Australians at War Film Archive

I was born in 1930, which is a fair while ago. And I was born in Paddington in Sydney. And for the first couple of years after that

I am told that we were on the track. We had a horse and cart because it was the end of the, when nobody had any money and things like that. And so my father used to ply between Sydney and Bathurst. So what we would do was, he would go from one police station to another because the only way you could get the dole those days was to report in. And you were

only allowed to have it for so many days. And when I was five we lived in an old bag hut that he built out of bush timber on the back of Hector’s brick pits up on the common. And it overlooked the Bathurst jail in fact. So that’s where we lived and we all helped each other. If you were short of food or something like that people would help you. I remember once, I can just remember

this pretty clearly, that a catholic priest came along and offered us that if we’d become Catholics they would give us some help with St Vincent’s de Paul. And he noticed that my mother had a rifle just inside the door. And he said to her something smart, I forget exactly what he said but he said something along the lines, “Can you use it?” And my mother said, “If you shove your hat up on that bloody clothes peg there I will show you,” and she put a hole right through it.

Anyway and so we didn’t get any St Vincent’s de Paul I might add. And then from there we shifted eventually back to Bankstown and out to Milperra. And we lived on Milperra Road. Not far from where Fitzpatrick was. And of course he was ended up being a millionaire. But I went to school those days at Revesby and there was only two rooms there. And the first room it was

one, two, and three. And then the other room it was three, four, oh four, five and six. And so I went there after a few years and then I eventually went to Bankstown school. And I went to secondary school there. And then I stayed there and I realised that all of a sudden my education was pretty lousy, because I had been to a few schools. And so I worked for a bloke

named Morrison on a milk cart. And he said to me that he would pay for me education. So if I worked for him over a two-year period. So I then took off to Metropolitan Business College in Dally Street in Sydney. Where I got my intermediate. And these days if you wanted an apprenticeship you had to pay a fee, like a bond. And I didn’t have the money to put up a bond. And so this fellow put the bond up for me and I got an apprenticeship at Chullora.

On the NSW [New South Wales] government railways as a fitter and turner.

I went there in 1945, I got me apprenticeship. And then I stayed on the railways but I always had in the back of me head. Because I lived on Milperra Road and I was there when the Americans built Bankstown Aerodrome and there was Cobras flying about and Lightning’s and things like that.

But the army used to go past there in their trucks on the way to Liverpool. And I always had a, I wanted to join the services because of the simple reason, in those days I think it was the uniform. I just liked the look of it. And I just, I thought if you got into something like that my career would be assured. Anyway I stayed on the railways until I was eighteen. And that would have been 1948. And I thought well I’ll join, I joined the air force.

And they allowed me to finish my apprenticeship in the air force. And I become an airframe fitter. I did my recruit training at Richmond and that was three months those days. And from there they sent me up to Rathmines, the sea rescue base which was 11 Squadron but it was also a training unit. And there they put you put your paces, and I was lucky, I was given an accelerated course because of me background.

And so I was only there something like about six weeks. I was accepted straight away as an airframe fitter class two they used to be those days. Or a fitter 2E they called them. And then from here I was posted to Sale. But in the meantime I was there I was working on Frigate Bird II. And Frigate Bird II was PJ Taylor’s airplane, they wanted to pave their way to South America. So they used this Frigate

Bird II, he flew it, it was an air force plane. And flew the Catalina to South America, and that’s how we got our first airlines went across. He actually checked on the bases as they went across. And so I worked on that. And did most of the airframe work on it. And then they sent me down to Sale. And then at Sale I worked on

Catalinas, not Catalinas, Lincolns, Dakotas, and the Vampire Jet had just been introduced. And in these days Gill Cummings, who was the one of the top pilots, brought the first Canberra out from England. And they asked me if my job to go down to Laverton, and bring it in and fuel it up. And so I’ll never forget,

we had the old fuel tankers, had an old engine in them and they are very slow fuelling up. And the fuel that went into the Canberra was two thousand four hundred gallons those days. And I know we were there for about half an hour filling the thing up. But that was a great experience, because he broke the world record coming from England to Australia in the, in a Canberra. And then I got very interested in jets because I could see that it was the future. So they sent me to a school at

Forest Hills. Just out of Wagga [Wagga Wagga]. And I did a conversion course on jet engines. And they sent me back to Sale and while I was at Sale I working on what they called the Neens and the Goblins and the Goblin was a twin-seater aircraft or the navy had them, Sea Venom for the navy. And they did, they trained our people in them. And I was

lucky enough that one day, the chief pilot there, Read, came in and said to me, would I like a ride. And I thought, “Oh, I would love a ride in one of those.” And he actually took me up. And I was very thankful, I often used to wonder why they used to have, they used to have fifty cal [calibre] guns. I think there was three of them in under the aircraft. And of course it was a wooden fuselage and they had metal main flames on it. And I used to wonder why they had the guns there.

Anyway when you see they come in very low when they land, he said to me after, he said, “I will tell you why they are there now.” And I said, “Why?” Because they left them in. And he said, the idea was if you had to crash run the guns actually give you the skid and kept you, between you and the ground. And so that’s why they used to leave the fifty cals on there. But and then from there, I was posted back to Richmond with eighty-six wing which was the VIP [Very Important Person] wing. And the King

of England was on his way out. And I was lucky enough to be in his flight. And we were to take off to Western Australia to go to Pearce Aerodrome to meet them. Because they were going to come across on their first race in Australia was to be at Pearce. But the Dakota we were looking after had twin great large seats sitting out, had a toilet in it and room for some of the staff, it was beautifully fitted out, the aircraft.

And we were to take off the following day an that night we were watching the pictures. And the duty officer come in and said, “I’ve got some bad news,” to everybody in the theatre. And he said, “The King is dead.” Well we knew straight away then that the King had died, that was the end of the trip we weren’t going anywhere. So it was a little, I suppose you could say unloyal or something like that, but we were a bit rotten on the King because he had died, because we missed out on our trip to Western Australia.

But no, that you know, that was really good. But I could see, I was an LAC then which is leading aircraftsman. But I had been in four years. And I started to specialise in jet engines. And I could see I was never going to get anywhere because no one left the air force, everybody loved it. And so I thought well if I am going to get anywhere I have to get out of this. I really need to get into the army because it’s much bigger and that way

I’ve got some sort of a show. So what I did, I asked for my discharge, in the first place they wouldn’t give it to me. And when I said I was going to join the army, they wouldn’t lose me out of the services altogether, they eventually let me go. Anyway I went down full of beans to join the army to find that I couldn’t get in the army. Because of the simple reason they didn’t have any vacancies at that time. And those days the army was reasonably full.

So I thought, oh dear I am in big trouble here. So somebody suggested that I go out and work for Qantas. And if I worked for Qantas it means to say that I kept me continuity of service, because it was a commonwealth recognised. And so I went out there and worked on the constellations for a while for Qantas. And then I was asked if I would go out to De Havilland. And Black Jack Walker was there, the test pilot.

And he was testing the Neens and the Vampires, the Neens for the engines. And they didn’t have anybody that had my experience so they asked me if I would go out there and work for them. So they actually transferred me. So I went out and worked for Black Jack Walker on the, on his aircraft, on the Vampires while he was testing them, to see if they were going to be available for the services. And that was a great experience. He was a bit of a wild man, but I suppose when you look at test pilots they have got to be that kind of people.

So I stayed there I did me two years almost. And then the army got in touch with me and said that there was a vacancy, if I’d like they would bring me in as a corps enlistment, I went straight in as a three star private, on a fairly high rate of pay. And I only had to do six weeks recruit training at Kapooka, because they said they would accept my training in the

air force. So I did six weeks training there and was posted straight to 1 Armoured Regiment LAD [Light Aid Detachment] which they called a corps posting. It was a little strange actually because when I joined they said, they gave me a choice of a couple of postings. And I always thought Kapooka was, not Kapooka but Puckapunyal was just out of Albury, I liked Albury, and I thought, oh well that will do me. Only to find out that it wasn’t anywhere near Albury, it was near Seymour. And I spent the next seven

years there. And

I can tell you exactly how old I was. I got there in 1955. So I would have been twenty-five.

Well he was a carpenter and there wasn’t any work of carpenters. And he was prepared to do anything. He was pretty multi-fisted, he could do most things. And so what we did was that, of course I said we lived at Bathurst. And then

he worked on Doctor Zeely’s house, I remember that one, just prompted me a minute. Doctor Zeely’s house, who had a huge home at Bowral. And he went up and help build on that, build that. And we lived in a tent and I used to, me and my brother used to sleep in a hammock. And so I went to school at Bowral itself. But earlier than that I was a little unlucky in some of the years

that I was at school. There was, when I was about ten, my father and mother had a little bit, few problems and everything like that and they ended up having to put me in a home. So I finished up at Camden in the home there. For almost a year. And that was on MacArthur’s property actually. In one of his old homes, going back to when MacArthur came from England. And it was stone,

very polished board and extremely cold. And we used to go to school at Camden and we used to get bread and dripping. And if we were lucky we used to get a bit of fruit. But we used to like the dripping to be old if we were lucky enough to get that with salt and pepper. And the kids at the school were really lovely to us. Because what they used to do is that sometimes their Mum would pack an extra sandwich for them or a piece of fruit and

things like that and they would send that along and you know that was good. And then I left that home and went home for a short time. And then they ended up they put me into a home at Springwood. And so I finished up in a home at Springwood. And that was in the Methodist home there. And so I was there for about nine months and I went to school at Springwood. And that was a lovely home. Very kind to you and everything like that.

Whereas the one at Camden they used to often beat you and things like that. They weren’t the nicest of people. That’s probably a little bit about my early life.

I went to Camden, probably I was about eleven. And I was there for about a year until I was twelve. Then I came home for about six months. And things hadn’t got any better there. And

so they then, my father had actually gone off to New Guinea because there was a housing boom up there. And he’d gone off to work up there. And so, my mother was trying to work and it think that maybe we were a little bit too much for her and so I think it was the easy way to get rid of us for a little while. So I went up there for about nine months. I came home for a short while. And

what happened then was that I didn’t get one very well at home. And I run away. So and I took off and I used to play a piano accordion. Which I had saved up through various means. So I sold the piano accordion and got on the Narrana. So this was just before the war ended. And the Narrana went across to Tasmania those days. And I got a job at

Paton and Baldwin in Launceston as a bobbin boy. Putting the bobbins on the instruments or the big machines that had wool on them and they put together skeins and things like that. And I was there for about seven or eight months. And then I was reported for running away from home and so they put me into a home out at Deloraine, it’s called, that’s in Tasmania. And it was a

boys’ home, a place for wayward kids, but it was also a home for orphanage kids, and they put me in the orphanage part of it. Because it was pretty tough, there were people getting beaten up and things like that. And I even got into big trouble meself one day because I was hungry and I ate some of the eggs out of the chicken place. So eventually they put me back on, I was getting toward fifteen then. The put me back on the onboard the Narrana and in fact I got on at Burnie. And

it was a blacked out ship and everything like that. And I got back to Melbourne, and they put me in Torana for the day because Torrana was going then, I was met at the ship, in Torana that day and then that night I was put on the train. And sent back to Sydney. Where me mother met me and I don’t think they even mentioned it. So what happened then. But from fifteen I never went to, I went back to school then, that’s when I went to

for a while to what was the name of it, I just can’t think of the name of it. In Dally Street, the college I went to. And that was the only way to get me intermediate. And that give me a chance to get an apprenticeship.

I did actually. I’m positive I wasn’t bad. There was no doubt about that. But the thing was I was looking for something probably that

wasn’t there anyway. But I was looking for adventure. But the other thing is that I think I was trying to grow up too fast. I could see that my way ahead was to get into something permanent and in the back of me head, I always had that I wanted to get into the services. And so the day I turned seventeen and a half I did just that.

Oh yeah a lot. We used to follow the war on the radio. And for some unknown reason if I ever got a hold of a newspaper I would cut out all the pieces out of the newspaper and I had an old telephone book and I used to glue them in the telephone book. I don’t know what ever happened to the book but it’s. So I was certainly following the war and we could see how it was going. Not only was it in the newspapers but we were

reminded of it almost daily at school. Because around my neck, we used to carry a little bag. And in the bag was two pieces of like cotton that you had to put in your ears in case of an air raid. And also a peg, and a peg was to put in your mouth. So if you clamped down, if there was a shock wave or something like that you didn’t break your teeth. And of course living near the aerodrome those days on Milperra Road at Milperra

of course the Japanese used to fly over on a regular basis. In Zeros and you could see ‘em. But they were up that high that the lightning’s or the Airacobras that were based there couldn’t get up to get them. And we knew they were taking photographs and everything like that. And I also happened to be at my grandfather’s place, who occasionally would take me for a little while, he was a terrific man, up at Dora Creek on Lake Macquarie. And I remember hearing the guns actually when the subs [submarines] hit Newcastle.

And you could hear them from Dora Creek, we didn’t know what they were. But we found out later that one of the subs that shelled Newcastle. And of course I was aware of the subs coming into Sydney. And that was all in the newspapers, the Telegraph used to publish all those things in Sydney, and the Sydney Morning Herald and the Tele. But so I was fully aware

of what was going on the war and I followed it with great interest. And the day that war ended I was in Martin Place. And dancing with all the people and everything like that. I never forget that I came up from the college on the tram, nobody paid of course the trams were packed, and they were dancing in the street. Occasionally there is a bit of footage I see where that bloke is dancing and he takes his hat off. And in the street of Martin Place and I get reminded

of that’s what we were doing that day in Martin Place. And I would have been fifteen then. So I do remember a lot about the war. I have a big problem these days still, I have got a young daughter. And we do a bit of travel nowadays but the thing is I’ve just got to be careful because of my thorough dislike for the Japanese. The things is it is still inside of me but I am trying to bring up a daughter. But

she doesn’t need much bringing up now, she is eighteen. But the thing is that I was trying to bring her up that she liked everybody and doesn’t have those inhibitions that I was brought up with. But occasionally they are inside me, so I say something I wish I, you know, that, when you think about the atrocities and everything like that I still have, I remember them vividly because, a mate of mine actually, McDonough was his name, he is now dead. But his son is still in the army, he is a

captain now. He was one of the lawyers that went up to Japan. And actually defended the Japanese because they had to supply the defence. And he told me some stories and everything like that, I had him as a boss when I was in the army. And they always reinforced what I learnt when I was a kid.

Well I was still very young, so he had to go up there just right at the end of the war. Because I got a, it almost makes me think that he was there before the war finished. But he was just at the end of the war because he was working with the Americans. And they were using civilians to build things and that. So he would have been in say,

I’d say in ’45, early ’45. And I don’t think the war was over, but they did send them up there early. He belonged I think he joined that voluntary defence corps where they were using trades people and things like that. To do work on airstrips and all that kind of thing. But I knew he was building housing because that was his area of expertise.

No I always wanted to join the army. But I went down to join the army and the recruiting bloke was, those days it was Rushcutters Bay. And he sent me up to Dymock’s building, that’s why I finished up in George Street. Up on the 7th floor. And I had to do a test to see, you know, it was a written test, then they sent me out to, I’m just trying to think of the name of the place,

it was up in the northern, Bradfield Park, they sent me out there and I had to do a trade test. Like had to turn up a couple of little things and hand make a little model. To be accepted. But they said I would be better in the air force. And at that stage of the game I think I would have gone there then. And so that’s what made me join the air force. But there is funny little story there,

there was a chappie that came down from a place called Terry Hie Hie which is out of Moree. And he’d never been in the city in his life and he and I were going up and we were standing on the bottom floor and we had to go up seven floors. He wouldn’t get in the lift. Because the simple reason that the lift had people in it and they would go up to the 7th floor wherever they were going but when it come down it was empty. And he said that it was a disintegrator, the people disappeared so we had to walk up the stairs, seven floors. Later on I used to remind him about that.

But he was fair dinkum he just thought it was little strange that the lift went up with people but when it come back there wasn’t anybody in the thing. But the, no I loved the air force I just thought it was, what I really loved about it was that each unit or each area, say Richmond, Rathmines, Wagga, Sale or any of those, they had one mess for the ORs [Other Ranks]. One mess for the sergeants and one mess for the officers.

Which meant that you got very friendly with all the people, you would go to another unit and there would be somebody to know. And later on I missed that because when I was in the army, they have unit messes. And so you sometimes didn’t meet a lot of the other people that were in the services, you only meant the people in your unit. You didn’t meet too many more unless you went to another unit. So that was one of the downturns in the army that I thought, I could understand why, because the simple reason they send units off whereas aerodromes stay.

But that was one of the lovely things about the services.

Yeah, it was extremely rough. But it was rough in a way that it was rough for outsiders. I lived in Glenmore Road when I lived in Paddington, I lived there first

before I went to Redfern. And that’s up the road, just from where the Australian Rules first started. And in New South Wales. And it’s what they call, five-ways is not that far and then that’s where all the sly grog places were, the two up games were run there. And those days you couldn’t get booze. And so the taxis would come along and run in with a sugar bag and buy their booze and come out with a sugar bag.

There was a lot of muggings, people were beaten up and things like that and robbed. But they we never robbed like they are today. If somebody was robbed and got knocked down, at least they would let ‘em up. They didn’t kick them while they were down or anything like that. The other thing is if you lived in the area you were protected because the simple reason they never touched their own so I was always protected there. And later on I went back there, because me mother lived in Glenmore Road. And I

had only just joined the air force. And I’ll just digress a little bit and all the prostitutes that used to live in Kings Cross, every now and then the coppers would come in and pinch them. So what they would do they would get one and pinch them and tell the others to get lost. And what they used to do they used to all come down to Rushcutters Bay Hotel. And of course the trams used to run down past there those days. And I’m coming home one day and I forgot about them and all the pros used to sit up, the road used to go down, the hotel was up here and there were seats out. And the prostitutes

used to sit out the front there. And if they seen anybody they didn’t like they used to wee straight over the rail and you would cop em. And I knew this but the thing was I wasn’t awake this day. Any rate, what I did I jumped off the tram and I looked up and I was too late. My uniform was covered in it, I’ve never forgotten that, it reminded me later on when I came back from Vietnam. But that is another story. But the

days that were there they were tough, I went and lived in Redfern. And Redfern of course today, we all know about that the Aboriginals live there and how rough it is. It wasn’t so rough those days it was all the poor people lived there. There wasn’t very, I don’t remember any Aboriginals living there those days. But it was another area that was well known for stealing the things like that. There wasn’t so many drugs about. But I can’t remember any drugs about those days. But there was certainly a lot of

sly grog. Everything like that, and it wasn’t nothing, where the park is that the Aboriginals congregate now which was opposite the old Faulding’s buildings. It was nothing to go over there and see two up games going on and everything like that. They would have cockatoos [lookouts] down there on the road on the corner, looking out for the police. And somebody would whistle and everybody would disappear. But we were used to it and the other thing was the police were too. In fact we like the police in lots of ways because I can remember

I didn’t drink very much or I never drank very much right throughout my life. But somebody gave me a couple of beers. And I collapsed in the park there. And one of the coppers came over and grabbed me, and of course they had sidecars those days. He threw me in the sidecar and he knew that my mother had a shop, a dry cleaners shop on Whites Corner there. And he took me home there and grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and give me a big boot in the bum as I went though the door. But those days, the police were excellent. They, you only got pinched if you were a

troublemaker or something like that. But if you got into trouble at that kind of way you were likely to get a boot in the bum or you know clip over the ears. But the thing is that the police can’t do that any more. As far as I was concerned, being brought up in Paddington and Redfern there, the police were our allies more than anything else. The only people they really got stuck about was people that were stealing cars and things that they were doing that were just a little bit outside what you would call, what was reasonable.

Yeah I was still at school I was only fifteen. But I was getting, I was fifteen I was fourteen and a half something like that. So that was the question again?

Well those days we used to roam the streets and play cricket. And football in the streets. And of course it wasn’t Australian Rules we never heard of it. We used to play rugby and I

a little on the little side. And that was a problem but that can be and advantage. Because I can remember that when we lived in Bathurst, I lived in the old bag house that my father had built and the floor was earthen. And my mother used to dampen it down with kerosene and polish it. And it used to shine. And we had a fireplace in there and I could sit in the fire place he built into the side of the mountain, you could actually sit inside facing the fire. And

of course we had, this was the depression years, getting, just after he depression years. And we still didn’t have any much to eat and things like that. And my father used to take me and one of the blokes from the brick pits, Brinkmen’s they were called, Brinkmen’s brick pits. And Len was his name, he used to come down with me father and they, the golf course is still there alongside the jail. And there was a drain up alongside the jail. And the drain the water our of the jail there was a stormwater

area that you get through with bars up. I could fit through those, so they used to take me down and put me into the yard of the jail and I used to pinched the vegetables and they would tell me what to get like cabbages and what ever the case may be. And I would pass them through the bar, we never took any more than what we required to eat. Because that was the deal. Like I can remember my father pinching a sheep once. And the deal was that if you took a sheep you had to eat it, it wasn’t to be sold or anything like that. And that’s what we did. And we shared it.

But the fleece must be hung over the fence. And that’s what the unwritten law as. And I can remember him doing that. And so that’s not unusual for those things to happen.

When you say sustenance do you mean food?

Oh the dole was operating yeah. But the thing was with dole they had most people working for it.

And you had to work for the dole those days and I can remember my father had a pair of dole pants. And they were pants that were issued with white stripes, white linen stripes through them, very thin, they were stiches in fact. And they were issued to you, they gave you clothes. And I can remember him getting meat coupons. And the meat coupons were like a, about the size of a halfpenny. And they had a whole in them. And what it had written on it was meat and how much you could get for it. And you used to exchange those. You would go along to the

butcher and exchange it. So you were reasonably looked after but there wasn’t any money changing hands as it’s such. Not like today, you could live on it and go and buy a car, there was no way you could do that. But I can remember him working on the drainage system. Digging drains, he would do anything. So he wasn’t lazy. And to get the dole. But the only gave you the dole so long, sometimes they would move you around because the simple reason that they would only let you have it for so long. I’ve forgotten how long it is.

But I think it was something like a month, and after that you had to, they would suggest you go somewhere else. And so you would pack up and move on. But that was, I think those days were a lot better than they are today. I think today, when you are given the dole sometimes you can be on it for so long that you don’t want to, it becomes a way of life.

After that I went onto the New South Wales, I went and did an exam. And I’m not sure how much the bond was you had to pay a bond in those days to get an apprenticeship. And if you did anything wrong you just lose your bond. And I’m pretty sure that it was twenty pound, but I have forgotten, it could have been a little bit more. But it was twenty pounds those days which was a lot of money. Any rate, so what I did, I started at Redfern

at the old workshops there and then they shifted me out to Chullora. And Chullora is not far from Bass Hill and I suppose the biggest town near it would be Bankstown. And I did me apprenticeship there. And by this time my mother and father had moved out to Bankstown. And moved to, they lived in up near Bass Hill. And so I started me apprenticeship there. And of course

the first year of apprenticeship you, you know, you are a gofer, you go for lunches, go and do this go and do that. And I don’t think I learnt a hell of a lot say the first year. But I was going to tech and I went to Ultimo tech in Ultimo itself in Sydney. And those days you used to go one night a week and a half day to tech. And so I learnt a lot at the old Ultimo Tech. And so I went there for

nearly four years to learn me trade. But most of your learning and everything like that was doing railway bogeys, like making up stuffing boxes, that the axels run in and things like that. So it was fairly big work and of course they had big lathes and things like that. And being young like that, I was fairly small, so I couldn’t

handle the really big machinery so they used to give me a box. And I used to stand on that when I was turning. But I got very interesting in machinery, I loved milers and lathes because I could see that I could learn that. And I had somewhere I was going to go. And I stayed there until I was seventeen and a half. And they would take you in the services at seventeen and a half. And of course as I mentioned earlier I went down the Rushcutters Bay and they sent me up to Dymock’s. And of course I ended up in the, my first unit was at Richmond.

And where I did my recruit training.

I was a with the railways, I would have left there, three and a half years. I still hadn’t finished me apprenticeship. They allowed me to finish it in the air force. And so at the end of the five years, actually before that they granted me my papers. So then I had something in my hand, and of course tradesman those days is a lot different than what they are today.

Tradesmen were recognised as being something special. But today they don’t seem to be deemed that really.

Oh huge changes. Of course one of the biggest changes was they got rid of the trams. The, that shook me, when I got back there was no trams. Because

while I was in the services I went back occasionally. Because that was where me home was. And the changes that I have seen there I suppose the Manly ferries seem to be the same, they always seem the same. The Zoo for many years, which I loved the Zoo, that never improved, but I went back the a few years ago and of course that’s totally different. But the suburbs shook me. When I lived for a while out at Milperra

when I was a bit of a kid and went to school at Revesby, of course I said earlier, there was only two rooms there. There is a huge school there now and the thing is that the housing, the suburbs are all full. And when I went back later on and I was working out as I said on De Havillands, De Havillands were at Bankstown, and the houses were just going up like mushrooms. Bass Hill was nothing, it was just hill, you know, it was just grass and people had horses out there and things like that. And of course cars, they are everywhere. And

I got the shock of me life when I went across the [Sydney] Harbour Bridge. How much traffic there was I don’t know how much traffic there is on the other side. But even now I haven’t been to Sydney for many, many years. And I try and avoid it, recently, when I say recently a couple of years ago. I’ve got a mate of mine that’s very old, and he’s a Christian Brother, and he is in a home in Melbourne. And he wanted to see his sister because she was dying and he asked me if I would drive him up and I did . And but I got the shock of me life, when I got, I found a tollway on me way. And so we had to pay toll to get on the toll to Sydney. And then I had to find me way out to North Sydney. And I was shocked at the amount of traffic, and of course the one-way roads nowadays, because Pitt Street in the old days was two ways, they even had a tram in it. But of course now today it’s only got one way. So and of course the old tram sheds have gone down at the where that huge sail ship they got down there, the opera house. That used to be the old tram sheds. And when I was a kid, there were two free rides you could ride, we used to ride lots of times, just jump up on the guard would come along, when the conny come along. But the thing was that the free rides were from out the front where the ships pull in, there at where the hotel is, out to where the old tram sheds were.

In that area? No I can’t think of anything that was around those days except servicemen. We go back after the war the place was full of Yanks. And

of course Bankstown aerodrome had heaps of them and they weren’t very well received, by not only me, I was a kid, but the thing was, received by other servicemen. Because they had so much money, as one bloke put it, the they had more money than sense most of them. They had all the girls, all the good looking ones or whatever. And so the Australian soldiers didn’t get a look in. Of course as you are probably aware that

it was Mackay where the two trains, one was coming down south from New Guinea with a whole train load of armed servicemen and the Americans were going north, I think they were going to Cairns. They had a base there those days, and they happened to pull up opposite each other. And I think there was six killed because the Australians got stuck into the Yanks. And sorted them out. And we seen a lot of that in Sydney those days because the Americans, they were everywhere. And a lot

of them of course married Australian girls. And were successful and some weren’t so successful. But of course we don’t see that kind of thing today. Looking at the news lately I don’t think it’s too far away when we may see it again, because they are talking about bringing the Americans out and putting them in our bases. I’m not very happy about that because the simple reason that I believe this country is ours and the thing it’s such a beautiful country. But we should be the ones who say who comes and who goes.

But going back to those days, that would bet the difference and of course their flags were everywhere. And then we didn’t see a hell of a lot of Australian flags and once the war, say about a year after the war was over they started to disappear. And so did the Americans. Of course they went home and they wanted to go home. They left a lot of their gear here I can remember out at Bankstown they took all their airplanes but they left

a lot of their trucks and things like that, the GMCs [General Motors Corporation trucks] and things like that. People were buying them and going into trucking businesses. So you used to see a lot of Yankee gear around. With civilian plates on them. Because I can remember one fellow that made a lot of money out of it actually, his name was Gleason. And he lived he had a place just out of Taree. And he bought a big heap of the trucks and he actually built the inland harbour down at Port Kembla. And

later on a lot of us guys in the air force in those days and our money wasn’t too good. So we would go up sometimes of a weekend and work driving his trucks around. And he used to pay us on a daily rate. So I remember his trucking business, and they were all GMC s. So we could drive those without much trouble. But as for the rest of that, Sydney, I suppose one of the big

things I remember that really upset me in some ways was the amount of women that lost their jobs because the simple reason that women were running the country, all our trades people, there were welders and terrific welders they were too, I seen a lot of them. There was welders and turners, fitters and everything like that that worked in all those trade places. And of course they built airplanes and guns and all those kind of things. And some of them were still there when I was doing the apprenticeship.

But when the blokes came home from the war they all wanted their jobs back and they had to get rid of the women. And it seemed terribly unfair that they had supported the men, and we would never have got through the war without them. And to think that they had to go home and of course they had their independence those days. And of course the blokes expected to come back and go on from where they were. And they expected to

go home give their wife some kids and she would stay home and look after them and cook the meals. And of course when women have got independence and have seen a different light, it’s pretty hard to get women to do that. So there was a lot of break ups of marriages and things like that. And that was something that I thought was you know pretty devastating when I look back on it. To think that that had to happen so the men could maybe get their dignity back and their jobs back. But I suppose that’s the only area I suppose in Sydney that I can remember, that things changed

as they went along. And of course the immigration started, and I seen that when I was in the services. And I get into trouble for a little thing I remember now that me daughter says things to me when Arthur Caldwell with the White Australia policy. And they were trying to bring in foreigners from Japan, not Japan from China and places like that. And Arthur Caldwell said,

“Two Wongs don’t make a white,” and I sometimes say that, I wish I hadn’t, the thing is that that’s how it was those days. We were brought up on the white Australian policy. And as people started to come in it was pretty hard to accept. And we used to see them around Bankstown and that and of course I’ll never forget that book that Nino Culotta wrote [They’re a Weird Mob], about his experiences in Bankstown. And being

called a wog and everything like that. Of course you wouldn’t do it today, we accept all that now. But those days it wasn’t accepted. And they came out not long after the war they started to arrive. And of course the Brits came here in droves, in ship loads. And so we had Poms everywhere and of course we would give then a hard time as well. But today, we wouldn’t even say anything. So that would be the only difference that I could see as the years roll along, as I look back on it anyway.

Well there was, there was actually murders that happened in Sydney. And of course the Americans were having their share, they were killing people as well. The, so there was lots of

fights and thing like that, especially in pubs. What they had to do, because I can remember quite clearly although I was only young, occasionally I used to go into the pub meself. And what used to give me away because I was so small. And what they did was they ended up allocating hotels. I think they were self allocated because the simple reason that the Yanks would drink in some of the pubs. Because I can remember the matlows and everything used to drink in Belfield. The army used to drink in the Town Hall. The air force always drank down at the….

I can’t think of the name of the hotel, I’ll think of it in a minute, they drank at their hotel, which was underneath Dymock’s building [Tattersalls]. And the Americans drank in their hotel which was usually, and one of them was a ship. Which was down at the Quay and I know what they used to do occasionally was they’d all go down there and sort them out. So there would be a blue in the pub. And the police would have to come and sort it out.

But the Americans weren’t very, well they weren’t liked at all because the simple reason they were too well paid, so they had heaps of dough. They lavished gifts and things like that on the women, and the women loved it, and I don’t blame it. But the thing is that the service blokes were blocked out. And of course they were all coming home then. And so there was a lot of bitterness. The Yanks boasted about it which they should have had more sense a lot of them paid a high price for it.

I know a little incident that happened that cost a friend of mine his life actually. And this bloke was named Stewart, I went to school with him. And we used to play over in the Bankstown aerodrome and one of the guards over there we got friendly with. And the thing was that there were a lot of guns that were made out of tin, they were imitations ones and we used to ride on them around and the guard there used to lend us his gun. And

used to unload it and we used to play cowboys and Indians with the thing. And we went over this day and there was Ray Fees, meself and this bloke named Stewie, we used to kick around together. And we went over there and Stewie run in behind the guard and took his pistol out of his holster. And raced around the front of him and said, “Look at me,” and put the gun up to his head and blew his brains out. And so that really affected me for many, I’ve never forgotten it.

And it come home to roost sometimes because when I was in Vietnam one of the things that we learnt in the services was you never carry one up the spout, and the Americans still today, carry them one up the spout. So you don’t get time to think. And I often think to meself, you know, just stupid things that we did. It wasn’t his fault because he was taught to do that the American. But we didn’t after that we never went over there again. And for some

reason, which when I look back, which is stupid, we blamed the Americans. And of course it wasn’t his fault at all, it was our fault. And it could have been one of us. But that was something that I remembered. And to be quite honest I felt that so that when the Americans left that we got our country back. Because you know I think it’s very important that what we have got we hold for ourselves.

No at the time because they kicked up such a stink, they didn’t go easy. The thing is that you can’t come along and tell a woman, you know she’s been working say on a lathe, because I seen some of those, she’s working on a lathe and she is good at it. And the thing is that she is getting reasonable wages

compared to the army wages. And the thing is that she has got her own independence. Those days having children and not being married was unheard of, it wasn’t done. And if it was you know the kid disappeared. And they thing is that those women, they used to go to dances, go to the pub, they used to sit in the pubs and everything like that. And it was something that I seen. And I wouldn’t have noticed it only they didn’t go quiet at all. I would say I’m talking thousands and thousands of them. All over

Australia, certainly in Sydney. They even had some marches, and the thing is that they really kicked up a stink and said, “Why should we go? We have been working her for four and five years in some cases. And the things is that we have held this country together. And you come home and you walk in and just say, ta-ta.” And I could see, because I liked some of them, well I liked all of them, for the simple reason, they were good tradespeople and women make good tradesperson even today.

They are excellent for the simple reason that they have the right temperament. And lots of them have got great hands, they have got long fingers, their eye hand coordination is excellent and everything like that. So they were really great. And when you think of the aircraft industry, especially the aircraft industry, a lot of them were air frame fitters, engine fitters. They were putting airplanes together. Certainly the blokes were flying them, but the thing is that all that expertise went down the tube. And all of a sudden you have got a bloke that hasn’t worked on machine or anything for five years or

four years whatever the case may be, the time he gets discharged, comes back and you put him back on the same job. You had to give him his job back. Because that was the deal. The law said that he was entitled to his job and they come back and demanded them. And the things is that when he demanded his job back the companies like say De Havilland, say those big companies in Sydney, the tyre companies, Dunlop, Goodyear, Fauldings was another place, it’s a stores place where they looked after

drugs and everything like that but the people that worked there were all women. And they had to sack them. And the thing is that I just though it was terribly unfair because some of the people that come in, they were nice people, but a lot of the army blokes had trouble, like they were drinking and they didn’t have much, a lot of respect for women, they’d been four years in the front and things like that. So a lot were a little bit like that, and we were used to the quietness and people getting on

with their job. And all of a sudden, and we did have problems, the whole of the country because when you look back, our production went down the tube. And a lot of people had a lot to say about it. And the thing was that, I certainly noticed it because the people that I knew a lot of people were trades people and things like that.

When I joined the air force?

Yeah. Well I didn’t so much get up to the dances or anything like that. Until I was until I got in the services.

All of a sudden I found everybody went to the dances. I didn’t I suppose you could say that I wasn’t greatly interested in girls. I know that sounds a bit strange, I wasn’t interested in blokes either, but the thing is I wasn’t interested so much in girls because the simple reason I could see that for me to get anywhere, you know, I had to finish me trade, I had to, usually tired to keep me nose fairly clean. I got into the usual things you get around the streets, like football and all those kinds of things. And sometimes I would go into the pub and somebody would give me a

drink but I don’t remember ever buying one. I’d go in there and stand with somebody and they would sneak me one, they used to call them ponies in those days. In New South Wales they used to have ponies and middies and schooners. I don’t even know if they still have them today. And so I would get a pony which was the smallest glass. And I thought I was big time if I had a beer. But when I was seventeen and half and I was down at recruit training everybody seemed to go to the dances. I did my recruit training at Richmond. And then at the Bright Lights it was called the dance at Richmond. If was commonly know as the

sack factory. And so we used to all go there. And of course

Well because of the women that went there. But that’s what it was called, I know it’s disrespectful. But if anybody is watching this they will all know this. And so we used to go there, they were nice people it’s just

you get a bit of a smart Alec when you are seventeen and a half and I think that you sometimes take up these things. So we used to go in there of a Saturday night at the base there. And try and pick up a girl, I don’t think I was very successful too often. And those days I wouldn’t know what to do with her if I did get one. So and then we started going to Sydney. And the usual things was we would go down on Friday night and go to Australia Hall. And

We would dance there, always wore our uniform because we thought we were the best thing since buttoned up boots. And then we danced at Australia Hall not far from air force house. And we used to stay over there and you could stay there for ten shillings a night. The only thing is you had to put your wallet down your pants and sleep with your clothes on because it was pretty rough, you would get ripped off so you wouldn’t go there if you had a few beers. And so we would stay there.

And then Saturday night we went to Paddo [Paddington] Town Hall, we all went, there was probably about fifteen or twenty of us. And we’d all go to Paddo Town Hall with two dance floors going and there was modern on one and fifty-fifty on the other. And we used to do the fifty fifty most of us did. And they used to, it was a little strange when I look back on it, they used to sell rum and milk and they weren’t supposed to. At the canteen, but

we used to think we had a few beers, like a few drinks. And we later found out that it was that imitation rum, so we didn’t have too much did we? And go there. And then on Sunday the usual thing was we used to go to Neilsen Park. Now we would pick up with a lot of girls probably be fifteen or sixteen girls that we used to hang around with, and they used to go to the same dances that we went to. And then so we would bring the booze along, not a lot. We’d only probably bring one or two bottles each. So you weren’t there to get

drunk and the girls used to bring the food. And so we would all meet at Nielsen Park that was a common place. And from there we would go swimming in the summer time and have a, and just stuff about like chase each other about, muck about kick a football, throw a tennis ball, all those kind of things. And from days, not in my case, but in those days a lot of those people, they got engaged and ended up being married. So but that was the usual thing. And then as years went along I kept going to the dances.

it didn’t matter where I was, it was at Sale we would go to Maffra dances and things like that. But in Sydney and then Saturday, just the Saturday itself, the usual thing was that we’d all meet at the pub the air force pub. And we’d have a few beers there and we used to wander down to Belfield’s. And have a few beers down there because we knew a few of the matlows and they were pretty good blokes that we knew. And

so a few beers there and usually have lunch across the road. Sometimes we wouldn’t bother with lunch, it would be a liquid lunch, but we would try and have tea. And if I hadn’t had tea my usual trick was I’d go in and get a milkshake with two eggs cracked in it. And, raw eggs, and I would down the shake with two raw eggs. That would settle me stomach

down a bit because I’d probably be a little bit charged up. And we would go along to the dances, and by the time you danced out the night you would be reasonably okay. But sometimes we used to have to come back to the unit and in Sydney those days they used to run what they called the midnight horror. And the train used to leave of course at midnight and it was a steam train to Richmond and the girls used to come down to give us a kiss or whatever the case may be and a goodbye and we used to get on the train and go back to the unit. And

it used to take a couple of hours, and we used to walk up to the unit. But that was our usual, we did that sip I did that for years, even when I went to other units. And got a, ended up buying meself a motorbike and things like that. I would even go back to Sydney and go to the same dances and see the same people. Occasionally we would go to the Troc, the Trocadero. Especially if we were going to stay in on a Sunday night if we had leave or something we would go to the Trocadero on Sunday night.

You’d see service blokes everywhere and usually the same girls. They used to follow around. And they were nice girls, when I look back on them, they weren’t, you couldn’t say they were frumpy or anything like that. They weren’t promiscuous or anything like that, they were just lovely girls. And we treasured them that way. We used to have a good time. And we used to hide booze outside the dance halls and go out and have a drink. It used to be wine because beer didn’t do much for you. And

things like that. But we never got that drunk you couldn’t look after yourself and things like that. And but I remember a lot of girls when they married some of our blokes you would see ‘em later on with a couple of kids, so they were good people. In fact when I look back on it, I enjoyed it.

Yep, it was a bit strange I didn’t know what to expect. They sent me out to Bradfield Park and I stayed there a couple of days.

And then they took us in on a truck and shoved us on a train. And there was about, there was thirty of us and we were sent to Richmond, we all got off the train in those days the drome wasn’t as long as it is today. We used to walk across where the airstrip is now. And they walked us up to the main gate and of course we looked up and see, “porastera darga” which is their motto

and we met this bloke. I’ve never forgotten him I’ve met him a few times as years went along in the services. And he said, “My name is Killer Carter,” I’ve never forgotten his name. I thought with a name like that we are in big trouble. And he said, “Youse can all line up,” and he got us all lined up. And he was a corporal and he started really into us. And the thing was that I learnt from the word go from probably the experience of places in Paddo and

where I grew up in Redfern, know when to keep your mouth shut and when not to. And the thing was, so I just kept me mouth shut. And the things was that they had us in height order and things like that. And I was probably the second smallest bloke. So that meant that when we were marked off that I was in the middle, and I remember there was one bloke shorter than me and we called him the rocking horse kid, he was behind me. And so we lined up in threes. And the first couple of weeks was foot drill.

We never got any leave whatsoever, our wages were, I think we got something like about sixty cents and my rank was ACRM. That was aircraft recruit minor, because I was under twenty-one years of age. And so the money was hopeless. So you couldn’t go anywhere with money, you only got payed fortnightly but the meals and everything were fantastic but we never got any leave.

I’d say the first three weeks. And so they marched you and you polished things and you had to lay out your gear. They had bed checks and in those days, I can remember the first time I went and got in me bed, they sent me down, they gave me this big long, looked like a big pillow slip. And they said, “Go down that shed.” So they sent me down the shed and it’s full of hay. And that’s how you made your first bed, it was a palliasse, they called them. So it was full of hay and depending on how much hay you put in it was how high it got. And

then you had to bring it back and tie the ends. We did have beds but they were straight out, they had no ends on them. And they had two struts that came out from underneath. And they had wire bases on them. And we got one wardrobe each. And we lived in a Nissen hut. And the old hut had one room up the end that had a corporal in it, and that was where

Killer Carter stopped, he slept in there and the rest of us slept in the hut itself. And they had bed checks, you had to lay out your clothes, all you uniforms and we just looked strange in them. We were given needles, lined up, and they used to punch a needle in each arm itself and then attach a syringe to it and you would walk through and you would get eight injections in the one syringe. I know some of them fainted. The blokes, because we didn’t like needles,

I didn’t like them meself. And I remember that when I first got me first vacs, the vacs took and I couldn’t move me arm at all, later on I got used to it. But the vacs I couldn’t use it at all so I couldn’t do any drill. So would you believe they sent me over to polish windows. Oh well. And so I’d say the first six weeks we didn’t see a weapon. It was just drill on concrete and of course

there was those days, Richmond was where they sent all the recruits for the Australian air force and the thing is I would say there was something like about fourteen courses going at the one time and there would be thirty people in each course. And each course had its own D.I., drill instructor. And we competed, my number was 157 was the group I was in and we competed with the others for best drill squad and that was the idea to make you better and things like that. And after six weeks they gave us weapons.

And of course the weapons were .303s and we were all fingers and thumb and everything with them, although I had used a weapon, I’d used a .22 when I was a kid. But the, we got our thumbs caught in the wrong places and everything like that, it took a long while before we got used to them. But once we got used to them we loved the 303. The drill with them was precise and we just thought they were marvellous. And of course they started later on after about eight weeks taking us on route marches because

we toughened up pretty well, and we used to be like, well we loved them I suppose, we sang songs and all this kind of things. And then they used to do like air raids and all those kind of things. We used to be out in the paddocks and we would have to get down and shoot imitation enemy and things like that. And the mongrels always seemed to take you to a paddock where there was plenty of cow manure. And they would take us out when there was a lot of it around, those kind of things.

Well we used to sing, one of them was a

German one and the German one was the ‘Lili Marlene’ would you believe because it was very popular in those days, it was a ‘It’s a Long way to Tipperary’ was one we used to love. And ‘Goodnight Sergeant Major’, ‘Bless’em All’, all those type of things. Because they were old war time songs. But we loved those, because this is in 1947, ’48, we were still getting concerts in the

theatre and we used to go in for sing-alongs. And the whole theatre would be full of recruits and of course 2 AD which is two aircraft depot and 86 Wing was at Richmond in those days and they used to come in too. And we used to have community singing, and they would get some popular signer to come up and lead us in community, and we used to love it. So that was really, that was the good part. And then

of course we got to the end, not everybody got through their recruit training. Some had been sick and that so they would back squad them or you weren’t good enough, they would back squad you I was lucky enough to get through, most of us, it was only a couple that went back. And of course when you passed out a lot of them brought their relatives and everything like that to see them pass out. I wasn’t fortunate enough to have anybody that would come up, but nevertheless I thought it was a great day.

And so I enjoyed it. And of course then what we had to do was get out postings. And my first posting from there because I hadn’t finished my training, and I was getting paid because of me trade, so I was getting more than the rest of them, the recruits, it didn’t make them too happy I can tell you. They sent me, it was only a couple of bob, they sent me off to Rathmines to the air sea rescue base. And that’s where the base was where they

started all the fitters and turners, like all the trades people to do air frames and engines and things like that.

We were there for three months. And in that three months we were filing, not so much using machinery but mainly it was hand work. Because a lot of the work you do on aircraft and everything like that is hand work, riveted. So you are using snap and dolly rivets the old type. Where you get a hole underneath and then tap

and then you had to measure the rivet properly, it was in what they called diameters, two D’s and half D’s and all that kind of thing. And one of the things that we had to do they give you a piece of inch round or twenty-five mil round. And you had to put six sides on it. And they had to all be equal, so you can imagine the work in that. And the things was we would be there for days filing. And drove us up the wall. And you make one mistake we used to take it and throw it in the drink, because it was Lake Macquarie. We had an air sea rescue base it was on Lake Macquarie.

And so we used to make, you had to learn to mark out and everything like that. So it was more trade. And I don’t know how many times I drew the hydraulic systems up on the Wirraways but they had a Wirraway there and it couldn’t take off. And a Tiger Moth, and what we had to do was learn to rig it. And the Tiger Moth when I went down to do my trade test, the Tiger Moth

had a fuselage and it was up on like horses, the fuselage was, the wings or the main planes as they call them were hanging on the wall. And so we had to take the main planes off the wall, off the wall. And fit it up. So you had a couple of people help you but they couldn’t help you other than what you told them to do. And I remember really clearly that the dihedral angle on a

Tiger Moth was a hundred and eighty-seven degrees. And the dihedral was where the line, the cord line was drawn through the main plane through the aerofoil section and the cord line was drawn through the tail plane which they called the eppenage and where those two lines met was called the, that angle was called the dihedral, and I will never forget, they used to plug it into your brain all the time, they said it wouldn’t fly unless that angle was a hundred and eighty seven degrees. But of course today with modern aircraft they are like flying bricks anyway

they don’t have that any more. But those days with the Tiger Moth. And once it was all put together, what they would do was they would shove you in it. The pilot would get in it and you would have to go up in the Tiger Moth. So you made sure you did a good job with it. But that was, and then they had a Wirraway there which they couldn’t take it off at Rathmines. But the Wirraway we used to have to do all the

hydraulics and everything like that. And you’d draw it up, I must have drawn it up two hundred times I reckon and coloured it in. So you knew the hydraulics backwards on the Wirraways. And later on they sent us down to Richmond and made us work on the Wirraways. And one of the things that the Wirraways used to be prone to was catching fire, when you started the up. And so you had to always stand by with a huge fire extinguisher, a foam one. And I will never forget this day, there is a bloke standing

there with a fire extinguisher and another bloke, that didn’t know much about Wirraways, had another fire extinguisher on the other side but opposite where he was. And this thing caught fire anyway he had to douse it, not that you wanted to douse them because you had to clean the engine off. The, he doused the engine and of course the other bloke looked like he was a ghost, he had foam all over him, he stood there again. But no, so at Rathmines I worked on Wirraways and Tiger Moths and of course I worked on the Catalinas. Because

that’s where they had the Cats and they were a fantastic airplane. And Wing Commander McMahon who was the CO [Commanding Officer] had a licence of course he was a pilot. And he used to fly it down to Rose Bay. And if you had done well working on his aircraft and things like that, what he would do is let you come down to Rose Bay because we used to have to go down on the train. They used to send double-decker buses for us and take us up to Fassifern and they would put troop trains on, there was that many of us, we would have a whole troop train.

And the troop train would take us to Sydney for our leave. And then on Sunday afternoon, the troop train would be there again, we would all get on the train and head back to Fassifern where the double-decker buses would take us to Rathmines. But one of the nicest things about that, my grandfather, who I loved dearly, lived at Dora Creek and the train used to go through there. So I used to write him a message and tie it in a rock and throw it out at the station, and the station master used to take it down and give it to him.

But Rathmines was, occasionally, two rides I had with him, and McMahon down to Rose Bay and he would have a staff car come down and pick him up and he would give us a ride to town. But the funny part about it he used to take his wife and family with him. His wife was a better pilot than he was and she wasn’t supposed to be flying them. But she’d be sitting there, and I don’t know if you know what the inside of the Catalina looks like but you got two seats and the bars and the pedals

and everything for the rudders and everything, but underneath there is heaps of room and in the front there, the forward gunner would be or the navigator would sit. And of course we used to sit in there and she’d be in a dress. And occasionally he would tell us to move because we weren’t being very respectful. I don’t think we were we were too busy looking out the bloody window, we weren’t looking at her. But she used to fly the aircraft down and land it. And she was a very good pilot. And she was a lovely lady.

They were really good in lots of ways, they used to try and make it a bit homely some nights there would be a turn out on or something like that. And her and her daughter would always turn up and give us like plates of stuff. And those days so that we try and get some normality in your life, what they used to do was have balls, big balls at the dance balls in our mess. And they would clean the whole mess out and they used to supply the girls.

And the girls used to come from Stockton Mental Home. And not the inmates but the nurses. And they used to put on buses for them and everything like that. And they would know how many blokes was going to go to the dance. And you used to have to pay to go and you used to pay for the girl that you didn’t see from the beginning anyway. And there wasn’t very much, I think we used to pay something like oh fifteen shillings or something, might not have been that much, might have been ten shillings. Anyway so when you went into the dance they gave you, you get all dressed up and everything like that and they gave you a number,

a ticket, a docket with a number on it. And of course when the girls came in they gave them the same docket, and that was the girl you got. So they would come in and sometimes you would be very lucky, sometimes you weren’t. But they put a good meal on, great meal, they put a meal on and dance. You weren’t allowed to take the girls outside the dance hall and you weren’t allowed to leave yourself. And the girls, the buses would pull up out the front, very well controlled.

And the all the girls, the nurses and everything would go out and straight onto the bus. But a lot of us made arrangements with the girls and we would meet them in Newcastle next weekend, which was our business, nobody else’s. And a lot of marriages, you know, evolved from those as well. But they were great days and the thing was, they were fantastic too because even if you got a girl and you wouldn’t very often get one you didn’t like. But even if you got one that you thought wasn’t the, you know, the best looking sheila in the place,

all the blokes treated her properly, you know, you stuck, you were stuck with that one for the night and we all did, and the things was we treated them with respect, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. And we had a good time there was none of that business about being nasty to people or anything like that. You went there with the idea you were going to have a good time, no booze. You went there with the idea you were going to have a great time and that’s exactly what we did. So those days are great memories. But I know that one of those balls and we

had, in the three months I was there I think we had two. But one of those I got into more trouble than I could handle, was that some clown came around with a teapot, with a tea towel, not tea towel, table cloth, and said, “This is going to be a souvenir. We would like you to sign your name.” And being as thick as a brick, we all signed our name, a heap of us, I signed probably about twenty or thirty. Anyway next morning that tablecloth was up the flag pole along with the orderly officers

pushbike. Needless to say we were all charged. For doing, of disgracing service property, well we don’t know who put the bike up we still don’t know who put it up there. And the thing is that we ended up with five days CB [Confined to Barracks] each, which we didn’t appreciate. But those kind of things happen those days, discipline was pretty tough, it had to be. Because the simple reason that you

got to run a big unit like that you got to have it so you do as you’re told, when you are told. So but that was a great unit there and I was fortunate enough that when I worked, I mentioned earlier, that I worked on Frigate Bird two which was a PJ Taylor’s aircraft, the first time he took it off, no it will be the second time he took it off, he knew he would have rough seas to take off in. And so they fitted the aircraft with what they called Jadars, and they are rocket propelled and the first time they had ever been used.

And they put them onto the side, fitted them onto the side of the Cat [Catalina] and I was onboard actually when it was on. And it took off down the bay, Coles Bay it was called, it took off down the bay and when he hit the button for the Jadar, one went off a fraction of a second after the other one, it slued the aircraft out and Coles Point was reasonably high but not really high, so probably a hundred and fifty or something like that and slued it up over the top and it just missed the trees and everything like that. And I thought

we were gone. But that was a, gave me something to think about. But that was the introduction to Jadars, after that they sorted them out. When those Cats used to take off in rough weather the water used to come up so high and hit the prop. And you could hear it, and of course it was an awful noise, like a crankshaft going bang, bang, bang as it went down. Until they picked up enough speed to get it above the waves. But they were beautiful airplanes, used to cruise at about

ninety-six miles an hour and you would get out of them, the engineer used to sit up between the main planes or the wings, and if there was any, if they got holes in them, didn’t happen in my day of course, what he could do, he could climb out and walk along the wing and plug them. So you know they were beautiful aircraft had a stove in them and everything, beds.

I was posted there. And that’s the normal thing, depending on where you are required. And so what happened was that I had been to a course, what they call a fitter Two A course. And down at Forest Hills at Wagga, and I finished that. And normal procedure after that would be

go into another group of pay would be to send you off to where there is a vacancy, and the vacancy just happened to be at Sale. Or East Sale as it’s called. So I went down and joined Abi’s air force and that was Wing Commander Abicair, you’ve probably heard a little bit about him but his daughter was Shirley Abicair and they used to call her the Beaufighter Kid because becauseshe had two huge motors out in front. And but

Abi run the maintenance squadron down there. And for those that mightn’t know who he was it’s reputed that he was Squizzy Taylor’s driver in Melbourne in the old gangland days. And if you read some of Squizzy Taylor’s the gangster’s history, you will find that Abicair and they claim it’s him, was his driver in the days when he

was doing stick ups and everything like that. And but he was during World War II Abicair was in the desert and he invented a filter that worked on the carburettors on the Merlin engines and kept the sand out of them, that’s how he become a engineer and got the rank of wing commander. But he was a funny little man but he certainly knew his game, he had been in the air force a long time. And while I was there the

aircraft that I worked on were Lincoln bombers. And they were of course left over from World War II. Dakotas we had a heap of Dakotas because they were a transport aircraft. And used in that line. And we had Mustangs of course that we used in Korea and later in the war. And some said replaced the spitfires, I never ever thought that. The Spitties [Spitfires] had Merlin

engines in them. And where the Mustangs didn’t and they had one big problems the Mustangs in the front of the engine and in front of the windscreen was where the batteries were. And if the batteries boiled the acid used to come up on the canopy and of course the pilot would have to open the canopy so he could see and he would get an eye full of acid or his face, he would have a pair of goggles on. But one of the jobs that I used to have to do there was arm up the rockets.

And we used to ride the wings of the Mustangs. And what you’d do, they have got containers on the main plane, the wings, and they got thirty cal ammunition in them, and what you could do was open the top of the hatch a little bit and lean back and put your hand in it to hold yourself on the wing and you used to sit over where the wheel was. And if the pilot didn’t like you or he was having a bad day, what they would do because Sale is known for how much water they get down there, they would go through the water and the prop would pick up

the water and you would get sopping wet. But we used to get square with them of course just before they took off. The tabs on the wings that let them fly the aircraft straight and level with hands off, what we would do would bend them down and so they couldn’t trim the aircraft out so they would have to fly it all the way holding the joystick, and they’d see you do it and so they would remember next time and be nasty to you, they didn’t do things like that. But

Yes.

No, no they do they can’t arm them up and take them down to the airstrip because the simple reason that if you do that they’re live and you want them live over areas that have got people living in them and things like that. And what they always do and they always have is that the aircraft will go down to the end of the strip ready to take off. And just before he takes off you arm the rocket. So it doesn’t become live until he is taking off. And

they have those for live firing exercises off the coast in conjunction with the navy and things like that. So and we used to run exercises down there. The other thing we used to do with the Lincoln we used to sometimes get a ride because they would want us to go to Williamstown just out of Newcastle. And when we used to do the big exercises what would happen is there used to be Queensland versus the rest, so they would bring their aircraft down and attack

New South Wales and it was the job of our air force those days was to defend New South Wales. And I will never forget that one time we sorted them all out and I didn’t realise until after what we were doing. But two of the Lincolns we loaded up with tin foil, we’ve been saving it for about six months. And the whole of the fuselage was full of tin foil so that the radar would get clogged. So as we left Williamstown, they took off, had only been gone about half an hour and they said

unload it, chucking out all this tin foil and of course just flooded the whole, it went for miles and miles. And the radar that was in the northern hemisphere that was being used to pick up clogged it all up. And of course they couldn’t see where aircraft were and things like that. So we had a win that day, it was only one day though. But they were about the only aircraft. We did have something like about six Tiger Moths, but they were mainly sued for training.

Because that was a training base at East Sale. The Tiger Moths they used to play fantastic games with it. What we used to do was let off, send up balloons and the balloons were the ones they used to use for weather, the weather balloons. But not blow them up too big. And they would float up and the idea was to try and bust them with the main planes of the Tiger Moth. And of course as you realise you have got two main planes, now if you don’t get the balloon dead smack in the middle it will flick over

the top or flick over the wing because that’s the way the wind goes. And so they become very skilled pilots adjusting the aircraft so that they get it dead centre. So there was an even amount of wind coming underneath the wing, the top wing and over the top of the lower wing. So it was a great game. But when the weather was very bad the Tiger Moths they used to send us down there to act as extra crew. The Tiger Moths would come in and they would be virtually flying backwards.

And so that they didn’t tip them over it was our job as soon as they got them on the ground we would either pull them down, and then jump onto the main planes, without putting your finger through the fabric, and hold them. Everything up to four of us sometimes, just laying there and trying to hold the aircraft down and get it in, otherwise it would just flip over with the heavy winds and things like that. But they were the main aircraft we had down there, besides the Vampires that I mentioned earlier and the Sea Venoms, the twin seaters.

Yeah that was air frames.

Well it means to say that you could sign for the aircraft, you could sign to say it was serviceable and things like that. So everything you did you had to sign what they call a double E 77. And a double E 77 was the log book for that aircraft. And

everything that ever happened on an aircraft was written in the double E 77. And so you had the authority to sign to say the aircraft was air worthy. I never forget one of the things with Abicair down there, somebody had put up on the board, and in the tarmac we used to have a big serviceable board. It would have the aircraft number and then they would have what was wrong with it. Then there was two columns to say it was either repaired or it

wasn’t. And if you were going to take an aircraft off the pilot would come into the tarmac hut and look at it and make sure the thing was fully serviced before he took the thing out and had a look at it. And somebody had written up there that there had been a rev drop. And what they had done, said that the engine was missing, and somebody on the other side on the serviceability side had signed the things up, usual search carried out, engine found between fire wall and propeller, and signed the rotten thing out. Abi walked in and didn’t think it was very funny at all.

And two of us got a boot in the bum. For being smart alecs. But engines and aircraft of course they have got maggies on them, and they got twin maggies and of course what he should have put down there was that there was either a rev drop on the left or the right maggie. And we would go out and see what the problem is and the problem could be usually it was plugs. So you would fix it up and of course that’s what you would write up so that they know. So that when they started the air force up and switch from one maggie to the other, note the rev drop on the rev counter, and there is a limit

to what they can and can’t do.

Yeah. There was a heap of us, what they used to do, have in those days, I had an airframe ticket and an engine fit ticket, so I could do both. And the thing was that what to do, they had tarmac crew. And that was the more interesting, and then they had the base crew

doing the overhauls. So if they are doing the overhauls you are working back in the hangars and stripping down engine and things like that and overhauling them. But I found that to be a bit of pain in some ways because the simple reason that you can’t use your own initiative. And fair enough you shouldn’t, but everything you do is checked by somebody else and it’s got to be signed. And so what happens is you work in groups of two. And you have an inspector with you all the time, he is an air force bloke. But they double-check everything you do

that’s why we never have any trouble with our engines or aircraft because the simple reason you have got so many checks to go through and nothing is left to chance. And I think that’s one of the reason we have probably got the best record in the world.

No I was on the tarmac, yeah, and you get everything checked there first. But the thing is that what happens is you get more leeway on the tarmac. If I say an aircraft is serviceable they will accept my word for it once you

become fully qualified.

Yeah because you got a huge difference when you are in training unit because the simple reason that the pilots have got to be trained on all types of aircraft. And of course the, for those that have been to the museum and Canberra and seen “G for George” which has just been overhauled

and I should imagine, I haven’t seen it yet, but it should look absolutely magnificent. The Lincoln aircraft is identical to that airplane. And what our role was to make sure was that the engines were up and running, and everything like that, we check them over. The other thing, the airframe itself has to be completely checked over. Tires, you have to get into the aircraft itself and make sure there is no marks on it. The pilot reports if he has got any problems with flying.

He should be able to fly the aircraft feet and hands off, it should be rigged in such a way that he can fly it straight and level without having to touch anything. And the other thing is you got to make sure all the windows Perspex has got no marks on them or anything like that. And all the controls work as they should. The Dakotas of course have got twin wash engines in them and the thing is that they’re a hugely reliable aircraft and they are mainly

used to transport. They used to use them in the old days at Richmond where they used to train the parachutists, especially the SAS [Special Air Service] people and things like that, they later moved up to Williamstown. But a lot of us used to go up with them in those days. Just to make sure that anything in the aircraft needed repairing we could actually repair them in the air in lots of cases, especially with hydraulics and things like that. So, and they always if they would go on a long trip, and in the old days they used to go from Richmond to Butterworth in Malaya, that was 86 Wing and then from

Malaya they used to go up to Iwakuni in Japan and a lot of used to, they always took an engineer with them. So at Sale they didn’t do that so much, but the thing is that occasionally if they were going on exercise they would certainly take us with them so we could to the dailies and the servicing on those aircraft. But that would be, we had the Tiger Moths, probably about

those days they had about six of them, four of them would be in service all the time. We didn’t, we had the Lincolns, the Dakotas, and the Vampires, we had those there and that’s about all we had at Sale these days.

Well mainly they would fly to sea, they would go to sea or things like that. When the exercises were on of course

what they would do is that they would probably go to Williamstown and then from Williamstown they would fly out on exercises to sea in conjunction with other aircraft. Later on, and what they used to do was use them out at Tindal which is up in Northern Territory, for attacks on Darwin. And so from Tindal they would fly to sea and come back over the top of Indonesia

which we would have to get permission from. And then they would come in and attack Darwin and we could pick them up because we had the radar up there those days. And the RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] had bloodhounds [surface to air missiles]. They didn’t use them but they used to have the big radar set up there. They used to call them CRU [pronounced “caroo”; radar surveillance and ground control of fighter interception, based at 2CRU (2 Control and Reporting Unit) Darwin]. And later on they did exercises like that so we went on a couple of those where they used the Lincolns. But mainly they were training so what would happen

they would go on navigation exercises. So you would head of say to Edinburgh, you wouldn’t land at Edinburgh, you would go from Edinburgh to Woomera, then would come back and back to Sale. And so you’d be training, some of the Dakotas were set up with something like about fourteen desks all set up with, that had navigation aids on each desk. And we would take the student sup in those and what they would do they would

navigate for the exercise in the Dakota itself. So they were mainly used for school exercises.

Sometimes we would yeah. If they were going to stay overnight anywhere we would go with them, because the simple reason that what you need, the aircraft has got to have a daily and every day, so the thing is that if he is on a long haul you need people that are used to that airplane you can’t just use somebody else that wouldn’t know a Dakota from a bull’s foot. So they would take their own crews on them.

They do sometimes, and one of the greatest formation I have ever seen was that they used, is what they call the Prince of Wales feathers, and they do this a lot at say places, they’d have a big, say an airshow at Sale, we had them at Sale we had them at Richmond. And of course down at Laverton they used to have airshows there those days. And what they will do they will fly in formation, in formation they used to put two Mustangs on either wing

and the Lincoln would be in the centre. And what they would do they come up over the crowd, the Lincoln would fly up almost vertical and the two Mustangs would fly off at angles on either side. And it looks fantastic, so they used to practice those kind of things. And of course now today we have got the red sails and things like that but we didn’t have those in the old days. But they would fly over do little exercises and things like that, if we had an air show on or something.

So they were used for that because Lincoln aircraft were a very attractive aircraft to look at because they were the results of World War II and we were still flying them those days.

Well there is an old saying, they said that a pilot is not worth his salt unless he could fly a Tiger Moths and he had to fly it by the seat of his pants. Because they are the only true aircraft that flies all over the place.

And to get a ride in one they were fantastic. But I’ve only had a couple of rides in them and they are really great. But you are all over the place because

Are you?

Oh that was early in the piece, that was, I got out of the

air force I am just trying to think, in would have been, ’48. I’ll just have a quick look. I got out of the air force in 1956. So it would have been prior to that. To my knowledge we only did one up there. But later on when I was in the army, which I will tell you about later on we certainly

did them then, but they were using Mirages by then and I was well and truly out of the air force.

A Lincoln aircraft yeah, I didn’t go out on the, I was based at Tindal. They didn’t take us out on those things like that because the simple reason that our use was to do the dailies and to make sure the aircraft was serviceable. And they wouldn’t take us out. We were only ever transported from one place to another and then on the ground and they went off and did their thing.

Well they were big exercises, I’d say you probably got something like about six or seven Lincolns. Dakotas, probably six or seven of those. And Mustangs they would have all up, and the Mustangs would probably have say eight, nine Mustangs. Because there were Mustangs elsewhere but the ones I am talking about are the ones from Sale. So because

Williamstown had Mustangs up there which they alter got rid of. Because they have got the Vampires then, and the Vampires were stationed up there as well. We only had a couple that we used to training exercises, like we introduced pilots to it.

Korea, I got into the army, when Korea was on, we, yes, I can see what you are getting at with the air force, we had a couple, they were Mustang pilots. And those days they were only

staff sergeants on it, that’s right, Tom Stoney was one of them. And they were fantastic pilots that flew in Korea. And when they got posted of course they come back to us. I was fortunate enough I went to Japan once. And but those days I was 86 Wing and I went up to Butterworth and then onto Iwakuni. But I was only there for a couple of nights and then they flew back because they used to take us up. And my job was to look after the aircraft and what used to happen of course, the pilot

would sit in the back playing cards and one of us would sit up front and watch the fuel tanks. So that make sure if we had to switch the tanks over. We’d do that, but you could set those things on George [automatic pilot] and away they would go. But other than that, Korea, all I can remember is the gung-ho pilots that had, that we got to know, and I have never forgotten Tom Stoney because he, they were so nice to us, they used to

look after the ground crew. Whereas you get some of the younger ones, and these were only staff sergeants, and later on all pilots become officers. But it was unusual to see a warrant officer because that was a bit high ranking, they only made them sergeants and staff sergeants those days. And of course now they are all commissioned officers. They were great pilots and we knew a little bit about them. And that’s as I mentioned earlier, Black Jack Walker was in that lot too, he flew in Korea and later become a test pilot.

But they made great names for themselves.

Oh the word would get out, you know, he flew so many sorties, he took on a MiG, those kind of things, stories that you would hear from other people. They were mess stories, you would be in the mess and somebody would say, you know, Tom Stoney arriving, and you would say, well who the hell is Tom Stoney, and they’d say, well he is a staff sergeant in Korea and took on a MiG.

And you’d say well how did he go, and in most cases not too good because the MiGs were far superior to later on we had Sabres up against them and they were superior to Sabres as well. But for a prop job to take on a MiG was something. And we’d hear the stories, so you get a bit of respect and, well you would like them.

Only sometimes but he damage would come from when they were using rockets. And going in too low. Some of these blokes, they would be up under a Mustang and when they would come in on a target

the target would, in most cases be on earth, and they had concrete war heads. And they would put them in on a target and they would go out too low and the concrete would explode and come back onto the air force and would damage the bottom of the aircraft. And so that was the only ones that we fixed, that we would be repairing. So no I didn’t repair anything that had gunshots in it or anything like that.

Well they were. But we didn’t used to say anything to anybody we just repair them and not report it. Because the simple reason that lots of times the pilot would be in trouble and we liked them. So we didn’t say anything about. It’s like when you are taxiing aircraft we used to taxi the aircraft and to a spot say on the tarmac or on the strip somewhere. When we used to have to put them away for the night or whatever the case may be. Because if you went between, if you went close to

a, and you were supposed to have people on either wing tip. So the watch, so if you went along you didn’t hit a building or a hangar or something like that. And I can remember once that I was taxiing and aircraft and I went a bit close and I took a wing tip off a Dakota. And the deal was, if you took a wing tip off a Dakota you put it back on again. And the things was, the amount of rivets in them, there is thousands in them. And you used to take the whole wing tip off and put a new one on and you had to do it in your own time. So instead of doing it,

you would allocate it during the weekend. Things like that. So you just made sure that you didn’t do things like that. That only happened to me once I can tell you.

Only a dent or a hole. Sometimes there would be a hole, he would be going really low if there was a hole. But it would generally be a dent or something like that and lots of times we couldn’t do anything about it, you wouldn’t touch it. But

if it was on a panel or something like that we would get all the rivets out and put a new panel, then rerivet it. And it was time consuming and it was tedious work. And I didn’t like doing it. It was like putting the de-icer boots on Dakotas, on the forward leading edge on the main planes, they have a rubber, and you may have seen them, a black and it’s a rubber boot. And what they do is that the exhaust gases are fed into

that boot. The boot, when the ice gets onto the boot, it’s fed into the boot and then the ice gets in and it cracks the boot. And it drops off. Now if you break one of those, those have got to be replaced, there is thousands of little PK’s what they call Parker Kollen, screws you got to screw in and you got to do them all by hand. You can’t use anything mechanical on them because the simple reason that if you slip with them and damage the boot you gotta replace them and they are expensive. So we used to, you would spend days

in putting de-icing boots on. So you made sure you never damaged one of those. Because if you had to replace one, once again you had to do it in your time. So it’s time consuming and tedious.

Yes I worked on the Vampires. I was fortunate enough to go and do a special course. They had Nene in them and Goblin engines in them. So I went and did a course on jet engines. And

so it was my job then, there was only two of us at Sale at that time that were qualified to work on the jet engines themselves. But I can remember once that they had a, on take off in a Vampire, the pilot had blown a tyre and they were using what they call circuit and bumps. They would come in and just touch and then take off again. And somebody had seen that he blew a tyre on the way out. And somebody had sent that from the

control tower. And then they can bring them over and they can fly them over the control tower and they can look at them with a pair of binoculars. It’s pretty hard to detect a blown tyre, but they must have seen it blow out when it took off. And so what they did they bought it, they said, they wanted two or three aircraft to get in, and to get a tyre, and aircraft off the strip if he has got a blown tyre is a hell of a job, because you can’t, you’ll damage the thing. Because he is just dragging a flat tyre. So he brought it in and lobbed it on the strip and we knew

beforehand and a couple of me mates raced out and what we did we jacked up one wing on the strip itself and changed the wheel, all, I reckon, they reckon we did it in record time, I don’t know if it was ever a record, people say that and so on. But we did it in about four minutes and changed the tyre on it with the help of other people. And got it back onto the strip and took off and got the others in. So things like that makes it a little bit exciting. And so you are doing

something worthwhile. But no I worked on Neens and later on as I said I left the air force they sent me out to Havs [De Havillands] and that’s where I worked on Black Jack Walker’s and he was testing Vampires and Sabres at the time actually. To be sent to, not to Korea, to service which we used later on. Used in the RAAF service but I had left by that time.

Well I loved airplanes, you know, full stop. I just thought they were the greatest things that were going. And they were a pleasure to work on and the other thing is that whenever you do work it you are lucky because you got clean clothes on you are well looked after. All your tools and everything are almost brand spanking new. And so the thing is there is no grease, dirt or anything like that. So your conditions that you are

working in are ideal.

Engines that I worked on? Yeah I suppose I did, I liked the Neens I thought they were great engines. The other things is that you don’t have to be extremely bright to work on jet engines. Because the simple reason is that they are not as complicated as most people think they are. Just to give you an idea,

I’ve forgotten exactly how many cylinders, I think there were nineteen cylinders on them. I could be corrected there, I have forgotten. But to check to make sure they were all firing, the only way we used to check them was we would go down the end of the strip and get a pair of binoculars and look at the back. And see, you could see them in rotation if they were firing. And if there wasn’t one firing you could pick up which one it was. So like simple things like that. The other thing is that the intake for argument sake is a series of fans, exactly the same as they are today. And of course

if one of them goes, you got one going one way and one going the other way and what it does it just builds up the air pressure in the engine itself so that when it goes into the cylinder, they lock it off, ignite the cylinder and it’s the reaction of an explosion in there because what you are doing is you are getting huge pressure and the pressure is equally diminished in all directions and if you let it go one end for a split second the pressure is on the forward part and that’s what drive your airplane forward.

So it’s really simple and the thing is that when you are looking at them, although it may appear to be complicated they are not. And so once you get used to them there is not much that can go wrong with them. The only thing that can go wrong is them is the feed of the fuel itself. And most of them have got one igniter plug, that’s all they have. Some have got two. So that when you start them up you get them ignited

first and then they ignite each other. So they are fairly simple.

Four years. And then I took my discharge with the idea of going into the army. Because I had ideas that I would like to get promoted. And the four years that I had spent, certainly enjoyable and I learnt a lot. No doubt about that. But I felt so that if I was going to get anywhere I needed to get away from the air force to get promotion and things

like that the army was huge compared to the air force and so there was vacancies there. And I thought that would be the place for me. And in the first place I always wanted to get into the army. And I actually got into the air force by default. So but certainly didn’t do me any harm, in fact it served me well later on. Because I can remember once I was down at Nelson

on an exercise just prior to going to Vietnam and they were using Austers down there. And they had an airplane fellow but not an engine bloke. And they had to put a new maggie on and he couldn’t tune the engine. So I made up a little circular chart that I could set up to tune the maggie and I tuned it up myself. And the bloke was amazed to think there was an LAD warrant officer in the army that could tune the engine for him. He wasn’t too happy about taking the

engine off. Like using the aircraft because he didn’t have a qualified, but anyway they run it up and he got permission from Williamstown because that’s where he came from. To use the aircraft from there. And they spoke to me and I told them who I was. And what I had done in the past so they accepted it. So it does come in handy.

Yeah. I think

there is not much improvisation you can do in the air force you start doing that in the air force they will give you a toe out the door because the simple reason that everything is black and white there is no grey. But in the army of course you can do things like that. In the air force they certainly don’t like people that can do that type of thing. So I, certainly improvising in the air force. That was the one thing that I helped this fellow with. And I got to know him later on actually on other exercises. He was a good bloke.

Almost two. Yeah, I worked with Qantas but I seconded if you remember rightly and sent out to De Havilland to work on the jet engines for them, out at De Havilland but I was still on the payrol at Qantas because I wouldn’t go out there without because the simple reason that it gave me continuity of service. So that

when I went into the army I in fact had six years service up my sleeve. And I was thinking of me pension. And so that my DFRB [Defence Force Retirement Benefit] the day I marched into the army I had six years service up my sleeve. I had lost the money, but later on after about three years in the army we were offered the opportunity to buy it back. And so I actually bought my service back in money for kind. So that when I eventually took my discharge I had

twenty-seven years and went out on a pension equal to a major. So I knew that when I first joined the army so I thought I was just waiting for the opportunity to buy back that service. I wanted to join the army because the simple reason, I had ideas and it was always my aim to become a warrant officer. And so this was, and I made it, I might add, within six years. By going to courses and getting

yourself upgraded because in the armed services as it is today you get promoted on knowledge. And the things is if you get those course behind you and are going to be some use to the services then they will reward you with promotion.

I went in as a three-star class man. As a fully qualified tradesmen and I was corps enlisted into RAEME which is Royal Australian Electrical Mechanical Engineers.

And so I went straight into that and as I said earlier they asked me where I would like to go. And I thought Puckapunyal was near Albury so I said, “I’ll have that. That sounds good to me.” I liked Albury. And it turns out they through me off this little station at Seymour and seven miles out to Puckapunyal I find this desolate, oh it was terrible place them days. I find this terrible place and of course it’s fairly huge range where they run their tanks and I was posted into

one armoured regiment LAD which was light aid detachment. And that was my first posting to Pucka. And I was in that unit for many years. In fact I was in Pucka for about seven years.

I did, I did six weeks, because I had been in the services before they give me a credit and said that I only needed to do six weeks recruitment training. As an ex service person so I did six weeks at Kapooka and at the end of the six weeks

and I am still getting paid full, three star pay. But then they sent me straight off to my unit. So and that’s how I started in the army. There were sixteen of us in the unit. And I was amazed to think that there was a warrant officer in charge. And there were staff sergeants and sergeants and of course I was then qualified and they called me a gunny because

I was qualified as a fitter and turner but gunnery, that was the way I was going to go. And so I was only about there only six weeks and they sent me to of to do a gunnery school up to RAEME training centre at Bandiana. And I went up there to a school which covered twenty-five pounders and all arms and all the equipment that I would be working on including tanks for the rest of me life.

No we certainly, I went in at the latter end, what they did there was a recruit course on which they run for three months those days, I was, did the last six weeks of it. And they just threw me into one of those courses. And the thing was that the last six weeks I picked up a .303 which I hadn’t picked up for a long time and went thought the drill, it took me I reckon, probably a week

to get meself back into action again because all the muscles and everything that you are used to using, that I hadn’t used although I was reasonably fit so that helped me. And they were pretty lenient towards em for the simple reason that they realised that my area of expertise was going to be trade related and not shooting at people. And that came later on.

They sent me to RAEME training centre, which is out at Bandiana, which is out of Albury so I eventually got there. And the idea is what they call, it’s a class two type of training. Later on I did something like about thirteen or fourteen schools there. But that area I went there in the beginning was an introduction to gunnery and as I said earlier it was the twenty-five pounder. And what you do is you strip them right down, go right through the hydraulics and everything like that.

Finding for any faults, fault finding and things like that, they put faults on the weapons you’ve got to find them. You got to be able to repair them, strip them down. And then what they do is they teach you about gunnery itself. How the shell operates, when the shell leaves the bore, when does it become armed. How the projectile itself, how that operates, how far would you expect that trajectory

and all the things that go with gunnery. Because if something goes wrong you have got to be able, to have what they call gun artificer on every range and they are not allowed to shoot without them. Or in war or in any other way. And the things is so you would be standing behind the guns and you’ve got to be able to quickly recognise the problem is and go and sort the thing out. And that includes ammunition if ammunition breaks down or you have a problem with it you have got to repair that. Sometimes the ammunition is stuck in the, you will get a misfire and the misfire

will be in the bore. And you got to be able to know what, the shell fragments when it takes off, what they call set back inside the little clock mechanism, turns it back, what it does, there is a key and it comes around and there will be a lots with a different shape. And in that shape will them fall through the shape that it’s going to fit and that will arm you, your projectile up. Some have got valves in them and things like that that send out wavelengths. And you’ve got to know exactly how they work and how they truss. Because the simple reason, I’ve had them

where there is a misfire or they haven’t had enough bag say in a twenty-five pounder, and the shell hasn’t come out, it’s gone about two thirds of the way up the bore. And you’ve got to be able to get the thing out. And so they have like a cup that fits down the bore and it’s a bit crude, it’s got a big shaft on it, you go and get a sledge hammer and shot it back down the bore and get rid of it. But if you don’t know, that’s an explosive shell, and if you don’t understand, first of all you won’t do it because it’s live, but if you understand why it’s in, how it works and everything like that you know you are completely safe. So you’ve got to know exactly. Then there is the other part. Even tires, you’ve got to be able to repair the tires, because there is tires on them, how to pull the thing into action. How does the sight work, how do you line up, because in most cases it’s not the gunner that will line up his bores and everything, he will get onto you. You will have to come up and what you will have to do is called bore sighting. You will put a cross there across the bore and then you will line up a target, thirteen hundred yards away those days, it would be metres today, or greater so the parlex error goes out of it. Then you put in a shell in the back, and it’s got a small hole in it. And you’ll line it up on the target, and then look at the sights. And then line your sights up on the target. So that you have got something in common. So that when you fire it, it’s going to hit the thing that you are after. And then eventually what will happen is, that weapon will fire, they’ll fire it in, they will put it onto a target whatever the case may be, and if it’s a touch out they will adjust it by firing the weapon itself. So you have got to know all about the sights, how they work ...

The sights and things like that. You are responsible really for the whole gun. And the other thing is that I think a lot of people don’t realise and it’s still the same today in any type of gunnery or anything like that, is that you have got say your twenty-five pounders or anything like that that they used to use those days, and of course it was 105 Howitzers. The guns, that

you got line of sight over the top of the bore. What can happen is the enemy come in on you, what happens is sometimes you have got to point the gun straight at them and fire your weapon straight at them, your explosives and things like that. So what happens is you got to be able to, well know how that goes on. And if anything goes wrong with your guncrew or whatever the case may be anybody that’s around, like the cooks, if they were up there, they are trained

in the unit to be able to take that gun over and fire it. Because it’s go good having people in a unit that are useless. It doesn’t matter if they are cooks, GD’s which are general duties people that run around and clean up your toilets and things like that. Or the bloke that works in the office or does your pay or whatever the case may be. At one time or another the unit will make sure that he gets out behind those guns and if anything goes wrong he can actually at least shoot it. And you have got to have those

kind of people. So one of my jobs was to not only make sure there was safety on the range but if anything wrong, was to make sure that the people that were doing the firing and everything like that by your actions and the way that you went about your job. That what they were doing was safe. And one of the things I would do prior to the guns going into action. And that was the job of all the artificers was to go along the front of the gun and we used to put down

what we call a plug ball limit. A low limit gage, and it’s a gage that’s about this long on a twenty-five pounder, beautifully made, machined fine by grinding it and everything like that. And it’s the minimum size that a shell will come out. So what you do is you slide that down the bore to make sure that there is no obstructions because sometimes what can happen, the shell itself on the back of the shell, so that it seals the bore, is made of copper in most cases. Later on they made them

nylon. But they are made of copper so that when they engage in the threads of the bore itself and get spin, what happens is what gives them spin is the copper engages into the bore or the lans, the lans turn in the bore and the shell turns and that’s what spins it. On its way up. So sometimes they will pick up a bit of copper. In the bore. Now if you can’t get your low limit gauge down, it means there is an obstruction down, it’s up to you to make sure you get, it’s my job to make sure it gets cleaned out. And so

that there is no problems and the gun’s not going to blow up. It does happen sometimes, in the forty mil anti-aircraft guns that are used, what can happen, they fire them so quick sometimes that they will build up, in the lans, and I’ve seen them where the shell has gone off and just peeled the end of the barrel off and made it into a banana type. Most cases you won’t get anybody hurt but that can happen. So when you are talking twenty-five pounders or any gun.

And then they have a straightness of ball gauge which is a gauge about this long and what’s happened, it’s very sturdily made so that when you put it down, if the barrel is bent in any way it won’t go down. Now if they see you doing that job and they know that you are happy, I go over to the gunnery position officer, the GPO. And I will say to him, okay your guns are okay, go for your life. And he will go off and do whatever he has to do. Now in the even of war you still do that job, because the simple reason that if you

don’t, you can’t have guns blowing up. And the thing is that what happens in a lot of cases you get excited, the gun crew gets revved up when you are firing some rounds or anything like that. And the thing is that if you haven’t down your job you are likely to put them at risk. And so when you are an artificer or a gunny they call them, in any of those artillery units or anything like that, you become pretty important and they look after you.

Valves? Only the valves would be, that’s twenty-five pounder in the recoil system. See when a gun goes off in the old days when you see the ones in the ships you know, if you have seen commander or one of those where they got those cannons, the recoil was taken up by the wheels and ropes on the side. So that when, it runs back in the ship. Well the recoil has got to taken up by something otherwise it will leap over you head. Because the amount of pressure that goes forward to fire the shell it’s exactly the same

pressure that is coming back so it’s got to move something. And so what happens is they have hydraulics that attach. So that when the gun moves back, what happens is a series of valves in there that restricts the oil. So it becomes slower and slower and slower and slows your gun down, so what happens is the gun recoils and then what happens is the ridge surges it pressure in the oil and pushes the gun forward and it’s ready again to fire again. So that’s where the valves are in the twenty-five. 105 Howitzer gun, all guns

you got to have some system in there. And of course if you go back to what happened in the Crimean War and things like that, if you remember when they fired those the wheels used to leap in the air, and that’s what used to take. And the spade would dig into the ground, that’s what used to take the recoil. We got a bit more sophisticated than that.

Lots of them.

I started to specialise in that I was very interested in, was Centurion tanks and that type of gunnery, five fired gunnery which is the big heavy gunnery, when they say fired five, it’s five point five inches across the barrel so it’s a fair bit. And so, but what happened is, being in an armoured squadron armoured regiment LAD, my main area of expertise has to be the Centurion tanks, I get seconded to these other jobs. But the thing is that

when they went out in the range or anywhere like that it was my job to drag along behind them. And check the gunnery and everything to make sure that every day I would look at that. And then the other area that I got to know a bit about was the engines and I would have engines and I would have engine mechs [mechanics] with me as well. If they had any problems or anything like that it was my job to make sure they were sorted out. And then of course you have got to become a bit of an expert in the area of wireless and

map reading and things like that. Because when you are on an exercise say like we were at Pucka many times, the first big one we had was fire power. What happens is that you have got tanks all over, you might have thirty-six tanks on the range. Now if you got thirty six tanks on the range you could have three squadrons which we used to do, A, B, and C squadron. And at one stage we had Delta squadron. And you got them all over the place, if they break down or they have got a problem or anything like that. They won’t come up and tell you exactly where their position is because they are going to give it away to the enemy. So

what they used to do they used to code everything. And you’d have to be in on the exercise with the coding and everything like that and seeing like most of the times I was the LAD commander of that little section. Although I was only a corporal at that stage of the game. And so what they did they come up on the air there and they’d say, “Croc one” and then give the code, it might be “Mini two” and I had an overlay and I’d put it over my map and I would see where it was.

The mini two could be a position on the map because it’s code named, and I would know that it was a croc, which means he has broke down. So then I would have to go out there and see what the problem was and sort the thing out. So you’ve got to have a fair knowledge of radio procedure. And also you got to be good at map reading. So you can find these things because it’s no good running around all over the range. I can tell you a little funny one that happened with me and I don’t think this bloke would mind me

giving his name. His name was Dronerweegan and he was a sergeant and he was Dutch, he later changed his name to Greenaway. And at that stage, no he wasn’t he was only a corporal, and I had him on a recovery vehicle. So we had a big recover, now this is a tank that weighs fifty-six ton all made of steel and everything like that. He wasn’t used to tanks he had only been posted in the job. And I needed a recovery job done so I come up on the air and I got onto him, his call sign was, one two Charlie.

And we used to always have out own, kept it all the time. Anyway I told him where the croc was and the croc was out the other side of Mount Pucka. And I gave him, and he said, “Can you give me a bearing?” Anywhere I wouldn’t give bearings over the air because the simple reason that the enemy are listening too as well. So I just said, “You head for Mount Pucka,” but I used a code name for it and I said, “and I will pick you up.” So anyway

I drove my vehicle up on the side of Mount Pucka and waited, but he was back in Puckapunyal himself and it would have taken maybe a couple of hours to get out to where I was. Because you can belt those tanks along at say twenty-five, thirty without much trouble at all. Anyway it was getting about, it was about four o'clock in the afternoon in winter, it was getting dark. And he’s getting lost, he’s got lost. Anyway in the end I couldn’t have him lost because I had a job to do. So I sent for him and I could hear he has gone too far because his radio was getting weaker

and weaker. So I said to him, “Where are you?” and he said, “I don’t know.” So I said, “Righto, throw your main beam in the air,” which you are not supposed to do and the main beam has got a big search light that we use for when you are doing recovery at night you can see what you are doing. I said, “Throw your main beam straight in the air and I will have a look to see where you are.” So anyway I couldn’t see it. So anyway I track him down the next day, he had gone past Mount Pucka into the bush, onto Bows Woods. Anyway so

anyway when I got to him I wasn’t too happy and I just said to him, “What the hell did you do?” I think I might have called him a few names. And I said, “How the hell did you get out here?” and he told me that he, he worked it out on the map and got the bearing and everything like that and he got his compass and put it on top of the recovery vehicle and remember it weighs fifty-six ton of steel. And the poor little compass is about this big. And took a compass bearing and headed out with the compass bearing. And I have

never let him live it down. I see him at reunions sometimes and I say “How are you going, compass?” and he says, “I will kill you, you have never forgotten it have you?” So things like that, you know, little things like that that happen in your life. Anyway. But I also had a mishap which was just a little bit of bad luck. We had a bloke killed at Pucka on the range. And what happened was that the national service kids we used in the tanks those days, we later

stopped them because the cost was prohibitive to shot one round it was about eighty six pounds. It cost for each round to shoot it. And this was the first lot of national service kids that had come in. So they were teaching them on gunnery on Centurion tanks. And anyway what had happened, the safety officer who was the sergeant who was in with this lad, any rate, and he was firing the main armament and he got a stoppage on his

main armament. So I jumped in the seat and cleared it. And by the time I had cleared it and things like that I had actually got the shell out. And of course they are electrically fired. I got the shell out and they had gone too far in the thirty-cal, it’s a thirty-cal machine gun that aligns with it. Any rate, and he had a stoppage there as well. So I got him, cleared that up. And to see what the problem was, it was just dirty ammunition. Any rate, so I got out and stood on the back of the vehicle

and the kid got another stoppage and instead of me getting in to clear which really wasn’t my job the safety officer jumped in and was a sergeant, and cleared the weapon. And the usual thing after you clear is you fire a short burst, to make sure that it’s firing okay. The kid had dropped his, the oil can which shouldn’t have been up there anywhere, it should have been inside the turret, had dropped the oil can and it had dropped down in front of the gun, he climbed down to get the oil can. And the

the instructor that was in there cocked the weapon and fired a burst and it hit him from right across the shoulder to right down here. Killed him instantly. I just seen it happen it was amazing. And I just yelled out to my crew, we were on radio and things like that. I said, “Get an ambulance out here straight away.” But any rate I dragged him off the side of the vehicle onto the ground, but he was dead. So by the time the doc got out there and things like that it was the end of it.

So you got to be ever vigilant to make sure that you know, that that kind of thing doesn’t happen. I had another one with Centurion tanks. It was a little strange. We used to get all our ammunition from England. And the thing was, and it was expensive. So Maribyrnong tooled up, that’s where the ammunition is made, tooled up and started to supply us with ammunition for our, for the Centurion tanks. Now Centurion

tanks fire another different type of rounds. One’s in APDS armour-piercing discarding sabot. And what it is, it’s a small shell encased in a nylon casing. So that when, and the small shell is inside that. So that when it comes out it discards and the shell goes on. So you got all that power behind it. And they use that for armour piercing so it’s got

high velocity. And so they fire those, they fire what they call Splintex or canister. So that and what that is all these little ball bearings and everything like that. So that when you fire them they just come out and just burst, if you are up against infantry or anything like that. And we used a lot of that in Vietnam. And they also fire HE, which is high explosive. Now the high explosive that we were getting, the shells on the end were oversized. And we knew it

because we couldn’t eject them, couldn’t eject the casing itself out of the breech, because they wouldn’t come out and the only way we could get them out was what we used to do is take the base of the primer out which is electrical and then we put a screw in and put a puller on and pull them out. Anyway the minister for the army and it happened to be, I’m pretty sure it was Beazley those days, him and all his cohorts were coming to see

an exhibition on firing on the range. And what they didn’t know was that we used to cheat occasionally, because what we would do is fire a blank and we’d put AP, not AP, plastic explosives, say you were going to fire on, they put a car up, an old car. And they were going to blow the car up. And so as it looked very impressive and they never knew this, what we would do is we would get engineers in and the engineers would wire the thing up and put

explosive in it and stand off with a bloody, with a plunger. And you’d hear, “Fire!” and the bloody thing would blow it to pieces. Little did they know we fired a blank and the bloody thing was blown up by the engineers. But it looked impressive and we never had any trouble with these blokes. Anyway Beasley was coming up and we all his cohorts, got people coming out and there is brigadiers there and goodness knows what. And the CO [Commanding Officer] of our unit was a terrific bloke, anyway, Coleman was his name. He called me in

and said, “We have got a big problem.” And I said, “What’s the problem?” and he said, “The problem is we got to fire on the range, we got all this ammunition and we can’t eject it. So it means that we fire one round and that’s the end of it on the range. Is there any way we can get those bloody things out quickly without having to pull them out?” And I said, “Yeah there is a way.” And he said, “Well what can we do?” And I said, “Well I will go and get a bit of two inch water piping, about an inch and a half, and something like about thirty feet long and I will weld it

and what we will do,” because we picked the range, number two range, and three got a gully alongside it, like a water course. And I said, “What we can do is the tank can roll forward, fire at the target, come back, wing the bloody gun over to the side and I will have look,” because we had national service men in those days, I said, “I will have all these little men and they will run in and put the pipe down and knock the bloody thing out of the casing out in the

into the turret itself.” And I said, “and that way we can keep it firing all the time.” “Gee, good idea” he says. So this is what we do. Anyway we charge one forward there and I hear misfire and I thought, oh god. So which means that the bloody thing did go off, there is an HE sitting in the main barrel of the Centurion tank. Anyway I know that they need set back and everything like that. But a lot of the gun crews don’t know all this stuff. So anyway the gun crew is in there and there is all these

people there with binoculars, you know, big-noting themselves, and Beasley had a uniform, big fat slob, and he had this hat on and everything, you know, big hat. We were all wearing berets back in the armoured mob. So anyway, and I hear a misfire. Anyway the GPO the gunnery position officer said, “What are we going to do?” And I am standing pretty close to him and I said, “Leave it to me.” So the bloke orders the gun back so I said, “Just do what you normally do.” So he ordered the gun back

swing the gun over the side, I signalled these guys to run in, they shoved it and it went bang and the whole shell came out, the shell and all, crumpled up. Dropped into the bottom of the tank and all the blokes jumped out the top of the tank. They were going everywhere. There was only three in there but they jumped out of the bloody tank and the bloke that was standing on the back took, didn’t know what was going on and he jumped off too, he was the gunnery officer. Anyway I looked in horror at this bloke, anyway, we were just lucky they didn’t see it. But the little blokes that were

running, they said, “Was that live?” “Oh no, don’t worry about it.” We had to coax the blokes to get back in and they said, “What are we going to do? The shell is in there?” Anyway we know it’s safe it’s all crumpled up. Any rate I said to the sergeant, “You should know better than that.” He said, “ I seen them jump out of the tank. I thought there was something wrong.” I said, “There was.” So I he got it out the back and put it in the scrub, we blew it later. But I will never forget that. But I know Coleman was standing there and he is trying to stop laughing while they are all standing there watching it. Watching the target.

So we had some funny things.

Oh yeah. Number two range it was called for those that know anything about Pucka. And the thing was that all that kind of thing, but we used to do a lot of little things like that. Later on I worked on Malcara which was a missile that was laced up with cord. They have them at, they run out on wire. And so it is controlled by joystick And you

got to be able to see the target. And later on when I was working on that that was really strange. I was working on it, it was supposed to be a secret, there was only about two people at Puckapunyal who knew anything about Malcara which later on the Brits took I might add and used it for anti tank, it was a fantastic weapon. I don’t know why we never ever took it. But any rate so we had to do some trials with it. And I was sworn to secrecy I never even told me wife. Any rate and I had to go out at half past five in the morning. And what we’d done, I had made up a mounting

that fitted into the side of the ferret, scout car. And it was going to be fired off the ferret scout car. So they bought the Malcara from Melbourne or wherever it come from, up in a horse float so it wouldn’t be recognised, we did all that. We get out onto the range and it’s just light and I get the thing mounted up with, all civilians, all boffin help and everything like that. We get it mounted up onto the side and they got to have an artificer on the range by law.

Anyway and I met. So any rate everybody is saying how secret it was. We had a place what we called spectator hill where spectators, the families used to come out and see what was going on. I looked around and I reckon there was two hundred people up there. All watching. And this boffin bloke said to me, this solider, said, “Oh we can’t fire now. We can’t show anything,” and I said, “Oh rubbish, what are you going to do? Crumple and shoot them all. You better keep your mouth shut and we will fire the rotten things.” Any rate what they used to do, you could guide it, and it was so good you could guide it through a doorway. And

So when they fired it the wire comes out behind which controls this, through the wire itself. And what we were doing we had bunkers that we had already built. And so we fired the main armament of the Centurion tank into one lot of bunkers, and the same lot of bunkers were built on the other side and we fired the Malcara in there. And the Malcara just blew, it went straight through the door. And they had great control over it. So that

was at the beginning of the, so I worked on the Malcaras.

No that was my area of expertise I wouldn’t even know what was in it. But the, my job was to get it mounted, I had to make up the mount. They gave me the drawings and everything like that so I made up the mount for it, fitted it into the

doorway, the doorway in the side of a hatchway. In the ferret scout cars. And so I made it up so it fitted in the doorway and was mounted up onto the side of a scout car so it could take off. And it was a rocket, missile. And wire spools, twin wire spools on the back of it. And it went through and they had a control with a joystick and everything. And you controlled it by line of sight, it had pins on the back to give it guidance and things like that. But my

job was mainly the Centurion tank. To make sure that that was firing and they wanted to get the wear in it. so I had a pull over gage to get the wear each time it fired. Don’t know what ever happened to that. But it was also to make sure that the Malcara was mounted up, and my area was mounting it. The rocket itself, I knew stuff all about.

Malcara itself, be about five foot long, four foot six. And about oh, fairly fat

looking thing, it was about eight inches, ten inches in diameter. It’s, it had a warhead on it of course. And that’s what we wanted to see how it operated. And it was invented would you believe, by an Australian and it was a fantastic weapon, and we never bought it. They gave it to the Poms, and the Poms used it in the desert and places like that as an anti-tank missile, oh it was deadly.

And it was you know a real shame.

Well it had to be cradled. To hold the thing. And the thing is it had to be done in such a way, had to hold the weight of it, it was really heavy. It took, there was four of us, to get it across, and we had to bring it out and put it up and, later on I believe they made them a lot lighter, but it was fairly heavy.

And but the cradle itself had to be special and had to be all welded up and made and everything like that. And what I had to do was I had to end up making it myself. Because the simple reason that nobody else was supposed to know about it. And I had been cleared for top secret. And so and not everybody else had been. And so nobody was supposed to know about it, expect the two hundred that were up on spectator hill watching.

What had happened, I was keeping the secret and others, the secret got out and they, everybody in married quarters knew about it so they all brought their bloody wives and kids out.

Come out and watch this, missiles, new, come and have a look at it on the range. This was about 1957, ’58 somewhere about that. So missiles were completely new. And in that ear, so to see something like that was really good. It’s a wonder it didn’t make the newspaper, it didn’t.

Oh I did, back to front, I worked on it. All told I suppose I would have given most of my army career to them, red eye missiles and to, and to the forty mils. But most of my life was on Centurion tanks. So I considered I knew the Centurion tank back to front. I developed a means, which later on I used in Vietnam, and actually made the front page of The Age newspaper. Here back in Australia. Was to

take the, what happens, in Centurion tank, if you had a front idler or a front road wheel or anything blown off it can be replaced. American tanks, if you blow something off you can write the tank off. And even the new tanks they got in that they are now going to buy, the Abrams. Well Abrams, I met him he was in Vietnam and he was the general that took over from General Westmoreland. And later on I will show you a photo of them. And

he come down to see what had happened in one of the tanks that had the front road wheel blown off. And I made up a, to replace them we used to have to take the mudguards off all the tops and everything like that. And put a wire over the top and drag them into position. They were extremely heavy. And what I done, I got a fifty ton jack and made up so that what I could do is put it on the fifty ton jack, run it in, and I used to have a plate of sixty-four steel and lay it down in the dirt,

and I would run it in and jack it up into position to save all that time. And I could remove one of those, a damaged one, that had been damaged by a road bomb or something like that. I could remove one of those and put a new one in something like an hour. Whereas the other it would have been something like three or four hours. And so what I could do, that’s my expertise so I invented that. To come in and the other thing that I could do

with most of anything that was in there at all, what they call cupola locks or anything like that I could recognise what the problem was very quickly.

A cupola lock is when you traverse the tank, you do it by hand or you can do it by electric motor. And you can do it by hand, most of them use that, to get your gun onto that last little bit just to make sure you got it on your target. So they had little indents in them that used to fold across, and when they say order lock, as soon as you stop them, jump to lock position. And what would happen those little pins would wear

and so you would have to get a file and fix them up. And so anything like that I could, and I become pretty expertise in the engine itself, because they had, would you believe, a Merlin engine, a Rolls Royce Merlin engine. Same as the Lincoln aircraft had them. So I had a lot of experience on those so I could actually recognise and do repairs on those fairly quickly. They had a what they call an auxiliary motor on it than run all their electrics and everything like that. And that was a little

Ford, four cylinder that you had in the old Prefect cars, exact same motor was in those. And so we could get those, and as for the tracks and everything like that if she done a track or blew a track or anything like that, I done a course on explosives and I could use the PE [Plastic Explosives] and things like that and I could break the tracks and get them off without, see what happens sometimes is the track will jump off on the inside. But the idler at the back of the Centurion is so taut that it is like a

bow string. Now you can’t go in there and cut it with the oxy, because you cut it with the oxy, the kid that was cutting them with the oxy because I wouldn’t do it, because you can get wrapped up with the track itself and they were extreme, that would kill him. So the only way to remove them was to use explosives and we used to get PE and what I’d do I used to use a cardboard and make like a little tent and run it across and put the PE across it and put a dent in it. And what happens, it inverts when you explode, and it would crack it as clean as a whistle.

And that way I can explode those from a distance and break the tracks. And then of course you can move it and take the tracks off.

Yeah, just crack the track right through. As if it had been burn by a couple of, burnt by an electric knife. And so things like that, there wasn’t very much that I, you know, that I couldn’t do. And especially on the machine-guns what we used to do is have thirty cal machine guns in them.

Which we later on switched over and we put a fifty cal in it and the fifty cal we aligned with the main armament. And what we used to do is fire the fifty cal at the target and as soon as the fifty cal hit the target we fire the main armament. Because it meant we were on target, that way we didn’t waste ammunition. And so you got proficient at making sure they were aligned. And would hit the target when you expected it to.

Well it’s a 3.3 the diameter of the bore. And

it’s what they call an auto-fratage barrel which means to say that it has been shrunk bit by bit onto the main bore itself and it’s been put in tension with oil. What they do, they put the oil in the barrel itself and seal it all off and pump it up to great pressure, and what they do they put everything in tension and it will hold a long barrel without drooping it. And they call it, that method is auto-fratage. And it fires electrically so that

when you fire them they fire electrically so that when you throw the breech across you press the button, a charge of power goes in and burns a little fuse. They are usually about, the fuse is about five inches long and what happens is that inside that the little element like the electric light globes, and what happens it just lights up when you do it and it give you an explosion. And that’s what fires your main armament. And to keep the

smoke and everything out the old ones, earlier ones didn’t have a smoke extractor. But when you see that bulge on the barrel itself, and it looks like it’s encased, say the barrel is that round and the casing goes in about that long, what happens is the series of holes being bored so that as the shell comes past on its way to it target, what happens is the vacuum in there. And I mean there is a pressure in there but there is a vacuum in the other and what it does it sucks all the

air out of the breech block. And so the blokes inside the, inside the turret itself don’t smell it, well they smell it all right but they don’t get covered in smoke and bloody cordite and everything like that. So they are very cleverly done, beautiful weapon. And very accurate.

It’s mounted on the barrel itself. So as you move the barrel up and down

so the your fifty cal goes up. It’s mounted, it’s got clamp, it’s clamps on the barrel. So wherever you put that barrel the fifty cal points. So what you do, so in the old days you might have to fire two or three shells at a target to hit it, like you’d be unlucky if you did but that used to happen, and they are very expensive. So what they used to do, the other thing is if the enemy hears a fifty cal he knows that whoever is out there, it’s bigger than the, see when you got war or anything like that

a section, if they are firing rifles and it’s one or two you are hearing and say a machine gun, you can bet it’s a section. If you hear more than one machine gun you can say it’s a company. If he is using say a fifty cal you are starting to look, he’d got carrier with him. And that’s how they recognise things. So he might think there is carriers there using the fifty cal and he wouldn’t be worried about a Centurion tank. And he’d be mistaken. But the fifty cal would hit the target and you don’t hear much, and it’s

usually got a smoke on the end of the… it will give off a puff of smoke. And so you can see straight away you’ve hit the target and your main armament aligned but just press the tip and you’ve got your armament on. And so it’s a good way of doing it. And of course they fire canister, and canister you can lay that down in depth with they used to, they did in Vietnam when I was there. The enemy is coming at you, what you can do is you get that close to them so that they are within fifty yards of you

or anything like that, what they do is they start laying the canisters out. And it’s about a hundred percent effective.

Well what they will do, say you’ve got a heap of people running towards you, and what can happen is that what you’ll do, is you’ll start on one end of them and put the canisters out, lay a burst, another burst, another burst, and they will cop them all. It just spreads out and it’s, like little bits of shrapnel, hundreds and hundreds of little pieces of shrapnel and it looks like, all the world like a tin of

say peaches, you know the tin of peaches, well it’s upside down and it’s all in there, and what it does it just burst out everywhere. It’s a bugger on the barrels because for the simple reason that for each one of those you fire, it effectively cuts your life down in your barrel. Very effectively because the simple reason is it’s going up there and it’s not clean. Like a shot gun.

Well if you look at what they call the tote, which is the full set up, your whole tank when it goes to war and they don’t always carry them, in Vietnam

we didn’t. What you got is you carry a spare barrel. But they never ever, it’s a pain, how the hell are you going to put it in anyway. You got to use a crane to get the barrel in, to take it out and get it in because it’s so heavy. So they only have the one barrel on there. And so and what you got to do, every time there is a round fired it’s got an effective life. And I’ve forgotten exactly what the effective life is.

Off the top of my head I think it’s sixty, so if you fired sixty canisters you got to get a new barrel. Because a canister is worth one life, but when you use the stuff which has got nylon, that’s coming up it hasn’t got very much wear on it. So if it hasn’t got very much wear on it say you’re looking at .02 of the wear of one, say you might get hundreds of rounds out of it. Depending on the type of rounds you fire depends on how much wear it makes when it goes up the bore. And so and that’s all recorded. And so

first thing I ever looked at was the log book, so many rounds is fired so then you can measure it, what they call pull over gages. And you measure it C of R which is commencement of rifling. And then what you can do is calculate the wear by the measurement of the wash, as it comes out, it will wear just before the rifling and then I can calculate the life and the re give it another life. By the amount of wear that is on that barrel. So

Yeah it’s going up the bore, the whole thing, it’s like a shotgun, you know pellets in a shotgun, it’s the same thing. It coming straight up and it’s in the bands and everything. And so it’s a huge amount of wear on the barrel itself. So we give the effective life of that of one. It’s, we used a

lot of it in Vietnam. The buggers, I’d kill them if I could because what they would do sometimes was they wanted to clear the bamboo. And they couldn’t see, the buggers would come along and fire a canister shot through the bamboo. And of course it would flatten the bamboo. Oh there it is, and off they would go.

Yeah.

You mean the distance it can fire.

What type, yeah. All right it starts with, you got the canister. And we just mentioned that one. The next one is the armour piercing discarding sabot and that’s APDS and that’s the one I was telling you about, it got the small shell in it and it’s encased in a nylon cocoon. So when it comes out the nylon cocoon leaves and it’s got all that, and that’s mainly used to anti-tank. Cos what it does, it will go through, and then they’ve got

it will go through the turret of most steel tanks. And then they got a squash head that burns through, a phosphorous one, when it hits the tank, it goes like a big piece of say cow manure, and what it does, it will then burn through. And then runs around inside the tank as well and sorts out anybody that’s in there. And then you got HE, which is higher explosive. And they do, they used to, they don’t any more, they used to have a

smoker, but they don’t use that any more, not that I know of. And that’s about the range of the ammunition that they use. So but they got smoke canisters, they mount on either side of the turret that they can fire for small rounds. What they will do is they will fire it forward, it goes about fifty yards and lay that down sometimes in depth and then withdraw to get out of the road if something is coming, that they don’t want to see. They can, they are armed up with smokers as well.

But they are very accurate, they can fire on the move because they have what they call stab, it will move up and down and stay in approximate, not exactly the gun will sty in the approximate area and they are going things. But the new ones they are getting, the Abrams, stays on the target, would you believe it doesn’t matter where they go. So it locks on and stays on the target. The Leopard tanks were a little bit like that but I didn’t do too much work on the Leopard. I was

moving, taking my discharge by the time, I was there when we got the Leopards but I was on the way out.

No the gun itself, it floats. It’s on like ternions and everything like that and secured, but what happens is it will stay on, electric motors, got electric motors that will bring it up and down and keep it approximately where you want it. And so they are like gyros. They will keep the gun in the approximate position. And of course if you are stationary those

gyros will put the gun straight on for you when you look through your sight, you can see exactly where, you know, where it’s going to hit.

Very conscious because the simple reason that earlier in the piece what was happening was they were getting the training team together, because the training team were up there in, I think it was ’63 or ’62 or

something like that. In Vietnam. So we were very conscious of it. The other thing is that I certainly wanted to go. And I thought well this is my last chance of, I’m getting a bit long in the tooth, my last chance to have a go at something that’s got some guts in it. So I was looking to go. The only problem I had was that being a warrant officer there was not a lot of vacancies. If you are in say a craftsman or something

like that or an infantry or something, you go very quickly. But they have got to find a vacancy for me. And that’s where the problem lay.

Yeah well we were doing that all the time actually. Because the simple reason that we knew the gear that was going up and everything. And we were fully aware that they had Centurion tanks there. And what was happening was that they were

looking for people that could fill some of the roles anyway, especially with the equipment. And I was very much involved earlier in the piece because three battalion was at Woodside. And I had just been posted up as the OC [Officer in Command] of 111th light ack-ack battery. And they had missiles and 40 mil weaponry. But at the same time I was senior WO [Warrant Officer] on the ground up there, the battalion was there, it was my job to look after the battalion.

So I was checking on their small arms, if they had any problems or anything like that. And just before they went to Vietnam the boss rang me from Keswick, and said, “Have you had a look at their equipment lately? They are getting ready to go.” And I said, “Well I think the equipment stinks but I will go down and have a another look.” And although we were in the same area and I knew a lot of the blokes. But I went down there and took a

couple of fellows down with me and actually went though every weapon that was there. Set up a table and everything like that and I physically stripped every weapon down in the battalion which meant eight hundred, went all through their gear, and found it was a thorough disgrace. Wasn’t their fault, it was just old, worn out. And it wasn’t up to scratch. So what did I do, I recommended they be issued with all new equipment. The whole battalion. And so 3RAR [Royal Australian Regiment] got new rifles, new everything before they went.

It was a bit of a funny thing about that actually. Because what happened was some of the blokes, they went up in the beginning of the year in 1968. And I arrived there in April ’68, and when I was doing EIS [Equipment Inspection Services], I went down to the battalion and inspected them again. And one of the blokes said, “Gee you’ve got a great job, you see us off and check all our equipment, and now you are up here seeing us.” And the funny part about it,

when I went and inspected them again and went through all their gear and sorted it out so they went home with reasonable gear. But what they used to mainly do, the bigger stuff like mortars and things like that, leave them behind for the next battalion.

Well it had eventuated actually through a mishap. I was the OC of the LAD. And we were down at Myponga shooting

the sea and the sea targets with live ammunition. And I had a crew of sixteen odd people. And a boat came out from Victor Harbour and went within the range. And the gunnery positioning officer who was only a young kid, I ripped down and said to him, “Stop firing there is a fishing boat and he’s come under your fire.” And his exact words were,

“Stuff him. He has been notified through the newspapers and the police station and on the air,” which they used to do, “And if he is stupid enough to come out there that’s his problem” I was absolutely shocked and amazed of course. So I just ripped up onto the mound and grabbed my sergeants and said, “Come up here and pull all those breech blocks.” And there was hell to pay. So I pulled all the breech blocks out. And stopped them from firing. Any rate, they rang the CO, happened to be a bloke named Neville Paisley, I never got on to it.

A major, a Duntroon bloke I might add. And he come down and him and I hadn’t seen eye to eye. Because he didn’t seem to take a big interest in the equipment, as I did. So he thought it was a golden opportunity and threatened me with court martial. And so they fronted me to the brigadier. And the brigadier was an old friend of mine, I had known him many years. And the brigadier thanked me very much because that’s what you are supposed to do.

And said, “It’s obvious you can’t back to the unit with the CO trying to court martial you,” so he dismissed it on the spot. And said to me, you know, “What do you want to do?” And that was me golden opportunity. I just said, “I want to go to Vietnam.” And he said, “You got it.” And six weeks later I was in Vietnam. So I was pleased about it. I had to go to Canungra of course. And do two weeks jungle training.

Which everybody had to do it was one of the laws.

Oh yes. Well and truly. And I might add that my wife wasn’t very happy about it. It think most wives all do the same thing. But I was over the moon about it, but all I could do was make out that I wasn’t. And I was saying things like, oh I have got to go and do my job, and those kinds of things. But I was really breaking my neck to go.

Well first of all

I was, they couldn’t find a spot for me first up. And seeing that I had been told that I was going, so they had a couple of jobs. They said they wanted me to start in EIS which hadn’t been, equipment inspection services, in Vietnam because there was a lot of trouble with weapons and equipment that weren’t kept up to standard and nobody was keeping their finger on it. And at the same time they asked me if I would take over as the task force armourer. And which meant that I was responsible for equipment, the weapons in the task force at Nui Dat. And under

the command of a captain, and he was an EMU, an electrical mechanical engineer, he was an old mate of mine. So there wasn’t any problems with anything like that. But I almost had a free range of what I was going to do. So as soon as I arrived in country I got to Nui Dat and I reckon I wouldn’t have been there any more than a week and I found meself back in Saigon. And actually another old mate of mine, a captain,

said, “We want you to start EIS,” and I said, “Well what do you want me to do?” And he said, “Well you do what you like.” And I said, “Well let’s start with the training team.” And I said, “I will go through all the units one at a time” and there is a little funny story there, that I couldn’t get an offsider. And because the simple reason they weren’t going to post anybody and everybody was being used in country. So the EMU which happened to be a major said, “Well you can have a bloke but you are going to have to go and find him yourself.” Now me

biggest problem was the get somebody that I, well not only was I compatible, that wants the problem so much, but I wanted something that could do me paperwork, that was more important, I could strip the weapons down, do that, become very proficient at doing that. But I wanted somebody that I could teach to do it to give me a hand. Any rate I went around the unit commanders and the unit commanders weren’t prepared to let anybody go because that means they are going to be short one person. And the other big problem

that I had was that who ever I get I didn’t want him to be too good looking and I didn’t want him to be chasing women. Because the simple reason that if somebody gets the Jack I could lose him for six weeks, and if it’s a bloke I trained, I’m in trouble. So what I did I went around the units and I found a bloke eventually, his name was Graham Peron, his people owned a big ship yard in Queensland, he was a national service kid. And the thing is that he was really nice, keen to work and

everything like that. And the thing is that, he told me he was engaged to be married. And I thought, oh yeah, this is for me. Because a lot of them disappear in the brothels. Any rate, so I said to the boss, “I’ve got this young bloke, now I am in the bachelors officers quarters, of a night-time he is going to be down the Canberra.” That was the OR’s quarters in Saigon. I said, “I am not happy about that because of a night-time he can disappear on me, he can be engaged to be married or married, who knows what they all do.” So he said, “Well what

do you want to do?” Any rate, I said, “I’d like to shop around and get some quarters with him.” Anyway, I found a hotel called the Don Khan Hotel. I later found out it was a brothel as well, sort of thing that wasn’t any good. And so he said, the boss said, “Well how are we going to work this?” I said, “Well the army can hire the room and I will take him in with me, and that way he stays of a night-time I can get me paper work done. It’s too good of a situation, then I will move

out of the bachelor officers quarters.” So he said, “All right.” So he moved in. And he lad never ever knew, he doesn’t even to this day that he was there specifically to do my paper work of a night-time. But see at seven o'clock of a night-time there is a curfew. And you can’t get out onto the street. And it means to say wherever they are they usually stay. And it was, I thought it was a little funny because after a couple of nights I found out that the place was a brothel, so I thought oh well that’s good. Most of the hotels in Saigon are.

But there is a, just a funny little story, can I?

After I, I went backwards and forward there. And what happened was I said to the boss, I had a big room, I had a shower and toilet in one room, a huge room, about twenty by twenty, could even have been a bit more. And the thing is that I said to him, “You know I got a few mates down at Nui Dat that might like to come down here.” And the word was that if you could find somewhere to stay, they would let sergeants and above, have a couple of days’ leave, or

whatever to come to Saigon. Any rate, so that I did I got twenty odd stretchers and put them in the room and let the boys, anybody know if they were coming down they could use my name and just use the room. Got a fridge and turned it into a, an old fridge it was, and I did it up and put it in there and keep plenty of green, which was VB [Victoria Bitter], and XXXX [Fourex] in there and things like that. Because beer is ten cents a can, it was cheaper than buying bloody, we called them goffas [Royal Navy slang for soft drinks] because soft drink was eleven cents. Any rate, but

what I had found out I had been coming backwards and forwards here for a little while and I found out some of our blokes were getting the jack [venereal disease]. Off the girls in the brothel. And I thought to meself, this is no bloody good, so I said, and each brothel had a manager, and I said to the manager, “Look you know who’s got the jack and who hasn’t? How about you give me all the girls numbers that haven’t got the jack, and I will give you the biggest bottle of Bacardi and coke every week when I am here.” And he said, “Yeah, I’ll be in that.” So when I used to walk up in the bar,

I would go over to him and he would give me a list with just the numbers on them. Any rate the word got out because, I told the Australians, if you pick up a sheila come over and have a look at me numbers, and that went on. Any rate, I was away a couple of weeks and back I come. And the place used to be frequented by Koreans. Korean officers, and I never liked them they were very bad news in Vietnam they used to throw anti-personnel mines out on the bloody roads, run over

people, treat kids like garbage, push them over. They had no, just terrible people. Any rate, and I certainly didn’t like them and I don’t think any soldier in Vietnam did. Any rate, and they was always in there and they found out that I had these numbers. Any rate, one of them come over one night all dressed up and he said, “You give me numbers,” and I said, “I’m giving you nothing,” and he said to me, “I want numbers,” and I said, “Hey.” I told him to piss off. Any rate,

he pulls out a thirty-eight [pistol], puts it up to my head and says, give me the numbers. I handed them over straight away and gave them to him. And I thought bugger this. Any rate, so the next night the word was out that the Koreans could get the numbers off me. What he didn’t know was I had switched them all. All those that had the jack had all their numbers down there. So I reckon I lit up half the Korean bloody army, mongrels. The padre found out about it, somebody must have told him, he was an old mate of mine, the chaplain. Any rate, the chaplain

was down in town and he said, “I heard a little story about you.” And I said, “Did ya?” And he said, “Yeah.” And he told me the story. And I said, “Oh you don’t want to believe everything you read.” Everything you hear.

Well I didn’t have to, all I did was any number that was on, don’t touch them. And I had that down there for some time, so a lot of the blokes used to come down and have a few beers and have a good time down there. But

Oh it was great. Because I was as fit as a fiddle. And my hobbies and everything were mountaineering and things like that. So I was in really good nick. And when you are running up embankments using bayonets and things like that to get up I didn’t have any trouble at all. And you’d have to rope the rest of them up and those kind of things. So

I just thoroughly enjoyed it. And so I only, because I had already been posted, they only sent me up there for ten days, it’s usually a fortnight. And they only kept me up there for ten days and I was flown straight down to South Australia. And I think I got one or two days leave and then straight off to Sydney, to South Head. And I arrived there on Anzac Day and I thought, oh I would like to have Anzac Day in Sydney. So the bloke that was doing all the allocations of people

on aircraft and everything like that was an old armoured corps mate of mine. So he said, “When do you want to go, Tommo?” And I said, “How about the day after Anzac Day?” So he said, “Yeah, okay.” So actually somebody must have rang up or people rang up South Head and I got an invitation to go over to Harbord RSL [Returned and Services League]. And be their guest for the day. And it was really fantastic. I had a few beers and everything like that, and they had a concert on

and all those kind of things, and I marched with all the local people three. Although I was entitled to because at that stage I really wasn’t a returned serviceman. But they allowed me that courtesy. And then the following day it was on to Qantas, actually that night, the following night it was. Flying Qantas aircraft and had to wear my civilians because when you land at Singapore they were allowed to have army blokes there. I think they gave me twenty-five or forty bucks or something

to go and buy a shirt. Anyway of course I didn’t buy a shirt. And so we landed at Singapore and then onto Ton San Nhut, which is where we all land. And there was a little baby Herc [Hercules] there waiting for me and about twenty others, the aircraft was loaded to the hilt. And there was twenty of us going down to Nui Dat. And next minute I was on the way down to Nui Dat. And they met me down in a Land Rover and took me up to task force. And then

I got meself a tent and a bed and things like that. Which was already got for me, blokes knew I was coming. So they looked after me. And what I did I just stayed there for a few days, to get meself familiar with the area, because the big secret in Vietnam is that if you can get through the first six weeks, you start to learn what you can and what you can’t do. If you get through the first six weeks you are in business. Even when you walk around say in areas, you never keep the same pace and things like that, you alter your pace

if you are over near the fences of anything like that. And I did that all the time I was in Saigon too. Whenever I was in Saigon I never stuck with my back to a window or in a corner, you just learn to do all those things. So you are not a target. And I was three for about four days and they sent for me to go back down to Saigon. And I used what they called the Mickey Mouse Airlines they call it, and onto a Caribou and down to

to Saigon and ended up at the headquarters, what they call the free world headquarters. And that’s when I mentioned earlier that I stated to put together what I was going to do with my, with EIS.

It looked good to me, the first thing I found out was there was no Vietnamese in the compound. Like in the area at Nui Dat. It always worries me

when you got foreigners in there because the simple reason that, it always, even before I went up there I knew that that’s the kind of thing that you don’t do, because you learn these things. Down at Vung Tau of course they had Vietnamese working in the headquarters and typing and things like that. But at Nui Dat the only people we had in there, we had a couple of Vietnamese interpreters. But I felt safe from the word go because the simple reason that

well it’s imposed on you almost, because the simple reason I’m carrying a weapon for starters, and although I used to wear a pistol, I used to carry a M47 which is a grenade launcher. Seeing as I was the task force armourer, I could pick what ever I wanted because I had me fingers on all of that kind of stuff. So I used to carry a grenade launcher. And as me personal weapon which could fire a canister and an HE, and it was 40 mil diameter which really sorts

people, people see you with them, and they are only light. They are not much, not very hard to carry. And but when, with the EIS, at the same time I was briefed and I was asked to keep an eye on, out for certain things. And the things were that if I found people along the way like talking in the mess or anything like that, or boasting about they killed people or anything like that, I would have to prove it, only to my satisfaction.

I could move fairly quickly, it had to be verified.

Yeah they just took my word for it, I had been around a long time, I’m a warrant officer. And people trust warrant officers. And so I was to find out, not to go around and ask them questions. But if it come to my notice that people were being, making a game out of shooting people and things like that, or getting to enjoy it,

my, what I had to do was report it to the boss. And they’d take it a little bit further.

Well no it wasn’t anything to do with civilians, it was all army blokes because I’m at the base and no I wouldn’t be interested in civilians I wouldn’t even see them.

All army, any army corps, doesn’t matter what corps, because when you are doing inspections you inspect all units, it doesn’t matter what, so that would be RAOC [Royal Australian Ordnance Corps] which is stores, you’d inspect their unit, inspect all the

battalions, well mainly my area, I was more interested than anything else. All the headquarters go through all their equipment, even the cooks. The hospital, go and have a look at their autoclaves and make sure everything is working there. Even the instruments. And if they need anything well then I have got the power to order it. I can write out a request form or a 406 that allows me to do that. And they would automatically get issued with the gear. And if I see gear that I think they should have

I can also get that. And I was told to look at everybody, and I asked about the New Zealanders. And they said, “Yeah, we want the whole units done.” So the first thing that I did was I started to go, I looked at the training team. And I went up to places like Qui Nhon, Da Nang, Pleiku, wherever they were training people, I went to have a look at them. And I was told before I went that they particularly wanted me to see those because a lot of them had gone feral a little bit, in that they had dumped all their gear.

They had come back and there would be no nine mil pistol. Or their binoculars would be gone or something else would be gone, they had come back in Yankee gear. A lot of them were wearing strap down holsters with cowboy guns and things like that. So I went up and unbeknownst to them, they didn’t know this of course, and if I seen that kind of thing I would have a word with them first. And say to them you know, what’s the chances of getting all your gear back. And most of them were sergeants and staff sergeants but all

made up to warrant officers because all the training team had to be warrant officers. And where I found that they couldn’t get it back and in lots of cases, you know, had been sold or given to the Yanks. Cos they loved them, cos they were nine millimetre pistols. A lot of them found that they didn’t stay as long as they should have. So that was one of my roles. And the other role that I had at the same time was as I said, was to keep any eye on people that, and there was few that I

reported, and one particular case, I was looking after SAS. And that’s your special air services. And I used to go down there and turn any weapons into automatics if they wanted it. They were having trouble with the M16s being choked up because of the dirty ammunition we were getting from the Yanks. And so I devised a plan for them. As soon as they stepped off a chopper after doing a, and being out on patrol they would fire about twelve or thirteen rounds and immediately

clean them while it was hot, and that cleaned out the chokes and the weapons. And I had a funny experience there too. I was in with the CO one day on SAS hill, I am just having a bit of a chat with him. And talking about, because I was inspecting his equipment in his unit, and I was having a bit of a yarn with him and he was doing a debrief on some Kiwis. And the Kiwis, a sergeant or above has got to confirm a kill otherwise it’s not recognised. If a unit goes out, a small unit or section goes out it’s only got a

corporal what happens is they don’t take the corporals word for it and they don’t get any credit for how many they killed or whatever the case may be. And that’s very important to them. And I’m just sitting over in the corner and he had a rather large desk, I don’t know where he got it from but it was a lovely big polished desk, I got an idea he took it home, but anyway, he is sitting there and he has got he five, there was supposed to be seven but there was only five of them

lined up and this patrol corporal and he is just going, sir, and he is writing down what they are saying. And he said, “Kill,” and they said, one of them said, “Five,” and he said, “Verification.” The bloke picked up a sand bag and tipped it upside down and five heads fell out. Onto his desk and one rolled across and almost at my feet. And I looked down to it, he never seen it, he said, “Yeah okay,” just ticked it and went on, and he says, “Pick them up put them in the bag, leave them there, and off you go” Never even

batted an eye. Anyway I am just sitting there shaking my head. And I said to him, “What’s going to happen to them?” and he said, “They will be out in a week.” Because the simple reason that they get used to it. And there were some in one of the battalions. That one, they were improvising new ways of killing people in hammocks, and a couple of these blokes said that what they did was they wouldn’t shoot them while they were laying in a hammock they would try and creep up with a long stick and tap them on the

shoulder and when he sat up then they would shoot him. So of course they went home too.. You had to just keep an eye on those things because the biggest problem was not the bloke doing the shooting and things like that, was he might get used to it and like it. And when he comes home here to Australia you know where does it leave him, you gotta think of him as a person. Not so much what he does there but so much what he, he’s got to return to civilian life. And most of these are national service kids. And so

they only do the two years and they are gone. And we didn’t have no program to debrief them or anything like that.

SAS yeah, they had New Zealanders in out SAS it’s like the Anzac Battalion, the Anzac Battalion had a company of the New Zealanders . And they were wild men a lot of them. If you went to a, if there was a mess do and they were having a barbecue, you didn’t go.

Well I didn’t anyway.

Oh his CO. I wouldn’t have to do anything about that, no his CO. So he ended up, they are his blokes. But I reported it later. But I knew full well, there was no need for me, I just mentioned it to the boss. And he said to me, “Oh well, I will leave it in his hands.” And I found out later they were gone in a week.

But as far as I’m concerned, most Australian soldiers are fantastic, the national service certainly worked for us, we would never have got through Vietnam without national servicemen. And I had the highest regard, I had a lot in my unit. And I was, when I took over 106 Field Workshop which was later on, I took over the GE [General Engineering] platoon and something like ninety percent of them were national service kids. And so you know, they were excellent. And then

what I did then was I went around all the units and my usual procedure would be to, I had a table, table FS as we used to call them, a wooden table. And what I would do up one end I would have Graham Peron sitting up there. And he’d be writing the rifle names down and what they call a114 which is a equipment inspection sheet. So that we recorded every weapons number and that, he would have it ticked down there if they were serviceable

or unserviceable. He would put “s” for serviceable, if they were unserviceable he would put a “u” alongside of it. And I would keep the weapon, it would go back to the kid. Or who ever it was. And then I’d bring them up company by company. And just strip them down, get so you could do them really fast. I would strip them down, gage them all up so I can tell if they have been well worn, check the head spacing, and also check the pin that holds the breech block. And you got a gauge to check all those things, I would go right through the weapon. Have a look at it

reassemble it, it was just as quick for me to reassemble it and hand it back to the person and then give the number over and that way every weapon was thoroughly checked. And there is no excuse for why they’d be, we had a little funny one there because I was also the task force armourer. And John Gorton, the Prime Minister, came up and this was happened to him actually twice and I was involved in it. Twice he went out to Coral where the big exercise was on. And I

I’d been choppered out there because the 3 RAR and one of the battalions, 3 RAR and 1 RAR was there, was that they were having trouble with the M60’s. Anyway at this stage, because some of the kids had come up early, and they were putting their sears and springs in back to front. And so what had happened as soon as you fired the M60, the machine gun, it would run away, just keep firing, you couldn’t stop the rotten thing, the only thing you could do was lock off the feed. And so

I was sent out there to have a bit of a look at it. And probably, no it wasn’t probably, it was the biggest operation that we ever did in Vietnam. I think it was something like about twenty-seven, and I don’t know how many wounded on that exercise. But I happened to have the misfortune of being there, one night I had to stay over because they couldn’t get me out. And so and the place got overrun. And that was

the time when they all came though, this was the North Vietnamese as a regiment. And they came through, overrun the guns, took one of the guns, the M105 Howitzers, and they were laying the Howitzers down with splintex. And splintex is little arrows about that long, and thousands of them bunched together and they come out and just wipe everything out in front of it they are supposed to. And I seen people

running through the splintex with legs blown off and arms blown off and it had me completely baffled. How in the hell would you hop along on one foot and keep going. And keep running with an arm blown off, you know, you’d think that would be enough to stop you. Anyway what we did find out later as that before they go into battle the buggers used to needle themselves. They used to come down so they didn’t get sick on the way down from North Vietnam they used to come down the Ho Chi Minh trail and they would put them on drugs.

A lot of them, most of them, all of them. Before they go into battle before they would do that, they were loading them up on morphine. And so they didn’t feel a thing. Terrible when you think about it because the simple reason that they didn’t feel nothing when they overrun your position. I can tell you I was out of there first thing the next morning, the first chopper that come in I was away. Because it was terrifying. And so that was part of the job I did. But I also went down to Vung Tau. And happened to, I went through the hospital and made sure all the

instruments and everything like that. And one of the things, you got to be registered of course with all your blood groups and everything like that. And Doctor Donald Beard who happens to be the, who was, not so much nowadays, he’s old, the Queens’ surgeon in South Australia, he put the pin in Tommo [Jeff Thompson] the cricketer, he put the pin in him, he was a great cricketer himself. He was one of the surgeons there and I had known him before. He did a bit of mountaineering with me. And

anyway I didn’t know he had come up, the surgical teams used to come up for six weeks. They used to bring a whole surgical team, anaesthetist, their offsider, the nurses, they brought the whole thing. Anyway, they used to do six weeks then head home. And rate I got a call because my blood group is A2. I got a cal they wanted all A2 blokes down at Vung Tau. So I jumped on the chopper and they took me straight down to Vung Tau. And straight into the hospital and there was

about I think twelve or thirteen of us. And I got in there and Donald Beard was there. Anyway but I said to him, “What’s going on?’ and he aid, “We got a bloke in here and I am operating on him right now,” he is gowned up and everything. He said, “I am operating on him right now and he’s lost his leg and he is an A2 and we just got to have a to more blood or he is going to lose his leg altogether” And he was trying to save it. So he took so much blood out of us that there is a rail in the hospital

and they had all our legs tied on the rail so that we kept blood to our head and we were there an we were drinking as many of these goffas or soft drinks as we can. And we were there for about two or three hours. Any rate he saved the blokes leg. But he, he’s a great bloke, I met him later on as well, had some outings with him. So that was one of my main areas. I did have a little, I got ring tinea while I was there. And so much bad so they put me in hospital.

And while I was in hospital I’m looking out the window one day at the hospital and all these sailors had come in, bloody matlows. And I thought what the hell the matlows, a matlow get hurt here in Vietnam? He’s on a ship, there is no ships out there going to hurt ya. Anyway he was off the HMAS Hobart, any way there they were and they brought in about I think there was five or six of them, they looked in a pretty bad way. So anyway I later

found out what it had been. The Americans one of the Hornets had come in and put a strike on the Hobart and took the front gun out. Killed five I think it was, and all these other injuries were coming into the hospital. I can tell you they weren’t too happy. The Americans had a bit of a, we wouldn’t use, the battalions or anything wouldn’t call them for a strike. Because they either overrun or underrun, one or the other, we would use the Wildcats. Because they were piloted, they were prop job and a bit slower. But so that

I was still doing EIS then, going around the units and everything, and still being the task force armourer. But getting back to John Gorton, he went around, was talking to the troops, you know, going around the troops, “How are you son” you know all this kind of thing. And Dunston was there a couple of the COs, I think Shilton was standing there and Phillips from 1 Battalion. And Gorton walked up to this kid and said, “How are you, son?”

He said, “You got any problems?’ and the kid said, “Yeah, these M60s are shithouse.” He said, “They are bloody useless.” So I just hearsay for me. Anyway next thing they get on the blower, I’m at bloody at Nui Dat and the next thing I am on a chopper on me way down. I get down there and they get hold of the kid and of course I go to sort the thing out. And I said, “Where is this shithouse bloody M60 you got?”

So he said, “They are all the same.” So I got his M60 and he wasn’t looking after anything. He never carried a spare barrel all those kind of things. And you wouldn’t believe about two days later the same thing happened down at, he was down at 1 Battalion. And he asked another kid, and a mate of mine, Digger Campbell they call him, he is a bloody major. And sees this kid, another kid, and he says, “These are awful, these M60s.” Oh okay I had to go and get some other, it’s all written up in

a book actually, in the Operation Coral book, and I had to go and get these other armourers and go down and inspect the whole bloody unit the little pest. And you know later on he tried to trick again with another, with another dignitary, but Digger Campbell was telling me, he said, “I stopped him straight away, Tommo. You didn’t have to come back.” I thought, “Oh, crikey.” But you get all you know funny things like that. But after I had done that, I was still keeping an eye on the tanks. Because that was my area of expertise and they had

an armoured squadron workshops. Any rate 106 Field Workshop was formed in November of 1968. And they couldn’t get anybody to take over the GE platoon so actually he said to me, it was my boss, in Saigon, he said, “How would you feel about taking over the GE platoon?” And I said, “I would love to,” because warrant officers don’t usually become OCs of a unit because Jimmy Hislop, this mate of mine, he was a warrant officer and he was going to take it over but he was

doing another job down in Saigon. So I took over and was the first one on the ground at 106 Field Workshops. And give me an opportunity, what I did, I had some buildings down and things like that to build houses, house the lathes and places to put guns. And got a pit dug in and things like that. Because it was already a squadron an armoured squadron workshops, but when 106 was formed it was a field workshop. So it’s a lot bigger.

So I was lucky enough to take that over. And when I wanted men, they told me I wasn’t going to get any, so I took the blokes we already got from armoured squadron workshops. But I thought to meself, this is my opportunity, so I went around the units, and seeing I knew them all because I had been doing EIS, I knew some mates of mine who were bloody good tradesmen. And things like that. So I went around the rounded them up. Then handed their names in, they got posted.

There was hell to pay from there, because they were posted in country which meant the bloke, the other units lost them. And here was hell to pay for that. But they couldn’t do anything about it anyway. Because Nui Dat that was the front line in actual fact.

That’s the only one, only him and I. We did GE, I had another mate of mine. And

still a mate of mine, is Alan Cook and he looked after the not the weapons, the vehicle side of it. So he was doing the vehicle side, he was a warrant officer. So he had an offsider and the two of them went around the, see you are very short of people . Normally you would have ten or twelve people to go into a unit and go straight though it. But what I had to do was work at me own pace. And I could go

through a battalion and there is eight hundred men and do all their equipment, including their mortars and everything like that. I could go through that, I could do it in a week. It was hard work, I would be, I wouldn’t stuff around. I was there at seven thirty in the morning. And the funny part about it some of the companies they would send them out on exercises, when I say exercise they would send them out on the boondocks. And some of them were up on the Ho Chi Minh Trail and places like that where they were getting attacked and all of those things. And they thought they were going to get away

they didn’t think they were going to get an inspection. Not that I wasn’t, I wasn’t tough on them, not my role. I knew a lot of them and things like that, my role is to do the best for them so they are better equipped. Not you know give them a hard time. And so they would chopper me up and Graham and I would go up, and I’ve got some actually great slides. Where the one three’s are guarding along the Ho Chi Minh Trail when the Agent Orange and everything was, there is no leaves on the trees or anything like that.

And what they used to do they used to promise to come and get me because the simple reason that it’s very dangerous. And the thing is well all wars are I suppose. But I would be out there, I had an agreement with the OC Air who sometimes was a RAAF bloke. And at four o'clock they would come and pick me up. And sometimes it would be five o'clock and I would be listening for the chopper because if it was any later I would have to stay there. And so I’d be listening for the chopper, one of the greatest sounds I ever heard.

So a Huey [helicopter] would come in and pick me up and take me back to the unit at Nui Dat.

Oh in the time that, say in six months I would probably see them twice. Within six months unless there was a problem. If there was a problem well they would go to the EMU of the taskforce and tell him what the problem was and of course he would tell me.

then I would have to go in an sort the thing out. That’s what I was paid for. We had a real, I didn’t think it was too funny, but everybody thought it was funny at the time. I went over to inspect the headquarters at Nui Dat, the cookhouse, and one thing I always used to like to do those because the simple reason that they think they get away with bloody murder, they don’t clean things, any rate the tea urn was full of tea of course, that’s what it’s there for. And I just pulled the centre of it out where you put all the leaves, and it was full of bloody

maggots. You know they were streaming everywhere, they had been in there a long time, the bugger had just kept, you know, bunged it full and filled it up with water. Anyway the sergeant, his name was Green I had known him for many years. So from then on he was known as Maggots Green. Well I would come back in that case in a couple of weeks time and just to have a bit of walk around just make sure things were going as they should go. But you see lots of funny things, one of the, I went and attended a course …

Yeah I can tell you that with EIS what you got to do of course is you inspect everything like typewriters, anything that goes with, anything they have got. That’s what you got to inspect. And I got more calls than I could handle for people that couldn’t open safes. And what had happened is that the bloke was posted home in a furry and forget to tell whoever was going to take his place what the code was. Any rate once I had to open one

with the oxy and it was devastating because the simple reason that what was inside got burnt so it was a complete waste of time. And the other thing they couldn’t open was the not just the safes that cabinets that were locked with bars on them and all those kind of things. So anyway I said to the boss, “This is bloody ridiculous.” I said, “I don’t know how we are going to do it but I hear the Yanks have got a bloody safe cracker.” And he said, “You’re joking.” And I said, “No.” I said, “I found out he’s a Staff Sergeant Stoney.” His name was Stone. Any rate I said, “I wouldn’t mind doing a course,” and I was half joking.

And the boss said, “Well I think that’s a good idea, why don’t you go and do a safe cracking course,” and I thought, gee I am never going to get another opportunity like this. So they sent me off for a week with this bloke, the Yanks. And they sent me up to Long Binh. Anyway so I get up there and he sits me down, and this bloke is sophisticated and I had ideas of putting things in me ears and clicking it over and

warming me fingers up and all those kind of things. Anyway he sits me down and I said, “Where do we start?” Well he said, “Well we have got a safe in the office here, what would you do to open it?” and I said, “Well you are wasting time, the first thing I would do is get the oxy and take the bloody hinges off.” And he said, “Well you can’t do that nowadays they are all filled with concrete and asbestos or something like that, so that’s out.” And I said, “Well I got no idea.” Anyway at the end of the week, what happens I found out and I since proved to be

true that all safes and everything like they are made, say Chubb safes, when they are made they have got a code. That they use on every safe, so it doesn’t matter, when they send it out it’s the one code. And I found out there is something like sixty percent of those safes have still got the same code because nobody knows how to change them. And then the next thing I found out was that, he said, “It’s all done with psychology. What you do is whoever set the file last time you go and get his file, find out his wife’s birthday, the kids birthday

and all those kind of things. Before you do that, go to his desk, pull out the,” he said, “the drawer, look at the back of it, turn it upside down.” He said, “That’s what you do.” And then he gave me a list of numbers that most people would use. They have worked it out on computer sometime ago, that most people would use. Because you can’t use zero, you don’t use one, so that only leaves that other range. And so

he said, “And most people think along this line.” And I had something like about forty numbers that he gave me. And I can tell you I never had trouble opening a safe. And so if anybody wanted a safe open or they would ring me up and they would send me down to the unit and it could be at Vung Tau or Nui Dat or wherever the thing was, and I would go down there and open the safe. So it become, I enjoyed it actually I thought it was funny, because the simple reason because you know you can have one idea how to open safes, what they do on the telly and everything like that, and it’s

nothing like that at all.

No it’s all psychology. So and so what I thought to meself, well it taught me another skill.

Oh well there was one at the headquarters. And what had happened, Punchy Wright, he wouldn’t be in the services any more he was a major, he didn’t get that name, when he used to get pissed that’s what he used to do. He had a safe and

he didn’t know what to do the thing. And he didn’t know what was in it, and he couldn’t open it. And what in fact he did was he dumped it. Any rate, and almost at the same time he dumped it, which you can’t do, he got in touch with me because he has got to write it off. Any rate, next thing, he asked another mate or asked an old mate who said, “Can you go down and see if you can help him?” And I went down there and he said, “I just dumped the bloody safe this morning.” And I said, “Where did you put it?” and he said, “I dumped it out on the, it’s going to go out to one of the landfills.” And it was at the back of free world headquarters.

So I said, “Well send somebody there and get it.” It was only a little safe, it was about yea high, I’d say a couple of feet by a couple of feet, so it wasn’t big, took about four blokes to carry it. But anyway he got it back to the office. And I found out who had it before him, and you wouldn’t believe it was still in the original number. So it was pretty simple. So I just looked up me numbers of the company and everything like that, opened the safe, I reckon I had the safe open in something like about

four minutes, because that was the first thing I tried. And old Punchy couldn’t understand, and I never told him I had the bloody numbers, that it was the original number from the safe. But he was very impressed. I think he told everybody that Tommo opened his safe. So you know,

Yeah I thought something like that. But then, after I’d done all those kind of things

I went to 106 and by this time it was getting, it was November, December.. It would be early January, I had been working, I put together a forward repair team. Which I had a I couldn’t get an armoured vehicle or a 113 and M13, a fitters vehicle has got a crane on it and things like that. They didn’t have any in the country they were going to send up one. And so a job come up and I had to go to fire support

Juliet and the only thing I had was a three ton truck and you shouldn’t be running a three ton trucks up where there is mines and things like that. But I had no other alternative. So by this stage I had trained my forward repair team. To like take off stations on Centurion tanks, that was our main thing, looking after tanks because that’s what our first responsibility was. And so I threw them onto a back of a truck, and I can show you a photo of that later on. And went

up to fire support place in a three ton truck with soft wheels. And when I got up there I had to take off the front left hand side of a Centurion tank station, we call them stations, they were road wheels that they carried. And to repair it and that’s when General Creighton Abrams came down, the bloke they named the tank after, the new ones. And he was taken over from US General Westmoreland, and he come down and watch me, and of course my boss

my superior was general Sandy Pearson. And Sandy Pearson I had known him he was a terrific bloke. And cos he was a tankey. And they all come down and actually that was on the front page of the age because they had photographers there taking photos. But later on they gave me 113 and I had to go up another time to another fire support place. And I was going out to, I’ll think of the name of it in a minute, to do another tank

that had been pranged. And they had a road wheel blown off with a five hundred pound bomb. But what they used to do, the Vietnamese, to get their bombs and everything like that, they used to, the Americans had an aircraft and they used to call it Sniffer. And what it used to do it could sniff out urine. And tell how much urine that was there and everything like that. So what they used to do so they could get bombs because they never all went off when the Yanks used to bomb places. They would go into there and they would get the village people to all

the wee to these four gallon kerosene tins. And they would carry it right out into an area and flood the place with urine, maybe from two villages. Or something like that. And of course sniffer would come over and smell it and say there is three hundred people down there. And then what would happen, there would be a strike put in. And the bombs, you’d never see them, but the strafe crew, the bombers used to come over and they would bomb the living daylight out of the place and there was nothing there. And they would go out and pick up the ones that didn’t go off. And

they used them on the roads and things like that. So if you see roadwork going on you would just be very careful. What you do. And any rate I am going up to, this time I had an escort. Americans in an M113 front, and an American track M113 rear, they had thirty cals up on there because I was also the task force armourer, I had to a fifty cal on mine, we used to frighten the living daylights if you started that up. Any rate, so I was pretty well armed up. And we were

heading down the highway. On highway one towards Saigon, any way it comes lunchtime and one of the kids said he was hungry or something like that. So I got a headset on, so I tell everybody to stop. And you never get off your vehicle because the simple reason that the Koreans if they go down any road throw out anti-personnel mines, that’s how a lot of kids in Vietnam and things have only got one leg, or no legs. Of course you wouldn’t step off it yourself because they used to do it indiscriminately. Any rate, we pull up, any rate, and you are on Yankee rations. So I

grab me, my rations, and I am eating away and the kid up in front of me, he’s bout, maybe about twenty five, thirty feet away from me, a young corporal. And he is eating and he opened a tin and when he finished with the tin he through it over the side, which you weren’t supposed to do, but he did. And it went down a hole and out come this bloke, he’s got his arms up. And this kids looking and I am looking at this. And the kid is trying to get his pistol out, and he says, “Hey, Sir, I got a Vietnamese” and he said, “What am I going to do with him?” And I said, “You want him you keep him, shove him up on your track.”

So any way the bloke got up onto the track, but it looked so funny this kid trying to get his pistol out and this bloke is trying to give himself up, he thought it was a bloody grenade or something. Any rate we got down the road, and I thought to meself, oh well there is no good taking him back to Nui Dat, we didn’t have prisoners of war

set ups or anything like that. So I thought, what I will do I will hand him over to the South Vietnamese. And of course the South Vietnamese are all along the roads, they used to have their families with them, the wife and all, take them all with them. Any rate, so I am getting down the roadway and there is a divert in the road and a South Vietnamese army bloke is there with there, I’d say about fifty or sixty of them. Any rate, I went over and they speak pretty good English and I just said to them, “I got a prisoner. I’ve got him down the road.” Any rate I said,

“I will give him to you.” So I handed him over and I reckon I wouldn’t have got any more than ten paces down the road and they shot him. So I thought to meself, I felt pretty guilty about that, I didn’t think they would. But as the bloke said, when I handed him over, I said, “I don’t know what I am going to do with him.” Obviously he had made up his mind what he was going to do with him straight way. So but I used to also do a little bit of free running. Id be called up for a job

and if it wasn’t urgent I would go up in a vehicle. And so I’d go down in the vehicle and I got caught once, of a night where the fire support base was attacked. And I was so stuffed, working so hard, working on road wheels and things like that, to get this tank into work, because a lot of them are bits a pieces blown off them on a regular basis. And I used to carry a hammock in me 113. And

so I got the bulldozer, put up a earth front in front of me and I run me 113 in behind it and I just went to sleep in the track. Anyway they got attacked that night and there is incoming, you know, small arms fire and everything coming in, no mortars, small arms fire coming in and everything like that. I will never forget this, Johnny Caulfield, he is now dead, he is an old mate of mine, Johnny Caulfield creeps over from his vehicle and says, “Hey Tommo you are under attack” I thought to meself, stuff it, I’m so tired anyway. Any rate, and

he frightened the shit out of me so all of a sudden I sat up and me bloody hammock come adrift and it wound up in my oxy bottles and everything in the track. I think I got more hurt, I hurt me elbow and everything, and I said to Caulfield, “You mongrel, you did more harm to me than these bastards.” So but you know that kind of thing used to go on. And I had another funny one one day. One of the tanks had auto lock I was telling you about that locks around like that little detent that you traverse your gun on.

You can’t traverse a gun by hand without it. But it fits in and runs on the race on the outside, so you can turn your turret. One of them was jammed and locked on. Any rate I get a radio call to say that, and they used to give a veiled speech, they would never say, because everything was being monitored, and they’d say, you know that big thing that hangs out the front, and you’d’ say oh yeah. And they would say, it doesn’t droop you know that, oh yeah. You know what you are going to get, and he would say oh well it stuffed.

And of course it’s veiled speech. So and I knew it was the auto lock. Any rate, so I jumped into a chopper and they took me down. And I went straight in and I didn’t have a spare auto lock and I thought I might have been able to free it up on the spot. So I took the auto lock out which took me about twenty minutes, and I had lost me chopper. Any rate, and they had been attacked the night before and the word was they were going to get another dose of it the next night, and you need your gun because it’s got

you know his thirty cal on it and he’s got his main armament and things like that and you can’t do without that, can’t just sit there bloody doing nothing. Any rate I went home and there was no bloody helicopter. So I got onto the, and I said, “Can you get the G2 air?” and I said, “Tell him I want a helicopter, tell him to come and pick me up because I got to go back to Nui Dat, repair this auto lock,” and I said, “I want him to wait for me and bring me back. It’s got to be in before say five o’clock.” And this is about two o’clock. Any rate the

G2 air said, “Sorry we haven’t got a chopper I can’t do a thing for you.” Anyway there is one sitting on the pad, a chopper. Anyway and I said, “Whose down here?” and he said, “Sandy Pearson.” I said, “Oh, is he?” So I went down to the headquarters tent and I said, “Whose chopper is that?” and they said, “It’s Sandy Pearson’s,” and I said, “Oh, when is he going back to Nui Dat?” and they said, “Oh shortly.” And I though shit this will do me. So, and all I have got on is a hat and a pair of shorts and of course me boots, I never used to wear me rank. And

a pistol, I am usually wearing a pistol so that usually says you know, I got a bit of rank. So any rate, so I go over to the tent and I see Sandy Pearson down the back with the maps and everything like that all set up. And his aid’s there, he has got a captain who is an aid. Any rate, I said to the captaan, “I want to see Sandy Pearson.” He said, “You can’t see Sandy Pearson,” and I said, “Why can’t I see Sandy Pearson?” and he said, “Bloody hell,” he said, “He is a general, for starters. You can’t.” And I got an auto loc in my hand I might add. And I said, and he said, “What do you want?” and I said, “I want a ride in his chopper,” and he said, “It’s full.” I said, “Bullshit, you can get one more.”

And he said, “You got no hope.” And so by this time I am getting a little upset. So I raised me voice a bit, and he said, “You can be quiet.” So I raised me voice and sung out to the top and I said, “Hey sir, can I talk to you?” And he knew me vaguely and he was, “Up here son.” And this bloke is whispering in my ear, “You can’t talk to…” he is walking alongside me. Giving me a mouthful in my ear. Anyway, I’m not taking any bloody notice of him. So

any rate I get up there and Sandy Pearson said, “What’s the trouble?” and he could see the auto lock in my hand and he knew what it was because he is an ex-tankey. Any rate, and I said, “I got a tank out here, the auto lock is stuffed, and it’s got detents, I got to file them out, I can’t do it here.” I said, “I got to get back to Nui Dat and I got to get back here at five o’clock.” And this bloke, and I said, “What I am looking for, I want to come back with you.” And Sandy Pearson hadn’t opened his mouth.

And this bloke said, “I told him sir that he couldn’t, there was no room on it.” He said, “And he is not coming back on it.” And Sandy said, “Oh,” and I aid, “Well that’s the situation” And he says to this captain, well he said, “I tell you what I am going to do, you stay here, you,” he said, because he knew me, “You can come back with me,” he said, “and I will get my chopper to bring you back.” And I says, as I am walking out this door this bloke is in my ear, “I will get you, you bastard.” And I said, “You haven’t got a dog’s hope.”

So later on I wrote a little story about it which they printed in one of the little craftsman magazines. And I got the day I rode with Sandy Pearson. Anyway I got back and they did get attacked that night. And that gun was back in action. So you know.

Yes I was out, the chopper waited for me because it’s only ten minutes, a quarter of an hour job, and he waited for me and took me back to Nui Dat. They were pretty good like that. I had another one that was

a bit hair raising. I was coming back from the up on the Ho Chi Minh trail where I had been looking for another company one day, and I was in the chopper. In a Huey and what they do, if there is a medivac needed, any Huey goes in it doesn’t have to be a medivac Huey or anything like that. And of course you can’t hear a thing in the Hueys they are that bloody noisy. And they always have the doors open and everything like that. Any rate, I’m sitting on the outside seat with the door open, you never belts or anything on, and we are sitting there

and they start yelling. And the blokes inside, there was about eight of us in it. Any rate, they said, “We are going into a hot LZ [Landing Zone],” and I am trying to make out what is going on, they are going in to do a medivac. Any rate, which means, we are all trained what to do. So all you do is point all your guns out and the chopper pilot will come in. And he comes in there was stuff going everywhere. And the pilot was fantastic.

He came in they raced over the threw the bloke in a and we just dragged the bloke in, he had been wounded. And there is stuff going everywhere we are firing out of the bloody out of the chopper and there is stuff coming in, hitting the, a couple of them hit the blades, and goodness knows you could hear it. Any rate we took off and headed down to Vung Tau, straight to, he landed on the medivac pad at the hospital. And I see the pilot get out. Any rate, cos, what I was doing I was staying because I wanted to go over to the drome.

Any rate, and so he got out and the other pilot took off and he went over and he shut down, at the aerodrome. And I said to him, “What did the pilot get out for?” And the pilot had taken one in the shoulder. And the thing is he never moved his helicopter. He took it in before it went down and he just never moved it, and I thought that was fantastic. But I think we all got a little excited, I think we all had a few beers that night.

So but they are things, when you see things like that it is fantastic. And the bloke I, later found out that he was all right. So you know that was good.

Yeah what I did I went over to one oh two field workshops because being RAEME you know, so I went over there I just stayed there, and I had a

free range, I could do almost anything I liked. And lots of times I would work and operate on me own. And but when I had Graham Peron with me, if I do a unit he would always come with me. And when I left that job he actually went over to the bloke that took my place and he ended up joining EIS and I went to 106 Field Workshop.

I was it, the first one.

Nobody because

they weren’t being done, we have got RAEME in every unit, a sergeant and a couple of corporals and armourers. But and they are really responsible for any repairs but they relied on it being brought to them. They don’t go out looking for them or anything like that. If a bloke has got problems he will come and see you. It’s like an old mate of mine I march with every now and again, down at Torquay, Peter Thomas, he’s a publicity bloke. And he was in 3 RAR and he is an old mate of mine, he went and did a few adventures with me. And

he come over one day and being a PR [Public Relations] bloke, they are not really geared up on weapons. I’ve never let him forget this by the way. So he brings his rifle over and the pull-through was stuck in the ball, which is a no-no, nobody does that. Any rate, he brings it over and says to me, “Can you sort this out, Tommo,” because it’s a chargeable offence. He says, “Can you sort this out for us, Tommo, and I don’t want anybody to know,” and I said, “I won’t tell a soul.”

But every time I see at, he is now the secretary down at Caulfield RSL, I, every time I see him I never let him forget, “Don’t forget to pull that pull-through.” “Yes you bastard,” he says. But no it’s, you know, I thoroughly enjoyed what I did in Vietnam. And having a free reign like that, you know, it’s absolutely marvellous. And

I even went up to Phan Rang one time, I’d had a gutful, I was up to my ears in it. And I said to the boss, and his name was Claude Vivian Loftus Palmer, a major. Not the most likeable bloke. And I later had him for a boss back at Victoria Barracks actually. We used to call him rotor button because he used to go around in ever decreasing circles doing nothing. He finished probably up his own backside. I didn’t like him at all. Anyway

I went over and seen him and said, “What’s the chances of getting a break? I need a few days off. I have had this.” Any way he said, “How many do you want?” and I said, “I don’t know. Four or five, something like that.” So he said, “Off you go.” So what I did I went down to Vung Tau and I jumped on another aircraft and I went up to Phan Rang I thought I would go up and visit the RAAF. And got he shock of me life when I got up there. They virtually had no war at all, the lights were on full pelt. They had a big photo of (UNCLEAR) hanging in

the sergeants mess, there was grass, which we had never seen, grass growing out the front, the bar was open. And the picture theatre was just off the veranda. So you could sit in the bar and drink booze and watch the bloody pictures. And when they would come off their work down, it was a Yankee base, one of the biggest I have ever seen in me life. Seven runways on it. And as I come off the day, they were working on Canberra bombers, they had Canberras there. They would come up and they would just walk through

two storey buildings mind you with lino on the floor, hot and cold showers, which we had never seen. And they just dropped their clothes as they walked along and an armourer, or a Vietnamese would run along behind and picking up their clothes, take them away and ash them for them and things like that. We had about three days there, Phil and I said, “This is all bullshit mate, we’ve got to go home.” I said, “We can’t say this is a war, I feel like, I’m short sheeting people.” So Phil and I jumped on a baby Herc and headed back to

headed home again, I think I was glad to get back. Cos it just felt so false to me. So but I was fortunate, I would say very fortunate that I could almost do what I liked, they give me a free run. But I made sure that I, that I did me work. And I think that’s more important than anything else. So

About six months, a bit more. But I was a task force armourer and doing EIS. I would have done that say, April to October, yeah, six months, spot on six months. I was there doing that.

No very much. I probably go down there to hand me paper work in and things like that.

And I would get to the hotel, I would be lucky if I spent, I used to try and spend about four days there if I could. Because the simple reason that me offsider needed a bit of a break. And some of the areas we went to was unpleasant. And he was such a nice lad that you know, I used to make sure. I even took him down the zoo one day in Saigon. Got the shock of me life. Because it was full of prisoners, no animals.

It’s like that bloke that said, he was talking about the animals and he said, “Do you know what a Shitzu is?” and the bloke the army bloke said, “No I haven’t got a clue.” And this young kid said, “I know.” And he said, “What is it?” “It’s a zoo without animals.” And I thought that was pretty good. But it was one of those. And the, it had all the cages and everything were used to hold prisoners. But occasionally in Saigon if you,

what you had to do while you were in Saigon. I used to never carry weapon where it could be seen. Most of the times I used to put it down the front of me pants. And I’d have my shirt on while I was in Saigon so they would recognise that you were an Australian. Because Americans were targets, they used to have what they called, cowboys roaming the street on the motorbikes. The bloke on the back of the motorbike would have a thirty-eight. And they would just drive up and what we call kamikaze taxis, it was a seat in front and

there was a motorbike behind. And the Yanks were always riding around in them, in front. And they would come up alongside and execute them. I’d never ride in anything like that. And so what I used to do if I had my shoes shined I wouldn’t do that very often I would always shine me own, I don’t believe in and I would make sure they got paid. And so we used to pay them a lot with MPCs which is military payment certificates. And so they always got paid

whereas a lot of Yanks didn’t pay them, they would kick them over and they used to go in the brothels and not pay them and all those kind of things. I made sure I didn’t do anything like that. And so we weren’t singled out. We weren’t a target that they were after. You could almost, as long as you kept your eyes open, wouldn’t got to the market or anything when you were like that. So but I would occasionally I would go down to the, there was a floating restaurant.

Down on the river and used to have French food and that down there. So occasionally I would go down there because I was sick of Yankee stuff. And cos the Yanks used to feed us. And get something like that it was marvellous. When I came home on R&R [Rest and Recreation], I came home for five days, I got in touch, before I did, I wrote to Sergeants in Sydney, you know, the Sergeants pies people, because we couldn’t get pies, and pies, you know were, we’d love to have a pie. And I wrote to them and said,

you know could I get a couple of dozen pies that I’d deliver out to the airport on me way back, I could pick them up at Mascot. And you know I was prepared to pay for them. And I asked them how much they would be I didn’t expect to get them for nothing, any rate they wrote back and said they would be at the airport. And there was two great big boxes and they were packed in saw dust. And they had all these pies in there. I reckon there was probably about thirty, thirty-five pies in them. And

all packed in saw dust. I took those back to Nui Dat and took them up to the mess and shoved them on the table and they didn’t even heat them up. Somebody cut them into fours and they all got to get a bit of pie each. But and they didn’t charge me, Sergeants didn’t, they said, “They are yours.” But we had a few problems while I was there, because the postal strike, did you hear about the postal strike. We didn’t get any mail for three weeks. And we were supposed to, they were on a strike and it was supposed to be

a fortnight and some clown in Nui Dat there in the sig [signals] section said they could put up posters and that and made up a poster. And on the poster it said, when on R&R punch a postie, and they had this army bloke giving the postie one. So some clown let the newspaper know in Sydney. And they printed it and we didn’t get any mail for another week. So they sorted us out.

Well we had the free world headquarters and it was about seven storeys high. And all the Australians were in it and Kiwis. But mainly all Australians. Alongside of us was the, a huge temple and that’s where all the Buddhists were and when you read about it in the newspaper about Buddhists

burning themselves and that, one happened right in front of me, actually I was pulling out heading for Cholon and they, one bloke in the middle of the road poured petrol over himself and set himself alight, the smell was bloody terrible. And it’s an unusual smell. And the funny part about the next door, it was a huge temple, and because we were seven storeys we could overlook their bedrooms and where they were and everything like that, they had

big windows and because of the heat and everything they had the windows open. And they used to have girls in there and everything it used to amaze me. And thing they used to do was come over to the fence, we had a six foot fence with barbed wire top on it. And they use to come over to us and ask us for dirty books. And the worst thing about it our blokes used to give them (UNCLEAR).

Yeah, this the Buddhist monks yes. So but from up top when you looked across it looked like any other city, you said earlier you had been to China, it looks like

any other Chinese city, the only thing that it had that, there was traffic going everywhere. A lot of service people on the roads and things like that, especially Yanks, and almost slap bang in the middle was a huge catholic church. Because as you can imagine in South Vietnam there was a lot of Catholics and that was the main problem. That we really had there because the Catholics run everything. Including the government and everything like that, they were the heads of the forces and everything like that.

And of course the other religions that were there like the Buddhists and the Shintos, I think I’ve got that, probably said wrong. All the other religions which were the major religions didn’t get a leg in. And of course the Catholics were doing all the education and everything, they used to run their schools, up till twelve o'clock and then from one till five. So they had two shifts in schools. So the kids were getting educated and the others weren’t. The hotels were beautiful hotels, the city itself had big wide roads

on it because the French designed it. Trees, lots of trees in it, it was a beautiful city. Of course while I was there you wouldn’t use the lift because they didn’t work, there was hardly any power on, most big buildings had a generator operating or two to three generators operating with the exhaust stuck out the windows. There was taxis. Huge lot of taxis, all Renaults, little Renaults. And they were only allowed to carry two people.

But what they used to do in the front seat with the money exchange, always almost in every cab, they do deal in MPC and try and get American dollars. The, a lot of push bikes and everything like that. A couple of big swimming pools that you wouldn’t swim in because they couldn’t get the chemicals to keep it clean. And they still swam in it. The, a lot of people selling things on the street. On a corner,

you could see, say a Vietnamese would be doing repairs on the motorbikes, and he would have one stripped down on the footpath. The biggest problem they had a lot of brains, they were bright people, but where they problem lay is that they didn’t have any training so when they put a set of rings or a piston in or something they just put it back in, they couldn’t work out, they didn’t know about tolerances or the gap of the ring or anything like that. So invariable what happened when the put the engine back in it still burnt

oil the same as when they took it out. So they didn’t have that technology. There was a lot of people selling things like we used to call them hepatitis rolls. They were little rolls that they would bake and they put them in banana leaves. And the kids used to carry them around on their head or up and try to sell them to people. But you wouldn’t touch those, not in a fit. Like the water, you never drank the water, we had potable water, and I always carried water with me. Sometimes we would carry it in a four gallon drum and

take it to the hotel and just leave it in the room. Because the beer was all right and the spirits. But they had, it was probably one of the most beautiful cities that I’ve seen. But where there was a problem was that the, I went down one day to have a look at their, where their government was. Now their embassies were around the government, and our embassy was still operating, right through this. And they had Australian guards and things like that. But they had a beautiful little building that was the, that housed the government

but there was a couple of mortars shoved in one side and another one in the other side, They don’t bother repairing anything, because it’s almost a wast of time. So their, and you just, like if there was any wooden fences around, they would be gone. Because they would pull all the palings off and sell them. And there was one good lesson, I don’t think the Yanks ever learnt it, because a lot of people get killed crossing the roads there, right in the centre of Saigon there is about seven ways

and so what they thought they would do, the Vietnamese a favour, and so they built a steel walkway over the top. And down the other side, it never ever got finished to my knowledge. Because of a night time they used to come in an steal the steel. And you go back the next day and it would be back to square one. It think it got the staircase up and a bit across the road, but never ever to my knowledge got across the other side. But they still come back and build it every day, and every night the Vietnamese went in there and stole the steel. So but they would steal you blind.

But you were aware of that, and so what you do of course is make sure that you secured everything that you had. And you never went around leaving anything like a camera or anything like that anywhere. But where I stayed down at the Doncaster Hotel. That was about six floors, and of course the lifts didn’t work, but the lifts all had chickens in them. They used to, the chickens were always in there and they were getting the eggs and killing the chickens. Because you could buy meals there and things like that. The top two floors most of the places

as I mention were bars and they were all the brothels. And I used to go to the first floor because there was nothing else you were going to do, you can’t sit in your bloody room all the time. And I’d go, whenever I would go down there I would go there and just sit there until about half past ten at night and then go to bed. But the funny part about it, because they couldn’t use the lifts, a lot of the officers that I knew used the brothel upstairs.

They knew we were all in the next floor down, and I would see them going up the back stairs. So occasionally I would remind then, you know, did you have a good time last night. Because they used to be always lecturing us, so I thought I would sort a few of them out. But the city itself, and there was a bridge that they used to use and they are very enterprising the Vietnamese. And it had been blown up and was in the river. On the Mekong Delta, river where it goes down, and it had gone into the river and they had little rowboats and they would take people across in them. All kind of things, push bikes and all these kind of things.

But they were all dressed immaculately the girls. A terrible lot of what they call round eyes. And the round eyes are French and Vietnamese. And you are probably aware that if you, if you got a French Dad and you are Vietnamese that your eye won’t be slanted, it will be round, you can tell straight away, and they were absolutely beautiful. They used to dress in white and their complexion and everything, they were beautiful women.

But the, and they all wear the traditional dress the hats and everything like that. And they kept themselves extremely clean. We used to use, trade repairs with them a lot, trade typewriters and all those kind of things. Because what we did we found out there was a few people that were running businesses in Saigon. Who could supply us with what we needed and they were very good at it. So they were clever.

No they would be paid, they call it trade repair. And

so we had a bloke inside Saigon that’s that what he did all the time. Was (UNCLEAR) and fridges, the power of course is a hundred and ten volts, so it’s not a problem, we had our own electricians. But is there is power running anywhere you can use the, their power, I used to never bother disconnecting it, it was a hundred and ten volts, it never worried me. So if we had to do anything in that range and the power was on, we’d just use it.

No we supplied ourselves. We did occasionally, our radar sets and everything like that we were using the A and K [radar bandwidth], QP [quasi-periodic] ones and we couldn’t get past at one stage for those. And I had a mate of mine, Billy Painter and Mick Burgess was another one that comes to mind that was there. And they went up to the

Americans because they were American equipment and they actually bartered stuff and got some spare parts for them. But most of our equipment except food and of course you wouldn’t drink their booze, all came up on the HMAS Jeparit. And early in the peace the Jeparit was run by the civilians and they were always going on strike, they wouldn’t load the ships, we used to get, couldn’t get our spare parts, we couldn’t get booze, couldn’t get, lots of, we couldn’t get anything.

Because they would every now and again go on strike on us. So what they did, they let the civilian captain off and the navy took it over. And we were getting a six weeks turn around. Every six weeks exactly the Jeparit would pull up with all the gear in it. They would bring up tanks, they would have winches and stuff on it, it was so big they could actually unload a tank. Especially 113’s and things like that. And then if we had to move the tanks from there we’d use, we had landing craft up there

that were commanded by warrant officers and we’d show them on our landing craft. And the landing craft would then get them ashore. But everything was bought ashore by landing crafts down at Vung Tau. But the thing we were mostly interested in, the mail used to come up by air. And it sued to be funny actually because ours would come by Qantas and the Kiwis used to get theirs, their own air force would send it up. And they used to use, I’ll think of the name of it in a minute, really old aircraft

and they used to take about, they used to fly from New Zealand to Richmond, Richmond to Darwin, Darwin to Butterworth, Butterworth to then up to Ton San Nhut Airport and it used to take them nearly up to six days to get their mail. And we used to, why they never used Qantas I’ll never know. But we used to give the Kiwis hell because they used to look after themselves, well we fed them, equipment wise we looked after equipment. So but no we’d get supplied very well. And if the grog was late everybody would be whinging and moaning. But most of us didn’t drink much because the simple reason that you can’t be on the ball and know what you are doing if you are full of booze. So id be lucky all the time I was there. I wouldn’t have drank any more than say twenty or thirty cans. Because the simple reason was the last thing I needed was to have me head not on right, because the simple reason if you had to do a, or you were called out to do a …

When I was with the 111th light ack-ack battery we at that stage had red eye missiles that were very interesting to me but we also had forty mil ack-ack guns, fire roughly about a hundred and twenty rounds a minute.

And they are hopper fed so they are pumping it out. But what happens is their main role is to aerodrome defence. Around aerodromes. So what happened was they used to put the cam, the cam nets over the top and what they would do they would put poles up to hold them there and camouflage them so you couldn’t see them. Any rate, but every time, not every but lots of times they would pull the camouflage down the poles would fall down and the camouflage would end up

on top of the gun and they wouldn’t get the gun into action as quick as they could. So I said to them there has got to be a better way, always, that’s what they had done since World War II. So what I did I came up with like a gate action with prongs out to hold the cam out so that it didn’t look like a tent. And what they do is they load it up on the ground and I put bungee cords on them. Then what we’d do we’d load it up and put a pin in it with a tape on it. And of course

they pride themselves on how quick they can get themselves into action if an aircraft comes over, and this is in Australia of course. And so what they could do in the end was, they could run and just pull the one tape and the whole thing would spread apart and you could jump on the gun and put it into action. And so I invented that. And the other thing that I did invent in Vietnam was what they call a carry all. What we used to do was when we took things out in a hurry we would get a Chinook helicopter to come in

and pick up a great big container. You know the containers that go on the ships, we used to call them Connexes in Vietnam. And I put all me gear in that that I wanted say I was going to go out today and put a final drive on. The final drive would go in with all the gear and what I had, I had a list of everything I needed, so if I had to replace the final drive, I would list all the tools I want, the gear, even write down the nuts and bolts and everything like that. And I had that all in a big box.

And I would get a call and they would say you got to go up and do a final drive. And I just wheel this whole box out and shove it in a Connex. And a Chinook would come in, we’d get in the Chinook and up we would go to where the tank was, they’d drop us down, we’d open up the Connex and we got all our gear in there in one foul swoop. Anyway what used to happen was the Connex, we lost one actually, don’t know who got it. But they took one up and the quick release on the Chinook released, and of course, we knew straight away it was gone.

And so that we lost the whole lot that was in that Connex, it went down to the jungle, no point in trying to get it because you wouldn’t get it back anyhow. But and so they were unreliable. And the other thing was we couldn’t carry what we like in it because the Connex is only so wide. The other thing is you can’t have it too big because the simple reason that the down draft from the chopper will push on it and what it does it stops the chopper from

flying properly. So I come up with a great big basket that’s almost, it was about twelve, fourteen foot by fourteen foot by about three foot deep. And what I did it was all up with rails and on the side so air could go through it and everything like that, and on the sides of it I put like mesh and so that things wouldn’t fall out of it and things like that. And then put four points on it so it could be picked up.

And that way the helicopter, the air would go through it or around it or anything, it would only hit what was in it. The other thing I could put in it was high stuff, so if by chance, that I had to take a barrel out or something like that I could actually get it in. Whereas on the Connexes they couldn’t do that. And the other thing it was all just sitting there. So I come up with these carry all things. I ended up I made the first one meself. And then after that I made about six of them. Because what happened, the battalions used to

use it. They would chuck all their gear into it and everything like that for their headquarters, tents and all that sort of stuff and just pick it up and go. The other thing that I had a hand in and I didn’t invent this there was a young lieutenant down at Vung Tau. Our biggest problem was with our Centurion tanks they weigh fifty-six ton. We didn’t have anything that would carry them. But the Yanks had lighter tanks, and their lighter tanks that they had were roughly about forty ton. Any rate,

I said to the boss one time to get our tanks say from Saigon, back to Nui Dat which is roughly about say close to a hundred ks [kilometres], when they were running them down the road the bearings used to overheat. They are not designed to run long distances and continuous. So I said to the boss, “Why don’t we use those bloody Yank trucks? He said they could only hold forty ton. We could borrow them.” So

I didn’t come up with the idea but a young kid, a young lieutenant at 102 Field Workshops and I don’t know his name, came up with a tripod thing where we could run the tank up over the back and distribute the weight equally over the wheels and the tank wouldn’t be cocked up. Where, up near where the goose neck is, what we call the fifth wheel where it hooks onto the prime mover. And he come up with that, we built it, he designed it. And we built it up at the workshops all out of steel and I have got a photograph of that. And so the first time we

had to use it I got a call from, up at, we had the one fire support base there for a long time there, to say there was a tank there that had done an engine and we needed to get it back in a hurry. Now normally we would go and replace the engine up there, but we had other problems as well. So the boss said, “We want, take that forty tonner.” We put this frame on it, and go up and get it. Now I had a young driver and I said to the driver, “Whatever we do, this is a forty ton vehicle, we’d got fifty six ton on thing, so what you are going to have to do, you are

going to have to stop on the main road, which we call highway one, when we pick up the tank, when we put the tank on, you are going to have to stop on your way down about every say, twenty ks. And,” I said, “tighten up the wheel nuts because the simple reason that they will come loose.” Any rate, I took off and went back in the chopper. I got another call to say that the bugger had broken down his wheels had fallen off the prime mover, right in the main centre

of the highway and it’s got a fifty-six ton tank on it. The crew is with it, and the prime mover has lost its wheels, broken off from the axles. So I grabbed my fitters vehicle and by this time it’s about four o'clock I am starting to worry about the dark. Anyway, cos they all the, the North Vietnamese regulars, we call them black shirts as well, would come out and find it at night. Any rate so I

shot up there and the wheels were off all right and there wasn’t a thing we could do about it, I needed another prime mover. Any rate, I got onto the Americans and asked for an escort cos I went up on me own. The only thing I took with me was me crew and a monkey. We had a monkey and we used to call him Bluebell and he hated the Vietnamese, but he didn’t worry us. So I would have him on the track sometimes and I took him a few times.

And he would be on the track and if any Vietnamese kids came near the track because we used to carry weapons and stuff in there. And I used carry grenades and all that kind of thing, I would have hanging in me vehicle, and if anything come near the vehicle he would bite them, but he never bit us. And I told the kids if they ran around, don’t touch monkey. Any rate and so they never ever, I could guarantee they wouldn’t come near the track. Any rate so I got an American escort I got onto the air, and asked for an escort and all they could do was

give me some Yanks. So I had six APCs [Armoured Personnel Carriers] come up with full weapons on them, thirty cals on them. And then I got a prime mover up and I got the old prime mover out from underneath and jacked up the trailer with fifty ton jacks on either side. And I got he prime mover in underneath it. And I said to the bloke, “Every ten ks we got to tighten up the those wheel nuts.” Any rate, and we took off down the road and by this time it’s pitch black. And

I’m in big trouble because the simple reason that I got the Americans together and if I could I would get black ones, the Negroes were better soldiers by far than the white ones. And I actually come up there and asked for them, and got into trouble for that later on. But I got them. Any rate, I got them together before we took off down the road, and we had about thirty ks to go. Any rate through Baria, over a forty ton bridge, and that’s the story I am getting to. And then into Nui Dat, through Baria and up to Nui Dat. And

of course by this time it’s pitch black and it’s not raining, thank goodness. Any rate, and I thought, and there is people coming on the roads, they got weapons and everything like this, they know we are Australians but I got Yanks with me. Any rate, so I thought to meself, all right, so we got a big main beam up on the

Centurion tank, it’s roughly about, oh three feet across. We have infrared screens on it so that you can fight at night and pick thing up with the infrared, you wear special glasses and things like that. So what I did, I said, “Take the screen off, the infrared screen off.” So they took that off and I got the white light, we started up the generator which was working on the oxygen in the Centurion tank. I just put the main white light down the road. Where I could see because it’s no good trying to work in the dark, I can’t. And

I put the lights on the vehicle, all the vehicles, our 113’s don’t have vehicle lights. And they only shine on the ground. So I just lit everything up. The people that were on the road didn’t move off, they had weapons, you could see them. But they could see we were in big trouble and they didn’t attack us. Any rate, so when we got down to the bridge I’ve got a fifty-six ton Centurion tank, a forty ton trailer, the trailer itself

would weigh in the vicinity of twenty ton. So I’ve’ got somewhere in the vicinity all up probably about sixty ton, sixty-five ton to go over. The only other way to go was to go all the way around, skull drag the tank up down through the, through a river, and I wasn’t prepared to do that. But I knew that the forty ton bridge was a bailey bridge and it was one of ours. And the thing is that the bailey bridge, bridges are rated at about one third.

They can take another two thirds. Now I know that because that’s my area, I am supposed to know things like that. So when we get down there, I’ve got a headset and radios and things. And I said to the driver of the vehicle who happens to be a Yank, I said to him, “I want you to cross that bridge,” and he said, “We won’t make it, we will finish up, there is a big drop down there, down there fifty, sixty feet.” Any rate, I said to him, “I want you to drive it across.” So we put two tracks across, three out the front, three out the back.

Three tracks across and there at the back and he said he wasn’t going to go across. Any rate, I took my own time through all this. Any rate so I got off me track and went up to him, and I just said to him, “If you don’t go across when I tell you to go across at the speed I tell you to go across, I’m not kidding,” and I pulled my weapon out, which I shouldn’t have done. And I said, “I will shoot you me bloody self so you don’t have to worry about going down there.” Any rate, I might add I got into trouble for that later on.

Any rate, I must have frightened the shit out of him. So I said to him, “Get going.” Any rate, we drove across the bridge, the side rails buckled I was looking at them. And got the vehicle across. And I knew he would. But she sagged there is no doubt about that, but they are very well built, they are built by an Australian company. And they are owned by engineers. Any rate, we all got back and he reported me for threatening him with a weapon.

And I had to front Dunston, the colonel. And full colonel he was in charge of the base. And he asked me what authority I had to do that, put people’s lives at risk. So I explained it all to him. And told him why I would never normally do that. But I said I didn’t have time to stuff about with them when he was putting people’s lives at risk. We had people on the road and things like that, and I said if I would have hung around there any longer than I should have, we may have been attacked. Any rate, he gave me a warning and that was the end of it.

But you know things like that, to me, that’s, I know what I’m doing and I know me job. And the thing was I knew we would get across there. And I’ve found out since that they used to sneak the cents across it without the trailer when they were in a hurry, one at a time, but they weren’t going to move the tracks otherwise it would have collapsed the bridge. But they were moving tanks across there.

I couldn’t it was already on the low loader and it was immobile. The way we got it on it had a winch on it. You could winch it on but you couldn’t winch it off. So but no, that w the only way I could do it. Any rate we got back, and you could see us coming for miles. There was guards. Any rate, they sent two tanks out for me.

No, I inspected them, because they are engineers, I inspected them and things like that. They were mainly attached to our

our aid, we had a company there that was run by engineers and we called it civil aid. They did a fantastic job. I used to take, I couldn’t say enough good things about them. What they used to do was, they used to build houses. Put in water articulation, put in bores for the people, because in the province we were in, the Phuoc Tuy province we were responsible, the reason we got that

Phuoc Tuy province because at the beginning of the war we sent our battalions up there under the command of the Yanks. And what the Yanks would do, we would go into an attack and all of a sudden we would find ourselves right up the front, the whole bloody battalion right up alongside the big red ones in attack and we were losing too many people because of their, well they are not very good soldiers, I have never thought they were great soldiers. And the thing is they do stupid things. It’s all brute force and ignorance with them. Just massive stuff

and we are not trained to be in that kind of environment. So Menzies who was listening to his generals, to our people. And so he asked the Americans to give us a some sort of role, and they gave us the province. And we were given the Phuoc Tuy province and that was our domain to look after that. I believe that we brought democracy to the Phuoc Tuy province, probably before it went anywhere else. Because the Yanks had a habit in each of the villages

and everything they had advisors. And say the 113’s or their tanks or whatever the case, went through a rice field in a village, what would happen is the head man would say to the American advisor, we lost so many, they worked everything in bags of rice, we lost twenty bags of rice. And they would go to the rice mill in Saigon which was huge and get twenty bags of rice and it would be delivered to them. Now of course you can imagine the head man he’s done that a couple of times, it becomes a hundred bags of rice. And where it ends I will never know. And

so we didn’t do that. In our province we didn’t go through their paddocks or anything like that. Geelong here in fact played a big part. Because food was their biggest problem, they couldn’t grow enough food. So the boffin from here came up through the civil aid people that were there, through pioneers and engineers and everything like that, they invented here at the CSIRO [Commonwealth Scientific and Industry Research Organisation] in Geelong, miracle rice, which give them four crops every year. Now we knew the

North Vietnamese were eating it, you’d have to be blind in the head not to know. But the people were getting X amount for themselves as well. And when out people went up there, we put the guards in and everything like that to give them security and everything like that. What happened is the boffin from here went up and got behind their rocks, their old plougher and showed them how to do things and gave them their dignity. When we built a house, we built a big room, a house it would have one window and one door. But there would be no door in it the window would be open.

we’d put tin on the roof and things like that. They had to help us, they would get up there and drive the nails in because they had a habit of pinching the nails out of the bloody tin and putting bas on and selling them. Either that or they would take the tin off and flog that. But if you get them to help you, of course they had no land tenure act, and that was the other thing, it was all done on village life, the village head, through the families and everything would own these plots. And so what we did we got behind and helped them help themselves. And

This is what the pioneers main role was. They had dentists and doctors with them, and the dentists would go down to the villages, we wouldn’t have them in Nui Dat. And would have days down there and they would all come along and get their teeth, they would line up for a hundred yards or so and get their teeth fixed and things, and this is the role that they played. And the thing is, and that’s why they didn’t attack us. There was a village just outside of Nui Dat it was called Ha Long. And when I first went there we used to have

some of the kids up a tree ladder arrive and say you are going to the Ha Long dance, go down and open the bloody gate, I will pick you up at six o'clock, the poor buggers would go down there and there would be hundred down there sometimes, somebody would tell them they had been taken for a ride, well not hundreds, say a dozen or so. But Ha Long we found out later it had a ninety bed hospital under ground there, we found out after Vietnam was all over. And what they used to do, we used to go through there and they used to shoot over our heads, around our heads, sometimes you would take your tires out. They never killed anybody. The idea was to stop you from

going there. So eventually we got the message and built a road, a huge U shape right around the town. And then of course we found out later why they were shooting us, they had a ninety bed hospital there. And so what we did there was what, nowhere else was doing, we still give aid today to Baria. And to the orphanage and everything there. There is a big catholic orphanage there. And if I could find any

old wardrobes or beds or anything like that, and we had them spare, I would load them on a bloody truck. And if I didn’t do it somebody else would do it and we would take them down there. And if we had food over or anything like that we would take it down to the orphanage, blankets or anything like that and didn’t give them a hell of a lot because otherwise they would sell it. We gave them enough, asked what they wanted and give them what they wanted. And even at one stage I went down and helped the scout troop. They had a scout troop in Baria. But the whole idea they used to come in and invade

our area occasionally, just to jazz us up. And attack our own workshops got attacked one night. But the thing was that a lot of it was just to keep, you know, throw a couple of mortars into the place occasionally, just to keep us on our toes. A lot of our people got killed as you are aware, but most of those were out on exercises. And like out on what we were doing. But our main role and we were

taught to do this, and they didn’t have to teach me, a hell of a lot of Australians didn’t have to be taught was to be nice to them. To go to the brothels and pay, to go in and drink their booze, pay them. And the thing is, that’s what we did except for one night. This is really funny, I was down at Vung Tau when this happened. What they used to do with military payment certificates, what they would do now and again, nobody would know and all of a sudden one night they would switch it. They would cut it all out and you’d be issued with new stuff, you put your old stuff in and they would give you a new colour. And of course you are aware that they are military payment

certificates and they were army money. And Vietnamese were dealing in them. And of course everything was paid in this. And the blokes in Vung Tau is they went into the brothels or anything like this, would go in there and pay in MPC. Any rate, the Mama Sans and that didn’t know when it was going to be changed and either did we. Any way one of these blokes had a terrific Monopoly set. And the money in the Monopoly set was fancily done. And so what he did, a big heap of them from the workshops most of them, all went to town

on this night and had the time of their lives drinking and doing all the things they shouldn’t be doing in town and pay them with monopoly money. I did hear about it, because it wasn’t at all what was going on. next day there was about six Mama Sans down at the main gate at Vung Tau all wanting to see the padre with all this monopoly money in their hands. Wanting to change it over into MPC. Of course that was illegal, they shouldn’t have

collecting the MPC anyway. But so sometimes you get a bit of a laugh out of these things. They didn’t do a great deal of harm anyway.

Oh they weren’t supposed to, it was only supposed to be service operated. If you went and bought anything from the PXs [Post Exchange – American canteen unit] the American PXs you used these MPCs and everything like that. But they we supposed to be using their own money. And but they used to try and get the American green if they could. But none of us had American green anyway.

I was there when the Tet Offensive was on. Because what happened the Tet Offensive was actually January. But it was still going on when I arrived in April. And I arrived the end of April, in fact there were fights and everything going on in the street. And I was saying earlier that I was up in the ambassadors officers quarters in what we called the North Pole it was called. And upstairs on the top floor

was were they used to feed us. And I was up there and Alan Cook this mate of mine, he was in country before I got there, he is an old mate of mine. And we were drinking Saigon Tea [cold tea supplied to the bar girls but charged at the price of whisky] of all things, I don’t think I even had a beer. Anyway there is a fight going on in the street. There’s you know guns going off everywhere because the Vietnamese had come in and they used to do that of a night time and clean up the locals and everything like that, and take on the Yanks and then flee. And Alan Cook

looked over the top, which I wouldn’t do in million years, and a bullet come up actually and hit the concrete, chipped a bit out of the concrete and give him a bit of a scar on his face. So I reminded him how stupid he is, he is an old mate of mine.

Oh very much so. Because the simple reason that you would expect them to be there. It’s their villages and things like that. And the things was that I didn’t have a really big problem with

that. I had been fired on and things like that and I’ve actually returned fire and that kind of thing. And I dare say that a few people have suffered because of it. But I worked on the basis and every soldier did, you didn’t fire on anything unless you were fired at. I had a great respect for them because the simple reason that I realised it was their country and I was the foreigner. That was there. And I think most Australian soldiers knew that, if they had half an ounce of brains would know that. And he thing is, we knew the end result was being,

because you could see the war winding down as you went along, they were getting better and better. Going in and out of Saigon which they were and putting attacks in on Saigon, you know, they are only going to eventually win out anyway. And when that big offensive came through for Fire Support Base Coral, the one that I was on meself, we knew then that was a whole battalion. And the fact, I’m not sure if it was a battalion and a half but it was huge. And the things is if you are that game and they are bringing their regulars

down from North Vietnam well you know full well things are, the other thing is that there is no way, and the same thing is happening in Iraq today, there is no way that the Yanks can win something when you are not kind to the people, you don’t treat them right. You point guns at them, you’ve only got to watch them on the telly, they used to do that in Saigon. And anywhere else I was, they walked around the street

flourishing guns everywhere and they just pointed, the poor little buggers walking around the street that wouldn’t even know day it was, kind of business. You can’t do that. And the things is, that think that people are going to love you, they won’t. And the other thing is that when you invade somebody else’s country they love it more than you do, and the thing is that they are, they can improvise and they can come up with all kinds of things. It doesn’t matter how long it takes them. They will get you in the end because the simple reason that you don’t know who they are. Like they can be walking around, we had black pyjamas [North Vietnamese regular soldiers] that night on the main road

when I was heading back with that tank, all armed. You can’t take them on. And if I would have shot one they would have got into me and that makes common sense. If I was a black pyjama person I would do exactly the same. So the thing is that you got to treat them with a bit of respect. And the other thing is you are not to treat them like they are dopey, because the simple reason they are not. You can’t live in those countries and throw rice and be funny. You might have a good education but that doesn’t mean to say that you don’t know what day it is.

No it wasn’t. I think it was mutual respect. I didn’t think they would shoot at us. I really didn’t because id been in amongst the Vietnamese at night-time which you shouldn’t have been, I was out of curfew. In Saigon, and as long as they know you are an Australian, they, because we were good to them. What they used to do was dump their bloody, say that, say one of them got wounded,

and say he is got a leg half off, they put a tourniquet on him and bring him up to the main gate. And drop him at the main gate. And of course we’d take him in and put him in the hospital and operate to him to save his leg, because that’s what we should do. And the things is they know that if they get hurt or anything like that we will look after them. Now we knew they were North Vietnamese everybody knows what a gunshot wound looks like, you seen one you’ve seen them all. And the doctors certainly know what they are. But that’s exactly what they did.

And we didn’t have any problems with that because the simple reason is that they’re soldiers like we are. And we are in their country and I understand when I talk soldiers I am not talking about the blokes who are trained and regulars like that, but most of them were soldiers that in families, where Dad would get the bloody gun during the night out in the paddy fields and go out and have a go. And be organised. And we realised that. And they realised that in our province we were looking after, we were doing a good job in helping them. And one day we would go

away too. But they certainly didn’t want the Yanks there. We were, to me we did a marvellous job. It tells you where a lot of the mutual respect came from too. We had an R&R centre, which is rest and recreation, down at Vung Tau. Now right alongside us, on the Vung Tau beach there was all these buildings and bars and everything like that, we knew it was the North Vietnamese and the people, they used to have their R&R there, we knew that.

But the thing is we didn’t go in there, they didn’t come in ours they would have been in big trouble if they had of. But the thing was I knew it was there, I kept away from it, and everybody else did. Because the simple reason that you know that’s a bit of mutual respect, what we did we just didn’t go near them. And so that’s how it was. And I think, well that’s the only way you could, say in Iraq and the way I see Iraq now, it’s another Vietnam. And the thing is

when you see things like that, if you show respect, look after the public and even in this mornings paper, you know, they are targeting houses taking out a whole family because they think there is somebody in there that is a terrorist. You can’t do that now, what will the rest of the people think. They could be next, you just can’t do that. This is my thinking, and I’m sure I got a lot of mate who are in the army think the same way, because we had discussed it. We all think that if you go into

a war like that, you do as you are told, you shoot at people who shoot you, kill them if you can, and they will do the same to you. But the thing is that, when say, they get their wounded and they are carting them off and everything like that, we wouldn’t fire at them. So what you gotta do, I think you just got to, it’s their country, they have got to recover it themselves one day. And one day, likes happening right now, we all might want to go back there again, I won’t but a lot of my mates have gone back

for holidays. And but it’s a beautiful place and it’s well worth visiting.

Oh, for starters just a simple thing. If you look at the Americans and the Iraqis, which will give you a good idea, they walk around and when they look at a potential target, what they do is they turn their head around and look at it like that. And you watch the Australians when you see them there, and I watch them

continuously whenever I get it, you can see them on the telly. He turns around, he’s got a gun and he turns around with his gun, it’s no good having a gun pointed over there and somebody is firing at you and you are looking at them. It’s just their training. The other thing is that a lot of them are on dope, they get into the drugs. They, I was attached to for a short time when I was doing the, that safe cracking course I was telling you about. And the things is that a lot of them dope themselves up. And the other thing is the American

government realised at the time how bad a problem they had with the, with their venereal diseases and everything like that, and they put every soldier, not talking about one or two, they put every soldier on the pill. They used to have to take anti, ah, not depressants, what do you call those things?

Yeah, they used to take antibiotics whether they needed them or not. Every American soldier. Now if you’ve got that coming in because every American soldier that goes sick he takes something like about

eight people with him, because there are the doctors, nurses, he’s got to be carried there, taken in a taxi, well not a taxi, a bloody ambulance or whatever the case may be. Eight to ten people looks after every person that gets sick. So the idea was and it worked very effectively for them, was that every Vietnamese girl that was working the streets and everything like that, they wanted them all to be, to have sexual diseases. Because that’s what they were doing. And the thing was they deliberately went out of their way to do that. So that

all these blokes would get sick. And they did by the thousands. The other thing that I seen with them is that they just fire indiscriminately. It’s, like if they see something that is a target or they think is a target, they will take it out, they won’t think twice about it. Another thing they do is they all carry one up the spout. I reckon that is totally wrong because the simple reason that, they still do today, because it means if you see something you don’t have time to think.

If you’ve got time to cock your weapon, you have got time to think. And you mightn’t want to take that, you mightn’t need to take that person out. And so the way they, and they still do toady, the way they run their army is that, they haven’t got a hell of a lot of respect for other people, they think that they are gods gift to everything. They live on a high platform, they have got no respect for other people as far as say in Vietnam, the Vietnamese. And they treated them like garbage, and you just can’t

do that. And the other thing, that makes you a target and that makes you not a very good soldier. And what I seen of them, I didn’t see too much of them in the field, I seen them mainly because they were in Saigon. I did see a bit of them up in the Pleiku and Qui Nhon when I was there looking at the training team. And the thing is that they are so loud-mouthed you can hear them a mile away. And it’s, most of them have got a bloody radio in their pocket and one bit stuck in their ear, while they are trying to walk through the boondocks, through the jungle.

Now they are not all like that but I would say probably sixty percent of them are. You certainly, well that’s one of the reasons we got the Phuoc Tuy province we didn’t like what they were doing, and that’s not a way to fight a war. So they mightn’t be happy seeing this because the simple reason that if I was a Yank I would say you know, what would he know. But when you have been attached to them and worked with them, I think we have got a fair idea. And so a lot of us have said, and it’s not very nice if we had to go ahead and fight some country

we would sooner fight the Yanks because they are not very good fighters. That’s the way I see it. So there is some nations in this world that have got good soldiers, and I think the way you train them is the result of what you get. And I think you’ve’ seen enough in Iraq, the soldiers that are treating people as badly, say in jails and things like that, that doesn’t say much for your, we wouldn’t even think of that. You wouldn’t get one Australian soldier who would even

think of doing that. So and that’s, that’s not the way to fight wars. And they certainly won’t win this one in Iraq either.

No not very much at all. In fact nothing. We seen them operating and things like that. But they are not very trustworthy because the simple reason that

come six o'clock they all go home. So it was a little bit like that, they will fight during the day but you got to jazz them up, and then at night, because I had a lot to do with the training team. And they reckon that come six o'clock they would all go home. So that doesn’t mean they aren’t good fighters because they proved that they were. They are great fighters but I think they didn’t have their heart in it, the South Vietnamese.

Oh yeah because the simple reason that they had radio set ups and everything like that they were monitoring all our telephones and everything. They knew exactly what was going on so, they call it veiled speech, we used it all the time. If I had to get stores up from, it has to be in a hurry, most of the time it’s not. But if you had to get something up in a hurry, say from the stores depot down in Vung Tau

I’d use veiled speech and if I had to report something, say a tank out of action, that I needed some time or I needed some help or whatever the case may be, I’d use veiled speech overt the air. So that our blokes understood. The other thing, the Vietnamese had a big problems with the Australians we used to talk so fast. They just couldn’t keep up with it. I found out later, whereas the Yanks all go a bit slow, they were easier targets than us. But

the North Vietnamese were very clever, they, what we used to see them doing, and we wouldn’t attack them, most of the cases the Yanks did, would be that they would use bases for their mortars. Say they we going to put a mortar attack in what they would do is use a school. And they would come in during the day while the school was there. The kids were all ion school, and they would put the base plate down, put their markers in and then what they would do was they would probably use two fires or big trees if they could use them. They didn’t have

like trigonometry they could use, and what they would have, is two fires, say a fire up here and a fire up in the hill here. And what they would do is they used to use sticks and they would have a stick with a triangle with nails in it. And they would line it up where that fire was going to be and this one, and that’s how they used to put their mortars into position. Very clever, and sometimes of a night-time you would see two fires light up. You’d then say, hello, they are at it again.

And what they would do, they would race in with a tube, drop it into the base plate that is already there, the mortar tube and drop down, you know, four or five mortars, and before they had even reached their target, they have got the tube the base plate and they are off. So you know, they really knew their onions. And of course if they did it during the day you wouldn’t fire it back because it was a school. And you know it’s a school and you didn’t do that.

Well we put them there. We knew where they were and if we, we had a bridge layer in our, for the Centurion tanks. And if it wasn’t wide enough we would take the bridge layer out and put the bridge layer, put the bridge in first and then run the tank straight across it. We used to have problems with that because the Yanks used to use, we couldn’t move it, it was too big for a Chinook. So they used to send a sky crane in for it, like great big praying mantises. And what

they used to do we used to try and tell them but a couple of times you couldn’t tell Yanks anything. They would pick it up and so the bridge, when it was out, had a convex top on it, and of course the prop comes down they would pick it up with a winch, and the prop’s coming down onto the top of it would force it down and give a lot more force. And what would happen, well one of them broke while it was doing it, I was watching. And I am trying to

tell the bloke that was the rigger that was rigging it up, I tired to tell him to pick it up by the end, and carry it ends ways out to where we wanted it. And I was just down there giving them a hand to make sure it was going. Any rate, he said, “No, we always pick them up.” So they put four lots in, and really bent the airplane and that went down, had to sit it on the ground. But the

we didn’t upset the Americans very much at all actually. We tried to keep them out of our area, occasionally they would come in if they had a small unit there working for tank guns there. But if we wanted to get rid of them, they used to come over to the mess and we would give them about six beers and they would be gone. They couldn’t hack that VB I can tell you, or Fosters, they were drinking Schlitz. So occasionally we would give them a carton, but they were bad blokes. And we’d hear them yahooing for a little while.

They weren’t all like that, there was a couple of them, I made very good friends of. And a couple of high ranking officers that used to stay at the Doncaster Hotel. And occasionally I would go to a, I went to a party one night and I’ve never forgotten this, and they were all high ranking officers. And I think the colonel was about the lowest one that was there. And one of them got up and made a speech up and introduced me and Phil Smith.

And of course the two of went out, it was after hours, and we had a escort, and went out in one of big bloody staff cars. Any rate and they introduced us and was telling people that Australians don’t do, and this is Yanks he is telling, he said they believe in the hands across the sea, because everything they used to have two hands gripped. Had a Vietnamese flag in this end and a Yankee flag that end. And it was just absolute rubbish, and he said, “The Australians don’t do what some of you blokes do.” And I don’t think we were too popular but he believed it, and we did too. I am not saying that everybody in the Australian army did the right thing, but I didn’t know anybody that didn’t. And so and we would all keep an eye on each other. But no I think, well I am positive a lot of them knew we didn’t like them. Well when you come up in the air, and ask for an escort and the thing is, have we got any, and I didn’t stuff around, I said, “Have you got any black escorts …

Yeah well that was great day actually. We all looked forward to it. so I was up at early in the morning and we used to call it the freedom birds. And what happened on the day was there was a cyclone. And I thought oh god I am not going to make it home. Any rate, and so they wouldn’t send up a Hercules, the Americans used to

send up baby Hercs for us, or the Caribou would come and pick us up. Any way, I went down to Luscombe Field where we were supposed to go from there to Saigon and they said, it was blowing like a gale, and I thought we would get no aircraft in today. And they said, “You can’t go home,” and I said, “Why is that?” “Because if you miss your aircraft home, you may have to wait up to six weeks, because the simple reason

that the, every day they fly they are taking R&R blokes and Yanks, they are taking Yanks and us. Only take X amount of us.” Any rate, so but this day of course the plane I was going to go back on eventually did get on it, was that it was all Australians, I as really thrilled with that, with Qantas. Any rate, so I thought well we are going to miss, anyway they said, “If you can get down to Vung Tau we might be able to

get somebody to fly you down from Vung Tau.” Any rate, we had to drive to Vung Tau so we jumped in a bloody Land Rover, one of the blokes give us a Land Rover which we left down there, there were six of us, we all got in the one Land Rover and drove straight down through the rain, got sopping wet. Got down to the airport, the aerodrome at Vung Tau and there was Caribous there. Any rate, and they weren’t flying either. So one of the blokes, terrific bloke, came in and said, “Are you blokes heading home?” and we said,

“Yeah.” And he said, “Well I will take you down but you are in for a rough time,” because the bloody monsoon was in. So what he did he flew down all the way with the wheels down, down the road, followed the road, all the way to Saigon, and I reckon he was up no higher than a hundred feet. And the plane was all over the bloody place. You couldn’t see, but he could see the road so he followed the road down and got us into

Ton San Nhut, and of course Qantas didn’t have those problems. Any rate, so we headed home. And we were heading for Sydney and so I will never forget when we flew up past Darwin, the pilot come up and said, “Now you blokes are behind the wire now so stop worrying.” Any rate, we got into Sydney and I had an overnight in Sydney. I had to wait because those days I was in Adelaide. And so I got into Adelaide, I had been home a couple of days and I knew that

three battalion was on its way home. And I had looked after three battalion oh, well I almost mothered them in lots of ways because I went over there if they had any problems, I would sort them out. So I looked after them because I had seen them off with their new equipment and everything like that. And because they were at Woodside when I had the battery LAD up there I knew a lot of them personally I used to go to the mess with them and things like that. So

they aid, if I wanted to I could march with them when they got the freedom of the city when they came home. And I had been home about three days I suppose, wouldn’t have even been that. They marched straight off the ship. All in their finery and their greens and everything like that, their ribbons up and everything like that. They assembled them outside Harris Scarf near the park there and we were going to march straight down past the Town Hall which we did. Right down to the oval and when they get down to the oval

they’d put a dinner and everything on for us at the Town Hall. And there was roughly, oh gee, I don’t know about six hundred and fifty of us. And all the warrant officers were lined across the back of the battalion, so all the battalion came up in buses, they all got off and lined up opposite the park there as I said near Harris Scarf. They put all the warrant officer which included me right at the back. And then from there behind me was something like about two hundred and fifty police

paddy wagons, there was a bus there, a police bus and everything like that. And they had me completely beat. And I said to one of the coppers, “What’s going on?” And he said, “We are expecting some trouble, the word is that the university students are going to get stuck into you when you are marching.” And I said, “Oh they can’t do too much bloody trouble.” Anyway I didn’t think they would. Any rate, we took off, there was a band and everything like that. And we marched down and we got near the Town Hall and I’d say there was hundreds and hundreds of university students and

they pelted us with rotten eggs, tomatoes, our uniforms were a thorough disgrace, it looked awful. Any rate we kept marching and we got down to oval. Any rate, Shilton who was the CO, terrific bloke, stood up on a Land Rover and he said, “I don’t know about you blokes but I’m going nowhere I am going back to Woodside,” he said, “if that’s what they think of us,” he said.

We looked a bloody mess. He said, “ I don’t know what you blokes are doing, but I am going home, I’m going back to me unit.” I went home. I lived in Adelaide those days. And so I went and they just loaded the bus up. And all the blokes went back. But we felt awful. To think they could do something like that to us. But I’ve never forgotten that, that was pretty bad. But after that, I settled down at the workshops down there at Woodside. And

what we did then, I was offered, I had a CO that I really liked. And Colonel Graham Allen his name was. Any rate, and he was made the EMU [Engineering Management Unit] of southern command in those days. And he got in touch with me and asked me if I would like to come over. And work with him, and I said yeah. So I got posted over to

Victoria Barracks. And that’s where I stayed there for many years, a few years. And then they wanted me to take charge of the air, I was at Townsville. And so I went to Townsville and took over the EIS at Townsville. And my area of responsibility was to Cairns to Bowen to Mount Isa. And all those units in that area and everything like that. I had a responsibility to make sure that the equipment and everything was

up to date, and it was being well looked after. And so I finished up, that was my last unit.

No they posted me to the workshop, they call them central and command workshops. Those days down at Warradale. So I stayed down there and was the, I was the

planner for the command. So I planned all the workshop, parts and when vehicles come in and I did all the planning for the whole command on repairs and equipments and things like that.

Some of it, yes, some it came back from Vietnam and things like that. And the equipment that was in the are itself. So and I did that. For about I suppose I was there for a year. Then I was offered this posting to Vic Barracks.

And that was, I was doing defective investigations then, because I had a lot of experience and things, so if a defect come up on anything, on equipment trucks or anything like that, one I remember very distinctly was on the Mirages. And I thought that I wouldn’t have much to do with Mirages. But

the boss came and seen me, he was a colonel. And come and seen me and said, “They are having an ammunition problem and it should be right up your alley.” He said that they were getting a hell of a lot of stoppages in the mirages and I knew they had Gatling-type guns in the Mirages. Any rate, and he said, “I want you to go out to Maribyrnong and see if you can sort it out. It appears to be ammunition.” So when I went out there I got all the measurements and everything like that and I measured all the ammunition

up and the ammunition was all over sized. So that, they are fired electrically, and what happens is they wipe around each barrel, and they just rotate and fire the weapon. And that was happening is that they would jam after they got a little bit warm because the base was too thick. So I don’t know how many rounds they dumped out on that. Sorted that out. And so my, anything that like trucks or anything like that. If they were having a problem I would go down, and maybe I couldn’t fix it. And maybe I didn’t know what it was completely about.

But because of my experience and everything like that I could call people in that did, even if they were civilians. Say we were using Leyland trucks and everything in those days. Well I sent an expert from Leyland to come out and say, hey you are, because we were having trouble with the fillidias nuts. We wanted to put double stop elastics on it because the fillidias nuts used to boil. And I got him out and suggested we put, that we the company should be using stop elastics. So we could do things

like that, so it was a very rewarding job.

Yes.

Well I thought national service was the greatest thing we ever did. Because the simple reason that without

national service we would have never ever got through Vietnam. Because the simple reason that we didn’t have enough people. And the thing is that what I saw of national service there was a huge success. The people that I worked with and everything like that I had the greatest respect for them. And the things was, I didn’t treat them like national servicemen, I could never see the differences in uniform. As far as I was concerned they were soldiers. And the things is, and I think most soldiers, I’d even go as far as to say that almost all of us, thought that

national service, we treated them all the same way. If they died or anything like that, they don’t die any different to we do. And so I thought it was the best thing we ever did. And we got some terrific people out of it. In fact I think I treated a few of them so well that, not many of them, but a few of them joined the regular army because they were good soldiers, and some had good trade background and everything like that. And I think that, the battalions were the ones that had

problems. Because the simple reason that you grab a kid and you put him in there for three months and chuck him in a battalion and take him over there and stay out there and try and defend yourself, it’s something that’s all of a sudden, you know, it’s foreign to him. And so you can see why he’d get jacked up and say hang on I am not too happy about his. And you have forced me into something I didn’t want to do. But it certainly worked as far as the RAEME people were concerned with workshops and everything like that. And I found them to be very loyal. And the things is that as long as you showed them

a little bit of loyalty, a bit of respect and respect of their ideas and things like that. You’ve got a very good soldier, so I was all for it.

Nobody ever gets enough training irrespective if you send them to Vietnam or anything. But I think they did because the simple reason that the ones we got were tradesmen anyway. And so the thing is that they got their soldier training which we used to because they had to do guards and things like that. And they were shot at at times, and things like that. So they had to know what to do

but they all went through Canungra. So they certainly got the same training we did in Canungra. But as far as I was concerned, you couldn’t make it three years, because the simple reason that I don’t think the country could afford it. And I think you have got to look at the big picture and not lots of little ones. And I think the big picture was that we needed them for what they did, they did a good job, and I think as far as the government is concerned they had no other alternative. You weren’t going to get them from anywhere else. So I think the bottom line was we needed

them to work, and they were great. And I don’t think, you know that would be a political question because the simple reason that irrespective of what government was in, I think that they would have to do the same thing. The opposition would only be against it for being against it sake. So I think we could have paid them a bit more. I say that because I am a bit greedy meself, but I don’t think we got paid enough. But because a lot of them left very good jobs. And to find themselves on a lot less pay.

I know you can’t iron that out, but I think that they could have given them an allowance or something like that.

They don’t have to be returned servicemen, anybody that’s got a problem at one stage I was the state president of the Vietnam Veterans federation. But I found that a lot of the

people I was dealing with and everything like that, there was so much, I don’t think there is any other way to put it, bullshit in it, that they were telling me that I found it very difficult to represent them or make out claims for them. Because the simple reason in some cases I knew who they were, where they served, I had a great idea of what they did. And when I would hear stories that they used to give me, like they worked in stores, and I know that they never left Vung Tau, or even stores in Nui Dat

and never went anywhere. We used to call them blanket counters, the thing is that they were telling stories to me that were absolute rubbish. And the thing was that I just couldn’t wear that. So it ended up I resigned as the president and the thing is I stopped doing advocacy work. And only did those that I knew meself personally. Or were recommended to me and then I took on really big jobs. But they weren’t all like that. I have a to of mates of mine that I have made claims for and

that certainly did have post traumatic stress. That were injured or shot at or you know, that had some other problem that the war had given them, especially the blokes with cancer with Agent Orange, there is a hell of a lot of them. That have got Agent Orange and things like that. I had a good dose of it and my arms and everything like that they are all covered in white spots and things like that. And I have got it all over me body where I had my show. I’ve had about a hundred and something taken off me.

And that, I permanently go to Doctor McLeod here in Geelong, he looks after me all the time now. And the thing is that I have had twenty-six stitches in me nose here where one was taken out in there. And they claim that they were all Agent Orange and I believe they were. And when I look at some of me mates that came home and with kiddies mongolised or they have got something wrong with their kids. I can certainly, I certainly would want to represent them and help them if I could.

But I’ve had a couple of really big cases. And one case was a national service kid who never went overseas. And he had epididymitis. And the thing was that what had happened was that he jumped out of bed and had a fall at Puckapunyal between the pallets that used to line the floor and damaged his testicles. And the epididymitis meant that he couldn’t have any children or anything for there on. It’s pretty well recorded it was, they took him from Pucka to

Melbourne and they had to operate on him and things like that to free up his testicles. And because it was that area, most people didn’t want to know anything about it. And it was, he came and seen me after many years trying to get some recognition. He didn’t want any money so much, but he just wanted the fact recognised that this happened to him. And that, he adopted a couple of children. And the thing is

that, and it wasn’t his fault. That he was like he was. Anyway so I took his case up for him, I ended up at the AAT [Administration Appeals Tribunal] in court. And the thing was that, and I got him some money and things like that and recognition but they did recognise that that was a problem. And I had four days in court which I controlled and run meself. And up against the QC [Queen’s Counsel] who is now a magistrate. Murray McGuinness is his name. He wasn’t

very nice to me but that didn’t worry me. And so they got a fair amount of money, not a lot but enough to pay their house off and buy themselves a new car. But more than anything he got recognition for what he did. I have a case now that I have been working on for seven years. And the things is that it’s an old mate of mine, his name is Painter, Billy Painter and he was a major in our corps in RAEME. And the things was that a lot of our radar techs have all died, not all

a lot of them have died of a brain tumour. And we claim that the microwaves and things like that and the X rays that are given off by the old radar sets that were number there mark sevens. That we used that were a hangover from World War II, we used those in Woomera and places like that, when we were tracking, with rockets and missiles and things like that. And we also had a big radar set that wasn’t ours, it belonged to the Poms. And it was a

number three mark nine and commonly known as the yellow river. And it used to pump out twenty two thousand volts just out of the magnet that operates it. And this mate of mine that worked on those, and some of the things that they did, today we think it’s a joke, but them days it wasn’t. This is in 1955, ’56, ’57, and things like that, they used to stand in front of it of a morning because it was very cold in Woomera and warm themselves up, turn the bloody thing on full pelt. We know we don’t do that, but we didn’t know in

those days. And so later on in Vietnam he was working on the ANKQP1 radar sets that were designed by the Americans to track mortars. And we had those up there and they in turn pump out something about thirty one thousand, two hundred and fifty milliwatts. That they are pumping out in microwaves, and they used to work directly in front of them. Now what I am claiming and is that those things, we know for sure that X rays, that work in the one billion hertz area definitely

will give you cancer. But and so what I am doing is fighting that case. Last week of this month which is in July, I have already had three days in court. What I’ve had to do is we got another five days then. Because the court cases are so big and the people that I was dealing with, Doctor Bruce Hocking was one, some of the, Doctor Laurence Shirr who is one of the top

specialists that operated on Bill in the Austin Hospital, a lot of them have got to be paid to get them into court and things like that. And Dr Laurence Shirr wasn’t one of them he said he would come along for nothing and help me. I had to go to Slater and Gordon and made a deal with them to use their lawyers, their barristers, got one lawyer and a barrister by the name of Mark Carey, who is a terrific bloke. And so I’ve got a deal that finishes up in the last week. And as a matter of fact I’ve got some charts over there and if you like

I can show you where they have asked me to give all the figures and everything like that and I have got the figures all together. And on that chart it shows the microwaves where they hit people on the heads and everything like that. And we are claiming that glymo brain tumours and everything like that can be caused by microwaves and X rays. Where me

biggest problem lies is that a lot of people have jumped on the band wagon say from Salter and Gordon and I have had to make sure that this didn’t happen. They would like to think that microwaves from telephones can cause brain cancer. And my personal opinion is that I believe they can. But because they are on the low end of ELF which is electro, low frequencies, it’s very low

frequencies, they operate at around about a hundred and sixty frequency range. I don’t want to get involved in that because the simple reason that what can happen, is that once you get involved in that, and we have got big companies like Telecom and all the greatest companies and biggest companies in the world you are up against them, you haven’t got a dog’s hope in hell. They might change the rules if they have to. But the thing is that, so I have kept away from that and just stuck to the radar. So we have got another five days in courts, as I said at the

end of the month, and I am just hoping that we may be able to pull this one off. It think we can.

No when I say it’s a military case we have had to go to the Australian government solicitors or the old name is Comcare. Because the simple reason that it happened, we are saying that it happened from the inception when they were at Woomera, when the atomic bombs were there and they were tracking the radar tracking of missiles and all those. We are

saying that it happened then. That was the beginning of it. And we have got a doctor that has gone into court that says sometimes the latency period for these kinds of things can be forty years. So he has given all sorts of evidence to that effect. So we have had to go, instead of going against the Department of Veterans Affairs, and I might add the Australian government solicitors, Comcare is now all under Veterans Affairs in Melbourne, they all come under the one umbrella.

So they are bringing in big guns to, we’ve got a Professor Fox that is going to give against us next week. They got a Professor Giles whose going to come in and give evidence against us. So they have got their big guns out. But I’ve always found that it doesn’t matter how big you are if you are telling the truth, I reckon you’ve got a show. And we think we are going to win this one.

Oh yes, lots of times, I would be up on the Ho Chi Minh Trail and everybody has seen it that has ever been in Vietnam because they used to use the big Hercs with the bars running along the wings, and lots of times, in front of that they would send a little bird dog. And the bird dog would come over and it would have a speaker system in there that would tell all the Vietnamese village people and everything like that that they weren’t spraying gas, that they were spraying like fertiliser type things and that this wouldn’t hurt them.

And of course we know different you’ve only got to look at the Vietnamese at the present moment, all the children there that have all got deformities and kids born with two heads and that kind of thing. And so the Agent Orange would fly over us and just soak us in it. And of course what we did we had it ourselves in forty four gallon drums. And the things was what we were doing was spraying the, and spraying the outside of our, of Nui Dat so that the leaves and everything like that so the enemy couldn’t get in too close to us.

So Agent Orange we just seen it, we just lived with it. And I’ve been doused with it, it smells a lot like dieseline.

No I didn’t. I didn’t really see, I had an idea it was doing some harm, you can’t have leaves falling off trees as soon as it’s sprayed and, that using it as a defoliant and not think there might be something in it. But you couldn’t think too much about it because otherwise you wouldn’t be doing your job. But

when I got this ring tinea, it was suggested to me it could be, and I never had anything like that, I had it so bad that it went right around my face, two of them covered my nose and everything like that. They had to send me for hospital and I was in hospital in an air-conditioned room to try and get and treat it. Because it drove me mad, and I was down there in hospital for a couple of weeks until they sorted it out. But a lot of people have aid, and the doctor said,

they believe it might have been agent orange. And of course I used to walk around with a pair of shorts and a hat on. And so you got covered in the thing, and I’ve got cancerous things on me back. And so I go every six months and get, automatically get a check up. And in most cases they will take one or two off me. Skin cancers, this one of my nose is a bit big I was a bit worried about that one. And after I came home I got prostrate cancer. And I swear blind that it could have been caused, because I wasn’t the only one

there is a lot of us, and Doctor, Professor Singer at the Austin Hospital operated on me. And I, and they had me on treatment for a really long time. And the thing is that now I only go once a year but at one stage I was told I only had a couple of years to go. And the thing was that I even put this place up for rent and

headed for Mackay, and was up there teaching and was treated at Townsville. Go backwards and forwards and get treated there. And but some how some reason, I don’t know, I belied in meself and things like that, I don’t believe in god so it’s no good me saying that he helped me out. As far as I’m concerned he didn’t, he probably helped the bloke spraying me. And but I don’t have that problem any more now. So I only go

one year to get a cell count and things like that. But a lot of our blokes have had prostate cancer and things like that. I believe it was probably in the stuff we were drinking, in the water and things like that.

Yeah there is, I’d say that you are looking at probably fifty percent. I’ve looked at some figures recently. And of course they did some research into it, so have got out a health service day and things like that. And the figures are horrendous. I’d say that probably

fifty percent of the blokes that went to Vietnam have been affected in some way or another. Health-wise, and a lot of it you can’t see it. I mean you know even with children. And of course now they have got a spina bifida program and things like that. And if any of the kids have got any problems and I think I was lucky because my daughter was born later on. But this mate of mine, that I am representing

Billy Painter while he was at Woomera, they brought out a notice to say that some of the kiddies, they believe and I have got it in writing, from the government itself, they believe some of the kiddies could be born mongolised. And his son, his name is Shane, and he died at nine and he was mongolised and had a hole in the heart. Now a lot of that has happened from the kids at Vietnam who have come home and sired children, they are in big trouble. And

Oh yeah we kept records and everything like that. I’ve got files downstairs which I have kept. I eventually what I’d try to do I was not keep them meself. You really need to give them back to the person because they don’t always stay here they go somewhere else. And keep their records with them. And what I do when I help any of these people with advocacy work, whatsoever, I try and do is to show them what I am doing and teach them

to do it. So they can go and help somebody else.

Oh just, I have always been interested in the law and the thing is that people would come along and say I’ve got this problem or that problem. So I would say you know if I can help you, so that’s what I ended up doing, but I love the law. And the thing is that I believe that if you are an honest person and you put something over, and that why I have a problem with people that aren’t, when it comes to some of their problems, is that, and you put up

a good case, I’m positive, vet affairs and the government will give you a fair go. But there is so much bullshit going through what they are seeing, that they even get sceptical, and I can understand that.

I was very lucky. What they did they offered me a course at any university of my choice. Accredited two years and a chance to become a qualified teacher. So forty of us out of the three services took our discharge and we were all in Queensland and some of us, they wanted to scatter us at different universities. And

I said, I got them all together at the department of education in Brisbane. And had a meeting with them, I was one of the older ones. And I just said to them all, “If we got any brains we will all go to the one university, and all start at the same time and stick together, and that way we can help each other through. If we have any problems with other students or anything like that we’ve got forty people on the ground.” And what

happened they got the shock of their life, we went to college of advance education and the first thing they said to me and the rest of them is, “You have to join a student union.” We told them to get stuffed. Any rate they threatened to go on strike and, we said, “Right, we’ve got time on our side, we are getting paid. Do what you like.” Any rate, what happened was that the university heads the vice chancellor went to the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and said what we had done.

And asked could they be of any help. So vet affairs, the government picked up the tab, paid all our union fees, didn’t even get, we wouldn’t have had a union, and paid them, and paid it for the two years and said, “Don’t let’s have any trouble.” They got in touch with me and I said, “I don’t care what you do but we are not going to join. If you want to pay it that’s up to you.”

Well because the simple reason that we were there to learn and everything like that we didn’t want to get involved, we had seen what they had done to us in places like Adelaide and with their protest and they were very good at that. We didn’t want to get involved in any of that, we just wanted to go to school at the university and we wanted to learn. And we didn’t want to join the union that would be dictating the agreement when you join those things

we had seen enough of them over a period of time. So we thought, you do what you like and we will do what we are supposed to do.

1977, I went to university in 1977

Oh it could be fifty-five years for me. And it would be the same way.

Oh of course they did because they put us in two different courses. And so we weren’t to be returned servicemen, well we were. All Vietnam vets and we all had to have, we were all artificers so we were top in our trade and everything like that. Otherwise we would be no good to TAFE [Technical and Further Education], and that’s what we were going to teach with. No they were aware of it, but the thing is that I think they respected us. We didn’t have anything to do with them really because we had our own course, we went along, most of the course we all did together, there were twenty in the class, some of the teachers refused to teach us

instructors that wouldn’t teach us. Because the simple reason that I remember very well being taught psychology and they were telling us how to suck eggs on the basis of we should teach children, like young adults, how you should look after them, and what you can and what you can’t do. And we recognised that and we needed to be taught that. But what they were doing they were treating us like little kids. And instead of being adults. And so we challenged some of their reasoning

and the psychology area. And one of them, refused to teach us any more and they had to get another instructor. We didn’t give him a hard time we just didn’t want him to feed us bullshit. We wanted him to tell us the way it is. And we certainly wanted to know about the past, we were taught from the past because you can learn from the past. But he started to put his own spin on things. And I think that he was, you know, we were all veterans and things like that and he was treating like we were

eighteen years of age. So we objected to it and the bottom line was he refused to teach us. So he was the only one. But every other one I think we all got on very well all together. And I loved it I could have become a professional student, that’s how much I got into it. I thought it was magnificent, getting paid to go to school and learn, things like that. I didn’t want to go to TAFE and start teaching.

Yes I do, yeah. Well I have a problem with that, I tell you why because the simple reason that I didn’t need one and a lot of my mates didn’t. But I think some of the national service kids could have done it. The other things is that when I look at some of the sad cases that come out of World War II, and I can remember them coming home

very well. And a lot of them had shell shock, which we know today as post traumatic stress. And some of those never went back to work. My grandfather for argument sake was in World War I. And he got gassed in France. And when he come home there was no, you know, that’s stiff, there was no pension or anything like that. They ended up giving him a pension but it was like an old age pension which he stayed on. And he was gassed so bad he died when he was ninety-nine.

But he was gassed but when he come home he just got better. I don’t think he told them by the way. So there was a lot of that, I think a lot of the people that I saw that were shell-shocked and I did see a lot of those. They could have done with some help and they didn’t get it. So but I think what got to happen, you got to pick your mark. I think a lot of people are getting help when they don’t need it. And I think sometimes that what happens is you can say to people you need help, you can talk them into it and you can mentally

change their attitude to things by brainwashing them. I think sometimes you have got to get behind them and support them and push them up instead of trying to drag them on by their ears. And I think that happens a lot today. I’ve been up and looked at the wards out at the Heidelberg hospital and some of those in there I think are milking the system. But a lot of them, when I say a lot of them, I think a good percentage of them are fair dinkum, and the poor bastards are in real trouble. Even if it’s imaginary

that’s as good as you are going to get anyhow. And you keep talking yourself into it, that’s as good as having it. And that worries me, that worries me a lot. But all my old mates, that I went with, and remember I was a fair age when I went because I went to Vietnam when I was thirty-six. I’d been around a bit and the thing is and a lot of mates are similar ages. And no good talking to us about post traumatic stress, we probably give it to people. So we didn’t get it, because that was our game

what we did for a living. To get an opportunity to do it I think we were privileged. A lot of them wouldn’t say that but I do.

Well he didn’t have it. The Kiwis had it.

Oh it didn’t worry me very much, I’d seen a lot of death so I don’t. I am probably one of the most fortunate people over the years in Vietnam I’ve seen them in the drain, and I’ve seen them dead and things like that. The first couple of times it worries you but after that it’s, well I don’t think you ever accept it but I look at it that way. I don’t think it worries me very much. The,

you know when my mother-in-law died and things like that, I didn’t ever, I know she is my mother-in-law and I loved her but I don’t have a problem with death. It’s something that I can accept and I believe it’s part of our lives whether you like it or not. All you got to do is just when. And so that didn’t disturb me very much at all in fact I know it’s an awful thing to say but when I look back at it, it’s a little bit funny for the simple reason, not for the blokes heads that were on the desk, but whoever heard of anybody,

but they were really saying was, you know, that we killed these five people and you didn’t count them. And that’s what happened to them before and they weren’t going to have that again. So if you say you doubted our words because we didn’t have a sergeant with us. But this time we don’t need a sergeant because you can count them, well up to five any way. So that’s, it’s an unusual story, I have told it a couple of times to people that I know. And

Some of them laugh, they say, that would be lovely Tommo, what did you do. But there is not much you can do about that, it’s done anyway. And all you can do is feel sorry for the blokes that actually did it. Because they have got to go home and live with it themselves. I don’t.

I think it might continue to haunt them but I don’t think they regret it because there is not much you can do about it. I think most soldiers believe that they are there to do a job. I’ve got a mate of mine, I’ve know many years, he’s a Kiwi. And he lives in Christchurch. He was part of the little group that was collecting ears. And the thing is that when I found out about it, I went and had a few words with him. He was a Kiwi, but I know he is sorry that that ever happened. But the thing is that you become, when you are his age, he was only young. You become gung-ho and you start to listen to clowns that should know better. And the thing is that it becomes like a competition for some of them. And the thing is that, and in fact they are brainwashed. Now he is married, and his kids have grown up, and having their own kids now. And I don’t even mention it any more. If I go over occasionally I go and see him. And the thing is that, and we don’t even talk about it. Because I’m sure that he doesn’t want to talk about it any more. And the things is that that’s why when you talk to soldiers sometimes that have done something like that, they will block it out. I’m positive that he doesn’t even know any more, I can do that now, I have the ability, if something is really worrying me I can block it out. And just cut it off. And I think a lot of them do do that, but I have done nothing that I am ashamed of. And the thing is that I …