I graduated as an interpreter, second class, not first class, but better than third class. And away we went to France and

Switzerland. So I had the two postings, I had Paris and Berne. We were buying Swiss aircraft which you see zipping around in the sky doing aerobatics and we had a lot of – we had a French ship which was introduced into the RAN, the, not the Success, I’m having a mind blank.

We had a – I’ve forgotten the class, the French class, but we acquired one of those. We had a lot of French helicopters and of course we had the remnants of photo aircraft which was still at the time being used and we had a lot of French spare parts so there was quite a big team in Paris, who were mainly spare parts people, engineers. And I was able to do other functions

as well because the defence attaché was the third in the embassy echelon. So that bought me into contact with the ambassador and minister, a most interesting time. Most interesting. And I was obliged to speak French at the time. I think now the French speak less French and more English. But at the time in the diplomatic role everything was

done á la France and that was difficult.

The three – one is absolutely bilingual. Another one speaks French confidently but as badly as I do and the third one understands it very well but doesn’t speak it. But they were not with us. They were brought

up in the language by their mother. And it’s an interesting language. We think it’s easy but the idioms makes it so difficult. It’s really very complex. So easy to say the wrong thing or make a fool of yourself.

Oh.

That’s right, when I was in the Melbourne. Well I wasn’t there all the time but wherever the admiral deployed to sea for exercises for example he would take as I said, his operations officer and his signals officer, and perhaps one other with him. So I had the chance to go to all the sea-air exercises in the days when SEATO [South East Asia Treaty Organisation] was important.

Oh no, no they were just exercises where say, you may have four Australians, six Americans, four British or two British, a New Zealander or two, a couple of Thai and a couple of Filipino ships. And occasionally, at the very beginning, we had a French ship. But then the French pulled out and the Pakistanis pulled out, so SEATO began to fall apart. But they were pure exercises

where you did drills, formations, manoeuvring at sea, learn the practise of safety, signalling, inter-operation. Signalling is the main function other than exercising to detect submarines.

Of course I was fully aware, because I was in

Canberra with all the intelligence that was being generated. So I was very familiar with the overall strategy and the tactics that were being employed on the ground. But when I was on the fleet admiral’s staff I would occasionally find myself in South Vietnam as part of the exercise planning. But I was never with the Australians. They were in the South. I was

- the Americans had a big radio station at Cam Ranh Bay and that was really where I went, or to operate with the Americans who were operating in the Gulf area, the Gulf of Tonkin.

Difficult. Our skills in communications for example were somewhat different. We had common equipment

but – when manoeuvring it’s always been my experience that the Americans do not manoeuvre their ships as quickly under signalling as Commonwealth ships. And I think that when we had that terrible accident, when Melbourne ran down the Frank E Evans that

part of it was the inability to react quickly in extremist situations. You see things that you’ve learnt to do, you always have the captain on the bridge when there’s close order manoeuvring but the Americans didn’t do that. They had untrained officers on the bridge, unqualified as it turned out. And they ran right under the bows of Melbourne. And it was an horrific experience, that one.

One that just should never have happened. And one day somebody will have the courage to write this up. To go into it with Freedom of Information get access to the results of the board of enquiry and write up what really, what games the Americans played to try and change the blame. That was the most disappointing experience of my career. To

see my American colleagues ducking for cover. And we didn’t believe that they could be doing the things they did at that inquiry and subsequent court martial: same sort of things that we’re seeing happening overseas at the moment.

Well

I was there for the exercise period. And so I went right through that exercise which was almost at the point of termination when that ship was sunk. In fact it was terminated, yes it was terminated.

Yes that’s right and the naval forces just went back to their countries. Because we were halfway through the exercise when this happened. And

the situation was that we were proceeding through a pattern of exercises and we were moving from one area to another and you have to do that in order for the submarines who are a threat to relocate themselves. So you’re doing little artificial jigs and we were waiting to jig from one area to another. And aircraft were being flown off during the night to lay their sonar buoys in the water to listen for submarines. Which would

be known to be in certain areas through which you would pass. And commander of the – am I all right telling you this? –

proceeding through this phase, the admiral who was in charge of this formation because the Americans had a carrier in another formation. And we were flying off aircraft, dropped their sonar buoys as I said

and to do this, to fly off at sea you always have, a custom to have a guard ship which is called a rescue destroyer ship. It is positioned normally astern or very nearby the carrier, aircraft carrier. Because if an aircraft drops in the water, and this can happen and does happen, sadly, you try and do what you can to rescue the crew.

And this ship was being taken off the screen and position. And the captain was asleep in his cabin: the captain of the American ship. And the American ship was told, “You are on a collision course”. The bearing was constant coming towards. And he didn’t react and so the captain of the Melbourne did what he could.

He changed direction to port. Normally you go to starboard, but he could see that to go to starboard would mean a definite accident and we as I said were laden, Melbourne with fuel, aviation fuel and an oxygen tank. Under the bridge on the starboard side so he actually went to port to try and clear the space. And the American panicked at the last moment, and the Americans have a rule.

In extremis go to starboard. Because the starboard rule is give way you see. So he went to starboard and went under the bows of the Melbourne and was cut in two. And I was the admiral staff officer just watching what was happening because the ship was in control because it wasn’t a real exercise situation. And

that was quite something: to see the bow of the destroyer rise up as it goes down your side with turrets dropping off and men at eleven minutes past three in the morning. And that was the end of the bow of the Evans.

Seventy seven men. Including three brothers, the Sage brothers.

And the son of a chief petty officer, who was also in the ship but who survived. Chief Petty Officer O’Reilly. So you know life at sea can be a bit dangerous.

Yes I had to present myself at the enquiry and subsequent court martial. I think that

because we’d had experience of the Voyager, we knew the ropes, we knew how to prepare information and we got everything collected and packaged up and so on. And an incident occurred during this packaging up with all this material on the admiral’s table, you know in the admiral’s quarters. And two American officers came to visit, to supervise, to see what was happening not supervise, to observe. And a senior sailor unfortunately

made a statement which was overheard and he said it to me and – to the effect that he would not have made some of the signals that Melbourne made during the night. And that immediately alerted these Americans I’m sure that there was a failure in communications. There was no failure in communications. Signals are either exact like mathematics or they’re not. And

when we arrived in Singapore a couple of days later the team who had been observing on the bridge of both the ship and the staff, fleet staff, admiral staff, went over to the enquiry in the Philippines. And I arrived as the fleet communications officer and when I arrived I found myself segregated

from my admiral, the operations officer and his staff officer. I was put in another barrack and nobody spoke to me for three days. And eventually I had no idea what was happening so I would ask for a taxi or car to take me around to – or a military vehicle to take me so I could – they never arrived. So each day I walked, about six kilometres to the enquiry and spoke to the admiral and said, “I don’t know what’s

happening, but I find that I am segregated from what’s happening. Is there a problem with communications?” He had no idea what I was talking about because we thought that this was a British type court martial or enquiry which was starting up. We had no idea that the Americans were actually generating as much bad press as possible to suggest that the Australian ship was totally at fault, including communications.

I had no impact on that because the ship’s communicators were handling it all but I was back watching it. The ship performed perfectly well. So it was then realised that something was happening. And sure enough the next day in The Stars and Stripes, the American forces newspaper, ‘Australian Carrier at Fault’. I then realised a game was being played. And I went to enquiry

and asked to present myself and the enquiry was just beginning and they were formatting the rules. The American rules are quite different to our rules, our giving evidence and so on. And we weren’t to realise that things were being drummed up. I asked if I could do an analysis of the books of the signals that were recorded by each ship. Of course the ship that sunk didn’t have a book. That was duly approved and I asked to

present myself and to have the books of the exercise, because we had regressive SEATO publications not the current NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organisation] ones that the Americans might have been using for operations. And they’re shaking, “We don’t know where there are any books.” And that’s a lie because there were ships in harbour who’d been in the exercise which had the books in their confidential books office. So I then asked for a typist and

“There aren’t any available.” And so games were being played. So in the end, not to be beaten I said, “Look while I’ll do it manuscript, I’ll do a translation in manuscript, into plain English of all the coded signals.” “Alright,” that was agreed. So I did that and at the end of which an American witnessing officer and myself signed this document and I wrote a caveat and this is important. I wrote a caveat

and I put a box around it and I said, “We have been unable to acquire any exercise publications to exactly define the meaning of each signal. They’ve been done from memory. Adlibbed from memory.” You know I heard years later from Justice Gallop, who had been one of our legal officers sent across

on the second enquiry, that document had – that caveat had been whited out and it had been photocopied and on top of it was a letter from a signal authority saying that, ‘these following signal interpretations are not precisely correct.’ You know words, the meaning was correct but the suggestion being that the signals

were at fault. And it’s a terrible fabrication and I have never forgiven the Americans to this day for having suggested that we fudged the signals to try and cover Melbourne. We had no need to, you can’t fudge signals. But the Americans seem to have done that and I’m very disappointed because Admiral King who is the American admiral who eventually took charge of the enquiry, should never have done that.

It should’ve been done by another officer, preferably a British officer because there was one equivalent in the area but the Americans hid this and I’ve always been concerned that one day this must be revealed, the exactness of this must be revealed by somebody getting the publications from the enquiry and opening it up and writing a book about it. Because the only book written has been by the captain of Melbourne’s

wife who was an American journo and it’s just a personal tirade. She doesn’t go into any of these matters I’m talking about. I have told a number of people about them and I have written it up. And I’m ready to disclose it to anybody who wants to make a novel about it because I think it will make very interesting reading. I do like my American friends. I think they’re

great people as individuals but sometimes they do some things which I think are just unacceptable. And that’s one of them.

Yes you know I was so involved I could. In fact if I live long enough I think there’s going to be an article in probably The Royal United Service Institute Journal, about that.

It was at the naval base in the Philippines, you know at that famous R&R [Rest and Recreation] centre of Olongapo.

Well it’s a puzzle. We eventually court martialled the captain of the Melbourne. He actually deserved a medal for the way in which he controlled the ship, especially with half the ship alongside, half the American ship alongside and a number of very courageous things were done to get men out of their bunks cause we never knew whether the back end would sink or not and to throw hand grenades over the side and tanks of petrol and so on.

And the way he controlled the ship having gone through the trauma of sinking a destroyer moments before was just absolutely remarkable. And the work by my admiral who, as the incident developed I rushed off to call him, ring him up and we both witnessed this incident on the open admiral’s bridge. And the boiler blew up as we hit this ship and both of us got a slight burn.

And afterwards inside the operations room and I said to the admiral just as it had happened I said, “I’ll go down to the main wireless office, I’ll make a general signal.” I went down and made a flash signal, which is the highest priority. We’ve just hit this ship, split it in two, anticipate many casualties, I’d no idea how many. And exactly what it was. So we broadcast it for people to come and assist us.

And my admiral, Admiral Crabb, Buster Crabb, has my eternal admiration. He had the – I said to him also when I had made that signal I came back and said, “Admiral, I’ll go down to the quarterdeck,” because by that stage one or two men were coming in from being picked up outside. And the boys in the aircraft carrier were dropping their boats and floats and picking up men. Some dived over the side. Quite a

marvellous exercise of the human brain and courage. And so I went down to the quarterdeck to see if I could find anybody from the bridge, including the captain who we all thought was on the bridge. He wasn’t, he was in his bunk. And I called out as a boat came in alongside the quarterdeck full of American sailors, “Is anybody from the bridge here, is the captain here?” And the captain put up his hand, “Yes I’m here.”

Commander McLemore. And so I grabbed him, he was in his underpants and a singlet and he’d obviously been asleep in his cabin. He had a huge cut down his back that he’d escaped through a hole in the ship as the ship broke up. And I walked him up to the bridge and introduced him to the admiral and the captain of the Melbourne and it was a very emotional moment. You know

both senior officers grabbed this American and said, “Oh commander, we’re so sorry.” And he just said, “We hit a mine, we hit a mine, we must’ve hit a mine.” And the admiral gave him a gentle shake on the shoulder and said, “No captain you hit us.” And the enquiry then began.

Eventually

it was slowly brought up but you see, the Americans refused to call us to give evidence at the court martial. Clearly somebody was at fault, so they tried the captain and the two officers of the watch. And I think they – the American system is to admit to a minor element of the charges, which might be so long and if you admit to one down here somewhere

they’ll judge you on that. So the captain was I think dismissed his ship and the two officers of the watch were removed in seniority places, several hundred places, which in the American navy is not very much at all. And still seventy-seven men died. And the real truth about the lack of skill and supervision, management, exercise in that ship never came

to the fore. And I think that’s to the detriment of the American navy. I think if it had been us or the British navy, it would’ve been in exact detail as to who had failed, what must happen in future and what training must be exercised in order never to repeat that kind of incident. The Americans by then had seven major collisions at that stage. One collision’s bad enough, but seven…

The Melbourne, it was a political decision that – because the American dominated board of enquiry – we had Australians on the board but they agreed to the form of words, which suggested that Melbourne reacted slowly or ineptly. Not those words but that they contributed to the

accident. So because there was this element of suspicion of contribution, our system used to court martial a person because a court martial means this. You will either be proven guilty or innocent. Not only was the captain proven innocent, but it was proven no case whatsoever to answer. And that was correct. As I said he deserved a medal. Probably his

actions saved a lot of men.

No he was demoted or he felt that he was to be demoted and he eventually resigned like his predecessor Robinson. With the Voyager. So you know sad outcomes, very sad.

Sort of jinx ship, yes, yes. In a sense.

Even I feel that today, there’d been a similar incident only two days before this accident. Which I didn’t know about until the very watch I was on. And I was reading a pack of signals just to get up to date. And I became aware of this incident, an exchange of signals. And I was beginning to think, “Why would ships get so close?” And I

came to the conclusion subsequently was the reason was the Americans were using the wrong publications. But because we were unable to express this in a court martial it has never come to the fore. And I believe one day somebody ought to be able to look at that and prove what actually happened.

Well you see Canberra’s remote from

the South China Sea. Our involvement with the Americans is sensitive. We’ve got so many agreements that have to be exchanged, so many exchanges of information agreements. So much intelligence and I can understand that it may be that things are so sensitive that you just cannot afford to disturb those sensitive agreements that are in train or about to be signed or being re –

- regenerated. And intelligence is a very special area. It’s one that’s so easy to get wrong. And I think that Canberra thought, “Oh look I think we’ve got to prove our man innocent or guilty,” and of course he was proved not just innocent but no case to answer. So he should’ve been clear, but the stigma was there. And mud sticks.

Canberra was – Sir James Killen was minister for defence at the time and he had a hand in this. Government would have had a hand and I think our military hierarchy clearly had a hand. But I suspect that a little more courage ought to have been exercised at the top.

Or that we have more to lose by having a lot of disruption between Washington and Canberra. And I think that’s being oversensitive, I think we could have been a little more positive. But usually Australians are. I mean look at them now with Afghanistan and Iraq. The Americans listen to Australians and I think we could’ve been listened to then.

It didn’t happen.

Kearsarge, that’s correct. Yes I was in that ship for a week building up the exercise plans for the communications. So in fact Admiral King was in that ship so he was to be the president of this board of

enquiry. So I saw something of him. And I saw the Americans operating. Yeah.

I think they’re a bit more laid back than they should be. Yes. I’m not – look

it all depends. There are some outstanding staff officers and they’re very careful they way they do screen people going through their higher core structures for promotion. But I have a belief that the American system does not really give a fair chance to the right officers. You know if you don’t get big high scores, they have a similar system to

ours – if you don’t get big scores out of ten you can write yourself off. Now under those circumstances, how do you make judgements on a whole string of officers, thousands of officers, how do you grade them when they’re all getting eights? Or seven and a half to nine? And the Americans do that. And I think that’s not very perceptive. I think you require a lot of courage and I think you’ve got to tell people

when you mark them down or mark them.

What do you mean? In South Vietnam?

Well there was a lot of activity in the North of course, above the parallel. A lot of aircraft operations into North Korea [actually North Vietnam], a lot of ground operations. They suffered a lot of losses of course, aircraft shot down and so on. And occasionally a ship would get too

close to the coast when it was doing bombardment and they were fired on. But there were no major submarine incidents and no major incidents where forces at sea were attacked by North Korean aircraft.

No I was flown in, in an American COD [Carrier-on-board delivery] aircraft off the Kearsarge and I remember going into

Cam Ranh Bay and there was a little operation going on just to the north so the pilot detoured to see it. And it was interesting to watch this ground operation. And the whole of the ground was being sprayed with napalm and if there were any North Koreans there or communists they’re unlikely to have survived.

Oh it was just interesting. The experience I found

somewhat memorable was to arrive in Cam Ranh Bay on the airstrip and one of their aircraft, a Caribou, was laden with body bags and the back was open and as it swung around you got the full blast. And that was a bit uncanny and brings home the reality of what was going on day by day and as you know the Americans did have casualties in South Vietnam.

And when you heard how some of them were operating you were not surprised the Australians wished to operate independently.

Well in Canberra yes but I have

no experience of the contemplation that went on in South Vietnam but I know that the Australians, although some forces were integrated with the Americans, the majority prepared to be independent. Because again our mode of operation was slightly different. And I think our men fought to avoid having a radio strapped to their ears and chewing gum and shouting at each other. That’s not

the way to survive in a jungle.

No, no not at all. Other than to see a – oh well it’s interesting. One of the days I was in Cam Ranh Bay at the radio station I was taken down to the wharf where one of the small craft which the Americans had operating in the rivers, was coming back and they’d had an incident and

I think two of the five were either dead or badly wounded. You know medicos were hovering around and collecting people and rushing off with them. And that was the sort of environment that the alternative president of the United States was operating at the time. Right at that time. And those boats did suffer casualties. You know going up and down

a stream making a lot of noise, you’re a target. It’s not like creeping through the jungle.

Usually yes, that’s right.

Well on any matters that were

pertinent to the task that you had. Or other observations but you had to be pretty discreet of course because the pieces of information (UNCLEAR).

Well certain things you put a caveat on that’s right.

Well only in the

training phases, before they went up. I was aware of the ships up there but I didn’t join any. I had colleagues who were in those ships so I heard quite a few incidents, events that occurred. I remember hearing about an American officer who was a ground target

advisor being brought on board and he had a few drinks and became a bit talkative. And informed the wardroom that Australian gunners were very good and that to keep them on an even keel and operationally effective they used to drum up targets. Like occasionally this guy talked about a couple of chaps working the paddy fields. And

when that was heard captain was advised and I remember reading the signal subsequently. They were brought off station and the whole matter was investigated, but that’s an incident, whether it’s true I can’t say, but it was a story. But it’s enough to sicken you. You know trying to shoot up a poor little chap behind his bullock on a paddy field

certainly wasn’t why we were there. And I would say that it did happen, it would be extreme.

Yes that’s right. They do happen and you just have to look at your level of value judgements. Mm.

Well my feeling has always been the strategic, the idea, the concept was right but it’s the ex [execution] strategy where everything goes wrong. And in this case it was clearly a stupidity to try and conduct an operation without being on the ground.

And of course the North Korean and the French can tell you all about. The (UNCLEAR) learnt bitterly what happens when you turn your back on very clever, determined operators. And the same will happen with terrorism and we should never have operated solely in the South. If they were doing something serious, they should have gone into the North

and finished it and got out. But that didn’t happen and eventually it was a total disaster.

Well I know there was bad feeling at home amongst a lot of groups who wanted to throw paint over people and buckets of red dye

and so on. My concern was more over the RSL, which is a great organisation for pointing the mind about defence matters. But the fact that they turned their backs on these young men in my view was unforgivable because it disowned people who really were heroes. A lot of men

were really gutsy types and that was shameful. They should have been welcomed. I think though that you know politically we should have realised that the way it was structured it wasn’t going to be successful. And you know perhaps we should have spoken up earlier than we did.

Well it was just sheer communications but interestingly I was one of the two defence writers of the AUSAT [Australian communication satellite] project which put the satellite up and there were about twelve of us and two defence people. So I wrote the defence element of that. And I think that was a very

successful project. We still have it and satellites are here forever, I hope.

Well we had an inter-departmental report, I’ve got a copy here somewhere, in which we wrote up the elements which would convince a government to make a decision to invest in an Australian satellite. The AUSAT,

Australian satellite. And of course it’s just about out of time now so we need to keep regenerating these little animals but they do marvellous things like irrigating footprints over certain areas. It’s part of our, I think responsibility to have an impact in the Solomons, in New Guinea, Tahiti, New Caledonia, New Zealand. So we can do that. And there’s the

defence element of course. You’ve got a fall back for communications in the region. And you can inter-operate with other satellites and drop into Afghanistan and the Middle East or Europe. I hope we don’t have to do that but it’s ‘tu toffe un problema’, too tough a problem.

I was. It was just after I arrived in Paris. And the first news I, in the Paris embassy, knew about this was when I read a news bulletin and it was a bit sketchy. And it didn’t mean a great deal, it seemed to be rather a trivial little matter and I couldn’t believe that it was what it turned out to be.

And a couple of days later I was doing, I was standing at the Arc de Triomphe which is their Tomb of the Unknown Warrior location, and the French have ceremonies there practically a couple of days a week through the year. And I went from there to one of the typical

cocktail parties that you know get generated in the diplomatic circle. And I met a garrulous young man, a young French army officer, and I was introduced and my wife with her native diction was able to inter-operate with nearly everybody instantly. And immediately I was Australian. “Oh,” this young man said, “Oh I know the

officer involved with the Rainbow Warrior.” So I discovered that he’d been a top boy at college and he had a knife wound from an operation in North Africa. And late that night I sent a long message to Canberra about probably what it was all about. Nothing happened until I was at the point of departure from Paris when

a small letter came into say, “We have reviewed your letter of so and so, and it’s interesting that you seem to have been so perceptive of the event and the fall out.” And that was that. And when I got back to Canberra for my debrief cause I’d retired at that stage, I asked what had happened.

Nobody knew anything about it and I found myself so annoyed. This is another example of information being suppressed. It obviously went into defence and it should have gone to the prime minister’s department because it would have been a key bit of information in the crossword of identifying perhaps what might have gone on. But I

remember distinctly outlining this officer’s credentials and possibly why the French were there, why they were doing this thing and I’m sure I was right. And I even suggested that the Minister for Defence in Canberra might have had some involvement, you know in conditioning officers in the intelligence

service to do a certain thing against Greenpeace, against the greenies. There’s always something against the greenies. And they had subsequently reacted this way but people were covering their tracks because nobody likes to be caught out in a thing like this. I even suggested the minister would resign because this was at the portent of being so serious. I was dead right, not only did he resign but he suicided.

But I was very annoyed that this information didn’t circulate a bit further.

I have no idea. Maybe they thought my information was too irrelevant. It was too low in the pecking order but my ambassador supported it.

Well it’s – you’re aware

that there are volunteer groups all over Australia who assist the department of immigration and multicultural and ethnic affairs with settling these people. And I was searching for something to do. I had a pretty active life and I found it pretty frustrating not to have a – some kind of aim.

And I was pushed in the direction of Archbishop Hollingsworth’s committee, which was looking after refugees and migrant ministry work. And I was on the council where we were looking at word smithing instructions. I found that rather tame and unexciting. So I moved from that into starting up a group in Toowong. And we’ve had

over fifty refugees now, children who have now been settled around here. And I’ve got a group of nine from Rwanda at this very moment whose only language is French and Swahili. My Swahili is zero but I can cope with the other one. So I find that these people usually have a lot of courage, a lot of stamina

and fortitude to have made it to this country. Where they are genuine, I’m not so sure about some who are not so genuine. I’ve got – my jury is out on them. But those who have been through the United Nations mill and identified as refugees and there is a definition of a founded, well-founded, belief of persecution for a number of reasons.

They’ve been given the tick, I think that’s reasonable to use this bank as a source to bring a number to this country sufficient to be settled. We’ve got to be careful because there are religious and ethnic problems that have to be looked at carefully but their children are the future even if the parents are not.

To refugees?

Well when I was in Paris at the embassy I saw something of people queuing up, you know trying to get visas and others to migrate out of Europe. Because Europe has got a real problem. We don’t know about it here because the press doesn’t show it. But the borders are changing and thousands

of people are flooding across from the east and they’re having difficulty settling. And I saw a lot of these people in a lot of distress and it struck me that there’s a lot of value there. It’s just going down the drain. And later on when the Kosovo business was on, I was living in France at the time. And I was watching what villagers were doing. Watching on television. Going by bus

right up to the zone, the fighting zone and taking kids and wounded civilians and wives and taking them out and resettling them for a few months in France till things would settle and they were being allowed to go back to their villages or to stay in France, there were some conditions. And I was very impressed, I thought that was an example of the best of the human condition. And I think that

this country needs more people. We need to be careful because people you don’t want can hide in this system but providing the system is adequate in that influx of people is a string of children who’ve got a kind of stamina that I think we need. And I’m confident.

We haven’t had one failure although I’m suspicious about some people from El Salvador, I think they’re on the drug take. But other than that family the children especially, I think are fantastic. And I’m looking at a family that have just been here, two months. They’re gentle, they’re discreet, they would put the average Australian teenager, those who

are teenagers to shame. And they’ve had the most horrific experiences of watching eight hundred thousand of their fellows being murdered with machetes. And that’s a mixed family between the two races. But their children will make it and I think it’s Australia’s future.

Probably a little humility. I think you learn a lot about yourself

which you otherwise wouldn’t learn without military experience. I think you’ve put under test situations which don’t occur in the normal civilian life. And you meet some fine people. And you meet people who need encouragement. And I think the military experiences

gives you such a breadth of vision that you can almost, I know it sounds a little arrogant to say, but you could almost handle any job. And I’ve never had any difficulty since I’ve been in retirement handling Legacy as the president or starting an RSL sub group. Or handling refugees. I think I can contribute there. I think

a lot of people are misinformed about a lot of matters and I think we can – there is some rationality that experience in the military world gives you, that you can impart to the population.

The best of times would certainly be experience as second in command of a shipping establishment.

I think jobs outside my specialisation, where I was looking at the broad spectrum. Paris was – and nobody will believe me, was the hardest job I ever had. Paris and Berne. I might have worked too hard there. But it was a rare experience, working with seventy five

nations. Officers from those nations. A lot of the Eastern Bloc too. One of my closest contacts was the Russian general, whom I thoroughly enjoyed meeting and sparring with probably more appropriate. But he and I were the oldest attaches there.

Well yes, yes. Of course my foreign languages were very restricted but my Russian colleagues usually spoke good French. Russians do speak good French and there’s a very strong relationship with France historically. But when they try and speak English they tend to

fall apart a bit. And it was very interesting observing the Eastern Bloc starting to fall apart. I could see it happening even then. And I think that one of the generators of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc is one which is not written about. The French in

1989 celebrated their bicentenary of the ‘Rights of Man’. So all over Europe and being integrated into the Eastern Bloc were the French broadcasts of what they were doing to show the world how they had advanced. You know the French have got problems but they’ve certainly done a lot of things for their own community. And the things that they were showing of the way they had advanced

and the way they were so open and free in society, I’m sure had an effect because from 1989 onwards there was a progressive collapse in the Czech Republic, in Hungary, in Romania, in Bulgaria and the Latvian countries.

Yeah I feel that there is something in that contribution of television to these people.

No. Except that I’m very interested to follow up what I think is a possible contribution to the sinking of the Sydney off the West Australian coast. One of my colleagues felt that the Germans had actually compromised the merchant ship’s war call signs. And my studies in Germany and

in the Public Record Office in London suggest that that was possible and I’m still writing that up. And I think too that the Anzac myth intrigues me because if it hadn’t been for the Australian submarine at Gallipoli and the navy talks quietly about this because it was an army show. But the navy lost a submarine, four days after the landing. The day of the landing the Australian submarine, the AE2, got through under extraordinary circumstances.

The story I can’t describe in thirty seconds, but the courage of that crew in getting through and they were half British and half Australian, of getting through and making a signal that night to say they had penetrated the Sea of Marmora. Arrived and they were not to know because they became prisoners of war. They never knew until the war was over, all but four who died as prisoners, that that signal was intercepted and handed to the British general who was a bit pedantic

and frustrated by signals from the Australians and New Zealanders that they were having a bad time and wanted to be withdrawn, and I have a photocopy of the operation orders of that day which show that the Australians were panicking and wishing to be withdrawn. And the British hadn’t thought about a withdrawal. Nobody thought about withdrawal, wasn’t on the plan, wasn’t on the plot. So the general sent a general and an admiral ashore to try and negotiate to get the Australians and the New Zealanders just to stay where they were at Anzac Cove.

Submarine’s signal arrived at midnight. The general who’d in a fit of pique gone to his bunk and said, “You sort it out, you’ve got me in this spot,” was shaken. “There’s a signal from the Australian submarine,” and it’s well recorded. And the general said, and this is where generals come out and show their spurs, and he said, “That’s it, the Turkish reinforcements will now not come by sea because there’s a submarine in there

running amok. Tell the Australians to dig in and they won’t be pushed off the hill.” And they stayed and we have that myth. And I think that signal which has now disappeared into history but which can be almost reconstructed by people who were there who talk about it and I’m at the point of writing an article about that. I think it ought to be recorded and my hero is the telegraphist, Mr Falconer, telegraphist…