Australians at War Film Archive

Yes, it was nearly five years, I joined up in

March the 20th, 1941 at Wayville, then went to Woodside and then three weeks later I was on the boat, we went by train to Sydney and got on the boat and sailed from Sydney on the 10th of April, 1941. We arrived in

Suez about the 16th of May, 1941, went to a training camp at Dimra, in Palestine. Was posted to the 2/27th battalion on the 23rd of June, 1941 at a place called Sidon, that’s in the Lebanon, it was called, all Syria then.

At that time the battalion was in action and we were under shell fire. In the three months from the day I joined up. From there, the campaign lasted until the 11th of July, 1941, when they had an armistice and from then, from then until, 1942, January ’42 we was doing garrison duties in Syria,

the Japanese had come into the war then, and we moved onto back to Palestine for a couple of weeks, at Hill 69 and about the 29th of January 1942 we entrained for Port Suez, and we embarked on The City of London for an unknown destination.

That was the 30th of January, 1942. We, the whole brigade was on the, I won’t go into that. Then we arrived in Bombay, a week later, and transferred to the ship, City of London. And on the 13th of February, 1942, we sailed from Bombay and at the time, 13th

of February, for Java, or we presumed for Java but fortunately, or probably for us the war was too quick for us and Java was captured by the Japanese and we toured around and sailed back to Colombo and waited there for four or five days. And then we sailed again, this time we thought for home and it was. It was for Fremantle, we arrived in Fremantle,

about the 21st of March, 1942 and three days later we was in Adelaide in the Port River, we disembarked there and was marched to and trained and went to Springbank Camp out at Dawes Road and was given seven days leave, home leave. Then we reported back and was sent to

Queensland, or actually sent to Glen Innes in New South Wales by train, then we went to Queensland, at Caloundra, did beach defence there till August 1942, where the 7th of August 1942 we embarked for, well we wasn’t told it was New Guinea, but we, just knew that it would be, we arrived in New Guinea, for, seven days later. We disembarked at Port Moresby at the 14th of August

1942, two days later the two battalions of our brigade, they went up to the [Kokoda] Track and we was kept in reserve. We didn’t go into action until the 30th of August 1942 we started on the Track, and then we had three weeks in action, one week was more or less

getting there and fighting, and two weeks we were cut off without any food, and, behind Japanese lines. We eventually got out of that and I was fairly sick, recuperated for a month or more and then was flown over to Gona, to attack Gona. We was in, I was in the Gona campaign, that’s where I was wounded, wounded on the first day,

probably lucky, so I was evacuated and didn’t see any more action in that whole campaign. We came home to Australia, round about the January, 1943. From there we had fourteen day leave, I was back on the Atherton Tablelands training again and by August the same year, 1943, we were on the boat

again going to New Guinea again, this time it was for the Ramu Valley, Markham Valley/Lae Campaign. I only did a month in the Ramu Valley because that campaign I was LOB which is left out of battle much to my disgust. Anyway, done the Ramu Valley Campaign and was brought home again in February 1944.

Came home had twenty four days leave. Sent back to Brisbane then, camped at Strathpine then for about, from about April, till August and then was sent up to the Atherton Tablelands to finish our training. This was September 1944. We trained there until June 1945 when we embarked for

Morotai and went into the landing at Balikpapan. That was the 1st of July, 1945 and was still in action when the war ended on the 15th of August 1945. Then we were in just looking after Japanese prisoners of war. Then we were sent to the Celebes to

Macassar in the Celebes on garrison duty, until the end of 1945 when we was brought home from, well we went back to Balikpapan in Borneo then was sailed on the Manoora back to Sydney and that was landed there on the 15th of January, 1946, straight by train to Adelaide and discharged on the 29th of

January, 1946. My discharge paper’s out there if you want to look at it.

When I come, when I was discharged, it was fairly difficult because I was engaged then, during one of my leaves, I got engaged, and,

when I come home, it was fairly difficult to know, my ambition all the time while I was at the war was to get a piece of land and settle, and when I got home, it was hard and you couldn’t settle. And I took a job shearing for a while, found that was too hard, eventually managed to purchase a piece of ground, a piece of country from my neighbour and it was one of the worst blocks in the district,

everyone said, “It’s no good.” It was two thousand five hundred acres, it was full of rabbits, and it had no fencing on it and anyway, I bought some sheep and that’s how I got my start. And of course, there was lots of problems, there was no way we could get married, we had no house, there was no house on the property and we wasn’t going to live with in laws, so that didn’t sound attractive

and gradually, I managed to build up a bit more land and we finally got married in 1948. And to, so we’ve been married fifty-six years, last May. But the first place we lived in was a pretty run down old place, we just managed to make do and we lived there for about four years and then we bought another property with a nice house and we still

live in that same house today, we’ve been fifty two years in that house. So that is, I wouldn’t like to leave, I wouldn’t like to move now. Too much rubbish.

Well of course they started to come fairly soon. We had, we were married in May 1948, then

June the next, no August the next year we had our first daughter and she was, and that was number one. And then the next year we had another one which was a bit quick, wasn’t it? That was in November, 1950, that was and, I thought righto, we had two and of course by this time our old house was getting a big small, it was only four rooms,

so that’s how we bought this new, another property in, as I say, a nice big house and, was six rooms and plenty of room, so we moved to that and that’s where we’ve been ever since. Then we gradually had more children, until we finished up with six. So, that was our last one was 1962, so she’s the baby, because she’s over forty now.

Our house was at Ucolta.

Eight miles east of Peterborough on the Broken Hill Road and it’s the property, at that stage it was the property it was a property of about two thousand acres and we’ve kept adding to it, as we become more financial, we’ve bought another block and we finished up buying most of the neighbours out and we finished up with about twelve thousand acres. All in one piece, joining, right on the Broken Hill Road, Broken Hill Road splits us and so does the

new Indian Pacific Railway, goes through six miles of my property. That was a problem when that came because they had to cut straight through, there was no going around, if you had a fence, they just cut straight through, it upset the running of the place rather badly until we got fresh waters and all that sort of thing. But, we managed to make a living, this country, of course is marginal country, it’s very

hard sort of low carrying capacity, it’s subject to drought every three or four years but we manage to make a living. I like to think we were, of course it was, with the help of my wife, you’d never be a farmer if you didn’t have a good wife, that’s important. And but we like to think we’re, some of the

best marginal farmers in Australia, that’s what we think. We never had any help from, any government help or anything, apart from, I did have a loan from the Development Bank, that’s how I bought my first property, from the Development Bank. It was the best thing that was ever bought out was that, it was, for twenty years, at three and three quarter per cent, a fixed amount to pay every six months and you knew where you stood

and the interest didn’t change for the twenty years, which I wish you could say that today, no that was wonderful. We sort of, well actually we’re self funded retirees now, we passed on our land to one of my daughters and gave the other daughters money, so I suppose that’s all you can do, it’s hard with daughters.

I was born in Peterborough, at Mrs Harris’ nursing home at Peterborough. There was no hospital in Peterborough then, and that’s where most of the women went to have their babies was at this nursing home. And that was well the 29th of September 1920, and of course I was only there for a few days I suppose.

But then we lived on the, at that time my father lived on, and my mother lived on section one hundred and twenty of hundred of Parnaroo, now we called it Hillside. And we lived there for six or seven years, I can just vaguely remember that, because that’s, I just, so a few little things

I can remember living there. And then we moved to my mother’s property, we bought, that was bought called ‘the Olives’, about three miles away and that’s when where I went to school from. And because we, it was only three miles to go to school from there, where we lived on the other, the hundred of Parnaroo was six miles, too far, so we rode bike to school. My sister had already started school, and I was seven then,

see I didn’t start school until I was seven years old and I rode a bike to the Ucolta school. And that was a little one teacher school with about twelve pupils and I done six years at school and finished up getting my Qualifying Certificate which is, that’s grade seven, when you finish grade seven, you done the Qualifying Certificate and you done it, you go to Peterborough and do a, well a full day’s

exam. And that’s, just scraped through that and then I just done, only done six years at school and then, of course this was 1933 by that time at the height of the Depression, no work, farm was in a bad way because prices had dropped to nothing, wheat was one and six a bushel and wool was five pence a pound and I can remember I was only young, twelve or thirteen, and I can remember one mail comes along and there’s a terrible to do [fuss]

with the father and mother, the bank’s closed the cheque account, their cheque account and we was in financial trouble of course. Anyhow, managed to get some, get a few cows and managed to struggle through the Depression, at this time there was no, I was just handed an axe to cut wood for my father. And done a few jobs around the place, trapped a few rabbits and took a few jobs. First job I had

was on the Broken Hill road, there was no made road to Broken Hill at those time and this is 1937, I was seventeen and the chap he employed me and another man, to grub [clear] the road. It was solid mallee scrub and we had to grub that by hand, too, with a monkey grubber and we was six weeks doing that, from this was a place called Oodlawirra. Three miles with solid scrub, chain wide,

we had to grub it and, it was, very hard work, but anyway we got that finished at two pound a week, that’s how much money I got for the job. That was one job then there was another job, oh farming, cleaning oats with a winnower, you’ve never heard of it I suppose. But a winnower was a machine that you turned by hand and you fed the oats and chaff

on one side and that blew the chaff away and you came out with pure oat seed on the other and we used to clean a hundred bags a day for that, we cleaned two thousand bags by hand there, that’s about two months doing that. And that was another hand job, then I, my father had a few sheep, so I learnt to shear by hand, this was blade shearing, so I went out shearing, with our neighbour,

and I got up to, I was eighteen then, and I got up to sixty sheep a day with blade shearing and I thought this was good, but, well my neighbour said, “Why don’t you buy a…” He didn’t have any money but I had saved a bit, “Why don’t you buy a portable shearing plant?” So we bought this portable two stand shearing plant and carted it around to the neighbours and, shore their sheep for them and of course with the machines, I could shear a hundred a day then, I was, I thought pretty good. But I

was only getting two pounds a hundred to shear them, but then two pounds was pretty good money, and this was 1939 and anyway we, I kept to that and that was 1940 and then 1941 of course the war situation was bad, and I was old enough to go to the war then. And I remember, I went into join up and they said “You can’t join up, you’ve got to get permission from your father and mother.” I was twenty years old, mind you. And I had to take the papers home

and had to get them to sign it.

Oh, probably I wouldn’t know a terrible lot about it. But I think the way they coped, was they were careful people, and we lived off the land and we milked cows and we grew our own vegetables, and fruit and

killed our, caught a lot of rabbits and killed a few kangaroos. That’s how we coped, we never went hungry, but during that time of the Depression and this is vivid in my mind, there was an awful lot of swaggies [homeless travellers] walked to Broken Hill to get work, and every swaggie that come in, my mother would, she’d never turn them away and she’d give them, and sometimes she fed them and we had nothing to eat ourselves. And she’d have to make scones for us, she’d give all the bread to the swaggies. And,

but anyway, that was, the Depression was a very hard time, but I think it was good, probably because of the hardships we were very good soldiers, because we were tough and I think it stood us in very good stead for later life. That was one thing, but

Oh yes, we always had some money to buy clothing and of course my mother, she used to sew and make things for us and, no we were better off than some. I remember at school, one family came there, they was on, working on the railway and there was ten in the family and they come to school with no shoes or socks on.

That’s how bad things were at that stage, and during this particular Depression, in our area, it was droughty conditions too, which didn’t improve the situation but I must have liked it because I’m still there today, after eighty four years. My brother,

he went away, and going back to my father, he was an old, of course, I go back, I suppose I’m the fourth generation, my great grandfather he come out into Australia in 1842, or 1840, he went to Jamestown and then he, my grandfather took land up at Wonna, that’s where my father was brought up. He went to school at Wonna he only had six months at school,

and then when he was fourteen his father got him a horse team and he drove to Broken Hill, to the mines at Broken Hill at fourteen years old, I don’t know how done it, but he had a team of horses, eight horses. And then he went to Western Australia carting on the goldfields, on the Murchison in Western Australia, then in he came back and married,

this was 1895, he married and he got a job at Port Pirie in the smelters and he worked there for several years but he got leaded, in those days lead was pouring into their lungs and anyway he left that, and that’s how he bought the property where I’m on today and that property is ninety six years in the family.

But, unfortunately he lost his first wife and then he married again, I’m the second family, there’s three in the second family and there’s two in the first, but just something a bit unique about the whole family was my stepbrother, the older stepbrother, he was in the First World War, at sixteen years old, my other stepbrother, he was in the Second World War and he was in the Middle East. My sister was in the AWAS [Australian Women’s Army Service] and my young brother was in the AIF [Australian Imperial Force],

in Australia so the whole five was in the war.

Well unfortunately I didn’t know him very well, because he was so much older than me, that he was married, we’d lost touch, well only, I can remember him like he’d come home, but I don’t know anything about the war,

except that he joined in 1916 and he was sixteen years old and I got his details here and he was in the 43rd battalion, AIF First World War and he was discharged in 1919 but that’s all I know of him, unfortunately I haven’t even got a photo of him, I’ve got a photo of the others, but, then my second stepbrother, because he was older than me too, he went to the Middle East and he

was left over in the Middle East, he didn’t come home when we did, he was in the field workshops and he was with the Eighth Army over in the desert. And he, of course he was married and he lived over in Victoria, we didn’t have much to do with him, but my sister, well she in the AWAS for four or five years. And my brother, he was younger than me, well he didn’t, he went in, he didn’t get away overseas, but he was in

the AIF, he was a driver up in Alice Springs, from Alice Springs to Darwin. And then finally, which I think was a fairly loyal thing for my country, well my father, by this time he had a bit of money, he loaned money to the government interest free for the war effort, which was crazy when you come to think about it. But yes, when I, I still got the letter there where they wrote and thanked him

for his effort. So that was the family, so of course while we was away my mother and father they had to look after the place, it was only, not as much as we got but and we, I finished up getting the original homestead, it was transferred to me but I had to pay the shares out of all the others, I didn’t get it free. And, so that’s how it goes with families. I can’t say, well

you know you could say a lot more about them but I can’t, they were real pioneers and I think perhaps my wife and I were the last of the pioneers. When we started we had no refrigeration, we had no electric light, no washing machine, a scrubbing board and it’s still in the shed. Glass scrubbing board, I don’t know if you saw it, it’s got ribs on it, and that made her own soap out of saved the

fat from the sheep, boiled it up in a copper and, now my wife goes into the supermarket and she might spend twenty dollars on cleaner, I said “What the goodness are you spending all this money for, a bit of soap will do.”

Oh she was wonderful, she’d make a meal out of nothing, sometimes when there was nothing in the house, she’d make onion gravy, a few onions and a bit of flour and it’d all come out that’d be only gravy and put it on a bit of bread.

Absolutely marvellous when you, look at the time we didn’t, we just thought it was normal, but when you look back, it was wonderful the way the, I think the women, there would be no, they were the pioneers of the country, I think they done more than the men, and even, in my day, if my wife hadn’t been any good, you know good helper, we wouldn’t have never made the grade.

Well we made our own fun,

see when I went to school we just used to play the usual games around the school and then we had a bit of a tennis court at school and played, we learnt to play tennis. And later on I wasn’t a bad tennis player, yes played a little bit of football and then if it was school holidays, we went bird nesting and we’d find dozens of birds’ nests and the environmental people would

be horrified now if they heard all about and, then of course another thing I was very keen on I had to do it, we had this fruit garden and they’d be, parrots the ring necked parrots would come in and eat the fruit. Five o’clock in the morning and my mother would say, “Come on get up the parrots are in the garden.” And I’d go shooting parrots, I’d sometimes shoot a dozen parrots, I had a .22, I was shooting, I was only twelve years old, we were, those days,

kids were pretty responsible, and I wasn’t a bad shot. But no, and, all this today of being bored, we had bikes, we rode a lot on bikes and, we then we’d go to the neighbours and play. And I can remember we used to celebrate Guy Fawkes [celebration with fire crackers and bonfires], that was the 5th of November, and, you couldn’t do it now, but at that time, they’d have a Guy Fawkes made

of rag and kerosene and they’d light him, and he was out in a paddock mind you. And didn’t seem to start any bushfires in November, now you couldn’t do that, you’d have a bushfire, there’s more grass. It was a drought year I suppose, that was another big fun, all these rockets, you’d put up in the air, that was another day out. And then, little bit later, as we grew up a bit, they’d have local dancing and socials and things like that, there was a

local hall and, one thing at Ucolta , I went to school at Ucolta, and there was a memorial hall and on the hall today, the hall’s out of repair, but there’s a plaque there, that fourteen men went from Ucolta in the First World War and seven were killed, what a terrible average, you know it was really horrendous, fifty per cent of the young, the cream of the country [the best young men of the country], no wonder our country didn’t prosper.

It, no it was, but then see all these little villages they had their own fun, and five miles was as far as you had to go. Now the motor car, it’s, all these villages are gone, they’re closed up, there’s nothing. No, we got to Peterborough now, no, we’ve been associated with Peterborough, my wife was born in Peterborough too, so it’s not a bad record.

Yes, that’s quite interesting, when I went to school, it was a lady teacher, she was eighteen years old and she had some boys up to fourteen to teach. Must have been awful hard and I can remember the first day when I started, my sister and I rode bikes you see, but there must have been a head wind or something and we were late,

the first day I started. And when we walked in, of course all the other kids geeked [stared] at us and I wished the floor would open up and swallow me. But, she wasn’t a very good teacher, she wasn’t strict enough, and I was doing no good, and when I got to grade six, she went, and a new teacher came, Ray McPherson, he was a man teacher and was only eighteen, but by cripes he was strict, the cane would come out if you didn’t do your job there. And he managed to get me

through my QC [Qualifying Certificate] which I’d have never got through if she’d have, if the lady teacher went on. So anyhow I had five years with her and one year with Ray McPherson, the man teacher, so that, but you imagine in a one teacher school, with seven grades, and, there’s fourteen people, about two people in each grade. It, how we concentrated I don’t know, oh it was basic sort of life I suppose, we didn’t go to high school

because there was no, couldn’t get to Peterborough that was, see we were ten miles from Peterborough.

Only during school holidays, of course, by this time we had a motor car, my father had bought an Oakland Six, that was in 1924, and it was a beautiful car, and we used to drive in every Thursday, Thursday was a market day in Peterborough,

there was, everyone from the district would go to Peterborough and there’d be a sheep market and one thing at the sheep markets that seems strange today, the man, would put their suits on and go to the market in a suit mightn’t have been their best suit, but a nice suit, and put a dust coat over the suit and they’d wear a hat and I’ve got photos, not here but at home,

where all these men are there with their suits on and their nice hats at the sheep market mind you, dusty. Why, now, if you go to the market now with these people, I call them the baby boomers [generation born after World War Two], they’re forty and fifty years old, they’re the most scruffy lot of people you’d ever see. They’ve got jeans on, they’re half dirty and you’d never see anyone that was dressed up, if I went like this which

oh I’d be a toff, I wouldn’t be spoken to. It’s a funny world the way changes had come about. No that was the fashion, yes, all went there with their, and Peterborough was a great stock market where up to thirty thousand sheep of a market there, and unfortunately times have changed, the railway is closed down and there’s no market there now. There’s sheep there, but we’ve got to send them away to other places.

That’s progress for you. But there’s been great change in my time and I suppose I’m lucky in a way that I saw these changes, started off with horse and cart and finished up with a new car or something.

Yes.

Every year or two, our parents tried to get us away to the beach and some years we’d go to Port Germain, another year we went to Wallaroo, another year we went to Semaphore and Victor Harbour for about two weeks, it was a big expedition, we’d go by car and we’d take all our produce with us, we’d have our meat and our butter

and jams and all that, so that it didn’t cost us much, we’d rent a house about a pound a week or something and have a real good holiday and we’d come down to the [agricultural] Show a couple of times, quite an interesting thing I suppose for country bumpkins to come to the Show, you could get lost so easily. No it was quite a different world to…

we enjoyed life.

I don’t know, see they, parents didn’t talk to you much in those days and probably we don’t talk enough today, but I suppose it was just the fact that tradition is, as they got older we’d stay on, we didn’t get paid anything, we’d stay on and help, and when they got old

and eventually hope that we might get the farm, well I suppose that was part of our expectations from when we come back from the war, I got a piece of the farm and my brother got a piece of it, and the others got some money so I suppose, to keep it in the family for nearly a hundred years is not too bad. I suppose that’s was what I would have liked, well I’ve

still kept it in the family, I’ve transferred it to my daughter and hopefully her children, or my grandsons will carry it on.

Well, it was just a matter of what you could get, there wasn’t much to do, like for instance this wood, my father handed me an axe and we sold a little bit of wood in the town, we had a little truck.

And I know, practically every street in Peterborough, we delivered wood to Peterborough, that was pocket money, I used to get two shilling a load and that was my pocket money to help, we lived home for nothing, there was no having to pay board with your parents, that wasn’t on them days, you worked on the farm for your tucker [food], and that was your base and I stayed home until I was married, like even after the war.

When I come back from the war, for two years, I was home until we got married and then we, lived down in Hillside ever since of course. But, and my parents, they stayed on at the old home until they died.

Oh well, I remember when the war broke out in 3rd September, 1939, I was working in a wool shed, doing wool picking at that time. This was for a neighbour and, we were listening to the wireless [radio] and I can still remember Menzies [Prime Minister of Australia, Robert Menzies] declaring war. It was, I suppose

didn’t register I suppose what it meant, but I remember my father and mother saying, “Oh gee this is terrible, it’ll be like the last war, we’ll lose everyone.” And that’s probably what came through their mind because they’d saw so many killed in the First World War. But of course I was home, at that time I wasn’t nineteen and was too young. You see you wasn’t allowed to join the AIF until you was twenty.

And I always intended to get away to the war, but just planning it was a bit hard, well I got this shearing plant, and I had to pay for that and the right opportunity didn’t come until early 1941 as far as I was concerned.

Oh I think it was patriotism, you see were brought up in a lot different era to today. Every time, when we went to school, we had to salute the flag and we had to sing ‘God Save the Queen’ and the song of Australia and we were really…. the King was everything and it was King and Empire and then

of course adventure, see every young fellow had a bit of adventure in him and I thought I did, and I wanted to see the world and it’s a good way of seeing the world. That was the reason, later when I joined up, but at the time, of course, 1939, the war was pretty remote and then it got worse as we come along, France

fell and of course, I was in well before the Japanese started but there was a cry, see they closed down recruitment for the AIF in September 1940 and it wasn’t until ’41 that they opened it again, and that’s when I sort of, and some of our local people decided we’d all go and join up. But I didn’t join up with anyone in particular, no it was, I just took it in me head I’d join up and I was a loner,

I just joined up on my own. You made your mates later.

I went to Peterborough to the recruiting office and the first thing I had to do was have a first medical examination. Dr Flaherty was the doctor then, he passed me fit, I didn’t seem to have any trouble with that, we didn’t think of fitness, we were pretty fit. And, he sent me to Adelaide, I had my second medical in Adelaide at Wayville,

they gave me a week’s leave to, I wasn’t sworn in, but just to go home, fix my affairs up, and that’s how I come and then I caught the train down to Adelaide in March and it was the 20th of March, 1941 when I marched into Wayville and I was sworn in.

Oh they was quite happy at this time, they had already signed the consent for me to join up, we still had to, twenty one was the consent age then, so we had to have the consent. They’d signed it, they were happy but they were worried. But, that’s natural isn’t it?

No, no.

I went to Wayville and the first day I took the oath, they made us make a will and gave us inoculations and the inoculations I can still see it, I was in a room like this and we were all lining up and the chap’s down there on a table, and as I got to the table, before he even put the needle

in, I keeled over and the next thing I remember the, somebody’s handing me money, it all fell out of my trousers, and I fell out of, I’d fainted, but they put the needle in while I was out to it, so that was lucky. It was the thought of the damn thing, not the needle, just the thought, “Oh cripes, I can’t stand this.” so that was a good start, wasn’t it?

Well then they issued us with our uniforms and all the stuff that we had, and then the next day they put us on parade and they called for volunteers, they said we want fifteen volunteers to get overseas quick. Well I thought this is what I come for, and so I stepped out and fifteen others stepped out and the next day we were up to Woodside,

we were into Woodside. Been in the army two days and we’re up to Woodside and we’re reinforcements for the 2/27th Battalion. We were the third fourth reinforcements for the 2/27th Battalion, and next thing, of course, oh I was hopeless they gave us all this gear to put together. Somebody helped me put the webbing and all this together and,

you can imagine how green [naïve] you were. You were in three days and you’re nearly ready to go overseas. They took us down to the rifle range and gave it a shot out of the Lewis machine gun, and shot it out of the rifle, the rifle wasn’t bad, I’d used a three before, I was a good shot that was probably my one thing in my favour, the second one was, of course they give us new boots. Well I’d been wearing boots all my life,

put them on, they were great. No sore feet with me. So that was two advantages I had, and they took us down the range and learnt us how to throw a grenade, and three days later, embarkation leave came along, four days embarkation leave. And, I arrived home, we didn’t have any telephone in those days, I walked in, I caught the Broken Hill Express home, and had to walk to miles,

got home at two o’clock in the morning, the train got into the Ucolta siding, and I walked home in the dark and my brother was very surprised to see me home, thought I shouldn’t be here at all, and I said, “I’m on embarkation leave.” And four days’ embarkation leave, and of course that caused a stir, the district had to organise a send off for me, I’d only been in the army a week, and they’re giving me a send off.

It was ridiculous wasn’t it? And righto, they gave me a fountain pen and pencil. You know that fountain pen was probably the best thing they probably ever could have gave me because I kept a diary all the war, and because I had to fill it up with ink, I didn’t have to look for ink, I wrote that diary in ink all that time. So that was a good present wasn’t it? And anyway, got this embarkation leave over, back to Adelaide

and the 4th of April, 1941, we’re all marching, we were sent down, we were taken down to Adelaide and we marched through Adelaide as trained soldiers, two weeks in the army and we’re trained soldiers. I never forget when we marched up at the parade ground at Torrens Parade Grounds, they said, “Pile Arms.” Well I never knew what ‘pile arms’ meant, well ‘pile arms’

was in those days they had a swivel on the .303 rifle up the front, and it had a little hook on it and three rifles were hooked together and they made a tripod, and then the rest of the platoon filed past they leaned their rifle onto this tripod, and that’s how you piled arms, somebody said, “Put it over here.” And they managed to get the rifle standing up in the heap

and anyway, this, while we had to pile arms was we had to have lunch there, and you couldn’t take your rifle to lunch but then after lunch we marched down, we thought we was really (UNCLEAR), fancy marching when you’ve only been in the army two weeks. Well a week later, the, we were put on the train at Woodside, or not Woodside, Oakbank and I got a photo of me looking out of the

train as I left, I don’t know whether you want that or not. But anyway.

No not really because the best mate I had and he’s still alive he joined up the same day and he had never had any experience either.

But he was a bit older, all right, yes he did probably help me, because he was four or five years older than me and a bit more experienced in life. But, yes, and then there was another chap, and he’s still alive, Vern Sharrod, he’d been in the militia and he was a good help, so I guess that, yes that at this stage they were a help, but anyway, I’m on the train, this is the 8th of April, 1941,

and it was two days to get to Sydney, four o’clock in the morning on the tenth, we arrived at Circular Quay in Sydney, and there’s this huge boat, we looked out and this huge boat, the Ile De France, it had been, can’t say it, taken from the French anyway, in Singapore because they’d chucked the sponge in [given up], the French had, and they marched us on, the first troops on, onto

this new boat, passenger liner, forty two thousand tons and they marched us on, but of course because we were infantry, we were put down on D deck right down in the holes, the bowels of the ship we called it. Had a blanket and put it on the steel deck and that’s where you slept for the next five weeks, the toilets are, just a bit of a partition off,

they’re a trough, from one side of the boat to the other, on a slope with a big lot of water coming in this end and it going out that end. And the seats all up and there’s fifteen blokes sitting on the seats, that’s the privacy of the toilets. Anyway that, we managed and then of course, the first half day, oh I was lost on the boat, I couldn’t find my way around, you, you didn’t

know where you were, you probably been on boats, they’re that big, and no hope. But, the worst part of it was, the, some of the artillery men they had the cabins up the top and later on this is a few days later, I realised that my, well I don’t know how you’d say this relationship, he’s my stepbrother’s son was on that boat. So that’s a very

complicated relationship, but he’d be a, would I be a step uncle to him I suppose. Anyway he was on, he was nineteen and he was on there, so he took us up to the cabin and I think he had extra food up there we done pretty well.

No idea he was on the boat until we met on the boat yes. Well going, we’re on the boat now and

we sailed out of Sydney Harbour on the 10th of April, ’41, and I can still remember going out the Heads, it seemed to get a bit rough, but it was all right, a big boat and we sailed down to Wilson’s Promontory in Melbourne, just outside of Melbourne and we met up with more boats. And we finished up, with five boats in the convoy then and if I recall right, there was the Ile De France, there was the Aquitania, there was the Queen Mary,

the Queen Elizabeth, and the Mauritania, and then we got to Perth, we picked up the New Amsterdam. There were six of the best passenger boats in the world, I don’t know how many thousand men there was on them. Well when we got to Perth, or going across the [Great Australian] Bight, was a bit rough, I got a little bit seasick but I found in my travels on boats, that after two days

I was all right and I got my sea legs and no more seasickness, so that was fortunate. But, we got to Perth and of course we couldn’t get leave because our boat was too big to get into the wharf, so we just sat out there and they picked up the Western Australians then off we sailed. It was just on big adventure up to this time. So fast, I hadn’t come down to earth, really, I don’t suppose there would have been too many done this in such a, you see

most of the original battalions had done twelve months training, they’d done Woodside, they were sick and tired of it, I didn’t have time to get sick of it, no. But there we are, we’re at Fremantle and of course, then they sailed out of, we had two or three cruisers there, escorts, and of course shipboard life is, oh I suppose we didn’t like it much, they had a lot of PT [physical training], I was the worst in the world at PT, a bit stiff in the bones. But anyway,

I suppose it was, the next thing the New Amsterdam left us, that sailed off to Singapore, thank goodness we weren’t on that, that was all prisoners of war. And the next thing the Queen Mary left us, the Lizzy [the Queen Elizabeth] left us, they went on ahead, they was fast they didn’t need a convoy. We pulled into Colombo ten days we had in Colombo and we got leave everyday.

Wonderful all around the flesh pots of Colombo, wonderful, you can imagine why I wanted adventure, I was getting it, all so soon. Yes. Anyway after ten days they set sail again and of course the next thing we’re in, oh as we’re going over to Suez, we met

the Lizzy and the Mary [the Queen Mary] coming back they’d dumped their troops, they’re on their way back to Australia, anyway we get into Suez and…

Oh absolutely thrilling, I suppose, like I couldn’t comprehend it, and the fact well, to be in a foreign country and all this, well people chewing betel

nuts and then they had these mosques where you could, well they’d take us on tours and you had to take your shoes off to go into them a mosque and then a trip to Kandy, they put us on a bus and these drivers, you wonder how they didn’t tip you over, but anyway it was a seventy five mile trip up to Kandy from Colombo. Wonderful, the tea growing, get up there of course, Kandy’s a bit of a holy city and then, that was really, really wonderful too.

Yes, I can remember Kandy all right.

Yes, I didn’t drink much, because I was, I suppose I was brought up from a pretty strict, my mother was Scotch and I suppose a drink was looked down on pretty much, and I didn’t drink much but I did like have a little bit, as

the war went on but not much because later on I got sick and I got a hiatus hernia and I couldn’t drink then, so that was later. But no it was, I suppose, the leave though then, some, that’s all some would live for, they’d go into the and get drink and some of that drink was pretty hard, I don’t know what enjoyment they, I was taking it all in and I was enjoying every minute of it yes.

Colombo was Suez, and when we got to Suez, I said, “This is the last hole in Earth.” It was really, really dry, dusty and we wondered why we was over there fighting for that country. Well we wasn’t fighting and anyway they took us off the boat, put us on the train at Suez, and the train was, Egyptian train,

and it was these big steel dog boxes, they had a big door on the side and they put about twenty men in there, shut the door and when we got to El Kantara, that’s where we crossed the canal, they took us off, they had to take us off the train and take us across to the other side by ferry and, they gave us breakfast there, it was a nice breakfast, it was sausages and green peas and potatoes,

and then we got in the train again and all night we travelled across the Sinai Desert and in the morning we arrived at Gaza, and they took us off the train there, and went to a camp, the training camp at Dimra. This was about the 18th of May, 1941 and we were in the training camp, this was the 2/21st Brigade training camp. And the training camp was really where we

learned something. And everyday then we went from daylight to dark learning bayonet fighting, Bren gun, rifles, Thompson gun, and manoeuvres day and night. And we really thought we were soldiers then and we had a month of this, then by this time, the battalion had gone into Syria, they had attacked Syria because the Vichy French was going to let the Germans in there and,

so that, our battalions in action, the 8th of June, 1941 they went into action into Syria and they lost a fair few men in the first two weeks and we were sent up as reinforcements and there was great excitement at Dimra when we were put on draft and away we went. They took us by truck to Gaza, they put us on the train and we went by train to

to Haifa and then on trucks and we arrived up at our battalion by truck about the 22nd of June, 1941, and we spent the night there, the next morning, the colonel, no the major, Major Dobbs, lined us up and he said “You, you and you and you, go to B Company.” So there was about ten of us went to B Company and that’s where I finished up, B Company 2/27th Battalion, 11 Platoon, 4 Section. And that’s where I stayed for the rest of my days.

In the army. Yes and this is where the help came then, from the real soldiers, they took us in tow and they taught us the little bits that we hadn’t taught anywhere else, the real thing. And, took us out, that night out on a patrol, and by this time the shells dropping fairly close but they said “Don’t take any notice of them, they can’t hit you.”

And you know it was really quite, we didn’t think they would anyway, but they didn’t. But anyway that’s when I got in 4 section with one of my best mates was in there Jock Hogg, he just died the other day, and he was a bit older than me and he looked after me, then Mal Hurrell, he was the one I joined up with, he was there, and we were all together for, well until after we come back

to Australia, then there was a bit of a change, but to join the Syrian campaign of course, we saw our first dead in the field and all that business that was.

Oh no, there were no tents, we were in the field, we were just sleeping on the ground oh yes, no there

was no, all you had on your back was what you, you had a blanket and you had a groundsheet and that’s where you made yourself comfortable.

Yes, yes we were under shell fire the first day. Yes. And then by early July we done the big attack at Damour, the whole brigade was in action there, we had to take Damour and the 21st Brigade

the 27th Battalion, had to find a crossing and they found a crossing over the Damour River and we moved at night, over the river and up to a hill called 560 and this is where we really saw the first big action. The French did a counter attack on us, and I can still see them streaming down the hill, and the poor buggers they got cut to pieces, they must have knocked about fifty or sixty of them,

just in a few hours. They were clean in the open and anyway we took a few prisoners. And, probably I don’t know whether I should say this on tape, but one bloke come on a, on a well two of the Syrians brought him, a French bloke on donkey and he had smashed leg and myself and one of the other section of our section were detailed to take him back to the

headquarters and get him, like where he would be put in hospital. So as he’s going back, I ripped his watch off and the other bloke took his money so we thought we’d done well, terrible wasn’t it? But he wasn’t thankful, we looked after him and, he thanked us and, so that was my first introduction to real war.

But no it was a.

Yes.

Oh yes, I mean somebody’s got to reassure us, you would get in a hole and you wouldn’t move, I think, and there were people that ran. First shot

was fired they ran the other way. And I think somebody had to reassure you, I never felt anything, funny thing, you didn’t seem to feel danger, I don’t know what, I reckon there’s some second sense that protects you, you know, and I could tell right through the war that, even when I was wounded, I never really thought that I was going to get hit. No way, you got some sort of a feeling, yet you see some bloke alongside you shot through the head,

why? I reckon there’s something in your body that protects you from that sort of thing. Perhaps I’m wrong but it’s like talking to one of my mates the other day and he said, “So-and-so.” he said, “When we landed at Balikpapan.” he said, “He got up and ran the other way.” And I said, “I never sort of felt that.” It’s something that you don’t feel, but you

don’t know how everyone but and no, in this case in Syria, you didn’t, well I didn’t feel any danger but they reassured me and I think that was, that was, and a little bit later there, when we was doing this attack on Damour, we got caught right in the shell fire and I reckon a shell must have lobbed within fifteen yards of us. I think it must have damaged my ears because I’ve been a bit deaf ever since. But I really

the concussion is terrific, in that case it was, but it’s something that you, or put it this way, you didn’t panic over it, if you did you wouldn’t have been in the army.

Yes.

Well we were briefed and our section was to

march, we set off at eight o’clock in the night, where it was very rocky and hilly country and we were to march at a forming up place on the south side of the Damour River, which was, when I say the south side, it was a range of hills, then there was a depression of about a thousand feet, down to the river and then there was another range of hills on the other side that you had to ascend. So when it came twelve o’clock at night,

we descended down the, we’d already found a goat track, down to the river, under shellfire, the French are firing, they knew that we was attacking but they couldn’t see us, it was night time and these shells were, it was a tremendous noise of probably the most noise I’ve ever heard in warfare. See with the Japanese we never had much of that and the echoes in the valleys and by morning,

we’d ascended to the other side at a place called El Boum and this is where the French were and they were running out of El Boum and we occupied El Boum and they’d retreated to Hill 560, but then they held Hill 560 and we moved forward and this is when they counterattacked us and that’s when they lost a lot of men there.

And at the same time most of us, the first shot I fired out of my rifle was there, because up till that stage we hadn’t been in close contact, but there we did fire a fair few shots, wouldn’t know if anyone hit, whether I hit anything, because this was fairly long warfare, I suppose this was five or six hundred yards. Nothing like the jungle, but,

it was very, oh I suppose it was pretty scary when you see a mortar shell come over and one bloke would get hit and somebody would have to try to carry him out and the, and the whole thing lasted for about two days. And then the French retreated and then we were moved to another position and this was

the night before the end of the armistice, we got word to say, “Don’t shoot because there’s, at twelve o’clock there’s going to be an armistice.” And this was 11th of July 1941 and righto when the twelve o’clock come all firing stopped and next morning the war was over for us there. And then we were doing garrison duties and this garrison duty,

was to disarm the French, and guard the ammunition dumps and that sort of thing, and we moved, and we had a rather, oh I suppose a good time in Syria, although I got sick.

Oh right. Yes well I can enlarge on that if you like, because we were B Company, A Company was the leading company

and my neighbour, a chap by the name of Martin, he was, Allan Martin, in A Company, he was a corporal and he happened to be going with my sister and unfortunately he was killed in that battle and the chappie with him, I was talking to him afterwards, and he was a Bren gunner and

his name was Ogilvie and he got an MM [Military Medal] because he attacked the French and the French were a little bit dirty, they put the white flag out and right our chaps started to march in to disarm them they opened fire and this is how that man, Alan Martin got killed, because they were really under a truce and they opened fire. Well then this chappie who got the MM, he

went mad, he shot ten of the French with his Bren gun, and he got the MM over it, but they didn’t, they put the white flag up pretty quick again, no doubt about that. Yes that was the only incident that sort of stuck in my mind a bit, it was pretty dirty really. But, it’s a shocking country

very hilly and, stony, but our casualties were fairly high, the whole campaign was about forty killed and fifty wounded during the campaign, which was high for those days. Nothing of course compared with over in New Guinea later on, that was absolutely slaughter.

No, it didn’t seem to affect me, because I think being a country person, I was used to seeing animals dead and it didn’t seem to, the first couple I saw dead was two of our own people and it shocked

me a bit but I really, I don’t really think I, don’t really think about it, I can’t remember thinking too much about it, I suppose anyone should have been thinking, it’d shock me now I suppose, but at the time, it was part of the job, if you can understand. Our job was the enemy was to be killed and that was that, pretty rotten I suppose and that’s how it went.

It was a really, like I don’t, I think I must have went a bit numb, I don’t really know that I was scared anyway.

Well, I think the range would be, you wouldn’t really know if

you hit anyone or not, no I wouldn’t like to say that I definitely wouldn’t day that I ever killed anyone there, because I didn’t know. I fired shots though, but, that’s what we were there for and I suppose we done what we were told and that’s, but all along this first action, it was the old, the original men that was the steadying influence. Then

we’d just do what we were told, because we were green, you see and I guess that, that same thing went, later on when we were experienced soldiers and we got reinforcement the same thing happened.

Well, at the time,

we didn’t think it was too good because, they’d thrown the towel in [surrendered] to the Germans in France and then they’re fighting us, to help the Germans, it seemed a very, very treacherous thing to do, but it was a gentlemen’s war compared with later on. For instance two of our chaps got taken prisoner and they wasn’t harmed in any way and

when the armistice was, we had the armistice, we got them back again, and they said they were treated quite well by the French and they could talk to them and some of the French were glad to surrender, they were disappointed that they were fighting Australians. And, really the impression was when we went into Syria that the French would surrender and not fight, so I suppose we were disappointed then.

But no, it was a silly war but I suppose it was a necessary one.

Yes, yes, and the reason why he was taken prisoner

because he was badly wounded in the leg and to save his life, it was better for him to get somebody to help him and he got the Syrians with a donkey to bring him into our medical centre, it was to lay in the field and die, so that, and we helped all wounded, whenever necessary, we helped all wounded, oh yes, there was no, there was no, it was a gentlemen’s war compared with the Japanese later on. There’s no doubt about that,

it was fought as it should have been, but no we looked after them and they looked after us, but as I said, we exchanged prisoners when the thing ended, it was pretty good if you could, that’s how it ought to have been fought. And I suppose when I went away I thought it wasn’t going to be like, how the Japanese turned out later on. But yeah, that’s another story.

Well that’s very interesting, at all stages they received us very, very well, the only, animosity that might have cropped up is many years later when we’d go to a reunion, “Oh you were just reinforcements.” and I had to point out several times that I saw more action than half the original, half of the originals done one campaign,

sick, wounded and gone, and, I can remember two or three times at our reunions and I had to give the toast to the battalion and I incorporated in my speech that the last reinforcement to arrive in the battalion was just as important as the first that came there and that was my last shot back and it was

received very well and today there’d be no animosity what so ever. But at that stage, and of course later on as we got reinforcements from other units, we accepted them with open arms, because we were desperate for men and, I at no stage did I ever see a reinforcement ever shirk his job, so that was, and I didn’t think I shirked me job either. So there you are.

Well, now, when you talk orders, the battalion’s orders were to encircle the French and cut the line behind the French on the other side of Damour. That was the actual, that was the order for the brigades, that was the brigade’s job. And eventually with the help of

the 17th brigade, brought two battalions through too, the third and the fifth, and they cut the road behind Damour and of course Damour fell then because the enemy was cut off. That was the actual object, it was the strategy of the whole battle was to well outflank the enemy if you like to put it in army terms. The Damour was a town close to the river, on the

Damour River, a very hard nut to crack because you had to cross the river there was hills overlooking the river, which was very hard, but by sending the 2/27th Battalion inland, and crossing the river further up, we didn’t strike the opposition and we eventually helped the, we only got so far and then the third and the fifth battalion cut the road

and that was really the object of the whole battle and once that battle was won by the Australians I should say, that was, the armistice come about a lot quicker than it would have otherwise. It was a pretty important battle. Of course it was only one part of the fighting in Syria, there was more fighting inland in Damascus and all that but, this was really the key to the armistice.

The terrain was quite high, the mountains were quite high, several thousand feet well, up to about three thousand feet, I think the terrain, the mountains were and the roads were very windy and narrow and I recall just after the armistice the moved us up to a big ammunition dump up at Hammana and the orders were that we had to go

on the inland route, because, to show the flag, the idea of showing the flag was for the locals and also the French, to think we had more troops than there was, and they put us into three ton trucks and they moved us on these secondary roads, as they called them, they were only about ten feet wide and very windy and when we was going up through some of the mountains, we could not negotiate the corner with one part, you go up to the edge of the road, back a little bit,

and do a couple of little manoeuvres to get around and you look down and it’s a thousand feet down the side and we’re sitting in the back of the truck and you look over, hoping, I hope he doesn’t go much further and the tyres are that far from the edge. But that was, the idea was to get, to put the troops through the centre and show the flag. Hammana was a great big ammunition dump and that’s where we were camped for two or three months.

This was after the armistice, that’s when I got sick.

Oh, I only actually had three weeks, from the time I joined the battalion to the armistice was declared, yes, from the 23rd of June to the 11th of July. That was my period with, there, that was the actual fighting.

Oh we thought it was great, we were a bit sick of the war by the time, three weeks was plenty long enough for me. We all thought it was great and we went down to the river, they took us back to the river and we had a swim and we was able to write letters and we got letters from home and they even come around and said, “You can send a message home.” And I was selected to send one to someone, but it never got home, I don’t know what happened to it, like when I say

message, you talked into a microphone and then they sent it home and played it home on the wireless, the ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation], was going to play it on the ABC here in South Australia, but it never arrived here, no one heard it so I don’t know what happened to that. But oh yes, it was quite an exciting time for us I suppose at our age.

We was, actually at twelve o’clock, or

it was before twelve, it was going to happen at twelve o’clock on the 11th, at midnight, but we got word about ten o’clock in the night, to say not to shoot, unless fired on, after that time, and when it come twelve o’clock, we wasn’t to shoot, that was our orders, definite orders. And it was only a few shots fired after that but only by mistake.

Oh well actually, during the campaign and even after, the food was very bad, in my opinion anyway, it seemed to be greasy and I suppose a lot of tinned stuff and a couple of weeks after the armistice, I didn’t feel too good and I reported to the RAP [Regimental Aid Post] and oh, they said,

“Send you back.” They sent me back for a rest, so righto they sent me back to the dressing station and then that tour at convalescent camp and when I got to convalescent camp I’m sick every day and I’m sick and I report sick and, “Oh you’ll be better in a few days.” And eventually I went to the doctor and he pulled up me shirt and I’m as yellow as the guinea, “Oh.” he said, “You’ve got yellow jaundice.” And of course that’s what was making me sick. So straight away they sent me back to Palestine then,

the 2/7th AGH [Australian General Hospital], and when I got there the doctor, I was yellow for about a fortnight and then I gradually got better and then they sent me to a convalescent camp at Kfar Victin and that was on the sea, we could swim there and that was quite pleasant. And after a month, I was a month from the time I got sick till

I was sent back to, and of course by this time I’m in Palestine I have to go back to the ITB, the infantry training battalion and start over, you start again then to be sent back to reposted more or less, but fortunately I was only there a week, and then they, sent me back to the battalion in Syria. Well that was an interesting trip.

Oh yes, we had to do marches and get properly fit again and not much in the field firing or anything, but just marching and guard duties and all that, you had to do the usual army training and stuff.

It took me a long and even to this day it’s still, I’m still suffering with that same thing, because

it ruptured my hiatus hernia, hiatus and now I’ve got a hiatus hernia now and I’ve had that all my life and I get a lot of indigestion and regurgitation, that’s me only, perhaps legacy from that illness. Yes, it was I feel it was the conditions that caused it, but just coming back to the trip back to the battalion, I just, like to make this point,

because it was very interesting, they took us by truck to Gaza, we got on the train from Gaza to Haifa, camped the night out at Mount Carmel and next day they put us on a smallish boat, the Riley and, this was daylight, it was eight o’clock in the morning, we got on at Haifa and we sailed along the coast of Lebanon to Beirut and here, I suppose if you,

today, you’d pay thousands of dollars for that trip, it was magnificent, the sun was shining, sitting on the deck and you could see all the white houses on the shoreline, all the villages, right through and it lasted till four o’clock in the afternoon, we arrived in Beirut, pulled up at the wharf and marched off. So I reckon that was worthwhile, if nothing else was. Best trip I had in the army, yes, yes, it was actually just fancy laying back on the deck and seeing

this for nothing. Of course then we’re, I’m back to the battalion again, and that, that’s all pretty hard again then, and it’s coming winter time in Syria then. And by Christmas time we’d had a big fall of snow, the snow come so heavy there must have been a foot of snow, it broke the tent, the ridge pole in the tent, when we woke up in the morning, the tent had collapsed down and we had cane beds

and the top of the tent is laying on us. Cold, I still got a numb toe from that, I reckon I got frostbite. Very, very cold.

We had five blankets and a greatcoat; it’s pretty cold, yeah, just about like it is up at our place now.

North of

Tripoli this was, we dug a lot of defences, you see they still thought the Germans would come through Turkey and come down through there and take the canal from that side, so we had to, we dug defences there, we put up, dug holes in the ground and put up barbed wire and every days we would work on the defences, and we worked there for about three months, and it was just after Christmas, and of course just after Christmas the Japanese come into the war and sort of

everything seemed to change then and next thing, we knew there was a move afoot when another battalion took us over, the 43rd came and they took us over, we were sent off to Palestine, we were the whole battalion was sent off to Palestine, we went down by truck and then by train and then, got camp at Palestine, Hill 69.

Well we was camped in tents, near the positions where we were to occupy if the Germans did attack we would occupy all these positions and be in a battle situation. That was the idea,

and this was called the Tripoli Line, the Tripoli Line was to stop the Germans from coming through and there was a tremendous lot of work put in because these positions we’d dug, they was in rock, they had to be blasted out, and we thought we worked for nothing I suppose, but it was a horrible job. But it was necessary.

Well they had engineers to put the charges in, but we had to do all the pick and

shovel work and all that sort of thing it was, it wasn’t soldiering, it was really hard yakka [hard physical labour].

Oh we got a bit of leave sometimes, yes, that was nice. Mal Hurrell and I, we went into Beirut, we had a day’s leave in there, of course Beirut was, well it’s a modern city, it’s French orientated,

because a lot of French in there, because it’s Syrians, the shopkeepers, you could buy souvenirs, you could get entertainment, no it was, that was quite another plus in the thing. And just talking of leave, I also got a little bit of leave in Palestine too, I’ll come to that in a minute, as we come back to Palestine.

We were a bit perturbed because we were isolated in the Middle East and we were really worried that Australia had nothing to protect itself, and unfortunately the Australian Militia was pretty weak, we had four divisions of the AIF were overseas there was the 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th, and the 8th were in Malaya and

so the best trained troops were really nowhere where they could do any good. And we were a bit apprehensive and when we got the order to move, we thought, “This is great.” But of course that’s a little bit later, when we moved. But, I guess, we didn’t get the information that you’re getting now on the television, you’re getting a ball to ball description of the war aren’t you? But then we’d get a newsletter that was ten days old and

you didn’t know what really was happening, it, nothing like you’re getting now.

Well there was nothing you could do about it, it was our job, we were in the army and we was to do as we were told and there was really nothing we could do about it. It was, I suppose it was just our fate that we were there.

Yes, well it was very good, you see, the direction in the army was that the officers done all mess orderlies, they served you and you was even allowed to duck the officers into some mud and things like that. And, because it was so wet and, mucky around the camp and we had

slit trenches that were full of water, it was the ideal opportunity to duck your platoon commander into the water. Freezing cold, but it didn’t matter. And I think we had a ball of a time and there was plenty of grog [alcohol], there was two bottles of Australian beer each and then there was a bit of wog [ethnic] beer as well, so you can imagine by the end of the night it was a pretty happy occasion. Yes, no it really was good,

that was probably a highlight of my trip over there.

Yes, yes well we moved from Syria by truck to Hill 69 and at Hill 69, of course the whole brigade was there, there was the 16th and 14th Battalion, they make up the 21st Brigade of course, and we knew the move was on but we didn’t know where.

The betting was that it might be Singapore, it could be Burma, it could be Java but we didn’t know where and there was no stage that we did know where.

Well I suppose it was like the whole war was uncertain, in my opinion. We really weren’t told much and we didn’t know what our role was,

but we did think we was going to fight the Japanese, we did think that. Yes, yes, there’s no doubt about that but just while that few days we was at Hill 69, I think we was there nearly two weeks, I was lucky enough to get a day’s leave in Tel Aviv. And I went down there with a chap by the name of Rosenberg and in my album I’ve got a photo of where we were both taken in Tel Aviv and the soldiers’ canteen was behind

us so if you want to you can have a look at it later, but that was a highlight, because Tel Aviv was a modern city, and oh, we had a really good time in Tel Aviv, and I can still recall it was quite nice, yes. And while we was, this was just before, and I’m going backwards a little bit now, I got a day’s leave in Jerusalem too, when I was sick and I was at that training battalion and I got a day’s leave to Jerusalem and

that was just as good, I saw all the religious sites of that time. So, although I was only there over there that time and I didn’t have much leave, I had a day’s leave in Tel Aviv, I had a day in Jerusalem and one day in Beirut and so I saw all the sights when I was there.

Well I suppose it was only people, it was nice to see, see

they were all, just there they were mostly Jews there, and they were white people and you could talk to them, they knew English, and they’d invite you to their homes and they were pretty nice, yes, yes, they were good people. I think this is where we had a big advantage in the Middle East over New Guinea, we were inside, we might as well be inside of Siberia when we was in New Guinea, because there was no one you could talk to. See over there if you got leave,

you had people you could mix with, it was good.

I think the people were wonderful, and their Jewish settlements were wonderful, we did have a trip out to one of their Jewish settlements, and me being a farmer, I was amazed at what they’re growing in country that, here in Australia you’d call it desert, so no I hand it to them, they were clever

and work, very industrious. Yes, I as a matter of fact, I sympathise a little bit for them now, because, the way that, I mean you know the international situation that’s going there now, I do, I think they’re entitled to something too.

It was, yes. And of course the British were in control of Palestine at that time.

See it was under British protectorate at that time it wasn’t Jewish, it wasn’t Arabic, it was British, British protectorate and it was pretty good.

Well we left Palestine by train, we caught a train to El Majdal, we went straight from

El Majdal, that’s in Palestine, through to El Kantara, and same old routine, a meal at Kantara, the same sausages and peas and potatoes, all exactly the same. And then down the Suez Canal to Port Suez. Well if that wasn’t the, I think that was the end of the world down there, there was a dust storm blowing, we got off the train and we had a full packs, and

all our gear and we had to go three miles to the camp the staging camp, we went into the staging camp for a couple of days and then low and behold they took us down to the wharf and there we got on the barge and out on the Ile de France, on the Ile de France again. We’ve come over on it and we’re going back on it. Get on the Ile de France and the whole brigade is on there, five thousand men, yes. Next day we pulled out,

I think it was about the thirty, or the 29th of January, ’42 and, set sail for unknown destination, down through the Red Sea and, of course, going down through the Red Sea, you can see the land on both sides, very barren, into the Indian Ocean, next thing we’re in Bombay, a week later we’re in Bombay, five days and we were in Bombay.

We were, on the Ile de France coming home,

we were up in the lounge. They just pushed the lounges aside and we camped on the floor on the carpet in the lounge. Up on the promenade deck, oh beautiful, yes. And there were so many troops, you couldn’t do any training, and like, exercises so we really had a bludge [time off] for five days. No, another tourist, a Cook’s tour I suppose. We get into Bombay and

there’s the City of London waiting for us, but we didn’t get off for two or three days, but we got off the Ile de France and onto the City of London, well did our stakes go down, the City of London’s ten thousand ton, it was a hot hole and we were all crowded into the mess deck. We eat there and we sleep in the hammocks there above us. Yes, during the day

you took you hammock down, and you ate there and in the night time, you put your hammocks up the slept up there, and crowded in. Anyway we get on the..

No, but I do get a bit of it if I get crowded now, so I don’t think there was any, no we put up with that all right. But it was , but before we sailed that day, the night before we sailed, they gave us a night’s leave in Bombay.

And of course what can you do in one night, but we done a bit of a tour around the place and I can well recall seeing all these people eating betel nuts. God what a terrible, all this red stuff running down their mouths and there’s a terrible bad, the poor population in Bombay, millions of people and they’re half starved at that time it seemed a last place on earth. But we enjoyed it, it was another place we’d seen

for nothing and then away next morning, 13th of February, 1942, we set sail, in the most motley convoy you ever saw, it was nine ships I think and they can only get a speed of about eleven knots, thankfully because they couldn’t get any speed up, we never got to Java. We sailed in the ocean for two weeks, all of a sudden the whistle blew and we turned around and somebody had made

a decision that we wasn’t going to fight the Japs in Java, so I don’t know who it was. They said at the time it was Curtin [John Curtin Prime Minister of Australia] and Churchill [Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of England] arguing the point and Curtin wanted us home and Churchill wanted us to go to Burma, and anyway Curtin won thankfully. And we, next thing we finished back in Colombo. Twenty ships pulled into Colombo harbour, side by side, if the Japs had come over, they’d have sunk the lot of it, but no, fortunately they didn’t, three days we sat like that.

We didn’t get leave, and then they decided well we’re going to take you somewhere now. Out they went again and oh we was all looking, was watching our compasses, see whether we’re going to go south, and yes we’re going south all right, after about three days they told us we’re going to Fremantle.

No I don’t think so,

we didn’t know, I don’t think that the powers, we didn’t know that the Japs were just over the hill. They were just in Singapore, more or less two or three hundred miles away. We really didn’t know, Singapore had fell, it fell and we didn’t know, see they didn’t tell us much. But the luckiest thing every was, not getting into Java, you see 2/3rd Machine Gunners, one of my mates was on that. He was taken prisoner there and taken prisoner of war and he lost a leg

in, during the war, so, I said that was our lucky day that we didn’t go into Java. We would have been gone. But anyway, we come out, we set sail from Colombo and of course in two weeks we were into Perth.

Not really, not at this stage, no I think everyone was in shock, I don’t think that really, no it was like the army, it was a bit of a shemozzle [a disorganised mess] and no one knew what they was doing and I really think that probably the British was partly to blame, but you can’t blame them in way, because, they lost their two best warships off Malaya, there in the first battle of Singapore

and they lost there, and what could they do, they couldn’t do very much and then we lost, we lost our navy in the battle of the Java Sea. The [HMAS] Perth, went down, we lost a lot of men were there. So we limped home with our tails between our legs [humbly]. And we, it was a great to see Perth.

Well I can see Rottnest Island, it’s the first thing we can remember

seeing, that’s just out from Perth, at the entrance to Perth, that’s the sort of, and then we pulled right into the wharf at Fremantle and fortunately I was very lucky I had an aunty in Perth and they said, “Anyone’s got relations in Perth can get overnight leave.” So this is great, by this time it’s eight o’clock at night and of course I didn’t know anything, I got on the train and I got off at Perth. I had her address, 220

Lord Street I think it was, somewhere right in Perth, and it’s a blackout of course, there’s no lights in Perth and I went to a little shop and said, “Can you sell me a box of matches?” I said “I’ve got to find a place.” I wasn’t going to burn anything down, I was going to go to find the number on this house. I knew where the street was, I found the street, of course I’m striking to look at the numbers but anyway, I eventually got the house. Ten o’clock at night when I got there, I rattled at the door and somebody came out they just gone to bed

and, “Oh, yes, great to see you.” and all this business, I stayed the night and then my cousin she put me on the bus the next morning to take me back to Fremantle and when I got back, people said, “Oh, you can have a day’s leave now.” So we got another day’s leave in Perth, which was wonderful and at the same time we were able to send a telegram home to our parents that we was home in Australia I suppose that must have been a great thrill to them.

And so, the next day we sailed for Adelaide and we get down to Cape Leeuwin and the escort they said, we didn’t want that anymore, we just went individually through the Bight and the next thing we pulled up at Port Adelaide, right up into Port Adelaide, on the wharf. And no sooner I pulled up there and I look down and my brother’s down there, he’s in the transport

and I was able to talk to him, we were home. Just on a year from the time I left.

Oh it felt pretty good, we were pretty excited and of course, the next morning they took us off the boat, by train up to Mitcham, got off, oh Mitcham’s just a, I don’t know where I am, Mitcham’s just up near Springbank anyway, opposite Mitcham station marched to Springbank that’s near, right near Dawes Road Hospital.

And you know where the Dawes Road Hospital, well that was all open country then, there wasn’t a house there, and they had tents there and hats and we went into camp and two days late they gave us seven days leave to go home. So I caught the train home and had seven days home. And I think when I come home, I think I got home that time, I got three o’clock in the morning, I walked home that time that time. So, you had to do it the hard way.

Well I seen a terrible lot of change, when I got on the train, or even when I got into Adelaide, there’s a blackout on and you couldn’t find your way around and when I got on the train, they’d taken all the signs down off the stations, you know as you pull into the stations there’s Gawler, there’s Terowie, all that, none of those signs.

Unless you recognised the place, you didn’t know where you were but fortunately I could recognise most of the places, and by the time I got up to Peterborough, well it, going through all these stations without any light, you really hardly knew where you were, but anyway, we got home all right, but that was the biggest change I noticed was the blackouts. And then of course when I got home, there’s petrol rationing and of course petrol rationing, my father and mother,

they were on the farm, but they only got two gallons of petrol a month, a week, no a month, two gallons of petrol a month to do all their work and get their shopping, that’s all they had, but they’d been saving up a bit for when I did come home and they had a tin there with four gallons in so I was able to do a little bit of a social round, around the district when I got home.

Oh no there wasn’t any of that, but all the people were very friendly and no I had a pretty good time and. Of course at that time I wasn’t engaged and I didn’t have any particular girlfriend at that time. It was later when I got engaged, and I think it was the next leave.

We were to report back to Springbank, that was the camp. Report back there and about a week there and they decided to send us east to New South Wales or Queensland, we didn’t know which but they put us on the train and the train was a very interesting trip, if I remember, we had breakfast at Murray Bridge and we had tea at Serviceton and

we had breakfast again at Ballarat or somewhere like that. Then, we went the inland route, now when I say the inland route, and instead of going to Sydney you go north and because the river at Tocumwal, Tocumwal, is in the River Murray, I don’t know if, you probably never heard of it, but anyway, at Tocumwal, we crossed the river there and into New South Wales, of course it’s a different gauge there, you have to change trains.

And the same time there’s hundreds of people at every stop the trains stopped, there’s hundreds of people, they’re giving us fruit, they’re giving us names to write to them and we’re getting a very good reception and we went right through the back streets, the back blocks of Cootamundra and Wagga and Werris Creek and Tamworth and Armidale and we finished up at Glen Innes after three days.

Oh the girls and that were, want you to write to them, all very nice. I don’t think I did, I might have had correspondence with one or two, but I wasn’t a very good writer so it, it didn’t appeal to me much. But, just talking of trains, I just tallied up in my diary I had spent forty two days on trains

travelling during the war. And, boats, I spent a hundred and thirty-eight days on boats during the war. And I travelled thirteen, on thirteen different boats, so pretty good experience, wasn’t it? I’m just diverting a little bit here.

Yes but just think, I wasn’t all the time fighting was I? I was enjoying myself.

I’m at Glen Innes now and we trained there for a month and by the 8th of May, 1942, the big Battle of the Coral Sea is on. And they, the powers that be, at last they start to wake up that there’s a war on and they shift us to Queensland.

Well they

weren’t sending us, they wasn’t going anything with us. We should have been up in New Guinea, weeks and months before and no one could make the decision and I blame the generals for that. I suppose they had their reasons, and I suppose the reason was the Battle of the Coral Sea was the first defeat, although we lost a lot of ships, America lost a lot of ships, the Japanese got a defeat and they were turned back. As soon as I suppose the

the Allies sensed that the Japanese were weakening, they thought, well we’ll put our troops in, so then they trained, they kept us at Caloundra for two months and then in August and by the way at Caloundra we had a pretty good time, the best camp I’ve ever been in, the best food we ever had and the people, you know all good.

Well we just had tents of course, but we dug holes in the beach and

put up barbed wire and things like that. They thought the Japs were still going to land there and there was a possibility. Because at that time the Japs had submarines just out Sydney Harbour was invaded by the Japanese submarines at that time, so they could have landed there. But anyway, the camp itself, we had good food, we had fresh Australian food, we had a bottle of beer every night issued to us, we had to pay for it, one and threepence a bottle,

which was a big bottle. And not these little piddly [small] things, you know the big ones like that and Castlemaine XXXX [brand of beer] it was. And very good and we all put on a bit of weight, I think I was the, fittest and the best health I’ve been in while I was there. I suppose the story is they fattened us up for the kill. And,

we moved, then we had leave into Brisbane, we had. That was disappointing, a leave into Brisbane, we go into Brisbane, right, and there’s two girls hanging on each Yank that you ever met and there was a bit of trouble, there was fights amongst the Yanks and the Australians and we didn’t really enjoy ourselves there, because the local population had gone for the Yanks because they had money.

They had plenty of money, plenty of nylon stockings and that was it and then the army themselves said, “Well we’ll fix this.” So they soon got us out of the road, so they sent us up to New Guinea.

Not really, no I was a

bit too quiet for that, and a bit, probably I’d run before I wanted to get involved in those sort of things. And of course I didn’t drink much, whereas it generally flared up when there was a lot of drink about, see people got a bit of Dutch courage [confidence after drinking alcohol] and that sort of thing, but, I know, you see the point, it was disappointing to us, we’d been away for so long, we thought the local population, they were so good to us in New South Wales in the backblocks, there were no Yanks out there, but when

we get to Queensland where the money was flowing into their pockets, it was a different thing and those same Yanks were supposed to be here to help us and we were sent off to New Guinea and they was left with all our girls in Queensland, in Brisbane.

What do you mean? Oh well I suppose it’s human nature if they can,

if somebody’s got plenty of money they can give them chocolates and cigarettes all that sort of thing, we didn’t have any of that, our pay was only five shillings a day. We didn’t, or six shillings a day, we didn’t have much to throw around and so I suppose that was the attitude, they had plenty of money and they used it to influence the, probably it was not all of them, this is just what we saw.

Well now we’re going to New Guinea, it’s the real stuff.

Oh yes, yes, I think that if it hadn’t have been for them, we would have lost Australia, it’s as simple as that, although at the time we didn’t think they were doing enough.

If it hadn’t have been the resources of the Americans, look the Japanese would have been here, we had nothing to stop them although we were the first troops that defeated the Japanese later in New Guinea. If it hadn’t have been the resources of the American navy, and air force, we had no hope what so ever, because we’re only a small nation, you see, that’s, that was our trouble. No I guess we had to grin and bear

it if they had the best of the womenfolk for a while.

Oh I don’t know, the whole thing, I don’t think it made much impact on us. We didn’t realise, I’m quite

sure we didn’t realise how serious the thing was, and even when we, when eventually got on the boat to go to New Guinea, we didn’t realise that it might, that we might never come back. We, I think we were pretty naive, we, I suppose the Australians, we’re a bit of a cocky race and we thought we was invincible, we really did. It’s, I can’t explain it,

but no there’s no sign, thought that we were defeated at the time. Afterwards when you read the history, we were absolutely on our last knees.

Well it was a good help, when we got at Caloundra and we done training there, they

reorganised the training into groups, the section would, perhaps have a scout group of three people, they were the three people that would lead the section. And then it’d be the main section, he’d be the Bren gunner and then there would be another group and then, those, during the jungle training those three people, more or less kept together, if you

dug a position, the three of you was together so you could protect one another, you wouldn’t get so scattered, in the middle east, you was all scattered apart. But you try and kept three people close together as a protection and that was, even what the training we had, when the real thing came I, I think we were lacking, we hadn’t, it was harder but hard to visualise, the jungle was so much thicker in New Guinea than Queensland,

that’s probably what upset the training schedule a bit.

Thicker in New Guinea than Queensland.

Well I think it was much more nerve racking, the training was, you’d be fighting in close quarters, the enemy might only be five yards from you, whereas in the Middle East, and you didn’t feel as if you were under much pressure, but I really think when we got to the

New Guinea training it was a lot more pressure on the individual man, when the enemy could bob up just there or it was so pitch dark too in the jungle, you couldn’t see and you had to depend on you hearing an awful lot and I think it was much more nerve racking. I think there was far more people where their nerves went on them in the jungle training and the jungle fighting than they did in the open

warfare, that’s just how I saw it anyway.

Well, we all had more submachine guns and shooting had to be done from the hip. Instead of

putting it up and sighting it from your eye, you fired from here, and that was another difference in the training. That would be the difference in the training, how to handle the weaponry.

Fairly good, although

the Thompson sub machine guns, they were American, they jammed up a bit. But later on we got the Owen submachine gun and that was very, very good. Actually I was a Bren gunner and I found the Bren gun absolutely marvellous, never had any trouble with it, it was a very good gun. By the way I’d only just been made a Bren gunner when we left to go to New Guinea,

in my section.

Well I had to carry the gun all the time then and look after the gun and that was my responsibility right, for, well right through the New Guinea campaign I was a Bren gunner. And it was, there was one disadvantage being a Bren gunner, it weighed twenty six pounds and you had extra magazines to carry, you were carrying a lot of weight.

And the training was that every man in the section took a turn to carry it, but when we got up in New Guinea, that seemed to go by the board, no one else seemed to have any energy and you were left to do it, and you couldn’t throw it away so you just had to carry it. I reckoned I carried it all the way up and back on the Track, that was a little bit later. But no, the Bren gun was a very, very good weapon,

and it never gave any trouble.

Well actually it was in Glen Innes, just before we went to Caloundra, yes.

Oh we had all the proper training, we had to learn how to strip the gun, in so many seconds or minutes what ever it was and you had a little bottle of oil and you had some rag and practically every day you had to clean it, take it to pieces and clean it. Oh yes you had to look after it, clean the barrel and everything.

You were in trouble if you didn’t do the job properly.

Oh you’d just run the cleaner through the barrel, just to stop it from rusting and that. It would only take, you know a half a minute, something to do that. Of course if you were using it, you had to clean it more often.

Oh well, you, when you’re training it’s never quite the same as the real thing. They would, perhaps dig some positions, and you’d set your gun up and you’d sight it out to where you thought he enemy would come, but we wasn’t given any live ammunition because they didn’t have much to spare. But I suppose, really you could only train up to a certain thing,

the real thing was, it would be completely different, but it give you the basics of, well how to fire it, as long as you could fire the damn thing, it was the main thing.

No, no, I was very good on it as a matter of fact, I was just looking through my diary there, and three different stages where we went out to the range, I topped the firing of the Bren gun, so I thought I was pretty good.

Well we knew that the Battle of the Coral Sea had been fought, that the Japanese were going to try to take Port Moresby. We thought that we would be going to Port Moresby. But that was just rumoured and, when we left

Brisbane on the 7th of August 1942, we got on the boat, one of those liberty ships, they’re made with, they’re steel made but they’re welded, they didn’t have rivets, all the sheets were welded and that was the new style of quick, and they called them a liberty boat and we were on a Yankee liberty and I happened to be put on a different boat to what my battalion was with brigade as an ack-ack gunner.

Well the Bren gun had a tripod like that there and at the top there was a bracket to put your gun in, you put your gun in and sat under it and that was to fire at aeroplanes. So half a dozen of us were put on this boat to ack-ack so it was really good, because it wasn’t crowded. We lived on deck, and, each day we got firing practice with our Bren guns into the air, so it was a good experience.

I can’t remember the name of that one, because the only one I haven’t got in my diary with a name. Now that is plain rotten isn’t it? I just got down a victory ship, I didn’t note the name when we got on it, I’ve got all the others and I can give them to you , but that’s the only one I can’t tell you.

Well by this stage we were told they were rather ruthless and that there wouldn’t be too many prisoners taken and we was really getting, I suppose they was getting us churned up to expect the worst. Of course the worst had already happened. They had murdered one of our battalions in Rabaul, and they were taking prisoner and then they just came along and bayoneted them, so the thought was that we won’t take any prisoners, that was our thought.

And I think that would be so with anyone that was in the front line. Yes it’s unfortunate, but that’s how we were starting to think, because it wasn’t humane.

Well, in some ways they were described that they were poor soldiers and they had

bad eyesight and they were small men. But that didn’t prove true, no. The first Japanese we struck were big six footers, so I don’t know who got the idea that they were little men and that they couldn’t shoot. They could shoot all right.

No, they hadn’t give the order, even the battalion commanders hadn’t

been told where we were going the orders hadn’t been opened. We were led to believe we were going up to Townsville to reinforce Townsville, and we sailed inside the reef all the way up. Yes, and it wasn’t until about a day before, when we left to go outside the reef, oh we’re going to Port Moresby. And that was after Townsville, yes, seven days it took us from, to go from Brisbane to Port Moresby.

The first sight that I can recall was seeing a boat sunk in the harbour at Port Moresby and I understand it was the Macdhui, and strange as it may seem, I was back there last year and the Macdhui’s still sitting there in the harbour, you can still see it, it was sunk and it’s still above water, and it’s still there. So I was very surprised to go back after sixty years and still see it there sitting in the same place.

That was my first impression, there’s, and the Macdhui was sunk.

Well we thought we was getting into trouble now and we arrived there at about, well we arrived in the daytime, and then at six o’clock at night they took us off the boat, it was just getting dark and when we got off, they put us in trucks

and they drove us thirty miles up through the Rona Falls, up to our camp at Itiki. And to get up to Rona Falls, I don’t know, have you been up there at all? No, well anyway, to go up through the pass, of course it wasn’t bitumen then, that was exactly the same as in Syria, the road was twelve feet wide, and we come to the bend, it’s pitch dark and the bloke stops, he couldn’t get around the bend. And he backs back right to the edge and he gets out and he

goes around and a thousand feet down, the cliff, down a thousand feet. And I was amazed when I went back this time and had a look, I sort of forgotten about it, of course it’s a bitumen road then but how we, well I suppose we couldn’t see it, but, it turned you over. Anyway we got up there, we lobbed up there about three o’clock in the morning and we just camped in the open there, we didn’t have tents. And, of course,

why they took us up on the highlands, that’s up about two thousand feet, there’s not that many mosquitoes up there, it wasn’t subject to malaria quite as much as down at Port Moresby is very bad for malaria. So the whole brigade was shifted in one day, well, seven days from Brisbane, up on, and they all congregated at Itiki, and two days later the 14th and the 16th were ready to march up, up to the Track.

That’s the start of the Track, I always call it the start of the Track, I got a photo of me standing under the, under the memorial there now. And that was, but we were, I suppose we were lucky, we were kept as reserve. We got there and we had to train like mad, hardest training I ever had was when we got there.

Well, at that stage things were a little bit vague, they were giving us quinine at the time and we used to have to take one tablet every day. And we had some ointment to put on our bare skin, like during the, well daytime, we had to wear long trousers as much as we could to protect us from mosquito bites but

we had this stuff to rub on our hands and our face and that’s supposed to protect you. But, it didn’t give us much trouble for a while, anyway, the malaria.

Oh, we didn’t like that at all, we thought we ought to be up there and you know helping the whole brigade, but the reason why we were in reserve, at the same time as

this battle on the Kokoda Track was on, the Japanese had landed down at Milne Bay and the whole thing was a bit in the balance down there. So they kept our battalion in reserve, we were either to go up the Track or we were to go to Milne Bay and it was a full week, or a full two weeks before the thing was, fortunately we won at Milne Bay, the first defeat the Japanese ever had. And we didn’t have to be reserve,

so this time, our brigade is in great trouble up on the Track so they hustled us off to go up the Track.

Well actually speaking, what happened then was, they worked out how much we were supposed to carry and every man was to carry at least

fifty pounds in weight, plus, I was carrying a lot more than that, I was carrying probably seventy pounds. And we put on full load and we done hill climbing for probably six hours a day and, and in that tropical climate, you were just absolutely wet with sweat because you were dehydrated, you had to drink a terrible lot of water because you dehydrate. And that’s the training we were doing, more or less physical training, and we did do some firing too, it was really more or less

to toughen us up to the real thing and I guess that was, it was just as hard as what we eventually done when we got up there, but you can imagine, climbing some of these hills like that and you’ve got all this load on your back and every muscle in your body is sort of taut and it was really hard and I just got one note in my diary, that it was the hardest training we ever had, so it must have been hard.

Oh well it was six days of food, there was a change of clothing there was your toilet gear and there was half a blanket and you had your groundsheet and we didn’t actually have our packs, we had our haversack and we had a little roll which we put our blanket on and our groundsheet on our belt. The packs, the haversack it’s a smaller

well, I say a pack, it’s a smaller pack the big pack is about that long, the haversack is a bit about six, that long and, so that was the difference but still it was the weight was there and we did get five or six days food in your pack, that’d consist of about three or four tins of bully beef and perhaps a, a tin of peaches or something and various. And then

our equipment, we had pouches on the front and you had all your magazines in there and I think I had, and we had, probably had about six magazines and then the two grenades, and of course that was all counted as your weight that you’re carrying. But, it tallied up from anything from fifty to seventy pounds in weight. And that’s a bit weight to have to stagger along with.

On my shoulder.

I’ve got, I still got a crook [bad] shoulder you know. I can’t straighten my arm any straighter than that because when you carry the gun, you had your arm bent like that and held the stock of the gun, like so that it’d balance, and I can’t straighten my arm any further than that because that happened, sort of something, done something to the muscles. It never pains or anything, but I just said I can’t straighten it. I can’t straighten it any further than that and

that’s what caused it.

Oh it was tremendous, actually speaking, a little bit later, as we were going up the Track, I can remember you would just about be sick by the time you got to the top of a hill. It was so, so hard and I saw plenty of men sick with exhaustion. Yes, and

yet, finally, this is a little bit later as we got up there, there was only about two men dropped out, it was marvellous how the willpower of man can keep you going.

Yeah, well not just the first day,

not the day we set off, the day we set off was the 30th of August, 1942, and the, we went by truck to the start of the Track and the start of the Track in those days was McDonald’s Corner, and just, I wouldn’t have known it but I went back last year, and they’ve got a little memorial at McDonald’s Corner now, and a little plaque there, and that’s where the Track started. But now, of course they’ve

got the Track a bit further out, I went by jeep out to Ower’s corner, and we got off the trucks at McDonald’s Corner and we walked to Ower’s Corner and from Ower’s Corner we camped the night and at Ower’s Corner there was a staging camp and they had a cook house and they gave us a good meal there. And this was, that was on the on the 31st we set sail for, or set walking, wrong terminology

I’ve been used to sailing and we turn off at six o’clock in the morning, from Ower’s Corner and at Ower’s Corner, good job I went back and had a look, it goes down to the Goldie River and then it starts to go, it goes along a flat bit in the river bed. That was fairly good going, then you climb Imita Ridge and Imita Ridge was what they called the Golden

Staircase and that’s thousands of steps. A piece of wood across and two pegs and makes a step, and step, step, step. I don’t know how many thousand there was there, but anyway, you climbed Imita Ridge and Imita Ridge was the furthest, when the Japanese were coming through, that was where our battalions made the last stand, but anyway that’s later. But anyway, we went over Imita Ridge, we went down into the

next valley and along the river and then we ascended Iorobaiwa Ridge and Iorobaiwa Ridge was where the Japanese, there was big fighting later, but it was a clean, well it was seven o’clock that night, it was just about twelve hours slogging, from the time we left one camp to the time we left one camp to the time that we got to the top of the, and that’s three thousand feet height, Iorobaiwa Ridge and at the tip of the ridge, there’s a

entire village and they had huts and when we got there they had a staging camp where they fed us, and I recall when got there, half our platoon had straggled behind and some of us went back, I didn’t I was done, because I was carrying the Bren, but they went back and they helped the others come with their gear to get back and some of them didn’t get in till about ten o’clock at night. There’s that far back.

But anyway with a feed and a bit of sleep, we all arose next morning, fit and well, no one sick and the human body is pretty good how it recharges, we got up and the next stage was from Iorobaiwa to Nauro. Well, from Iorobaiwa, you go down, the hill, then you go up over a big, the, Maguli

Range and then into Nauro it was only seven hours, that was pretty easy we was in there by three o’clock well that was good.

About now, about the second day out we could see evidence and I just noticed in my diary I’ve got all the evidence of the evacuation of wounded men coming back on stretchers and some of the 53rd Battalion, fit men coming back, they

deserted some of them, they just ran for it, and it was a very sore point with the powers that be, but some of them wouldn’t face up to it, they just set sail for home. I don’t know where home was anyway, yes.

We were pretty, we knew that it was going to be tough,

we really knew it was going to be very tough, in that, I suppose it’s still your training, we didn’t make too much of it. As a unit then, you’re working as a platoon, a platoon is about twenty three or four men and you’re a very close knit lot and you would not give in for anything, you wouldn’t give into your mates, because you’re part of it and I think that kept us, kept

our morale pretty right, but we was, we could see that it wasn’t a picnic [wasn’t easy] by any means or manner. And to carry these stretchers, well you can imagine a man trying to carry the weight of a man and then up these hills it was very hard job. And a lot of the time the mud was, you were slushing in mud up to there, we had leggings on we had gaiters on, it kept your boots and your, kept the mud out of your boots, but it was

very hard to drag your leg out of the mud sometimes. But we were still going on and we were being forced by a bit because we was needed. And by this time we got to Nauro, and they told us we got to be out of Nauro by seven o’clock in the morning, because the biscuit bombers would come over. That meant that the planes were coming over to drop the supplies. If you’re not out of the camp by then, you’ll get hit, well we got out.

But the next day they come a bit earlier and they killed one of our men, and wounded four, yes. Fancy being killed with a tin of biscuits, break your heart wouldn’t it? You went to fight a war. Oh absolutely terrible that poor man, that’s as far as he got. But anyway we got…

No that wasn’t in my platoon, that was in C Company that was the next day,

B Company was, or C Company was a day behind us but, A and B Company was first and we, we got out of it, C Company was a bit late getting out and the planes come over a bit early and they was under the trees they thought they was safe. And yeah, he was killed, yes, yes it’s all recorded in the history books. Yes. But so, we left Nauro and the next stage is Nauro to

Menari and that was about a six or seven hours, that was pretty sloshy but we were getting used to it by this time and we didn’t think it was too bad. And so and at each stage we camped the night, you see and we got a good feed, there was cooks there and they cooked up bully beef [tinned beef] and stuff. So really we were coping very well at this stage. But we were seeing more people coming back wounded, and, the word was coming back that the Japs were streaming down over the ranges and

right, we pushed on. We pushed onto a place called Efogi. And to get to Menari to Efogi, we go over Brigade Hill and a little bit later Brigade Hill was come into the picture because we made a big fight there. but anyway, we go to the Efogi and camped the night there, I remember camping under a native village there and the jolly pigs come in, and the come in and walked all over us. They had wild pigs, or you know

the natives had pigs and it didn’t matter because we kept dry while we was there. Anyway the next day we went on, and this time of course there’s a stream of evacuees coming down, stretchers and medical men and everything. And we’re still going forward and we went up to place called Kaigi. Well when we got to Kaigi, that’s the 39th Battalion, that’s 39th Militia Battalion, they were the first troops that struck the Japs up there. And then, we relieved them, because

they’re worn out, they’ve lost half their men and they’re completely worn out, they’ve been in there six weeks, and they’re completely you know absolutely exhausted, because of being in the condition, so we took over. And I remember as we took over, one bloke said to me, he said, “Make sure you don’t lose your groundsheet.” He said, “It’s most important to keep your groundsheet, because.” he said, “you can’t sleep on the wet ground, but the groundsheet will help you.” And I hung on to

my groundsheet for the rest of it. Yep it was good advice, and that’s the only advice I had from when you take over from someone else, well that was his bit for it and I never, probably one of the worst nights I’ve had there, we were the formed platoon, we camped on, we had the gun dug in on the Track and of course, I think I was a bit nervous, I didn’t sleep. I was awake all night I know that, and you know every little noise

you heard you had your hand on the trigger, but anyway, fortunately by next morning, the order come, we had to evacuate, we had to withdraw, cor, I never seen anyone withdraw so quickly. It took us five hours to get up there, two hours we was back, we was back where we started and we went back to Efogi. Well when we got back to Efogi, they put us into positions and we dug holes and now we’ve got to fight, and the order came, no more withdrawals,

you got to more or less fight until you’re exterminated. And, righto, that night the Japs just they struck us and we had a few, we fired a bit and it went quiet, and the night was pretty scary because I was in a pit with a chap, just two of us were in the pit together and I had my gun, Bren gun on the parapet and he had his

Tommy gun and not too bad that night, we took turns to keep awake, and we got a bit of sleep. Anyway, next day, all day, or no the next morning apparently the powers that be had ordered the air force to come over, and they strafed the Japanese, they done a wonderful job they strafed all the Track and oh this is great, we can do this forever and anyway, by night the Japs are closing in on us and they’re within thirty yards of us,

there and we’re throwing grenades over and I don’t think I slept any that night, it was all night long we were awake all night. Of course there’s one disadvantage, when you’re in these holes like this, you couldn’t relieve yourself or anything, you had to use a bully beef tin and chuck it over the side. And so, you weren’t going to get out and, you’d get shot,

so that was all part of the exercise, so you tossed that over the side and anyway, by next morning, five o’clock in the morning it’s just coming alight, and they started to put an attack anyway, we used everything and oh we beat them off and then just an hour or so later, my bloke alongside of me, he fell back in the hole, and oh God, I thought he’s gone. And he got up, bobbed his head up,

his head, a bullet had gone straight through his tin hat, gone in and spun around, and come out the back and hadn’t hit his head. You wouldn’t believe that, yes it ricocheted around inside his head. He said, “I think I’ll take a ticket in Tatts [Tattersalls lottery].” I can still hear him. At the same time, two bullets hit my gun and I kept my head down,

and then I thought, “Oh it’s getting a bit… I’ve got to have a look.” So I just got me head up and had a look and there’s sort of a mob of them a way down and I give a couple of bursts and then I got me head down again. I wasn’t going to get hit. But unfortunately two of our section had been shot dead, one through the head and one in the chest. The poor bloke in the chest, he was alive, and anyway, I won’t name him, because it mightn’t be wise,

and we got the order to, things were so bad that the Japanese had cut the Track further up that we got the order to, we had to withdraw, and we had to leave him there and he’s still conscious you know, it’s a terrible thing. But anyway, later on they found his bones, I suppose the Japanese would just, would have just killed him.

Well that was the closest contact we had, they were within a hundred yards of us for two days and they had snipers up in the trees and we had holes in on the side of the hill in open, and they could probably see us quite easily and we couldn’t see them, that’s where the trouble is, but when they got closer we could see them and we, see they were down and we’d roll grenades over and that’s what saved us, the grenades were the best

the best thing to stop them. The, but the actual, oh being the gunner or whatever you was, especially under those conditions, you wasn’t game to put your head up too long, because they’d, somebody would get a sight on your, so if you got up quick, had a few shots, and then gone down, you kept them quiet and that was the only way we survived. But then of course the order came to pull out, and the poor old lieutenant, he must have had a sad job,

he had to write to all those parents of the blokes, six killed in our platoon, left in their holes you know. Terrible, yeah, we were the, I think we had the most casualties of any platoon up there, and no, he was a bloke from Peterborough too, I knew him, I knew him before, and I’m just reversing a little bit now. The lieutenant has to send see your letters you see. Well he come to us, I was

horrified, he’s going to read all my letters, you know, wasn’t very nice was it, you’re writing to some girl there in Peterborough and he’s going to read your letter. I had words with him a couple of times, he made a few, he’d write a bit in the bottom of the letter sometimes. And, yeah, oh, but that’s where the personal touch was a handicap.

But anyway that’s just digressing a bit, but he was a good fellow and he’s dead now, but he was Kelvin Crocker, now you might have heard of Lieutenant Crocker, Lieutenant Governor Crocker he was a Walter Crocker, was the Lieutenant Governor of South Australia, his brother was, like Kelvin was and the lieutenant was brothers. But anyway he was a good man, a good soldier anyway. But to hold a platoon together

it must have been a terrible job in that, in those, see you can’t see anyone, it’s only a couple of yards and you lose them, but then the order come to withdraw, well, righto, we withdrew up the Track, as we call it and, we get to, it comes, we get up the Track a bit, and the Japs have cut the Track our retreat’s gone.

Yes, we walked for, I think this is what was a mistake in a way, from when we started off from Ower’s Corner, we walked in single file as a company and a company involved about a hundred men, and being in single file,

there’s a, it’s like a convoy of cars or anything, there’s an awful surge in the poor blokes at the back would be sometimes left with gaps so wide that they couldn’t catch up, because there’s a surge in the speed, the first people made good speed and then there’s somebody that doesn’t and that holds them up and then there’s, it’s surging all the time, the whole line, of men, later, we worked as platoons and even sections and

really working as a section is far better about seven men or so, you don’t get that surge and you have a gap between that section and the next, it was, but most of the way up we worked as a company and that’s why I think we found it so much harder than a bit later on.

Yes we was advised to keep the groundsheet, the groundsheet was

not really a, well, you use it as a raincoat too, because it would fold around and you could, it buttoned there, it’s a cape you used it as a cape, really, but the reason for that is because the ground is so wet, and oh you would not sleep at all if you, with water oozing out of the ground, whereas if you put that down, it was water proof and it, we used to share, I’d put my

groundsheet down and I’d share the blanket, or half a blanket with another two people, and three of us would share and found that was the best way to sleep. And especially a little bit later when we were cut off we found that that was the only way to keep warm.

Well as we moved back to Brigade Hill, the Japanese caught up, the rear guard, we were actually, B Company was actually the rear guard protecting the rest of the battalion and we were, when I say rear, we’re actually facing the enemy but we’re the rear of our lot that’s

evacuating, if you can understand. And they caught us up and righto, we fired a few shots at the, Japs advancing but all of a sudden, our company commander, if he was Captain Lee then, Captain Mert Lee and he decided that we’re not going to have this, so he must have 10 Platoon and 11 Platoon and he put in an attack

and we moved back towards the Japanese, next thing we’re all in amongst them and there’s a hell of a fight, and it gave the Japs such a shock and I think we knocked a fair few of them off, that eventually when we withdrew then, after that, we lost a couple of men, they didn’t attack us anymore, so we reckon that was the saviour of the whole thing, they thought well they’re a bit

stronger than they’d estimated and we withdrew then and that night, when it come dark of course the stretchers, they’re carrying the stretchers out further away, we’re making another, we‘re cut another route, to go, they’ve cut the Jap track, so we cut another route to go around them again and when it come night time, this is what amazes me, as soon as it come night, we stopped, we couldn’t see anything, I was hanging onto

the next blokes bayonet scabbard, but after a while everyone stopped, I don’t remember any orders, but we all sat down and we went fast asleep there and then and I don’t think we put a guard out, I can’t remember putting a guard out. I reckon we sat there, the Japs sat down just over there. It amazes me and I think this is quite true, and that we didn’t put a guard out that night, no. And next morning when we woke up, it started to come light, and we heard someone out in the scrub and it’s two of our blokes that had been sort

of lost, they came in and they hadn’t saw any Japanese, but so the Japanese must have stopped when we made the counter attack on them they couldn’t come any further. And I reckon that saved the whole battalion and Mert Lee, he got a bar to his MC [Military Cross] out of it, anyway, so he’s, no he’s a brave man. And he was in the forefront I saw him. And, that was probably the end of the action then and now we were cut off and we were

carrying the stretchers.

Oh very much so, we’d lost all the influence on the battle, because we were forced from the Track, it didn’t count for anything, really what we done really, if we killed the Japanese, really it didn’t help us one little bit, because they were steaming off to Moresby and if it hadn’t have been for the 16th [Battalion], and the 14th that had managed to get out, the Japanese would have been in Moresby, I think that was the most

critical phase of the whole campaign. And as a matter of fact, I think Moresby would have fell I think if it hadn’t have been for that action. And, we say we, we were cut off, but, if we hadn’t have stood our ground then, the Japs would have been straight through to Moresby and there was no one to stop them. There was, the 25th Brigade was still in Australia and it was, I really think it was the turning point of the war, of course we didn’t

think that at the time, we were cut off, we had twelve stretchers and what do we do, we were in the hands of the CO [Commanding Officer], and oh all due respect to the CO, I don’t think he done a very good job but, I suppose and the strain of it all, it’s pretty hard to make right decisions isn’t it.

Oh well he didn’t, I don’t think for instance, he should have kept a whole battalion trying to carry five stretchers and tied up all those men,

and what it meant was that we would losing our condition, we were fading away, we were starving to death, and if it hadn’t have been about six days later, he made the decision to leave the stretchers, we would have all died there. It was that’s what I said, he did not, he didn’t make the decision soon enough, eventually he made the decision to leave the stretchers and two brave men stayed with them, John Burns and

Zanker, and they stayed with them in a village and eventually they got all the stretchers out and only one or two died. So I think they done well, but in the meantime our condition was deteriorating so much, that I think just as I see it, there was mumblings that we would make a break for it ourselves, it’s pretty hard to say that but I really think we would have. Yes.

and I’ve got two notes in my diary that say that, the CO is still hanging onto the stretchers and we won’t get out of here. And it must have been bad, that’s all I’ve got to go on, what I wrote down at the time. But no it was a very it was a very touch and go situation and for five days and the one that annoyed me the most was that, after about two days, as we were moving

back along the Track myself and Bob [Robert] Payne the sergeant of our platoon were sent on a patrol miles ahead to Nauro to see if there’s any Japs in there. We get to Nauro, yes we sight Japs in Nauro, swimming around the river and walking around. We go back and report it to the battalion, two days later they come to the hill over looking Nauro and instead of bypassing Nauro, he takes the whole

battalion stretchers and all, with a patrol in front of it, down over the river and into, to the edge of Nauro. And the patrol sights the Japanese, and we had to retreat, carry the stretchers back to the top of the hill and we’re back in the same place that night that we were in the morning, and we’d had it all, already reported the Japanese were in there and he didn’t think they were. Well why did he send us out there for? Well

that annoyed me. And there’s a big bit, a fair bit of debate and of course even books have covered him up, and just in my opinion, it’s said that lowly privates knew nothing, so that’s how you. But that’s what happened and it’s mentioned somewhere that him and I done this patrol and saw the Japanese there and yet he would still insist. And then the next day he decided well,

we’ve got to leave the stretchers, so he dumped the stretchers and we got out then.

Well we didn’t eat very much and I noticed there in my diary that one stage we had three ounces of bully beef that was after four days and that was after four days, so I don’t know how

that kept us going, and, then we found a native garden and we got some sweet potatoes and we cooked and ate them, which was a good help, and then a little bit further along we found some sugar cane and I remember I cut a lot of sugar cane into short lengths and I put it in my haversack and every now and then, I’d take a stem of it out and suck it and of course the sugar was good, it was good, giving you strength,

so that helped you along. I think the worst part was, by this time we’re losing a fair bit of weight and at night when we went to sleep, our bones would ache so much and we were only sleeping on the ground and that, we did, we wasn’t really sleeping very well and I think that was against us. And then there was another thing that helped us, I suppose we were always a bit genius, to light a fire in the jungle is very hard. And so I had a lot of bullets with me,

left from my Bren gun and we weren’t going to use many, so we’d pull them to pieces, pull the lead out, get the cordite out, put it in a heap, and then put some little twigs around it, some dry stuff and we’d light the fire with the cordite. And that would flare up, it wouldn’t explode and that would light your fire. So that was a good help. That’s a few things on the side, yeah, quite ingenious really, but see at this stage we were well clear of the

Japanese, we didn’t need any bullets, we didn’t throw out guns away. No one threw anything away oh yes, I threw a fair bit of me clothing, spare clothing and all that, you didn’t need that, you weren’t going to carry a change of clothing. You lightened up as much as you could, but mainly the ammunition was, you carry that until the last.

Oh yes, yes. It’s like,

I diced me jumper early, I remember the captain, Captain Lee saying, “We’re in for a hard few days.” he said “Lighten off your loads.” And immediately I reckon I got rid of about ten pound of my pack straight away. And that helped, I reckon that helped to save me, I threw me jumper away, me long trousers and all me shaving gear, I didn’t have any shaving gear or anything, it, it all made a difference though.

Yes it’s just those little things that helped you to survive. But when we finally got out to Jawarere that was the rubber plantation, they gave us chocolates and stuff and then we went down to the river and had a wash, well you never saw such spare clothes in all your life, most of us had lost two or three stone in weight. And, instead of being all nice and rounded, we were all bones. Shocking.

And then when we finally got out to the base camp, they gave us about a week convalescence you see and we’ve got diarrhoea and of course we went to the canteen and we’re stocking up on tinned fruit and all this chocolates and that didn’t do our stomachs any good, I still think my stomach, that’s why it’s rattling now, it’s still empty.

The casualties in the actual action just for those two days was around, officially around forty, forty killed and forty wounded. Give or take one or two either way. But you see the big problem was these twelve stretchers that we were carrying. That tied up so many men and because

of the energy used on it, they was, we had to change them every little while and that was sort of taking all the strength out of the whole battalion and that’s really why I think the CO made a mistake in not, or not, I shouldn’t say dump, not finding a place for the stretchers a little bit earlier. But of course I know that making those decisions wasn’t easy, I give him credit for that. It wasn’t easy, but

from the ordinary infantry man and us in the platoon, ordinary fighting soldiers, we thought we were making very slow progress, when you’d only move a mile in the one day, something like that. We did honestly think we would never get out, that, the attitude, I think got through us that we mightn’t make it, that’s how bad it was. But anyway we did, and I don’t think there were, but out of those twelve stretchers, two died while they was, laid

up in the camp where these two men Burns and Vanker looked after them, and then one died, they got him out to hospital, he had a shot through the arm, he got infected with gangrene and all that, he died just after we got out. We only lost the three, so I suppose it’s a good effort really because we saved, I suppose you couldn’t abandon them no one would be happy if your CO abandoned you, I suppose, so. A pretty hard decision, but I think

he made a few mistakes, probably we all did. Well, I never want to go through that again though, that’s probably the hardest part of my experience during the war.

Yes, yes, each day we moved anything from one mile to five miles, just as far as our energy could see us, yes, yes. Well we all knew where we were going,

but we , we didn’t want to go where the Japs were, that’s for sure, but we knew that, we had to head to Port Moresby and we eventually we, that’s where we was heading for, and we got out. But, of course, we weren’t very fit when we got out, we was pretty, I suppose we’d just lost too much weight, we just were worn out.

I was carrying a Bren gun.

No, no, only once did I take a turn on the stretcher but it was pretty hard, somebody had to carry my Bren gun, so it was much as much. You carry the, I carry the stretcher and I handed him the Bren gun. And so it was just about as bad as carrying the Bren gun as it was the stretcher, so they didn’t call on us blokes, and I carried the Bren gun, I never, no one give me a turn on the Bren gun

all the time we was coming, we was cut off for that time, because I was strong enough to carry it. Lot of them, they wasn’t hardly strong enough to carry their rifle let alone the Bren gun. I don’t know, I must have been, I suppose I was pretty fit and just strongly built I suppose that was it, but, and determined.

Yes, well Jock was still there, Mal didn’t get there, he was detached as a sniper and he didn’t get up there at that particular time, but Jock was with me with us and he was a wonderful help and he was, I suppose the, absolutely marvellous because he helped a couple of our mates that had diarrhoea and that too by taking turns carrying their rifles and carrying their gear

he was marvellous because he wasn’t a man as strong as I was and I think he done a really wonderful job there, and he was a lance corporal and what, absolutely rocked me, when we got out, our lieutenant ripped a stripe off him, he said, “Oh, you didn’t do what I told you some of the time.” He demoted him. Pretty sad wasn’t it, you do a good job, and then, then you get demoted, you done that to two of them in our

platoon, I don’t know what the other bloke done. But I suppose they couldn’t have carried out his orders as he wanted them, I don’t know, I don’t really know the whole story, but he lost his stripe anyway, he was in charge of a section and he lost it.

Well now that’s interesting, you’d think in a place like that where it rains every day there’d be tons of water but during the actual battle we couldn’t move and

our water bottles were empty when we retreated they were empty and it wasn’t until we had to make that bottle of water last us two days and when we come to a river or the creek, running up the side of a hill, we stopped and we filled our bottles. But probably we were taking a risk might have been contaminated, you don’t know but we didn’t get much dysentery. So water was pretty easy in most cases, because

for instance there, during the actual battle, we put our groundsheet out and, come a heavy rain and we had all this nice water in the groundsheet and we got it into our water bottles that way so that was one way of catching water, so there was a lot of ways of survival.

I think I had four magazines left.

That’s a hundred and twenty rounds, there’s thirty rounds in a magazine, so I still had enough to, well it wasn’t enough perhaps if you had a real battle, but it was just a safety, you could fight a little battle with it and still you had some protection, yes. Obviously in a way I was glad I only had that much to carry but, the more you had the more you had to carry. But I think I’d have been throwing it away if I had have had anymore anyway. You just,

you could only carry so much, but a hundred and twenty rounds is quite heavy.

I think it was fairly low, yes, I think we were fairly low. The morale of the whole battalion was fairly low, no I think two or three people

they needed a lot of help to keep them going and this is where Jock Hogg come in and was a great help to keep one or two going. You know he’d give encouragement and I think the morale was fairly low. I didn’t think I was, I thought I was all right, but perhaps I’m, I forgot the worst part of it. But just by my entries in the diary and that, I think I must have been coping reasonably well.

Well I think the hearing was very important, because at night time I the jungle, it, of course it was so dark, well you couldn’t see as far as that television there, so I think you’d

have to depend on your hearing, if there was somebody was going to attack it’d have to be you hearing that would have to alert you, I don’t think that you could see much and even in the day time, sometimes five or six hundred yards. And the Japanese were so good at camouflage they’d have all leaves around their hats and bodies and you almost wouldn’t know it was a man, so I think really the hearing was the best

thing in the jungle. Even in the daytime, something would crack and you’d think well somebody’s there, that shouldn’t be there. No I think those that was one thing, you needed good hearing.

Yes, especially if you were any where near the enemy, you would not talk, now that’s a funny thing, the enemy would talk all the time and they’d try and frighten you with noises, yes, they’d shout and carry on, and strange

as it may seem, they had a fair command of English too, and they were speaking English, yes. And I can recall them, two or three times singing to in English. At one particular spot was we thrown a grenade out and you hear the grenade drop, it hadn’t gone off, and I heard somebody sang out, “What’s that?” and it was in English. And you know it was the Japanese, yes, so and they would sing out,

for help in English and all of that sort of thing, thinking that one of us was wounded to try and attract you to them. They were very, very astute or shrewd in trying to trick you into all sorts of funny things, yes. But, I’m surprised at how much English they did know. And at one stage, I didn’t see it, at one stage they said the 14th Battalion, rather than give a command in English, they gave it in

Arabic, to trick the Japanese. Arabic, you see we learnt a bit in the Middle East. And we hoped the Japanese didn’t know that.

Not very well, at that, I can, I reckon that I had more aches and pains than what I’ve got now, when I went up there. Yes didn’t sleep very well, no. No we’re too, I think, that’s

one thing, I think the tension of being on the alert, you might sleep with one eye open sort of business. And you’d be awake the least noise would wake you. If your mate moved, you’d, “What you doing?” and he’d only just moved a little bit and I think your nerves a little bit on edge. No, I, they must be, I mean it’s not normal,

it wasn’t normal. It’s hard to describe, but I suppose, it’s too long ago I think.

Yes the leeches were fairly bad. If you got leeches in around your boot and they got bored into you, the only way to sort of get them out was to get a cigarette and burn, and burn

them and they’d let go then. Yes, horrible things yes, and I did suffer with sores, well we called the wog sores but, insects or something would sort of bite you and you’d scratch it, then you’d get a bit of a sore, and then it’d start to get infected and there’s two or three blokes got ulcers right into the bone with the sores, I wasn’t that bad, but I noticed there, after we got out of the

back to the camp, I was getting treated for sores for some time. That was, see being wet and that, I suppose they didn’t heal up too good that was he trouble.

No that’s an interesting story and I can just tell you a little bit of a story. But when we was in Syria, you see we was under the British command,

and they issued us with fifty cigarettes a week free, I thought this is wonderful, as soon as I got there, here comes along this, so I started smoking. So all right, and we, this is just after I got to the battalion, “Oh yeah, I’ll have a smoke.” Halfway through the smoke and I’m sick, I thought, “That’s funny, oh perhaps I’m not feeling that good.” So I didn’t have any more that day and I tried again the next day and the same thing happened, give it three tries and I never touched one in me life.

I was pretty popular, everyone wanted me smokes. And, it’s a funny thing, many years later, I was out at Dawes Road to the hospital and the doctor said, “What’s the best thing you ever done?” and I said, “I don’t know.” He said, “Not smoking.” He said, “Your lungs are pretty good.” And I think perhaps there might have been something in that because, I’m really, not really,

I’m reasonably fit, I suppose for my age.

Well, they took us into camp, put us in a convalescent camp for a week, and fed us up and then they put us into light training and by this time

there’s about two weeks gone by and they, the fittest of the men they formed them into Char Force, and Char Force was going to be a battalion made up of the fittest of the three battalions of the 21st Brigade, and they were to go forward and get behind the Japanese lines and play havoc with them. Well, because I, it was volunteers for that, so I thought, “Oh yeah, I’ll put me hand up.” “No, you can’t go. You’ve got too many sores on your legs.” And yet the next day

they sent me out doing patrol work out at Jawarere for a month. But, anyway that was, probably was lucky because the Char Force had a pretty bad time, and, you probably in some of your encounters, you’ve heard of Char Force. So therefore, I was sent out Jawarere and was out there a month just patrolling all the tracks that the Japs might come through, and that was fairly hard, but, there was no danger, we didn’t strike any enemy.

Then, they bought us in through the main camp and smartened us up and we had the great big parade when General [Thomas] Blamey arrived. That was terrible, they formed us all up and we put on our best marching act, thought we was going to get praised up and what did he say, he said that, “It’s not the rabbit that stays in the hole that gets hit, it’s the rabbit that runs.”

We were the rabbit that ran and that’s what he referred to us as. And, there was a boo come through the ranks and then, Blamey sacked our Brigadier Potts and he went on his way, so he wasn’t a very popular man after that. I mean we’d lost hundreds of good men, and to say we’d run like rabbits, we done everything we could do and was ordered to do,

and, that’s what he said to us. So I don’t think it was very diplomatic, if he wanted to say something, he could have put it a bit better, and I heard that, and that’s recorded anyway somewhere in history, you probably heard about it too. Yeah no pretty sad to think that you, you know you thought you’d have got a little bit of credit. But, anyway they went on training us for a while till

then they decided that the 21st Brigade would have to go to Gona. Because we were only half a brigade the, because all the numbers had gone down.

Oh, I didn’t say very much and I looked in me diary and I never made a not of it, so really I don’t think we could have made too much of it you know.

I, at the time I remember a rumble went through the ranks, but can’t remember anyone just alongside me doing it, but you just see, “Whoo.” it sort of went, just, we all knew what it meant but I don’t remember saying too much about it. But it was a bit of a blow, I know we felt, “Well what did we do it all for?” But, no, I don’t know why

I didn’t put an entry in me diary about it. I didn’t and it couldn’t have been too bad. But, it

Oh no it wasn’t what we expected no, we thought we was putting on a bit of a show for him, doing our best and perhaps, he could have said, “Well you done your best. You got defeated.” That wouldn’t have sounded as, “You run like rabbits.” would it?

No, and of course us blokes had been in the bush and shot a few rabbits we know that if the rabbit sits, he, you don’t see him but the one that runs, you shoot him. It, no we knew what was going, on but no well, anyway I suppose that’s the way. There always had to be some mistakes and it might have, I think it perhaps was a reason for a lot of chaps

getting killed a bit later on, because they felt well we’ll do better next time. And, so that’s how it went, but. Of course [Brigadier] Potts got sacked and we had Doherty then, he came to us and of course he was a good man.

Yes, yes I still with, the same old, I didn’t like change and they never dared change me, I was still with

11 Platoon and I was still with 4 Section and at that stage I was still carrying the Bren gun.

11 Platoon was a, perhaps they was a little bit unfortunate in some ways. For the first part of the war they had a platoon commander and he left and then they, during the Syrian campaign, we didn’t have a lieutenant,

we only had a sergeant. We seem to be left in…we weren’t in the limelight, we were just sort of on the edges all the time and I think that affected us a little bit. But it was, 11 Platoon was a pretty wild platoon, I think 5 was the best and ours was just, we had one wild sort of a bloke, he was a Western Australian, this is from the Syrian campaign and

and all the thing in the world and he’s just a miner, and, I’ve never saw anyone use a pick and a shovel like him. You’re digging a hole, and I thought I wasn’t too bad, he’d say, “Give it to me.” And he give two hits with the pick and he’d have the hole dug, when he I was, because he was a miner, he was trained in it you see. Wonderful fellow but he was old and he didn’t go to New Guinea, that was one the, yeah, but in New Guinea, well

we had the Corporal Whelan, he was a Scotsman, he was about thirty-six years old and pretty broad Scots and good fellow, and, a lance corporal was Jock Hogg and he was the lance corporal, so he was, from Scots descent too, and I was the Bren gunner,

me offsider was a chap who come from Port Adelaide and Mal Hurrell he was a sniper and he was a really, really top shot. And, so Mal’s still alive living at Tumby Bay, he’s eighty-nine now, we keep in touch, so he’s pretty good. And all in all they were a lot of good fellows, I mean and then of course when we went to New Guinea,

we got Kelvin Crocker, he was a warrant officer WO [warrant officer] and they promoted him during the campaign they promoted him to a lieutenant and he was my neighbour and of course that’s what I said, earlier, he used to censor all those letters which was very embarrassing late on when I had a girl, or my present wife was next door and he knew her, knew everyone. No that wasn’t very good, and

he was a good soldier, a very good soldier and he was with us, and had us right through to Balikpapan then and, I suppose that’s wonderful to have the same man and you had confidence with they were a good platoon, and I finished up at Balikpapan they made me a lance corporal, I don’t know why. And two or three times saying what would they ask me, but I wouldn’t do it, but the wars’ nearly over now,

I’ll finish up six months off as a lance corporal. Not a shilling a day extra.

Oh well we were camped, yes we were camped down by Port Moresby at the seven mile from, and then of course they decided to take us

back to Gona, you see the whole brigade, at the Seven Mile Drome and then of course they decided to take us back to Gona, the whole brigade went and they were, this was about the November now, it was about head they, the flew it over to Popendetta, of course the only time I’ve flew us over to Popendetta. Of course the first time I’d been in a plane I think. We went down to the ’drome, and they had these

biscuit bombers, fourteen people goes in one plane, no seats or anything, you just put your gear down, you sit on it. Well of course you just put your gear down you sit on it. Anyway, they took off, well of course it’s a nice clear day, and we going up through the ranges and we get up to about where even in Kaigi, and we looked down and we reckoned we was lucky not to be walking down there and the planes seemed to go through a big valley it just, there’s hills up that side and that side,

and we’re flying along, in the sort of a valley over the top of the gap as they call it. Anyhow we get down to Popondetta and they land, very muddy the strip and I can remember plane like this as we landed but anyway we landed safely. Got off the plane, and we marched to Soputa that was about ten miles away, we marched down to Soputa. Soputa is where the field ambulance was,

and the day after we got there, the Japanese come in and bomb the field ambulance, killed forty people. But we were lucky, we were just about half a mile away and we never got a scratch.

No, we could not, we couldn’t do anything, because everything was so much in a hurry that unfortunately they were just left dead in our holes.

And it was a month later before the burial party come along and identified them because of their tags around their necks and temporarily buried them at Brigade Hill, and then later along they was shifted to Bomana Cemetery and I, when I was up there last year, I went and saw all their graves. And they’re all in a row in one section, all my platoon.

We didn’t feel too good, but we’d

no alternative, no. When you’re cut off, you only just do as you’re told and I think you battled for survival.

Well that’s quite interesting, see we weren’t allowed to have diaries and when we went up the Track,

I didn’t take my diary with me but I had plenty of writing paper and I wrote it up each day on paper and when we got back to the camp I wrote it all up then, from the notes, that, I had them each day on pieces of paper, but it was easy enough to get plenty of time to write it up during the actual time we were cut off. Because sometimes you would sit for two hours

and do nothing so you got out your pen and you did a little bit of scribbling. So that’s how I vouch that it’s pretty accurate, yes. But I didn’t have that diary on the Track actually , I wrote it up when we got out, but it’s all wrote from day to day, it was wrote from day to day but then copied in.

Well I thought I might get captured and perhaps give something away, see you weren’t allowed to have that.

But I suppose it’d have been just as bad if I wrote it, but then the bit I’m writing is only the few days we were up the Track whereas the diary had a years campaign in it, so that might have told the enemy something so. I think that’s the reason I didn’t take it.

Oh, I don’t think I would have surrendered, it would have just been him or you, you’d have to go there was no way

you could fall into the Japanese hands. No way at all, you were going to get your head lopped off anyway. Yes, oh no it was a terrible, they were terrible people and of course this was their training that they were just trained to, well kill people I suppose. Yes. No it was something that you , well when you see, I didn’t actually see it myself, but two of our fellows,

we lost them when we was cut off there on the first day and a month later they come back and they found them tied to a tree and bayoneted, so it was pretty gruesome. Yes.

Well we only just trained, had to get our fitness back again, you see, we was, we’d lost a lot of our fitness and we had to have route marches and weapon training and even come back to the original ceremonial drill of sloping arms by numbers and all this, you just about drives you mad but that’s how, they call that discipline and learn your discipline.

Some sergeant who’s shouting at you, and do this and do that, and, eventually it just goes in one ear and out the other. But you had to do it. But we got fit again and that was when we were ready to go up to Gona.

Well all we knew before we went in was that the enemy was about perhaps

three or four hundred strong, boxed into a area of about three hundred square metres and they had to be eradicated. And that was about it, the 25th brigade was up there trying to take Gona, they failed and we was, went in to do the job the 21st brigade. Well of course we landed at Popondetta and marched to Soputa and from Soputa we marched to the outskirts of Gona.

Ah, was about seven hours I can’t tell you in miles, not very many miles but took us about seven miles to march that trail and probably you’d only go about a mile an hour, a little bit more, about seven miles perhaps.

The terrain was flattish there, it was flattish and boggy and we took some jungle but mostly kunai grass that grows about a metre high

or perhaps two metres high and, if you , if it was two metres, well you couldn’t see a man in it, and you almost had to push it apart to walk through it. It was nasty and very hot because it’s steamy underneath and the sun baking down it was like a Turkish bath, you were wet with sweat all the time.

Well you, I think you had to drink plenty of water, and there’s one think we

usually had plenty of water, so that, it went, you drank it and it went straight through you, sweated it out.

Yes, yes.

Oh rough, rough as rough. The plane wobbled everywhere and it was real muddy. The land, they had these steel mats down so that they wouldn’t bog, but when you, when they hit it, you know they bounced, it was quite rough,

but it didn’t turn the plane over, we didn’t carry on much as long as we got there safe.

Yes, yes, there was a lot of places it was mucky swamp, perhaps you’d go to your neck in vile, swampy, salty water. And, that, but even out of the swamp, well it was a track that you were on, you was nearly up to your knees in slimy mud.

And, pretty hardy to pull your foot out of that, and that’s what we, it was, practically, no it was a fair, it was nothing like the Track up the Owen Stanleys but it was still hard going, it was no hills, it was flat.

Well some of the, when you got down near the coast, it was nearly tidal, it was, you’d dig a hole in the ground and think you’ve got a nice

little foxhole and it’d fill up with water and it wasn’t very funny, then that you had to sit in the water. Though it wasn’t cold, so I suppose that didn’t, and no one seemed to get colds I don’t think. I got a bit of malaria.

Well, you didn’t real, well once you was in position, you threw a groundsheet over the Bren gun and keep it as clean as you could, but while you were

carrying it, of course it just had to get wet and just hopefully it dried out all right when you’re going to use it. It was all fairly difficult.

Well I suppose there was, but we just, as we was approaching Gona we had to go through a swamp and I think it was only about up to my waist, it didn’t seem

too bad, like you wouldn’t drown in it or anything, but it was a bit unpleasant, and the water was pretty polluted, or something, it really wasn’t nice.

Well, on the 29th, about ten o’clock we formed up and we was to do the attack at twelve o’clock

and from a starting point, we had to move through this swamp and then onto the beach and then go parallel with the beach to attack the Japanese positions, and our platoon, by this time, we were so short of men that they broke B Company and made A Company and B Company into one company and I was in A Company then, 7 Platoon, A Company, and lieutenant Johns was my platoon commander at the time and,

but the funny thing, this only happened when we got to, Soputa and, we didn’t, I didn’t know our lieutenant, we didn’t know anyone in their platoon and it was really pretty difficult when you’re put into a unit, into an other platoon and you didn’t know your commander and, but we did have, some of my section was there, and as we advanced, I remember the Japanese opened up on us,

and Lieutenant Johns, or we went to ground and he urged us on and we got up and ran, ran forward and it wasn’t very long before you was one or two people falling over, you wouldn’t know if they were hit or, most of them were hit, you don’t know how bad and eventually we got, pretty well amongst the Japanese and this time, we’re all firing from the hip, and I had a Bren gun and

you fire bursts from the hip into where you think the enemy is and eventually we got up to within thirty yards of the enemy and, by this time, everybody had gone to ground and Lieutenant Johns went to go over to a Bren gun and he got hit, so we lost him, so then the order comes through we had to give covering fire for C Company was going to attack

on the flank, well the covering fire meant that you picked out what you thought was a Japanese position and you fired, to keep their heads down while the other people were coming in. And I was doing this and sitting behind a coconut palm, and, my corporal was refilling magazines, he had a lot of loose ammunition and as I used a magazine, I tossed back he’d fill them up and throw them up to me. Eventually

there was two or three people in front of me from our platoon, in a hole and I see a Japanese, crawling up towards their hole and I fired, I don’t know whether I got him or not, but anyway, my mate up there said, “What are you doing? You’re shooting at me!” And I had to shoot over the top of him to, and then he always said after, “You stopped, that Jap would have had me, he would have crawled.” You know he was right at the edge of the jolly hole, and, of course

he couldn’t see him. Anyway we stopped there for a while, and then we go the order, “Withdraw. We’re going to put more shells over.” So we withdrew about a hundred yards and they put twenty shells over, not one hit the target, they all went out to sea or something, I never heard, saw one hit the target, then they said attack again. And righto, away we went again, and we’re getting along pretty good, we’re in amongst them pretty well and thought we were doing pretty good, and next thing, I’m on me back, I must have been hit and had my mouth full of blood,

and I said to me mate Charlie Jordon, I said, “Oh, I’m hit.” And he said, “Oh, crawl out.” And so I crawled out to him and he put a dressing on it, and I just took me, dropped me gun there and all me gear there, and I crawled out and that was the luckiest think I ever could do. Because if I’d have stayed like I mean, if I hadn’t have been hit, probably could have been fatal, you see, who knows.

Yes, walking, walking and firing. Walking forward.

Nothing, nothing, or there might be an odd coconut tree that you could get behind temporary, but you couldn’t stay there all day, you had to move to the next one. And I remember that there was quite a, and I didn’t know at the time, but I was reading our history in the book,

Peter Bourne done that, you know, Gona’s Gone, I don’t know whether you’ve saw the books, but, he wrote the book and he says, in one of his statistics, that every Bren gunner in the battalion was either killed or wounded, so the odds were against you weren’t they?

Thin,

scattered, coconut tree, with kunai grass about a metre high and reasonably firm ground, where we were and the men spread out within, oh my mate would be about two or three metres over there and somebody would be two or three metres there and we’re all going forward at a set pace, no running, just walking and of course every now and again, somebody would fall over.

You didn’t know fatal or not, but you didn’t stop, you just, that’s part of your training that you don’t stop to help anyone, you’re just hoping that it wouldn’t be you.

Well we finished up within thirty yards of them and that was a stalemate then, they were too strong for us and we was losing too many men, so eventually the order was that we pulled back a bit and we was finished about seventy or eighty yards from them.

About twenty yards I suppose. He was just like sort of, not much further than out there by the sink. But he, he was a bit unlucky, he shouldn’t have been crawling there, lucky, I was very lucky to see him, because he was, he had all leaves on his helmet and on his clothes, and you just think, it just

happened to move. You could see what it was then, he wasn’t very big, but that was probably the only one that was real close at that stage, that you know, you was definite that they were fanatics, see they would die, they wouldn’t surrender. No. No they took and I was evacuated then, and now what did I do? Yes I crawled back about fifty yards and then when it was safe

I got up and walked, that’s right. And, I walked back to the RAP, that’s the… I don’t know what it stands for.

Yes, regimental aid post, you’re right, you know more than I do. And, the doctor had a look at me and all he done was just pulled the bandage back and had a look, “You go back there.” he said and then because it was getting dark by this time and they put me up for the night in

a tent, it only be about two hundred yards back from the front and we stayed there for a night.

Oh, it probably wasn’t a real strong force but they was very, very fanatical, they was very good riflemen,

and they put up with any sort of conditions, like, towards the end, this is what I’ve been told, that they, some of their dead, they was standing on them as firing steps to keep out of the water, well I mean that’s pretty fanatical isn’t it? And they was pretty good tacticians, they had their defensive positions cited, strategically to cover all ground that you, they had us

as an attacking force moving over they burnt the grass in the front of their force and we had to go over bare ground. Well anyone that happened to get hit there, they just was got shot again, a lot of the wounded, was you know they were hit two or three times. It, no you didn’t have much hope there and I think the first day we lost about twenty eight men, killed, and our of them there was about five officers,

all for nothing, we didn’t go a yard. And the next day, I’m told the order came through another attack, another twenty odd people were killed, this was the general’s were determined to kill us off.

Well they was a very difficult proposition, see they were up, some of those were in

the coconut palms and at one stage they told us to shoot in the top of the trees, not the ground at all and all it seemed to do when I shot up there was knock down some coconuts. And you wouldn’t believe this, but my corporal, Corporal Whelan, a coconut come down, hit his tin hat and he was knocked silly. Yes, fancy being knocked with a coconut. He was evacuated, yes.

So that’s we didn’t do much good shooting up the top of the trees were knocking the coconuts down on ourselves. No that did happen, he was as silly as a wheel, he was concussed.

I don’t know. I don’t know, there’s something in you that as I said earlier

you don’t feel anything. You go numb I think, I think you did, I can’t remember any fear of any sort, you just sort of, you got to keep going and it’s, I think the reason, as I said it before, there’s some sort of a mechanism in your body that probably it comes on from the year when the swordsmen and all that was, they just, it’s been in the

human race for ever and ever I think yeah, I think it is. But it’s quite a silly thing to talk about it, to think about it, we, I suppose the job had to be done but I don’t think we, I suppose we could let them stay there and they would have died with starvation more so than anything but at the time [General] MacArthur wanted results, he wanted results to send back to America so that he could get more men and so, we got to

take Gona at all costs. We eventually got it, it took about nearly a week to before Gona fell. And when it fell and the count was six hundred, they buried six hundred and forty of the Japanese and I forget how many hundred of ours we lost in that process, nearly as many. It wasn’t much of a victory. See they landed there by the sea,

and they was being reinforced by the sea and most of the Japanese, the last day, this was after I was gone, the Japanese broke, they tried to get away and they dashed out to sea and they got mowed down in a final charge there, so no it was very grim and Gona, Buna and Sanananda was probably the worst campaigns of the whole war up there and our

battalion was decimated, we were never the same after, because we lost so many good men. Eventually we lost, I think two hundred and fifty-five men killed, no there but the whole war, just from the battalion, of course you got reinforcements to keep coming in, see you’d fade away if you didn’t get reinforcements, and that’s what I said before about the reinforcements. We welcomed them, we didn’t think they was rubbish.

Some of them did, we did have a little bit of a slur against us from some of the originals, but anyway that’s gone now. I suppose there’s not many of us left anyway.

Well of course I never felt anything, the only thing I knew was when I came around, if you were going to die, it would be an easy way to go. You don’t feel anything, but that wasn’t my object, but, when I came around, it must have been bleeding and I must have been all the way back and it was all in me mouth, I didn’t know where I’d been hit until somehow or other, I felt pain up there and a terrible headache. And I thought, oh,

and I managed to get back to the RAP and once they, they must have given me an aspirin or something, because I didn’t really remember much pain after that. And then the next day we walked the eight miles back to Soputa as I described earlier, mud and, but of course we wasn’t carrying anything then, and met up with one of me mates, at the same time, Ray Baldwin who was wounded in the head too, so, he just lives over here in Glenelg. And, so,

we went into the, well 2/4th Field Ambulance was running it there and there for two or three days and they come along and said oh they wanted somebody for, to give blood that hadn’t had malaria. So I said “Oh I haven’t had it.” so they popped me onto the table and took a pint of blood out of me, I didn’t have much, they had a job to get it, but anyway, got a pint of blood for somebody else you see. And

then two or three days later they said “Oh you can go back to your battalion.” That’s back at Gona, and the doctor come in and he said “Oh no, you can’t, you still got shrapnel in your head, you got to go back to Port Moresby to have x-rays”. And I thought, you know, I didn’t know what to think, so I said “Yes, all right.” So we had to walk back to Soputa, another seven or eight miles, no from Soputa we had to walk back to Popondetta, the aerodrome and catch the plane,

the ambulance took us back to Port Moresby and, and I was put into the hospital at Moresby.

Oh yeah.

Oh, firstly it was a couple of hundred yards from the battalion to the RAP, and then it’s about seven miles to the field ambulance and then you had to walk yourself to the plane, you’re all, there’s no transport. And you see there weren’t, in New Guinea

they had a terrible time, they didn’t get carried in ambulances like in the Middle East, if you got hit, probably you’re put in the ambulance and you was back in the hospital with no stress. But see a lot of the wounded died before they could get to hospital. It was terrible.

Yes, yes. When we got back to Soputa the reporter was there and I’ve

got the little pamphlet there and I give a bit of description of the war then, so that’s come out in The Advertiser here in Adelaide just after. So, that was another souvenir that I’ve got.

I just said that I was in the first attack on Gona and that I was only there for about four hours and I got wounded and that was it. So that wasn’t much of a story was it?

Yes, well at the time, I suppose they were screaming for it. Of course once I got back to Port Moresby, they x-rayed it, and they said “Oh it won’t do you any harm.” And that piece of shrapnel’s still in me head today.

Just there.

Can’t feel it and the x-ray shows it. How I know it’s in there because, I fell off me motorbike and I went to hospital and

they sent me to Adelaide because I hurt me neck a bit and they x-rayed and they said “You’ve got a piece of something in your head.” And I said “Yes, that’s been there for a long time.”

Oh I don’t know, it just looks about half as big as a fingernail, that’s what it looks like in the photo I don’t know. It must be just resting on the bone. No doesn’t worry me.

Well it must have been flying fairly hard mustn’t it? I guess it must have been a fragment of a grenade of some sort, I don’t, you don’t know, it wasn’t a bullet anyway, or else it would have went right through, wouldn’t it, so it must have just have been like a hit with a stone and it must have concussed me enough to knock me out, I don’t know for how long. I thought, I think perhaps for about ten minutes, but that’s only my estimation, I wouldn’t know.

But, that’s the closest I’ve been.

Well after they discharged me, said it was all right, I was better then, discharged me, and I went back to the training battalion then at Port Moresby they had a base back there for, and then stayed there for a while helped with the camp for the chaps that came back from originally came back from Gona and then

we stayed, we left in January, ’42 we came home from Port Moresby by boat to Cairns. The Jason Lee, I got the name on that one the Jason Lee we come home on that, it was another liberty ship and we came to Cairns and from Cairns we caught the train up the, to Ravenshoe, Ravenshoe is on the Atherton Tablelands, and that was a wonderful trip and the moonlight and there’s the

the Barren Falls, in full flood and shining, it’s not in full flood now because they’ve got a big dam to stop it, but then it was in full flood, and I’ve never saw such a sight in me life. And then we get up to the top of the, going up to Ravenshoe there at Kuranda, and they had cups of tea for us, the people they looked after us all the way to Ravenshoe. In the took us off the train at Ravenshoe and we camped there,

and we stayed there for a couple of weeks and then we got a couple of weeks leave to come home.

In New Guinea?

Oh Gona, well, as I said I was only there four hours on my feet,

that was the actual fighting but we were there a day or two before. But, I don’t know how to answer that, I think we thought it was a pretty hopeless task, because we couldn’t see the Japanese, I think we thought it was pretty hopeless. That’s how I felt, although we thought we done well, while we were going, but it was the loss of men that was worrying, the worry I suppose. No it was,

I think the loss of life was terrible really.

Yes, yes and when they came back there was only fifty three of them walking that came back. The rest had all be sick or wounded out of three hundred odd we went up with and there was only fifty three that walked out.

And one of those was Jock Hogg my mate. He must have been very tough, he went right through it and he never got wounded or anything no. He got malaria, but no, just lucky I suppose.

Oh it was pretty grim, because at this time scrub typhus had taken over, and, every two or three days

I got a job with me mate, Ern Pearson to be pallbearers to ride with the body from the hospital to the gravesite and the body’s only wrapped in a blanket, and right in the back of a closed in truck as a body guard and when you got there, you had to, with a couple of others lower them into the grave. And we got that job three times, it was pretty tough, it was probably the worst job I ever had to do outside of battle anyway. And when I went back

this time, I went and looked up that grave that, two of those graves that I helped bury those people, same place at Bomana and, it was pretty emotional. Terrible.

Well it is caused by the bite of a mite that it gets into the blood stream. It’s similar to

malaria but a lot worse and at that time they had no cure for it and three, they got a temperature of about a hundred and six, and next thing they were gone, yes, very, very, bad that, we lost, I don’t know if we lost eight or ten men with scrub typhus out of that campaign and this is what we were doing, it was a terrible job, we had to bury some of these poor buggers that died with this scrub typhus.

Only because of the living conditions and the stress they were under, and that’s what we were doing for, until more or less, oh just before we come home, we set up a camp for the people that come back and issued them new clothes and all that and then eventually they brought us home by boat, but that is how we filled out time in, I suppose it was useful but, it was, pretty grim to see,

and everyone was, even though there was a few that come back, walked back, they was sick, they got sick afterwards. And we never, I don’t think we ever, the battalion ever recovered from those losses. Sick and killed and wounded, eventually we had to reinforce with a lot more, well, lot more men from Queensland and we lost our identity as a South Australian battalion really we was reinforced with so many interstate people.

We were originally a South Australian battalion you see.

Well he told me that he was absolutely shit frightened if you like the expression and he said he was terrible lucky to, and Christmas Day he spent there and he said and the silly bloke in charge said, “We’ve got to do a patrol today.” Fancy Christmas Day, and got to go out and fight the enemy, surely you get a day off

Christmas Day. So he spend Christmas Day in the front line, and I was back at the, no I was out of the hospital, no I was out of the hospital, I spent it back at the training camp. But no we had some grim Christmas’ didn’t we?

Well we had a fair few concerns because unfortunately there wasn’t too many of them left by the time, when they eventually walked out and got back to us, I think well the only one of my platoon was Jock Hogg, out of the whole lot, I mean he’s was the only one that arrived back. And that’s why, well, we really think if we’d have stayed there much longer none of us would have got back. So it was very

very grim I’ll tell you.

Yes, things were good then. We got out fourteen days’ leave and I went home and I managed to get an extension of another month without pay and with my sister, we went off to Melbourne then to see my brother, he’d just

come back from the Middle East, so really it was a good leave and then of course, we had to go back to Ravenshoe about March and start all over again to rebuild the battalion.

Yes, I finished up with six, I was a bit lucky, I cheated a bit. I put a, we put some sort of a tale over that, well it wasn’t a tale, but mother and father were on their own and there needed to be work done on the farm and

I had to straighten things up a bit. Yes it was good.

No, I, you’re, I wrote to another girl earlier and then no, I didn’t, I knew her, I’d met her at, two or three years before.

But no, it was later, we were over in New Guinea, when I got a letter from her, big surprise, and from then on we blossomed a bit.

New Guinea, yes.

Oh I think it was biting a bit that people were short of everything that needed, tyres on the cars were short, petrol was short and of course it was rationing, tea rationing, butter rationing, clothing rationing and it was all, I think people at home was doing a marvellous job to carry on, I reckoned sometimes they had it worse than we were. Apart from the actual battle, I mean just being an actual soldier, was nothing, because we were supplied with everything.

They had to go short for with most things and I know my mother and father, they didn’t have enough petrol, they had to have a horse and cart to get around the farm with they couldn’t use the vehicle, because they didn’t have any petrol and it was the same with everyone, because when two gallons of petrol, that’s only nine litres, it wasn’t going to go far in a month was it. A month running when you live out

from town ten miles. It was, but they used to save a bit of petrol up when I got home, they’d I’d have a few gallons of petrol to play with, to do my social, rounds. Oh dear, it’s good times, but that’s how it went.

Not too good. I think we,

you know, it, you went, you knew what you was going into I think this is, and it wasn’t so bad going back to train but I think eventually when we finished training there and was, ready for the boat, well what future is it this time, we know what we’re going into. Oh, but of course they had boosters, things are better now, we’ve got more, like we’ve got more aeroplanes, they’ve got to have guns, we got everything, you will never, there will be no problems now. Because

we had the Japanese measure, of course, probably that’s true. So in August ’43, or perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself.

Oh well that was very good, we got a lot of reinforcement and we had new officers, new corporals, new everything, and at the same time they put in a scout clause and we

had training and we had, this scout course was, you know it was through the jungle and there was a bit of a track, and as they person was coming along, he had his rifle coming along, he had his rifle ready, and out would jump a Japanese, and, he’d have to bayonet him and then somebody further along would fire a few shots over his head. A real shot and this is the training of the new recruit. And we really had them battle trained before they went up there. And was really good and I think that

meant a lot, one of two of the said it saves their lives, so I think the training was much, much better and the that went on for, you know two or three months.

Well, I don’t think as a private you could really teach them very much, although you would help them as much as you could. But, and they respected

the old hands, I must say the reinforcements really they did respect us, and, but I never really had any promotions ambitions and I suppose I probably didn’t do as much as I could have to pass on my knowledge, although you passed on little things that perhaps my not have seemed important, but it may have been important later on, I don’t know. They all seemed to, I don’t know, most of them seemed to be very good with us older,

old hands as we were called. But, there again, I think we was getting to the stage where were we really expected the reinforcements to do, perhaps, I don’t know if it was something dangerous, we expected them to take part and do it, my, I think perhaps some of the older hands, we did hang back just a little bit, we weren’t quite as game. It, all in all I suppose

we all done our share I suppose.

No when I went back to Ravenshoe and we go the reinforcements they made one of them a Bren gunner. And now what happened, no they just

gave me a rifle then. And, I think to give you a spell, I think the policy was that those people that had been done, have been there a good while and perhaps they didn’t want to kill us all of, there was giving us a little bit of ease up, and of course the Bren gunners, they were one of the worst, one of the worst, they were a big target, so I think, I don’t think I lost the Bren gun because I wasn’t doing my job I think it was just that it was a policy to change them over and they, and they

made a new man the Bren gunner then.

I changed over back to a rifle, it didn’t matter much, anything yes, that’s right I changed back to a rifle.

Oh that’s just a .303, the Enfield .303, the ten shot magazine, the bread and butter [the main weapon] of the army, I suppose in these cases. It was a bit, of course now, it sounds obsolete.

It’s like they’ve got new rifles now, they’re nearly all automatic.

Oh yes.

Oh well because of this scout course and by this stage they knew the tactics of the Japanese better, the officers were better, we knew how to camp in the jungle better. We knew, it

came to the stage where we were digging fox holes like the Japanese instead of big slit trenches. It was hard, it’s all the little improvements that we made along the line, I think and, the end we got it, they introduced us with a new sub machine gun, the Owen gun and that was a wonderful little gun, that was a smaller, lighter gun but very, very easy to handle and very reliable, and I

think that all helped the troops to beat the Japanese and in the next campaign I’ll tell you, it really, we were superior.

Yes, yes, they, they had Owens, we’re changeover, I was very late in the Gona campaign and then when we re-established a battalion for the next campaign, we all had Owen guns.

There’d be, I think there was two Owen guns in each section. And there were two Owen guns and one Bren gun so we had three sub machine guns in each section. And then the rest were rifles and we had much more fire power from then on. Oh yes it was a great help, the Owen gun was yes, yes.

Oh, very little, we never got, we really didn’t know what we was going back to do in New Guinea. We went back to New Guinea and when we go there we just went into basic training and then they told

that there was going to be a big attack on Lae. The 9th Division was going to land at Finschhafen and the 7th Division was going to land at Nadzab by air. Our whole division was going to be supplied by air, the 7th Division. And so it was the 21st Brigade, they was taken first and the flew into Nadzab and attacked Lae, and they took Lae just a day before the 9th Division got in there,

so they had the honour there, so then they flew in the our brigade the 21st Brigade, or course, I suppose we were the last battalion in, the 27th, the 14th and 16th went up and landed a Nadzab, and we were left cooling our heels at Port Moresby again. So we wasn’t happy about that, anyway, couple of weeks later, he decided that they’d take the 25th Brigade up the Ramu Valley.

So the landed the 27th Battalion at Kaiapit [airstrip], but in the meantime, I’d been made LOB [Left out of Battle]. Now I don’t know whether you know what that meant, left out of battle, and I was pretty angry about it, and I think it all was because my Lieutenant Crocker was a neighbour and he didn’t want the responsibility of writing home and saying I’d been knocked off [killed], so he made, he got out of it the easy way, he said, “You stay here in Port Moresby, you’ll be the nucleus if we want,

you know later on you’ll, if we want to form a new lot.” That was the idea. So righto, I’m left cooling me heels with one of me mates down there and I didn’t get up to the Ramu Valley till the end of November. And, by this time, of course I get up there and I hardly knew anyone in our section, the malaria knocked a few off, and the scrub typhus and we had an accident, and the accident was, one of my mates,

Stan Gray was on guard one night and he must have dozed off I suppose and all of a sudden he’s heard something move and he had the Owen gun he pulled the trigger and it was one of our chaps just crawling out of his tent. Shot him in the leg, so he was out of action. And the other chap and he got scrub typhus and he died and

they had malaria, so when I go there, there was only four or five left of the original ones that I knew. So anyway, at this stage I was, I think I was 2IC [Second in Command], I didn’t have any stripes or anything. And anyway I was up there a month, then they decided they will relieve us, just after Christmas and I got sick. They evacuated me, I got jolly, I had unconfirmed malaria, but it was only two or three days

before the battalion was taken out, so it didn’t really worry me. So then I was back in hospital again at Port Moresby.But that was unconfirmed malaria, they never found the bug but it was malaria. So I didn’t see much of the Ramu Valley I had a month up there, and we didn’t contact one Jap, so I didn’t really come into any danger. And all in all that campaign was lots easier, although they did have one big battle, but that was John’s Knoll, I didn’t see it.

And all I done was patrol work, hard work, but no Japs. We did see them shelling Shaggy Ridge and all that, we were sitting opposite, we didn’t actually get close contact. So probably that was an easy campaign. That was all over for me just after Christmas in ’43, and while I was up there, I get this letter from my future wife. And, of course she wrote a letter

and would like to write to me and I wrote back and when it come leave, I went and saw her, and blossomed a bit and, sort of went on from there.

Oh she lived in the same town. She was born at Peterborough the same as me, but she lived on a farm twenty miles away. And, that, we all know each other, all around the district, and that’s how,

I suppose, they talked and probably decided it might be an idea to write a letter. And I think I’ve still got those original letters too.

Not in words, no I might, you know I’d have to look up the, I think I’ve got the bundle of letters, I think I kept all the letters, I think I’ve got them all there. It’d be pretty interesting, I haven’t read them for years, so I don’t know, I can’t remember.

That’s interesting isn’t it? No I think it was just a friendly note. Yeah, but I was fortunate I suppose, as we went along.

Oh, just what you was doing, you wasn’t allowed to say where you were,

you were just say you might be a bit wet or raining and it wasn’t probably a very thrilling letter was it? I don’t know, she’s got all my letters too, I must have a look see what I did write. Be probably embarrassing see what you did write.

Oh that was when I went, later on we decided that when I sailed for the next, this was at Balikpapan, that when we were sailing, I would write her a letter in code to tell her that where I was leaving from and when, and I think that’d be somewhere too. But we used the first letter of each sentence somehow to make up words, it was very hard to write.

To work it out, to I mean you, I think the words either I wanted to say, “At Townsville, leaving such and such.” I only wanted to put four or five words in, but it all had to be done in code. I best say they picked it, if somebody got it they’d have picked it to pieces, it must have been amateurish. I forgot about that until you talked of it today.

But I must, I must see if it’s still about, it may be very interesting, I think she’s got a bag of letters somewhere. See we don’t look at those things much when you get old.

Yes, yes, my mother sent food parcels and so did Joan, my wife, she sent a cake and we were well looked after, we wasn’t forgotten.

Yes, yes it was, and, it was a code when you got a parcel, you shared the whole lot with your section, if you got a cake you cut it into so many pieces and ate it then and there, you had a supper, you boiled the billy [pot for tea] and had a cup of tea and had cake for supper, that was the novelty and that’s how you done it. And they all shared like that, we done pretty well. Yeah that was good,

I think that was a good part of it. And of course the fact that people were sending you these things, it made you feel good, I think that’s why they encouraged it.

Well I think it was the fact that somebody cared for you a bit home, I think that’s the answer to that, I think that that’s how you felt, yes. That’s

about all I could say.

I had a word to my platoon commander then I had a word to the company commander and he said, “Oh well, that’s how it goes.” And I didn’t, I had to be paraded of course to the company commander. And state my complaint.

“Oh.” he said, “You’ve done your share, that’s how it goes.” So that was that. Yeah, yeah, and I suppose I wasn’t the only one, but it just seemed a bit cruel that we’d done all the hard work and we missed out on the easier stuff, if you can call any of it easy. So, that’s, that was my attitude then and I sort of thought well, you know you felt like not soldiering on, but of course what could you do? You couldn’t do anything.

It was, you were there and anyway I was back there and we done all the work at the training camp then and then, ah, there’s a lot of little training jobs that you had to do. For instance when the people went up to the front, they left all their spare stuff in a pack but every week we had to take all that stuff out and air it, because it’d go mouldy, so when it was a nice sunny day, you’d take it all out and put it out in the sun and all those things we

was just poking around the camp doing. I suppose it was easy work, but somebody had to do it I suppose. That’s what we, how we filled out time in. Played table tennis and anything else to fill our time in, and have to cut some wood, I always used to get plenty of wood cutting because I was good on the axe. Yes that was, in the army the axes were something shocking, they were blunt.

No, we didn’t, we didn’t have much contact with the locals at all, even the carriers we didn’t have much, we weren’t in charge of the carriers we had very little contact with the local natives, and yet we knew they was doing a good job, you know they carry huge loads and the conditions were pretty rough and they carrying the wounded.

but they could negotiate those conditions better than we could, they didn’t wear any boots and there was an advantage on the Track and probably their tucker, they could live on a few yams where we had to have more solid food, so probably they, they were very, very helpful, they done a wonderful job and, when I was up there this time, last year,

they just love to see somebody that had done the Track, they say, “Oh, my grandfather was on the Track.” And they’re shorter lived than us and they’re nearly all dead you see, and they’re, it’s their grandchildren there now and they’re acting as guides on the Track and all that sort of thing.

That’s right.

Yes, yes we done patrols, yes, but we didn’t contact the Japanese. Yes we done two or three patrols, but no, unfortunately we didn’t contact anything, was, the Japanese were fairly scattered then and we had a job to find them. So no we didn’t, didn’t really come under, I think there was only one patrol where I heard a shot fired and then they reckoned it was somebody accidentally fired it, so I

don’t know whether it was the enemy or not.

Oh, well that particular patrol there was the whole platoon, about twenty two men, but, sometimes you would be only six men, and other times, I took a couple of, carrier lines up to the forward post and there would only be four men in them, you’d just look after the, just sort of there as a bit of a body guard to the boongs [natives] as they carried the loads up.

So that was easy work and there wasn’t much danger in that, but. No it was, it changed a lot from the first part of it, I suppose from our point, us older campaigners, we thought it was comparatively easy, it wasn’t easy but, it was a little bit better than the first campaign, the supplies were better and everything was a bit better.

Some of the time we dug in, just the last two or three weeks, we was on a post, they called it Thomas Post and we had fox holes around the top of the hill and it was about nine of us there and at night we’d have two men on guard and we put booby traps on the tracks ahead of us, and that would be a part of our protection at night. And we

were self contained, we done our own cooking and everything in that particular post. But that was the only one that we done, like individually and we had foxholes for. I never, yes that’s the only foxhole I dug anyway. Yes.

Oh quite good food, eventually they had a new ration out and a lot of it was dehydrated but it was

run on the American lines a little bit and it was like dehydrated mutton and vegetables and then, some of the time they brought up fresh food like even fresh meat and potatoes and things like that. But so because the planes were able to fly in quite close to the battle front and it was really no trouble to keep us fed, no we had good food then.

Well we came back to Port Moresby, we flew back to Port Moresby and it was in February, they brought us back to Brisbane on the Etalin, we came back on a Yankee ship. We embarked at Port Moresby again and four days later we were in Brisbane, yes, this, this Yankee ship was specially fitted out I think for troops.

Lot of hammocks and that, but they used to only have two meals a day because mealtime was congested so they cut it down, and we survived quite all right on two meals a day, it was a good idea. Got off the boat at Brisbane and they even played the band when we got off. We thought we must be progressing well.

Not at that stage.

They put us on the, straight on the train and we come home for twenty four days leave. So this was 1944 of course now, so we’re sort of thinking, well this probably be the last leave, so, we, when we got home they said “Well we’re going to have a divisional march.” So we’re all on leave and we got recall, we had to go back to Adelaide and on the 4th of April,

1944, we marched through Adelaide. And that was pretty thrilling, yes, the whole battalion what was left of us and of course that was only half a battalion because of the wastage and that was pretty good. We just, we all reported back to Wayville and stayed the night there and next day we marched, and then we went back on our leave again, so that was pretty good. And at that time, of course, they were trying to give the 7th Division a bit of a boost, because we were the silent 7th and they’d never heard of us, so

just had to give us a bit of a boost. Well then we finished our leave and we’re back to Brisbane and they shifted the whole division back to Brisbane now, I suppose they thought the girls were safe now because the Yanks had moved on and so we were camped at Strathpine out from Brisbane. Well that was a very nice, we had three months there, three or four months, till August. And, could leave every little while, two days leave in Brisbane, I think

it was a good highlight Strathpine.

I’m with, I’m still with 11th Platoon, yes, still in 4 Section, I’m a sticker. Yes, yeah there’s been a lot of changes, we got a new corporal, yes, Bill Chandler’s the corporal now and I forget who’s the lance corporal, but we’re still,

we’ve had changes, I’m probably the only one left in the section now that’s Jock’s gone, he’s gone into the quartermaster’s store, he’s got a stripe now again. He’s a lance corporal so I‘m still with the same old crew and, anyway we had good fun at Brisbane and of course I got a few new mates now because the others are all gone and we get our leave and,

one of me mates, I still keep in contact with him, he’s up at Snowtown now, and we used to go off to leave together and I’m going to see him next week, but that’s Stan Gray, but it was a good time there. But anyway, time moves on but so they decide the powers that be, that towards the end of August, back to Atherton Tablelands again. Couldn’t get us away from there, and we were at Kurai this time

we’re not Ravenshoe, Kurai is just out from Atherton, it’s just a few miles from Atherton, about ten miles, and we’re camped right on the Baron River, very good place, swimming and away goes the training again. And of course we’re getting more modern we’ve got tanks with us now, we’re learning how to fight with tanks and they’ve got tank rock out there where they had artillery and we trained there and trained there and next think it’s Christmas time 1944

and we’re still training, we think the war will end soon. Come 1945 and me platoon commander called me in one day and said, “Oh I’ve got a stripe here for you, Eric.” And I said, “Oh, I don’t want the damn thing.” I said, “The war will be over directly.” I said, “I don’t want that.” I said, “What I want is some leave.” So he straight, he sat down and wrote out an application for leave and I copied it out and we put it and I got leave, no one else got leave.

And no, it wasn’t general leave, this was compassionate leave because me parents were a bit sick and anyway I got leave and home I come and next thing I’m engaged. This was March 1945 and you wouldn’t believe it, of course diamonds were pretty scarce in those days, so we had to travel to Adelaide, we travelled by train to Adelaide,

and we went into the jewellery shop at Adelaide, and by, at that time it was Roger’s, Roger’s were the jeweller. Oh no we told him what we wanted and he brought out three. I told him a price range, I said “Forty pounds, that’s all we can pay.” And righto, he brings out three. And they’re ranging between thirty six and thirty nine pounds and we picked out one,

it had two diamonds in it, it was thirty nine pounds, fifteen shillings. “Oh yes, we’ll take that one.” So I had five shillings change, she’s still wearing it.

Oh well we thought the war was going to be over pretty soon. You see it’d been going a long time, the Japs were getting defeated, and we thought, well this is a good time now and it won’t be long before it’s over

and then we can get married, and we, well then I went back from leave and of course, there on the, the battalion’s just left for Borneo. They’ve left for, to go away again and I just missed them at Townsville and anyway, I got on the next boat but of course I didn’t catch them up, they got to Morotai and they’re just sailing for Borneo, and

I’m left LOB again, so I suppose it’s my lucky day again and, I’m put on a boat with the stores, and we travelled with the stores, to Borneo, there was only a hundred of us on the boat, real good trip, this was the Julian Dubuque, was the, it was a victory ship and, of course, when we got to Balikpapan, our battalion had landed.

And I wasn’t, I didn’t catch up with them until, well they called, they used to, there’s an F ten, that was the tenth day after the landing on the 10th of July I caught up with my platoon again. By this time, the original platoon commander, he didn’t land with them but he had an acting platoon, and that poor bugger got killed, he got killed in the landing and the only one that got killed in the platoon. Anyway we,

then did patrol work at Balikpapan. This was probably the most dangerous part of Balikpapan.

No I missed out on that, see when we was at Cairns, when was on the Atherton Tablelands, they sent the battalion down and because I wouldn’t take a stripe,

they must have had an inkling that I wasn’t going to in the landing, they didn’t, he left me behind to look after the camp. They went down to Cairns and at Glenora and they done landing with a Scottish people there and they learnt all about that, and I missed out on that so I suppose that’s why I, perhaps it was a good think I didn’t catch them up. But no you see, the end, another part of the war wasn’t too bad for me, I suppose that’s helped to keep me going. But

no I hadn’t had any training and that’s how I missed it, because but as I say the personal element came in a little bit because my platoon commander Kelvin Crocker was too close to home with me and I think he was trying to protect me by keeping me out of it, but then I didn’t like that. But anyway I got to Balikpapan all right, and we went out on patrol and by this time,

my corporal, the corporal’s still there, but straight away the lieutenant said, “Will you take a stripe Eric?” I said, “The war’s nearly over now.” I said, “Yes, I’ll take one.” So, that’s how I got me promotion and next thing, we’re out on patrol, and we done this patrol out to the Milford Highway, whole platoon of us. And this time I’ve got an Owen gun, the lance corporal had an Owen gun then

and they’re doing this patrol and there’s three men, there’s Toby Mcneven and there’s Stan Gray and myself, we’re walking along and we’re right out nearly to the Milford Highway, and this two shots were fired and first bloke fell down and Stan and I, we crawled forward and covered the track and anyway, he’s the luckiest man alive, the bullet had hit his pouch, and hit the grenade,

and it’d glanced off and gone through his arm, and the other shot had gone through his hip. Two shots, only two shot, so we had to carry him, anyway, our lieutenant he said, “Oh, we must move on further.” So we left one section to look after the wounded man and we went on a bit further, next thing we heard firing behind us, and the Japs had moved in behind and they’d killed the corporal, they’d killed

6 Section corporal, shot him dead and so we moved back quick and we pushed the Japs away and then we had to carry this poor bugger back to base, about blinking several hours carrying and, so that was, we could have been knocked over there quite easily. Only two shots fired, or three shots, and we, oh no we did get a couple of Japs, that’s right, one bloke, he got, he shot a couple of Japs. And then that wasn’t good enough, we get back and the…

Oh we just had a stretcher and four men carried him one each on each corner of the stretcher. It’s an especially made little stretcher to carry a man on.

Oh not too bad, no he was in hospital for about a month and he didn’t break any bones and he was really lucky, it was nearly all flesh wounds and he come back with us afterwards. No he was a very lucky man to be alive. But, then again, we had a post mortem on that,

the captain gets there and, “Oh yes, you should do this and that.” And I was, “Well we hadn’t advanced much.” I said, “Here we are, we’re into 1945, we, never had any artillery.” I said, “with us.” We said, “We never had any mortars, all we done was had, we still the same as we done the Kokoda Track.” I said. And the next day, up comes the artillery officer and they set up everything then and the lieutenant said after, he said, “If you hadn’t have said that.”

he said, “We wouldn’t have had any of this.” And they did take notice of me. And anyway, that was okay, so four days later this was end of July now, this was nearly the end of the war. Out we go on patrol again, I’m at the back of the section this time, and there’s two blokes out the front and bang, he drops dead, and anyway, we

evacuate, we go back next day and find he’s killed and so we like in the last two weeks of the war we lost two men killed and one wounded, which wasn’t a very good effort was it? And, as I said, by Jove you, I was lucky I was glad I was in the back of the section, at least you were a bit more protected. And that was, so but you could have been, you know you could have been killed the last day of the war, wouldn’t it have been terrible?

Yeah and so that was the end of it then, on the 15th of August, well there was great excitement. The war’s over.

It wasn’t as thick as New Guinea, and of course we didn’t have to walk near as far, because

there was a road, there was a coast road and also they moved us by barge up the rivers, there were some rivers there and we went up this, to this place where we was doing the patrols from and by barge, six miles up the river, it, they’re, when I say barge, it was a duck and a duck is a motorised vehicle that runs on the road and it can go onto the water and also

propel itself along in the water, sort of dual purpose job and that’s how they moved us about there. And up this river and that was really good, we didn’t have to walk near as far and the jungle wasn’t near as thick, so I suppose condition, and the Japanese weren’t near as ferocious as they were. See we come back to New Guinea, they were highly trained, they’d been training in war for ten years in China,

whereas these people were base troops at Balikpapan, which weren’t so good a soldiers, so it was lots easier there. That was my definition and the country was easier.

Like in the town and on the, at the aerodrome and on the beach and when the war ended we was camped on the beach. And we had, you know swimming all that sort of thing, it was quite good.

Yes, picture shows and they bought in plenty of beer and better food and of course so they should when the war was over. But of course it wasn’t quite over for us, we had to go on a bit further after that. You know.

Yes, yes, well actually I’m running the section now, the corporal’s gone, he was a five year man, and the five year man was sent home, as soon as the war ended they sent them home, so I’m running the section now, so I did, I was in charge of it now. It was a pretty happy time, they all seemed to respect you and, we got on pretty good yes, yes. And I didn’t find it difficult at all, I thought I would but

it, I should have done it two years before. But still never mind, you can see back in hindsight all right, can’t you? Yeah.

Oh well it would have been more money. You see, I was one of those, probably I’m, I’ve got a fair bit of Scotch in me and when I joined up, I’m digressing a little bit, I made an allotment to my mother of three shillings a day,

we’re only getting five shillings, but I kept two shillings for myself, three shillings a day and she banked that for me, all during the war and when I come home I had seven hundred pounds in the bank. Great help to start off with, see half them was, they didn’t have a penny, so that’s why I, I got sixpence a day, I got a shilling a day extra for being a lance corporal. Well it wasn’t enough, if you got corporal you got three shillings extra, I should have done it two years before,

but I didn’t want I thought, “Oh, it’s not worth it.”

Well not too bad, for instance instead of being, standing out on guard for two hours, like a dummy, you sat in the tent and when the two hours were up you marched them out for the next relieve and you marched them back and you sat in the tent as a corporal

you sat in the tent, that was with guard duty. And if you were a working party or you, you went out, you did the same work, but you just directed operations. Like a boss, somebody had to be in charge, or if you was, now for instance, you got a working party, we want three men out of your section, you, you and you. But you try and keep them fair, just those little details that it entailed. It wasn’t really hard, probably

if you wasn’t trained it’d be hard, but no I enjoyed it for the last, four or five months. Course then, some of, most of the old, five years had gone home so really we were senior then, so we were king pin.

See for me the war finished off rather quickly in a way that we didn’t do much in the last three years. Terrible thing to say.

We was in our tent, on the, our camp, just along the road from Balikpapan, yes about ten miles along the road, we had our camp and that’s where I was when the war ended. I don’t know whether we got word that night, I think we got word in the night, there was a bit of cheering and going on.

But it was, I suppose it was a bit of emotional sort of a thing, because we weren’t expecting it to end so sudden. You see they dropped the atomic bomb, only a week or two before and then they dropped the second one and all of a sudden there was a crumble and the Japanese threw in the towel [surrendered]. They had to or else they’d have been wiped out. No we was very thrilled to know it was all over, there’s no doubt about that.

No we had to take the surrender of the Japanese in Balikpapan, and I didn’t play any part in that because they only had a selected few of the guard, and then but it all went on and they had to build barbed wire enclosures for the Japanese there, and we was there for, oh two or three weeks and nothing much happened,

we was having a pretty easy time. And then the rumour started that we’d have to go and garrison either the Celebes or one of the other islands that are along the coast, and the next thing we’re on the boat to go to the Celebes at Macassar.

Well as far as the ordinary private soldier or, it was, we just got a

movement to say that the battalion would move at such and such a time, and we marched down to the wharf, or no we didn’t march, we went by truck to the wharf and, the same day we got on the [HMAS] Burdekin, the little corvette, the corvette, the Burdekin and that was about eight o’clock in the morning I think I got it in my diary and

sailed off to Macassar and we arrived about four o’clock in the afternoon and when we pulled up at the wharf, there’s these Japanese are standing there with fixed bayonets and, we just took their surrender, our riflemen marched down and marched and marched up to the Japanese commander and he handed his sword over to our commander. And then

the Japanese were given an order and the piled arms in a heap on the wharf and then they marched off somewhere into a barbed wire enclosure and we marched off to our barracks and that was the start of Macassar then. And our duties then, we got rid of the Japanese mostly, there was a few strays about, was to keep order because the Indonesians were,

were planning an uprising if you like to call it against the Dutch, you see the Dutch owned all those islands before the war, and, the Indonesians were fairly aggressive and we were split into parties and patrols, we had to do patrols day and night in my, like rostered and I know I had my section on a jeep and we used to patrol all night some nights were out duty.

And if there was any trouble spots, you would go there and surround it and, well if they had any, they usually only had a few sticks and things, well then you’d disarm them, and create law and order and we was, everything was okay again. We had a nice time at Macassar, there was white people there, there was Chinese, the Chinese were the actual business people of the town. They ran all the stores, and pretty clever people.

And they made nice filigree work, I’ve still got a couple of pieces at home that they sort of very fine, it’s very fine silver wire that it’s made with. That was nice, I don’t we didn’t have a bad time and then they’d send a patrol out somewhere to round up a few more Japs and we were camped in barracks, we had electric lights and we had refrigeration and

it was tops really. We had a room, my section was, we had one room and there were seven of us in one room, just beds all around the wall. And, it was quite good, had to have mosquito nets of course, there was a few mosquitoes there. But, and the Dutch people were pretty friendly, one of our chaps married a Dutch girl there while we were there, so I suppose it was, it was really pretty good.

Yes I think that was a very, yes incredible sort of a thing. But just to my mind, to see those Japanese all standing there with fixed bayonets with full, with their helmets on, and full battle order, you might say, and yet they’re not dangerous, it’s wonderful wasn’t it you see. But, because the orders were given from the Emperor, that we’ve surrendered.

He should have given it five years before.

Well they seemed to respond all right, but the stories that you hear, some of them jumped over the cliff and all that, but in these people seemed to respond all right, I couldn’t, of course we didn’t follow it up but at the time they seemed to respond all right, they marched off all right, done as they was told and

I don’t think, there was no trouble as far as I know.

Well I think they was good, we didn’t, we weren’t guarding them, we only just told them to put their guns on the wharf, and then they was marched off. We didn’t go and guard them anymore, I don’t know who guarded them. But, they were locked up behind barbed wire, but they must have behaved because I never heard anything bad about it.

Well they were up in the hills you see and some of those had, either married or taken up with Indonesian women and they were deserters, they had deserted from the Japanese Army really and that was why, they were probably more dangerous than what the true Japanese Army was. Because they, well I suppose they thought, “Well if the war’s over, we’ll desert.”

And they may, and of course they had children and I suppose this is why the Indonesians are a little bit troublesome now, I think there’s a fair bit, fair few half breeds there. Japanese and that’s put a bit of intelligence into them, and that’s why, they’ll be our next trouble spot.

No, only just, only two

that we heard of, but we captured, or I suppose you’d say captured any, so I never actually took part in that patrol. One alert we had, the Indonesians were going to blow up, this was the Indonesians now, were going to blow up the power station, we had to take our platoon out and dig in around the power station. My section was dug in around the power station. We stayed there for twenty-four hours and then it calmed down and they sent us home again.

We had ammunition in our, we was all loaded up with everything to fight if necessary. We had to the Bren guns and all that dug in around this power station. They were going to come and blow it up you see, but anyway it never eventuated, and that was the only danger we had.

Well, not really

against us, they was defying the Dutch, you see they wanted to take the thing over. And really I wouldn’t say that, I don’t suppose they were too bad, but we had to protect the property what was there it was the Indonesians at that time anyway. The Dutch, the poor old Dutch, of course they, well they had to give it up anyway, because it

was finished as far as the Dutch empire goes it was Indonesian and of course it wasn’t long before they formed a government and little bit later we were evacuated and I don’t know who took it over then, I think the Indian Army took it over from us, but. Not very long and they had their own army.

No, not that I know of, no, it was, it was fairly safe although I suppose

I think there were one or two Dutch people knifed or killed, you know just by their, more or less gang sort of a thing, it really wasn’t warfare, it was just a little bit of a trouble spot.

Well yes, that would be, we were actually a garrison when we was there, that’s right. We was, quartered that

as I said before, we were quartered in the barracks and we had, we had to make sure our own security was safe, you see, any forces in a foreign country, they got to protect themselves first. So we had guards out all the time and, had to make sure it was safe, but it was all, it was all pretty friendly.

Well nothing, nothing, except, no we wasn’t going anything else. We just had do our turn, it seemed pretty fruitless, but it had to be done, I suppose it’s all, and it was no trouble, but we was wanting to get home, we wasn’t wanting to be sitting around up there. Then in December, they took another count, they used to have a point system of how long you’d been in the army and,

how old you was and all this, and by that stage I’d got up to enough points to be sent home, but, what happened, get on the Burdekin and go back to Balikpapan “Oh there’s no boats to take you home.” So then we sat at Balikpapan for a month waiting to go home.

No I wasn’t a very good mixer.

I did talk to a couple of them, but no I didn’t, we didn’t mix very, some of them learnt the language and all this quickly but no I didn’t really have much contact with the local, local people. I think only once did they ask us out to a meal or something at one of the private houses. But I don’t think we got on too good, their language

was mostly Dutch and we was mostly English, so it didn’t work out too good. And of course we didn’t have much to do with the Indonesians, and the Chinese, they were the business sector, which was mostly shops and shopping so, no, no I don’t think, we didn’t have a lot to do with the local population.

Well we done a little bit of sight seeing and

a friend and I went up the Milford Highway for a day out and we went swimming and, we didn’t do any work, except the necessary fatigues like in the cookhouse and that. And, it was just a sort of a holiday I suppose, but eventually of course the time comes when they managed to find a boat for us.

Oh yes, there’d be a morning parade,

yes there’d always be a morning parade. And they’d call the roll and just see you, as long as you were there for the one parade, you were all right, you could do what you liked during the day. Oh we wandered about, but it was, I suppose it was interesting anyway.

No, no training then, the war was over for us. If they’d have said training we’d have said,

“You can stick that .”

Yes, yes, we wandered about, yes we was pretty well, as I say the morning parade and any work details that had, you might cop a job just for a couple of hours, but otherwise, no we just had to fill our time, but we got a bit bored, you see because there was nothing really to do.

Oh I think we left about the third or fourth of January, 1946.

Yes, but we didn’t get all the attention, this was in the, just in the staging camp there, it didn’t seem to be any officers to look after us, I can’t remember much that was much of a Christmas, I think we did have turkey but it was nothing like when you were with your own unit.

You see we were all people that was going home from all units, and you, there’s not the comradeship that there was in the unit. So, no it wasn’t, I suppose it wasn’t much of a Christmas, but it was nice to get onto the, we come home on the Manoora, and I got the Manoora’s paper there, they put out a paper every day and it was amazing, we travelled three hundred and sixty miles every day and when we came home, and it’s quite interesting,

we left Balikpapan and we sailed down through the islands, and through, down through Cook Strait. On that side of the island, of New Guinea, we went up on that side, the east side and we come back on the west side. And we come through Cook Strait, or Torres Strait and Torres Strait I should say. And come down, and we come inside the [Great] Barrier Reef, right down to Sydney.

Yes we landed in Brisbane, and put the Brisbane people off, and it was the 15th of January 1946 when we disembarked in Sydney. Off the Manoora, that was the last boat I travelled on.

Not much, at Brisbane they had the mayor out, but I don’t recall much happening in Sydney. I forget what time of the day we arrived in there but I, we commented

Brisbane was better than Sydney, yes. And we got off at Sydney and practically two or three hours we were on the train and two days we was in Adelaide. Then of course we didn’t get quite out of the army then. We got to Adelaide and, of course by this time, Joan was down in town waiting for me, and, I had to wait nearly another fortnight before I got discharged. Discharged on

the 29th of January. 1946, that was it.

Yes a train, yes. Yes I had some train trips, wonderful trips on the train, and as I said to you before, forty two days of train travel.

Well not many in that particular case, because we were just a few that the battalion, well what was left of the battalion was left in Macassar, they didn’t come home for another two months. And but they were mostly Queenslanders. And they come home to Brisbane and were disbanded at Brisbane and

that’s where the battalion finished in Brisbane, it was just, I don’t know how they wipe a battalion out, but it was marched out and that was it. But no we, were just dribs and drabs coming home you see.

Yes, yes that’s right. And she stayed on in Adelaide until I was discharged and then of course

I suppose that was a big day when they discharged me, they handed me my suit that I’d handed in, in 1941. So you had to put your suit on to go home.

Yes, I hadn’t changed in weight, oh yes I’d put on about a stone in weight from the time I started till I finished. When I went in the army, I was eleven stone four, when I come out I was twelve stone four. So it wasn’t too bad.

Well that’s a good point, I’ve got me kitbag, that it’s a round bag that had your name on it. I’ve still got the kitbag in the spare room there and I’ve got the pack that you put on your back, the belt that goes around you. I think that’s about all, oh and you had your uniform, you had all your army clothes that you, you didn’t hand in your army clothes, I had my uniform,

but I suppose I was silly, I finished up wearing that for work and of course that’s destroyed long ago, should have kept it, when you look back you should have had it, I haven’t. I’ve still got my hat, yes, yes I’ve still got my own, slouch hat.

Hampstead out here by Enfield, if you know where that is. Yes, that’s where we were discharged. I’ve got my discharge papers there if you want to have a look at it.

Well, you had to sign everything away, I looked at me discharge book, I haven’t got the book here. All your equipment, you signed that they’d, that you, it wasn’t up to pay for anything, I think I signed about ten times and they paid you right up to the last penny, what you had owing to you.

If you had any leave left, they paid you for that, they didn’t give you the last few days leave, they just paid you. And, I suppose it was like any job you were in, they want sort of just wound it down to the last penny and kicked you out. Yes I suppose that was a period that you’d never do again would you.

Yes I think we did miss it for a while, and probably I wasn’t half as bad as some but, so a lot they got on the grog and they ruined their lives after the war, not the war so much as afterwards and I think there was a vacuum that you just didn’t know what, I know I felt it a bit and I didn’t know what to do and I think I said it earlier, I done a bit of shearing and I done a bit of this and that, and it took me, nearly

twelve months to get on the right direction, it wasn’t until I bought land and started to know what I was going to do, that I really got over it, and I suppose, you’re never quite over it in some ways but, you think you’ve done your bit and that was that. Then of course, I suppose the fact you’ve gone back to your old town made it easier.

See you knew a lot of people.

Yes, they had a welcome home, this was a couple of months later after we got home, they had a welcome home in the town hall in Peterborough and the mayor got up and said good things about us and, was, that was about that, and, it, it’s a funny thing he said, “Oh this and that.” And it

wasn’t until fifty years later that they had a honour roll in Peterborough to say that we’d ever been anywhere, so I didn’t think that was very good. We put one at Ucolta, and I got that photo there, Ucolta was only a little hall there that, you just put the names on a plaque there, that’s our local one but the Peterborough one it’s all the district you see. And, oh they’ve still got the RSL [Returned and Services League] in Peterborough and there’s only about

four of us left from the Second World War, it’s pretty sad. Well age has got to catch up with us hasn’t it?

Yes. Yes well my sister she died fifteen years ago, she was in the army, and my brother he was in the, and he’s still alive, he done the, or he was discharged

about the same time as I was and he got onto the land, and he finished up, he’s retired now, and he finished up, he left the district, but he was on the land all his life and, he done well. We all done all right, my stepbrother in Melbourne, well he went back to his trade, he was a motor mechanic and then he finished, and he died, of course he was a lot older. So that’s him and of course my other step brother, he was in the First World War and of course he died a long time ago and his

son, he’s the same age as me and he’s died, so and we were together during the war. And I didn’t mention that as we, somewhere along the line, I met him, oh yes I did mention, that we met him on the Ile de France when we went over. But I contacted I met him again in the Middle East and then he come home to, his name was Len [Leonard] Sambell, and he came home to

Adelaide and he got discharged from the army and joined the air force, the Empire Air Training Scheme, and he went to Canada, and he married a girl in Canada and he never left Canada, so there’s Sambells in Canada, so that’s how we gone.

Not much, no, see, the early part and my kids say, “You never told us anything.” and I said, “You didn’t ask me.”

And, oh I reckon for the first ten years we didn’t want to talk about it, it’s only, I reckon it’s only the last ten years that I’ve really got into this history and wanting to do something with it. And now I’m, even Graeme here, last time I was down, I had my diaries with me, “Oh you must write a book, you must do this and do that.” And

they were fascinated when they saw my diaries for the first time and this was only last year or this year. So, it shows you that, I, we didn’t want to talk about it, it was a bit taboo I think, but I think now it should be, we should know more, it should be put way for history anyway.

I do get a few nightmares, still you know. That’s a funny thing, you know, it doesn’t worry me much but there’s times

when I’ll wake up kicking, my wife she, “What’s wrong with you?” and I said, “I’m surrounded, I’m surrounded.” You know, you could see the Japs were all trying to surround you, it’s rotten and I don’t dwell on it at all, but I don’t know why, yes, it’s a good question you ask me because I do get a few nightmares. It’s plain rotten.

No, no it’s more now. After the war we were so busy, we didn’t think of it, I think perhaps I might be thinking of these things a little bit more than I should be now and that’s probably a reason that you think of it and then I went, of course I went back to New Guinea last year and saw all these graves, that didn’t do me any good either. So there you are, I suppose you can’t help how you feel.

I think it done me good, I was a very shy person and I think that it, for the rest of my life it gave me a lot more confidence in myself and that is why I sort of, what everything I took on I made good in. I think it did me a lot, I don’t think, if I’d have stayed home and been a zombie,

I don’t think I’d have had half the go in me that I have now. I’ve more determination and that sort of thing. I think that really, it was an experience, that I suppose you couldn’t buy it, but I wouldn’t have liked to missed it when I look back. See I’ve got good mates still, and that’s after sixty odd years. See that’s pretty good, not I’ve got one at Atherton Tablelands,

he come from our way but he married a girl on the tablelands, he was more, probably had more enterprise than I had. There wasn’t many girls there but he got out, and he went to the dances, next thing he’s hooked up with his wife, he’s been married sixty years and marvellous, but we go back there, we’re back there two or three times to Cairns, to Atherton to see him. There’s Mal Hurrell here, he’s

eighty nine, years old, he’s over at Tumby Bay, we go over there and see him, he’s doing his history like this, and he’s doing it, he’s writing it out himself, he’s a pretty good scholar. And, I couldn’t do that, and poor old Jock Hog, his wife we go and, still go and see him down here at, she’s in the old folks home here at Henley Beach. And anyway,

he’s gone, and see, then there’s one up in Snowtown, and he’s, I was with him, he’s a reinforcement, but I was with him for three years, so you got good friends through it, so no I reckon it’s an experience I wouldn’t like to miss.

Oh I think it was after the Syrian campaign, it was as early as that, I think once you’ve been in action, it’s, you feel more confident in yourself and I think that you knew that you could stand it and that I suppose you thought you was a bit cocky too, oh well I’ve been in action and you haven’t. I think it was a different feeling, I think that was, I was very lucky to get away, I would have went mad if I had have been in camp for a year in training without getting away.

Oh it’s, everything just come right for me, to get away so quickly.

Well the proudest moment, I don’t know, it’s a fairly hard, hard.

Well I felt pretty good when we marched in Adelaide the first time that was only five minutes in the army, but then I think I felt better when we’re 7th Division marched three years later. I think that was a wonderful moment and to see that you was recognised as, well people are recognising you. I think that was nice and I still pretty proud to march at Anzac Day. You know, I’ve never missed a march at Anzac Day, I reckon that’s a

pretty good record, because I’ve lived in the bush and had family ties and you never know how your health is, and yet I’ve managed to get down to Adelaide and march for sixty, no it’ll be sixty years this year I think, yes. No next year. Yes, so, I suppose that’s not bad, so there are a few places, you feel good anyway.

Oh it means a lot, I think you remember those that you were with right from the word go and I think that’s the meaning of it, more than any glorifying of it, I do think that is, that is, and you just wish that some of them had, I mean take Lou Dix, same age as me and he’s unfortunate enough to go off the first time he goes into action, it’s pretty sad but you think of those people that

then you think well, I suppose I done me, I done me duty to the rest of, to king and country and I suppose that’s something that counts too.

The 2/27th?

Oh I think that that, you know it was one of the best battalions in the AIF and I like to be remembered that they helped save Australia. See and, this battle at Brigade Hill, I reckon

that it could have saved Australia, because if we’d have collapsed, there, the Japs would have been in Port Moresby and we didn’t, and I reckon that was, that was turning point in saving Australia and we like to think that anyway. It probably, every soldier would say the same thing, perhaps the 2/16th Battalion would say they did, but we were the people that done that counterattack and we set the Japs back on their heels

and they didn’t recover for a day and they let us get, let reinforcements into Port Moresby and I reckoned they saved, I reckon we saved Australia. But I’ve got our battalion paper there and our editor says the same in there, he’s wrote an editorial on that along those lines and you know if you had time and read it, you’d know what I’m talking about, it’s a really, he’s put it in fact,

how it could have happened that the Japs would have taken Port Moresby. And he’s telling the same story as what I’m telling now, no that’s true. I reckon that our battalion, and yet we got a lot of criticism our CO, he lost his, Colonel Cooper, he lost his command, he never got another command after Gona, they, because he made a mess of things

and it’s pretty sad when the boss gets sacked, and the brigadier got sacked and we reckon we’re the brigade that saved Australia and they all got sacked because they reckoned that, the top brass [highly ranked officers in command] said that we didn’t do a top job. It hurts a bit.

No it was MacArthur was the person who was trying to get glory, he had to get results to get reinforcements from America and I suppose it was all political really, if he didn’t. See, MacArthur wrote all his communiqués and he never mentioned the Australians were in New Guinea for a long time and it’s sort of

more for the American’s ears that they were successful. I’m not denying that we would never have won without them, but it just pretty hard on a few people that had to take the brunt of it. And this was early days and, we were, Australia was in a terrible mess, because we didn’t have anything in the islands at all. They sent the militia up there untrained, the 39th Battalion, eighteen-year-old boys,

and, it, it was we shouldn’t have been, they should have sent us up there, we sat down there at Glen Innes and Caloundra for three months when we should have been up there at Port Moresby. Now they rushed us up and of course it was just a bit too late. But that’s political now.

Well I don’t know, I think just for history’s sake, I think that’d be the reason, I think that it’s nice that it can be put away for, I’ve always wanted to, the last ten years, I’ve wanted to write it myself, but I’m not capable of writing it so this is the easy way out. Well it’s not easy but it’s, to have to write it, it’s far, it’d take three years to even

get the, to research and to put it onto paper, and you would need a good typist and whoever it be. But I’m not in a position to do it and my daughters are all scattered too far. They’re all, “Oh yes, we’ll do it.” but I said, “You can’t when you’re thousands of miles away.” I said, “I can’t send it and do it all like that.” You need somebody like you to ask questions. So I think that, I think from the archive’s point of view,

I went over to the War Museum over at Canberra two years ago and I was very pleased to see that it’s very good, they’ve got a lot of stuff there. And of course this is, this will be further to it, so I think it’s good for the next generation, you see, my grandchildren in the things than what my children were, it’s coming, they want to hear something, well if I don’t tell it, there’s no one to tell it is there.

Oh God, I don’t know. No I don’t, that’s stumped me, I hope they don’t have to fight another war. That’s, but that’s not advice, that’s just a hope thing, I don’t think

we will have to. But it was all so unnecessary, wasn’t it, when you, the loss of life, the last war, so, that’s not advice, I can’t think of how to put it.

Well I’d like to say thank you to Cathy and Louise [interviewers],

for, it’s been a pleasure to work with you and I hope it turns out, well, reasonably anyway. It’s been an experience. I’ve never done anything like this before. Thank you.