Australians at War Film Archive

I grew up in Melbourne and went to school there and initially I lived, the family lived in Brighton and then we lived in Morgan, and what else can I say?

My father was an importer. Unfortunately, he

had a lot of ill health and died when I was 14, so I didn’t see a great deal of him. He was in and out of hospital.

It was good. I attended Melbourne Grammar, which was a traditional English type school, and I had a fairly happy school life.

Yes, it was big on discipline, and I think I was a very average school boy. I wasn’t in the first eleven or the football team or anything like that.

I liked English and Latin and didn’t like mathematics,

which was fairly typical. I enjoyed history, and when I was in the senior school I became interested in the cadet corps and that sort of, I think, led me into my later life in the army.

We all had smart uniforms, as you can imagine, and the cadets would parade every

Tuesday afternoon and we would go to camp once a year and that was very exciting, and we would go to courses, promotion courses and that, and so on.

We were issued with a navy blue, which was the school colour, and a khaki uniform, and we were issued with rifles, .303 rifles, and we were allowed to take them home, which would be unheard of these days,

so we, all small boys, we would climb on board the tram and try not to drop the rifle on some dear old lady’s toe as we got on the north tram. But of course this was, I’m speaking now of the period 1938, 1939, ’40 which were the last three years of my school life,

and the country was at war, or about to go to war, so cadets were very much in the news at every school that had them.

It did. Yes. The family were pretty hard up. I had a maternal grandmother who lived with us

and she took over the cost of my, the payment of my schooling, so I was very lucky that she was there to help, and also to give me a lot of warmth and love and friendship, as grandmothers do.

I have one sister, who is still alive, and she lives in Brighton in Melbourne. She is older than I am and she has lived in Melbourne all

of her life.

We had a small cottage in the hills near Mount Macedon, and we’d frequently go there for the weekends, which was fun, and what else would I do? Go to the beach, of course, like most children, and

go and watch the football, watch the cricket. I was a passionate follower of Melbourne, Melbourne Football Club, and now I’m a West Coast supporter. How things change.

I had an uncle that was in the First World War, Uncle Horace. He was my father’s brother.

He tried to enlist in 1915, but was found to be medically unfit. He was then 36, so he paid his own fare, went to England, and he was commissioned in the Devonshire Regiment. Went to the France with one of the battalions. I think it was the 8th Battalion, and

I think he was the last officer standing at the Battle of the Somme, which went on for weeks and weeks, and eventually he was killed, went missing, as they say, so he was the only member of the family who was off at the war.

Yes. Yes. Well, that was the spirit in those days. For God, King

and Country, and tremendous support for the war.

A bit, but not much. The years had moved on, and I remember he had a pair, he had sent home a pair of binoculars that he had taken off a German officer, and in World War II there was an appeal by the government

for all people with binoculars to hand them in, so Uncle Horace’s binoculars…By that time my father had died and my mother clung to these binoculars with a gold bar, and wouldn’t give them up. We still have them.

Yes, the binoculars.

Very, because as I say the war had started, or practically started and all of us at school wanted to serve. I think it would pretty well apply to all. Many of the boys wanted to join the air force. That was a big attraction. Some of them joined the navy. Only the stupid ones

joined the army. Not quite that bad.

Daily. I read the morning and evening newspapers. In those days we had evening newspapers and the radio, and then of course when the Japanese came into the war people were very interested, with blackouts and children being evacuated

and all those sort of things.

Well, Melbourne, of course, was a smaller city in those days. There hadn’t been the great wave of immigrants coming from Europe after World War II. It was a good city and still had a changeable weather.

And the football. It was a great city.

In what way?

It was very exciting with people leaving Melbourne to go and train with the air force or the navy

or whatever, and there was a lot of coming and going and lots of parties and farewells, and as I say, coming on leave. It was fun. As I say, I think we were, my wife and I often say we were very lucky to grow up during that period, with a war on, because it was all embracing the whole country. Instead of bickering about

trivial issues as they do today they were all thinking about the war and how can we win the war. It gave them something to strive for.

Yes. There were people raising money for various appeals. Lots of women were

knitting socks and providing refreshments for troops, particularly out in the country as the train would pass through. The train would stop at a…I remember going up to Queensland later on during the war, and one time the train stopped on that long journey from Brisbane to Cairns, where we were in camp, and each time the train stopped the Country Women’s

Association would be there on the platform with tea and coffee and cakes and scones. They were wonderful.

Yes. She was in Melbourne in various, I think, Red Cross. My sister was a volunteer driver with the Red Cross. My future wife was a diversional therapist in the Red Cross.

Well, it’s…What’s a diversional therapist? Occupational therapist is the modern term, so people who were ill or in hospital, whether they would be military or civilian, they would help them to get their minds off their problems and so on.

Well, very. As soon as I left school I wanted to join the 2nd AIF [Australian Imperial Force]. I was only 17, and my mother put her foot down and she said, “No, certainly I won’t agree to that, and you can wait,” and then, as I said, as children get around their mothers I said, “Well, would you let me join the militia?” which were also known as the Chockos,

short for chocolate soldiers. A very derogatory term used by the AIF, and she said, “Yes, I’ll let you join the militia.” I thought, “I’m really important.” I was a sergeant in the cadets, and they would need me, but they really didn’t need me because all the battalions in the inner suburbs were all at full strength,

and I think a, we think that the reason for this there were a lot of men that really didn’t want to go overseas with the 2nd AIF but they would like to wear a uniform part time, and they joined the militia. That is perhaps an unkind interpretation. So eventually someone directed me to the 32nd Battalion, which was a City of Footscray regiment.

That was the other side of the tracks, so I went out there and they enlisted me and I became a corporal. That was the best thing I ever did, because I learned how the other half lived and it was very educational. They were all great fellows, and we all went to camp with them and it was quite an experience.

Then we were in camp, and purely on a part-time basis, and then suddenly the government said, “We are now calling out the militia for full-time duty,” towards the end of the war, so we all went off to camp, and I was there for the next nine months.

We had nights at the drill hall. They used to call it the drill hall at Footscray, where you would learn rifle drill and map reading, indoors usually. Then, as I say, the militia battalions would go off to camp once a year, so we went

off to camp shortly after I enlisted, and then we were called out.

Not really, no. I think the cadets were up to the same speed, really.

Yeah, very good.

The training became more intensive. There were more weapons to train with.

The Bren gun [light machine gun] came in, previously we had the Lewis light machine gun, which was ancient and there was more money being spent on training and I almost had another experience. When I was in camp,

this was about June 1941, and the army said, “We are calling for volunteers to reinforce the 39th Battalion,” which was another Victorian battalion. Of course it’s going to New Guinea, and we all said, “Gosh, that is a bit of fun,” and I went home to my mum and said, “Would you sign here on the dotted line, because I want to go,” and she

made enquiries and she said, “No.” She refused.

Horrified, and the reason they were sending this 39th Battalion…This was before the Japanese came into the war. They were becoming worried about the defence of New Guinea. There wasn’t any defence really, so they sent this battalion and another two from Queensland and NSW, militia battalions,

virtually untrained and this 39th Battalion was the battalion that met the Japanese at Kokoda and was virtually decimated. They lost a lot of men and were really cut up, so I was terribly lucky that Mum refused me, but I had some good mates who were in that battalion and it had a very proud record.

No. Those were guys who were serving in the 32nd with me. They had all gone off, but I was a bit young.

17.

Still 17.

Yes, very keen. Well, the war was on, and as I say, the whole country, or most people were keen.

No. There had been quite a lot of things that had happened years before they came into the war, and the situation in what was called the Far East was deteriorating, and the Japanese occupied a lot of China and Korea [Korea had actually been a Japanese colony since 1910],

and a lot of friction between Japan, Britain and United States, and it went on and on and deteriorated. We weren’t surprised.

We continued on with the battalion on the Mornington Peninsula, and

of course there were other units living in tents, and about August they moved huts nearby, so we moved into huts.

Very primitive, yes. And then a school friend of mine, who was still at school. I saw him one weekend when I was on leave, he said, “I’m going to apply for Duntroon. Why don’t you

apply?” and I thought he was talking about the agricultural college. I had never heard of Duntroon. I then applied, and unfortunately he became very ill and I was accepted by the selection board, and next February, 1942, I went off to Duntroon to start the course.

I was given you know a sort of hero’s farewell. They thought it was great that I had been selected, and I remember the old regimental sergeant almost had a tear in his eye as I, because he was a permanent soldier and I was about to become one.

They were militia officers. They were part-time officers.

I think it was very much, some very good officers as I remember them. Others were very amateurish, but they were willing and keen, and we did what they told us to do.

No, not really. No, and when the Japanese came

into the war in December 1941 we were deployed to, the other battalion and other units were deployed to construct coastal defences around Western Port Bay, which is south of Mornington Peninsula, because they thought that the Japanese were going to land there, and we were busy building pillboxes and erecting barbed wire fences

and doing all sorts of things. Working very hard, because it was quite a sense of urgency. This was just after Singapore, or just before Singapore fell, and the Japanese had come into the war.

We were all very worried, because we thought Australia would be next. That was virtually,

for years, I think, people in Australia, and particularly the defence planners, had regarded Singapore as the lynchpin of the western defences against possible Japanese attack. Once that went, and the two British battleships, the Prince of Wales and the Renown [actually Repulse] were sunk just before the fall of Singapore, that was, that really

frightened a lot of people.

Oh yes. We thought it was imminent. We were told that it was likely. Looking back now it seems rather, someone used a lot of imagination, but such were the panic, and there were people in the civilian population who were buying poison from the chemists

because they thought the Japanese were going to occupy Adelaide and other cities and they would rather poison their families and their daughters growing up, etc, than survive. There was a lot of panic.

Yes. There was, of course there was a lot of air raid training, air raid precautions – ARP.

Blackening windows and no lights at night and digging trenches in their back gardens and public parks and so on. Schools were being evacuated. So it was quite a panic.

As a civilian?

I’m not sure, because I was in camp. When I came home on leave my mother insisted on telling me about all the precautions, and then of course there was rationing. She used food rationing and clothing rationing and so on.

I think she was proud. By that time she had remarried, and I had a stepfather who was ex-British Army, and he was working down at Victoria Barracks in St Kilda Road, Melbourne. He was a lieutenant colonel, and a veteran from the First World War. He was

very supportive and helpful to me as a young soldier.

I don’t know. I would go to him with questions, “What about this?” I really can’t remember, but he was great. He had served in Mesopotamia in World War II. Of course Mesopotamia was the old name for Iraq.

He was proud too, and pleased, and I went off in January, I think it was January ’42.

Well, yes. I think it was advertised as it is today, but not very, on much lower scale, and then

when you went before a selection board, who asked you all sorts of questions about what books do you read.

Yes, and I had trouble thinking of a suitable book, and then once you are accepted you signed a form and medically, well, before you are accepted, you are medically accepted, and you went off on the train to the Royal Military College,

ACT [Australian Capital Territory].

I really don’t know. I think they were like any sort of military selection board. They were looking for people who would be future leaders and so on. Of course they made a lot of mistakes in those days.

In picking the wrong people. I’m sure I wouldn’t be selected today if I went before the selection board, because they are highly scientific now. They have, future cadets have to be assessed by a psychologist and all that, very high tech. You have to have a university degree and so on, which

I didn’t have.

Yes, and they were very, looking mainly for people who they thought had leadership ability, and they didn’t always get it right.

Yes, there were four boys from my own school, actually. There were five of us selected that year, which was

quite a coincidence, so I knew them fairly well, and then I met others on the way to, on the train going to Canberra, and I’m still in touch with quite a number who live in the eastern states and New Zealand.

No, I was in

civilian clothes.

We were met and conveyed in trucks, I think, big trucks, to the college, where we were sworn in and attested, that’s the term.

Attested. We signed the…

…the oath of. Attested, so from that day on we were officially members of the defence force, even though I had been a member of the defence force just prior, I had been discharged from that enlistment and then took on this new one. Then we were issued with uniforms and shown our rooms.

They were, well, the working

uniform, everyday, was a khaki denim type material. They used to call them giggle, suits because they were pretty terrible, but good working clothes, and then we had a navy blue uniform with a red stripe down the side of the trousers and brass buttons, and we used to wear that at night for dinner.

We had to wear that on ceremonial parades.

Oh yes.

Of course Duntroon was a built up school, I suppose you could say. Like a big boarding school with lots of rooms and classrooms for lectures. It was fairly big, a big parade ground, and

then we’d dress for dinner every night, and it was a pretty full on day, with reveille at 6 and studies at night from, in your room from 8 to 10, and lights out at 10.15.

Military subjects, as well as some, what we called civil subjects, like chemistry,

physics, mathematics. Those three civil subjects, and also English and writing essays and things, but most of them were military subjects so you would be studying drill, weapon training, artillery, engineers, signals. Every sort of branch of the army to get some,

learning the basics, or being taught the basics.

To give you an understanding of how the various arms of artillery and signals and infantry, how they worked. Armour, etc. How they worked together, and then tactics and military history. The whole range of subjects,

and this was to ground you so that you not only were capable of being a platoon commander in the immediate future when you graduated, but also that hopefully you stayed on and progressed up the ladder, you would have some fundamental step or understanding of how the army as a whole worked, and

of course this time the course had been shortened to two years. Normally it was four years, but because of the war we worked a lot harder than the pre-war cadets did.

Well, more or less, yes.

We had single rooms, which was heated,

because you know Canberra is a pretty cold place. Obviously communal bathrooms, but single rooms and a big wardrobe where you kept all the wardrobes and gear, and every room was inspected every day, and if you hadn’t folded your blankets properly or there was a speck of dust on the floor you were disciplined and, but it was pretty rigid.

What they called extra drills. That would mean you would have to get dressed early in the morning and put your pack and web equipment on and take your rifle and be marched up and down the square, probably from 6.30 to 7. That was an extra drill. You might

get, you would get one in the morning and one in the afternoon, and if it was a serious offence, like you had been caught drinking or something, you might get 28 days of that. So it was tough.

No. No alcohol was allowed. I think they are much more civilised now. They let them drink.

No. You

weren’t supposed to. We would sort of surreptitiously have a drink, because most of us were fairly young, and boys didn’t drink at school as much in those days as children do today.

We would do physical training every day for one period, and then sport after work. That was from 4 to 6. We would be playing football or AFL [Australian Rules – Australian Football League] or cricket or whatever. The physical training would be training in the gym, cross-country runs, climbing ropes. All those sort of things.

Very much so, because they were conscious of the fact that when we graduated from the college we would be going almost straight into action in New Guinea or somewhere else, and so they wanted to make us as fit as they could.

Yes. Yes, we would be given leave on Saturdays. Saturday afternoon, Saturday evening and Sundays, so if you were fortunate enough to meet a young lady who lived in Canberra, and of course the population of Canberra was only about 9,000.

Very small, but if you were fortunate enough to meet a lady who took pity on you or liked you you would be invited to her house for dinner or lunch

or something, and that was a great, I mean, that was like winning the lotto.

They would have dances from time to time. But by word of mouth, mainly. A senior cadet who was graduating, who would say, “I know Mary in whatever suburb, and I’ll tell Mary about you,” and if you were lucky Mary would send you an invitation.

Or have a sister and all that sort of thing, but as I say, it was a very small town.

I think they accepted us, but in those days Duntroon seemed a long way away from Canberra, although it was almost an inner suburb and not far past the,

I don’t know if you know Canberra, but Russell Avenue, where the defence headquarters is now, and so it seemed a long way because there weren’t many houses. The houses hadn’t spread, and they didn’t see much of us, really.

Looking forward to graduating. You know, it was almost like being in, as I imagine

people would feel in gaol. The boys used to call it the clink. That was the sort of nickname. We all wanted to graduate as quickly as possible and join a unit and go to the war. That was our ambition.

We were reported on every term, and copies of the reports

sent to our parents who used to provide us with pocket money, and we weren’t paid as in cash by the army, although there was a small amount put aside so we had some money when we graduated, but I recall our parents used to send us, I think, 10 shillings a week. That was all we were allowed, which is $1,

equivalent to $1 when the dollar was converted, so we didn’t have much pocket money.

Oh yeah, it was great. Different food and so on.

Well, my ambition was

to join the infantry and to join a battalion and go to the war, and some people wanted to become gunners and join the artillery, and engineers, and so on. As much as possible they would meet our wishes and fill our preference.

Our selection?

So I graduated, and we all went to our respective units.

Well, it was memorable. I went to see the, I was there last December for the 60th anniversary of our graduation and there were, quite a few of my old class were there, the graduating class of my time, and the parade hadn’t changed.

The Governor-General, Major General Michael Jeffery, who used to be the Governor here, was in his role as Governor-General and Chief of the Defence Force. He reviewed the parade, and it just seemed very much the same as it was in 1943 when we graduated, but bigger of course. Bigger crowds.

There was a dance that night,

a ball, and the custom was in those days that at midnight your partner who you were dancing with pinned your badges of rank on your uniform, so from that moment you were officially a lieutenant with two stars, and that was very exciting and in my case my partner was my sister, elder sister. So that, and my mother

was there, and my stepfather. That was lots of fun.

Yes. Memorable.

By that time we had, sorry. That night we wore the blue uniform, and then of course we

went off to war and we hung it up and didn’t wear it again.

Initially I had to go and do another small arms school at Bonegilla.

Weapons training, and although I had done a lot of it before this was to make us officially instructors, so that we were

super trained, and then from there I went to the jungle training centre at Canungra in Queensland, where we were taught the rudiments of jungle warfare. I was there for a couple of months, and then eventually I went to north Queensland by train and joined my battalion, which was the 2/6th Infantry Battalion

on the Atherton Tableland.

The weapons training course was at Bonegilla. We were spent quite a lot of time on the rifle range perfecting our skills of marksman or potential marksman. Training on the Vickers gun [machine gun], the Bren gun, which was the light machine gun.

Mortars. 3-inch and 2-inch. Anti-tank rifles and grenades. All the infantry weapons.

Yes, we had. Many of them.

Well, it more intensive. There was more time allocated to it. I think we were there for three weeks, or it might have been four weeks and I remember

it was in north Victoria in the summer, and it was a very hot camp.

It was like many of the wartime camps. It was a series of what we used to call tin huts, galvanised iron huts. Naturally no air conditioning or fans or anything like that, and

they were built all over Australia. Here, in Western Australia and everywhere.

Much, I suppose, harsher. They weren’t the proper bedrooms as we had been used to. We were sleeping in a dormitory type hut with other people, so it was fairly crowded.

Well, adapted well. At that age, I think in your late teens or early 20s, you all had lots of fun together.

I think the worst episode was when we arrived, we, the people coming from Melbourne on the train to Albury

in New South Wales where the camp was. Bonegilla, actually in north Victoria, we decided we wouldn’t catch the train they told us to catch. We decided we would catch another one that was faster and get us there earlier, and instead of that there was a delay and we arrived about two hours late, and we were exceedingly unpopular when we arrived because the whole course, the other people on the course had been held up

and we incurred the wroth of the commanding officer, who I don’t think liked Duntroon graduates in any case.

In front of the whole school.

There were lots of people who came from infantry units throughout the 2nd AIF,

and they were there to become weapon instructors.

He was not a Duntroon graduate himself, although he was a permanent officer, and I don’t know why he had it, but he was certainly biased. He probably thought we were all jumped up and, you know, overeducated and had no practical knowledge,

I would imagine.

Not really, no. With one officer in my battalion I was aware of it, but no, it wasn’t widespread.

Yes. I went to Canungra, which was a camp called the Jungle Training Centre in southern Queensland, near the

New South Wales border, and there was a lot of not so much jungle but what people call rainforest, but it made a good area to train people in patrolling, ambushes and living off the land, and generally hardening them up in preparation to join

units in New Guinea. Most of the soldiers there were reinforcements or people who had been converted from other units, such as the anti-aircraft artillery which were deployed around Sydney and Melbourne, and by that stage the war had moved on and the threat to the big cities had disappeared, so these people were reallocated,

and really didn’t like becoming infantrymen.

We were well accepted, and it was quite a Spartan life. You were up early in the morning, and instead of shaving in an ablution hut you had to shave in the river, and it was pretty cold

at that time of year, so having a shave was quite difficult, and wash.

The daily routine was reveille and then physical training. They would march us to the river and we would shave, and then there was physical training and breakfast,

and then there would be a series of training sessions, or sometimes a three-day training exercise. We would go off as a platoon cross-country in the mountains, and we were pretty fit by the time we finished.

Yes it was, and it stood us in good stead later when we got to New Guinea.

Pretty well. We had this advantage of being at Duntroon for two years, so we had been on some exercises in the bush at Duntroon, and we were pretty well trained. I think we were much more fortunate than the young reinforcement who was

joining the army for the first time and suddenly pitchforked into this horrible camp in the mountains.

Well, most of them were very cooperative. A few became what we used to term ‘bolshie’ and, you know, difficult, and some of them would drop out across

field exercises, but very few really. I suppose one per cent who couldn’t hack it.

I don’t think so. There were a few there with me, but I didn’t see much of them. We were all too busy.

I remember we moved across country all the way down to the coast, and there was a big, what they call field firing exercise down there, south, sorry, near Surfers Paradise, and that was with tanks and live ammunition, artillery ammunition. That was quite

an experience for the first time. Quite frightening in a way.

I think I was just leading my platoon. I was a platoon commander and it was, by the time we reached that area I think

we were all pretty tired, and then this exercise started, but that was quite exciting.

Yes, with artillery ammunition. 25-pounders and close support.

They had safety officers with radios,

and I think the 25-pounder was a pretty safe artillery weapon and there wasn’t any drop shorts or premature explosions and nothing untoward happened. It went according to play, in other words.

Yes. When you saw this shell burst 50 yards ahead of you

you realised it’s not something to be trifled with.

They were good. I don’t specifically remember any of them, but they were good, and all keen and professional.

Well, that was, as future professional officers they wanted to join units like artillery and engineering. I think they had more appeal for them, and they probably thought infantry was a bit dull, and more to be in life. It was better to be an artillery officer, where you were using mathematics to

get range and so on. I suppose it is a bit more professional arm of the service. The same with engineers and so on that are building bridges and so on.

Good-humoured, but nothing serious.

Well, they always used to, the artillery officers

as having a handkerchief up their sleeve. That was the sort of, what shall we say, customs that some of them had borrowed from the British artillery officers. That was a bit. You certainly didn’t see it in the jungle or anything like that. Only in the peacetime deployment.

You know, the foot-sloggers and PBI – poor bloody infantry. But it was all good natured, and I think we all realised we were dependent upon each other for support. We were one army, and you certainly were glad later on in New Guinea when we finally got some artillery support, and we were very glad to have it,

and air support, so on.

I think we were there for about six weeks, and then we caught the train to Brisbane, and then Brisbane to Cairns, and then I joined the battalion.

It was good. I think it took about two or three days, and we slept in the train, and as I say,

occasionally when we pulled into a big station, big country station, these wonderful ladies from, I think, the Country Women’s Association or such organisations were there to provide refreshments, and then back in the train, and then finally we got to Cairns, and then I think we went by truck from Cairns to

Atherton, up in the Tablelands, which was a great area.

It didn’t, the part that we were, there was a lot of bush and we were in tents, and it probably wouldn’t. If you drove past you wouldn’t know that there was a battalion of 800 men

in those woods, and we did a lot of training there and then eventually went to New Guinea.

The, it was sort of hacked out of the bush in various company areas. Six companies in the battalion, and they were separated

a bit. There was a parade ground for the whole battalion, but that wasn’t used much because we weren’t there to drill and have ceremonial parades. The training was on a company basis, and again we were concentrating on some weapon training and some map reading, but mostly patrolling and ambushing, which was the

sort of most common deployment or employment of troops in the jungle, in jungle warfare.

I remember being marched in to see the commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel F.W. [actually F.G.] Wood, DSO [Distinguished Service Order], who

was a very distinguished officer. He commanded a battalion through most of the war previously, in a previous campaign in New Guinea and such places as Greece and Crete. It had quite a history, the battalion. He greeted me and he looked at me rather intently and he said, “What’s that you’ve got?” and looking at my upper lip, where I was attempting to grow a moustache, and I said

rather modestly, “That’s my moustache, sir.” He said, “Mmm. Looks like a cricket match.” I said, “What do you mean?” and he said, “Eleven a side.” I was very embarrassed so I went and shaved it off.

Only that they had been in previous campaigns,

which I’d mentioned. It was came from Melbourne, the 2/6th and its sister battalion was the 2/5th and the 2/7th, and they were very proud of their history and they had done very well.

And very proud to be a member of it.

Not very well informed. Just by word of mouth, that he was very well regarded.

I don’t think he took much notice of me. I was very lowly officer, and we had an officer’s mess which was pretty rudimentary, where we would have our meals when we weren’t out in the bush, and he,

they were pleasant to us, but being young lieutenants they weren’t very interested in socialising with us, because we were pretty young and raw.

Just exchange of pleasantries, but…

Oh yes, at times, but mostly the subalterns [junior officers] would stick to themselves and have different interests and comments, but they made us feel welcome and they were pleased to see us as reinforcements. They knew that we were going into battle, and we depend on one another.

There was a fellow called Hederman who had been a sergeant and had been promoted in the field. A fellow called Ivanery, who lost his life in New Guinea. There was Stewart Gordon, who is still alive in Canberra. There was

a fellow called Jones. I don’t know where he came from. I’m finding it difficult to recall their names now, because I hadn’t seen them for years.

No. We, I don’t think so, no. I mean, we were friendly as

young people are, but we were all pretty busy, very busy and a lot of training, and occasionally we would go to the 6th Division…This is the 6th Division emblem that I have got on today. The kangaroo and the boomerang. We would go to the 6th Division Club, which was a big tin shed in which we would

imbibe and have a meal and come back later in the evening, but that didn’t happen very often.

We would talk about them, and you know, the…I remember once I got lost, well, not lost, temporarily lost.

Yes, in this very thick bush, and I was very glad to get

out of it because once you get lost in the bush…But I had my platoon with me and I was leading the way and hacking my way through this bush and I thought, “My goodness, we are lost,” and just at that stage we came out of it and I remember talking about that, and they had had similar experiences.

I was allotted a platoon. 17 Platoon in D Company,

and there were a number of veterans in that Platoon. People who had served in the previous New Guinea campaign, and they were soldiers from all over Australia, about 35 to 38 of them. Sergeant, three corporals.

In a guarded way, I think. They thought “Who’s this new fellow? What’s he up to?”

It took them some time to accept me, because I looked very young, but most of them were either of similar age, a few older ones.

I did, yes. I did. I felt daunted. I realised that it was a big challenge, and I found it more when we got to New Guinea.

No. No. They were well behaved. There were no incidents, and they were good.

No, not really. I think they were. It was a different world then, and these people had been in the army for maybe six months, 12 months

or more, and they were well disciplined and polite, and they weren’t under any pressure at that stage.

I think so.

We were there only about three or four months, maybe four months, and then we

went to New Guinea.

I don’t know, it just seemed to happen. We accepted one another, and they…I think it was more of a strain, more daunting for me, much more than them. They were used to

different officers and being in charge of them, and they probably thought, “Who’s this bugger who’s come along?” and they wanted to find out.

I realised it was a big responsibility. I thought that, “I can’t let them down and I can’t let myself down,”

and I think it’s probably the most difficult command in the army, being a platoon commander, because you are living with the men. You are one of them, and you get into dangerous situations when they are looking to you for leadership, and that’s quite daunting, very daunting.

I suppose all the familiar qualities of being responsible for your men, considering them at all times. If you are out on a bivouac or training exercise, making sure they were fed before you were. All the basic principles.

Caring for them and not risking them in battle unless…Not taking unnecessary risks. Talking to them and making them feel welcome. Trying to ascertain if they have got problems at home so you can console them. It’s a lot easier said than done.

Often people don’t talk about what’s in a letter that’s arrived, but I’ll come back to them when I get onto censorship later. So these were the sort of, the catchword in those days, and still is, man management. Of course, they would say man and women management,

I suppose, because there are a lot of females in the army.

Yes, yes, and when we got into battle they, of course, were very cool headed, and I tended to lean on a member or two of them

for advice. They were happy to give me advice when I asked for it.

Yes.

I think we moved on about the 6th of December 1944, and we were moved down to Cairns and then embarked

in what was known as a liberty ship. A big cargo ship, and that was fitted out with, in holds, big holds they were fitted out with tiers of stretchers. I think there was about six one on top of the other, and hundreds of stretchers in these holds,

and that’s where you slept and they had pretty rudimentary latrines on the deck, and a few temporary kitchens set up. I think it was about a five-day voyage, and then we arrived at Aitape in northern New Guinea.

Not about the particular area we were going to. We had been briefed about what to expect in the jungle and our, what we were to do regarding the natives and to respect them and all that sort of thing.

About the climate, about hygiene, but we hadn’t been briefed about the particular area, Aitape/Wewak area where we were headed for.

The Japanese. We were taught quite a lot about their characteristics in battle. The fact that they were good at camouflage, they were

good at digging weapon pits quickly. They, all their characteristics and…

Oh yes. We didn’t take them lightly.

That’s right, but by that stage in the war we had a lot of respect for them.

We’d heard that they were brutal. We had heard that from the

campaign in Malaya and Singapore, we had heard that they were very quick. They had bicycles and they were able to travel down the length of Malaya quite quickly. They were very good at envelopment. They would hold you up on a jungle track and then they would send

groups around both flanks to come in behind you. You had to be prepared for all round defence if you were, even with a small unit like a platoon you had to expect them to come through the jungle and encircle the unit. That sort of thing, which were the favourite Japanese tactics, and they did it very well.

Yeah.

I think we had more training and talks. Not very much, because it was so crowded. There were a lot of troops on this ship, and we were all very glad when we eventually arrived and got off the ship.

Well,

it wasn’t a landing on a hostile shore. We were landing in a bay at Aitape and we clambered over the side. They had big nets, and with our rifles and packs on our backs, and lower ourselves on these nets, and a bit frightening. Hoping you wouldn’t

let go, and then there were boats to take us ashore, but it wasn’t opposed by the Japanese or anything like that.

The weather was humid. A typical jungle New Guinea day. Very hot and humid, and then once we landed we were deployed to a particular area, which our battalion was responsible for. Just sort of a big

defence perimeter right around Aitape, and the chances of the Japanese attacking were very minimal at that stage, because they had been pushed well back. There was an awful lot of supply ships coming in with food and ammunition and petrol and so on, day and night. It was a busy bay.

Very little.

We built, my platoon was allocated a certain area. It was all flat and swampy, and we built a series of machine gun posts. We had what were called two-man tents, which were just two, we each carried one strip of canvas and then we joined them in the middle and made a small tent,

and two men would sleep in this tent, so we all had those to shelter us from the rain at night.

I shared with a fellow who was nominally my batman [soldier servant]. He was a fellow called Arthur Mark and he came from South Australia, and I remember he was quite old. He was about 28, which was quite old to me, and he was supposed to look after me but I think I looked after him.

He wasn’t very fit. Nice man. Good man.

Quite a close relationship. He’d help me and run messengers and remind me every morning that as the platoon commander I had make sure the Atebrin tablets were issued to the troops. The authorities were very

serious about Atebrin. There had been a lot of malaria, and we all had to take one every day and I was supposed to give each soldier his tablet and make sure that he took it in front of, observe him taking it and then record his name in a roll book. So that was pretty strict. Very strict.

Some

of the… There was a rumour among the troops that Atebrin might make the impotent, and some of them didn’t like taking it, but I never had any difficulty. Whether they spat it out after I had moved on I don’t know. I used to take my tablet religiously, but I still got malaria in due course.

There was a fellow called Doc Goddard, who was a veteran. He had been in the previous campaign and he was a Bren gunner. Very good soldier. Rough as bags. Very almost an insolent manner, but I always remember him later on, after

an encounter we had with the Japanese and we’d killed a few, he, some hours later I found him sitting on the side of the track and he had, there was a dead Japanese beside him and…

Doc Goddard. I said, “What are you doing, Doc?” and he said, “I’m just collecting some teeth.”

And he had a small white bag with him and he was collecting teeth with gold fillings in them, and apparently he had been collecting these teeth for some time. Of course I was, I suppose these days you would class that as desecration of the dead and a war crime, but no one was particularly interested in it at that stage,

and it gave me a bit of a shock, being a young officer. I never heard of this sort of thing happening, and I think I said to him that he had better not get caught, or words to that effect, which would horrify certain people today.

Yes.

There were different characters.

There was a Corporal Greg Smith, who won a Military Medal in a previous campaign and I remember the first patrol that we went out on, which turned into a raid on a Japanese position in a native village. We had a, quite a steep climb up a jungle track to get to this village, and halfway up the hill

he was killed, and just about a metre ahead of me, but he had been very helpful in advising, and I think on that particular day he had taken over from a young forward scout who was leading, and he didn’t approve of the way he was leading so he took over, just voluntarily, on this jungle track, and the poor fellow, he was killed. But he

had been good. There was another fellow called Allan Rose from Victoria who was a great soldier. I always remember the platoon sergeant, who was a fellow called Claude Wagland from Queensland. He was a big tall fellow. Sometimes if there was grumbling in the ranks Claude would say, “Enough of that, young man. If I hear

any more complaints from you watch out,” meaning he might…I don’t know, I never heard about it but I’m sure at times he might have used, he might have slapped someone over the head for being naughty, but they all respected him. He was a good fellow.

Yes, and he wouldn’t stand

for any nonsense or backchat.

Allan Rose, yes, and he had a brother in the battalion too, and I can’t remember his first name, but Private Rose, and they were good soldiers.

Oh yes. There was a lot of joking when it wasn’t serious, and

our life used to consistent of digging a defensive position using on the top of a hill, clearing the hill and building a series of weapon pits in the perimeter, and then we would send out patrols during the day. Not at night from that perimeter. We were usually supplied,

well, we were supplied by native carriers who would come in. Maybe 10 to 15 carriers with an armed escort bringing in ammunition and food, and newspapers and mail if we were lucky, and then in addition to that we would be supplied by Dakotas, by the RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force], who would

drop supplies either by parachute or by free dropping. They would endeavour to parachute these supplies to your platoon position, but they usually failed because it was very tricky, so you would have to send people down slopes of the mountain to recover, and of course one had to be careful doing this because

the Japanese would be, they were pretty hungry, would be trying to pinch some of the supplies for themselves.

We would be told by company headquarters, either by radio when it worked, or sometimes there was a landline, a cable, but not very often. Usually the Japanese would cut that,

so sometimes we would be get a radio message to say that supplies would be delivered at such and such a time.

We were being dropped, particularly ammunition, barbed wire. We were being, food. I suppose they were

the three principal items.

Well, most of it was parachuted. I think all the food was parachuted, or brought by these native carriers, so it was in pretty good condition. Food like canned meats and vegetables and

plastic spuds, which was the name given to dried potato in big kerosene type tins, and dehydrated carrots, dehydrated potatoes, dehydrated cabbages, so you would add a bit of water to them. They were pretty awful. A lot of bully beef, tinned beef, beans, baked beans,

pork and beans.

It wasn’t very nice.

I don’t know. It was a big area that we were operating in.

Unlimited. It was miles and miles, but we were operating in

a sector. It was not like a conventional defence setting. There wasn’t a line as there was in Korea. There was a series of isolated platoons. What they called platoon localities, and the theory was that each platoon would patrol around their area and

carry out raids on Japanese positions as much as possible.

You might be across country, you might be five miles from the next, anything up to five miles up to the next platoon position, but it would be very hilly country and a lot of jungle. Mostly jungle,

so you didn’t really measure distances in terms of yards or metres you measured distances in time. So if it took, to go from this platoon to that one over there might take you two hours along jungle tracks, or it might only take one hour.

Yes, we had maps of tracks and, but the big thing is we had native

guides. We’d probably have two or three native guides to each platoon, and they were invaluable. They were wonderful and they knew the area, but they were very silent footed. They had bare feet, and they would move along the jungle track and you wouldn’t hear them coming. They were very brave too, and they would reconnoitre

the Japanese position and move right up close to it, and then they would come back and tell you approximately how many Japanese were in the position, and sometimes they would volunteer to take grenades. At night this, would creep up to this old native camp, or native village or settlement on the top of the hill, and in the middle of the night they would drop some grenades into the huts

They would wreak havoc amongst the Japanese, and some of them would be killed. They were very spooky for the Japanese.

Yes, they would carry a rifle, but I really can’t recall. I don’t think they were armed all the time. If we were going on a

raid or setting up an ambush they would be armed, but if they were going on one of these missions I don’t think they would be armed. They just carried the grenade. They hated the Japanese. They used to call them the Banana Man because of their colour, and of course they would speak to you in pidgin English.

No, it was not hard to learn.

So most of it’s English, a sort of bastardised form of English, and there are some very quaint expressions.

Well, they used to refer to the moon as the ‘kerosene belong Jesus’. That was the moon. One I always remember was their name for a crosscut saw. Remember, the two-man saw. One man would sit on each side

of the log and pull it backwards and forwards, and their name for that in pidgin, “You push ’em me come. You pull ’em me go. All the time he cry out.” I don’t remember too many of the other words.

Yes. They’d say, they would come back, if they had been out

on a reconnaissance on their own, and they would say, “Japan man, he stop,” meaning they were located in this particular area.

They respected them, and I mean they were very grateful for the fact of their knowledge of the terrain, their knowledge of the area, and the fact that they helped us from time to time in these clandestine operations.

I guess we all did. I can’t think of anything specific. You see, we had big boots on and we used to make a noise when we moved through the bush. They were barefooted and surefooted, and it was wonderful to watch them walk along a greasy jungle track, slippery track, and they had so much control with their toes,

or climbing up a hill, many hills and mountains, and they were wonderful.

It was mixed. There was a lot of jungle, vines, all different types of vegetation. Thick in some places and not so thick in others.

Pretty dense, and of course if you were leading a patrol, as I was sometimes, we took it in turns, it was quite spooky, because every step you took you’d be wondering if there was a Japanese behind that bush or whatever.

Because of the density, and you had no way of telling. Hope there wasn’t.

Lots of bugs. I remember one night when we thought the Japanese were attacking, might attack our position. They didn’t.

One of the sentries heard noises in the bush outside the perimeter, and the alert was passed around and we all manned our weapon pits, and I remember after about 10 minutes

I wanted to get something out of my pack in my little dugout, and I grabbed my pack and I felt this creepy thing, and the next morning I looked in there and there was a centipede which was about six inches long. That was quite scary.

Yes. It was a nasty little centipede too. Fortunately I pulled my hand out quickly.

We all stood to. We heard nothing more and we went back, most of us went back to sleep. We had a pretty good defensive perimeter. We had tripwires and booby traps outside the perimeter so that if the Japanese did come they

would trip a tripwire and that would set off a grenade. It was a fairly primitive form of booby trap. There would be grenade in a jam tin, so if you tripped the wire the jam tin would empty and the grenade, which was primed, would slip out and explode after four seconds. So we were

quite confident about our defence perimeters.

I guess it was, as I said, daunting, but the longer it went on the more confident one became, and the more experienced members of the platoon were, and the corporal and the sergeant.

We all gained some experience, and we’d have a visit from the company commander occasionally. We would have a visit from the padre [chaplain] occasionally, and we would, I always used to remember when the company sergeant major would sometimes come with a native

train. I remember one day he was rather, almost bald, and I remember one of the carriers saying to me in pidgin…I said, “Who’s coming?” and this particular day the company sergeant major hadn’t come, and he said, “Man with lick lick grass on top.” Lick lick grass. Very little hair

and we knew that he was the only guy who had lick lick grass, so we knew who it was. So all these quaint expressions.

Yeah.

After we marched, after we moved from Aitape into the, what was known as the Toreselle Ranges, and that was the mountains behind Aitape and Wewak, and my particular brigade was deployed

in that area inland. It was pretty mountainous. We hadn’t been there. Oh, sorry, the first thing that happened, I was sent with three other officers independently of our battalion, before the Battalion moved into that area. I was sent on an attachment with the 2/5th Battalion, and I spent about a week, and this was for training purposes. They were training me

to give me some experience, and the other officers, young officers. So I spent a week, or it might have been ten days, with a company of the 2/5th Battalion, and they were going out on patrols and setting up ambushes in this period, so that was good training. I learned a lot about the conditions and how the platoon commander, who was experienced operated, and so on.

Then my own platoon and the rest of the battalion, my battalion moved into the area and I was reunited with the platoon and not long after that they sent us, I was sent out on a raid on a Japanese position, as it were. Corporal Smith was killed, and that was

quite a memorable occasion.

I remember we had a native. I remember several things about that thing. On the way to the raid, on the way we passed, we crossed a small creek, and then having got to the other side

we climbed up a track. As I say, we had a native guide, and we got fairly close to this position on the top of the hill, and then the track divided and the guide who was leading, the leading scout I should say. He was,

I’ve forgotten what the problem was, but Corporal Smith decided to take over. He was a very experienced man. Shortly after that he was killed right in front of our eyes going up this track. So we took another track and we eventually got, had a fire fight. An exchange of fire with the Japanese, and then

I decided to retire, because I could see that we had lost surprise, and we made our way back some time later.

I don’t know. But they had the advantage of height and concealed positions. It would have been folly to continue and tried to fight them.

So I remember by the time we got back to this small creek, it had been rainy and there was a raging torrent. The creek had become quite dangerous to cross, so we took up positions thinking that the Japanese might pursue us, but they didn’t, so we got away.

No. There were no other injuries.

We had a couple wounded on the next patrol we went on. That was much more successful. We managed to surprise some Japanese in a position on the top of a hill and we, I think we killed maybe nine or ten and,

but don’t hold me to that figure. That was a long time ago. That was successful.

Well, it was a question of getting to the outskirts of this small settlement, which was cleared. It was on the top of the hill, and I think there were two or three huts. When we got into position, still, with

the cover of the jungle, and we couldn’t see any Japanese, but we were told by the native guide that there were some, but he didn’t know where they were. When we got into position we opened fire, I ordered them to open fire into these huts, threw grenades and then charged and

raided this settlement of these few huts, and sure enough some of the Japanese had been killed. There was one offering resistance, and he was soon dispatched. One of our fellows was wounded in the groin. He survived, and then we beat it. We evacuated and withdrew quickly

after that.

Well, this fellow…We put a field dressing on this guy, and he was a fellow called Corporal Treblecock from South Australia,

although I don’t think that was quite the name and we had a stretcher, I think, and carried him home. It was not a proper stretcher. It was an improvised stretcher of a canvas top from one of the old collapsible

beds that we carried, but the stretcher was handy. The canvas, and a couple of bamboo poles through it, and we carried him.

You do feel responsible, but on the other hand you feel comforted by the fact that you are

in the commanding position, and you take up positions in the jungle beside a track, and you know that anyone who comes along that track, they are not going to see you unless you are foolish and move and make a noise, so if you are a well-trained ambush team you will have a successful

ambush. But it’s a bit like going fishing. You can have all the bait in the world, but unless the fish come along there is no result.

It was all much the same. I mean, you never knew where the Japanese were, but of course this was the dying days of the war

and a lot of the Japanese were sick. They had malaria, their hygiene was poor, very poor, so some of them had dysentery.

Well, their sanitation was non existent. They wouldn’t dig a pit or anything like that.

I don’t think they had any anti-malarial drugs by that stage, so a pretty grim time for them, but none the less they were a formidable foe. They fought on, and their morale must have been low at times, but they were good jungle fighters.

No, I think they were just naturally

good soldiers. They had been well trained, and they were probably more prepared to sacrifice their lives then maybe some of our people. In some areas of New Guinea at that stage, not in our area fortunately, they had resorted to cannibalism. I didn’t see that,

but it was well known, and they had killed some of our soldiers and eaten them, and also they had some prisoners of war from Singapore that they had brought down that were members of the Indian army attached to the British. Indian units in the British Army that had been captured in Singapore, and they used them as native bearers. They gave them a very hard time

and ate a few of them as well.

No, not about cannibalism, and we’d heard of the atrocities in New Britain, when members of the 2/22nd Battalion were massacred after the fall of Rabaul. We’d heard of that, and we heard of tales from Malaya

and the Malayan campaign. They were very brutal.

It did, yes. Yes, it did, and of course it made us hate them all the more.

Oh, I think we had enough from what had happened in the past

and the accounts of Pearl Harbour and the raids on Sydney Harbour and Darwin. All those sort of things. There had been a buildup over a number of years by this stage. This is getting towards the end of the war, so we didn’t need much more to propel us with hatred.

We were told that prisoners were valuable,

but we didn’t have an opportunity to take any. None of them surrendered. They were too brave for that. If you were a Japanese to become a prisoner was the most terrible thing, dishonourable thing that could happen to a Japanese soldier. They were taught that that was terrible.

Yes, absolutely.

Patrols were usually just for the day. You’d leave early in the morning. Movement at night was impossible, virtually, for people like us. So you’d be out from 6.00 in the morning or 8.00 in the morning for

four hours or six hours. That would be about the maximum.

What would you do? You’d have a feed. Some bully beef or biscuits or whatever was available. All you had to drink was water. There was no milk or anything like that.

If you are lucky there might be some mail that had arrived, but that was infrequent.

Yes, and also as platoon commander I had to censor letters, because they were worried that soldiers might reveal sensitive information which, looking back on it, was stupid.

There was no need for it. We were cut off in this area, and by the time the letter got back to Australia there was, the information would be stale, and that was an experience for a young 21-year-old platoon commander, to be censoring other people’s letters. I really didn’t like that. There was one particular fellow who used to write intimate things

to his wife, and one had much more hair then, and it made my hair stand on end. You felt as though you were intruding, but there was only one of them, and he later, he almost…He broke down later. He couldn’t hack it. It was too much, and he became psychologically sick.

Troppo.

He went troppo, and we had to get rid of him.

He used to cry and talk about his wife and children back in Adelaide, and I think one day he practically refused to go out on patrol. You could tell even then that it wasn’t a disciplinary matter, he just couldn’t help it.

I wrote a note to the commander, and he was sent back to company headquarters, and then they sent him back to Australia in due course. Without any disciplinary action, but by that stage he was in the hands of the medical authorities, and I ran into him later in Adelaide when I was stationed there, and I was in hospital with malaria

and he was in hospital with malaria, and he was a nice fellow but he just broke down.

Well, I suppose it’s inevitable. You don’t like it because it’s one less man in your platoon, but it’s inevitable that there will be some people

who can’t hack it. The only thing is that I suppose professional soldiers are a bit wary of people who declare themselves as conscientious objectors. You sometimes wonder if they are really genuine, because are they a conscientious objector or do they want to avoid military

duty? It’s a thought that goes through your mind, and then it’s up to people who are better trained then you are to determine that.

Yes.

No, it was just the daily routine of patrols, ambushes, not every day. Supply drops, visits from all sorts of odd people who would come to see you and ask you silly questions.

You’d get, senior officers would come and try and, which was good, and try and cheer you up,

and they’d want to know about the latest incident and what we thought. Were the Japanese fighting as well as they had previously? Those sort of things, and the old padre used to come and talk to me. He seemed very old, but he was probably only about 30, but he was very good and he would hold a service for the troops, and

we lost two of our soldiers who were killed just outside our perimeter, and that was a very sad day. We had to bury them within the perimeter and hold a service, and that was pretty

frightening. Not frightening, but upsetting, and when you are 21 you are not sort of prepared for that. You don’t think anyone is going to die, but obviously it’s inevitable. They probably train them much better in these days in teaching them things.

None at all, no.

Well, we were lucky, because the war ended, and

we were only there from December, eight months, so it wasn’t long.

Every day seemed long, and then of course the most exciting time was when we heard over the platoon radio that the Americans had dropped the atom bomb. We didn’t know what an atom bomb was, but they mentioned that this big bomb had been dropped

on Japan at Hiroshima. I don’t think they said Hiroshima, and that, it was a great thing, and then a few days later we heard that a second bomb had been dropped on Nagasaki, and then they were saying that this could see an early end to the war. Then we got the orders to cease fire. Not

to shoot anyone but to stay in the perimeter until further advice, and then in another day or two we were ordered to evacuate and withdraw, and then we moved back to the jungle airfield where they flew in aircraft from the coast, and we were evacuated to Wewak.

So that was the end of the war for us.

Oh yes, we were delighted and overwhelmed. There wasn’t much we could do to celebrate, because we didn’t have any liquor or any goodies, but

we talked, and then eventually we were told to put what ammunition, spare ammunition we had into weapon pits and then to bury it so it wasn’t found by the natives. They were obviously looking ahead. They have probably since dug it up, some of them. Then, as I say, we were flown back to the coast, and we were encamped

at Wewak for some months and then evacuated to Australia.

That was another tented camp. The, we then got a beer ration of, I think, one bottle a day or something. Not every day, but most days, so that was very exciting.

There were a few parties and there were people brewing home brew as they did on the tableland. Then I was posted from this battalion to the headquarters of the base sub area, because I was to be given me staff officer training. Training as a staff officer, and I worked on this headquarters, and that was my first experience as a staff officer.

At Wewak. This was all in the Wewak area.

Some miles away.

Yes, it was. They obviously found out that I was a regular officer rather than an AIF officer, and this was a good way to give me some experience. The other thing that I should have mentioned, before I left the battalion

there was a big parade of all the members of the division. We had to take part in a big parade at the local airfield at Wewak and the reason for the parade was the surrender by the Japanese supreme commander, General Adachi, who was the commander of the Japanese army. I’ve forgotten which number,

and he presented his sword to General Robertson, who was our divisional commander, 6th Divisional commander and we were all drawn up. Thousands of us on this divisional parade in clean uniforms. I remember we were issued with the Pacific Star, which was the medal for that campaign, and we wore that very proudly,

and we witnessed the Japanese general with some of his staff officers and they marched the whole length of the airstrip in silence. Absolute silence, and then General Robertson was standing behind a table and then he handed this sword to him, and that was a very memorable time.

Afterwards he committed suicide, and a number of the Japanese officers were tried by the War Crimes Tribunal, and at Rabaul in particular. A great friend of mine was in charge of them. He’s still here in Perth, and he was responsible for the execution of some of them. They paid for their crimes,

their war crimes. So exciting time.

Well, there was great jubilation, and by that stage they were starting to have movies, and in a sort of an outdoor cinema, and there was a certain amount of beer around, so people having celebrations.

Not really then, of course gradually the ships were arriving, and soldiers were being taken back to Australia. There were some people who were leaving to join the occupation force that was going to Japan, but that didn’t leave, I think that left from one of the Indonesian

islands, concentrated, before it went to Japan.

Naturally I was looking forward to joining my family and to leave and then starting a career in the post-war army, permanent army.

Actually I flew home,

because my mother became ill and I was sent home on compassionate leave, and by the time I got home she was much better. So I flew home with a series of flights from Wewak to Lae, from Lae to Port Moresby and Port Moresby to Brisbane and Brisbane to Melbourne. It was quite a long

process.

Adjoining flights.

Not really. Just boredom and looking forward to getting home.

They were people much the same cases. A few soldiers and airmen and a few sailors, and we were all anxious to get home and finally got to Melbourne,

and finally got home with great excitement.

It was great, and I think like all mothers she was terribly worried, particularly knowing I was in the infantry, and she, you know, she was very emotional and glad to have me home, and

then I started going to parties. 21-year-old, and meeting up with school friends and meeting up, meeting girlfriends, many of whom…I didn’t know many girls at that stage. It was an exciting time.

You know, it was great relief, and they were looking forward to progress.

Petrol was becoming slightly more available, and clothing and food, and it took time. It probably took 12 months to notice any major difference.

Not much different to what you would see today, I don’t think. There weren’t many motor cars,

but still a lot of people. The trams still ran, the trains, and you’d see still a lot of people in uniform, but they were gradually demobilised and discharged and went about finding work for themselves.

The health. Well, she improved and she lived for

another four years, and then died of a stroke. She was only young. She was 59 or something.

Very close. We were married, Norma and I, in 1948, and she died in 1949, I think.

We met through a mutual, we had known each other

slightly when we were at school. Very slightly, and then we met through a mutual friend at Duntroon, and I remember he borrowed an old car that I had acquired and used to take Norma out in it, and then eventually I met her and we got married.

That’s right, when all the other people were returning.

I suppose much the same as young people do today. We, parties in people’s homes, and there was…I don’t think that we had barbecues that I recall. A lot of people have barbecues now but I don’t think we had barbecues, and we, there were a

few dances. There seemed to be a lot of people, my friends getting married, so I went to quite a few weddings.

They would have dances in town halls, and not really, not that many

dances, but some that way.

A place called the, it was more of a nightclub, called the Embassy Ballroom. I think there was one by that name here in Perth as well.

Yes, a popular name, and they still, austerity rationing and austerity controls

on hotel meals. I remember going out on a couple of occasions to a hotel, a leading hotel in Melbourne, and the highest price they could pay for a meal was 5 shillings. That is nothing compared to what it would be today, and eventually those regulations were lifted and everything was decontrolled.

Not really, no. No, I can’t recall. I’m not very good on music.

No.

As soon as I had leave I was posted to Victoria Barracks, which was army headquarters. The headquarters to the whole army in Melbourne, and I was posted to military intelligence. That was a very interesting period, because several things were happening. First of all, they’re obviously no longer interested in the Japanese,

because they had defeated the Japanese, but military intelligence in those days was very interested in what was happening in China, and we had a military attaché, the first Australian military attaché was posted in China. Colonel Clarke and he used to send back reports about the ongoing war between the Chinese nationalists and the Chinese communists,

so we tried to follow the war, and as best we could from his reports and other reports, and there were battles going on in what is now Indonesia in the Dutch East Indies between the Dutch forces that had come back to the Dutch East Indies after the war and

the emerging independence movement, I think it was under Sukarno, and that war went on for some years. Here in Australia we’re very interested in the war. Also we were very interested, military intelligence was very interested in acquiring as much information about Indonesia as we could, about the infrastructure,

the military geography of the territory, the airfields and the ports and so on. So we had people sending back that sort of information in a secret way, and we were interested in that for future needs and the, we were following the progress of the

battles between the Dutch and the independence movement. There was an Australian brigade, I think it was the 34th Brigade, I’m not sure of the number of troops, deployed in Indonesia, but they weren’t taking part in the fight to the best of my knowledge, and then they were brought home and Indonesia got its independence.

I was a young staff officer helping different departments. Mostly foreign intelligence, and we used to give briefings on what was happening in China and what was happening in Indonesia, and in a very interesting way of reports on the Soviet order of battle, because

Churchill had made his famous statement, I think in 1946, about the Iron Curtain. There was great interest in this huge Soviet army that wasn’t at war, but certainly a lot of it was deployed in countries in Eastern Europe and

the Iron Curtain had fallen right across Europe and Soviet occupation, which was to last for many years.

Other officers from the directorate and other officers from army headquarters from time to time.

More an interest briefing, and military intelligence also had a section which was responsible for security, but I had nothing to do with that.

In Melbourne?

The ones in Indonesia. I think they were just acquiring whatever information they could about, particularly about the infrastructure and bridges, the aerodromes and ports, and I suppose they were getting it mostly from the civil authorities, and I don’t know whether in the long term it really meant much, but

they thought at the time it would useful for Australia to have this information on record. I don’t know whether it has been retained over the years, I don’t know.

Sorry, can you put that question another way?

I think that they weren’t sure what was going to become of Indonesia. What the future was, and they thought this was a heaven-sent opportunity to send this information back home and to collate it. For, they weren’t sure at that stage what purpose. I suppose you could say

spying.

Not that I was aware of, and of course, people like. Well, I think generally politically Australia was a supporter of the new independence movement. There was a lot of sympathy for the Indonesians rather than the Dutch.

That’s right.

I think people, certainly in England and America, were starting to worry about the consequences of this huge Soviet build up, and this occupation of adjoining territories, and of course they had good reason to

worry, because in the years that followed Soviet Russia became a huge threat to the world. It wasn’t until the ’80s that it was wound down.

I don’t know if I thought there was a great threat, but I was old enough to realise that you’ve got to look ahead and be prepared, and no good sitting back and saying, “We have beaten

the Japanese, we can put our feet up.” Just the same as today, the defence forces are acquiring weapons for the future which may or may not be used, but you can’t buy things off the shelf when the balloon goes up. You’ve got to buy them beforehand, before the emergency.

Yes, yes. I think I have been more and more aware of it, the importance as time goes on.

About three years, including a stint over in Adelaide with military intelligence, and

at headquarters. They called it in those days the 4th Military District, and I was there, and the main thing that was happening as far as Adelaide was concerned was the development of the rocket range at Woomera. There were test firings going on at that stage. I was involved with security,

and so that was…

They were testing the atom bomb and testing rockets, which were British, for deployment, in case they were needed later. So they, you probably

don’t remember, but you’ve read about the atomic tests, both at Woomera and also off the West Australian coast.

Only peripheral, because I was issuing security passes to Woomera and those sort of things. Not physical

security as far as I was concerned, and we also trained people in the army in South Australia in the rudiments of military intelligence in the field and collecting information and so on.

I was in charge of the intelligence in the district,

but purely as a staff officer. Not a commander in a field role or anything like that.

Well, as I say there were many military intelligence training, liaison with various units in the command.

No. It was a long time ago.

I’m not being evasive. I really can’t add much

to it. It was a long time ago and I was a junior staff officer. People have been critical of the British who carried out the tests and critical of the Australian government at the time that they allowed them to carry out the tests. But it was a different world then. People had a much greater sense of the fact that we were a member of the British Commonwealth.

Now today, I suppose, most young people would be critical of that, with the benefit of hindsight.

I’m not sure that it has ever been established that people in Woomera were affected by the radioactive

fallout. I mean, it’s the same question about the Vietnam veterans, about Agent Orange, and there are various investigations into Agent Orange, which was used by the Americans in the Vietnam War. But I don’t think it’s ever been scientifically established that it was the cause of illness and other effects in ex-servicemen.

I don’t know. I’m not up on that.

When or where?

Well, as I say, I think there have been lots of investigations both in America and Australia, and I think the governments have been sympathetic.

I don’t think anyone has established any proof, but there may be later information that I’m not aware of.

I think I was in Adelaide for about two years, and then I came back to Melbourne, because they wanted me to study, to attend a course which was known as the

pre-entry course for admission to the staff college, so I was sent back to army headquarters in Melbourne, and I used to once a week attend this course. Eventually I had to sit for what they call the entrance examination. It was a series of exams, and I managed to pass these exams and qualify

to enter the staff college. That sounds long winded.

Military tactics, military organisation, military history, military administration, staff procedures, writing. I think they were the main subjects.

Yes, it was.

A lot of lectures and study.

Mainly people of my seniority, many of whom had been at Duntroon before and after me and with me, so we all worked hard and then sat for the exam.

I was lucky. I think I was one of the top few to pass. They had a system that the ones that passed highest went to the overseas staff college, and the remainder went to the Australian staff college, which was at Queenscliff in Victoria, so I was lucky to be chosen to go to an overseas staff college, and it was

was the staff college in India. So my wife and I, we had only just been married, went to India for 12 months, which was very interesting.

Just a student of the staff college, and the Indians, as most people who are in the staff college business, they invited one American, one Australian, two

British and two Burmese students to go to the, and one Canadian to go to the staff college as what they call foreign exchange students. There were about 180 Indian students on the course, and it was held in south India on an old hill station called Wellington, which was named after the duke years and years earlier.

Well, as I say, the staff course in teaching staff officers and future commanders military tactics and organisation and administration and procedures. It was a very comprehensive course, and it went on for ten

months.

Well, originally, pre-war, the British had established a staff college at a place called Quetta, which was near Pakistan, and when partition took place in 1947 Quetta was

in what was to become Pakistan, so the Indians had to establish a new staff college, so they chose Wellington down in the south because of the climate and buildings available and all that sort of thing. That’s how Wellington became the staff college.

It was. It was good.

It was a wonderful experience.

It was working with other, particularly Indian students. Mostly Indian students, who I found to be great guys, and their wives.

Well, they had been trained by the British and were part of the Indian Army during the war, and they were trained in the same principles as

we were. The same methods of organisation and tactics and so forth. There wasn’t much difference, and the Indian army was then and is today one of the most professional armies in the world. Very highly trained, very motivated and well equipped. I learnt a lot. I enjoyed it.

There were a few, yes. One British, one American and one Canadian.

Particularly the American. We got on very well together. I caught up with him in Vietnam later but that’s another story, and…

I think Australians and Americans, well, I think Australians and Americans

have a lot in common, and also bonded very well with him because he had his wife there and I had my wife there, whereas the British students were unaccompanied, so we used to see a lot of them off duty and they were kind to us. They were a bit older and more experienced. They were good.

Yeah, we had a lot in common.

We’d play golf, tennis. Go on sightseeing, and to places like Mysore. They had three young children with them too.

It was a great place.

It was another culture. It was, some people were put off by the poverty and so on, but I think we quickly got used to that, and we liked the Indians. They seemed to like us,

and it was very interesting. Two young Australians who had never been anywhere.

It was, yes.

I think probably the most interesting experience, memorable

experience was going to Mysore. They have an annual ceremony where they had lots of elephants all dressed ornately and a big parade of these elephants and they were, this is for the local sultan, and the whole palace was lit up with

thousands of lights. It was quite a spectacle. We went to that, and of course the Indians had always been fond of ceremonies and pomp and that sort of thing.

Yes, it was. A great spectacle.

They allocated us a small house, they called it a quarter.

A small brick house. Small rooms. It had two bedrooms, and pretty basic.

We had a number of servants. We had a cook. We had a bearer, who is a sort of a butler. We had a lady cleaner,

and I can’t remember what she was called, and the bearer had a 14-year-old boy as his offsider. He was called a chokra, and then there was a gardener. So there was a lot of servants, and this was the custom. You didn’t do anything yourselves. They were good. They were very loyal and terribly, very loyal and

helpful.

No. I’d never had servants before.

Oh no. Life was just full of interest. I remember every third or fourth day a man would come with about 20 ducks all

waddling along, and he had a big stick with a piece of cloth, I think, at the end of that and he would hold that out in front of the ducks and they’d follow. This was the way he’d get them from A to B, and then the cook would point out a duck or whatever, one or two, and he had a big hook that he’d hook them around the neck and give them to the cook, and the cook would kill,

and off he’d go. Then the fishmonger would come with great big baskets of fish with people carrying them, so you would get some fresh fish. They were remarkably fresh, actually, even though we were some distance from the coast. I think they had come in by train. This was everyday life watching these things, and then there would be hawkers who would come,

and suddenly you would see, usually a turbaned gentlemen and a couple, two or three bearers carrying his stock, and they would come to your front verandah and they would start spreading out carpets and brassware and other objects,

and then he’d hope that you would buy from him and there would be lots of haggling and bargaining, which was the tradition, and I always remember, on one occasion we’d liked a particular carpet, rug, and we negotiated what we thought was a good price and

paid him and off he went with his team, and about ten minutes later one of my former students, Colonel Beddie, he arrived and he was a Sikh and he was a fairly forceful sort of gentlemen. He looked at this rug and he said, “Where did you get that?” and we said, “We got it from the hawker.” He said, “How much did you pay for it?” and I told him. “Far too much, far too much.” And

we said, “We are happy.” “You can’t do that. You’ve been cheated in my homeland.” He barked some orders to one of my servants, who disappeared in a cloud of dust and came back about half an hour later with this poor hawker and team, and Colonel Beddie proceeded to dress him down and tell what a terrible, in Hindi, and the carpet was,

the rug was given back. We gave the rug back to the hawker and he gave us the money. I’ve always felt badly about that ever since, and we’ve never found a rug that was as nice. So that was one of the things that happened.

The instructors were a mixed group. Some British instructors. Probably about half a dozen, and

the rest were Indians, and they were very competent, very fair. It was a busy place, and the commandant of the whole staff college was a British major general called Joe Lentaigne and Joe Lentaigne, in the Burma campaign when Wingate, General Wingate, the British general was killed, Lentaigne

took over in this one particular operation. He was very well known. He was quite a character. He was a British Army gentleman. Irish. Enjoyed life. Had a young wife and gave very good lectures, and we all respected him.

I think we were progressively assessed in secret by the various instructors, and at the end of the course the commandant gave you a final report and you were called in and told how you’d fared and read the report to you, and that was sent

back home.

I think they were pretty average compared to people like the Brits and the Americans. I was rather naïve and young and hadn’t had the experience that they had, and as a foreign student I don’t think I did as well as the Brits or the American, but I passed and there was nothing derogatory

in my report that I remember.

No, not really, because this was right at the end of the course and it was a private thing, and the ones that got good reports obviously didn’t want to brag and the ones that got bad reports obviously didn’t want to complain, so it was sort of quiet.

It was, we were happy. Fortunately I had been arranged to go on a tour of northern India, because we were down in the south, and I went with the British officer, one of the British officers, and we flew. We flew to New Delhi and we stayed with our respective high commissions for a few

days, and then we went on a tour which took us to a number of Indian army establishments in the north of India, including Dehra Dhun, and then we went to the school of infantry at Mai, the artillery school, and then we went to Kashmir. The war was in progress between India and Pakistan in Kashmir, and that was very, very interesting, because

it was a terribly mountainous state and it was very scenic, wonderful. Pre-war, and later on it became a great tourist spot, but unfortunately it is closed now, the state, because of the fighting that goes on and terrorism, and I don’t think any tourists would want to go there. We went, Norma and I went back there later on and

lived on a houseboat, and that was a great experience.

Yes.

I think we were, at the time we were very young and impressionable and it was the mysterious Orient and the customs and the Sikhs with their turbans and the women with their saris and all

manner of speeches and dress. It’s a very diverse population, as you know, and really quite fascinating. To go on an Indian train, as we did, from one end to the other almost, was like a trip of Alice in Wonderland or whatever, and every time you stopped at a station

the throng of people who would gather on the station and people calling out, “Parni, parni.” Water, selling water, and hawkers and canvassers and people, and then on the railway stations, some of the main railway stations you would find a tearoom. The tearooms had been started by the British, where Europeans could get

a European meal, and it was like an oasis in the desert, and we would stop there and it was the hustle and bustle, I guess, of that sort of life. It’s much the same now, I guess.

Yes, much the same.

No. I was a failure in some ways

because I wasn’t a good cricketer and they all expected me to be another Don Bradman. When I say I was a failure, I was a disappointment, and I’ve never been keen on cricket, so they were looking to me for big things but I wasn’t able to help.

Only 12 months. It seemed like a lifetime, because so much happened every day.

We came home, and then I was posted to Headquarters, Northern Command in Brisbane as a staff officer,

and there for the next three years.

I was in what is known as A Branch, and that dealt with personnel. Not materials or training or anything like that, and that was interesting for me, and all sorts of applications for leave and medical classifications, and anything to do with personnel.

Discipline, court martial.

Absence without leave. You know, prolonged absence without leave. Sometimes for theft. You know, a myriad of offences but only

the serious ones would go to a court martial.

I don’t know if any particular aspects. It was the first time I had worked, I was going to say on a big headquarters, but I had worked on a headquarters in Melbourne, but this was

the command headquarters for the state of Queensland, so therefore it was different. We were more in contact with the forward troops. Not the forward troops, but the training units and the battalion as a whole, whereas when you are at army headquarters you are very detached.

Yes. We had a married quarter, actually at Enoggera camp, which was a big military area

outside, on the outer suburbs of Brisbane, and we lived in a small tin house. I think it was tin. It was prefabricated, and I think it had been made in Sweden and it was like a hot box, but we lived there for two or three years.

Not very glamorous, no, and it was interesting to live in Brisbane for the first time, because the people there were a different

tribe, as they are in Western Australia. They, the chief topic of conversation in the housing area that they lived, they had cleared it all and put these prefabricated houses on these lots, but they had left a great big gum tree in the front garden. It was quite big, and I suppose they had left it because it was too big to cut down

and they would all say, “Big gum tree,” and you’d say, “Yes.” Then they’d say, “Why don’t you chop it down?” This was the sort of, I won’t say mentality, but this terrible desire to chop trees down. Not that I’m a Green, but…

Yes. They couldn’t understand why this tree remained, and there was a colonel living next door

with his wife and six children, I think, and he was very rotund, and I think he used to booze a lot, and Norma was friendly with this lady, this mother, who looked very downtrodden, and she was very critical of this colonel. The only thing that she could see that he did was he opened the back door for the wife to carry out this great big basket of

washing, and never sort of put the washing on the line or did anything. She thought this was a great joke.

Yes. I think he had a slightly bigger house. Housing was, this was 1953 and housing was at a premium everywhere.

Oh yeah. I used to go once a week

with another officer to the Brisbane market and buy all the fruit and vegetables for the people along this row of houses. That was fun. It was fairly basic, but it was a good life.

Not in my capacity, but I remember

once accompanying the general. General Secombe and his wife. He sent for me and he said, “Bill, this Sunday my wife and I have been invited by an old family who live on a property outside Brisbane. I want you to come as my ADC.” Well, I’d never been an ADC before.

Aide de camp. Generals have aides de comp. They used to say as a joke that the generals used to have AIDS, but they don’t say that now. People may think that it’s something else, but it’s aide de camp – ADC. So, “Yes, certainly, sir.” So we went off in a big car with a driver, Norma and me, and we went to this lovely old house. It was very historical, and we had a nice lunch and I always remember

the hostess served dry sherry before lunch, and I was very nervous and I put my glass down on the table when it was empty, and as I put it down my hand knocked it over and it broke and it was beautifully fine cut crystal sherry glass. I felt like an absolute failure. I had disgraced the

general and myself and I said, “I’m terribly sorry, Mrs So and so. I will replace.” And she said in the nicest possible way, in other words it was so old. So I wasn’t asked to be an ADC again.

Yes, oh yes. They were good to us

and then after that posting. I think, it was two or three years, I was transferred to the 1st Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment, which was in camp at the time, and they were training to go back to Korea for their second tour, so I joined them and I was a company commander.

Not really. I don’t think they had interest in the Korean War.

In the military, yes. In the military, but the civil population, I don’t think, were very interested, although there were a lot of troops sent there and it went on for many years.

Oh yes, it was a very severe winter. Lots of snow and ice, and a hot summer by contrast. Yeah, I’ve never been back there. I would like to go back. They are a very hardy race. Very tough.

I was known as a company commander, and I’d been a platoon commander in New Guinea, and responsible for a platoon of about 40 men, and now I was a company commander, which is three platoons and a headquarters, and I was promoted to major.

We thought it was slowly at the time.

Different jobs carry different ranks, so if you are a company commander you are made a major, and if you are a battalion commander you are made a lieutenant colonel, and if you are a brigade commander you are made a brigadier, so it’s

all very predictable.

Well, it depended what we were doing. There would be a lot of training exercises. Other times, when you are in a peace camp such as Enoggera, at that time the platoons would be doing their own training and we would go out on the rifle range and go out in the field and

do exercises around Brisbane. A lot of your time was taken up with administration and supervision of messes and parades, when the battalion had a parade. The time went very quickly, and whilst we were in Brisbane I was appointed to command

the royal guard of honour for the Queen. The Queen was coming on her first visit to Australia, so we started training, it seemed like months before. Eventually she came to Brisbane and she opened Parliament and I commanded the guard of honour, and we had our battalion mascot on parade, Septimus. Septimus

was a little black Shetland pony. I think they are now up to Septimus X, it was so many years ago. They still have a Shetland pony as a mascot, and a band, so the band, a guard of honour and Septimus, and we all formed up for the Queen. I’ve got a photograph somewhere.

Lots of

drill and precision, and so that when the Queen arrived the guard of honour was drawn up, and then there was a salute given to her, and then she came and inspected the guard and then she left and went into Parliament and opened Parliament, but armies have been providing guards of honour for hundreds of years. It doesn’t change much.

Yes, it was an honour at the time. It was an honour, and we all looked forward to it.

The day went well, yes. The rehearsal didn’t go well. One of the officers collapsed in the heat, and the newspapers, of course, loved that. Typical media. Sensation.

Yes. When we went off to Korea the battalion embarked from Brisbane and Norma stayed behind with the other wives, and they were there for the 12 months we were away.

We had one little girl, yes, yes, and we only ever had two children.

The other one was born in Tasmania.

Well, the Battalion knew it would be relieving the 2nd Battalion, which had been there the last 12 months. They had a 12 months rotation, and so

we embarked from Brisbane and the ship took us up to Pusan in Korea, and then they put us on a train.

It was called the New Australia. It was a sort of passenger vessel, and nothing much happened that I can recall.

It was comfortable yeah. It was a passenger ship chartered by the government, and when

we got to Pusan we were entrained, as the expression goes, and it took us to, I’ve forgotten where we detrained, and then we took over from the 2nd Battalion, and fortunately, much to our dismay, in the month before we left Brisbane they signed the peace agreement, so there was

no fighting to go to. We were a trained battalion all ready to take our part in the field, and instead of that we had 12 months of training. Big exercises, because they thought at any time the Chinese and North Koreans would break the peace agreement, so we had to be on the alert, and so we did an awful lot of training, and we also spent a lot of time in Korea,

building a defensive line right across Korea. We only had a small part of it, but the Americans and Koreans and Turks and all the other nations, people who had troops there, were building segments of this line with bunkers. Very mountainous country, and natural defence, and that defence line still exists.

The South Koreans and the North Koreans glare at one another across the barbed wire, and they are getting a bit more friendly now.

Before…?

Oh, before we actually left for Korea. The usual platoon and company exercises, battalion exercises. Exercises where, say, a company would be in a position in the country, and the company commander would get orders to attack

that hill over there, where the enemy were supposedly held or holding, and then there would be token artillery support. It wouldn’t be the real thing, because it was usually on private property, and the various platoons would attack it. It sounds a bit fanciful, but it was good training. Very good training for the officers and the NCOs [non-commissioned officers]

and people. A bit boring for some of the troops.

Well, if it was run by battalion headquarters they would be testing me as much as anything. They would describe the situation, and I would have to make a plan and they would want to know. They would give me time to make the plan, and they would want to know

what was my plan, what artillery support I was needing. The support and timings and all that sort of thing, and it was, and then we’d start the attack at a given time and they would criticise you afterwards or hold a critique.

As I say, good training for me as well as the other…

Yes, it was. I hadn’t thought of that, so by the time we left for Korea we had had some good training, and then we had more training. We used to do a lot of training exercises. We were members of the Commonwealth

Division in Korea, and it consisted of British, Australian, New Zealand and Canadian components, and that was the first Commonwealth Division, and it was quite a formation. It was very well regarded, and we had in our defensive position on the Kansas, what was called the Kansas Line which

went right across Korea. I think we had a Marine, a US Marine division on one side of us and a US Army division on the other side of us. Each division was about 16,000 troops.

Oh yeah, a big force.

Well, communications to their superior headquarters,

and divisions responsible to corps and corps responsible to the 8th Army at the top. I think it was the 8th Army, and they were quite convinced that the Chinese were going to attack again, which they didn’t, fortunately. And then we came home.

We had what was actually known as a peace camp nearby, and it was a camp which, by this time the war had been over for some months, and they had started to build huts and they got what was known as concert huts. They were an American prefabricated hut, and soldiers slept in the hut

through the Korean winter, and the officers still slept in tents, and they were pretty cold, but we had proper buildings for people to have their meals in, and it wasn’t too bad really.

No, not really. No.

They had prefabricated huts, which had showers in them, and sanitation. They had a septic system, so it was fairly advanced, really.

Far more advanced than New Guinea.

It was, in winter it looked terrible. There was a lot of snow with these huts around, and then the remarkable thing about Korea was how quickly, once the spring started, it thawed. The growth was fantastic, and the grass seemed to be this high. Amazing, and the hillsides were covered. They were green and fantastic.

Not really, because we were well clothed. We had really good winter clothing, and we had heaters in the huts, and in our tent we used to have a kerosene heater. I shared a tent with another officer, and he was very good because we had an electrical light hanging from the middle of the tent and he used to be able

to put it out by throwing a boot at it. I’ve never seen anyone do that before. I think he only did it twice. Obviously had a few drinks, but very naughty.

There was a mess yes. An officers’ mess, and it was a sort of an unreal situation. Here we were

within a mile, or a couple of miles, of the DMZ – the Demilitarised Zone. No, it must have been a few miles. I can’t remember how many, and we would, we were living this sort of peacetime life with all these facilities, but every couple of weeks we would go out on a big exercise,

and the other thing they had, so as not to be caught unprepared. So as we wouldn’t be caught unprepared they would have an exercise called scram, and it was an American concept, and when the signal ‘scram’ came through

everybody would stop what they were doing, whether it was in the middle of the night or not, and all deploy to the camp line to these positions we had been digging, and that was pretty cold on a winter’s night. You know, at 2 in the morning or something, so they were ready. As I say, fortunately we weren’t summoned.

No. No. They would give you no warning at all. It might be tonight or it might be in a week or it might be in the middle of the day. I think the Americans learnt a lot from Pearl Harbor, not to be caught. It’s really affected their psyche,

and I think even more so after September 11. They must be even better prepared, and I often say to people…Sorry, I shouldn’t digress, but imagine the effect it would have had in Australia if the Twin Towers episode had happened in Sydney or Melbourne, we would all have a different outlook in this country.

It has, yes.

Yes, it did, yes. They had had a warning before, some years before. Somebody tried to blow up a car in the basement or something, didn’t they?

Only an hour or so, and then we’d all go home, hopefully back to bed, and back to sleep.

Oh yes. Food and ammunition was all ready and prepacked, and rifles and

the lot.

I would deploy with the rest of them to the company headquarters, which was in the Kansas Line, and the communications were all ready. The underground cabling and telephones, and we would take radios as well, so that, you know, I would just

be the same as anyone else.

Just people within the battalion. I would be working to battalion headquarters. The platoons would be in touch with me, the platoon commanders and I would be in touch with battalion headquarters and I would have an artillery commander with me,

who would be there as a, what we called a forward observation officer. If we needed artillery fire it would be his task to direct it. He would touch with his guns some miles back. It wasn’t any different, really, to any sort of military

situation where the artillery are deployed back because they’ve got the range.

Battalion headquarters?

It would be not far away. Probably half a mile or a mile.

Yes.

Yes, they had cabling and radio and

it was, that was really a defensive situation.

Nothing, really. I mean, it was just routine. We had done it so many times, and you would probably have your mind on something else.

Mail was pretty good. We had regular mail and newspapers and we, everyone went on leave once to Japan, and that was an experience, to visit

Japan and…

Lots of nightclubs. Lots of tours of Tokyo, shopping. No football or anything like that. It was mainly shopping.

We went for two days skiing up in the hills behind Tokyo. We had never skied before, and we had never been to a ski field, so that was interesting.

That’s right. A contrast.

Yes, I think I had seen

a lot of photographs of it, and I remember travelling on some of the suburban trains, and the women used to treat us pleasantly as foreign troops. Not too friendly, but the men used

to scowl at us and we would scowl at them.

I’ll tell you later.

That’s right, not even five years later.

We still had contempt for them.

That’s right.

Yes, it was, yes. Either that or stay in Korea, so everybody went to Japan. In Vietnam there was a choice. A lot of troops came home towards the end in the later part of the

Vietnam campaign. Some went to Thailand and some went to Taiwan. So there was a choice.

Yes, we went through a summer and it got very hot, and all this growth on the hills and mountains. It was an extraordinary change.

No, it was better in the summer,

and we didn’t swim in the river, but I suppose you could have swum in the river.

The Imjin, that’s right. We were camped very close to the Imjin River.

Oh yes, it was quite nice. The landscapes were pretty.

We had good food.

We had a lot of American rations, and you know, you used to get the occasional turkey, and it was good, and Aussie steaks and all that sort of thing. Frozen steaks. We did very well.

Not really, because we hardly saw anything of these other nationalities.

We were really quite separate. Within the Commonwealth Division, as I mentioned, there were the other commonwealth nationalities. We would see a bit of them sometimes, and there was a Norwegian

advance surgical centre. Like a hospital, medical hospital, and we used to go and visit them. But we didn’t see much of the Americans, except for the marines who were next door to us, and when we were building the Kansas Line they used to help us

a lot with supplies and things that we needed.

Very high. They were very dedicated, well motivated, well trained people, the marines. Very proud of their corps. My wife used to have a marine boyfriend when she was still at school in Melbourne. She wrote a story about it.

Yes.

I don’t recall, but I did wash.

I had a batman, yes, and he used to take the washing and he had a good job.

He didn’t have to go to training.

He was a nice man, yeah. For years afterwards I used to correspond with him. He lived down in Launceston, and I’ve lost touch with him now. A very nice man, or he was a boy then.

None at all. One of my soldiers had some contact, and he got arrested by the military police.

It was that sort of contact. I always remember this fellow. Will I tell the story?

He was a bit simple, and very big, tall fellow who came from Tasmania, and one night he apparently met some Koreans and he

was making love to a Korean national on the side of the hill. It must have been cold, and the US military police caught him, so they filed a report, and in due course he was charged and he, the charge said that he was,

that’s right, it was quaint language. That he was entertaining a Korean national, contrary to whatever the order number was. So he came up on this charge, and we all thought that would be So and so. He would be the only one stupid enough to be caught, and the company sergeant major, who was a fellow called Aussie Ostara,

said, “Sir, how unfortunate,” and I said, “Yes, how unfortunate.” So he marched him into the hearing, which was in my company headquarters, and this fellow was so tall that he had his head on one side because it was hitting the roof of the tent or the walls of the tent, so the company sergeant major read out the charge, and

I said, “What does entertaining mean, sergeant?” and he said, “I thought you would ask that, sir.” He pulled a book, a dictionary from under his arm, and he read out, “Entertain: To amuse.” No, sorry, “To interest.” I said, “Do you think Private So and so could interest a Korean national?” “No, sir, he couldn’t possibly.

He doesn’t speak Korean.”

On this particular occasion the US military police had caught one of the soldiers from my company fraternising with a Korean lady outside the camp, and this was contrary to all the regulations and rules and they charged him with this terrible offence. They worded the charge,

“Contrary to 8th Army Regulation So and so and so and so, Private So and so is charged with entertaining a Korean national on the night of whatever it was.” So in due course he came up for hearing of this charge before me as his company commander, and

we all thought that this fellow was the only one that was a bit deficient. We all thought that he was the only one stupid enough to get caught. Not that he should have, but he did. So I said to the company sergeant major, who marched him, and he was a very tall fellow, and he looked pretty hopeless because he was so tall he couldn’t stand upright. He had to lean to one side because of the slope of the

canvas in the tent, and the company sergeant major read the charge of entertaining this Korean national, so I said to him, “Sergeant major, what does ‘entertain’ mean?” and he said, “I thought you would ask me that, sir, I’ve got the dictionary here.” So he pulled out the dictionary and he said, “It says to

‘interest, amuse or excite’.” I said, “That’s very interesting. Do you think he could interest a Korean?” “No, sir, he doesn’t speak the language.” I said, “What about entertain?” “He’s not known for his sense of humour, sir.” I said, “What about excite?”

He said, “I think that’s very unlikely, knowing Private So and so.” So I thought for a moment and I said, “He’s obviously not guilty of any of those three elements. Charge dismissed. March out.” So we let him off. I must say there was a bit of collusion between the sergeant major and myself.

Yeah. He was,

I think he was a bit light in the, two shillings light in the pound. That was an old expression.

We were only there for 12 months, and then we came home.

It was again the rotation. By that stage the policy was soldiers were to stay there for 12 months and they would rotate people through them. The battalion stayed there, but they rotated officers and soldiers through it.

Very much, yes, yes.

My family and Australia.

With my wife, yes, and my sister and family. Writing lots of letters, and it was good to get home.

Mainly other members of the battalion whom my wife knew and met, and

their news, perhaps, from time to time. About the conditions. I suppose we all wrote about the conditions and how cold it was. It was 40 degrees below zero and all those sort of things, comments.

Very cold, yes and then we would go out on exercises. But we had all this wet weather, cold weather dress, clothing,

and that kept us pretty warm.

Yes. We used to wear a special cap, which would button down over your ears, and we used to wear a parka, which was a big fleecy lined heavy jacket, and under that there was a thing called a smock which was like a raincoat, a jacket. Underneath that

we would wear a big thick woollen pullover and a woollen shirt, and finally next to your skin was a string singlet, so when you had all this on you were pretty warm, and mittens. The trousers were made of some sort of windproof fabric, and then we’d wear boots with, big thick

boots with special inner soles which I think acted as a, they looked like a sponge but they were plastic, so there was a layer there between your foot and the sole of the boot.

Yeah, it was good. I suppose they are much better now.

Not badly.

Nothing in particular, because you got used to it and you had all this good clothing on. I think the only people who ever, there was one fatality at night,

where some of the soldiers used to drink pretty hard, and I suppose some of the officers did as well, but this poor fellow, he, on his way back to his hut I think he passed out and decided to lie down in the snow, and the next morning he was dead, perished, frozen.

Yes, yes.

There were a few of them, but we only had the one.

We returned home on what was called individual relief, and they flew us home via the Philippines to Sydney, and Sydney to Canberra.

Very well. Obviously missed.

12 months, yes, which wasn’t long compared to World War II.

Yes. Not that I was married then, but I know some of the soldiers that went to World War II were away for years.

I stayed with the battalion, no, sorry, there wasn’t a battalion to stay

with. The battalion was still in Korea. I took some leave in Brisbane, and then I was posted to…

That was where we were living, of course. I left Brisbane for Korea. Then on return I was posted to Tasmania to be on the staff of the small headquarters in Hobart, so we headed off for Hobart and we had two years there.

No, that was in Melbourne, and they called this headquarters Headquarters, Tasmanian Command. It was a pretty small command. There weren’t many troops there.

It was interesting, yes. It was interesting. Just a small headquarters.

I was in charge of administration, so it was taken up with personnel

and supplies and transport and repair. All those sort of things an army needs, and I can’t think of anything exciting that happened.

My boss was a brigadier who was commander of Tasmanian Command,

and we were working with the civil authorities and with, obviously with the army and government departments. I don’t know a hundred and one things like that.

Interesting you should ask. Not good. I think all the people I’ve ever worked for, he was the one I didn’t like.

He was, he had a peculiar personality and a lot of hang ups.

No.

Yeah. I just think he’d had, he was very disappointed

because he had heart disease and he was terribly ambitious and they told him he wasn’t going to be promoted, and it made him bitter and twisted. That was the reason for his conduct, and he was very, very unpopular. A bitter man.

There we add another note.

Very difficult.

Very suspicious man and very quick to lose his temper and things like that.

I don’t know. It used to upset me quite a lot, and as you do in life when you are working for someone you don’t go for, you just have to learn to take it and

work around it.

He wasn’t the sort of person. He didn’t have any humour, so with the experience I have now I could have done it easily, but when I was your age, at the time I don’t think I was experienced enough to handle this sort of situation.

Yes, I had some confidants.

Yes. We did, yes. I could tell you all sorts of things, but probably better not.

I can’t recall any

great excitement, except there was a military disaster in a way. One of the truck drivers was driving a truck from Hobart to Launceston and stopped on the way at several places and had too much to drink and then ran into a car with a family in it and they were all killed. Of course the army were frightfully unpopular.

It was a terrible tragedy to occur in such a small state, and we were all upset for everyone’s sake, but also for the army’s sake, because it damaged our reputation. But I can’t think of anything that happened, except the Olympics were on in Melbourne at the time in one of those years, and

it’s a pretty quiet place, Hobart, or it was in those days. I don’t know if you’ve ever been there.

It’s a very pretty island, but not a great deal happens.

Not much at all. The Tasmanians used to talk about the mainland a lot like the people over here talk about the eastern states, and

they were pleasant and not much different from any other Australian. They used to eat a lot of kangaroo. I can’t think of anything.

It was unusual, yeah, but I suppose it’s much more popular now. It’s supposed to be good for you.

Not really, no. I’ve just been reading a terribly interesting account about the present Governor of Tasmania. Very interesting.

I don’t think he’s, you know this fellow Richard Butler. A very

critical article about him, but I have never met the man so I can’t comment.

No. I’d get it wrong.

Not really. It was fairly uneventful and,

except the great thing that happened was my wife had another child, and this time it was a son so we were happy with that. But no, not much that I can tell you.

I was posted to my next posting, which was at army headquarters in Melbourne, to a staff appointment,

and then they moved army headquarters from Melbourne to Canberra. The initial flight of the defence department. They call it flight. They did it over a number of years, so we were in Melbourne for 12 months or so and then went to Canberra with army headquarters.

It was a directorate called administrative planning, or

some people call it logistic planning, and at that time we were very engaged in drawing up administrative plans for the army. Parts of it were committed to Dutch New Guinea in particular, or in support of SEATO [South East Asia Treaty Organisation] operations in Thailand.

So it was, what’s the word? It was very interesting.

Well, for any sort of operation, like going to New Guinea, to a small port to support a force, say, a brigade or something

or larger, a lot of thought had to go into the type of ships. The loading of the ships, the type of tanks, materials, the guns, the hand grenades, the ammunition. How they were going to keep up the resupply once the force is located and the intervals and so on. Whether the infrastructure in the particular area they are going into

will support them. Whether the bridges are big enough for the tanks, and the airfields, whether they need additional airstrips, and all those things need to be considered and planned. There is a lot of coordination with various branches at army headquarters to come up with answers, and it’s all on paper. Nothing has happened, but it’s all what we call

contingency planning.

For instance, the tanks, you would have to find out what their weight and size was and whether they would fit into this type of ship or that type of ship, merchant ship, and what classification of bridge would carry them in Bangkok

or wherever you were going. How many months’ supply of ammunition should you aim to build up at the destination, and then what would be the frequency of shipping, so all these things have to be gone into.

It was only a small directorate. We only had

about six of us at army headquarters, and as I say, very interesting, and then we moved to Canberra.

I think it was work, like working on a, I guess if you are an architect

and you are working out the quantities, I think you would get satisfaction each time you completed different estimates, and the same with our planning. We’d come to the point where we know the answers now, and if it’s necessary to deploy a force there we know what to ask for and so on.

Hard to summarise.

Yes. All the spare boots that are needed and the bandages and all those sort of things.

There just seemed to be one

task after another, and it was ongoing the whole thing, and all these conferences and discussions, and busy like most jobs are busy.

In that role for about, I think about three years overall, and then it was time for another

posting.

Oh yes.

No, the army would initiate. They wanted to try and give their officers as much experience in different branches as they could, and it’s a good idea. Hopefully by the time they reached the top or higher up they had a wide experience, and they could be deployed to one thing or another.

Not only applicable to the Australian Army. I think all armies do it, and it’s important in a small army because you haven’t got the numbers, so you need the people who are there, as they get more senior they can be put into different jobs.

That’s right. You need an understanding of the problems.

Yes, we did, and then you’d move and you’d almost get to the stage in two or three years in a job, you’d be looking over your shoulder and saying, “Where are we going next, I wonder?” So, and I was very lucky that I had a wife who was adaptable.

Some wives weren’t, and they wouldn’t like it and complain and make life miserable for their husbands, but I had a wonderful wife who, I think, quite enjoyed it herself, and was very adaptable. She could move from this cottage to that cottage and put the curtains up and take the children to the new school and all those sort of requirements.

Yes, that’s right.

After Canberra? Then I had a complete change. I was promoted to lieutenant colonel and sent back to Duntroon, but this time on the staff, not as a cadet, and I was a senior administrative officer at the

headquarters at the Royal Military College at Duntroon for a couple of years. Then another change.

All the administration. Not all the administration, but the overall supervision of the administration, and again, the personnel, the messing, the transport, the repair. All those activities, and there

was quite a lot. Building programs. Quite a lot of building programs and new constructions, repairs and maintenance. They were all my responsibility, although obviously I didn’t carry them out myself.

I suppose not many, actually. A staff of about six.

Very well. It had been going since 1911, when it was founded. In fact, the year I went there we celebrated the golden jubilee, the 50th anniversary, 1961. That was

quite interesting.

That was a big weekend and a big parade and a reunion of anyone that wanted to come to it, and past graduates and the meeting of wives and a football match, I think.

Yes. There was about a dozen, I think, and there were past graduates going back to about 1914 attended, and…

They had a very big parade of the present-day cadets and all the old fellows sat around and watched that. Then they had, that’s right, they had a garden party,

a sort of an afternoon tea. They had a dinner and that was about it, so that was the golden jubilee.

Yes, and met people from the past and previous classes. I’ve just been back there for another reunion, I think I mentioned. The 60th. Much the same activities. Not much you can do.

Oh, I think I was proud to be associated with the college and to have been a graduate and to have gone back there. I was privileged to serve there. It is a famous college, military college, and I’m sure Duntroon could

hold its place with military colleges like Sandhurst or West Point in America, but probably not much that different, but it’s always had a good reputation and produced some good officers.

Yes, the military staff, and of course it also had a civilian staff of

professors and lecturers and, etc. It’s like a military university. The civil subjects are handled by civil professors.

Pretty good, really. I think they had mutual respect. They didn’t always understand one another, but a lot of respect.

I was there for two years, and then I was sent to the staff college, the army staff college at Queenscliff in Victoria for a year, and then, do you want me to go on?

Well, I was appointed as an instructor at the staff college

at Queenscliff, and they told me in Canberra before I left, they told me, “You are going there to get a year’s experience and then you are going to Ireland to be the Australian instructor at the British Army staff college.” So the family and I settled in Queenscliff, and we were there for 12 months and I taught there. Previously I had been a cadet at the Indian staff college,

so now I was going to be an instructor, and that 12 months went pretty quickly.

Well, as an instructor at the staff college the system works a bit like this. You have a syndicate of ten students and you are responsible for them for, say, six weeks,

and then you change and you have another ten students and so on. You do military exercises, discussions. You attend lectures with them. Most of the exercises are indoors, and sitting around a room like this, or some of them are outdoors and talking about how they would attack this feature over there or defend this

feature. That was interesting, and military writing. Correcting their papers, and like a super schoolmaster. I don’t know about super, but a type of schoolmaster, and of course they are all adults. They are all captains and majors, and some of them have got quite a lot of experience. They have their families there, their wives

and in some cases their children. But it’s a ten-month course and I only did one there because it was for experience purposes, and then off to England for two years.

In a place, in those days the Army Staff College was located at Camberley which is in Surrey, and I think they have moved it now.

They have merged it with the air force and the navy into one complex, and it was very historical. It was started by the British in about 1860, after the Crimean War they realised they had to do something about the inadequate training of their staff officers, so they started this establishment called the Staff College

You know, there were all sorts of greats like Montgomery, Slim, and going back in British history they had all trained there, and a lot of Australians as well. Well, some Australians. Blamey, I think, went to the staff college in his day, and it was very interesting. Very interesting students, because they came from other countries of the world. I remember there was an officer from Afghanistan,

people from South Africa, America, all over Europe, Japan and so on. So it was very diverse group, and I made some good friends in the British Army, one of whom I was talking to last night.

Of the instructors and some of the students.

Just friends, and we worked together and we are going back to England next month, the end of August, and we will see probably two or three of them again. They are getting pretty ancient, as I am.

Very well. I always remember the gratuitous advice that I was given by

one of the Australian instructors at Queenscliff, and he said to me, “Bill, you are going off to Camberley.” He was the sort of fellow with a bit of a chip on his shoulder about the British, and he’d just come back from being posted in America. He said, “Now, when you get there you let them know from the start that you are not going to take any

nonsense, and you’ll find them very superior, and don’t put up with it,” and so on. I listened to all this and off we went and I was, there was a great big room, about twice the size of this, where each of the instructors had a desk where we worked from, and then we would go to our syndicate rooms to be with the students at quite a lot of times

during the day. I was at the corner of this room at my desk and they were all pleasant to me when I arrived, but no one really spoke to me, and this went on for a few weeks. They hardly spoke to me, and I thought about the advice that this fellow had given me and I decided to ignore it, and after a few weeks,

suddenly the ice thawed and they had obviously discussed me and they had accepted me, and from that day onwards I was an old friend. What he hadn’t allowed for was the natural reserve of the English. They do have a, not all of them, but in those days they were more old fashioned. They have a lot of reserve,

and you can’t rush it. So that was a good lesson.

I don’t think he had had much to do with them, and had a natural prejudice. I don’t know why. He was more American orientated. He was, liked the Americans.

Very brash, and a bit stupid.

It was a beautiful old two-storey building built in stone, and very big rooms, high ceilings. Lovely grounds, and there was a tree outside the entry to the staff college that Queen Victoria planted, and very pretty grounds. A lake.

Yes.

Yes. There were a lot of pictures and photographs. A lot of oil paintings of various people like Haig and Montgomery, and a lot of their military heroes there were paintings of.

Who were my heroes? That’s a difficult, you mean generally.

Well, I suppose like most Australian officers I thought very highly of, I can’t think of his name now. How embarrassing.

The general in the First World War. It will come to me in a minute.

The Australian Army. Monash. Monash. He was a great Australian general and was very highly regarded by the Brits as well. I think Slim in the Second World War.

Montgomery probably deserved mention, although he was a bit eccentric. Blamey I don’t think I’d list as a hero.

No, he wasn’t popular.

Yes, whenever we could we’d travel around England and around Europe,

and that was great fun. We went to battlefields, Waterloo. We went to the Australian battlefields in France and Belgium in the First World War, like Passchendaele and Cambrai and all those battlefields. Down to Normandy to see the landing beaches, which were in the news a couple of

weeks ago. I used to bore my wife silly, but she quite enjoyed it.

I think she’s probably seen quite a few battlefields.

It certainly was. It was a great experience.

I think it was both because of the professionalism of the British Army, it made me realise, well, they had been in the business for a long time. Well, the business of

armies and defence and so on. They were very professional.

Well, I had never been one that was anti British. I suppose I had been brought up in a family that was very for the Queen and Country or King and Country

and I think if anything it made me more pro-British. That and the experience in India made me realise how much the British had given to the world in establishing, for whatever reason, they left behind a proud legacy in India and also in Australia. They gave this country an awful lot to

help us get started.

They used to have dinners. They would have dinners and formal dances and mixed dinners, and that was about all, and then amongst the staff who were living in houses all around

the college they would entertain, and the students would entertain as well. We had a happy life.

It was good. We had a two-storey four-bedroom house. We had a batman full time. He was a retired gentleman from the

Scots Guards. He had this employment paid for by the British Army. I think we made a contribution, but he’d come every day and do the housework and was there if we were entertaining. A delightful old man, and he used to ride his bicycle from Aldershot every morning. I think it was about ten miles,

whether it was hot or cold he’d still come.

He’d be there from 8 to 4, I think. Quite a long day, or it might have been 3. He would be there five days a week.

Yes, they went to school in England, and

I think Susan was about ten and William was about seven, so it was quite an impressionable time for them.

After Camberley we came home, and I was posted to Puckapunyal in Victoria, which is a big military camp north of Melbourne,

and quite a contrast of being at the staff college in England to military camp, and I was made a battalion commander and given, made responsible for the raising of a new battalion, which was to train National Servicemen who were being called up for Vietnam at that time.

It’s a big job.

It was a big battalion. I think it had a strength of about 1,700. A normal battalion has about 800 but 1,350 of those were recruits and they, we were responsible for their recruit training for the first three months, and then they went on to other units.

You had a lot of staff, and they were

marched into the camp and then they had to report and they were taken to Puckapunyal, and medically, I think they were medically examined before that, aptitude tested and given uniforms like all recruits, and rifles and shown to their huts. We had huts for them and then the training started and they looked

a sort of pretty unruly lot when they started. By the time they graduated after three months they looked very professional, and they were. Keen as mustard. We had very few cases of absence, and I think that might have been motivated by, or they might have been motivated by

the fact that any time they missed they had to make up at the end, but they were very responsible and responded well. A lot of them went to Vietnam.

This was 1st of July 1966, the first call up.

I think it was necessary to have conscription. I personally think that conscription is the fairest way in a democracy. That sounds a bit contradictory, but why should some people willingly go and give their lives. If it’s a national commitment why shouldn’t everyone go

that can? But I know other people have completely different views.

Physically they looked much smarter and well groomed, and they wore their uniforms properly and they looked like soldiers.

By the time they went to Vietnam, which in many cases was six months later, they were pretty smart. They had a lot of training. Much more than the Americans were having, the American recruits that were going to Vietnam, and I would say that the Australian troops that went to Vietnam were the best-trained, the best-led

and the best-equipped Australian soldiers that ever left Australia, and they had more leave whilst they were in Vietnam. They had more amenities such as mail, movies, canteens and all that sort of thing. Far more than the people in Korea and World War II or World War I.

The time, yes. I remember visiting some American soldiers, who were pretty badly wounded, in an American military hospital, and I spoke to these lads and they looked about 18 or maybe 20. They had been pretty badly wounded and I would say to them, “How long have you been in the army?” “Three months,” or

six months or something. They were hastily called up and trained, or so-called trained and sent to Vietnam.

No, not angry, but I suppose I was angry for them. I was sympathetic. I don’t think I was angry.

Yes, that’s right.

Well, it wasn’t really difficult because we had very good trainers and instructors and staff from

the regular army, and as I say, the National Servicemen, I don’t know what they were thinking, but they were certainly all had a good attitude and they cooperated. They weren’t sort of dumb insolence or stubbornness or resisting training or anything.

They all entered into…

No. Never. There were a few cases of people going absent. You could count on the fingers of one, intake, but most came back in the next couple of days. I think a handful were missing permanently or missing for a long period, and eventually arrested and brought back.

They were so few that we were all amazed at their attitude.

They would be fined and told to get on with it. Not like Duntroon, where they would have to walk the square with a pack on their back for a much more minor

misdemeanour.

Well, no, I think if you are an officer in the army you

know that if you are training, you are training people with different potentials. You are training specific people who want to become officers, and they had a much better education in many cases, but the National Servicemen, I mean, they came from all walks of life. There were some wonderful, some highly-trained young men who

were just as good as the officer who went to Duntroon. We had a system on day three of the National Servicemen training. I think it was day three. They were all aptitude tested by psychologists, and the ones who had the potential to become officers, they were then asked

if they would like to go off for officer training, and most of them said yes, they would, and then they were sent off. They were taken out of Puckapunyal and sent off to the officer training, OCTU – officer cadet training unit, where they were trained for six months and became lieutenant, and a lot of those young officers went

off to Vietnam and distinguished themselves in battle. That was a great success that system. Scheyville they were taken to, a place called Scheyville.

No, that was really, the potential officers were selected early, tested and selected, and the rest got on with it. We used to train six days a week, because it was a big program. Quite a lot of sport, organised sport in that time, and they would all fire rifles, throw grenades and

learn all the basic skills of a soldier, and then at the end of the period they would all be allotted to arms and services. Some would go to infantry and so on, and then they would get specialist training for three months, or six months, depending on how long it took. Eventually they would join, say, the infantrymen would join their battalion, which was usually up in Queensland, and they would train with that battalion

for some months and then the whole battalion would go overseas to Vietnam, or if the battalion wasn’t going they would be transferred as individuals into battalions that were in Vietnam at the time. So they’d had 12 months training before they went there.

My main purpose every day was to get around the battalion area to every company. They were all close together in a built-up area, and visit every company and look in at training. There might be, in this area

a corporal teaching ten soldiers how to handle the LMG [light machine gun] or rifle or whatever. I would listen to that, and then I would move on to another squad that would be doing something else, and talk to the company commander, and if I saw something that I didn’t approve of I would tactfully mention that, and then I would go to,

probably one of the mess halls, where they were feeding hundreds of soldiers breakfast, lunch and dinner, and talk to the cook and move around that and see what his problems were, and then to the quartermaster’s store and then to the transport officer and the components of this very large battalion. I might talk to a padre or two, so I had a very good idea

what was going on and we didn’t seem to have many problems.

Practically, yes, but if there were some visitors coming, obviously I couldn’t do it that day, or a conference I had to attend. Most days I’d do that, and then we had

conferences of company commanders from time to time.

The training problems, and this one wanted more instructors or one of his instructors was no good, so we’d get rid of him and get another one. Turnover of staff, so it was very interesting,

and it was a big unit, as I say, 1,700, and a lot was going on every day, but it was static.

You’d get the general from Melbourne. The General Officer Commanding, Southern Command, he’d come to visit the battalion and talk to me and talk to some of the officers and some of the troops, and you might get somebody

down from army headquarters in Canberra who’d come to enquire about some particular aspect.

90% to do with training. We never had any problems to speak of, except unfortunately there would be times when

some of the National Servicemen on leave would have too much to drink, and the road into Seymour was pretty, you know, it bent a lot, lots of curves, and a few of them killed themselves, unfortunately. That was sad, but we tried to coach them, caution them to drive carefully, but when people get behind

the wheel with a lot of liquor they are not always responsible.

Of course I had Norma and the two children there, and they had school activities,

and Norma ran various functions with the ladies to raise money for different charitable causes, and she did that very well. We’d go to other people’s homes for dinner or drinks or whatever. Just the same as you might have here.

Yes. We were living on the base. Yeah.

A very small prefab, which had been built years and years before. Tiny. I mean, you could, three bedrooms in this room. We used to call them dogboxes. They were very small. I think they have since rebuilt them all, not before time.

Yes, everybody. It didn’t matter whether you were a private or colonel, had the same type of house,

and that was quite a contrast after England.

Yes. They used to heat up in the summer. They were very hot. No air con.

Nothing like that.

Yes. That’s right.

I think it was the challenge.

You know, it was stimulating. It was quite different, and to be the commanding officer was a big challenge and it was, I remember one of the first things, we showed the whole battalion, in the local Puckapunyal cinema of about 2,000, I might add. It was huge.

One of the first things we ever showed them, and made a point of showing them, was Zulu. Have you ever seen Zulu?

That was a teaching thing to show them the importance of discipline and firepower and fire control and all those sort of things. It was great.

It was a good way to teach, and then the

various padres would have them for the day, and they would have discussions about the meaning of life and fair play and ethics.

Oh yes, and teach them, because a lot of these kids, well, not kids – they were 20-year-olds. But a lot of them had come from broken homes, and it was trying, some way, to teach them responsibility

and respect for other people, because they would be living with other people.

It was. To get them just to think about it and talk about it so the subject was approached with a group, and then hopefully some of them would go away and talk about it.

I think it probably was. I wouldn’t say in every case,

but I always enjoyed talking to National Servicemen today. Here it is, 35 years on, and you know, they are now, they, look, old men most of them. I can’t believe they look so old, and they are very responsible people now, and they say, “I wish we had National Service for my sons, children today, and daughters.” That’s what

a lot of people say.

I was hoping to go to Vietnam, yes.

I didn’t push, no, but it came up eventually, and of course it was an experience. I didn’t like it much, but…

I have to work this out, wait a minute. I went from Puckapunyal to army headquarters again in Canberra.

Well, no, they always change the COs [Commanding Officers] after two years. They try to give more

people experience, and then my successor did two years, and then there were others. They usually did that. There was only two years in those sort of jobs. Do you want me to continue?

So then we went back to Canberra and I was promoted to colonel, full colonel, and

I was made the Director of Cadets. It wasn’t a very exciting job, and I was responsible for all the cadets throughout Australia in schools. There was over 50,000 at that stage.

Yes, but again, it was not direct responsibility. They were with their respective schools, but the army supported them and gave them instructors

and helped them with uniforms and weapons and training and that sort of thing and I used to go around a lot of my time visiting cadets in all sorts of places. Even Western Australia, and that was very interesting.

Not very much. Listen to requests for this or that, or maybe complaints,

because they haven’t got this or that, and I would try and follow that up afterwards, and it was mainly to keep a finger on the pulse, and I found that I’d go to the Catholic schools and their cadet corps, which was very well run. I would go to the high schools and they varied.

Obviously they probably didn’t have the teachers for the same period or something, and then I would go to the private schools, and some of them had very old cadet units, and I had been to one of those myself, and I visited the old unit again.

That was quite an experience, to go back and see the boys 30 years later.

Yes, and two years again I was invited back by the old school to give the Anzac address.

That was quite a challenge.

To prepare it and think of what I was going to say and what I should say and how to say it.

I’ll give you a copy of it if you like.

Yes, so that it left a message, and they have this annual ceremony. A lot of schools have this annual Anzac ceremony. That’s good.

No.

I could go further with it, but I would have to go to the appropriate branch at army headquarters and write or talk to them and write them a letter and say that the cadets need this

or they are deficit in that, and of course at that stage we were competing with Vietnam. The cadets were competing with the training units that were training the people for Vietnam. Naturally the cadets took a very low priority, so here I was, from being with a high priority National Service unit, now to the bottom of the heap.

That’s life.

It was. They’d say, “Well, sorry, old boy, you’ve got a low priority. We’ll do what we can later.”

Not really. They were getting feedback about Vietnam from, at their own level, and from

old boys and instructors that would come and see them and talk to them. Army instructors. So they were, they didn’t ask me.

I don’t know, the progress of the war as it affected the Australians,

and we were getting reports back. How, a couple of notable battles. The battle of Long Tan, and the 6th Battalion took part in that and lost quite a, I forgotten how many they lost. About 20 or 30 in battle, and destroyed a lot of Vietnamese,

so we would talk about the progress of the battle and who was the latest person to go there as the chief of staff or who was the latest person there as the Australian commander, and so on and so forth.

Yes, gossip. Military gossip, that’s true.

Yes, there was

the famous, or infamous, Dr Cairns, who was leading the peace marches in Australia while our troops were fighting overseas, which I always thought, and still do was unforgivable. Instead of giving them support, rather like the current situation.

Absolutely, yes.

When your country is at war, no matter what you think, you support the people, particularly the soldiers that are over there. It’s the quickest way to undermine their confidence, and saying all these things like, “Bring them home.”

I would agree. Absolutely. Dr Cairns, yes.

You are right. I’d agree with

you. I think it’s progressed, and I think today it’s become even more so. They want to be vocal about more things.

You know, talkback radio is particularly encouraging. But it’s a good thing to have in a democracy, things like talkback radio, so people can let off steam.

I was on my way to Vietnam in 1971, and no sooner had I left than they announced that the Australians was to be withdrawn progressively. But, however, I was there for the last,

not the last, yes, the last ten months of the force per se being there but small groups had stayed behind which became a training group, but that wasn’t the Australian force. I went by air and…

I was in uniform, and arrived in Saigon and stayed in the BOQ and lived in a BO

It was, having lived…

We missed out my posting to Thailand.

Yes.

Rewind.

Yes. Cadets. Remember, I went to cadets.

Well, from cadets at army headquarters we went as a family to Thailand, and we were there for two years.

Yes. I’m sorry.

We went to Thailand. I was posted to Headquarters, SEATO – the South East Asia Treaty Organisation in Bangkok. I was the senior Australian on the headquarters of the military planning office. There were the nine SEATO nations: France, Pakistan, Thailand, Philippines,

United States, United Kingdom and Australia. The nine nations, and they were all in this headquarters. SEATO was divided into two components. The military office, and there was a civil side looking after the humanitarian aid and education and all those sorts of things, to try and help the SEATO nations. That was a very interesting

posting, because we lived in Bangkok.

My job description was I was the senior Australian Defence Officer at the headquarters, from the navy, army and air force at this headquarters. They were all planning like mad for contingencies. They thought the Vietnamese

were going to break out of, the North Vietnamese were going to break out of Thailand and occupy Laos, which they had already started to do, and then move into Cambodia and then move into Thailand. So we had all sorts of plans drawn up.

The introduction of defence forces from the member nations,

particularly the United States and United Kingdom and Australia and so on. Mind you, the Vietnam War was going on at the same time, and we used to have lots and lots of visits from senior officers of the member nations. They would come for conferences. We would have, groups of the medical officers would all come for

a conference. The people who made maps. The logisticians. The fleets, the air force talking about standardisation procedures so that, the idea being all the SEATO nations could work together, if necessary, in battle. They all used the same radio procedures and the same

ships and planes, and all flew the same way, and the doctors all spoke the same language and so on. It was a very busy organisation.

I suppose so, and I used to sit in a committee with the senior representatives of the other nations, and

we’d check the various plans and procedures that were done by the workers and, which had been completed by the workers. Meaning the staff officers in the various sections, and then we’d give our endorsement to it and then it would be sent to the member nations. In the case of Australia it would go to the defence department in Canberra, and they would scrutinise the plan or whatever it was, and then

eventually the chief of the Australian Defence Forces, who was a member of SEATO, he would come and meet with his people at his level and they would sign on the dotted line and approve it. So it was a series of procedures. It was quite a good headquarters. It worked hard and it was a small

NATO. You’ve heard of NATO.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

Well, most of it was directed towards a possible invasion of Thailand by the Vietnamese. Having said that, they also had plans for an attack

on the Philippines, and I think it was envisaged that the potential aggressor in that case would be China, but that was pretty far fetched. This is only my own opinion, but it may have been devised to placate the Filipinos, to think that they had something for being a member of SEATO. I don’t know. That is only a private opinion.

Always in the background there was the background as a potential China, and of course China was giving a lot of aid to North Vietnam at the time.

Well, as I say, most of our planning was to do with Thailand,

and there were various contingency plans to do with the introduction of forces into Thailand, and in the meantime the Americans were spending a lot of money in developing the infrastructure and the airfields, the roads and ports and so on. A lot of that was coming from American money. Not channelled through SEATO

but certainly it was, indirectly originated from SEATO planning

It was taking place, and of course at that time during the Vietnam War there were thousands of American airmen in Thailand, flying out of Thailand. A lot of people down at Utapow

Airbase, where the B52s used to fly over very regularly and bomb Thailand, Vietnam and Laos.

We were living in Bangkok, and the headquarters was in Bangkok.

The headquarters was a three-storey modern building, and

it had the civil component located in the building, and also the military planning office, and also the various national offices. I had a small national office with one warrant officer who assisted me, and each country, each member nation had its own national office.

The daily routine was to, quite a lot of correspondence backwards and forwards to Canberra. That had to be attended to. We had our own signal link so we could get radio messages backwards and forwards, and then there were meetings, conferences with various people within the military planning

office, and then conferences from time to time. Not all that often with the other senior military advisers, and long discussions about aspects of various plans.

It was good, very cordial. Everyone got on well together, and

it was interesting. It was international, it was tri-service, and we met some interesting characters from different nations.

I always remember the logistics meeting. They had a meeting of the logistic planners from various countries. We

met for about three days, and I always remember, after about day two we had nothing down on paper. We were supposed to put in a paper and we had wasted a lot of time, and the marine colonel from the US, the US marine colonel. He looked around and said, “Well, gentlemen. Someone will have to do a Billy Graham.” And we all said, “What’s a Billy

Graham?” and he said, “Decision, for Christ’s sake.” I’ve never heard that expression before, and so often we would be sitting around and no one was capable of making a decision, or no one wants to.

In that particular conference I think there were a few people who, perhaps, weren’t very experienced and didn’t know how to get started that

waste too much time.

I wouldn’t say it was great, because at that time I thought the Vietnam War was dragging over, and even if the North Vietnamese conquered the

whole of Vietnam they wouldn’t have any appetite to come onto Thailand. Not in the short term, so I didn’t think it was an immediate threat.

Yes. There was a lot of controversy in the world at the time about the so-called

Domino Theory. The Domino Theory held that the communists would take South Vietnam and then take Laos and they would take Cambodia and they would go on to Thailand and so on. All part of a worldwide sort of communist expansion, and

people were opposed to this Domino Theory. Others said, “It’s already happening. It’s started, so what’s to stop it going on into Thailand, Malaysia and so on.” So there were two opposing schools of thought.

Well, I believed in the Domino Theory. I think I still do, looking back. I think it

was all part of the allied plan to try and limit the expansion of the communists, and I think it worked.

It does, yes, you’re right.

Well, again, you know, I think we had evidence of it.

It occurred certainly in Europe and it was, North Vietnam had certainly got into Laos, got into South Thailand, and the Chinese had occupied Tibet. It all looked pretty sinister at the time.

I thought it was a scare, yes, and I never thought it would end as quickly as it did.

You mean the allied role?

I thought it was worthwhile. I thought

SEATO had a part to play, and Australia was certainly a strong member of SEATO, irrespective of what government was in office in Canberra Australia backed it and supported it, and in fact had been with it right from the start.

We were there for two years.

Again, it was the rotation of the appointment. I was succeeded by an airman, an air force officer, and I followed a naval officer, so they used to rotate through the services every two years.

I was moved from Thailand to army headquarters

in Canberra, and this time I was made the Director of Military Intelligence at army headquarters and I thought I would be there for a number of years, but I wasn’t there very long, and I’ll come to that.

Yes. From army headquarters, and then back to, two years later, I think 18

months later back to Vietnam, or to Vietnam.

Sorry.

From SEATO I went back to Australia, to Canberra, and I took up my appointment as Director of Military Intelligence, and about 18 months later I went to Vietnam.

It didn’t seem long.

I was hoping it would be for some years, but instead of that it wasn’t, and I’ll come to that later.

No, we are in Canberra.

No, we’ve just left SEATO in Bangkok, so then I went home to Canberra to be the DMI, the Director of Military Intelligence.

Do you want to deal with that?

No, sorry.

Misunderstanding.

I think it was about 18 months, yeah.

Yes. Well, I was the Director of Military Intelligence, which I had been in after World War II, and I’d sort of come back and that was a very interesting branch, because we

obviously the focal point of all intelligence in the army, and we had intelligence coming back from our intelligence people in Vietnam, plus we were getting intelligence from the Office of National Assessments in Canberra, from the Joint Intelligence Organisation in Canberra, from

ASIO [Australian Security Intelligence Organisation]. All of these different sources, so it was a clearing house as well.

Well, there was so much information coming, and it would be collated, and then we would try and decide what had to be disseminated to the various units in the army, and again

it was how much of this flood of this information, how much should be disseminated and passed on and how much of it should be, is irrelevant, and to what level can you distribute it at. If it’s very high grade intelligence it should only be seen by certain people. You can’t send it out like a newspaper,

so quite a lot of decision making to be made in that particular field.

It’s hard to quantify, except to say that there was some that was coming in from very delicate sources. In order not to compromise those sources we had to restrict it very much.

It would, a lot of it was coming from the Americans and from the British, and they classified it as very high grade, and they were very cautious about their sources being compromised. I can only talk in

generalities, as you can appreciate, even to this day, but a lot of it came from very sensitive sources.

Sorry?

Yes. There were some from spies and intercepts. There was a variety.

No, not really. They came from other agencies to us, and then, as I say, we had to make a

decision as to how far we could go in the dissemination, and it was obvious that we couldn’t afford to compromise the sources we were getting. As I say, a lot of it came from the Americans, and I imagine it still does.

Well, the way it was handled, and everything was certainly kept under lock and key when it wasn’t being passed around. It was only seen by people who were cleared at certain levels. Everything is graded either confidential, secret and top secret, and certain people were only cleared up to a certain level,

and there were some clearances in addition to those for certain types of intelligence, and they were very careful about certain things.

No real problem, because the people who

were working are aware of this, and I think the underlying principle of military intelligence is the need to know. So in other words, you don’t tell your grandmother something she doesn’t need to know in case she tells the ladies at the tea party, or your grandfather for that matter. So the fewer people that know,

are told, the better. It’s like gossip. Once the gossip gets out to one or two people it usually escalates. Well, escalate is not the word, but it gets passed on.

It was an interesting time, and we used to brief

the defence minister and the army minister and various generals and people, and I was, I thought I was going to be there for a long time, and then they said, “We want you to go to a posting in Vietnam on the Australian headquarters as the Chief of Staff,” sorry, “as the deputy commander of the task force.”

Then, no sooner had I left than the government announced that the whole force was going to be withdrawn over the course of the next six months or nine months. So I was diverted to another posting in the headquarters.

No. No. It was a political decision,

and I think it was Billy McMahon. It was after he took over from…no, wait a minute. Was it John Gorton? Sorry, it was John Gorton’s time.

I don’t recall it at the time, but I suppose.

No, I wouldn’t say so. You read of infiltration in certain

American headquarters and agencies over the years. I don’t think we’ve ever had a case of a spy getting into a headquarters and stealing information, but who knows? Who knows whether some employee, whether it be in uniform or not in uniform, has over the years been passing on

secrets? You would never know unless they were caught.

Oh yes. Everyone is security checked and cleared.

I was sent there, it was supposed to be the second in command of the task force. Instead of that I ended up eventually the chief of staff

of the Australian force when the headquarters was in Saigon.

Yes, it was.

Nui Dat. Correct. That was Task Force Command.

Well, it came about because of this announcement to withdraw the task force. Not immediately, but

eventually over a period of about six months or so, and several postings and appointments were changed, including mine, and so I spent the time in Saigon instead of Nui Dat. I suppose it was more comfortable.

Yes. The Australian headquarters

was in a building called the Free World Building, and it was about a three-storey building, four storeys. The Australians had the top two floors, I think. I’ve forgotten who else was in it. Other nationalities, I think. There was no lift, and we had this headquarters with the general and chief of staff, various branches, the personnel branch and the logistics branch,

the intelligence branch. We were obviously in touch with the Australian Defence Force in Canberra and also the task force in Nui Dat and also the logistics support force down at Vung Tau also. It was a busy headquarters, and

we used to work fairly long hours. We used to go out with the general a bit. Quite often to the task force, and sometimes to the American units.

We had a car, and we also had, in the grounds of the city building we had a helicopter pad and we had always had

one or two helicopters there. It was like a taxi service. If you said, “I want to go over to the American headquarters,” you would ring someone up and they would say, “Come now.” You’d got the stairs, hop into a helicopter and it would sort of vertical lift out of this. It was a bit scary. If you wanted to go to the task force, which was about an hour or 40 minutes’ flight by helicopter,

it was great if you had a helicopter, you didn’t have to drive.

Yes, it was. The rice fields and the rivers and so on.

There was a lot of air traffic. You would see a lot of helicopters in the sky. Not many fighter aircraft. No bombers or, but out in the task force zone when there were operations going on

they would have air support. Gun ships and so on.

Hard to be specific at this stage. Confer with the command, confer with various members of his staff. Not a great deal, but when we got onto the withdrawal

phase there were a lot of discussions and conferences going on as to which was the best way. Which units should withdraw first, and so on.

Well, there were a lot of points to consider, and how many, which units should go first and

personnel. How, personnel were in this category or that category, and who would take over the base. Obviously the army of South Vietnam took it over. There was no one else to take it over, but I wasn’t very involved in that operational side. It was more a matter of the task force commander

and the general. They had a lot of discussions about that. General Dunstan.

He was good. I’d known him for many years. and he was very well-respected commander. He later became the Governor of South Australia, years later.

You mean conflict with the Vietnamese?

No, I don’t think so. I think the people who were going home were pleased to be going home. I suppose there were differences and different points of view, as there are. People argue that, “I wouldn’t have done it this way,” or, “I don’t agree with you,” or something, but

you get that in a group of people working together.

I guess so.

When you say power…

No. Within the military system it’s,

rank plays quite a part, and when there is a discussion the senior officer present at the end of the day says, “Well, we’ve listened to your points of view, and this is what we are going to do.” The conversation comes to an end, and people are pretty harmonious about it. There are no sort of tantrums or clashes or

people spitting the dummy.

No. No.

Not very noticeable. There were a few bomb incidents, and mainly in nightclubs, but it was, you were always conscious of the fact that, you

drove around in an army car, that, you had in the back of your mind that if you didn’t have the door closed someone might open it and drop a grenade in it. But I heard of cases, but I don’t think there were any in our time.

They would creep in, and then it would be so easy to do, because there was a myriad of motorcycles every day.

We wore our uniforms. Sometimes, when we were say invited to the ambassador’s house for dinner at night, we would wear civilian clothes, but most of the time we were in uniform.

Oh, yes.

A lot of Americans wouldn’t leave the headquarters, a lot of the American officers of my rank would never leave the American headquarters, out of the bachelor officers’ quarter or out of the military environment. I would sometimes say, “Let’s go into Saigon tomorrow night,” and, “No, too busy.”

Yes.

Yes, I think, because I was living with the Americans. 95% of them were Americans.

Well, there was one other Australian. More than 95%. There was one other Australian colonel living there with me, and there was a Filipino. There might have been a couple of Thais. I can’t remember now.

Very good. It was like a big motel,

and had its own bathroom, and it was just like a series of motels.

No. No. No wives.

Very.

Politically it meant a lot to them. It’s sort of the same situation today in Iraq, where the Americans wanted as many nations as they could find to be there to support them.

Well, I suppose you could make the obvious comparison that it’s very hard to exist in an environment where there are so many terrorists operating. It wasn’t quite as bad in Vietnam, but in Vietnam it was

more of a defined enemy. You knew there was an enemy, although in many cases they looked like the civilians you were dealing with, one enemy controlled by one force, whereas in Iraq, of course, there are so many different agencies and groups and cells, and it must be a nightmare to try and track them down. Impossible.

I’ve heard that. I suppose you could say that. A lot of people have said it. I think it’s a fair description. Hopefully it will end up, in the fullness of time it will end up, when the

Americans have withdrawn, it will end up that peace has been restored and terrorism will finish. God knows.

I know that is a fairly popular theory. I don’t subscribe to that. I think the Americans have got

access to all the oil that they want, and I think that would be too obvious for them to compromise their position by taking over the oil or whatever. I don’t subscribe to that theory. As I say, I think they have got all they want.

They must be worried what is going to happen

in Saudi Arabia as well, where they get a lot of oil from. I see the Western Australian government are anxious for Woodside to sell them gas, I think.

They are hopeful that people in California will start buying our LNG [liquefied natural gas]. You know, as the Chinese are.

Yeah. That could be so.

Nothing, really. I think that the Australians acquitted themselves well, the Australian force. I saw the end of it, as I

said. I think you’ve got to bear in mind that the Americans were happy for the Australians to be there, and they were also happy for them to be Phuoc Tuy Province, which was a quiet province where, even though there were a lot of Australians lost their lives there the casualties were slight compared to what the Americans were sustaining

in other parts of the country which were more the target of the Viet Cong. They were more vital to them than Phuoc Tuy was, and I think sometimes critics of the governments of the time get things a little out of proportion. Make out that we had very high casualties.

They were high enough, but they weren’t, we didn’t sustain the casualties on the scale that the Americans were experiencing.

I left Vietnam in 1972, and then back to Canberra.

Well, as I say, the force was

starting to, or had practically withdrawn, and then I wanted, I think there were only about 50 of us left when I left, but there was a group forming called the training group. The general came home and the brigadier went up there, and this training group was training South Vietnamese and Cambodian officers

in Vietnam, and then they eventually came home and I think the Australians can look back and say, “We done a good job and we can be proud of our record.”

I didn’t, obviously

I was very critical of Dr Cairns and his like. I can’t say much more, except that I thought their behaviour was inexcusable.

Again, I thought that was very bad, but I

think the treatment of the soldiers in the streets in Sydney, I think that was probably exaggerated a bit, and people since have made out it was more widespread. I don’t know at the time, but from what I read I don’t think it was on a large scale. You know, throwing paint over soldiers, and I think they were isolated cases.

I would love to know how many soldiers were actually involved or suffered or were the target. It was unfortunate that it happened.

It was, I think left some soldiers with a feeling that they weren’t appreciated and so on, but when you look back to, even World War II and Korea, they didn’t even have welcome home parades for the soldiers when they came back. It might have been the case for some of the people coming back from the Middle East, but after New Guinea

there were no welcome home parades that I was aware of. Had there been, of course, they would have been better treated and not had paint thrown at them. I think some Vietnam veterans tend to feel sorry for themselves.

No, I think Australia

should have participated in Vietnam. At the time I think it was the right decision. I think it was part of the free world containment of communism, and I think it worked overall.

When that decision was made,

yes, I don’t think there would have been much opposition to the decision at the time.

No, not from the public, and even politically the decision was made by a Coalition government, wasn’t it. It wasn’t a Labor government, and they made that decision when it was winding down. Of course the Americans were winding down too

in a big way.

Right.

I’m not really in a position to comment. I can’t recall. No, I really can’t recall enough of it.

Well, in the first Gulf War, the general, the American general that was in charge, he insisted that the

media and American media was very restricted, and they used to have an evening media and they were very controlled and supervised. The recent Gulf War, the current Gulf War the Americans changed their policy completely. They reversed it and they had it, they had what do they call it? Embedding

of correspondents with units, both the British units and American units. There would be a reporter or member of media who would actually go into battle with them, and I think it has worked. I think a lot of mutual respect developed between the correspondent and the soldiers. I think

in many cases the correspondents were grateful for the protection they were getting, and I think if the commanding officer said, “We don’t want you to report this or that,” and he would only say that if there was some good reason, I think, from what I hear, this is all hearsay, it generally worked. The media played their part

on both sides of corresponding. So going back to your original question…

It’s very hard, I think it’s very hard to control things like that. No, I don’t think I blame the media. I think it was all part of the policy, particularly in the United States

to, well, I don’t know whether policy is the word, but it all became part of routine that every night on the television, that all the latest from grabs from Vietnam were shown and what did they call it? The television war at home. I don’t know how you would stop it.

This new idea of embedment is probably a good thing. Very difficult.

Here on the television. I was home by that stage.

I thought it was inevitable. After the Americans started to run down their force

and we ran down ours the, obviously the army of South Vietnam, the ARVN [Army of the Republic of Vietnam], they weren’t capable of offering a strong resistance, and I think that many of their units weren’t all that well motivated and the North Vietnamese were very professional and overran them.

Well, back into Canberra, and I was there for a few months doing odd jobs.

Detachments to various staffs and helping out and so on. Not doing very much. Mainly mowing the lawn at times, and then I was summoned one day and told that I was

to be promoted and sent to Western Australia to become commander of what was called Western Command in Swan Barracks. So in August ’70 I was on my way to Perth, and thereby remained in that position, although it changed titles, for the next 5½ years, and then I retired.

Well, again it was, well, I shouldn’t say that. It was, on a large scale, being a battalion commander. In other words, visiting units all over Perth and the country, both by day and by night. Certainly with the

CMF [Citizens Military Force] and the militia units. They used to parade at night, and I had a big staff at Swan Barracks on Western Command. They were a very good staff, and we used to have staff conferences, and we would be getting directions from army headquarters in Canberra, and I had to do a lot of what they call representation work. Representing the army at

functions and funerals, meetings, giving press interviews. It was a very interesting job, and a very diverse job, and fortunately I had had that training. I had worked in the headquarters in Brisbane and the headquarters in Hobart and on army headquarters on a couple of occasions in Canberra and Melbourne, so

I knew what headquarters were for and how they worked. How command headquarters worked, and it was a great job. I loved it, every minute of it.

On, sometimes on defence issues. One had to be careful that you didn’t tread on the toes of the people in Canberra, obviously, because they were

the superior headquarters, but also comment on local matters. Discussions about the future of army properties, about training of the army in Western Australia, mainly the militia, about the SAS [Special Air Service] regiment. They were down here at Swanbourne. They were always in the news.

Yes, on occasion. I used to visit them a lot, and there were different commanding officers. One of the commanding officers was Lieutenant Colonel Michael Jeffery who has recently become the Governor-General, and he was a very young commanding officer and a very good one. It was a great honour to visit his regiment. They were very professional

and highly trained.

They are recognised as, I don’t know about the best, but sort of one of the best. I think the British SAS and the Australian SAS are right up the top of the ladder. I hear from people who know a lot more about Special

Forces than I do that the Australian and British SAS leave the American equivalents well behind, but it’s very hard to compare on an international basis if you haven’t seen them. The Thai Special Forces are very keen. I’ve seen a little bit of them indirectly. All these countries

now have these SAS units.

They call them special forces. These days they work directly under a headquarters in Canberra. They don’t have anything to do with the local headquarters except for administration

They get all their training and operational directives from Canberra, and they don’t have much to do with the local militia. They haven’t got the time. They are busy being rotated through Timor and Iraq and so on.

It has changed, yeah, I know it has changed quite a bit,

and of course they had an anti-terrorism role in Australia, and if there was ever a major incident anywhere in Australia they would be flown out to take part in it. They are now training a unit or units on the east coast so they would be available for immediate deployment if there was a terrorist incident

over there, but the SAS, as I understand, it would still take part.

It’s another military unit, yes.

Same principles. A lot of cooperation with the police, national police and state police. It’s a field that I know very little about, but very

necessary.

No, not really. Usually I confined it to, nearly always confined it to local matters. I felt quite confident to do that and quite conscious of how far to go and how far not to go. The media were

not, what’s the word? In those days the media weren’t at all political or looking for sensational stories. They were just more interested, as I say, in local matters, purely local matters in Western Australia.

Yes.

I would think it

has, I don’t know. I don’t see much media attention to local military matters in Western Australia. I don’t see anything in the West Australian but in those days the West Australian used to be very interested in covering local news and military news, but I think they are more interested in controversial,

locally, like Mr McGinty and so on.

Being the brigadier?

Oh no, I’m retired. I think it was a wonderful experience coming to Western Australia and being able to travel

throughout the state and discover the state, because we had military units in Kalgoorlie and down south, and the SAS used to operate a lot in the Pilbara and the Kimberley, and I would go and visit them. I had never seen anything like the Kimberley in particular, and it was breathtaking. We

were planning to on behalf of defence headquarters in Canberra to acquire a lot of land for a future training area, and eventually after years and years the Defence Department bought three big cattle stations up on the Yampi Peninsula, up near Derby. It was about 1,200 square miles, and I was quite involved in that with then defence minister Lance

Barnard, Whitlam’s deputy for some months. He was a nice little fellow, and very interested in the project, so defence headquarters or the Defence Department bought this land. I think still has it, but never uses it, mainly because there is much more emphasis now on Iraq and Timor, and

we don’t have the large scale formations that we had in the past. I don’t think they have had much requirement to use it, but one day they will. Hopefully they won’t have sold it in the meantime. It was pretty good-for-nothing country up there.

It’s all right for wild cattle, but a lot of rock

and rough and it’s hot, and there is not much. I don’t know what you could do with it. Not like Kununurra with the Ord Dam and that area, where there was a big agriculture area, but this part of the Kimberley that I am talking about is like a moonscape. Very rocky and terrible.

Desolate. That is the word I was thinking of.

Why did I retire? I had been, I used to work on occasional visits on the Chief of the General Staff from Canberra. When I say I used to work on them I’d say, “Please, sir, may I have an extension, because my children are at the university and just starting?”

They were very kind and I was getting on well here with Charlie Court, with the locals and they took pity on me and gave me two extensions, so instead of going back east after three years I stayed for 5 ½ years, and then they said, “Bill, you can’t get another extension. There are people who are waiting to come here. You’ll have to go back to army headquarters in

Canberra.” I said, “Well, thank you very much. It has been nice knowing you, but it is only two years away from my retirement age, I’ll resign now,” so to save the army a lot of money, because we would come back here and not move over there, so I retired here after 5½ years in command. I was

very lucky to get that. It’s a wonderful place to end up.

Oh no. I realised it was inevitable, and I didn’t really want to go back to Canberra and lose my contacts that I had here and then come back two years later, 2½ years later or whatever it was and try and start again.

The wise thing to do was to retire then.

Yes, I did, and still do. I think it’s wonderful. It’s a great state. We are lucky to be here.

They had a big parade and all the soldiers and….Oh yeah, so I had this retirement parade and then I became a civilian, and as I say, I was very grateful for the appointment here.

No. I had sort of planned for it. I had done a company director’s course and was hoping someone would invite me to become a director of a public company, and the Thais that invited me to become their first consul general here in Perth.

That was a good invitation, and I am still doing that after 25 years.

Not a great deal. There are still a lot of people go to Thailand. Every week they come for visas. I issue visas. I get a lot of phone calls and visits from people wanting advice on

tourism and trade. A lot of enquiries from Thai citizens who are married to or living with Australian citizens, living here in Perth. They have all sorts of problems. Not so much fights or disputes but, you know, domestic problems. They want to know about transfer of land, or their son has been called up for national

service, and adoptions and divorces, deaths. I would get involved with all those sort of issues. Half the time I don’t know the answer, so I have to ask the embassy in Canberra and tie in with them, and they do their best to assist, but they sometimes don’t have all the information. It’s dealing with another community. They have a different,

what’s the word? It’s a different culture, and they have different ideas about things than we do, naturally, and I do my best to help them. Thai students come here. The Thais come here and lose their passports. All those little things. It’s very interesting. I find it’s very interesting, because it’s a day-to-day, challenges are coming up.

Not really, but I guess it’s good when you get old to have challenges and people wanting, they want you to help them, but I’d hate to go to the bowling club every day to bowl a black ball up some grass as so many do. They have got nothing else to do, so

I think it’s terribly important, and challenges as you get older. Not everyone is lucky enough to have them.

Anzac Day.

Every Anzac Day I march with the Royal Australian Regiment Association, which is people, 90% of them are Vietnam vets, and a few Korea,

and we march through the city and onto the big grassed area there and have an annual ceremony, and then we go home. I usually, I used to go and stay and have a few drinks, but by that time I’m happy to get home, go home.

I think about some of my mates in my platoon in New Guinea. Some of the ones that didn’t come home, and I don’t know. I think about people that I was at school with who lost their lives or have died since. I no longer go to the dawn service up at King’s Park. I believe a hell of a lot of people go now, thousands.

I think it’s a good thing that we have this annual ceremony and kept up the tradition.

I think the ones, we went to two of them when we were stationed in Thailand. I have also been to Gallipoli, just as a visitor, but I wasn’t there for Anzac Day, but I was very moved when I went to Gallipoli. I think most people are, and we were also moved when we went together to Kanchanaburi in Thailand on a terribly

hot day on April 25th with other Australians and the ambassador and the British ambassador. To see all these graves in the war cemetery, and terrible hot climate. Dreadful. You wondered how those poor men survived and were working, and to be prisoners in that

environment. I thought that was very moving, and as I say, Gallipoli is very…You must go to Gallipoli one day.

I suppose because I’m a soldier and I have read about battles, and I’ve often wondered what Gallipoli

is really like. I think I went to Gallipoli not so much to see the graves, but more to see what the landscape was like and the beaches and that sort of thing, because I have studied the Gallipoli campaign probably more than anything else. In fact, when I was at the Indian staff college, in the military history series they said, “You are an Australian.

You can be responsible for the Gallipoli campaign.” I had a syndicate of 18 officers, and we studied in our spare time. We read everything we could about the campaign, and then we had to give a presentation at the end of the course to the whole of the college about the campaign and about what form it took, and I was terribly lucky because there was

an elderly Englishman who was a tea planter living nearby and I met him and he was at Gallipoli. He was at the landing of Cape Helles with the Fusiliers down the end of the peninsula, and I said, would he come and speak? “Oh, he’d love to.” So I went and spoke to the commandant of, the British general, and he said, “Good idea, old chap. Very good idea.” We invited this old chap along, and once we started him talking we couldn’t stop him. No, one couldn’t

stop him so we were spared giving most of our presentation. That was just put aside. He was a delightful old man, and he had been at the landing of Gallipoli. It was more gruesome than the landing at Anzac.

Yeah. I think lots of things, but I think you would have to ask Norma that.

Oh, I think it’s hard to point to any particular thing. I think probably the military life. The training as a cadet, the training as a young officer at Duntroon and the experiences. All the experiences. The parades, and living

in a military environment. I suppose it has made me very right wing. It has made me very critical of people who let the country down in one way or the other. I suppose if I hadn’t been in the army I would have been more tolerant of those sort of things. I’m sure of it.

I’ve never thought, to be honest. I suppose perhaps going too far the other way in, perhaps I’m not

tolerant enough of the things I’ve just mentioned. I’m aware of the fact as I get older that I’m becoming more tolerant slowly, and I’ve seen with my own children, and I’m becoming more tolerant of them. Even with my grandchildren, I may feel very cross with, but now I

keep it to myself and Norma says to, “Oh well, they are only kids. You’ve got to excuse them.” My granddaughter goes to parties all the time at 15 and 14, and goodness knows what else she does. I feel like saying, “What the hell are you doing?” She is no different from the others, so I bite my tongue.

I think it’s, it’s hard for me to say, because I’m no longer in it but I think it’s less. I think it always reflects society, and when you read about soldiers taking drugs or soldiers drinking too much they are only

a reflection of what goes on in society. There is a lot of drug taking out there, and I think standards have probably declined with dress too now. Turnout. Bearing, because there is less emphasis on that side now than before. Even the Chief of the Defence Staff, General Cosgrove, I see him moving about and he’s

in one of those pyjama suits. What I call pyjama suits. Those tropical things, and the big bush hat like Dad and Dave, trying to look Australian and carrying on. I think it’s no longer the smart army that we had. Maybe it

reflects the community much more than the old army did. Does that sort of…?

Oh yes. There was much more formality, and I suppose as we moved further and further away from the United Kingdom and

the influences there and more towards America, which is bound to happen.

You mean the Australian military?

I suppose it’s had some bearing. I wouldn’t think it,

I think the military, as we call them, are more orientated towards operations, not so much anti-terrorist operations in Australia, although they obviously have a role if things deteriorate or if there is an incident. But they have their focus more on being

prepared to operate in different parts of the world, and leave anti-terrorist activity largely to people like the SAS.

That’s very hard to answer without sufficient thought, because anything you pass on has to be something worthwhile.

The only thing I would pass on is, remember that Australia is a great country, and unless we are prepared to defend it in the future and in some emergency, and let’s hope there will be sufficient young

people who will take up arms when the time comes and not to be, regard Australia as the land of the lotus eaters that is going to be forever fun and games. That wasn’t very well expressed, but…

Thank you.

I’ve enjoyed it all, and I enjoyed meeting you both very much. We are like two old friends, we have been here talking together for so long.

We’ll swap seats. That will be good.