Australians at War Film Archive

Oh my goodness. My pleasure and privilege, I should say.

Yes.

I was born at the Observatory, Observatory House in South Yarra. Just

(UNCLEAR) all the same place now. It’s changed. It belongs to the Botanic Gardens but that’s where I had all my early life. Up till the war really.

So I lived there.

Yes that’s, mm.

That was a very lovely place to live with the Botanic Gardens and then the Domain, the Government House, Domain and you know

just a huge area of paddock land there you could call it.

Because we saw the Shrine built of course that and then later we saw the Observatory shut down just before the war or just at the beginning of the war the Observatory was shut down and my father went up to Queensland and he died up

there just towards the end of the war and I got compassionate leave and came home and had to clear out the house. We’d all been hoarders and there was a lot of cleaning out to be done you know and done in a hurry because we had nowhere to store anything. So that was that and then

Then came the war, see.

Oh, I don’t know. When you become conscious of seeing things and then seeing them and knowing what they are and knowing why they are and so on, comes I suppose about between three and four you know. Something like that and most of my memories

are of the garden. We had a big garden, we had about an acre of garden there and all the things that went on there, I can remember all that. Big pond and a mountainous heap of Banksia rose, you know beautiful thing it, well twice the size of this room easily you know, just a huge (UNCLEAR)

and then of the Botanic Gardens. We used to spend a lot of time in there and wandering round in the Domain and going for tram rides into the city and so all that sort of thing, you know part of till I went to school and then that’s what sent us to Melbourne Grammar really because it was just a…

Well but yeah, just over the road.

So

Of the?

Oh the house. Oh I can remember that room by room, easily. Well that because my sister and I, I have a sister and a brother both, oh well, did have, my brother died. My sister’s still alive but my sister and I, when the Botanic Gardens took over the

old Observatory one of our main things was to show them round Observatory House, which was the just to show them what the different rooms had been and so on because they wanted to keep it as intact as they could, though it was to be used as office space and so on but they wanted to make as few alterations as possible,

just keep it as a period piece I suppose, so I can remember that room by room by room and all about it so…

He’s a government astronomer and this was called Observatory House, that was the…

His residence. Two storey house and oh I’d have to think carefully and count out

but you know (UNCLEAR) I suppose there’d be about seven or eight rooms on the ground floor and then the same up above and

Sleep outs and so on. So I can remember that…

Very well and the garden.

No, I was never

Well you know you have to, you can’t go through school without getting

involved in sports but it never interested me. I suppose both my brother and I were reasonable runners. We did take some interest in that but not much and then other sport, never you know, I’ve never followed cricket or football or anything. Just oh, I’m interested enough you know to talk about it but not very

very interested, and then when we were old enough it was all out camping you know on pushbikes all over the place and later on when I got a car you know that was the sort of thing that interested me, moving around the country and talking to farmers and miners. All sorts of people just, that was very interesting.

Railways too, I was

Younger.

My brother was three years younger, my sister seven years younger

Yes.

Ah

Oh yes, as soon… that’s where I began school.

You know I went into the, I forget what they called them forms they, well there they called them forms.

Can’t sort of remember but that

went to prep [preparatory] school first I think

I think it was six years of prep and then and then onto senior school.

Oh well, again school I was pretty indifferent to that you know, I was never miserable at school but I never, except we were

reasonably good students I think. We were all you know, all got scholarships and things like that so and oh I (UNCLEAR) you know, I’ve always been fond of learning, very much so, but otherwise school just drifted over me too because I wasn’t, outside the classroom there wasn’t much there that interested me really. Classroom and the library

Oh English and History. I’ve always been very interested in them.

My brother, funnily enough he went off on the scientific track. He was much more for science than, but my,

that’s a bad fault I was just oh, there was just the same as anyone else. They were just, went in choice of subjects, I don’t know quite how that was managed but I was always the sort of on the literary side and my brother was scientific you know. He went for

science and then the other half was really neglected. See he was in, worked in science, well the school curriculum just neglected the other side of it, you see, so that he got through with very little literary teaching, except in primary school of course, but

then when we got to senior school I didn’t know beef from a bull’s foot about chemistry or physics, which I should, except I picked up a good bit from my father at home as he was a scientist but that side was shamefully neglected at school so that’s and then and then at university the same thing,

well of course then…

Then you’re on your own course and just had to do what was necessary for that.

Oh well ah, just history in general I suppose but

at university I did European History, you see that was and otherwise history as it came. Funnily enough, we weren’t a military family at all but, my father and mother certainly not, but we had, it came from my father’s predecessor at the Observatory, a chap called

Baraki, he had a son and the son had a whole, a pretty big library of boys books: Boys Own Annual and Chums and the old English you probably don’t even know their names but they were a standard English boys books

You see and

so (UNCLEAR) out of that Baraki lot we had a lot of military history, so that practically, the South African War and even the Crimean War and as far as that just seemed yesterday to me because we were reading all about them and living in them and

another thing that he’d apparently been interested in was hunting. You know deer stalking and the, oh the bison in the US [United States] and things like that, and Zulu, the famous African hunter. They were all there, so those were big interests of

in our book. We used to have war games and…

So on 'round the

But…

Oh well, quite a bit one way and another because on the staff at the gardens there were several men that had been soldiers in the in the Boer War and of course we

were avid listeners to anything they had to tell us and then of course when I was little, it was different for Jim because he was younger than I was, three years younger but then my three uncles were away at the war and one of them was at Gallipoli and wounded on Gallipoli, so he was back in Australia by, before the end of

1915, well before the end I suppose and in hospital, just in St Kilda Road just down from where we lived, so we saw a lot of Uncle Dick and heard a lot about the war from him. The other two uncles, one was, he’d lived, been born in Melbourne but lived all the time in Tasmania and the

next up, he was the baby of that big family, and then the next one up, he wasn’t wounded or anything. He just left Australia, went to France and then he had leave to England a couple of times got leave in England and

so we didn’t then when he came back to Australia, we didn’t see much of him, so I didn’t hear much of his story till later in life, then he settled down and I used to hear a bit about the war from him.

So I was always pretty familiar with the whole lot.

Yes.

Ah no, he, well just told me that

he popped his head above the parapet somehow or another and copped it in the face, so that was he never told us much about his actual experience. I remember him just telling me about being wounded but otherwise we didn’t hear much about that.

Mostly, oh just various incidents,

you know and of course he had friends too and I got to know them and

They had the same, they didn’t tell us

Much about the war or anything.

No, no they didn’t. Oh, I never saw the other two. Dick, I saw a lot of because he went farming

in the Mallee up to the, there were soldier settlements and he was in what was then the new Mallee, which was, well he just had virgin Mallee scrub when he went up there. Lived in a tin hut and

Was still clearing and we saw the tail end of the clearing. Jim and I, when we were old enough to

be sent up by train on our own, we had to go to Bendigo, change trains at Bendigo to Wycheproof, change trains at Wycheproof and then get to Dick’s block, so that was we saw that growing, you know from virgin scrub. We saw that when we first used to go up there and then saw the clearing done and just lived (UNCLEAR) of course that was money for jam in our book,

working with teams of horses and things like that.

That was very

Very interesting, yeah. Yes.

Oh not much. I suppose it was very pretty vague. I didn’t get much idea of what actually it had been and what you know that Gallipoli was one

campaign and then there was the European side of it and then the war in the islands and so on. All of that I picked up because I was, as I heard about things from my uncles then I got to reading about you know actual war history. I got on to that then and of course then

it all became pretty real to me.

Oh vaguely I suppose, oh well you could put that almost onto university days that I did any serious reading. You know I’d read what I found lying about and so on, read that or

Some

master might tell us something was worth reading and that in that way I got you know just gradually grew into it as you read, well that sets you off on other reading and so on til

Um,

oh well I don’t know that I had any opinion much about that, but just hoping that you know if we were called on that we’d manage to survive too I suppose, that’s about what

And gradually just get to know more and more in that way.

Yes. Ah my father was, he was born in Australia but his father had come out to Victoria at, in pretty mature years because

he was a school master in fact and they were reforming the state system of education in Victoria, oh I’d suppose in the 1870s or some time, I’m vague about those, and they had what they called the

normal school and this normal school was set up in Melbourne and this was what became later the teachers’ training college. It was the beginning of that.

And grandpa Baldwin was in charge of this normal school. He was to set up the normal school, get that running, which he did and then fairly soon afterwards

he died, under what circumstances I don’t know, but I do know well that he left grandma Baldwin with a family of ten, well they weren’t children. The top end of them were grown men. There were two, just one that I know by name. He was the eldest. Well when his

father died my grandfather, he was up in somewhere in the east, I think probably India. I just don’t know about that or it may have been in the Malay states somewhere.

But we never knew anything about him except what we heard of the other

uncles from the other uncles and then the next one we did know quite well and he had nothing to do with our life really because he was a Presbyterian…

A Presbyterian minister and oh well-educated, widely interested man but along different tracks from ours altogether because we didn’t have any particular

religious background. So that’s for my father’s side. My mother, her maiden name was Redmond, Jessie Redmond, and that speaks for itself. They were Irish you see, very, very much so, and educated Irish but they were as Irish as the pigs is the expression and

so we heard a lot from her about, there were only two of them. Her brother, well they’d be our uncle and aunt you see that were, they, no there were only the two of them, so he was our uncle, we never saw much of him. He

was a journalist and oh I suppose moving about all over the place for the Argus was his paper and we heard from my mother a lot about Uncle McLeod and what he must have been a very remarkable man. He was a,

he went to Geelong College and he was a noted athlete, splendid runner, good footballer, good swimmer you see. He had everything but he was also dux of the school, so you know he must have been a very remarkable man really but then he was

just at the beginning of the war he was offered the position that was subsequently occupied by Bean, was CEW Bean.

He was war correspondent. He was the senior war correspondent and then subsequently wrote the history of the First World War.

That was the

sort of background that Uncle McLeod had because he was offered a post as war correspondent, but his mother demurred. She wouldn’t let him go and then very soon after that he was killed in one of the first car accidents in Australia up in Sydney. They,

I have found out about it you know. I got onto into the contemporary press, I got onto a bit about that. They were riding in a Sunbeam motor car and the thing just turned over, I think you know and

And McLeod was killed, so

that was that, but we heard a lot from my mother about

him of course.

And he, oh well she was a very studious type of woman you know

She’d been a good swimmer. That was about all she did in sport, of course girls didn’t need to then. They weren’t into sport all that much so

She was born in Geelong.

And I think it must have been on some picnic or another my father met her and they

were married again but before the war, not

Not long, but yes

World War I, not long before that but

No.

Yes.

Yes.

Oh scores of them.

Oh well of course when I was a youngster, when the end of the war I was seven years old then, you see. Well pretty well everyone you met

had been in the war one way or another, so I

heard plenty about that from there on because they had friends you know and then as I got older I’d be taken to various meetings or dinner parties whatever. I’d be taken along to them and I’d hear a lot you know from those people about the war.

Oh it’s hard to

Yes. It’s hard to remember, just well I don’t think I could remember you know but

they’d just talk about all sorts of things.

Yes, where they went and…

Or then as often as not, they’d just be talking about, ah daily events, you know the sort of thing that had nothing to do with the war at all. So bushfires and things like that you see but…

No, I didn’t, except well, he wasn’t very serious but one of the three uncles that did go to the war, well two of them were wounded, as you see. Dick was wounded and that was a bad one that smashed his

face up altogether and...

Oh, I don’t know.

No.

And then Uncle Bill, straight after the war when he got home from the war, he well, he may have gone to Tassie before the war but it all, eventually married a Taswegian and

so we never saw much of Uncle Bill at all except that I can remember him walking on two, he had two walking sticks, you see both arms. I remember that. I don’t know how old I’d be when I saw that but

Prep school. I was still in prep school and

And he’d been (UNCLEAR) and immersed in machine gun fire.

So and it had both legs injured.

Mm.

Oh not particularly you know. I suppose youngsters don’t feel much sadness about anything that doesn’t

Touch them personally. You know if a relation dies or something like that, well you can’t

you know, you can’t help knowing that but oh I suppose it’s only as you get a bit older that you begin to think of what it’d mean to be wounded.

I think so (UNCLEAR) I never, you know I just knew they had been wounded, knew what it meant in the way of what you could do and

what you couldn’t do but otherwise I don’t think I thought much about it at all. Dick, you couldn’t forget because this side of his face was smashed in you see and they never, they did try bone grafting and skin grafting and so on but of course at that time in the 1920s or well

it was a bit before that - Dick’s operations had taken place early in the war, probably through early 1916 something like that.

But I, you know that was just something that didn’t come into my consciousness at all, much like I felt sad of course when he used to come home from hospital.

I’d feel sorry that he had been wounded but that’s about all. Not a very deep feeling.

No, it was not, well just what you’d call a neutral family I suppose. We were never sent to Sunday school or anything like that

and my father was what was called a rationalist you know, so he’d never worried about going to church or anything of that sort, just, and my mother was not a particularly churchy person but on the other hand, and so we never went to Sunday school or anything like that but

they were not irreligious at all you know, they didn’t, they were quite and then there was Uncle Edward, he, the one, the Presbyterian minister, you see well we never saw much of him and…

We didn’t, so I suppose you’d say religious and it was something that just didn’t bother us (UNCLEAR) would be, but we weren’t

hostile

about religion at all, just took it in our stride, mm.

No, no.

No, they were Protestant Irish.

As far Presbyterian, you see.

Mm.

Oh yes,

I see when, and I think it was after Lord Kitchener came out here to draw up you know, find out what sort of a of military training or preparedness there should be

in Australia and from him came the idea of a citizen force, that was every male of, in particular age groups had to be trained as a soldier, junior cadets, senior cadets and these involved a

I think at, once a week we had to parade and then the senior cadets, by that time I was getting I suppose from background and so a very good soldier so and but we all had to be in this like it or not

and so by senior cadets we had a uniform then that we used to wear and we’d have to parade once a week and then you graduated from senior cadet into what they called the citizen forces [Citizens’ Military Force] and as a citizen force man you were given your

equipment. We had a rifle and a uniform. I can’t remember what sort of uniform but a uniform

And then we had to do those and go away for I think it was a week’s camp of continuous training, you see. Well that that was at, oh Seymour or Broadmeadows or somewhere like

where the big camps had been for all the First [World] War. Broadmeadows was the Melbourne one and we could go, they used to have training camps there and of course I was into that because these were training camps at, in the long Christmas holidays and

Oh well, all goes at, just you were just in the one of those three levels and I think the whole thing was called citizen

Citizen force, you see and it was just the degree of training that would happen in

each lot and in these when I was

still at school I think, age seventeen you became

The proper you know, due for proper military training then and that entailed a week’s camp or whatever and then into the bargain, as I said there was a training

camp in the vacation and that was a fortnight. Everyone had to go to that, and then after once or that sort of came into the top end of that, there were camps, they were voluntary camps

where you got more advanced training and it was in this way that they got NCOs [NonCommissioned Officers] for the younger groups, you see.

So by going to these additional training camps, I got to be a sergeant then you see, so and then when you got to university there was the university rifles,

you see and they were still citizen force though I don’t think there was any particular name for the force, but

Individual parts of it, there was the university rifles.

Everyone that was of such and such an age had to be in there and they could if you wanted go to these additional training schools and

Become,

you know become a

An NCO. Yeah.

Oh well just dressing properly, parading, seeing that you had your boots polished and your putties put on the right way and so on. That you could slope arms and reverse arms and then

little mock battles you know. They’d have say a hill over there. You’ve got to attack that and attack that hill and so you’d go across doing…

Oh yes.

Yes you’d go down to Williamstown to, oh that, I was very keen on that, I liked the shooting but…

Oh the ordinary .30

303 mark 3, yes. Lee Enfield. Lee Enfield Mark 3, that’s what they were called.

No, oh no, never entered me head. I didn’t, I was all for civilian life. I just liked while I was in it, you know I took a keen interest then and I was very particular about dress and so on but oh no, I had never any idea of, my ideas of

employment were partly, ah partly journalism, you see because I suppose that would be the influence of McLeod Redmond or what I’d heard about him and then, no I’d thought of journalism and then teaching you see. That fitted

in well with what subjects I was doing and so on, then I did, I just did the ordinary arts course and Diploma of Education course and then I was offered a, just before I’d finished the course I was offered, they wanted ah somebody to help out at Melbourne Grammar for,

oh I think there was only a matter of a term. Somebody was away on leave or sick or something and they asked me, my old headmaster at Melbourne Grammar said, “Well, would you like to help us?” And I said, “Oh, rather I would.” Well this meant a bit of bit of money, you know at a time when I didn’t have any other way of earning money and

So

that was what I did and ah then they, I got on the permanent staff at Melbourne Grammar and then when our war broke out, World War II, teaching was a reserved occupation and they, the headmaster of Melbourne Grammar, I (UNCLEAR) told him

I wanted to enlist. “Oh no, I can’t let you enlist Baldwin you’re, this is a reserved occupation here. You stay.” So I thought, “To hell with that,” and I went down to a pal of mine, he had gone before me on the same lines and went down to Geelong Grammar and there the headmaster,

he said, “Well I can’t, you must resign at Melbourne Grammar and then we’ll see what we can do.” Well there was a sort of wink accompanying that and I took it that there wouldn’t be any trouble about reserved occupation, nor was there and I went down to Geelong Grammar and I was there for a term and then went away as, from their staff with a job open for me when I got home you see.

If I got home. So that they were all, then that was, oh well that was my career then. I knew that’s what I’d stick at and I stayed, as I said you had to retire at sixty two at Geelong Grammar, so then I went across to Belmont High and did another eight years there

so and then retired.

Ah yes, just about.

Mm.

Yes.

Ah well, ah not to any great extent did it affect us

because my father being a civil servant was kept on in his ordinary, so we didn’t suffer any personal hardship from it but at the same time we were going away camping and the like then you see by, we,

my brother and I, and we had, my mother had bought a block of land up at Blackwood here just north up in the bush there, well of course by that time that was all I wanted to be, a bushman you know, schooled in the bush with axes and cross cut saws and the like and

another, you know, another big group of friends like that but that enabled us as we were camping up at Blackwood, we saw plenty of the Depression.

Because numbers of people just fled from the cities and they were given, I’ve forgotten certain

equipment, and they went and camped on old goldfields like Blackwood or 'round about Bendigo or Ballarat, you know wherever there had been gold before they went there and they were given a bit of equipment by the government and then they could go. They got, I don’t know whether they called it the dole then, I don’t think

I don’t know what, the susto

Sustenance it was called. Sussos, yes.

Yeah and so we got to know some sussos very well at Blackwood and so we saw plenty of the Depression at

close quarters like that. Heard the tales of, well there were some chaps there of our own age had just been in apprenticeships and

turned loose you know, they just had nothing.

Well, a pretty rugged life because food was short you know and they sometimes would find a bit of gold but not all that and there was a period when the,

they could, they were given I think a picker dish and a tent and a shovel, I suppose that’d be minimum equipment but this allowed them to, but there was some proviso attached to that. I think

they, when they oh, when they went away if they did go away from the city and into the country this mining business, I think it was for a fortnight, they didn’t get any rations and yes,

I can’t imagine how that happened at all but they didn’t these chaps that we knew in that fortnight, when they somehow had to find their own food. I don’t know how that worked but…

They used to sneak up at night to a potato field that they knew and there was a place where

there were a few quince trees that they knew and they just lived on potatoes and quinces

For a fortnight and then they

That’s right, yes.

Oh well they, there was an orchardist there in Blackwood and he had the old orchard. He

wasn’t running it as an orchard or anything. It was just the old orchard and there was a hut there and these two chaps in particular, we were camped out somewhere near and they met us and said, “Look would you like, we’ve got a bit of room in our camp, would you like to come in there?” So that was all right. We went in

there. By that time they had rations and of course we had, we could get our food and out of our all right, out of our own pockets.

Well, we saw nothing of it really.

Because see I was at university by that time and

and well you just didn’t see.

Except sometimes the only thing I can remember is, oh at and the landscape’s changed so much but between Melbourne and Footscray, that’s where the present, well the present Docklands were largely docks but then between there and Footscray on

the sea side of the Footscray Road there were level ground there and they were called Dudley Flats. A lot of unemployed were camped there in makeshift tents or tin sheds or all sorts of things. Well everyone knew about that and you could see it as you passed up and down the road or in the train, you see. You’d see Dudley Flats and they were known but then we never got to

close quarters with that, we just saw it and knew it was there.

Oh yes, ah we did because there was a lot made at school, there was a lot made of the Empires. It still was the Empire

then and I suppose we were, oh that probably you know we’d hear about all sorts of countries, India and Canada and so on and that. Oh we felt proud of the British Empire and I didn’t, the darker side of imperialism didn’t

affect us at all. We just didn’t think. Well you did, there was no material about it, wasn’t in the papers. There was nothing about it you know but and if there were trouble in Egypt for argument’s sake, you know well it just had to be put down and that was that and you didn’t, oh and the Irish troubles, you see well they just had to be kept

under so that we, which is definitely the darker side of, but we just thought, well that’s the way it works. You know. They just have to be kept in order. So it was later time I began to have other ideas about that.

Ah oh well, I suppose full strength you know because well that was where I was and I didn’t know anything about the state schools and what went on there, so you know I can’t say what they were taught but doubtless it was pretty much the same thing.

Biggest empire the world had ever known.

Oh yes, well of course Anzac Day and again a lot was made of Anzac Day at school and then more the,

once the war stopped with the armistice, Armistice Day was just what it was called then and oh that was rigid, the two minute silence on Armistice Day and probably both and on Anzac Day and on Armistice Day there’d be a good bit of talk about imperialism really but…

Oh yes of course. Well there were my soldier uncles you see, only they were, only one of them was an actual ANZAC but it was a general name. Returned soldiers were often called ANZACs, whether they’d been there or not.

Oh I used

to go and watch it.

You know whenever I could and then later I never went, oh well you couldn’t. There was no way because in the early Anzac Days, it was only returned soldiers that

were any part of the march or anything. I just used to go and watch you see.

Yes

And then by the, yes, no I can’t remember anything more about that, just watching

And then

I must first have marched actually after our war, you see. Yes.

Oh yes, yes.

Mm. Oh yes, I used to march because the general pattern, ah well you march again now but in the early days

the, ah general pattern was just to march and have a reunion after the march, a reunion of your own unit and then, yes so that’s just it, a reunion of your own unit.

Oh well, yes that

Really was.

Oh yes, oh mostly, ah yes, just wherever we’d have the reunion, wherever we could. Wherever we could get hold of a hall. To begin with, you see I was I enlisted and then until the end of Timor was in

what were first called independent companies and then I don’t know exactly at what stage but it was in, it was some while, something, some time that while we were in Timor, that was the year 1942 and the independent

companies became commando squadrons and we were really hostile about that. We didn’t, thought command was a bit bogus you know, we didn’t like that at all but we thought we were independent companies full stop. So for some while after the war, we just had a reunion of the 2nd.

That’s the 2nd Independent…

Company. We had a reunion of them but that was wherever we could get space and there were, well there weren’t so many of us here in Victoria in particular but…

No. It was mostly singing and that, well

just an ordinary drunken spree was what that amounted to. Yes, that’s right. More drinking than anything and you know what goes with that, and yarning and about all sorts of things so but not parti… well somebody’d pipe up with you know, “Do you remember when such and such happened?” And so on but no, they were,

and then later as numbers decreased there were ten independents, ah ten, were ten units you see.

Commandos or ten squadrons as they were called. Well pretty soon, we got to all ten units

had a joint reunion after the march. That became the standard pattern. You’d…

Go to the march and then those that wanted to would go on to…

To their…

Yes to, but and members of all squads, all ten squadrons’d be some of all of them

there you see. A fair number of 2nds because there were a fair number of us in Victoria.

But that I think, and it was largely a Western Australian unit. They meant to make it an entirely West Australian unit but they had to bring in a few officers from other states. There was an

OC [Officer Commanding] of the 2nd Company was a Queenslander and there was the OC of one platoon, he was a

New South Welshman. Two of us were Victorians among the officers you see so…

Yes.

Yes, that’s right.

Oh well I don’t know

really. It, that didn’t come into it much, it was just something that we’d all endured you know but I don’t know that there was, I suppose we’d all hope in a general way that there’d be you know, this would be the end of wars, but oh there was certainly

no explicit feeling about agitating against war or demonstrations or anything. They just didn’t come into the picture. I don’t think. I suppose we had feelings that way but it’s comparatively modern. I think that you get the…

Mass objection to it, as we do.

You know as currently,

as well it’s worldwide, isn’t it? There’s

war demonstrations and activities of this activists really. That all happened in the last few years I think. Well I think with the American invasion of Iraq the, it was about

the time of the first Iraq war, I think that’s when

antagonism became really so widespread and of course that’s just exploding now and it good luck to it too, so I…

Oh well, not very much really. We could see the rise of fascism you know and we thought, well I wonder if anything will, you know, in the early stages, will anything happen? And then there was the Spanish

Civil War, you see. Well I was at university by that time and by that time there was a lot of discussion about the rights and wrongs of that one because Hitler and Mussolini were on the move then and there were the Italians had their various little imperial wars, including the one in Ethiopia, you see and

so we just gradually became more and more aware of what was going on in Europe.

Yes.

Oh

well there’s not much, just what was ordinary military training at the time. Uniform, dress, you see then small arms rifles for most (UNCLEAR) but then there were machine guns, you see and trench mortars. They were all in operation. Well,

we had a skeleton training on those but the basic training was just ordinary infantry training and I don’t know what was, they must have had I suppose at some stage in the citizen forces

you were given the choice of whether you’d like to go into the artillery or into the sigs [signals] you see and then you did hive off in that way and I don’t know what their training consisted of at all, but as far as we were concerned it was just well the ordinary infantry weapons. Rifles

and machine guns and trench mortars and the ordinary arms drill and uniform and then mock attacks and mock defences where sometimes you’d have even blank ammunition but it was just going through the motions really.

Ah.

Can’t remember.

No, oh yes well the camps. Yes I, as I said before when you got into senior cadets, I don’t know when, though I don’t think it was the senior cadets but the year when you turned eighteen, then I think there were,

yes there must, yes there were camps, ah camps then.

Ah, oh yes. I can think

of, I think they were all ex-servicemen too but that was the, these men impressed me more, I mean that just their stature as men that was what impressed me and

won my interests and then I found out, they never made anything much of it, but two of them were ex-servicemen but it was there. One, they were both teachers of English. They taught me, I think one

while I was doing the first year English and the other in the top year of mine then. Then I found out they were ex-servicemen but they, it was their love of literature and their skill in teaching literature that interested me and they seldom

if any, I don’t think either of them ever had anything to say about the war at all you know but I just knew that that was what they were.

Yes.

They inspired me along those lines of…

Studying English and…

And trying to write proper English and so that that was what they were, that

was the inspiration. Anything about the war was just accidental you know.

They might say something about it but little.

Well the two, well it’s odd.

One was a, they were my mates in the sense that we used to go camping together and one was a theological student and he subsequently became a bishop. He’s still alive but they were an old bish… but my age, you see he’s ninety three and one was a

a, that was what he did. He became a bishop but he’s been a camper always, oh you know not now but has been and the other was, he became a lawyer and he used to go

camping with me. That was the thing and then the, another one was, he was a dairy farmer down in Gippsland and he, well he went away to war to, our you know World War II, he went away to war and then just

came back and went on the dairy farm again and then he, I don’t know, oh he got into the Department of Agriculture and came to live in Melbourne and he’s still active because his wife died a while back

and he, while she was sick he’d done a fair bit of cooking and so on but now he lives in a unit and he’s deeply into microwave cooking. He can knock, well there you are…

I’ve been to a dinner party at his place and he…

Did all the cooking himself and then put it on the table himself too you know and

And the other thing - he’s gone mad about computers.

He’s deeply into computers and so that’s, he’s versatile enough.

Yes.

But

Oh ah,

well just the ordinary course there. I did an arts course, well all sorts of subjects there. Minor subjects. It’s just do it for a year and others, the French and the English were my two main

subjects.

Well, I could just do that and there’s you know maybe a, well French and English were my, that was the course that - an arts course in French and English. Well into that came in one way and another the European history and I think there was one year

when you had to, that was in the first year I suppose to make sure you didn’t just become entirely involved but this was when you had to do a year of European history and a year of what was called PLE, that’s psychology, logic and ethics. So…

Yes. Yes.

I’m sorry?

Oh yes. I, you were just, that was by the time I got to university that was not, there was no compulsion but you could, you know in the,

oh general run of university work if you wanted to continue military training there was the university rifles you see, and that was just a volunteer organis…

I went into that.

Ah yes. Yes. In fact, I don’t know whether

militia was the term used in those early days but it, that’s what it is, just like the militia now.

Ah yes, I got, oh yes. I probably was, yes I think I’d by the time I got to university, I think I was a sergeant in militia. Sergeant, yes

and I…

Yes.

Yes, that’s right.

Yes, when I’d finished university I was offered a post back at Melbourne Grammar and I took, well you know that was in the Depression. Well, you didn’t

ask any questions and I still, and a good job, you know good salary and all, so I just said, “Well I I’d be into this,” and then it was after that, oh that would be, I must have been for another seven years at Grammar when the war broke out and then I told you how I left there and went down

to Geelong Grammar but…

Yes, yes mm.

That mm.

Yes.

Vividly, because a friend of mine was living in a flat at that time. My sister and I, it was not particularly a party

or anything, oh just an evening together. I suppose we’d had dinner and we were just sitting 'round the fire and then we heard the news come over the radio.

So that I can remember that vividly, you know that, just that one little scene.

Oh I don’t know now.

I just think, “Catastrophe again.” Something like that you know. We were pretty flattened by the news because there were three men there. Well we, you know we thought, oh well this is it, and I suppose the girls were thinking pretty much the same too.

They

It was nothing, you know nothing

spectacular just a, yes just deep sadness or whatever but it was that there was going to be another war.

I don’t think so. It’s hard to recall whether we did or not. I suppose we were well mostly, Hitler wasn’t, well Hitler hadn’t come really

into prominence at that stage. It was Mussolini was having little war you know, that was about the time that he was having his Ethiopian campaigns and then there were, ah there was the Spanish Civil War, you see. That was at approximately or had just over by the, I’ve forgotten exactly how well by that time Hitler was beginning

to, we were beginning to wonder about him too at that stage, so oh it was just general gloom, you know. I can’t think of any particular thoughts about it but well we thought, “Well, for heaven’s sake I hope you know, just hope there’s not going to be another major conflagration.”

Oh yes oh well, I supp… you know that’s why you weren’t even thinking about it. It was just automatic that as soon as, if a war broke out we’d just go along and enlist as soon as we could.

Yes. Yes.

Ah now yes, well I’d, I was, oh it’s very difficult

to get things into their proper sequence. It, at this stage. Yes I

No. You see I

stayed on because of the reserved occupation, you see. That really, well I suppose I just could have defied them at Melbourne Grammar and gone off straight away. I would have been accepted presumably but I don’t know. I thought well I’d like to,

I’d like to see a bit longer how things are before I enlist and it wasn’t, I didn’t actually enlist until I’d had this other business of, you know of not going away for not being allowed to go away from Melbourne Grammar.

And then getting down to Geelong. I got down to Geelong and it was from there

That I enlisted.

Some time, yes. I think so, mm.

Oh well, I’d never had any thoughts, you know I was always interested in navy but I, the army was just a natural thing because of all of us that had had anything to do with war had been army.

I don’t think we had any sailors and we certainly didn’t have any air force people in our…

Yes.

Yes, yes. Oh yes and from our family history and everything.

Ah, not with any clarity. We had to go up

to, oh it’d be silly to say, I don’t know. That’s just a tangle now. I went up at some stage or another to Royal Park. There was a big place there and you know I’ve forgotten what happened there. It’s just

Oh same thing. Infantry,

yes. Oh you just enlisted and went where you were put but I don’t know how they worked that. You’d, I suppose you enlisted separately to the navy or the air force. I suppose you just went along and enlist. They probably had their own enlistment but enlistment in the army, you just went where you were put then.

Ah well, I don’t know that my father, he was just sorry that it was all happening again. My mother was, she’d died well before. She died in about 1934, you see so…

Oh well, just ill health. She was, she’d long been crippled with arthritis and then I think it was a cancer that killed her in the end but she’d had years of invalidism

with the arthritis. That was very bad, mm.

Oh, yes.

Oh that was a

That was a terrible, being you know the engine room you can say.

Oh yes.

I was nearly going to say exceptionally so. Well I don’t know how

you’d measure it but she certainly was a very loving mother.

Oh deeply, yes.

Yes.

How?

Oh, hard to describe. Just sadness, I suppose.

Yeah, just a feeling of desolation and loneliness I think. Mm.

Well I’d be then in 1934, ah 1909 from '34 but I’d, you work

the little subtraction.

I

We’ll say just

Yeah. It’d be about that.

Yes.

Oh yes.

Yes but it can’t have been long after that he remarried.

A Queenslander and she didn’t have any family or any, you know she was just a single woman and she came to live at Observatory House then

so, and then my sister and I were living there at that time, then my sister moved out to a flat of her own soon after that and then when my father was, he had to do certain things

breaking up the Observatory. It was, you know just dispersed and he, I think he worked for about a year on that and then he went up, they went together to Queensland to live there. She

So.

Ah,

no because I was a resident master at Melbourne Grammar.

So I just

Yes.

Ah

yes. As far, yes I think I had to, I’m not sure about this but I think on a reserved occupation, if you were in a reserved occupation you had to

wait for enlistment, I think until the, your controller so to speak, that was whatever employment you were…

In at the time.

If you were in a reserved occupation you had to wait for some

particular time, this was laid down I think.

Before just

You could just give your boss notice, you see. That was, I think that was how it worked but oh my memory of a lot of these things is pretty hazy now but somehow that was how it worked because I went down

to Geelong Grammar. Well I was still a reserved occupation there and Darling said, “Well, could you give me a term or so here and then if we suit one another you can just enlist straight away?”, and then he introduced me, then Spencer Chapman was out

on this search for independent company people and Darling had met Spencer Chapman. Well Darling was an Englishman too, you see.

He somehow met Spencer Chapman and then introduced me to him and that was that. Then he said, “If you could just give us a while then you can go and enlist straight away,” and…

Oh Spencer Chapman was with a

mission from England. There was a full colonel and several of them were sent out here because of the idea of independent companies had been floated from Scotland. I think Lord Lovett, I think was the

beginner of them and they were actually a going concern in England and this mission was sent out to one of the colonies, you see thinking that all these big bronzed Australians will be just the boys for independent companies and that was it you see. Spencer Chapman was part of

Part of that, yes.

Ah yes.

Yes, oh yes.

Ah, oh in some ways they were the same but it was basically an infantry

training group.

And the units in the ordinary army or battalion and then a battalion, three companies to a battalion

And a company, an infantry company, I forget how many

men there were in that, but in an independent company there was a higher proportion of officers to men than there was in an ordinary infantry battalion. So there was a company commander and then three sections

and I think there was a special signallers unit and a special sappers unit they were, well they were not units, they were just subdivisions, so that the whole picture was an independent company, had a major in command. The

company had ah three platoons and each of those has a captain’s command, whereas in the ordinary infantry, a platoon is a lieutenant’s command, you see and so there was that and then there was a medical officer,

who’s a commissioned officer, a medical officer belonged and that was all I think but that’s a pretty high proportion of officers

to men as you can see.

And the idea was that on a mission, suppose they wanted to attack Shell

here at Geelong, you see you could, that could be probably a section, which’d only be about, oh I think that would be about twenty men, something like that, and there’d be a captain in charge of that…

And he could just,

you know it meant you had a reasonably senior officer in charge of a small number of men.

And then they’d carry on from there.

Yes. They were, yes they were highly, I don’t think, well the rest of the army probably got to, you know, the rest of the

serving forces probably got to know a bit about them but they were, ah they were meant to be really hush hush.

Well how much, how far one can go and hush hush is hard to say.

Special training down at the

Wilsons Promontory and there the training was in two phases. There’s what they call a cadre. That would be the officers only of what would become later a company. That cadre was trained and they

were then sent down, they were nearer to Forster, you see. That’s where the cadres were trained at Darby River, which was the nearest place to Forster and then when the cadre was trained, they were sent down to Tidal River and at Tidal River there were men

brought in to the number of the company, you see. So that meant there were trained officers and then the men were all people that had been picked up in ordinary infantry training camps and so they were trained to that extent as infantrymen and then their cadre took charge of them and made

a company of them. Well a chap called Callinan and myself were instructors of the 1st Company and we thought we’d like to go away with the first company, you see but that one was knocked on the head. We stayed on

as instructors for the second cadre and then they did allow us to go away with…

I don’t know. They just told we couldn’t and that was that.

Yes. Well yes.

Ah well I suppose the main, well the main skill that you had to build up and this was, I suppose we were chosen as instructors because we had it, but just what you’d call bushmanship, you see.

And my pal that, well as soon as I got there, he became my main friend, was a skilled engineer. He was in a big engineering company and had got quite well ahead there.

He’d have done all his,

you know militia training but then when you could just get out of the militia. He didn’t want to be bothered with that any more. He had no interest in soldiering and he, beyond what he learned you know but when he got into university, he just gave that away altogether and concentrated on his engineering, so he had basic

mili… Ah, basic…

infantry training but

Then this expertise in engineering, you see.

Ah.

No. I’d, while I was, yes while

I was still at university and still in the militia, I’d gone for a study to be an officer and I was just past the examinations and so on and became a

a second lieutenant

You see, so then

I was on the reserve of officers.

And so on enlistment I was on the reserved officers, so I just…

Went into that and I was given, I didn’t have to pass exams or anything as far as I can remember, I was just taken on

and as soon as I got into this independent company, I was made a captain you know. I just got that.

So.

And Callinan, my engineer friend, he came in as a captain too.

Mm.

Oh, just camp conditions

you know. There were plenty of rations tents too but then of course we were put on any amount once we got into our company, well there was all sorts of camping out and so on but oh no, otherwise conditions were very good down on the Prom.

Yeah. Well, army food. Bully and biscuits

and oh you know and there were of course, there was all sorts of supplements you could get in from Forster. Oh no we, it was good food.

Much?

Oh well, the whole thing moved at the double wherever we went and so on. Oh no, that was, yeah that was well looked

after. Oh, we wanted to be fit too, so we used to had to do a lot of running about and so on just on our own account.

Mm.

Oh yes.

Mm.

Oh well,

yes. It’s hard to remember how they fitted in, but there’d be musketry. There was a good deal of training on the rifle range. Then running. We were, there’d be quite long runs that we’d all go on. They’d, we’d just

be told, “Well we want you to get across to Sealers Cove and back again as quickly as you can,” you see, so that was that and then there’d be all sorts of exercises, attack and defence and moving across such and such a stretch of country or climb such and such hill and

so you know, it was just all pretty rigorous training.

Oh I suppose just that there was, it was done more intensively I’d suppose, see I hadn’t had any experience

of what ordinary infantry training was at that stage but I think ours was just, well it was a more, see the nature of the Promontory made it difficult in itself because if we were in an ordinary training camp at Broadmeadows and or Seymour, places like that,

well there was no difficulty with Seymour, you could get in but you could say in a general way there was no difficult country at all within reach and if you wanted to have any sort of bush exercise, you’d just have to be taken in trucks and put there you see. So I think that the mere fact of doing our training, well if you’re told

to go just at normal pace from the light down to the lighthouse and back again…

You see, say you’d be told, “Well you don’t get any meal until you’ve done it.” Well then you know that’s reasonably difficult just in on its own account and that you know that was the nature of it. It was just a more

intensive.

Training by nature of the country, I think.

Ah, oh well the operation was to move a small number of men secretly to

such and such a place and then carry out whatever, mostly it’d be explosive you see or explosives come into it or another thing to, well I suppose you’d have to use explosives for that too, but get into a key…

Yeah, strategic thing. Something like Yallourn.

See if you could get there and knock out a couple of boilers. That might, it might neutralise the whole shooting box. Well this was the sort of operation that we’d, somewhere to be able to put ashore secretly and then go from that to whatever the target was and do what was

Necessary to be done there and then be picked up again at such and such a place, you see.

Yes.

Yes, exactly.

Yes, guerrilla warfare. That’s an exact description of it.

Later.

Yes I,

that happened while were in Timor. This was in 1942.

It, they decided to call them commando. At what stage they’d done this in the UK. I don’t know, but they decided to call them commandos and then for some reason they,

yes commando for some reason they changed the company too. See we, when we were in Timor we were the 2/2nd because 2nd, all units had a 2nd put in front of them. Well the men were pretty hostile about this because they

said, “Well we’re not 2nd anything. We’re just ourselves,” and the commandos, they were bitterly hostile about that too.

And you could see this censoring letters. You’d see what they were thinking about, you’d oh well, what we were thinking about too. We…

I think most of the officers felt…

No, they didn’t like, well they didn’t like changing their name…

At all see

Yeah.

What the?

Oh well, while we were still on the Promontory as soon as we got into the 2nd Company we had

a major, a Queenslander in charge of us, you see and he just, he had command of that company.

Oh yes.

Oh he was a fine chap.

And we had another thing that normally wouldn’t be in a company at all but the,

see there was the medical side of it too, so there was a doctor, an established doctor with the rank of captain you see. He was put into an independent company as well on the, yes on the sort of company headquarters.

And he…

If a section were out and had somebody badly wounded or something like that, well the doctor had wherever the company headquarters was, he’d have a casualty clearing station there, you see and then they’d be just evacuated from Timor best way we…

Best way we could, yes.

Ah

Look, no I can’t…

I can’t remember that. It’d just be guesswork.

Ah

It could be, yes.

I’d suppose, oh I think a bit longer

than that. It’s hard to say

Yeah. Hard to say.

Oh no. No, there was no leave at all from the Promontory because that was supposed to be dead secret and nobody, 'cause we weren’t even allowed to go out as far as Forster.

Yes, very, yes.

Oh no, I don’t think so. The training was, you were generally too tired to get bored I think. Oh and there was a wealth of interest in the, you know in the training itself.

Mm.

Ah yes.

I did. Yes that, yes. I, nothing advanced you’ll understand but a, you know I was going steady with…

Ah, Mabel Winmore, yeah. She was a

matron at Grammar, Melbourne Grammar you see.

Oh yes and then, yes I missed her greatly while I was away

But there again you had plenty to take your mind, yes.

Yes.

Thompson submachine guns. They were the gangster ones from America and these were the actual weapons that we had and there was an English warrant officer that was the weapons expert and one of the things that he used to tell us were the characteristics of a weapon. The Tommy gun was light and handy

for the job or work it has to perform and capable of rapid employment in any direction. Characteristics of the weapon (UNCLEAR).

Ah well from Wilsons Promontory, we were sent straight, there was no leave or anything

on the way and how they expected us to keep secret under the circumstances, I don’t know but we went to Adelaide and we were on the Adelaide Showgrounds for, I can’t remember how long but a considerable time. We got to know our way 'round Adelaide. We were still supposed to be top secret. Well how they expected three hundred men to

stay on the Adelaide Showground and not talk about themselves, I don’t know but then after Adelaide and that I can’t remember how long, we were put on the train up to Alice Springs and straight into three ton vehicles

and up to Katherine River and there in Katherine River, we had to establish a camp and we were just doing ordinary navvies work there because they, again they didn’t want anything to get out but I and this was all sorts of jobs, concrete laying and doing track work on the railway and I

forget there was some other main task that, oh well fitting up the camp. There was concrete work and then it had to, you know water tanks and the whole thing that goes with that all was done at Katherine and then came the Jap attack on Pearl Harbour and we were just put straight into cattle trucks, we, they hadn’t been cleaned out or anything. We just had to hop into

them and it was pouring with rain by then. We got up to Darwin and ah, I think yes we were put straight aboard a troop ship and across to Timor.

Yeah.

Oh route marching mainly. See we had to keep fit

and oh we did our ordinary gym training and then well (UNCLEAR) you know in a conference, we decided how we would do things and we thought route marching was the best and these were long route marches. We may do thirty miles in a day. Something like that and walk

back to camp but yes, I think you’d say that was the main item, gym work and route marching.

I was?

Yes.

Ah about,

oh I’ve forgotten the exact strength but it was something just over a hundred I think.

Mm.

Oh just ordinary life. You know well a school master has to be a leader and keep a form under control and you just, you know I had no thoughts

about it at all. Just what you had to do, yes.

Yes, that’s right. You see as a school master, well that is your role entirely, isn’t it? Just giving orders.

And maintaining discipline, yes.

Oh

good, you know there were some rogues, of course there are, but it, in my platoon I, one of the main trouble makers was in another platoon and he didn’t go very far but he was a trouble maker.

But the West Australians rather admired him. I won’t name but he’d worked underground

at Kalgoorlie. Well that makes him a hero in West Australian eyes and he’d also killed somebody. Why we never heard what but that was what he’s supposed to have done. We never heard any more about that. Well that made him a point of admiration for a fair number of men because they were a bit that way themselves but otherwise he…

Oh well, I’ll tell you one classic. We were while we were in Adelaide. We were trained on N training in a railway, you know trained in N training and D training and on this occasion we were getting into this imaginary carriage and from this chap,

Paddy, a howl of agony. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” and said the CO [Commanding Officer], he said, “Oh I’ve caught my hand in an imaginary door.” Well that was one and then when there’s a place called Corn on the north on the railway to Adelaide and at Corn we had

to stay for a night or two I forget now, probably a night, and this same Paddy Knight and some of his cobbers caught a sheep just a paddock away and they butchered this sheep and they had a feast of their own and then next day the farmer came in furious to see that

the men had killed one of his sheep and Al Spence, our CO, gave him some hush money, you know whatever twenty five quid or something like that and the farmer went off. Well, you know this among the malcontents, this was a triumph for Paddy Knight and so

Yes, he was the one, yes and then the

tail end of him was that, the very, when the Japs had landed in Timor and they came out into the hills looking for us and they got onto one section and Paddy Knight was killed in the very first day of the Japs in the islands. So that was an end

to his trouble making, oh any trouble making I think by that time it was all over but…

So that was what you’d call poetic justice.

I don’t know, yeah.

Oh the chap that had been with me at the beginning of the when we were instructors. That’s

Bernie Callinan and he was, I was still just a platoon commander but Bernie Callinan had become, ah 2IC [Second in Command] of the whole company you see but still we were bosom cronies and oh by that time I had several close friends among you know all…

Yes, the other officers and…

Some of the men that I knew one way or another before we were interested in, got one that became the sergeant of my platoon later and he was, I think he was promoted lieutenant in the field you see. That which was but he interested me because he

did his civil occupation over in the west, was, I think he was an accountant but he was a keen fisherman so and I got to know him

Very well.

No, not really but and he was interested in gardening too. We always, we didn’t, at

Katherine we were there for a little while you see and we had a little garden in front of our tent. In Adelaide we had too, I think and we certainly did down on the Prom where so…

Oh yes, well from the nature of it you see there was (UNCLEAR),

fraternising can you know, it can spoil discipline, that’s the down side of that but just in the nature of it, camped out in the bush you, you’re very close you know. There’s not much, you don’t have a sort of separate area for officers and so on or separate messes, anything like that, just get along as best you can.

Yeah.

Yes.

I don’t, he’s the only one that’s in my mind.

And of course a number but by that time it had all dried up I think. In the early days there were, Paddy had a fair number of admirers, you see and they never did anything wrong themselves but

they just admired him and then well that had dried up by the time we were in action.

Ah oh, well mainly as I say just manual work. Ordinary labourer’s work. We made sure that they do, you know had a

bit of exercise every day but most of it, they were re-laying tracks out on the railway and the… ah there was the concrete work to be done but then there were roadways to be laid out and water tanks to be put in and a reticulation system to be laid

down. This was to be a permanent camp, you see. Not for us but just a permanent camp and we were the handy unit to use so.

Oh I don’t know except, oh well, this had come from you know land headquarters. I don’t know what their strategy was in that at all.

Yes.

No.

Yes before the bombing raids.

Oh just nothing. I think, well I just can’t remember. I, we may have gone straight from the train and aboard the trooper. I can’t remember that.

No.

Yeah, Westralia.

Westralia we went on, mm.

At?

Seymour?

I don’t see a connection. I…

I…

don’t remember any connection about Seymour.

The only thing Seymour means to me is a big military camp at Seymour, which was there all through the war you know

From the very beginning

No.

No.

Yes.

That’s Westralia.

Yes and were taken straight across to Koepang.

That’s Dutch, it was then Dutch Timor, Koepang, and I think we were all in the same ship. The 2/40th Battalion

Was there too and then we were all shipped and landed at Koepang and then see the Japs had this, was all post the attack

on, you know their first bombing attack on the American base, what’s the name of the place? I’ve forgotten that for the moment. Oh no matter, anyway we’ll soon find that one out but then ah, we thought or whoever directed operations from the top thought that it

would be a good idea to do something about Portuguese Timor because they were separate colonies, completely separate you see and not on very good terms with one another so, and Portugal was a neutral country at that time and there was a good landing strip there, you see. Well, I suppose

we were handy troops, so we were sent straight up there to see if we could, well peaceably have a peaceable occupation with the Portuguese, so as to get control of the air strip or just to do the best we could and if necessary the, nobody knew what the Portuguese’s do if

an independent company landed there. They might, you know they might be met with machine gun fire as they got off the ship. We knew as little as that and then…

No, there was nothing there. It was just Portuguese Timor and

We were

And when we got ashore we found, see the Japs, ah the Dutch had

a lot of natives trained as soldiers you see. Native Timorese. Well we didn’t know whether we’d be met with fire. Well when we got ashore, we found these fellas drinking coconut milk and so on and then they just, well obviously they weren’t going to start real trouble and we certainly didn’t want to, we, so they just vanished. I don’t

know what happened to them and we got in and we met with, we sent, I think Bernie Callinan and Spence went in to see what they could do in Dili and in Dili there was a British Consul and they got onto him and then he introduced them to the

Japanese and we were just received formally but civilly

You see

And so we, ah just sat down 'round the air strip as, and kept, we didn’t disperse at all. Well then after that lasted for about a fortnight, I think and of course by that time there were men beginning to fall over with malaria and…

We yeah, ooh yes.

So we decided and we’d had, there were no precautions. We had no Quinine of our own and preventive creams or anything like that you know. They weren’t thought of at that stage, so then I think that lasted for about a fortnight and we had a number of men

mostly from 1st Platoon for some reason and another in hospital in Dili just being looked after there and then Spence told us, “Well, we we’ll disperse,” and I was told to go down to a place called Tibar, a bit out in one direction. Well,

I (UNCLEAR) forty men just fell over on the way to this place. It was a couple of miles I suppose and they trickled into camp afterwards but they had proper malaria you know, and they were shivering like that all the time. Well

A fair number didn’t, how we didn’t, I didn’t catch it. My sergeant didn’t catch it and a fair

number of men didn’t have malaria and I don’t know why the mosquitoes didn’t, oh this was a Cactus Flat we called it because it had prickly pears growing all over it. Well we cleared a bit and we had tents, so we still had tents on our establishment and they were trucked out from Dili straight away

and I just had all the men working on clearing away enough of the cactus to pitch tents.

And at one stage we were down to just five of us. Eric Smyth and myself didn’t, we hadn’t had malaria and a few men didn’t and so we just did as best we could. There

was water at a little place called Tibar, a bit further down, so we had a couple of men, well we just used to take it in turns to…

Go down there and

And bring water, carry water back, you see and that way and then I soon, I had them all swimming if they

felt up to it. We were right on the water’s edge and that seemed to work you know, a lot, most of them, a few had to be sent back into the Dili hospital, I think but most of them got on all right there.

And then we were, after that we were dispersed into the hills, you see properly…

Oh no, except that was on the obvious line of advance. They’d come down through the Dutch East Indies, so just came down step by step.

And they were after Timor exactly as a launching place for an invasion of Australia.

One launching place and see they were doing the same in New Guinea too. They were

coming down that way.

That, that’s ah, yes.

Mm.

Sections, yes.

Ah

I went back to a place called Railaco and I had three sections camped there. They, each of my sections had its own little camping area there.

And then, ah I don’t know how long we’d been there, not very long

but enough to establish things reasonably well and then Bernie said, “Well, ah we’d, ah best get further distributed in case the Japs do attack us. We’ll just have to retreat before them.” There’s no good having a pitched battle because that would be, end up exactly as Koepang did with the

whole lot of us in the bag you see, so he said, “We’ll have to fight delaying actions if they do come out after us.” And just off the map without knowing what they were, we had a reasonable map, a Portuguese map and there’s the big central mountain and that’s a divide. You

go up from the north coast, how ever many miles and then there were sort of range and then you go down the other way to the south and flowing rivers and we looked at our maps and he said, “Well, we can just go on the places that look important and we’ll make each of those our headquarters, and you can go to that one Baldy”,

which was a place called Bobonaro and Geoff Laidlaw, who was number two, “You can go to such and such a place and number three section to such and such a place.” So that was it and when the Japs did come out after us, we from Ra at Railaco, we had our own

places there, all we did then just fight a delaying action, got over the range. They didn’t chase us and I went down to Bobonaro and then dispersed me sections pretty well from there and I had my own headquarters in Bobonaro and we had excellent relationship with the governor. He was, you know one of, I don’t know how many governors there were. The

whole Portuguese Timor was in provinces and each one had a provincial…

A governor. I don’t know how many there were but not all that many, he was a pretty…

Pretty potent figure and of course he, they had all native labour highly organised and he used to arrange stacks of firewood and thing,

anything like that. And I had my sections dispersed from there and he said, “Oh there’s a house up there in the village,” this is a proper European style house. “You can have that as your headquarters.” So I called that Australia House, so I had my little headquarters there and sections

dispersed 'round the country you see, and just…

No, of a platoon.

Yes.

Ah three section commanders.

Lieutenants, yes.

Mm.

Oh well because we were dependent, see we had no communication with Australia. That had that, had broken down and it wasn’t until Bobonaro days that we managed to, by going all over we managed to get the bits and pieces to make a sending set that would get Darwin,

you see because up till that time till the Japs got hold of Koepang, our line of, we had sets with us with our own signallers that could get Koepang and we could have, traffic could go between us and Koepang and traffic could go between there and Darwin, you see.

Well then, when the Japs

took Koepang that then finished. We were just regarded, I think it was a six week period, I can remember that because you know from what happened at home but we were just lost. They didn’t know what had happened to us any more than the 2/40th Battalion you see. They’d just been eaten up and all become

all either killed or become prisoners or war.

So and this was thought to be our fate too and we’d just vanished. Well this…

The 2/40th were, yes.

Yeah, oh yes the Japs just…

Ah yes.

Ah well, you see the

2/40th fought with them just an ordinary infantry and they didn’t try to escape or anything like that, just you know die to the last man so to speak or else be taken prisoner. That but some of them just,

well it sort of happened or was part of it but some of them what they, a battalion that was in a position like that had what they called a B echelon. In case of such and such trouble this B echelon would get out if they could you see. Well B echelon for them, I don’t know how

many men were in this but they came up and they still had their rifles. They hadn’t surrendered. They’d done nothing just, except just clear out and they came up and joined us you see and…

We gave them training and they became another platoon so

Four platoons by that time, mm.

Yes.

Willy the War Winner. Oh yes, well that’s the one that we built this from all sorts up in the war museum. You’ve probably seen Willy the War Winner but it was constructed, they, the sigs went out, little patrols of them and they got bits and pieces and in the end managed to cobble up this set, which just got Darwin

and then before (UNCLEAR) they had arranged with Darwin, they managed to get through to Darwin what way, what we needed. Boots and ammunition were the main things and rations if they could and then that much had been established and the Willy the War Winner just broke out, just broke down, finished

so…

No, it didn’t last…

Very long but just long enough, there was about a six weeks, I think.

Yes but that was getting it built up and then the period that they could send anything to receive or to Darwin was very short but then there were supplies dropped and the first thing

of course was a decent wireless set, which could go straight to Darwin and then we got little boats used to sneak over and…

With rations and mostly see, we could get on all right with native food. We could just get on with that but decent sets and then these little

craft used to come over mainly to evacuate any wounded or anything like that. So then we were pretty right.

Ah yes. Again I

can just recall what happened to me. My little headquarters in the first dispersal after Cactus Flat, I moved back into the hills and I had oh, I forget how the, I… happened at my headquarters I had a complete section,

I think a fair number and we, it was decided then that if the Japs came out there after us it would be a delaying action and we’d just fade off over the range you see. Well they did come out after us and my camp was here and a

valley coming up this way towards my camp and a funny little stretch of open ground there and the Japs, oh I don’t know how, who brought news in and said, “It looks like Japs coming up the track,” up this gully. So I got my binoculars and just with your naked eyes, you couldn’t see whether they, what they were. Whether they were Portuguese

or that, but with the glasses they were obviously Japs, so we went to the far edge of the, of this open ground and exchanged fire with them from there and that was, they were completely ambushed at that stage. Well when they start seriously to come up towards us, I doubled back over

to this side of the open ground and had another bit of fire fight and then they nicked off after that, so I thought, well they’ll be back any time now, so we just faded off over the range.

Over the creek was up in flood then. The natives came out to help us. They

said, “Oh we we’ll show you where there’s a bridge,” and…

Well the bridge was just a log over this roaring torrent but we got over that safely and then Bobonaro came.

Oh yes. Extremely.

Oh yes, we had good relations with them by that time.

Because the, oh

I suppose the men just naturally got on with them. You know they had a bit of cash and they, we’d buy pigs and goats and things and the natives were so helpful that if we gave them a little signed note, a surat, as they were, we said, “Well those’ll be good for Australian money, when we get it,” and so we got cash dropped

to us first thing and those surats were all paid off and, but oh I think our men just naturally got on all right with the natives, you know and fraternised with them.

Oh I don’t know, just, oh couldn’t say. They, you know they weren’t a swarm, they

just soldiers coming along maybe, ah forty, fifty men. Hard to say, mm.

Ah, oh yes. I think a fair number of them we knocked off but we didn’t go to look over the ground. I’m telling you we were more intent on getting away across the hills.

Ah no, not in that. We didn’t lose anyone at all.

Oh, over ah well, we had to move, we just moved through the country then and I suppose the natives, you know news travels quickly among them and

they helped us at. We had to camp out a couple of nights or three nights and then into Bobonaro, you see and then we…

New game then.

Yes.

With the Portuguese (UNCLEAR)

Nothing.

No, well just that we knew that Japs were at war with us, that’s all.

Oh well…

Well that was what we were trained, ah we were trained

as an independent company. An infantry battalion had its own role, which was you know resistance of a said position until the end, until they surrendered or were killed.

Yes.

West Timor ah…

Koepang is West Timor, you see. That was…

Yes.

Yes

That’s right and

Yes, ah well it was just surrounded. They and a battalion has what they call a B echelon transport and the like and they were outside the perimeter. So it was the main battalion cooped up there and a Japanese all round them and the B echelon just outside that. Well we,

that was the situation when we were up, we’d just been sent at the same time, we’d just arrived in Koepang with the 2/40th and then we were sent straight up to Portuguese Timor to see what we could do there. Well that was that situation and the B echelon, when the actual Japs had pretty well overrun Koepang, the B

echelon was ordered to move off to fight a rearguard action of course. They didn’t just run away but to move off towards Portuguese Timor and this they did, and the Japs were busy with the rest of Koepang, so they did nothing and the B echelon, cause they had their rifles most of them and they you know, they weren’t just fugitives anyway but

they found our headquarters and we put them in and out of the way area and trained them as another along independent company lines. Trained them as that. So they became from then on, we had four platoons in, ah four companies instead of just three you see, so it was like that.

Why didn’t they?

Oh well, they didn’t, they thought this would be a repeat of Koepang if they did, they just because the Japs obviously had overwhelming force you see and that this’d just be another lot that went into bag with maybe a few escaping.

That’s how that was.

Yes just worked, oh well, no we were just put aboard another, an old Dutch destroyer and it looked as though it’d fall to pieces but it, we were just put on that and shipped to Dili you see.

Pardon?

Oh yes, yes, it was an old, oh yes. The Japs

had…

The Japs had pinched this on the way down you see or it may have been stationed at Koepang, I don’t know where but I remember the name of the thing - it was the Canopus it was called.

Oh well, they just didn’t bother about it. I don’t, well, this was just before the Japanese landed and enveloped the 2/40th.

I don’t know how, you know they didn’t, either didn’t worry about or just missed the Canopus altogether anyway.

There were no Japs in Koepang while we were there, we were just put on this Canopus and bunged off to East Timor.

Oh Dili.

Yes.

Ah oh well,

I don’t know. We didn’t know much about it. We, see the Portuguese were neutral and we didn’t know anything about Portuguese natives or what the Portuguese had in the way of… they, we thought they may have had troops of their own up there, you see but we just didn’t know anything and the aerodrome

or the landing strip is a little, just a little way out of Dili, maybe a mile or two, and we, just this would be morning I think we arrived there. I can’t remember that but we were just put in boats and rowed ashore. Well from the time we were getting off the ship we thought, oh we may be met with machine gun fire or anything. Well we got to the shore

safe without any incident and then we saw a whole lot of native troops. We didn’t see any white officers or anything but we saw a lot of native troops just sitting around. I suppose they were guarding the aerodrome but they were just sitting around drinking coconut milk and they as soon as we stepped ashore, they just nicked off.

Oh I suppose, I don’t…

Well I suppose. Yes I don’t know what they, but we had no way of judging what they thought and so we landed then and nothing more happened to us and we sent a couple of senior officers, and oh well I suppose they had an escort but we just sent them ashore to meet the Portuguese.

And Britain or Australia had a, I suppose it’d be oh, anyway he was known as a consul. Chap called Dave Ross, he was the British Consul at Dili

And he took our officers to the Portuguese governor, you see and then the Portuguese, well they just made the best of a bad

job. They said, “If you’re here, don’t undertake any offensive action against us and we’ll be quite happy if you just stay.”

You see as neutral, so that was so we never had any armed clash at all with even a tiny lot of Portuguese. Nothing at all.

What did they?

Oh yes.

Ah that was it. As long as, you see that was as long as you don’t interfere with us, we won’t interfere with you and in fact they went beyond that in their own way. They just gave us a lot of help from the

beginning. Turned over their hospital to us for instance where we could send our mal [malaria] cases, ah our, what do you call it the disease? Oh malaria.

Yes. Malaria cases.

Oh yes.

Very much but they didn’t know how it’d come. Whether they’d come up as they did

through the Portuguese border or whether they’d come by sea or what. They had no idea but they knew that sooner or later they’d be trying to get the get hold of the airstrip.

None.

Oh none.

Well none that we knew anything about it and it wouldn’t…

You know,

their troops such as they had there, were in, weren’t worth two bob anyway, you know they…

Yes, yes.

I don’t know. It wouldn’t, from their record in the First War wouldn’t make much difference if they did because they had a terrible reputation in the in the First War. They came into that on the

side of the allies, France and that, but they had a very poor reputation.

Yes.

Oh just as bad you know. They wouldn’t fight.

That was the main trouble with them I think

No, if you know, if they were,

they had a stretch of trench to man for argument’s sake, they’d man it and then the Germans would mount some pipsqueak against them, the Portuguese would just clear out, you know that that was in general a reputation that they had.

Ah, oh well because it all happened so quickly you know. There was, no we were just sent up there well, while we were on the water practically to get up there, the Japs had complete control of Koepang. There was no, you know, no co-ordination was possible.

I wouldn’t think so.

I think they strictly stayed inside their own boundaries.

Oh it’s down, well I could only name places but it’s well to the west of Dili. I forget what’s the first or the last Dutch town, or the first Portuguese town. I just can’t remember.

Ah well no, I don’t, I think they, when the Japs arrived they probably, they’re, well we never ran across any. They may have been there but we never I think, ah as soon as the situation in Dutch Timor was clear, I think the

Portuguese just went off to the you know, kept to their own part (UNCLEAR) and they didn’t go down there at all and we as soon as we had got over this first business, our first dispersal, as soon as we’d established that really we sent patrols

down to the Dutch border to see if we could find out Japanese intentions. Whether the Japanese were coming up that way and for thereafter, we always until well, I don’t know when they crossed the border, but they arrived not by land but by sea. They

landed the same as we had done at Dili and so they didn’t and we always thereafter, had we kept an eye on the border between the two countries but the Japanese didn’t seem to do anything down there at all. They

landed Dili the same as we did and they got complete control of Dili and surroundings, you see and then that was all, we never heard anything more of Dutch forces after that.

And…

Ah Portuguese forces, I mean.

And the, ah the Dutch forces

well I don’t think they ever came up along the land side except oh well, on, I think it was in August they tried then to round us up. I thought they, their aim was to round

us up once and for all. Get rid of any Portuguese forces but mainly to get rid of the Australian forces but then they sent one of their main spearheads, I don’t know, well we had no way of knowing what strength they were but just overwhelming strength, they came at us from five different directions. Two-one as far as we

could make out, pretty how can I say, confused situation but as far as we could make out Japanese force came up over the border, two landed on the south coast or of the south, one on the south western part of the coast, and one almost opposite Dili.

And the others just all came from Dili I think and then converged on us like that and they did. They succeeded in having us all round the (UNCLEAR). We fought. They were all rearguard actions, you see but in the end they had us all bottled up in a small area.

Oh again, Alas was the name of the place but that’s on the southern fringe of the island and they had up us all bottled up there. There were a big force of Japs there south of us and north of us, and one lot up coming up this way and the others had got round from Dili and connect with the others, so that was Japs all round. And then

as I say, we were bottled up there and Callinan and I had a quick conference and we said, “Well we don’t, we’re not going to surrender. We’ll just keep, you know fight until the end. Whatever happens.” So that little conference was late afternoon and we had that and then we were

still together. Dark had well fallen and up went a big green rocket. I can see that quite clearly still, this big green rocket. We turned to one another and said, “Oh God. This is it. They’re about, that’s probably their signal to start on us.” Well as soon as it was daylight, we sent out little patrols to reconnoitre and see what was happening. Not a Jap to be seen

anywhere and we found out, ah, after the war, it was found out that this was one of their best divisions that was in Timor and by that time they’d given Timor away. They hadn’t, they just withdrew these, who were some of their choice troops, and I suppose they just wanted them somewhere else. So they just went up to Dili and then they were taking off.

Probably, you know when things were getting bad in New Guinea, when the Americans began coming across, a Coral Sea battle I suppose, and things like that. Then the Japs decided just to leave Dili, not to worry about that but to…

No. No.

Yeah.

No, no.

Yes, they just left Timor altogether.

I think so, yes.

Um

This would be ah well, I suppose yes, the end of '42 or the beginning of '43, 'round about that time and

they’d yes, they certainly hadn’t (UNCLEAR) thereon because we were and we were on the increase there. We, oh this is you know, we, is land headquarters in Melbourne. We didn’t have anything to do with it, at the be… yeah at the

decision, but we had to do the operations that occurred, that it entailed. The, let’s see how it did happen? Yes, they decided to send another independent company, that was the 4th, ah 2/4th,

send them across to Timor just as one block and to have those as they came, dispersed platoon by platoon to their, to our existing positions. The 4th were to occupy

then and stay there with us just to find out how the country worked and how to look, you know how to deal with natives. All this sort of administrative stuff and they landed and that was a very ticklish business getting them and getting them dispersed. Well it was decided

then, they had meant to last for a few weeks I suppose, but the 2/2nd was going to be taken off and the 2/4th left to hold the fort. So the Japs, what I don’t know, how many there were but they evidently got the idea that something was in the wind

because the 2/2nd had to evacuate. A destroyer came to pick them up and the Japanese didn’t do anything at that stage but then it was decided, oh, the time intervals were pretty short here. The 2/2nd got

off without any trouble but then when it came the turn of the 2/4th, Australia decided it was no good keeping any troops over there at that stage so the 2/4th came off, but there were enough Japs ah…

Callinan and I were left with them because Callinan had been left in command of the two companies you see, and his was all headquarters and I’d stayed with that and the Japanese didn’t, they were close behind us but they didn’t for some reason, they didn’t attack us at any stage and the…

A flood, I don’t know why. We

couldn’t tell but we were held up by a flooded river and we thought, oh God this is the end of us, because we knew there were Japs there but they didn’t, they didn’t attack us and the natives got us across that river. They managed to get a big rope across and our blokes…

Yes. Yes this, then we…

Then we got down to the coast again thinking

it wasn’t far, the distances were short, thank God and we thought, oh God they’ll certainly attack us when we were in the middle of a civil… or a fair number of Portuguese women and children and Portuguese men that thought they’d better get out too in view of what the Japs had been up to, so that we got that done successfully without any interference from the Japs at all, they didn’t so we were off,

but a few signallers were left there with some sort of escort and their role was just to live in hiding from the Japs and communicate anything to Darwin you see. They had signal sets that would do that well

and at some stage very soon and again we have no idea how many Japs were involved but that crowd were only a small group, they were just overwhelmed and imprisoned and the Japanese then operated their sets, you see and began sending false reports into

Darwin. Well the Darwin people, pretty well I suppose by the language or by the style of telegraphy. See it was still Morse telegraphy…

Mostly and by the style they knew it was not their, not an Australian.

But so that was that and I don’t know what happened to, I think a couple of those managed to

live in hiding and then in the end get away to Australia.

Just a few, yeah.

I couldn’t tell you.

Mm, no it wasn’t many. Well they couldn’t have many because their idea was to have them live in hiding you see, while they were getting their reports through

so…

Oh yes. Well…

Oh much the same. Some of the natives helped them you see and they could get food like that, but oh I don’t think they stayed there for long and then it was decided that they were, you know an effort was made to

pick them up but some of them had just vanished. I don’t, well they were killed presumably and one or two escaped somehow or another because I met them afterwards in Melbourne at, you know at reunions and things like that. A couple of blokes that had been with that party but they, you know it was all pretty mysterious what happened because how

they got off I don’t know. Maybe if I suppose somehow or another they managed to signal Darwin that there were some there that could be rescued.

What?

Oh well, we had

Our normal see, we all had normal

military infantry equipment. That’s Lee Enfield rifles and we had, oh pistols you know, a few pistols (UNCLEAR) and I think we still had a couple of trench mortars, but they were so heavy to carry about that we never

used them but we did have a fair number, I can’t tell you how many, but of Thompson submachine guns, just the plain civilian Thompson submachine gun that the American gangsters had at the…

Time, Tommy guns, and those were invaluable to us of course but I can’t remember how many there were or how they were distributed. They were a bit of an embarrassment because

we used to get supplies of ammunition for our rifles would come over and it was packed in such and such a, it was cases of whatever number of rounds. But two of those cases was a, just a good load for a Timor pony you see. The average pony couldn’t carry

more than that. Well the Thompson gun ammunition was heavier, oh well it, I don’t know it was heavier calibre, but it was packed quite differently and in square cases. Well they are hard to load on the horse and we, two of these was

far more than any pony could carry you see. Well you can’t arrange on a pack saddle, you can’t arrange a square box, you have to have it hanging down evenly on both sides, you see. Well we had no way of subdividing these Tommy gun cases, so they were awkward for us. We had to, oh I don’t,

I can’t remember how we managed them. Maybe we had a horse drag them or whatever, but they were a nuisance. I think the solution we adopted in the end was just to open a case and make it into man loads and let men take it and distribute it bit by bit.

Yeah, Sparrow Force.

Yes. They had the only two that I can remember: Sparrow Force and Gull Force was another. I don’t know, oh yes I think at any of these were based this was trying to get, you know filter ourselves

back into Japanese held territory in New Guinea, and some of them went to Rabaul and, oh different places you see, and the two that I can remember just are Sparrow Force in Timor and Gull Force in, where’s Gull Force? Ambon, I think.

Yes, one of them was. I think that was the Ambon force that was, just went into (UNCLEAR) but

Oh.

It…

Oh well, the strength of 2/2nd, which was three hundred. About three hundred men. I’ve forgotten now.

Oh yes, well I told I told Sue [interviewer]…

all about that.

And that’s in the war museum up there.

Oh well…

Yeah.

Well, there was

Ah, see

the main thing we’re with the set, we had to scrounge different parts from Portuguese friends or one way and another, parts to make a set. Well then with that, you have to have a generator and the generator, well we didn’t know how to get that fixed but one of our, I just remember one of our schemes and somehow the generator was fixed in the end. I suppose they got a motorbike

engine or something like that and could drive it but we had to have some manually driven thing and we had and you have for a generator you have to have pretty high revs, you see and this one, we made a big wheel, it was about that big out of wood

you see and that had things like bike pedals that you could work like this and it would revolve and then that had a belt that ran down to a, you know, to a normal-sized axle and that got the revs you see and then that was, that would drive the generator but, oh that just didn’t

work at all. But I can remember this huge wheel and two or three blokes that side going for their lives. I’ve got the revs down there all right but they could, you know, the whole contraption was just oh…

Oh, I don’t know.

A good while because there was a lot of

scrounging to be done.

Ah well, just for a very short while because in the, ah Winnie the War Winner managed to get a couple of essential signals across to Darwin, enough to be acted on, and after that it just

played out. It couldn’t transmit any more and then after a short while one of the messages, well one of the, I suppose the first one to get through I suppose was that we wanted a new wireless set or whatever you know, and so in the, ah what was dropped to

us in the end was enough equipment to get a wireless set that could work Darwin. It, I suppose batteries were sent with it to keep it going or whatever but I, you know those details I’ve just forgotten and then we had boots and ammunition, those were the main things we wanted

because though they did drop us, oh I suppose just as presents, American field rations in tins you know. Well we didn’t care for them much, they, we were living just as well on what we had I think so.

When we landed?

Ah oh well, ah

some of it was, well we had it until the Japs got Koepang you see, when that was the end of that. There was nothing served, no nothing served by communicating with Koepang and we had a set with us

with our ordinary equipment and we had sets that would do that all right but they weren’t powerful enough to reach Darwin you see.

So we just, you know, then they were and we had to travel as light as we could. There was no use carrying useless wireless sets around with us, so they were just destroyed.

Ah, oh

Oh no.

Oh no, it varies greatly. I don’t think there was any, we never struck anything you know in our wanderings that was dense like jungle at all and the Portuguese had a fair bit of it under you know, it was just a pipsqueak colony of theirs but they had

coffee plantations there and what was the other, oh rubber plantations. They had rubber plantations. Well they can’t have been very pretty. I never saw one of the rubber plantations. I saw one or two of the coffee plantations. Well they were just orchards, you know just like that and they just

did as much as they could with ordinary native labour you know, which was slave labour virtually. Just the imperial system, same as India or anywhere else and then the natives had ah little gardens of their own where they used to grow, they grew some and had sugarcane from somewhere or another and they

had this sugarcane and they grew a bit of rice. They had some little paddy fields organised and grew a bit of rice and maize. They grew a lot of maize and that was useful for to us. That’s what we bought from them mostly.

Yes.

Oh, I was never posted there, so I couldn’t tell you exactly. It was at a place called Remeseo [?], which was back in the hills looking down on Dili. Well the Japanese for some reason never got

onto that. That was I think that OP [Observation Post] mind, it was evacuated several times. They just went off into the scrub and come back later but I don’t think the Japanese ever got onto that.

And I had nothing to do with that except later when I’d left the

2/2nd and was on (UNCLEAR) headquarters for Sparrow Force, then I used to see some of the signals that came in from this Remeseo outpost.

And they, we had other OPs on Dili. I can’t, don’t know anything about them. I can’t remember where they were, nor what their communication was.

In later times it was, most of the news came in by courier you know. Just they’d have a native there and they’d give him a note and they’d send that back, which was written in cipher simple cipher, Playfairs

(UNCLEAR) and this oh is a very simple cipher to crack but we reckoned that all we were interested in was something immediate you see and that if the Japanese did manage to crack one of these signals it wouldn’t, you know, it’d take them so long to get through

the cipher that the need would be past for anything that…

Ah oh we didn’t, yes there seemed to be a fair bit. I suppose they were landing stores

for their own troops and things like that you know and I suppose every now and then they’d need motor transport. There were not many roads that could operate on but I suppose well water and medical supplies and so on. I think the, it seemed pretty… I remember one signal that we got back from this Remeseo, one,

this chap, you were supposed, if you were observed you were supposed to put down time and notes and nature of enemy action you see, and ten o’clock in the morning, three motor lorries landed. Twelve o’clock, two went off north and one went off south.

This sort of thing. Well one message that we got back from this was the officer had written down '(UNCLEAR)' which you were supposed to give in the report what you thought these were, you know, what was the purpose of them and he just, we read this at, the thing was in cipher of course but we

could read out, “Their moves seem aimless and have me rooted.” So that was the only report that I can remember from (UNCLEAR) from OP.

Yeah.

No, I don’t see what you’re getting at.

Yes.

Oh yes.

Yeah.

No, we see…

One

platoon early in the piece just had a little night raid into Dili, not to capture anything or, but just to interfere with the Japs, you know harassment, you’d call it, and they got there and I think they killed one Jap and they didn’t, a Japanese sentry, and then that got things stirred up

and our little party just nicked off before anything more happened. I think that’s the only time, oh well, no we didn’t, our main chance was to attack ambush-fashion some Japanese outpost, some small outpost that was out in

the country looking for us or trying to do something with us. Well, if we could we’d catch (UNCLEAR) and kill a few of them that way and then just vanish. That’s harassment, what that means.

Oh well we never knew.

Oh I think it was, from what we’ve heard since and so on it was about a division, mostly I think and that was a pretty… and then at some stage, well that was towards the end of when

I suppose there was a division there most of the time, and then when that, we thought they really had us and the rocket went up and so on…

I think at that stage they withdrew most of that division because that was one of their best divisions, a regular division I suppose…

They were wanted somewhere else you see.

Oh could have been. I don’t know.

Yes.

Mm.

Yes. Yes.

Yes, oh yes.

Oh very little, because you know these were overwhelming odds and our main aim was to not to be surrounded, so we never came too close, well with the skirmishes and you know, always we got out of it as we could. We didn’t suffer many casualties then.

Ah oh, well hardly that even. Just a fighting rear guard not, you know the purpose of them was not to delay the Japs but just to make sure they didn’t catch us. That, you know, it’s a bit of a difference.

Yeah, disengaging. Yes that would sum it up,

mm.

Ah

Yes. Ah…

Oh I couldn’t say. It certainly wasn’t one of mine. I never had a, I think there was one

occasion near Same and I don’t know which platoon or section was involved in this but it was I know a fairly sizeable body of Japs, and just a very successful ambush because they managed to pour a lot of fire into the Japs before

they knew where it was coming you know, before the Japs knew where it was coming from, and by the time they got things sorted out and were ready to attack where they thought it had been coming from, well we’d just vanished altogether, you know into scrub and we’d never know what casualties would be suffered by the Japanese because we didn’t, they, all we wanted

from them was to collect their wounded and clear out and we didn’t, you know, because from the nature of it in ambushes, you’re not defending anything. You just want to harass the attackers and that’s very hard to recall details.

I can recall details of things that I was

Ah well, I don’t think I was beyond that when they first attacked us, you know, after they’d arrived in Dili and came out after us. And I don’t know

how many this was, it, you just couldn’t tell, but we knew they were coming and then… Oh I’d had reports that they were coming, so I went to their side of this open space and I forget how big that was too, it was and then we just,

we did the ambush part but from there and got them as they were going along the track. Well they had a few killed there and then as soon as they began, you know their attacks would begin with an enveloping movement, they’d be going like that and then they’d try to bring that wing round and that wing round and swallow up (UNCLEAR). Well while they were doing

that I got back to this other side, my own side of the opening, and we had another fire fight with them there and then, I thought, well there’s nowhere to hide, so we just went into full retreat. We got 'em off the edge and down and hid in the scrub well away

overnight and in the morning the natives took us down to a bridge, which was just a single log across this roaring tide and we got over that and just made ourselves scarce.

Mm.

Yes, that one mm.

Oh well they always wanted to do that. They always wanted to take a slice out of the Japs.

While they could so, but oh I suppose, you know, there’s sort of sporting element in that.

Yeah.

Oh well, I don’t know,

oh it was done much in the, in a much of the spirit of a football attack or something like that. Just have a go. That was the thing.

I can’t recall. I don’t

think there was anyone caught in a Japanese ambush. I don’t think so because they never had much idea of where we were or what we were doing and we were never moving in a group that’d be worth ambushing.

You know in some country that we knew well to be free of Japs, we might move a section at once in a hurry but they wouldn’t be going in a concentrated group, they’d just be moving from place A to place B and they’d be pretty scattered. Well you know, it wouldn’t be worth ambushing them at all.

You know I think.

Oh, I don’t know. They, I suppose in one way they had us defeated altogether because we were never doing much damage to them but we were there and I suppose we were a nuisance and

I don’t think they ever knew quite what we were passing back to Australia.

No. No.

No idea. No.

About my?

Oh not heavy casualties. I couldn’t tell you how many but we always had enough. You see when we got back onto Darwin and could signal direct to Darwin,

we could, oh mostly sick, sick and wounded too I suppose but we could ask so that we… Could they evacuate such and such a number of people? And we’d signal that to Darwin and the response would come pretty quickly.

Oh

it just varied. About what we wanted and we see there are times when we didn’t need Darwin at all but we’d keep it radio traffic going and so, well we were all right, nothing, but then there was quite a lot to be arranged. If we called for a craft we had

to have recognition signals on the beach you know. We’d have so many fires burning in such and such a place and they’d know that that was a clear place to land and all this took quite a bit of arrangement you see and then that had to be covered. We had to signal in enough of our own men to cover that

landing, but all these things, they were just sort of daily routine, daily work and you don’t remember much of that do you, if say you work in an office, well it’s only a few incidents here and there that you can remember and then you don’t know much in the way of detail I think.

The?

No, I don’t think so.

Not that we knew, no, even among the natives they, what was hard

to know of because I think the Japs were pretty ruthless with them, if they had got displeased with natives for any reason, even if they just suspected them of being friends of the Australians or having done something to help them. Well they’d as likely as not go in and shoot a few people and burn down a few villages, you see so

I don’t think there were any of them, but they had some at one stage of, we never saw much of this and we kept religiously out of it of course.

But they had a civil, sort of civil war of their own but

Yes and there were two ah,

there was one group that called themselves Fretilin, and I think the Fretilin were, they were friendly to the Australians and then there were, there was a fair number of natives and they were known as Aima Fuic [pro-Japanese East Timorese] or mad people

and these were bitterly resentful of the Portuguese for one, you know in a way now much along the lines of small groups wanting independence and to be able, and they were bitter about Portuguese treatment of the natives in general. And those two, well we

couldn’t make out why they collided with one another but they certainly did and there was a pretty bitter civil war going on while we were there. This was more towards the end you know. By the time they’d sized up what Australians were and what Japanese were I think and…

I think so yes. Yes. Oh yes, I don’t think there were any that were just pro-Japanese. I wouldn’t think so.

Ah no. Well of course we were always just meeting those that that helped us or sold

us food and so on, but they, well I don’t think they had any cause to dislike Australian troops and because they just couldn’t see us tyrannising over them at all because we just never did you see. It would have been suicidal on our part to stir up trouble with them and oh I suppose

just our ordinary, you know ordinary human feelings. We didn’t want to make trouble for them.

Oh yes.

Oh yes.

Oh yeah, definitely. Oh they knew you pretty, in that sort of a situation you need a pretty, a you know, it’s not

an imposed discipline because we had no way of punishing anyone that we were worried about. We had no way of punishing them at all and, oh no, you’d say there was no disciplining trouble of any sort. I think they just did, they knew what needed doing as well as the officers did and they just worked.

Ah well

Ah

No, there was never ah, no. From the very nature of our operations there was never that sort of ah, that sort of conflict. We’d,

well just was good luck I suppose and (UNCLEAR) we just had to leave behind or anyone that was obviously mortally wounded but this didn’t happen because in the nature of things it’d just be small, very small numbers of our troops engaged either with ah…

with varying numbers of Japanese from big numbers down to little groups but we found, seldom found, well I don’t know that we ever found a little group of Japanese. And always if it were a big group, we made sure of if they were going to envelop us. We just made off, you see and we didn’t prolong an action until there was

time maybe for somebody to be killed or wounded but the very nature of our tactics meant that we wouldn’t get many wounded you see. We had very few wounded. Sick men were our main trouble.

But and that was casualties. I don’t, oh I think some men died over there, I don’t know,

but for the most part we managed to look after them and get them down to the beach and off you see because there were such small numbers involved, it wasn’t, it, well the Japs I suppose didn’t think we were worth bothering about more than a bit every now and then they’d make one of these concerted

moves to round us up. Well they never succeeded really in doing that.

Yes.

Ah

No, I don’t think they ever did.

No, I can’t, that’s the only concerted one that I can remember

where…

And then they were obviously coming where they got their information or what I don’t know but they were right on our backs for the second evacuation when the 2/4th Company was being evacuated. They obviously knew something about that because we could

tell by the way they were operating that there were numbers out after us but. What sort of soldiers or, I don’t know, but they never, that was the only time that we ever had them really trying to round us up I think.

Oh we respected

them as pretty ruthless fighters, but well I think we just you know, we knew too much about them to feel any bonds between us, because you know tales of Japanese atrocities and how they’d behaved in China, they were pretty

common knowledge by that time. I think our general opinion of Japanese was just vermin to be extirpated. You couldn’t feel anything else…

Yes. I think so.

Yes I think so because they behaved dreadfully, wherever

you know, and there was plenty when they got into, when they got into Manchuria (UNCLEAR) they called it in, well, their behaviour there, just atrocity after atrocity after atrocity and then when they attacked, China same thing, you know the rape of Nanking. They were common knowledge and they were just atrocious. Just atrocious.

You don’t know how they all were. I suppose there were different types as well amongst them as there are, but that was, their behaviour as a group and you can only go on that.

Oh nothing. I never had anything to do with them and

Ah oh well, my own feelings about them are quite different.

Yes. This is all on hearsay you see because I wasn’t there. Wasn’t in France or Flanders at any stage and in the in the Second [World] War, well again I had nothing to do with German soldiers at all because that was all in the Middle East

and we were in…

Oh to Australia.

Yes. Oh yes we were, and General Stevens then commanded, I don’t know how many

troops were up there. Most of 6th Division I think were in Norforce, which was Northern Territory, and when we were put in hospital for a short while in Darwin and then we were paraded. There was no place for us in the 2nd Company where we belonged

you see, because our places had been taken, the 2nd Company had come under command of… been promotions all round, so that was a closed door and Stevens interviewed Bernie before me and he said to him, “Well I think with your training and your behaviour in Timor,

you’d be well suited to command a battalion and I’ll send you to training school for such officers.” You see if you were being trained for an officer in an ordinary battalion, he was sent to what they call the tactical school, so he said to Bernie, “I think we’ll send you to the tactical school and out of that you’ll very likely get a battalion,” which is exactly what happened

to him. He got command of an infantry battalion and he said to me, “Oh with your background I think you should be all right as a staff officer,” and I said, “Oh yes, sir.” You know that was, he said, “Or I could get you into a militia battalion but I think you’d be wasted. You’d probably

be more useful as a staff officer.” So I just took that and I was sent to a staff school at Duntroon and then, oh I’ve forgotten where I think I went, straight up to New Guinea, then to New Guinea force, and then they were brought back onto the mainland for a rest and I…

Ah New Guinea force headquarters.

Ah no, that was, oh I forget what… I think that was 7th Division probably.

So yes, that and

then they were brought out to Australia for a rest and I just came with them and then I had a spell on land headquarters in Melbourne and then I went to another staff school. That was towards the end of the war and got put onto another divisional headquarters and that was the end of the war then. I just…

Mm.

Staff officer, yes.

Oh no, that was…

Nothing, well you know I was just a minor, what they call a G3. That’s, he’s number three down the line and you know I just…

Oh well, there’d been, oh all

the fighting that was, the New Guinea fighting was over by the time I got onto New Guinea force headquarters. They were just cleaning up New Guinea, just evacuating it you see because Kokoda was over, Milne Bay was over and the battles for Buna and Gona were finished, so there was… New Guinea

force had served its term.

Ah the New Guinea force headquarters? A place called Dobodura, which is oh, I don’t know how to describe it. It’s Buna and Gona there and then I forget what the landing place was there and then

The Kokoda Track comes up and

then Milne Bay’s down there

Finschhafen. Yes, that’s right.

Mm.

No. No. No, oh things were quiet there. The Japanese had been driven back everywhere that, they tried you see.

No, I didn’t go

there. I, ah there was another place called Dobodura where there’d been a big concentration of Japanese and they’d be fought out of there. Well I went over there one day to have a look around, but oh you could say it was all washed up by the time I got there. There was nothing

you could do and most of the people, well they, you know, you wouldn’t be talking to senior staff officers much and any of my own rank that I ran across, well they were the same as I was. They had, didn’t know much about what had gone on except for what they read afterwards and by…

You know what had been.

Yes, oh you could say eventful, uneventful just full stop and

No pretty, about it just…

For you know we had all sorts of other things to be interested in.

Oh well, the same thing.

Well just after Japanese surrender and there was a huge mob of them

just there in Rabaul that had to be looked after. There was an Australian there, was an Australian force there just to oversee them and see they’d all been disarmed and their, they had huge stores there, you know tunnels dug into the hills and hospitals and big reserves of equipment and so on. Well they just had to be kept

an eye, kept on them, that they… on the Japs that were there, and there were plenty of them. But just keep on eye on them that they were up to no monkey tricks you see, and that was all right. Oh that was just a beachside holiday for me because the old unit, the 2/2nd, were part of that occupying force and they had a camp

just over the hill from our headquarters and I found there was nothing doing at 11 Div [Division], so I used to come up there in the morning to see if anything was going on or if I were needed. Well I think they were a pretty rumpty lot at 11 Div, so in the end I’d just tell them that I was camped over here with an old unit and

that if they wanted me, to come and get me, see.

So that was. I had a lovely time there.

Yes.

Yes.

The… because

We it was a coconut plantation that we were in. We just had our tents under that and…

We made little canoes

for ourselves and used to go exploring up and down the coast and looking down at the coral reef you know. We made, we used Jap respirators, had a thing, a good face piece and a long tube and we used to make a float for that couldn’t sink and that meant we could put our faces under water and then of course you can see all the coral and we used

to have a lovely time just watching that.

Yes, mm.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Oh well I suppose it changes as you, as the years go by but no, I didn’t to a, certainly to begin, you know, in the early years up to being a teenager, I had no quarrel with imperialism at all. We were

just proud of the red empire that spread all over the world, the biggest had ever been and so on. The never sun never sets on… well you just swallowed that hook, line and sinker. That was all right then and I suppose by, oh by my late teens I suppose, I’d run on to different things that made me doubt this a bit. See when I was a child I never

never thought anything of the Indian mutiny. I didn’t see the ugly side of that at all. It was just a case of law and order and the Empire prevailed and then it was later on that I began to put things together a bit with what I knew about, well the Battle of Omdurman for argument’s sake or,

and well the Zulu war in South Africa and things like that. That began to open my eyes a bit to the dark side of things, you know, the dark side of imperialism and then I think that just grew and grew until now I’m very much an anti-imperialist you see but…

Oh this just happens gradually. I couldn’t…

Ah yes I suppose, yes I suppose that by that time I’d got things pretty straight after our war. As a matter of fact well I had been,

I had been onto it a lot before the war because ah my sister knew a fair bit about it and she put various books into my hands that were strongly socialist, you see and very excellent books and then, others oh I had

dozens of them I suppose one way and another and

Mm, my sister yes, she was thinking in advance of me I think at most stages, and I don’t know if you’ve run across any of the books. It’s hard, this is one famous one that it belongs to the late 19th century called the

Ragged Trouser Philanthropists. Well this is about the building trade, painting and decorating particularly, and the author classifies them as philanthropists because they work their hearts out to make other people wealthy, so he puts that in as philanthropism. Well that’s a

well-known book and a really, well it’s, the doctrine’s correct in my book and that’s very convincingly written too and so on. Then there was a whole series of little books, they were in, all in uniform red binding (UNCLEAR) it was pre-paperback really, they weren’t paperbacks but

they were published by a big organisation. It was big in Britain and big out here and I think it spread all over English-speaking, although I suppose it’d have much, well there’s more diversity of opinion in the U.S. than we, than we’re lead to think. I think there’s a lot

of protest in the States now that we don’t hear anything about and then these left books that, there was a Left Book Club that came into existence. I was, I don’t know whether there was any formal membership. I never was a member of anything out of that but there was a very fine shop in

Bourke Street called the Left Book Club and it was oh a huge selection of left wing books of one sort or another. Well I used to haunt that and get a lot of lot of reading matter from that and then during the war there was a CAE [Council of Adult Education] the, I don’t know what the C

stands stood for but Army Education and they had big libraries and collections of records and other things that were fed through the troops as much as was possible. They published a little newsletter for the troops called “Salt” you see and there was some these things, some of that was

strongly left wing and that and talking to people and I met…

Yes, this was in the army.

Yes.

Yes it, and the, I didn’t come into touch with it much, well I don’t know whether it was operating even while Timor was on but it certainly was a bit later this CAE was

very well established and by the end of the war it was well established and oh I met other people then. When I was at Rabaul and that (UNCLEAR) I met other another men and talk, you know we talked about it and (UNCLEAR) more just became more and more

strong in our views I suppose.

Ah

Yes. That I can’t really remember.

Yes.

Yes, oh yes it used to have political news and other, you know world news to just anything that was

prominent or making the news at the time. It would have bits and pieces of it in. It wasn’t, you know it wasn’t a deep or powerful magazine at all. It was just there and it was distributed pretty widely among the troops.

Depending on where they were and what they were up to.

No. Well I suppose partly you would, but oh no, I think that was, well it’s tough to say again but I just accepted Anzac Day as important

for Australians you see as some sort of moral lighthouse to steer on, but some of these, you know it’s hard to analyse your feelings because they change from time to time, and they grow all the time too, or get abandoned all the time and you can’t tell

and that.

No just as an important, you know it’s an important event in which our troops played a prominent and

generally praiseworthy part, you see, because war’s an atrocity in itself I suppose but you know the, about Gallipoli there was and the allied attempt to capture Gallipoli, there was nothing that… it may have been different if they’d overrun the place, you know if it had succeeded but I doubt whether

it’d be much different. I can’t see anything like the Jap atrocities in (UNCLEAR) and the Jap atrocities in China. I can’t see British troops in anything like that. Not in modern times anyway

but these things, they are very difficult to analyse. The, what you feel about them. I think that, just that Gallipoli was a failure for what it was intended to overrun Turkey but

I just think of it as something that’s happened. The thought of Empire, I don’t think comes into one’s head at all, but just that our troops there behaved as well as you can in warfare. I mean it’s an atrocity in itself but they didn’t go overboard as the Japs did

but it’s very hard to analyse these feelings and how they grow or how you retreat from them and the like.

Yes.

Yes, oh yes, the…

I knew a fair number of them while I was, when I was a boy in the early teens.

Ah, oh yes I think so. I think any South African veterans were proud of themselves 'cause of course they were comparatively fewer in number. There weren’t many Australians in South

Africa at all and I don’t know that they, well I never ran across. They may have had, you know returned soldiers from that war may have, they weren’t a large part of the population. I don’t know that they ever had any formal association or anything like that. They certainly didn’t have anything comparable with the RSL, Returned, ah Returned

Soldiers’ League [now known as Returned and Services League].

How?

Oh just as nothing, just as soldiers you know…

They were men that had been in action - that was all.

No. I didn’t, no. No, this was my

only connection with that, was what I’d read you know. I’d read a lot about it because this stuff was handy. We had an illustrated history of the South African war that came from Baraki with the Boys Own papers and things and that of course was just something that young boys were interested in and we got interested in that but no, there were….

I don’t think there were enough South African veterans for people to have any opinion at all about them really except, you know they took it for granted they’d been good soldiers and that was that and there were, you know, there were minor atrocities then and complaints about them. I’ve forgotten the exact

train of events now. There’s a book I think or it may have even been made into a film, you know a movie called ‘Breaker’ Morant.

Yes well.

Well ‘Breaker’ Morant, I don’t know what exactly the details were but

there was, I think it was a…

Yes that that’s right and I think the beginning of it was that I can’t remember which side acted first but a

German, a Boer or Dutch parson, you know, whatever they call them - padre or whatever, he was shot for, I suppose it was suspected he’d been you know shot by

some Australian or somebody on the British…

In the British forces for passing information that had led to some, you know, and he was suspected, it led to some trouble and he was suspected and he was just under

British as I don’t think it was particularly Australian soldiers that had done it or but it was certainly the investigation and so on was carried out by a British court martial, you could call it. And in reprisal for this,

two or three Boers that they had as prisoners were to be executed by firing squad and ‘Breaker’ Morant was one of that firing squad and he was, they’d gone beyond what they were supposed to do I think and he was court martialled, then found guilty and he was

executed you see. Well ‘Breaker’ Morant was a well-known figure

He was an Australian, yes he was an Australian.

Oh yes because I’d heard about it. You see a lot of our, oh not a lot but those I met, they’d been in touch.

They either knew Morant personally or else had, knew all about what happened and one of them put into my hands a book called Scapegoats of Empire, you see, and the theme of this was that the whole thing was to maintain Empire and that ‘Breaker’ Morant in the firing squad had

just, you know, he’d been guilty of war atrocity and so you could say and that that was that, and the Scapegoats of Empire strongly took Morant’s part you see so…

Oh

Oh it wouldn’t be known at all.

No.

Oh no.

Oh yes, no well they might know something about him but most of… see there was very little interest, general interest except if it was something accidental like miners, very little interest.

Particularly among young people, the South African war was just a minor show that was over and done with. They…

Didn’t think of it at all.

Oh

yes. Well of course because the South African war made hardly any difference either. There weren’t many troops lost and that was scattered through the population. It wasn’t well known at all but then there were practically every family in Australia had somebody involved in the First War.

Ah…

Well,

I was in university by that time and a couple of men that I knew, I think they were members of the communist party. That was a party by that time and they’d gone to Spain to fight on the republican side, you see, so I knew that much about it just having

known these chaps and then what we read in the papers, so I didn’t know more about than that.

And I suppose it didn’t, you know, it didn’t affect me much at all. I didn’t think much about that.

Ah well, ah yes I could

see that all right but at that time fascism wasn’t so clearly sketched as it is now and democracy nor was that codified to any extent, so… but we could see that there was an

established government in Spain, that had got there by revolutionary means mind, but that was an established government and we could see by then it was known that that fascism in general was just, well I don’t know who, just

stereotyping people you see. And the Germans that came in droves to fight in the Spanish Civil War, they were people putting down, coming in from outside and just putting down the existing government of a country and the same with the Italians you see and I think most people I suppose,

some were advanced enough in their thinking about communism to say that the Spanish Government should have been, but I think most of us felt that that the Spanish Government was there and that Germans and Italians had no business to be altering it for their own purposes.

Um, well I just don’t know.

Not much because it was something, it was only a minor event in a way.

And we might feel this that and the other thing in a general

way but we weren’t emotionally involved with it at all really in the…

Yes it was.

No well, no we never heard anything much about him.

Until then. I suppose we did hear bits and pieces but…

Oh and in a way we,

I suppose most people thought, well he’s bringing a properly ordered state to Germany in turmoil after the First War, and the same with Musso [Mussolini] you see, except that we were a bit suspicious of him.

Because he started on little imperial wars of his own in Algeria and so on and round through Ethiopia. Well by that time Mussolini was in bad repute.

Oh yes.

Oh

Oh I don’t know,

you know just meet, at university particularly. I was just meeting a, they were none of my, they were just people I met at university. They weren’t part of my home circle you might say and not that the friends that I’d formed from my family you see. Your family, you have all sorts of connections with people outside and you go visiting

Tom, Dick and Harry and hearing this and hearing that, so and I don’t know about… But then at university you tended, if you got into a discussion with anyone, well politics might well come into it you see and you’d get a bit, to know about communism that way but this is,

oh again something that I have no intention of doing now and you don’t go on concentrating on other things altogether. What, where I could doubtless clarify my ideas on such things would be to go to the libraries and get back copies of newspapers, you see of the time. Now that way, I might be able to clarify my

ideas but it’d be, take another lifetime to do that and I’ve got more urgent things in the time remaining.

Yes. Oh yes.

Oh I said, well yes, she was through university you see and I suppose the same thing went for her. I don’t think in our family circle or any, you know any formalised left wingers but I suppose we were all pretty left wing in our

our views there but then at university she’d meet people that were more codified you know. The members of a communist party or strong left wingers, or strong fascists for that matter. You could meet them.

Though the name, oh we didn’t hear of fascists much, but a strong, you know people that were strongly that way you’d find too in university discussion but then

when you found out, which way they were headed you probably didn’t bother talking to them much you see. That would keep you pretty steady.

Yes. Oh yes.

Oh well,

there again, you see we’d trade union, we’d heard a good bit about that because well my mother particularly had views of what Australians could call the first depression. That was the land boom in Victoria

you see and that led to widespread unemployment and union unrest. All sorts of trouble followed on that and my mother was pretty strongly in favour, or in sympathy with the trade unions you see, and we got a lot from her that way. My father was, well he was too busy with his

scientific work. I don’t think passing events impinged on him much at all really. He was…

No. No.

Yeah, well not very political but she was…

Yeah she was aware, so she was well I don’t know that there were, you know in the modern sense

of people taking to streets. I don’t think that happened in the land boom and it’s hardly, it didn’t happen much as far as I know in the Great Depression. There was nothing like the great street marches and so on of our time. Nothing like that at all.

Oh yes but…

Oh I don’t know. Well it was like a university course. You just accepted the course of instruction and that well it never…

Yes I know, well I mean your Melbourne Grammar.

What you did there was very much the same as your university course. Your main attention was on the prescribed syllabus you see.

To get your leaving certificate you had to read such and such books and well it never occurred to us, we just read them as such, and it never occurred to us to think of them in any other way as something we just had to be able to

answer the questions on, for the sake of getting our leaving certificate or whatever so....

No I…

Oh no, I don’t think so.

Oh no and see it was a pretty

well not neutral exactly, but it was a pretty impartial selection of books and certainly in, that’s on the literary side of school, and on the scientific side of course there was no politics involved at all.

About the?

Oh yes.

Oh yes. Oh well I remember bits and pieces of them.

But you know again, they were something, it was just part of life and oh I suppose…

Well I just…

No, I wouldn’t think so.

No, I wouldn’t think so at all because the whole atmosphere at Grammar was apolitical, you know, it wasn’t political at all but just accepted things as they were and that. That was the atmosphere I think

and as I say you’d pick up more ideas from the books that you read from and than from anything else and they were pretty well-chosen books. I mean you can easily make something particular

out of a Shakespeare play for argument’s sake if you set to work with what we know now and think we might say, “Well that’s violent,” or whatever but as you know just read it and study it as a yarn and you’re asked questions about it but you don’t think of it politically at all really.

No.

Pardon?

Ah ah.

Ah Throssell?

Oh yes. Oh well I…

Oh yes.

The VC [Victoria Cross]. Oh yes, I know and he was…

He, oh yeah Western Australia and he

married, I think it was Eleanor Darke, wasn’t it? Yes oh yes well I knew all about that.

Yes.

Yes. Yes, that but I…

Well by, oh I think it was, I got to know about that I think there was it may have been Eleanor Darke

that wrote a biography of him. I read a biography of him somewhere or other, so that’s how I got to know about that.

Oh yes.

Oh no, not just admired him for having a VC and being a good soldier I suppose and I, oh I didn’t you know, I thought well, going left wing. That again it didn’t mean to me much

at that time.

Oh well later, I suppose it was just a past thing that I’ve not forgotten about, but didn’t think about any more. See this is so, with a lot of well, with a lot of sorts of information. I read Eleanor Darke’s Timeless Land and I forget what there were, three or four

books then and I thought, oh well these are eliminating current history, you see. I thought that to myself but again it didn’t alter my opinions I don’t think. I just thought, oh yes that’s sound sense, and now they’re so far in the past I couldn’t tell you how far

any of them go or anything much about them at all and that’s where they’ll stay, unless for some reason I might, I won’t I know now, but I might quite possibly have thought, oh well, I said such and such things in the interview, I’ll go now and I’ll re-read Eleanor Darke and see what I’d think about, you see.

But…

it’s all just gone into the past and I can’t tell you anything about it really except that I thought that they were good books you know. Sound books.

Oh I don’t think so, no. No, I don’t think it had any impact that way.

I don’t think so, no. No, I don’t, I think I just accepted war service and accepted in a general way accepted what the allies were fighting for.

Well

It can, depends what you thought at that time. I

thought they were just fighting to neutralise fascism you see. To get rid of Hitler and Mussolini and of course we were allies with Russia in that, oh no, I don’t think that. I just went through the war

gradually growing up you might say, it… I do know I didn’t have any scheme for stopping the war or I thought you know, I thought we would well first of all get rid of this menace to us and then try to build… you see after the First War we tried with the League of Nations and by the, after the Second War

general attempt with the United Nations and both of them were wrecked on the indifference of the US. You see, they were the ones that throttled the League of Nations because they never paid their dues at all from the time and they never let it interfere with anything that they wanted to do and exactly the same with the Second War and with the Cold War. They

just went on and did what they wanted as with this Kyoto [Treaty] and then this other proposed war crimes legislation from the United Nations about war atrocities and so on. You see, well the Americans wouldn’t sign either of those. They just said, “Oh no,” and now that they are proposing

anti torture legislation, the States won’t have anything to do with that either, so I don’t know.

Yes.

Oh yes.

Oh well, sympathised with them. We thought it was about time that you could have the Portuguese off your necks and have a go of your own. That, you know, that’s all but

Well there were all sorts of Portuguese too you see. There were some Portuguese whom we knew sympathised with the Japs and other, well other Portuguese were very friendly to us and pleasant people. That’s all you know, we didn’t…

Well lord knows. Ask them,

because I suppose they thought they just wanted to continue as they were, as they were going and the Japanese were going to upset their, or could, I suppose they didn’t know that they would, but they could upset the apple cart altogether you see. I suppose that’s all but you see we didn’t meet many Portuguese

at all because their place was in towns, Dili or other little towns that were scattered about there. Their place was there and we had no way of meeting them except some were so openly sympathetic with us that that we did

talk to them as friends, regard them as friends, and this it could happen in various ways. One way that we got to know two Portuguese very closely was that Bernie Callinan was a fervent Catholic you see, and he got on like

a house on fire with Sousa Santos, all of us did, but that, his religion helped him and then there was another, that was the priest at a place called Atabae I think, that was it, and Bernie was moving about in that part of the country and again got to him. I suppose he went to a Catholic service or something and got to know that chap very

well and they were, they were bosom cronies in the end, so we got to know them well. But other Portuguese that stayed in Dili, well we never ran across them at all.

Did I?

Oh..

Well…

Gradually, oh I can’t say when, I suppose I’ve always been a bit sympathetic towards them. They just go through experience after experience and you think, what would you do in such and such a case, and what would you do in such and such a case? Well I, you know, there’s a lot of people have, and not without reason, they have these fringe dwellers at Alice

Springs. They stereotype all Aborigines as being like that which is far wide of the mark but it does happen and it’s very difficult for anyone living in Alice Springs to put up with the fringe dwellers lying drunk about the streets and so on you see, and I had personal friends, they retired to

Dareton, which is just across the river from Mildura, and they were, well I was talking with them one day when the, I was up there and they said, “Oh God, there’s an Aboriginal family coming to live just across the street from here and what are we in for in the way of drunken brawls and loud parties, etc., etc.,” and they were really

worried about that. Well who wouldn’t be, you know, because this is why it mightn’t be like that at all, it might be civilised Aborigines but it could very well be the fringe dweller type too you see, so they were worried about that. I can’t tell you what happened though 'cause I’ve forgotten, but this is the sort of thing that’s going on all the time you know. You get just a bite at some particular

case and then it passes and something else takes up your attention, that’s and that but in general I felt sympathetic with the Aborigines then, even well, I wish they could let them settle in there and try to get on with them

but it, oh you know, you don’t know how you could or what, it’s just unless you devoted, you know your life to it, but they’re just things that happen along the way and you pass them by, but I’m sympathetic with you know on these… the first big Aboriginal

demonstration I forget when that was, at a lot of both in Sydney and in Melbourne, people marched just in favour of making new legislation to make things more bearable

for the Aborigines. I think it was about the time of the Mabo decision or whenever and when the government of the day refused to say sorry, that was you know that led to big demonstrations, but then it’s faded away and you do, oh I suppose there’s nothing definite and dramatic

that’s big enough to stir up a demonstration has happened since really. It…

No, I can’t think of them. May have been somewhere or other in the end. I can’t in my own experience. I can’t think, well I may have known somebody or another but I just can’t recall any, (UNCLEAR) can’t recall any

No, there were no

I never, that’s it. In all of my service I can’t remember any thought of ethnic origins at all. I don’t I don’t think, I just did run across anyone. I may have. There again if I could swap notes with somebody that was up at Duntroon with me he might say, “Oh

can you remember so and so?” “Oh good yes, I remember him,” and waken up that way but just out of my own recollections I can’t recall that.

See?

Oh yes, well you admired…

Oh

well, I just admired anyone that had won one, but I, oh no, I don’t think they were important to me. I never had any particular longing for a chestful of ribbons but you know, you just admire and some of them you knew were worth more than others. In the First War, a

Military Cross, which was next after the VC, it was an important decoration and they were always, if you saw anyone it could be an officer or a man that could have a Military Cross you see…

And he was, oh that’s. That’s finished it, yes.

Well with the MC [Military Cross] that was highly regarded in the First War and in the Second War. I don’t know about the Second War, ah what happened but in the First War I know people thought of a DSO [Distinguished Service Order] as being pretty well buckshee and given away to some officers that they thought should have had some sort of decoration who was given a

DSO you see. Well that was, the MC was regarded highly and the DSO wasn’t counted much, but I think that changed in the Second War. I think a DSO was reckoned as a pretty prestigious decoration.

Yes.

Oh just as a hero. I’ve met two of them. One was a chap down on Wilsons Promontory off, I think he was on some part of the instructional staff, the same as, oh I can’t remember his name even, but he was

a nice sort of chap just a, but we you know, oh you look at him and with some sort of veneration. You can’t help yourself because I mean it’s never come under suspicion of being thrown away. The VC is reckoned as what it should be. A mark of supreme gallantry.

What?

Oh injury, wound. Oh I couldn’t catch that and what did we feel about that?

Oh I see. Oh I don’t know. I don’t think you thought much about it at all. Just mostly

just hoped that you wouldn’t get some vital thing. Yes, no I don’t think that one’s not, you couldn’t frame an answer to that I wouldn’t think.

Oh well this just…

Ah

yes, this just depended. In the field it would it depend on the size of the formation, whether a chaplain were available or not and whether you could get out of the front line if there were one. Somehow like that if you could get hold of a chaplain and then you’d

just have an ordinary military funeral. You might not have any music you see, just have to do without that but you could have the normal formality of, or as much as you could, of the normal formality of a military funeral but that never occurred to us, not in my experience anyway, I never

knew of anyone that was killed that we could have any sort of service for, and in no, I don’t think, no I don’t think we had anything.

Sick and wounded I’ve mentioned but

I don’t think we managed to save the corpse of anyone that was killed in action. The only one I can think of is that Paddy Knight, which was in one of the first clashes with the Japs. Well they couldn’t do anything about that.

The men that were involved in that just had to clear out, they you know because your main purpose is to keep yourself intact, to manage to keep on fighting you see, and that’s, so Paddy was just left there and what the Japs did with him I suppose they’d bury him but

oh, that we did, we couldn’t do anything about that at all.

Ah no, I don’t think so.

No, I don’t, you see there’s, I never saw, well you think of

heroism I suppose of somebody diving out to rescue a wounded man. Well I never saw that. That’s what you think of as heroism or holding his post until he was killed, something like that. Well I never saw any of that at all. I and those, that Paddy Knight is the only incident

that I can recall but there may have been others you see, I just don’t know.

Ah no, I never saw any of that either.

Oh hard to say. I’d, the circumstances might be that you’d be too busy to do anything, just let him rip or you might be able to draw your pistol and say, “Well you’re

thinking of breaking off are you chum? Well you’ll have to get past me to do that,” and threaten him with the revolver and then if he turned, well I suppose I would have fired if he still persisted but I don’t know, that’s just hypothetical and I suppose instinctively you’d do what you felt the best right thing at the time.

Oh well, it was just your job the same

No.

Oh no.

Oh no.

Oh no, just something that you’d enlisted to do and oh, no you didn’t.

Ah yes.

No, oh I wouldn’t say except that we knew, you know that, oh no, I don’t think there’s anything personal about it. It was just a day’s work.

Oh no, I still hold with that view.

Yes. Oh yes, that was just a day’s work at the time and had to be done.

Yes. Well um I regarded, see those, as an Australian, I just thought well they were unjust wars and we should

not get involved in them. We should just stand off and well I still feel that. Well I feel is nothing, you know. I denounce strongly what the U.S. has done in

in Iraq but I don’t feel any duty to go, you know if I was of military age I wouldn’t feel I had to go and get involved in that war because I’d regard it as something just not worth dying for.

Well I felt that over Vietnam. I felt very, very

sorry for the men that were belted into that, that went in just by the luck of the draw. I felt very sorry for them but I just thought the same about Vietnam, that we shouldn’t be sending troops there at all.

Yes I

Oh well, I thought that was grossly exaggerated, grossly exaggerated and you know McCarthyism in the States and things like that. I just didn’t regard communism as something, well I

don’t know what I would have thought about, well no I just don’t know, I wouldn’t have regarded communism as something that had to be stopped, although doubtless…

No,

not at all.

No. Oh well he was a sort of an arch conservative. You could be sure that in any dispute with trade unionism for argument’s sake he’d be on the side of the bosses. You could be quite sure of that and then because it seemed like good business at the time,

they were shipping off pig iron to Japan you see and there, well you know I couldn’t swallow him at all.

No, I don’t think so.

Yes I went in one street march at that time, but again I’ve forgotten

the incident. I just remember that I did and I’ve forgotten how big it was or what we did or anything about it but I know I did join in a demo there.

A lot of these things, it’s the same as they’re just passing incidents at the time. It’s very difficult to recall them, you know although I felt quite

heated about that demonstration, about the Vietnam, when I felt quite heated at the time and I suppose if the same, I were the same age as I was then and a similar set of circs arose, well I probably might feel more strongly about it but still it would just be, you know something that had I had to get on

with the day’s work, had my teaching to do and just keep going at that you see.

Well I don’t know what to say about that because you see since the atom bomb the whole thing has changed now because the U.S. is armed to the teeth with atomic weapons, and the atomic weapons that they have alone, if they decide they want to make a war up in Korea for argument’s

sake or if they want to attack China, because China might be attacking them, well they’d use atomic weapons in that and they’d probably just finish the planet, I should think if they did begin that.

Oh I feel pretty poorly about that. I think they were both unnecessary gestures. I’ve been

there and had a look at both of those places and it, oh it struck me at the time, you know when we got there. I’ve seen what the atom bombs did now and even before I’d seen that, just with what appeared in the papers I thought, well this is something beyond. The Japs are on their knees anyway, well why drop bombs on them?

And so they were. They were on the brink of surrender, and then they just dropped those two bombs to make sure that they did.

Yes.

Well, it was near enough to the end of the war.

We knew it was and we knew that the Japs were, we all knew that the Japs were going to surrender whether or not - there was no need to drop a…

Oh I think just to try it out.

They felt, I’m sorry?

Oh I don’t know, they just thought they wanted to see how this thing’d work in practice, so they picked Nagasaki and oh yes. Oh I think that was what was behind that lot.

Oh I suppose they did. I don’t know, we never, that was a matter that just never came up for discussion I don’t…

I can’t recall anyone voicing opinion about that. That was the opinions I held at the time. Doubtless a fair number of others did too but then there’d be a fair number

that would think, oh this is a good thing to do.

And the same sort of thing when Maralinga wasn’t it, that the British came out here and tested out an atom bomb in, well you know at the time I think we, well there was nothing,

it was just part of the daily scene, nothing much was thought about that at all but afterwards I thought, and I know a lot of other people have thought the same, well how many Aborigines were in that particular tract of country at the time and were killed by the actual bomb and then how many walked over without knowing anything about it, walked because there was no attempt made to fence off

a huge area or anything like that, which was tainted with atomic fallout and you know how many Aborigines were killed that way? We don’t know. I think there was some other tract of country that was, you know just outback

and nobody worried about it much. Same with the U.S. installation at Pine Gap you know or, goodness knows why we let it be there. Successive governments have let it be there and goodness knows what the sidekicks are from that.

Oh I don’t know.

I, well I just don’t know. I certainly don’t strongly agree with it or I think we’d be, well I think we’d be better off as independent as we can be from the U.S., you see but I think the ANZUS alliance is probably just

drawing attention to ourselves to, well acts of terrorism, I think we’ve made ourselves a target for them.

Yes.

Oh yes.

Oh yes.

Well they

Over paid, over sexed and over here. That and all that was a very common feeling among Australians of all sorts, but of course others just welcomed them, thought they were Christmas, but in the

armed services there was a lot of hostility to MacArthur and his overbearing ways. Lot of hostility.

Well just for that, for his overbearing ways.

Ah, well I don’t know of any specific example but

he always made sure that he was the hero wading ashore and things like this. It was always MacArthur for MacArthur, and then when the Japs were stopped in New Guinea, MacArthur openly claimed, “Well we did it you see,” and all that. We did, not many

Australians agreed with that. I mean in an indirect way I suppose they did because the Americans won the Coral Sea battle and so on but they didn’t bring any glory on themselves, they just were there in the background for New Guinea and doubtless that held the Japs back a bit but it was Australian soldiers that did all the fighting

in New Guinea.

Well I think so, yes I…

Yes, I think they were.

Oh just that they were braver. They’d keep fighting in situations

as at Buna Gona where the Americans probably would have pulled off and dropped bombs or whatever, you know, that we thought our soldiers were just well, just be better soldiers full stop. But these again are just my own views and it’s a question of what would I

think most Australian soldiers regarded themselves as superior to American soldiers, I think you know. Don’t know. So…

Oh no.

No.

Pardon?

Oh don’t…

Oh no, I don’t think so, oh you know I think I’ve answered, well, answered all your questions and I can’t think of any anything more to more to say because I’ve

repeated myself a good deal already.

No. Oh no. No.

Oh, not a bit. I’m glad to have had the chance but I think we’ve covered the ground really.

That’s about it, yes.