Australians at War Film Archive

How far back would you want me to start?

Well I was born in a suburb in Adelaide in 1920. When I was four my parents divorced, which was a great handicap which I discovered when I was a bit older.

I had to live with my father and his household for 12 years. When I was 16, I was given the option of going to live with my mother, which was a far happier set up. Going back a bit, I went to primary school at East Adelaide Public School and I was there for about 6 years. We used to go to Grade 7 in primary. Although I was

one of the youngest in the class I somehow or other used to come up at or near the top occasionally, which pleased my parents. Then I went to Prince Alfred College in Kent Town and I had 6 years there.

I missed out on getting a University Scholarship, because in 1937 they only had about 16 for the whole state. I needed to be near top of all five subjects. I did well in four but the fifth one let me down. So I had to go and find a job, which wasn't easy at the end of the Depression.

Eventually my Dad got me a job in the Commonwealth Bank. I soon found that nearly drove me crazy because they taught you something that you could learn in five minutes and you had to do it for three months and having just finished a fairly high level course in maths and chemistry, that wasn't very acceptable to me. So after about a year I said to my mother, "I can't stand this banking any longer." So she said, "Why don't you try Duntroon?"[Royal Military College]

I said, "Well I don't want to go to sea." I had only heard of the SS Duntroon. She said. "It isn't a ship, it's a military college." So I applied and was accepted, luckily with only six weeks to spare before I turned 20. In the meantime however, being bored in the bank and not enjoying my night university work, I decided to join the militia as it was called in those days.

I went to Fort Largs which was the six inch gun fort near the Outer Harbour. They put me on the range finder. They took me out of the rookie squad because I had had so much time in cadets. I advanced there until war broke out. I was a qualified range taker and they used to pay me two pounds a year.

When war broke out they gave me a job as a NCO [Non-Commissioned Officer] as a bombardier, but I didn't get any stripes. I just had to do it as a gunner because so many enlisted after I did, I became one of the old hands, even though I had only been in for about a year. By that time I had come to the top job in the observation post on the range finder. In early 1940 my sergeant went off to a sergeants' course,

which made me the senior gunner in the OP, Observation Post. This was a great responsibility for anybody, but for a 19 year old young man, it was a very big responsibility because I didn't have the experience or wisdom for the job. However they didn't tell me how to do it, I happened to know that from being in the OP and taking part in the shooting.

I was challenged on one occasion when a ship went out without a clearance and I had to decide what to do about it. I had to make a decision. So I stood the fort 'to' and hoped I didn't have to fire a shot across its bows, which I was scared to do. However, luckily the clearance for the ship came through and we didn't have to open fire. Then I went to Duntroon and did a normal course but

it was cut down because of the war to two and a half years. I was made a corporal in my second year. I graduated 6th out of the Australian group of about 40 odd. I chose to go to anti aircraft because air defence was becoming a big thing in the army those days; the Japanese Air Force.

So I did an anti aircraft course at Randwick and the first posting was to Darwin, which I was very pleased about. At least it got me up in the front line somewhere. I was at Darwin Fortress for 14 months. The first posting was at the oval right in the middle of the Darwin township near the wharves and oil tanks. We used to cop half the raids and the aerodrome copped the other half.

After that I went to other postings around Darwin and Berrimah. The fighter sector and the Berrimah guns and also to Fortress Headquarters. I had a short time in Fremantle for about 4 months, and then off to the jungle school, and by about September '44 I was posted to an AIF [Australian Imperial Force] Regiment in Strathpine,

Queensland and I was put on mobile 3.7 heavy ack-ack [anti aircraft] guns. This unit had been to the Middle East and it had been at Milne Bay and Lae, so they were well experienced. It took me a little while to settle in because I was the reinforcement officer and had the usual problems, but being a regular for one thing helped.

Having had some AA experience in Darwin also helped. At that stage I read some reports coming from Britain which said it was time to use these guns which are similar to German 88 millimetres, which had been used in other roles, and also that we should be able to fire in the field role against ground troops as well as in the air.

Also we heard that there were very few Jap planes in Borneo, so I suggested that we start training on that side of the work. I started a course going because I had learnt a bit of field artillery at Duntroon. We were three quarters prepared by the time we sailed on my 21st birthday. When we got to Morotai, which was the staging camp for the troops going to Borneo.

I finished it off by teaching the gun sergeants.

Yes, we were on Morotai. Then we sailed on a landing ship tank to go to north west Borneo, and when we arrived on the second day, (we were in the second convoy), a message came out that we were to deploy as a field battery and not as an anti aircraft battery which pleased me and a lot of the chaps too.

We were delighted that the new role was on. Anyway, we didn't have much work to do for a while. After a short time they gave us a target to shoot at on the mainland; we were on Labuan Island. That's about 10,000 yards off the mainland in Brunei Bay. They then

discovered that the map was wrong. The island wasn't where the map said it was. So that was a plus for a start. Then they wanted to put a battalion of infantry on the mainland to go up towards Beaufort. The 25 pounders couldn't reach the targets because there was a big water gap.

So they turned to us because we had about 8000 yards longer range than the 25 pounder guns. So we did the covering fire for the assault landing and we think that's the only time an anti aircraft battery has ever done such a thing using predicted fire covering an infantry assault landing. The war was over shortly after that and I went to

a staff course in Queensland. Then I was posted to North Head as a student to do a long radar course of 17 weeks which I enjoyed very much because there was a lot of physics in it. Then they put me on the staff as a radar instructor. I was enjoying myself doing that when out of the blue they sent me to the Staff College in Queenscliff, Victoria.

They kept on moving me around. I was down there for a year and I qualified. Then instead of sending me to a staff job they sent me to Woomera as a radar officer, so I was chopped around a bit. I was only up there for about six months when a vacancy came through on AHQ [Australian Headquarters]. I had become a captain at Woomera. The vacancy in army headquarters for a major, so they moved me down and made me a major.

I was only a captain for six months which is probably a record. From lieutenant to major in six months. I spent 18 months in that job and then I went overseas to Larkhill in England to do a field artillery course for 13 months, followed by attachments in the United Kingdom. I came back and went to the School of Tactics as the artillery instructor.

I had two years there. Then to Sydney. They had to raise a new CMF [Citizens Military Force] Headquarters and I was there for 3 years. From there I went down to the field regiment, first as a battery commander and then as second in command of the regiment. Then back to a staff job in the 2nd Division as a brigade major.

From there I went to a quartering job in headquarters at eastern command, which was an absolute dead loss. It was the first time I was away from the guns for any length of time. That only lasted about a year or so and I went across to HQ Comm Zone in a staff job. By that time I was getting a bit sick of being pushed around from pillar to post, so I found out I could get my superannuation if I retired about the middle 1964. So I decided to get out and get myself a different job.

I got a job up at Knox teaching mathematics. I was up there for 22 years. Also, of course up there I joined the cadets and helped with their training, particularly in ceremonial work and signals. I finished up there in 1985, which was 50 years after I joined the cadets at school. Then I went into retirement.

I missed out a bit there. When I was at Knox, I was also in the CMF for six years. I got a promotion to lieutenant colonel as CO [Commanding Officer] of the 9th Light AA (Artillery) Regiment in Sydney. I retired from the army in 1970 and from Knox in 1985. We decided to do a lot of travelling. We went for a trip around the world.

Another trip to England. Then when we got a bit older we decided to do a lot of Australian travelling including New Zealand. I've had a computer now for about five years, an Apple iMac which I enjoy very much. Not that I do a lot of surfing but I do a lot of email.

I'm also interested in family trees. I've written my own biography, which is on tape now. I'm helping my son produce a website for my grandfather, who was a famous explorer. That's nearly complete.

While I was at Corps Artillery I was sent to Maralinga for the atom trials in 1956. There are so many things, it's hard to remember.

Yes, I should have put that in.

I met her first at North Head when I was at the school. Her father was a major of administration. When I went to Staff College he was also sent down there as a major of administration for the Queenscliff Staff College. Our second break was in July.

I had leave, and I was talking to him one day. We got on quite well although he was a lot older than I, and I said, "I'm going over to Adelaide, it's my mother's birthday. I haven't seen her for a couple of years." He said, "Look up the family. They've moved over there." So I went over there and met Betty again, and took her to a ball; we went out together, and we corresponded for the next

three months while I was at Queenscliff. I went back again in September and by this time I had lost touch with my girlfriend in Sydney. I was only back in Adelaide a couple of days when I proposed and was accepted. So we were married just before Christmas and I had a lot of leave banked up from the war. I had about 7 weeks' leave. But we couldn't afford to travel for 7 weeks, so we decided

to take a cottage in the mountains; the Adelaide Hills, so we had our honeymoon up there. In the middle of summer of course. It was very hot but a very pleasant way to spend 7 weeks.

Well I can't remember anything until I was about four. It's all a closed book when my parents were still together. I can remember my father taking me up to the new house where my mother wasn't, which upset me terribly.

I met my uncle and grandmother who was over 70 at that stage. My uncle was a cricket coach and he used to teach me how to bat. I became fairly good. When I say fairly good, I knew how to do all the strokes anyway. So that when I was at Prince Alfred College, I was given the

captaincy of the under 14 team and the under 15 team. So that was a good experience. I think those captaincies and the fact I was a school prefect helped me get into Duntroon because they like leaders. I was also captain of the 2nd 18 football team and 2nd cricket XI. That helps you when you're being interviewed for Royal Military College.

Yes, I think a child gets moulded into the place he's in and makes the best of it, subconsciously or consciously. It wasn't until I was much older that I realised that I had missed out on a lot not having two parents together. From four to twelve,

you need your mother and I didn't have her. I only saw her once a month for one day which was hardly enough.

I would rather not go into that.

He was a gentleman. He came from a fairly basic background. I think his grandfather was a boot maker. I'm not sure about that but I think he was. His father was a journalist. He died young. He fell out of a trap [a horse drawn vehicle] in Victor Harbour, and the wheel ran over his head, so that was the end of him at the age of 39. So my grandmother had to bring up, a little boy

right from scratch. However, she must have had some help from her parents or his parents because they built quite a nice stone house in St. Peters in Adelaide in about 1900. She couldn't have afforded it, so it must have been financed by the grandparents. My dad went to the bank when he was about

sixteen. He was quite young. He used to walk all the way into town from Norwood and back because he couldn't afford the fares. That's how tight things were in those days. He rose to become a Branch Manager. He managed the branch in Rundle Street and also in Hindley Street. In Hindley Street he taught himself Italian and a bit of Chinese and Greek, and being in the China Town area in those days, it encouraged a lot of the new

arrivals from overseas to bank with them rather than the other bank in the area. This didn't do him any harm. Then he went up to head office and was the head cashier in charge of all the money. He liaised with the Commonwealth Bank, which was also the Reserve Bank in those days.

We got on quite well, yes.

That's right.

She was an old Cornish lady. Thinking back I don't blame her. She was a bit short with me because

when you're 74, a 4 year old is not the easiest child to handle. The men were both away at work and she had to bring me up during the day.

Well she was from an upper middle class family. One grandfather had owned

about 33,000 acres in the Penola district. He was a squatter and a magistrate. The other grandfather was the Architect-in-Chief to the South Australian Government. Her father was an explorer and he's the man we're doing the website on. He was quite famous in South Australia but not well known over here. She was a very attractive woman. She married again and had a daughter.

Well the handicap was there at the time and I didn't realise it. It wasn't until I was older and saw other

people being brought up by a normal pair of parents together, that I knew what I'd missed out. I was very naïve. I went to a wedding once and didn't realise I was supposed to take a present. I had no training in culture. I did not know how to behave in certain circumstances. I had to find that out for myself.

It was awkward.

Oh yes. She lost a lot of her so called friends. They turned out to be not so friendly. She was taken as the guilty party and that's why I went to live with Dad. I think there were

two sides to the whole thing anyway because my uncle was out of work quite a bit and my dad was still paying off the mortgage even after he got married and was living away. I don't think she enjoyed some of the income going to another household. So there could have been things on both sides.

A half sister.

It didn't effect me much because my dad was pretty well off. He was getting a good salary from the bank as a manager.

Well the school I was at there was a big mixture of very well off

children who lived in the north side of the suburb, and down near the south side there were a lot of working class people. We all came to the same school, so there was quite a mixture of social backgrounds. But apart from that, no.

They used to wear their father's trousers cut down and they used to come down to about there. Half way down the calf. If you see them these days they're popular. But then it was the sign of poverty. Some of them used to have very poor shoes or hardly any shoes at all. And yet the other chaps who came from the north end were sons of qualified doctors. One chap's father had a Straight Eight Buick, which was a bit unusual in those days.

Oh yes there was, absolutely.

No, we all mucked in together.

We were separated. There was a mixed gender up to Year 2. I started in Year 2, instead

of Year 1 for some reason. That's why I was the youngest in the class. When we got to Grade 3, we were separated, segregated. Girls on one side of the school, boys on the other with fences in between. That was the norm at that school and I think it was probably the better way to have it.

I enjoyed it most of the time. Yes. If you're doing well at a thing I suppose you enjoy it. I seemed to do well.

English, Arithmetic, Geography, History, Reading, Writing –

I can't remember them all. I've got my report forms out there if you want to have a look at them.

Yes, the two good ones. The ones when I came top of the class. A Class of 55. Can you imagine that these days with their classes of 30? We didn't think much about 55. We didn't have any problems because the parents backed the teachers.

I know when my half sister got into trouble at school, she never told her parents because she might get another punishment from them for doing it. It didn't happen to me luckily, but that was the attitude.

Yes. I joined the cadet corps when I was 14, 1935, and I was made a corporal the next year and a cadet lieutenant the third year. The last two years I was also in the Earl Roberts Rifle Team. We won the State trophy in 1936.

We either had to be in the cadets

or do physical training or scouts. Neither of the other two appealed to me. I had always had rifles at home. I had my own air rifle, so I was quite a good shot. We used to shoot sparrows and stray cats. Well they used to eat our fruit, so we thought they were fair game.

At cadets it was rifles, the Lewis machine gun and drill mainly. It wasn't very exciting like these days. We didn't go to camp. We used to go to the rifle range once a year and have a shoot at the Port Adelaide Rifle Range, and that's where they found I was a good shot with a rifle as well as an air gun. That's how I got in the team.

Well the chap my mother married the second time was a returned man, yes.

No. But he was a transport driver in France. I don't think he went near the action.

Not a lot. I knew it was a blood bath. People used to talk about that. But not a lot. I think the most interesting part was the sinking of the Emden which I saw on a film. A silent film in the late 20s. They had a film about the sinking of the Emden,

which I thought was great, and it gave me a look at the big guns when I saw the naval guns firing. Loading and firing. When I went to Fort Largs I saw the big guns.

My grandmother used to take me.That was my maternal grandmother. I forgot to mention that when I was about 7,

I used to go to Blackwood where my explorer grandfather lived and his wife, and I used to spend all my holidays at Blackwood with them three times a year. Nearly all my holidays were spent up there with them. So they were surrogate parents in a way, I got a lot of love from my grandmother there rather than from the one at St. Peters.

I just lived with them. We'd get the train further up the track to Mount Lofty. I just fitted into their family. I had a dog. I used to amuse myself a fair bit. But it was so nice having a change.

Having a different atmosphere and both my grandparents were very fond of me. In fact, my grandfather in his will left me more than half of his estate because he knew I'd probably fall between two stools. My father left all his money to my uncle. My mother left all her money to her daughter. But I got the old man's money. A bit of a start in life.

That's all I ever had left to me.

No, not that much. I lived at St. Peters for 12 years and I went to school from there. I moved over to Kingswood Park on the other side of town

when I was 16 and went back to school again. So there was only the one move there, apart from the holidays. At first my dad used to put me on a train and I would be met on the station at Blackwood, and when I was a bit older I did it on my own.

As a teenager? Well I was very much involved in the things at school, playing cricket, football, athletics, tennis, and that used to take up the afternoons a fair bit. Then we had studies every night. When the exams were coming up I would be studying weekends as well.

We usually used to work, or I did anyway, work hard in those days. I liked it. I enjoyed it.

I was at my mother's place over at Millswood and we knew it was coming. The week before war broke out I had been down at the Fort doing a course with the regular army and while I was there the artificers came and

pulled all the practice sights off the guns and put wartime ones on. So we thought then it was pretty obvious war was coming. The Tiffies don't do all that sort of work for no reason. They had to do that because the guns used half charge in practice and full charge in wartime. They had to change all the sights. So I knew from that it was pretty likely, apart from what you would learn in the paper.

I remember the night. First of all we heard from Britain and then we heard [Prime Minister] Menzies saying we were at war. I went back to my bedroom and kept on polishing my leather work because I knew I would be called up any minute. I went back to the bank the next day and got a telegram saying “Nine o'clock tomorrow morning”. So on the 5th September at nine o'clock, I started my war service

and I didn't get out until 1970.

Thirty one years, plus.

Yes.

Well we had a parade every Tuesday night. Every alternate one was paid. The other one was unpaid. But being keen to learn, I used to go to them all. It meant getting on the tram and going into town. Walking down and catching a train. I think we changed trains somewhere down the line to get on the Outer Harbour line.

Get off at a little station called Draper, and walk up the hill to the fort and there we were taught all about the guns, gun drill, gun mechanism and on the compulsory nights I used to go up to the observation post with the team there to learn the range finder.

14 months.

Yes there were a number of people there who weren't working and just joined to get the money.

Others like myself came from the city, not from Port Adelaide, and we were a mixed bag really, yes. We got on quite well.

Well it was silent film, made in about 1927. My father took me to the film. It was in Hindley Street in Adelaide. It was the first movie I had ever seen.

It started off by showing on a map what the Emden had been doing, pointing out that it had been up the Chinese coast and had moved around shelling harbours and sinking ships. Well it eventually finished up on the Cocos Islands and about that stage they brought in the [HMAS] Sydney, which was the Australian ship which they took off the convoy which was conveying our troops to the Middle East.

Then when the action started, they started the gunfire. The organ started up and started playing the "Blue Danube Waltz", which was most suitable because of the crescendos and with the guns firing was almost like the "1812 Overture". I've got strong recollections of

the comment coming up on the screen, 'on target' or some such remark and then you'd see the chap punching shells into these big guns on the Sydney. Closing the breech and then the word would come up 'fire' on the screen. Then you'd see the gun fire it would recoil with lots of steam; then you'd see the shell landing on the Emden and blowing bits off it.

The Wurlitzer playing the Blue Danube Waltz and the quiet bit at the end was when the Emden was beached and everything was quiet as the troops go ashore and rescue the people on Cocos Island. That's about all I can remember about it. It was really exciting for a seven year old.

It might have been the reason why I joined the heavy guns when I got a bit older. I was impressed with the big guns.

I found I couldn't cope very well with the university lectures at night, particularly in the middle of winter. I was doing Commercial Law and unfortunately the lecturer merely read from a book and walked out, which taught us nothing. Statistics; I was always late because they stated early and I couldn't get down there from the

bank in time, so I always had to stand at the back; I couldn't see very well nor understand what they were saying. Always a crowd of people in front of me. So after a few months of that I gave it up and decided to leave the evenings for some entertainment, and I thought as I had enjoyed the cadets, let's try the militia.

No, never! I wanted to be a scientist but I couldn't get a job

without a degree. We couldn't afford university, because I didn't get the University Scholarship. Although if they had counted my English marks in the total, I would have gained it. But because I failed English, they counted it as zero, which I thought was a bit poor. On the other hand it may have been a help because if I had been going to the university, I probably would have been called up in the draft and gone overseas

as a private, instead of which I went to Darwin as an officer. So irrespective, it might have been a blessing in disguise.

February '40. I left the militia on the 20th of February and enlisted in the PMF on the 24th of February at Duntroon. The only three days I was out of the army

was when I was travelling up there.

I was sick of the bank for one thing. I liked the militia and I thought the regular army would be just as good.

Oh yes.

I think I've mentioned that already. I told her I couldn't live with the bank much longer, and she said "Why don't you try Duntroon?", which I thought was a ship. She put me right on that one and then she showed me the advertisement in the paper which included a whole lot of scientific topics such as maths, physics and chemistry, which I loved. So I thought the civil subjects sounded pretty good. Then there was artillery and I thought, I'm already doing that.

So I thought I'd apply.

I wrote to Keswick barracks and sent them copies of my certificates from school; my leaving honours academic performance. I also described what else I did there; captain of cricket and football teams, school prefect, cadet lieutenant.

They wrote back and said they wanted the originals, which I had to send in. Then I was called up for a medical exam, and there was about 30 people there, boys and men. We all had to stand up at the end of one long room. At the far end there were a couple of officers

including Colonel Burston, who was the Chief Medical Officer in the state. We were called up one at a time; first we had to strip off to our underpants, and when we were called up we had to take them off as well. Of course a lot of chaps being school boys were embarrassed and walked along like a Neanderthal Man with their hands hanging out in front of them. This didn't worry me

because I had been in the army and we had to do these strips for the doctor every now and again. So I marched up in quick time and whether that made an impression, I don't know. I passed the medical and then I was told that I had to go for an interview in the future. Two other chaps, one whom I knew at Prince Alfred College, and another chap who joined Prince Alfred after I left,

were there too, so we had a bit of a chit chat; Just as a suggestion I said, "When it comes to the interview I'm going to wear my military uniform." I said it might make a good impression. I said "If you wear your officer cadet uniform, it might help" because they used to wear Sam Browne Belts, and stars on their shoulders. So anyway, we all turned up in uniform;

we were the only three to do so, and guess who were chosen? We three. We were the only three chosen out of 30 odd. Whether the uniform had any effect, I don't know. One of the three became a Lieutenant General. He's now Sir Donald Dunstan KBE [Knight of the Order of the British Empire], Commander of the Bath, and ex Governor of South Australia.

Well I hope so. I don't say that got them in but it may have helped.

I thought it would make a good impression because the war was on by this time. The medical exam was held before the war started and this was after the war started, in October or November.

Then a letter came through on the 13th of December. My mother rang me up at the bank

and said, "We've got a letter from interstate." She said, "It's good news," and I said, "Thank you very much"; that's all I wanted to know. I wasn't going to mention what it was in case somebody was listening in on the switchboard. So I resigned shortly after.

Well it took us two days to get there

by the train via Melbourne where we changed trains; we arrived on the morning of the 24th. Buses picked us up. There was a big crowd. There were 62 all together. We weren't all in the same bus load but 62 started that year. It was a double sized class. They usually take 30, but this time they took 62 of us.

Ten cadets were New Zealanders. We all stood outside of the office of the headquarters. I watched a class coming off a lecture carrying their books and I was most impressed. I thought they were very good. I thought they're better than the gunners at Fort Largs, the regulars down there and they were very good. Then we went to the commandant’s office

in groups of five. The Commandant was Brigadier Plant, who later commanded the 24th Brigade in the war. He said to me, "Have you been released by the 120st Heavy Battery?" I said, "As far as I know, yes sir." Apart from that there was no comment. We swore allegiance to the King. Then we

went to the quartermaster's store and got kitted out. I got two lovely pairs of boots, very close fitting. They were beautiful boots, I had never had anything like them. They fitted like a glove. One for marching and the other one had a complete sole for riding. You wouldn't want to catch the boot in the stirrup if you fell off. We were put into various groups for training.

Four different groups. I think there was some grading of previous ability amongst them.

Well it's a complete suburb. It was even in those days. There were married quarters including quarters for the other rank staff.

There were the cadets' quarters. Three big buildings, but because we were such a big class and there were two other classes still there, some of the chaps were put in temporary accommodation. I was in C Block. There's a big parade ground. Duntroon House was the old house of the Campbell's. They used to own the property originally.

They were obviously Scots. Obviously the Campbells and Duntroon are very Scottish. RMC is sited just behind Mount Pleasant on the far side of the hill away from the city. It's about half an hour's walk

into Kingston. I used to always walk. I didn't have a bike. I wasn't very good on a bike anyway. I didn't think anything of it. The route marches were a good deal longer than that.

Living? Well fairly Spartan actually. Each had a room.

We shared showers of course. There were two shower rooms in each block, on each level. There were four in each block. Several shower heads and one bath. The room had a bed but the only problem there was the blankets were pre World War One I. There was no fluff left on them. Even with five of them on top of you,

all you felt was the weight, not the warmth. So that was a bit poor and I suppose we were too disciplined to ask for better ones, looking back on it.

Good staple stuff, yes. They always had two courses as I recall and plenty of it. No trouble there.

Oh yes, but every so often one would be changed to another block, so you would have to start new friendships. You would hardly ever see the other chaps in your company except at meal times, unless you were in the same squad.

You see you would make friends in your squad, your training squads and you'd make friends in your company.

About half a dozen I suppose at different times, yes. One New Zealander I got on quite well with, mainly because we both loved mathematics and we talked maths sometimes.

The chaps from Adelaide of course, it was nice having them around. Dunstan and Cleland.

Well we started off during peace time with a lot of civil subjects, maths and science, economics. Some cadets did French, some German.

I avoided those because I'm hopeless at languages. We studied English; Bookkeeping. We also had military subjects such as drills and ceremonial drill. Then we had rifle drill; small arms training, and machine guns. And this went on for the first six months,

After the August break, and France having fallen, we went back in the third term to a complete change. We started on artillery, signals, armoured corps warfare, cavalry. We had horses. In other words they suddenly realised there was no use training us for peacetime. They had to train us for war straight away, the quicker the better.

The previous class had only been up there for three years and we only did two and a half in the finish. They had to get us out into the Army. So everybody was delighted that there was more of this and less civvie [civilian] lessons.

We would see the papers of course. There were always papers in the recreational

room. We used to have talks by the staff.

Oh a great officer. A memory like an elephant. He only met me once at the swearing in ceremony and when he left at the end of second term, he went off to his brigade. He came along and shook hands with every cadet on the parade.

We'd only been there for about six months at that stage, and to the chap next to me he said, "Well Bob, I wish you all the best,"( Bob Marlin). To me “ Dave,” He knew every man's name on the parade. How he did it, I don't know. There was 120 on parade. He was incredible. Very popular too. He was very fit.

The staff used to do training on the open range; rifle shooting and up against all the younger warrant officers, he came in second. At that stage the brigadier was in his 40s and they were in their 30s.

Yes, well the Director of Military Art was a Lieutenant Colonel McKenzie

who had been a Brigade Major in the Palestine campaign. He gave us military history lessons on the Palestine campaign, and because having been there, he made it live for us. The famous attack at Beersheba where our chaps rode in with bayonets because they didn't have any swords, and overran the Turkish position.

So that was good. I got so enthralled I topped the MH [military history] exam. I just so lived this thing with him. The next year we had the Mesopotamia campaign, which was fairly dull. The officer hadn't been there and it was a fairly unhappy campaign. Most of the British Army went home sick.

But the Palestine campaign was great.

Oh yes, the mathematics teacher. Sutherland. He used to have a lot of sibilants. A strict disciplinarian. If anybody played up he would give them extra drills to do. They could do that. They could give us punishments.

No, not a lot. No. See the discipline was such that if you got an extra drill, you had to be on parade ten minutes after reveille; that is twenty five past six on the parade ground and then you were drilled for about 20 minutes. Then you had to go back and change into whatever uniform you were supposed

to be in for the day and get to breakfast by two minutes to seven. It was a hell of a rush. Everybody got an extra drill at some stage and if they couldn't find something, they would make something up. They had to get you out there once. Later on when I was a corporal, I would occasionally take drills myself and march them backwards and forwards. They used to have an afternoon drill as well for those who needed more than one. Then there was confinement to barracks

if you were really caught out for a misdemeanour.. That meant extra drills, two drills every day if you were on CB [Confined to Barracks]. The NCOs used to get stoppage of leave rather than drills. Rooms were inspected frequently. I had one very unhappy incident just to the end of my tour there. I was a corporal

in charge of a section and I was told I was up for an untidy room. I couldn't make this out. I had been there for two years by this time. I went up before the company commander who said, "Your room wasn't in inspection order." I said, "What was the problem sir?" “He said there were fly specks on the mirror”. I said, "What time did you inspect it?" He said "About midday". I said, "Well I left the mirror clean at nine o'clock;

I've got no control over the flies for those hours." He still didn't relent. Perhaps he thought I was being a bit cheeky. But I was a bit cross. You don't know what the flies do in three hours. I was the only one up, so I got the feeling that he had been to my room to get me. No one else was caught. Anyway, I still lost a week's leave. It didn't worry one for five days but on the weekend it did.

You lost your weekend.

Explain.

No, there was no bullying as such. There was an initiation ceremony

about the fourth week. The senior class would take the newly arrived class out on a little march and when they came back they all had to strip off in the gymnasium, run around in a circle while they had hoses played on them. It wasn't too bad. It was summer time. It didn't hurt. Actually, I missed out.

I was on light duty at the time. About half a dozen of us were sick for various reasons. So I didn't have to do it. The following year when they had the next one, I had to do the last section only, but I didn't have to do the gymnasium. But no one got hurt. When I was there the initiation was very simple and not

vicious in any way. I've read a book since that shows that before we were there and after, they were much worse, and that's why they had those enquiries. When they had the enquiry about it, (Sandy) General Pearson was running it. I couldn't make out why they needed it because what we had wasn't bad at all. Then I realised that the severity had deteriorated rather badly.

It got rather cruel and that's why they had to stop it.

No, the only thing some used to object too was that we used to get a lot of questions at meal time. I didn't mind that because you learnt a lot that way.

Well, they used to ask us questions. For example they asked me, "Can you name the badges of rank for the officers in the Australian Army?"

And luckily having been in the militia, I knew them.

They would say "Well, learn them before tomorrow and we'll ask you again". So you had to go away and learn them. The only trouble was it used to upset your eating sometimes. You would be in the middle of eating and you had to stop and talk.

Oh absolutely. It was good, yes.

Well

I was a cadet for the first 16 months, up to Jun 41, Then I was made a corporal as a section leader. I was given a section of three of my own class and one of the junior class, which wasn't easy because the three, not having any rank, were envious and were not very easy to handle.

Having been together for 16 months and all of a sudden I'm the boss and they're not. I was the senior section leader in A Company.

"Who do you think you are telling us what to do? Yesterday, you were a cadet and today you're a corporal, so what!" It didn't make life easy for a corporal. We took the attitude of live and let live.

I didn't inspect their rooms and they didn't expect me too. If somebody else caught them it was too bad.

Not anti aircraft. That's very specialised. No, the four of us including one Kiwi, after we graduated as officers, went to the Randwick Army School of AA

where we were trained in anti aircraft gunnery.

In those days they had guns called 18 pounder mark 2, which the army had in World War One. Also four point five inch Howitzers.

We had a very good warrant officer, class 1, who taught us practical gunnery, and one officer, usually a captain, who would teach us theory in the classroom. He would take us out on miniature deployments where we were actually walking around rather than in a vehicle. So you had your observation post there and perhaps 50 yards back were the guns.

They taught you procedures that way.

Well it was exciting of course. We had been looking forward to it for a long time. By the time we graduated the Japs were in it as well and things were looking a bit thin on the ground. Six months before graduation they realised the danger to the south coast

of New South Wales so they formed a battalion of VDC, [voluntary defence corps], who were mostly people in the Commonwealth Service and possibly people on farms. They were taught as infantry. Our riding instructor became a squadron leader of Light Horse. He had served in the South African War.

He had two medals. He had this squadron of horses, and Duntroon itself provided the command, the signals and the guns. I was made a gun sergeant in charge of one of the 18 pounders. The thing was that if the Japs landed at Bateman Bay or down that way we had to go down and see them off.

Whether it would have been any good or not, I don't know. But everybody had to try and do something. We used to have lessons a couple of times a week after normal hours instead of sport.

Well

at first we didn't do much at all. We used to walk into town and go to the pictures. At some time at the end of the first year, I met a young lady who lived in Braddon and we became friendly. So from then I used to walk over to her place. Sometimes twice a weekend and

Easter time she invited me to stay with them over Easter. We had to fiddle the books there because we were supposed to either go horse riding or down to Cossacks camp, or do a route march. So about half a dozen or more, probably ten of us who had lady friends in the city, all put ourselves down for one route march and we drew the pots and pans for cooking, put them all in the spare room, locked the door and went off to our own

girlfriends' places all over Canberra. So we broke the rules there. It was better than route marches.

That was just an expression. We broke the law.

Well if you were going on a route march you would be away for four days and you

had to cook your own food.

There was a spare room we had a key to, so we hid them all in the room.

We thought so.

We did.

She's in one of those photographs. Betty Cahill. Her father was a doctor, an

ear, nose and throat expert and it was after the Japs came in that he was sent to Melbourne where he served in army headquarters. A very nice chap; her mother was very pleasant too.

Oh, warm.

Friendly. Very prim in some ways.

Well no. The Canberra girls were used to the college.

The college had been there longer than they had. So they were used to meeting cadets. So it wasn't any great thrill to meet a chap in uniform. So it wasn't a big draw card. You had to be the right bloke, not just the uniform.

Anyway, that only lasted less than a year because she was a Catholic and I had no intention of marrying a Catholic being a Methodist.

It's silly these days but in those days it seemed important. So I said, "Look, I don't think I'm being fair. You should go and meet other people." So we parted, friendly. Within about three or four months she had another boyfriend and they were married the year after.

No, they don't convert and I

wasn't going to convert. That was it. I wouldn't be in it anyway because the doctor was a non-Catholic, so at Easter time the mother and the kids all went to church and he stayed at home and took me around his garden and talked to me. That's not a good way to start a marriage, having a complete break in your religion.

My dad always told me "Never marry a Catholic" and that sort of stuck to me a bit. It broke my heart at the time. It was a pity but I couldn't have stayed longer.

Oh yes.

We got on all right at Duntroon. There was no antipathy between different blokes regarding religion.

I didn't care very much at all except I wasn't prepared to marry a Catholic. Not that I'm very churchie anyway.

Yes. Well, she and I went to watch a marriage of a friend of hers and she wouldn't go into the church proper. We had to go up on some sort of balcony

upstairs to look down on the thing. They wouldn't let her go in the church, a non-Catholic church. They weren't allowed in there. And they stuck by it too.

Yes, and that's well after when I'm talking about.

Well there was the usual parade. They have a big parade on the parade ground. In this case Prime Minister Curtin

and Frank Ford who was the Defence minister in those days came. A general from Queensland officiated representing the army. The only trouble was it was wartime, soon after the Japs came in and they couldn't get a band for us, so they had to get canned music. And I think it's been the only time that there's been a graduation at Duntroon with canned music.

They were wondering whether they could get a record which would be long enough for the parade to do the march past. You form up and then you turn to the right and then you march round in a big rectangle back to where you started from. And you salute on your way past the saluting bay. But you had to have music that would last for something like

four minutes until you finish the march past. So they were all wondering where they could get one and I said, "I'm pretty friendly with a lass, I know her father well; he is a senior at the AWM [Australian War Memorial]. So how about going to the War Memorial to see if they can get you something?" We did and we came back with the record called "The Thin Red Line". A long playing record. They played it and it was accepted, and used for the graduation parade.

Yes, at Randwick. We went to Randwick and did the 3.7 inch ack-ack gun and the predictor which is the way of working out where the aircraft is going to be when the shell gets there, (without going into any detail.)

Then after three weeks there, we went up to Prospect by the dam and we did the three inch gun, a very old horrible thing from World War One. Also the height finder. We had three weeks up there. That was quite a pleasant break really because we used to go to the local Prospect Hotel in the afternoon and you would get pumped up a bit with the local brew. That's where I learnt to enjoy Speights beer from New Zealand.

The funny part was I did not come across it again until I was in New Zealand a few years ago and I went up to the bar and ordered a Speights and I said to the locals around the place, "This is the first one I've had for 50 years." They were quite surprised.

Yes in May '41

we all went down to North Head. They billeted us there and taught us all about the nine point two inch coast guns, the plotting room, observation post. Also lectures and theory, which I enjoyed very much having done it before hand. The others didn't like it at all because they wanted to go to the AIF,

rather than be caught around the forts. But I enjoyed it because it was stuff I knew about. In my day the ships were all positioned by the visual rays coming in from the flank, crossing and plotted on a table. But they had another table there with a cover over it and a couple of us said, "What's that all about?" And they said,

"That one is for work on ranges, not bearings." We looked at each other and thought that's funny. You can't get accurate ranges off a depression range finder, or not terribly accurate anyway. It was radar, but they didn't tell us.

It would have been the plotting board for the radar for range estimation. Goodness knows what was under the cover, I don't know, but it was obviously another board they were working up on.

I didn't learn about it until I got to Darwin.

They weren't anchored. They were enemy ships.

Yes, it may not have been if the Germans had decided to shell Sydney or have a go at us. But the nine point twos have a very long range,

and it's not a very big shell either. Only 360 pound shell which is not really big as opposed to war ship ones, which are up to about a ton. But their range exceeded most war ships' range. They would come under fire of the fort before they could get their shells into Sydney.

Oh yes they were. In fact one day something came out in the Routine Orders to say that permanent soldiers may report to the orderly room to be enlisted in the AIF. Because we were permanent soldiers about half the class went out and lined up outside. The CO said, "What the hell are you doing here?" "We're coming to join the AIF!" He said, "Go, get out!" We knew it was a take and it was a good way to get him going.

You could do that and get away with it. What I didn't get away with was in 1941 we were going to this course in the School of Engineering at Casula. We had a lot of time off in the evenings and sometimes in the daytime. But in those days the place was crawling with AIF troops around Sydney, and for me to wear a leather belt, ordinary belt and gold stripes

was the best way to start a fight on every street corner. So those of us who had stripes took them off. I had a Sam Browne belt of my uncle's which I wore around the middle so with an officer's cap and an officers’ type uniform, I looked like a warrant officer. So nobody worried me. I didn't wear any badges of course. I wouldn't do that. But they all assumed at long range, "Oh this is a WO [Warrant Officer]. We'll leave him alone.”

So I got away with it, but the trap was set; the others did the same thing except they had cloth belts. So we got back and there was a list of about ten of us who were paraded in front of the commanding officer. Incorrectly dressed. What happened in my case was, I took a lass - a Canberra lass who happened to be down there - took her to the pictures.

Got in on the end of a long queue. It was dark. We sat in our seats. Up come the lights and who's sitting on the seat about two along? It was one of our officers. There I was, no stripes, Sam Browne belt and tan shoes instead of black ones. So the others all got caught too. I was the last in. The others all got a reprimand, which is to lose 10 marks.

So I go in. And the CO said, "You're aping something you'll never be." You couldn't explain to anybody what it was like walking around Sydney with gold stripes on. He just didn't understand that, so I just didn't try. So he was so annoyed with the Sam Browne that I got a severe reprimand. I thought it was most unfair. I didn't own a cloth belt.

Oh 20 marks instead of 10. But when you're up at a 1000, it didn't make a lot of difference, over the whole three years.

No, because we took them off you see. We put them back on before we went back to the college.

It was a dreadful term for a chocolate soldier. It meant that chaps were not volunteering for overseas service. Non-AIF. They were known as the AMF, the Australian Military Forces. That was a dreadful business and there was a lot of rivalry, or even worse than that between the two. AIF looked down on the others.

If it was ordinary stripes it wouldn't have mattered.

But gold stripes, oh no. Not in 1941.

Well the graduation ceremony went through quite well. We got our certificates. I've got one out there in the hall. You don't want that, do you?

Then we went down to the train in buses and I kept a smoke candle, a thing like a big cigar about that long and you light it with a match box by pulling it across it. It would smoke for about four minutes. I wanted to use it for something or other, but I had no use for it. It was just an exercise thing. I got down to the train and as the train pulls up, we're all on the platform and

there's a very light breeze blowing from the engine down to the guard's van. So of course being a silly cow, I go up and wait until the guard blew his first whistle, set the thing off on the platform just near the engine. And the whole of the platform was enveloped in smoke for about four minutes. Blokes were throwing things at the CO, boys were kissing their girls in the dark. It was a great shemozzle [mix up] and the train got away about five minutes late. We thought that was great fun.

I don't know if they ever found out who set it off. It was a bit late by that time anyway because we were commissioned.

So that was my graduation exercise. During a fortnight's leave we all went and joined the AIF. I had to join up in Adelaide, not Sydney.

You merely went in and applied to join the AIF and they gave you a medical exam. And that was it.

No, no problem with the medical exam.

Yes, I went to Randwick for three weeks.

It finished up a total of 10. I had to go to Clarendon for the Bofors, so it was 10 weeks altogether.

That's right. I was delighted. The other two ack-ack officers;

one was sent to a training regiment in Victoria and the other was sent to a training regiment in Sydney and they were absolutely furious. I was the only one who got a decent posting. Partly because I was the oldest and had had previous experience.

Well it was obviously very much damaged by the bombing. We were also in the middle of

the wet season, or the beginning of the wet season, which is the worst month of the year, November. I didn't enjoy that very much I must admit because coming from Adelaide which is a dry climate, I don't like humidity very much. We were getting rain every third day and the two days in between we were getting a lot of heat. We had sweat pouring off us. We were wearing belts with a pistols on them. A fairly tight belt and I was getting rashes under the belt.

There wasn't much you could do to stop it either.

Yes, well we boarded the train in Adelaide. First of all I had come back from the school. I had a few days in Adelaide off. I boarded the train in Adelaide and there was some troops of the regiment I was going to.

We got as far as Terowie and had to change trains onto the narrower gauge on the old Ghan line, before it was known as the Ghan. We went through the Flinders Ranges in those days, not around the other way. We went through Quorn and sometime that night the train stopped. We could hear it chugging hard; then it stopped and began to run backwards.

It ran backwards about half a mile or so. It was in the dark. You could hear it building up steam in the front and it tried again but it couldn't get over the hill. So it tried a second time. Then they unhooked half the train, took half of it over and there must have been some junction line at the top; so it went back and hooked up the other half, and away we went.

Later we got to Alice Springs. We were only there one night and we were put in three ton trucks. The officers were put in the last truck. There were about 8 of us in the whole vehicle, whereas the troop trucks had about 20 of them. Seats down the side type. Then it took us four days to get to Larrimah.

Larrimah was a big camp. We stopped overnight at Barrow Creek, Banka Banka and Elliott, then Larrimah. The last 20 miles of road had not been made properly. It was

being built at the time. So our convoy had to go through the scrub and you can imagine what that was like, like that all the way. Well the other officers apart from one other didn't like that at all. They went up behind the cabin, which was less bumpy. A chap from the 2/8th Battalion who had been in the Middle East and myself were down at the back and we appeared to cope better. And we got quite matey [friendly] down the back.

It turned out really well because the second day we were up there I was sent for by camp headquarters, and they said, "You're OC [Officer Commanding] train going to Adelaide River." I said, "What?" I had no idea how a troop train was organised or what I had to do. I didn't have a clue. I said, "Look, I'm a pretty junior officer. There's a captain of engineers there."

"No, no. Artillery is senior to engineers." What a way to work it out. I said, "Righto." They said, "Report back at so and so and we'll give you all the paper work." I went back to my friend in the 2/8th and I said, "You'll never guess what I've been doing. I've been made OC train; I don't know what to do." He said, "Look, I'll look after you." He said, "I'll look after all the stores and get all the water on the train." He said, "Go and find yourself

a good sergeant major in amongst the troops and get him to look after the troops." I thought, well that's a lesson in delegation. Good. So I found a sergeant major in charge of an employment company. He was quite happy and liked the job. So he handled the troops and my officer friend the lieutenant handled all the stores and we got on the train.

Well you're in charge of the train. You get into trouble if they break any windows. How you would stop them? I don't know. I had one crisis. The engine broke down. We were about a day out of Larrimah. The old three foot six gauge. They used to call the train the "Spirit of Protest".

All the troops were in cattle trucks, not carriages. So I as OC train went up to see the engine driver and said, "What the hell's wrong?" He said, "We've got a hot box." Whatever that meant. I said, "How long?" He said, "Not sure." He said, "It could be two or three hours, it could be a couple of days." Stuck out here in the middle of nowhere. So I went back to see my mate from the 2/8th and said, "How are

we standing for water and food?" He said, "We've got tons of food but we'll have to be careful of the water." So I found the sergeant major and said "Call a parade". So everybody was sent down to my carriage; one of these old carriages with a platform on the outside. So they arrived and he said, "They're all here, sir, except the civilians. About half a dozen council construction people.

They said "They're not army, they're not coming to your parade." I said, "Well go and tell them not to turn up for meals in the future." So away he went and came back with the CCC [Civil Constructional Corps] people as they were called. They decided they would come after all. I told the chaps that there was plenty of tucker but go easy on the water. I can't remember how long we were there but it was only a few hours. About a day and a half later we got to Adelaide River.

The local RTO, [Rail Transport Officer] grabbed me and said, "Are you OC train?" I said, "Yes." "We’ll inspect the train." But there wasn't anything wrong with the train that I could see. Nothing was broken. No seats were damaged. So that was alright. There was a vehicle there from our regiment which was at Batchelor about 30 miles down the track to pick up

an officer and some of the troops. So we got in there at night and somebody put me in a tent. Got up next morning, had a shower and a shave and went down to breakfast. There was a major already sitting there. "Good morning sir." Umph! So the batman brought the meals.

"Can I pour you a cup of tea sir?" Umph!; what have I struck here? So anyway, I was taken to meet the CO and adjutant. And the CO said "We're going on reconnaissance down at Coomallie Creek to site some Bofors guns to cover this new airstrip. We would like you to come along and learn something about deployment." So he took the battery commander, an officer named Perry,

the troop commanding officer, a lieutenant and myself. We climbed all over these hills, sited the guns; which in fact was the worst thing he ever did because he got sacked for it. Anyway, that's another story. So on the way he said "What's wrong with the 2IC [second in command] this morning? He was in a dreadful mood.”

So I said, "Well I said good morning to him at breakfast," and he said, "Oh no, you never speak to him before nine o'clock. You didn't offer him a cup of tea, did you?" I said "Yes". He said, "Well that explains everything." That's the truth. He was the second in command. A most peculiar gentleman. He really was.

Mander-Jones. I was only there three days

because the CO said, "I'm sorry we've no vacancy for you here." So they apparently got in touch with the brigadier at headquarters, an officer named Strutt and he apparently said, "Well send him up to Fortress." So the third day the AA CO of the Fortress came down in his staff car to have a look at me. He picked me up and drove me up to Darwin. A very nice chap called R.M. Ford who had been in the Middle East in command of the 2/5th heavy ack-ack battery.

He was a very good CO, an excellent CO. I had one night in his headquarters and the following day they sent me up to the Oval which was right on bomb alley as it was called. Right beside the wharves and the oil tanks. I was 2IC for about a fortnight and then the young officer who was in charge was sent south to a course and I became troop commander of this site.

Oh yes. That's all.

Yes about two days I think. Larrimah to Adelaide River. Mind you it wasn't a fast train.

About 20 miles an hour, I think. It might have been a bit faster. It was the Spirit of Protest. It was a good name for it.

We were situated right opposite the Hotel Darwin, which hadn't been quite finished. The whole of the civilian population cleared out. The air force all left and all the army left

except the anti aircraft and the coast artillery; the gunners all stayed behind. By this time it was several months after the first raid. But that’s what happened on the first day apparently, the first two raids. The rest jumped on the train, got on any form of transport they could. The story goes that one bloke was caught down on Melbourne wharves looking for a trip to Tasmania.

Yes they did panic alright, and even the provosts [Military Police] cleared out or so I'm told. This is all second hand of course. But a man there called Stevens was a big wheel in the YMCA [Young Men's Christian Association], and he used to have lunch with us at the gun site. He had always done it and he kept on doing it, and he was there for the first raid. So he gave me all this gen [information].

Well he told us that the first warning they had of the Japs' arrival was that the guns at Berrimah, which is about ten miles out to the east, opening fire. A lot of what you read says that's not the case, that it was the guns in the town that opened fire first. He said, "No, we heard the guns firing over in the east and we looked up and there were the Jap planes." One raid came

off carriers and the other one came from Timor. There were two raids in the one day. I can't remember which was which because I wasn't there. They came south and they travelled past Darwin out to the west and were seen by people on the islands. The islands out there are about 50 miles out. The Tiwi people live there; Bathurst and Melville Islands.

Bathurst and Melville. Yes, they were seen and reported from there but nobody did anything about it. They thought they might have been American planes. They went right around to the south out of Darwin and then came up from the east, and attacked us from the east, which we weren't expecting. But he said "That's how it happened".

There was the sinking of USS Peary for example and the poor unfortunate American sailors;

those who didn't go down were swimming in burning oil; the anti aircraft gunners on the Peary were still firing as it sank. It was most impressive apparently. They didn't leave their post. But the ship went down. There were many casualties. There were some civilian casualties on the wharves.

He told me that the authorities wanted them to, in their own time, dig fox holes for themselves around the wharf area. They refused and said, "If we can't do it in work time, we won't do it." So some of them paid the final price for that because they were out in the open when the bombs arrived. There was a big ship with sea mines on board tied up at the wharf, which was blown up. They hit that and I don't know if the mines went off or not but if they did

it must have made a hell of a bang. Several other ships were hit. The Mauna Loa, the British Motorist were sitting out on a sand bank in the middle of the harbour with the masts showing, the two of them, and you could always tell if the tide was in or out by how much mast you could see. We were overlooking the harbour. We were on a cliff 80 foot high looking down right on the edge of the cliff on the western side of the town.

No, we were slightly north of the wharf actually.

To see the wharf we were looking south to south east down towards Francis Bay.

Well a lot of the buildings were

wrecked. The Don Hotel was a complete mess; they got a direct hit on the Don, which was an old blood house which they used to call it in those days. The American Embassy was hit, the middle of the top floor of the building had been taken clean out and the two sides were still standing. A most unusual set up. Apart from that just rubble.

No one had cleaned up because there was no one to do it.

You can call it looting if you like. Our chaps were there. There was no one in the town. There were nice comfortable beds in the Darwin, so one bloke took a four poster bed to his hut. They pinched, I don't know about pinched, but I suppose you would say pinched, but no one came back for months so, so what?

There was lots and lots of orange juice. They gave me a demijohn of orange juice and I used to mix it with the dreadful whisky. Corio 10. We used to call it COR 10. Commonwealth Oil Refinery 10. Dreadful whisky. Made in Victoria.

A chap called Swaine I think his name was.

Yes, there was no one there to stop them, so they built up their rations a bit. They were only going to go to waste anyway. You can call it looting if you like. I don't know if other people looted other stuff. We were the only gun site in the town, so we were probably the only ones who did any of that. The coast gun battery was right out at East Point.

Perhaps the Emery Point people might have done some, I don't know.

There were four three point seven inch guns and the revetments up as high as the trunnion on the gun. That is so you could still fire it horizontal. Still fire over the top. There's no point building any higher or lower than that.

In between the revetments the chaps had covered it in and they actually lived in between the guns. We had one minute warning. The alarm would go and we had to report ready for action in one minute; the guns ready, the breech open ready to take shells in a minute. The same as the command post. All the power had to be on to make it ready to work.

Yes, air defence. My first raid was interesting if you want to hear about that.

On the 23rd of November, 18 bombers came over - this is what we found out later; they flew around the area in threes and dropped bombs occasionally and then flew off again, so you had this continually buzz buzz buzz of bombers dropping bombs.

We had no radar in those days. The searchlights couldn't find the planes because they were using World War I equipment called “Elephant Ears”. The speed of sound is so slow compared to electrical. The time the sound got from 18,000 feet down to the ground is the best part of a minute.

By that time the bomber had flown another mile. So there was no chance of finding them. So what they used to do is put the searchlights up in a cone of three and we used to fire at this cone without knowing what height to put in the predictor. It was pretty basic.

That's where they thought the enemy might be and we would fire five rounds per gun at that. That was all.

The searchlight people were engineers in those days and became gunners later. There was a battery or company of searchlights there.

They were deployed in permanent positions; the layout starting up near the coast, north of the area and around to the south. Hopefully, they could pick up a plane as it was entering. Until the search light radar

arrived, there was no way.

Oh yes, they would be warned that there was a raid coming the same as we were. We would all be rung by phone from the anti aircraft operations room.

The bearing they were coming in on. That would come in from the air force fighter sector, and our ops [Operations] room was in the fighter sector building.

You've seen them on TV in England, the plotting rooms. It was like that.

Yes on the ground on the floor. I worked out there for three months. It was great.

Yes, there was a big map on the floor all marked out with grids.

On my right the air force controller and his offsider, two officers. Squadron leader in charge and a junior officer, and they controlled the whole thing. They controlled the fighters, told them when to scramble and where to go. They would give them a certain bearing, which they'd get from our air force radar.

I'm talking about six months later now, '43. The middle of '43. Behind them were people filtering information. There were radars all around the place, mainly up near the coast. There was one called a GCI [Ground Control Intercept] at Knuckey’s Lagoon which was supposed to be a more accurate one for control.

I had one whole side of the room; an NCO and a gunner at the desk. I had two more working on some “ boards” behind me, working out the heights from the radar data, and a third one on the telephone. The bombardier next to me had telephone lines to the gun command posts.

I had a little switch board with direct lines to four radar sites; Oval didn't have radar, I don't know why. The others each had radar, which arrived at the end of '42. The searchlights got their radar at the same time. What happened was they would get a warning from the radar on Melville Island,

which is 50 miles away to the north; their radar could pick them up at two hundred miles, so we used to have them at least 250 miles; we used to have at least an hour's warning if a raid was on the way. When the raiders came within 80 miles, we had a yellow warning and at 30 miles a red warning. These were broadcast to everybody. The guns and searchlights were

told separately over their own lines. Now around the far side again were the search lights and the navy, and that was only manned by the search light officer at night. I don't know when the naval officer came up; I never found that out. So there you are, there were three sides, and the fourth side facing me was a big blackboard with data on it. It was a big building and the camouflage

was a tree. Right beside where I was; I could reach and touch it like that, and to talk to the squadron leader I had to walk around the tree, which we did occasionally. We compared notes.

Well it had nets as well. Nets are alright for visual but using photographs they can be picked up. Whereas this tree of course was a natural tree

and it didn't deteriorate in any way.

This was the Air Force Fighter Sector. It was out at Berrimah and it's now in the grounds of Berrimah Farm.

To get to it we had to drive or walk through kunai grass, the long grass about 8 foot high and thank God it never caught fire. But of course that was chopped away from the buildings. That was the way we got there and we used to drive up in the vehicle and the driver drove right around a circuit. He didn't stop for more than a few seconds. We used to walk under a camouflage net to the

building.

We're back on the Oval now. Well we were just firing at this cone, until during a quiet period somebody said, "Look over to the east," and over there we saw a lot of red balls of fire, going up like that. Obviously tracer from an aircraft. Then suddenly we saw a burst of flame.

The bomber they were firing at caught fire, and started to fall. It seemed quite slow from where we were looking at it. Then one piece fell off, probably a wing, and the chaps all stood up and cheered and used their worst language at the little so and so who was in the bomber. That's the sort of attitude they had. It turned out a pilot named Cresswell

was flying a Kittyhawk and he either got a silhouette of the plane against the moon or against a search light - I'm not sure which, so having once seen it, he could then focus on the exhaust flames and that's all he needed. But he wouldn't pick it up otherwise. So he closed in on this and opened his

guns up and down came the plane. It was a Betty [G4M-1], heavy bomber. It had nine on board. Five crew and they think four trainee pilots. That's their guess anyway. They couldn't tell very much because it was burnt.

Well I had to write a report on the raid. There wasn't much to say really. But I was having breakfast the next morning, when my troop sergeant came in and said, "Can you come out? I want to show you something sir." I said, "OK." So he took me to the edge of the cliff and said, "Have a look down there."

Down in the sand at low water mark were a lot of new bomb craters. So when the Jap flight had seen our guns flashing, they had taken aim and let go a stick. Obviously he had misjudged the wind or he wasn't a very good bomber. However, he missed us by no more than

20 yards laterally. But luckily by 80 feet vertically.

Very lucky. Very lucky. If he was 20 yards to the left he would have gone right through our gun sight and possibly taken out the command post. If he had had a direct hit on a gun, he would have taken the gun out. He may not have hit us at all.

I was excited.

No, excited. This was great. This is why we're here. Even though I couldn't see and get a target. That just made me frustrated. It was very frustrating.

One chap on a gun; it was reported to me that he had lost his nerve and instead of going to the gun, he used to go down under the cliffs to the Navy Cave. So I had to call the troop together and tell them "If they were caught doing this, they would be treated as a deserter in the face of the enemy, so look out". He

didn't do it again. He was first one into the gun pit from then on.

Oh yes. I didn't mention any names to the troops, but they knew who he was. So he gave that one away.

Not being an infantry man I wouldn't be an expert. I wouldn't pretend to know much about it. But I would think from what I know of jungle training, going through the jungle against the Japanese must have been just as frightening as in Vietnam. I don't know. I would have thought so anyway. But if you get an infantry bloke to tell you

about being in the islands, he would have a better idea than I would.

Absolutely, yes.

I was five months at the Oval almost exactly.

I was commanding there for nearly 3 months. Then the new battery came up and I was supernumary. However before they arrived, three Bofors guns arrived. We were supposed to have one of these on heavy gun sites for protection. The powers to be changed their minds and they gave me the lot, three of them, and they were sited one on Fort Hill, one on Stokes

Hill and one in Cavanagh Street, to cover the low level attacks on the oil tanks and the wharves. I was the only officer in the unit at the time who knew anything about Bofors. So I had the job of looking after them. So earlier I had a command of 7 guns, the best part of 100 men and I was still only 22. Looking back

on it, it gives me the shivers, but at the time I just took it in my stride. I'm not kidding myself. I want to know how the hell at 22 I could manage it but I did somehow.

Yes, it obviously helped to have had the regular training.

Three months. One of the most interesting

times was when a reconnaissance Jap plane came in and RAAF scrambled a section of Spitfires; Four planes to get it. I could hear everything that was said, it was all open. No glass between us. The controller gave them a height, go to Angels 20. (20,000 feet.)

Well that was alright. The Dinah was still far out at this stage. Then my gun radar picked it up, and they were far more accurate than the air force radar. The air force were good on long range but not much good on height. So my man at the back with the radar information suddenly reported “21,000”. So I immediately

whipped around the tree to the squadron leader. "I think your target is at 21,000." "Oh, is it?!" So he got on the blower and said, "Angels 22,000!" He sent them up 2,000 feet. And within a minute we heard, "Tally Ho, we've got the little blah blah blah”. So I walked around and said, "Half of that's mine." He laughed. It was good cooperation.

Well we worked three shifts; one shift you were completely free, one you were on duty and the other you were on standby. Then you could stay in your sleeping area, your quarters area, but if there was a raid, you had to race up and help if you were needed. That was the

idea. Each officer had his little team of gunners. When you were on duty you would get the information from the air force about the raids and where they were coming from. Your bombardier phones the gun sites and tells the gun site commanders; they then take post. I used to ring up the radar people as well just to make sure they were getting the information, particularly the bearing.

Then as soon as our radar picked them up, they would pass certain data through the line to my offsiders here and they would work out the height of the planes. We just liaised with the air force as necessary, as in the story I just told you.

Well the arrival was in December '42,

The battery commander who lived across the road came over and said, "See that ship pulling in there?" We walked down to the cliff edge and had a look. I said "Yes." He said, "Do you see those big boxes on the ship?" I said, "Yes." He said, "They're here." I said, "What are here, sir?" He said, "You know, don't you?" I said, "What are they?" He said, "Radar RDF [Radio Direction Finding]!" I said, "What's that?"

He said, "On that piece of paper you had when you arrived, you had it on that piece of paper." I said, "No." I said, "That was DRF, Depression Range Finder." Qualified. Nothing about RDF. So that was the arrival of the gun radar for the four other sites. They can produce accurate height and data to feed into the predictor, which is better than the telescopes, more accurate than

the telescopes. It's all electrical; no human error is fed in. The searchlights, that's another story. On the 150 centimetre search light equipment, they had little wings going out on the side fixed onto the barrel and three operators climbed up there,

my wife was one of them. She was a radar expert, and they operated the radar for the searchlights. They were given the bearing where the enemy would be. They searched around there and when they picked up the target on the cathode ray tube, they locked on, and then would call out to the sergeant on the ground, "On target” He would then throw a big knife switch and push about 30 amps through the light which gave

at least a couple of million candle power; as soon as he exposed his light the plane would be right in the middle of the beam. So instead of being zero success, it was 100%. As a result when the Japs came on a night raid in January the 21st they were caught in the radar controlled beams. They got angry and tried to bomb one.

They didn't get it. Those two raids were the last two at night. From then on it was all day light raids.

Well they were all at night from when I arrived; we had all night raids until the end of January.

Oh yes, that was February '42. Yes, there were two raids that day.

No. Not at all. They were having them at night because the guns got better and forced them to fly higher and higher, the closer and closer their shooting. They only came on moonlight nights so they could see the harbour water.

They could find their position more easily.

Once you could see them in the daytime, you use your telescopes, no problems. So I imagine they were getting more accurate and forced the bombers higher and higher, so they raided at night instead of the day.

I imagine so, yes.

Searchlight radar.

Yes. There weren't many. We didn't have a raid in Darwin after the middle of June until the last raid in November. A few went

down the track to the airfields, Fenton and various airfields. We didn't have a single raid in Darwin proper for the last five months.

Well we had a lot of air force up there. We had Liberators. We had Marauders, Hudsons,

I can't think of any others. Oh, Beaufighters of course. In fact that's what happened at Coomalie that I was telling you about, when the CO made a mistake. The runways for the Beaufighters were on the ground low down. He put all his Bofors guns on the tops of the hills. Well the Japs obviously took photographs and worked out where everybody was and sent a whole squadron of Zeke [Zeros]

fighters down low to go in below the guns, (which couldn't depress) and shot up the Beaufighters. The next time I saw the CO he was in Perth.

I don't know the story behind it. I have a feeling he was taken off a mobile regiment and given a static regiment.

Yes.

They weren't warned and some of the revetments weren't up, and also I don't know if the quarantine site was even working near East Arm of the harbour..

Ah, well the harbour; you come in

past the boom and when you go south to where we were, it splits. There's Francis Bay and then it goes out to East Arm, South Arm and then West Arm. It spreads out into the various arms. Like a big hand. The quarantine station was where they were building this big new port. There's a big port already finished and working. It's beyond where the quarantine gun site was.

The road goes from Berrimah due south and then to the harbour.

The first day?

Well we got our warning from the air force ops room. Took post, then

we were told by the officer whether we could shoot or not shoot. If the Spitfires were in the area, we weren't allowed to fire obviously in case we hit a Spitfire. That's what happened on this particular raid when I was talking about this. The Japs sent over three flights of fighters, not many, but the RAAF in the ops room scrambled three squadrons of Spitfires, one for each group of fighters.

They were kept well away from the area. While they were kept busy out there looking for the fighters, in came the bomber raid. No fighters left to take them on. But the silly part was, the Spitfires who were catching up with the fighters were just saying, "Tally ho. Tally ho." The people in the ops room air force thought they were into the bombers. They weren't. So because they thought our Spitfires were engaging the bombers,

they wouldn't let us fire at them. We were screaming over the phone. "There's no Spitfire anywhere near the bombers!" We're watching with our telescopes! "There's none there, we want to fire!" No fire. So after the raid of course the CO had a slice off the air force with their stupid tally ho business. "You should say what you're firing at." We had four or five guns sites, which could have taken those bombers on. 16 to 20 guns.

Yes, only in the fighter sector. The air force did, yes. We didn't.

This is the raid I'm talking about.

This gunner at Fanny Bay said the Spitfires were tearing into the bombers and this, that and the other thing. I can show it to you if you like. It's all a lot of rubbish because I was on the height finder with a very strong telescope and I was watching the bombers the whole way and there wasn't a sign of our fighters. Not a sign of them.

Yes, I went and saw the people in Darwin in the 90s when we were up there. I can't remember which trip. We've been up there about five times

because our son works up there. I went and found this chap and he was talking about that and I said it's a lot of rubbish. He made it all up.

They were perfect. Absolutely great. It was lovely being sent out there because at the gun site, we had been on one bottle of Corio per month and one packet of cigarettes a day, and you'd only smoke half of them because your sweat would put half of them out.

A bottle of beer a week. That was our relaxation. Sometimes if the ships coming around from Queensland were bombed by the Japs on the Aru Islands, south west of New Guinea; if they knocked out one of our supply ships, we went without for a month. So it was pretty raw.

I went out to Berrimah and they had liqueurs. They had Scotch. They had beautiful food because the DC3, the transport plane, used to fly down to Adelaide, fill up the plane with food and bring it up for the air force. They lived like kings. I was quite sorry to go back to the guns from that point of view.

Yes, Berrimah ops, yes.

We called it ops because there was a gun site at Berrimah as well.

Oh yes. That was when I was at headquarters towards the end of my tour in late '43. They sent me into headquarters to relieve the staff captain. They had two staff captains and they both had to go on leave and so they had to have an officer to take over from

one. So because I was a regular they thought it would be a good idea if I did it. So I was there for three months and helped them out with their staff work. While I was there this Beaufighter came back. It was going to Coomalie, or hoped to, but he must have run out of petrol or perhaps he was damaged or something and didn't think he was going to make it. So he decided to do a belly flopper on a bit of open ground. So he did it alright. He skidded along the turf.

A fairly heavy plane. They got out and walked down to the road, and as they came to the road they saw a sign of a skull and cross bones. They said, "That's a mine field." No mine had gone off even though they had put a plane through right on its belly. So of course when the colonel, the fortress commander heard about that, he probably sent for his engineer commander and said, "For god's sake, what's wrong with your mines? They're not working."

It caused a lot of excitement. I don't know what happened in the finish but you can imagine.

I didn't find out, no. If you know Darwin at all, the water comes in from Francis Bay on the south side and comes down another creek from the north. There's a narrow bit there called the Narrows and through that everything has to travel. Road, rail, water supply. Everything has to go through the Narrows, and that would have been the

vital ground. They mined that so if the Japs landed outside the Fortress and tried to get into the Fortress, they would have to go through this mine field. And this was covered with artillery.

I went to Berrimah gun site from July to September, I was on the guns at Berrimah which is about a mile away from the ops room.

I was second in command. There was an officer senior to me, another regular actually. He was in charge.

We didn't get a single raid all the time we were there. It was boring, boring. The troops were bored. We were bored. The troops used to write more letters when they were bored, so that meant more scrutinizing by the officers to check all their letters. It became such an awful bore doing all those letters between three of us, we hit on another idea. Instead of reading the letters we used to fold them down the centre

and read the left hand side and the right hand side. All we were doing was looking for words like bomber or raid or discipline that they shouldn't be saying. So we did it in a quarter of the time.

Oh yes, we didn't read it, we just looked for words. We didn't read the sentence, we didn't read the gist of it. We didn't need too.

You could pick up a stray word straight away and you knew it shouldn't be there.

They were very bored. I start to teach them the Bren, which they hadn't learnt. I had to try and keep them amused but could only teach some of them at a time. I couldn't let them off the gun site because of the minute's warning. At the most there were only two or three off at a time to go anywhere, and at Berrimah there was nowhere to go.

In Darwin of course, it was alright. That's the point I forgot to mention about the Oval. I could only send about two or three men down to the Parap movies, so I said to the CO one day, "Could we have movies near our gun site? They could all go and still be back within a minute on the guns." So he said "Yes" and so they brought the movies up to our site and other people had to come to us instead of us going to them.

All our chaps could watch the movie except those on duty. This was great because we could gallop back and be in action in one minute.

Well there were movies at Coonawarra. We were only about 300 yards from the Coonawarra Naval Station,

which I think was a communication set up, I'm not sure. We didn't have any contact with them except that they had films there, and we could send our chaps over there to watch the films. That was every fortnight or so that we would go over and see a film. That was all we could do. There was nothing else anywhere near us.

I can't remember. The one I can remember was "Test Pilot" with Clarke Gable and Myrna Loy. I love that film and I saw it again only recently. I can't remember the other ones. They were testing the original Flying Fortress. The B17A.

No, we used to get newspapers, that's about all.

There may be, I don't recall them.

The three inch guns, which we had to fire at Malabar out to sea;

I was put up on the platform, the nearest one to the muzzle, and I realised that comparatively speaking, the three inch gun has a short barrel, which meant that the noise was worse. I think from memory I pulled my great coat up like this, so I would have been a bit of protection there. It still made a mess of my ear. I had to go to the doctor and have it scraped, and I tell you that's not a nice process.

It's like having a tooth out without any injections.

I should have cleaned the wax out. I didn't realise the problem. It drove the wax on to the drum and stuck it there; I couldn't shift it. He scraped it off with a probe of some sort. I just sat there crying. It was incredible. Not funny.

It still doesn't work properly.

No, it's only about 50% effective.

It distorted the drum.

That's all I had. A lot of people don't realise but in my opinion the worst guns are the small ones. The Bofors guns and the three inch are much worst than the big ones. The nine inch guns just go. woof, but when you get down to the three inch and less it's crack, crack.

Anti tank gun is terrible and the seventeen pounder is shocking.

They could have. Mind you, I was on guns again when I came back after the war. So it wasn't just up there.

Yes, at the Karlin Hospital. They were the sisters. When I was on the staff doing the staff captain's job, the colonel went away on leave for several weeks and they sent a brigadier up from 2nd Brigade to look after the fortress.

He was in the Camel Corps in World War I and he was a much more relaxed chap. The colonel was a regular staff corps officer but this one wasn't. He was far more relaxed. We would get him talking at morning tea time about the Camel Corps. He woke up to us after a while. The brigade major started it off; he said "What about having a dance with the sisters

at their place?" So he put it to the matron and she agreed. So a few of us went over from headquarters. Less than half a dozen to the Karlin Hospital where we had this dance. I don't know where the music came from, probably a gramophone. It was a great night. I got paired off with a sister. I think her name was Shaw, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, we danced cheek to cheek and of course it was in the middle of summer and so perspiration was just pouring down. It was quite an unusual set up.

It wasn't too bad.

I hadn't seen a girl for over a year. It was nice to dance with the sister.

No, she wasn't up there, she was on searchlights. She enlisted in '43 here in Sydney; they posted her to anti aircraft searchlights, and they sent her to a radar course near Wagga.

She passed this course and became a lance bombardier in charge of the radar on one of the searchlight sites. They were sent to Queensland and she was at Townsville and Castle Hill. At one stage when the sergeant was away she was in charge of the whole site. But they didn't get any extra money, the lance bombardiers; It was an unpaid rank.

At North Head when I was on staff as a radar instructor. Her father was on the staff too. We went to a dance together on the site. They moved to Adelaide when I moved to Queenscliff and I met her again over there.

Not that I know of. I can't think where they would have been. One might have been hidden away somewhere, but I doubt it.

I never saw any. Mind you I didn't get out that much. When you're tied to a one minute warning, you don't see a lot of the township. Only when you go to relieve at another gun site or for some other reason or you might be moving around in a vehicle. I wouldn't have thought so, no.

The whole time I was on guns. When we got to Fremantle there was a 30 minute warning until that Jap raid down the west coast. You've probably heard about that.

Well I've only read about it but I was over there when it happened. All of a sudden we were told we were on one minute warning. I normally had two gun crews

out of four. The other two guns weren't manned. The girls had to do the maintenance on the other two guns. All of a sudden they sent me two more gun crews from another battery. Because I used to sleep a fair way from the guns, they put up a tent up close to the command post and I had to sleep on a stretcher for a fortnight. The reason they sent me to

Park; I was the only officer in the battery who had any war experience, and I think they wanted to make sure that someone on the key gun site wouldn't be too scared to open fire. Which happens to people, the first time up - do I fire or don't I? That's maybe why I was sent there, I don't know. But what actually happened, I read about it later on. There were 70 odd submarines in Fremantle Harbour;

they were going up into Java and around that area and sinking a lot of Jap ships. The Japs decided to go down and give Fremantle a burst. They sent three cruisers - I've got the names somewhere. I think there would have been destroyers. Somebody picked it up from

their radio. They could pick up radio with their direction finders; they picked up this force moving south. Well they didn't find it until the Japs got a fair way down the coast. I'm not exactly sure where but possibly Geraldton area. A small tramp ship happened to see them. I think it was the Behar, only about four thousand tons.

It promptly sent a radio signal, and the Japs didn't like this as they picked it up too. So a cruiser sank it. There was a vice admiral in charge of this great fleet and he had decided that as the surprise was lost, they turned off and went away. But we had several transports and cargo ships in the

harbour. They sent them all round to Albany supported by the old cruiser [HMAS] Adelaide. One of the very old cruisers. It was before turrets came in. They had single guns on the deck. She was commissioned in 1920. Anyway, they took them around to Albany. Then of course, had the Jap fleet arrived in Fremantle,

we had over 100 aeroplanes at Pearce airfield. I don't know how many were bombers and fighters, but 100 is a lot of planes. So they were ready for them. But even then, they still would have had to face the nine point two inch coast guns on Rottnest Island, six inch mark elevens also on Rottnest Island, and six inch guns on Garden Island.

The smaller ones wouldn't have, but the nine twos would have out ranged the cruiser's guns.

Oh yes, the armoured division. It was inland at Meekatharra. When I was so bored at Berrimah guns, I applied to transfer to the 117th airborne LAA battery which was in the armoured division. A reply came back, "He can't go; too many

staff corps officers in Red Robbie's division already".

No.

No, nothing serious. I had one chap up on a charge for minor insolence but

I let him off with a warning.

Well we just didn't have any trouble. I think the chaps realised they were stuck and they put up with it. They realised we couldn't do anything to help, except my little Bren class.

There was nothing much we could do apart from take them over to the naval base for the films and give them courses in Bren gun. Just keep them as happy as we could. We had no means of doing anything else for them.

No, we used to look forward to it. It was something to do. We were there to shoot at Japanese aeroplanes. We used to get a bit edgy, “where are they”?

Oh well, chaps get bored. I had one incident at the oval which unbeknownst to me, two or three chaps got hold of the basic sugar ration and the vanilla; they were making jungle juice out of it, until around about Christmas time, I saw them actually lifting one bloke along by his elbows

with his feet teetering on his toes. He was the colour of that wall and I suddenly woke up that there was some jungle juice about. So I set the troop sergeant onto it. Apparently they had used an awful lot of our basic sugar. When the new troop took over from my troop, we signed a hand over sheet; he signed that he had taken over and was responsible. A few weeks later he came up and said, "You're short so many pounds of sugar."

I said, "No Jack, I'm not, you are. You signed the take over." Though he was a quarter master type himself, he got caught.

I don't know how they did it but they made this brew and apparently it was dynamite by the look on this man’s face. He was sick. He looked like death warmed up.

Oh yes!

Oh yes. They managed to conceal things from the boss. They tried hard.

Well that was the main one.

Yes there was. We had one chap at gun site Berrimah who

was the youngest. He was cheeky and I took him before the CO for misbehaviour for being cheeky. The following week he asked for a green envelope, which we gave him. Shortly after that he went on a transfer down south. He was underage and we were quite pleased to get rid of him.

That was the reason they gave for him going home.

Going back. He was under 19 or whatever the age was.

Ordinary letters are censored by the unit officers. I was telling you about how we folded them. If a chap had to write home about a personal matter to his wife or some other reason and he didn't want us to know about it, then he could ask for a green envelope every so often. I think once a month they were allowed one. Then he wrote his letter and put it in the green envelope.

We didn't see it. We weren't allowed to open them. That went down to base censor and base censor probably would open them and see whether he was trying to get some serious information back which he shouldn't have. If they did, they would either tear it up or chop bits out of it or whatever. We occasionally had to chop bits out of the letters with scissors but not very often.

I suppose he wrote back to his parents and said, "Get me back south. I'm under 19 as you know and I shouldn't be here. I don't like this officer who has just arrived!"

Yes.

Well it was only with practice that one could see a plane over 20,000 feet. It was very difficult with one plane. Formations are easy of course. You really rely on the sun glinting on their wings or something like that. They're so tiny, more or less like a mosquito at that height, they're appear so small.

The new chaps had been used to Sydney; the planes down there were probably not over 10,000 feet, so they had no practice trying to spot something so small much higher. Once you were up in Darwin for a while you could. The atmosphere's clear too, no manufacturing smog around. The moonlight up there is so bright you could read by it. So strong and powerful without the smog.

No, I didn't mean in the moonlight.

I was illustrating the clearness in the air - that's all.

Well the first few weeks I was told to not just look after the Bofors guns but to help the people who had just arrived from Sydney. I found out very soon that they just couldn't spot aircraft. So I used to stand by the Predictor.

(there was no radar at the Oval). They used telescopes on the sides of the predictor. If they couldn't see it but I could, I used to tell them very quickly to elevate or depress, go left or right, until they eventually spotted it in their telescope and I hoped they could keep it. Once I put them onto it and they lost it again which annoyed me intensely. They probably weren't properly trained

before they came up there.

We would have to do it again, if it wasn't too late. The plane might be overhead by that time.

Only once. But I had to help them more than once, but they only lost it once.

Well November's the worst month or maybe late October. It rains every third day. When it stops the sun comes out and the atmosphere gets so humid; to me it was stifling and I hated it. The times we've been to Darwin in the 1990s, we always went up in the dry season. It's rather pleasant. Really pleasant in the dry season. Even my son who's been up there for so many years is getting sick of the wet too.

December, it improves. December, you get rain almost every day and that means it's cooler and less sunshine making it less steamy. It was December that I found out how to cure my rash on the back, quite by accident. I had this rash where the belt was on, and no one seemed to have any idea how to cure it; one day I was at my hut

and we had a heavy rain storm; I had an idea. I took everything off except my boots and I went out the back of my little hut ( I had a little building of my own,) naked and the rain was driving on my back. I stayed there until I got quite shivery and then I went inside, and then went out again and had another go. It had all gone. The rash had gone. Completely. The cold water had done something to the rash and it was gone.

We prayed the damn stuff would go away but it never worked. No, it was the cold water, there was no doubt about that.

Yes, a lot of people had this rash.

Oh yes. I caught it for a little while when I first got up there, wearing shorts. We never wore underpants there, it was too hot. The khaki short pants didn't suit me, so I had what they called Dhobi's Itch, and I had some violet stuff painted on me. It didn't last long.

Dhobi, I think it was.

There's another story about the Oval I forgot all about. When I was at Duntroon, the commanding officer of the Corps of Cadets was Colonel Thompson. He taught us military law. The first exam I came top with 80%. I just happened to like it.

So I had only been up in Darwin for a few weeks, and Fortress Headquarters sent for me. A Staff Captain, a chap I knew from the College, who was a year in front of me - Peter. So I said to Peter, "What gives?" He said, "You're down for a court martial." I said, "As what?" He said, "Defending officer." I said, "OK. Why did they pick me?"

He said, "You know who the Fortress Commander is, don't you?" I said, "No." He said, "It's Wang, Wang Thompson." He said, "You were rather good at military law, weren't you at Duntroon?" I said, "Oh no, don't tell me!" He remembered me for topping the exam and he put me on as defending officer. Boy, oh boy. I got caught three times for that. First one, I had no chance of defending him.

He was one of these anti vivisection people who refused to have a needle. I couldn't beat the argument for that one. The next two lots were both deserters. They were picked up in Sydney; they had belonged to the new battery which came up. They had been caught in civvies in Sydney. I thought that was pretty terrible because they weren't being sent overseas. They were being sent to Darwin to defend their own country, yet they had deserted.

In civvy clothes. I had to try and get them off but I had no chance.

When their unit entrained for Darwin, they dodged it. They were draft dodgers. The unit paraded at a certain time and they just didn't turn up.

A day or two.

Defending officer. Defending the accused. A hopeless case. I don't know what happened to the first chap but all the deserters went down to Brocks Creek for a month. Brocks Creek was run by the Provost Corps. Something like the Glass House which the British Red Caps used to run in Egypt.

An awful place to be in apparently. This was probably similar.

I think they treated them very harshly. I know the CO had to send a chap down from Berrimah at one stage for something. I can't remember what now. He was a pain in the neck. I had forgotten about him. He came back about a month later and every time he saw an officer

even 100 yards away he would salute him. I tell you the difference it made. It was incredible. You wouldn't know it was the same man. I bet he went through it though.

Oh yes.

Only that when I was at the operations room, my chaps weren't getting any exercise. I only had a half dozen of them. I thought it was about time they had some. We used to have a 24 hours off when we were free to do what we liked;

every third shift. So I just got them get their rifles, no packs, and took them on a route march. The trouble was I was fit. I had been at Duntroon and still hard. My legs were hard. So I took them for a 15 miler thinking this would be a good start. I nearly killed them. I didn't realise. It was in the day time too, so it was hot. Dry but hot.

I thought I'll have to get over that; then I had a bright idea of going out in the vehicle on the day off. Sitting up on the roof. I would be sitting up there with a rifle on my knees waiting to shoot kangaroos; we used to drive around the tracks. The driver would be watching the odometer, to see how many miles we'd done. So I worked out different routes where we could take them out in the moonlight at night. It didn't matter up there.

We were off duty, we could do this. So the next couple of months, I would take them out on a moonlight night and do a moonlight route march. Well the first one we did was 8 miles and they quite enjoyed that. The second one was 15 and that wasn't too bad. The 3rd one I got ambitious and had a 21 worked out. But in the moonlight it's not too bad. It's nice and cool in the dry season. The only trouble was the boss of the little unit –

the same rank as I was but he was the chief. A chap called Best. He said, "I'd like you to take headquarters out next time." I said, "Well are you coming?" He said, "Yes, I'll come too." I said, "I don't advise it, we're doing a long one. We've had two run ups and my chaps are getting fit." He said, "It doesn't matter, you take us all out." "Right ho!"

So I organised the show ready to go. All the lads turned up from headquarters. "Where's Mr Best?" "Oh, he's disappeared." I very nearly sent his blokes back but I couldn't. It very nearly killed them. My batman was one of them. He came in almost on his knees the next morning. A wonder he didn't throw my tea all over my face. He was in a mess and so were some of the others. It was unfair. My blokes took it in their stride pretty well.

They all came in reasonably happily. Tired and sore. But they had done two long ones before, you see. But unfortunately, some of the others hadn't done a route march in their lives and they did 21 miles.

I was transferred after that one. When I was at Duntroon, one of the exercises took 3 days. We were taken by vehicle out to Queanbeyan.

We were fully kitted up. Packs, the lot. Our rifles and everything. We then marched to a township about a day's march away, about 30 miles. We slept the night in a cow barn which wasn't very nice. We then supposedly attacked the VDC [Voluntary Defence Corps] in the town. Having done that we then marched

to Bungendore. It was 30 miles or thereabouts. It rained the whole way. The only good thing was I slept in a feather bed the farmers like to have. That was lovely. Then we marched 30 miles back. So we did 90 miles in 3 days. Oh I tell you -

we were tired. We were very tired. But it shows what you can do.

At Duntroon you do everything you're told to do.

Oh well, the same thing. They had to come. At Duntroon one of our officers who wasn't very bright decided

that we were marching at three and three quarter miles an hour, which is the same pace you do on the parade ground. We used to route march at the same pace. AIF troops marched at two and a half mph, which is two thirds of that. He said, "You'll have to get used to marching at two and a half miles an hour not three and three quarters. So I'm going to take you up to one of the trig points on a hill and we're going to march at two and a half."

Then he had the bright idea of taking the fourth class, (the new cadets) with us. Well we had just done 90 miles and a 20 miles round trip was an afternoon's breeze. These poor little blighters. I had two in my section, first year. It damn near killed them, 20 miles. Well it would, wouldn't it?

Well it makes you tough. It makes you able to cover a lot of ground in a fairly short time if you need to. The days before there was a lot of transport around, people marched a lot.

Yes you can be, particularly in jungle warfare. That's where I was hopeless. I ran out of breath. Every time we went up hill, I was the last to arrive at the top.

Were all flat.

They were all around Knuckey's Lagoon area.

Oh, we didn't stick to that up there so much, but I suppose I did, being used to it.

Well I didn't see any until I went to Borneo.

I don't know. Small, short sighted, wear glasses. After the way they fought in Malaya, we didn't doubt their ability. They went through Malaya in a few weeks

against two divisions. So we knew quite well that they were pretty good at fighting. But other than that I didn't have much of an idea at all.

I saw one dead one up there that's all. The regiment next door shot him in the middle of the night.

Well one, anyway. When. my sergeant went off on a course and I was in charge of the detachment; so I also had to make decisions because the officers didn't come up to the OP unless they were needed; the barracks were about a 100 yards away where they would be; there was very soft sand, so they couldn't

run through it. You would go through it putting one foot before the other. It was like going through mud almost. So there was quite a delay from the time you sent for them before they got there, so sometimes you had to make a decision for yourself. On this occasion this ship went out without a clearance from the Navy, so as soon as I found that out, I put my detachment onto the range finder and got them to call me ranges every

50 yards. I thought, how far can I let it go before I do something? So I decided that 4000 yards was fair and by then the clearance might be through. Anyway it wasn't, so I went and pressed the klaxon; the whole fort erupted with people running everywhere. I had a telephone and the gun sergeants reported “ready.”

We were up on the high ground looking down on the fort a 100 yards away. Well the klaxon alerted the officer and he was on his way. In the meantime I'm thinking how far can I let the ship go before I put a shot across his bows, and I wasn't too happy about making that decision. I was 19 and it was a big decision to make. But the officer arrived and so did the clearance report from the signals station

around about the same time, so I wasn't forced to make up my own mind about that one. But that was quite an experience for a few minutes.

Fort Largs, near the Outer Harbour.

Yes, I joined up in July '38.

This was in war time. Early 1940.

I went back to the bank a couple of times for short periods, but most of the time I was at the fort.

Right. When they called us into camp on the 5th of September they lined us up and said "The regulars have been manning the fort for about a week, so you're going to take over tonight. The militia is going to take over the whole fort." They had all the tents up already. They called out the names of the gunners who were in charge of each tent and who was to be with them.

The first four were bombardiers and would you believe the fifth tent was mine. I was a senior gunner at the time. I felt quite chuffed at that to be in charge of a tent and a table in the mess room. I had seven blokes under my command as it were, just for that little bit. But it was a step in the up direction.

Yes.

The whole battery was sent south. The 2nd Ack-Ack Battery. It was a West Australian Battery, so we would either go to Fremantle, or to Port Headland.

I thought, if I want to go overseas, I don't want to go to Port Headland. It's another dead end. So I opted for Fremantle thinking I could be more easily extracted from there. That's where the 30 minute, 1 minute business came up for the Japanese Task Force.

Well, a dead end for going overseas. It's the end of the road in that direction. The same as Port Headland in Western Australia was.

I was in charge of this gun site near the Fremantle Harbour overlooking the wharves.

No. Nice and relaxed, thank you very much. We only did shifts when I was at fighter sector, not on a gunsite. Apart from that I only had two gun attachments instead of four. All the rest of the tasks were done by the AWAS. They were very, very good. They knew their predictor, their height finder, the radar and their plotting. They did the cooking and the clerical work.

The AWAS [Australian Women's Army Service].

There must have been nearly 40. I don't know, I didn't count them. I could work it out for you carefully, I suppose. But 6 probably on the radar, six on the predictor, three on the height finder, three in the plotting room, some in the command post, the orderly room and a whole lot in the kitchen. There might have been 40.

Two gun detachments is 22, plus command post. Say 25. Most of the men were B Class; Low category males. But my sergeant was alright. He was an A1 bloke but most of the rest were unfit for a forward area.

Well medically.

They had flat feet or some other reason. They could be used in a safe area but they couldn't be sent away to the jungle.

No.

I was the only officer in the whole area as far as I know. But there must have been a few gunners around Fremantle who came down with me.

I don't know what happened to them. I never saw them again. They probably went to Port Headland, or to other batteries near Fremantle.

Well they arrived up at Duntroon in 1942 or late '41, I can't remember when. They were doing menial tasks, waitressing in the dining room.

Of course as a corps they were very efficient, most of them on signaling and some of them worked on the ack-ack guns apparently in England. I'm not sure about out here. I don't think they worked on the guns out here.

Oh yes.

I loved it really. As I say, although I was on 30 minutes warning I could still leave the gun site if I rang up the boss at headquarters. But I had to have a good reason. I didn't know anybody in Perth.

No.

They probably wouldn't have let me in anyway.

Oh there were.

I can't give you the number down but there were 70 odd subs stationed there. There were some British and the rest American. Most were American.

We had a day off every week. We used to go up to Perth and have a look at Kings Park and have a drink at the pub or a picture show. Nothing very exciting.

No.

No, what happened was the army wanted to make sure that all the regular officers got overseas experience if possible. So sometime in '43, an army order came out saying that all

permanent force officers at some stage would be sent to the Jungle School for posting overseas. So having known that when I went to Fremantle, I knew I would be picked up in the draft somewhere along the line, and I was. I think about July or August '44. So I went to the jungle school and I was there for about 10 weeks.

Canungra.

That was at Jungle School.

It wasn't.

It was a nice relief from the tropics.

Cool air.

I think you've had most of it. I used to go and relieve other officers; at one stage I had two officers on the site, so one of us could go and relieve other officers for rest days off. I used to like to go to North Fremantle. There was a regular army officer there and they had a grass tennis court; they

used to play in bare feet, which is much more comfortable than sandshoes believe me; in grass, it was great. I had never done it before. Soon after I had arrived they said, "Do you play tennis?" I said, "Yes, I'll be in that." Had some good hits too. Mind you I was only 24. I was an “old man” at the time. They used to call me the old man at my own gun site. “Look out the old man's coming.” At 24!

In Darwin, they were about 20. All AIF chaps, the volunteers who were too young to send overseas, so they sent them to Darwin; they were great blokes. The second lot who came up were all conscripts. They didn't go over at all well.

Not with me because I had to defend about five of them for desertion.

Yes.

They were court martialled.

I couldn't. I couldn't do anything to get them off. I used to say "Well go in the witness box and tell them your story". Of course the prosecuting officer would get stuck into them.

No. They didn't have any excuses at all. They just didn't want to go, as far as I can remember. Mind you it's a long time ago.

Their attitude.

The first crowd I had, I reckon they would have walked over the cliff with me, after they got to know me. I'm not saying they would but they were all together. But not with the others. A different attitude.

Yes, well. I'm not saying they would.

Well, luckily I wasn't an officer with the conscripts. I was only attached

to them for a short time, a month or two.

Well you could see by their attitude; I was still on the same gun site.

"Bloody officers," and that sort of thing. Whereas my blokes wouldn't and if they did say it, they wouldn't say where I could hear it. But I don't think they did.

Well the chap who volunteers usually makes a better soldier. That's about all I can say for that.

I'm just talking about the one troop or the one section of gunners on the one site. The Berrimah people were all volunteers. They were the West Australian battery of volunteers.

A necessary evil in some cases.

Well I think so because it was a case of everybody pulling their weight in the whole country. The army, the girls. My mother used to make camouflage nets. My step father was an officer in a depot in Adelaide. My wife served for three years with the AWAS.

Searchlights.

Well I think that was the attitude for any red blooded Australian. He opted in and did something if he could, unless he had a special occupation for making aeroplanes or whatever.

Oh yes. I had a little diary of letters out, letters in.

Oh yes, it would keep you sane.

My parents and one girl in Adelaide who used to teach me to dance. She was a good friend. One or two old school friends who were still around.

Well the boredom effect that's all. I'm probably exaggerating a bit.

But getting me through that boredom business.

Well I used to write all the time I was there. Not to keep myself sane but just for something else to do, some contact with civilisation.

I can't remember. Too long ago.

Well you're talking about over 60 years.

A significant crater. Well it goes back a bit. The day after I arrived in Batchelor to the 2/1st Regiment; they couldn't hold me; I had to fill in a day and the adjutant was reading up his books

about funerals. So I said to him, "Has somebody died?" He said, "Two or three days ago we had a night raid and we had Bofors guns there." He said, "A bomb fell near one gun; he was standing up on the platform and was killed." I said, "Were the

searchlights working?" He said, "No." I said, "What the hell was a bloke doing if you could not fire in the dark?" They had to stand up high on the Bofors to feed the rounds in to the hopper.

The chap who loaded and fired the Bofors gun had to stand on a platform and nearly the whole of his body would be above the revetment.

Why on earth was he standing up there with no searchlights in a high level raid? What's he going to do? You can't fire at anything, you can't see. He's asking for trouble. He said, "That's the drill.” When I got my Bofors guns, I said to the chaps, "Now when you get take post, you take post; if there are any enemy fighters

around you engage them. If it's a high level bombing raid and there's nothing to shoot at and you hear the bombs coming, go down on your belly behind your revetment. You can crawl under the gun if you like and stay down there until the raid's gone through; then you take post again and be ready to shoot." The chaps did just that. They hit the ground. Apart from ringing ears from the noise of the blast which worried them a bit,

they were all fit. Nobody was scratched even. I learned something from the other poor devil who had to be buried. The bomb crater from a 500 pound bomb was 4 feet deep and the lip was one foot from the gun’s revetment. Anyway, I said, "You'd better post your picket." We used to have a picket on the entrance. He put the picket on again at the entrance and as I expected along came the CO

in a staff car, the colonel. This gunner at the entrance gave him a present arms. Most impressed. The other story about the CO; I told you about that one, didn't I? Christmas Day? The CO sent a message around to the five gun sites that he would be visiting the troops with a Christmas message.

I told my chaps about it and I said, "We'll have a parade for the Colonel. We'll know when he's coming. We won't go out too early, but be out before he gets here." Everybody was well turned out. The sergeants went around and checked the troops. "Now," I said, "We're only supposed to have one dog on this site but we've got five or six." The men didn't want to lose any of them. They loved their dogs. It was something to give them affection.

I said, "They're all to be locked up while he's here." "Oh yes, sir." So we won't lose them. So they locked up the dogs and when I got a phone call to say he had left Fanny Bay and was on the way down, we fell in and the chaps were all there standing at ease. He came in the staff car and I gave him a present arms from the unit and then back to the order. "Do you want to inspect, sir?" "Yes," he did. So they were duly inspected, and I said "Would you like morning tea?"

He said, "Yes." So I said to the sergeant, "Dismiss the troop." So we went down to my little hut on the other side of the oval for morning tea. We were there for some quarter of an hour chatting away. I think his adjutant was there, or somebody else. So we came out and what happened? We were half way across to the main gate when out came six dogs running across the oval.

No! Some silly cow had let them out too early. "Davies, how many dogs have you got?" "One bitch and five pups, sir." He knew they weren't pups. "Oh, oh I see. That's alright then." I thought I got off that one lightly, didn't I? I found out later why.

He had gone to the Quarantine Station and made his way around from Quarantine to Berrimah to McMillans to Fanny Bay to me. The other four hadn't even got out of bed when he arrived. There was no one to greet him or anything. Whereas with me he got a present arms and a full dress welcome. A good reception you see, which I thought was normal if the CO came to visit you on Christmas Day. Apparently, no one else did it.

So of course, he thought I was Christmas except for the dogs, but he let me off. Apparently, he had a hell of a hate

for the rest of them.

God knows what he did to them. I don't know. But I like that dog story.

Oh about five or six. Mostly the gunners. There were some 60 or more gunners there on site.

When they were on the site, yes.

Everybody looked after them and gave them a tin of milk. We had one dog who was suffering very badly from old age. He was dying. They wanted me to put him out of his misery because they couldn't. I thought “this is a bit awkward”. They said, "Would you shoot him?" I said, "I don't want to shoot your dog!" "But he's dying!" So I called them all together and I said, "I want to know

from everybody here, do you all want me to shoot the dog? Anybody who doesn't, put your hand up." No one did. They all wanted me to shoot the dog. I said, "Well be it upon yourself. I'll do it for you but I don't like it." But I did. But that's how they were. They didn't want to see the dog suffer. But they couldn't do it themselves and in fact they probably weren't game to because I would have heard the shot and thought what the hell's going on? I shot the dog and of course the next thing I got a ring from headquarters.

“What was that rifle shot?” The trouble being near a headquarters site, you can't do a damn thing. I had another time when the Bofors were coming and I thought one was going to be on my site initially; the only place where I could site one was where there was a gap in the trees on the edge of the cliff over the harbour. There was an old post there, a steel post which once had a telephone line on it in the old days, but the line wasn't there anymore.

So I had to shift this post but we couldn't dig it out; it was in concrete. So I thought we'll chop it off with explosives. So I sent one of my scroungers out to the engineers for some detonators and fuse cord; we used gelignite to do it. They came back from the engineers. I don't know how they conned them.

We set all this up. I made a crack in the side of the pole with an axe, poked the gelly in and wrapped it around with the detonator in it, with the cord hanging out; took it to the grandstand, which was a fair way. I said to the sergeant, "Alert everybody because there might be some bits flying around." So he did, but he forgot to notify the main gate sentry.

The fuse burnt down and up she went and took the top off the pole just as I wanted it, so I could fire over the top of it. But just before it went off, in came the “violet cart” driven by a half cast and four aboriginals hanging on by one finger on either side with all the cans in the middle. They were half way across

the oval when the thing exploded. Of course they thought it was a bomb and promptly the violet cart did a U turn and went out going about three times as fast as it came in. We were killing ourselves laughing. Oh dear, that was a joke. The main gate got a raspberry for not stopping them. But nobody had warned him. I got a ring on the phone, "What was that all about?" I told him.

I had two goes with the battery commander who was a young officer with less service than I had.. One was with the old man of the troop. He was 34. Nobody else was over 26. My sergeant came to me one day and said: Gunner X is suffering terribly with his back. He's been to the doctor and the doctor thinks he's

malingering. He said, "I know he's a good soldier." I said, "I know he's a good soldier too." He said, "Can we do anything about it?" I said, "Oh yes, we can do something about it." I went over to headquarters and luckily the battery commander wasn't there, so I said to his offsider, "Can I borrow a vehicle and a driver for an hour?" OK. I had an officer with me to look after the unit while I was away. We got the vehicle over, we put him in the front seat and I squashed in beside him.

Drove down to the hospital. There was a doctor there called Ken Barr who used to come in for meals occasionally at our troop. I sent for Ken. He came out and I told him the story and said, "Would you mind having a look at him? If he should be admitted would you please admit him?" He said, "What's happened with his doctor?" I said, "The doctor is accusing him of swinging the lead, but he's not swinging the lead. He's a good bloke."

He came out after a while and said, "We've admitted him. He's definitely in a bad way." I said, "Thanks very much." The following morning, I had to report to headquarters. "Why did you go behind the RMO's [Regimental Medical Officer's] back?" I said, "This man was in great pain. He was so bad he was admitted to hospital." I said “That was good enough for me”. “We're going up to see the CO.”

OK. I'm quite happy to see the CO. So we drove up to Larrakeyah Barracks and saw the CO. The BC told the CO the story and I told him my story. The CO looked at me and said, "Outside." So I went out and the next minute, the CO hit the roof. He tore strips off the battery commander. He ticked him off like a pick pocket. "That officer must look after his troops; don't you stop him." Or words to that effect. You could hear it going on from outside.

So that was alright. But I wasn't very popular after that. It happened again right towards the end of my battery’s stay, before the other battery came up. We found out they were stronger in numbers than we were so there would be nowhere for some men to sleep. So I got the carpenters out who scrounged timber from around about and started to build a few more hutches. Another time when I was over at HQ, he said,

"What's all that noise I can hear over there?" I said, "What's that sir?" He said, "People sawing and hammering." I said, "We're building a few hutches for the new battery because they've got more troops than we have." "You're supposed to be training." I said, "These chaps have been in action for several months and now you're taking them back to Sydney and you want them trained?" "Yes, I told you that!" "Oh OK”. “We'll go and see the CO." I thought “here we go again”. The same thing happened!

The CO chucked me out and ticked him off. And that was the end of that.

Oh dear.

You've got to be able to laugh, I tell you that. Oh yes.

I had better not name

names. I don't know if he's still alive or not. He was a Sydney bloke and he was one of these quick commissions. They were so short of officers in 1941, they got all the recruits lined up at a depot, say the anti aircraft recruits, and the CO went along with his adjutant with a pencil and paper; the CO said to every

man, "Which school did you go too?" "Plumford High." "Thank you." "Kings College". “write it down”. "Scotch College". “write it down”. "Turramurra High". forget him. They picked out all these blokes who went to the big private schools, sent them to an officer's course. This bloke had got up to the rank of captain already.(temporary captain), commanding a three troop battery.

He didn't have a flaming clue. He used to walk around with a .45 Colt like a Texan. Not an ordinary pistol. Not one of our revolvers. An American .45 automatic. All he needed was a horse and a hat and he would have been set up. I had served longer than he had, quite a lot longer.

Bob Ford, the chap I told you about before. R.M. Ford. A very good CO. Overseas experience.

Middle East.

Well several things. First of all, he has to be a leader and he has to understand his troops. By looking after them, they then look after him. In other words he has their respect, but you have to earn it first. It's not automatic. He obviously has to know his job. He has to be a bit gutsy. They're the main things.

Handling your troops is most important of course and you must know what you're doing as well.

Make sure they get fed, watered and looked after. Mail, mail's a big thing with troops. Make sure the mail gets through and then they can't kick up a stink. You have to find out what's holding it up.

Well he was a good CO. The one we had

when we went to Borneo was a shocker. Very bad. I'll tell you that story when we get to it.

Well the first month was on the officers' course which I found very difficult because I was short-winded and every time we climbed a hill, I would be the last one up there. By this time the chaps had all had a blow and were starting off again just as I arrived.

So that was it. I could not climb hills quickly. I always got there but not in a hurry. I don't know why, just the way I'm built. I wasn't as fat then as I am now either. I was a lot fitter. But I still couldn't climb hills. Then we were allocated out to companies. I forget how many there were. Each one had an intake of recruit

troops to be trained in jungle warfare; the officers from the officers' course took a platoon each and trained them for four weeks. The World War One captain, a nice officer, said, "Righto, infantry first," so he picked the infantry people and he said, "1 Platoon, 2 Platoon.... Now who have we got now, field gunners, you take one and you take one. Now engineers, you take

one, and the two at the end." He said, "What are you?" The officer next to me said, "Anti tank," and I said "Anti aircraft". He said, "Anti tank's more tactical than anti aircraft, OK so you take the last platoon." I thought, you beauty. I said, "What do I do?" He said, "You go into battle inoculation. I'll give you a vehicle, a corporal and two soldiers, and you go with a Bren gun, an Owen gun and a couple of rifles, and as the platoons are going along the valleys;

you're up at the top of a ridge firing over their heads so they can hear the bullets whistling over their heads. I said, "That will do me." I did that for three weeks; then his 2IC left, so he pulled me into headquarters and I did the paper work for the rest of the time.

The what?

Yes. The chaps needed to get used to rifle fire at close range. We were firing over their heads; about 10 feet and the bullets were going whiz, whiz over the top. It's quite an experience.

Battle inoculation, yes.

Yes,

the noises of battle. This went on day after day. We'd be given a map reference to go to. We're driven up there with all our gear. The NCO used the Bren. The privates had a rifle each while I had the Owen gun because that's the most dangerous one to have, so the officer used the Owen gun. It waved all over the place, whereas the Bren was on the ground. The funniest episode was one day I said,

"Right, aim at that tree over there." They all aimed at the tree and they all picked the same spot. Anyway, we heard this platoon moving through, coming along. You could tell from the noise where they were. I said, "Open fire," and open fire we did and the bullets cut through the tree and down it came with a whack. It didn't hit anybody but it sure frightened hell out of them. A tree coming down as well as all the bullets.

We thought that was a great joke.

Well that was the end of that. I wasn't too worried about not being sent. I had a very bad report from the officers' course because of my inability to climb hills, so I needed a lot more training. I didn't worry about that because being anti aircraft I rode everywhere, and secondly I knew that army headquarters would soon fish me out and put me in a regiment. It was part of the

organization of the Staff Corps people. So in due course the posting arrived. I was posted to the 2/3rd AA Regiment. The trouble was I hadn't done my month with the diggers, so he said "They realise they can't hold you for a whole month after been given a marching order, so take a platoon out for one day and train them." So I took somebody else's platoon.

We had only done about half an hour when a bush fire broke out. So we spent the rest of the day fighting bush fires. So that was my experience in training for jungle warfare. So I marched out. I was only the second one to be posted. The major went first and I was the next one.

It was.

I was at Yerongapilly staging camp when I ran into a couple of officers from the RMC who were a couple of years junior to me; they were also going to anti aircraft regiments. This was at the staging camp. One was the 2/1st which went to Balikpapan. The 2/2nd was next door to us at Strathpine. They didn't go at all, and I went to North Borneo.

By this time they were composite regiments. They started off as heavies or lights, big guns or small guns. But we were composites that they changed for the jungle. There was a heavy battery of eight 3.7 inch guns. They could fire to 28,000 feet high and 19,600 yards along the ground. Very long barrels. The Bofors guns were for the low flying enemy aircraft, and

the dive bombers. Their calibre was about one and a half inches, 40 millimetres. A searchlight battery complete with radar. We had radar. We were all mobile by this time, not static like the Darwin guns; we had a workshop and some signals attached to us. Our task

was to protect the rest of the army from aircraft attack.

We were stationed there getting ready to go overseas. We didn't know early on which way we were going but as the Yanks were all going to the Philippines, we thought we must be going to Borneo, which was a logical conclusion.

It was then that having read the reports on the north and finding there were very few aircraft in Borneo at all, and then getting information from the war office saying "Our guns should be used in the same way as a German 88 millimetre", which is a fantastic gun of course. In the desert they used to knock our tanks out. Same calibre or very close to ours.

Also to be able to use them as field artillery to support infantry on the ground. I said to the battery commander "I think we should do some training on this". They had done one little bit of a shoot at Milne Bay. I wanted to teach them how to do the whole thing with predicted fire. That is unobserved fire which is far more complicated from a technical point of view. So he agreed

and we started a course which I taught the officers and the NCO's - the ones who would be in the command post. We were pretty well through that when suddenly Corps headquarters in the Tablelands, told us that they were sending down a training team to teach us how to do it. But we had already got most of the training done. So

the regiment next door and we had to form into a school, so I was told to select the people to go. The battery commander wanted me to send the GPOA [Gun Position Officer Assistant], the chap who helps the officer in an ack-ack shoot. I said, "He's a farmer. I don't think he would be too hot on mathematics. I want to send my clerk." He said, "What! A lance bombardier, a clerk?" I said,

"Yes." I said, "As far as I'm aware he's the only one who's done leaving honours in advanced mathematics in Victoria." "Oh!" So I knew I had a gem there. He was. He was just pushing a pen in our office. So he went and back came the results. An officer from the other regiment, a captain, came top and my little bombardier came second in the course. So I was very pleased.

Abbott. He died recently.

last year I think.

Fair go. His nickname was “Ace”

Lance bombardier, one stripe.

Oh it was. We had two legal blokes as well set up in the headquarters for field shooting. They were obviously pretty bright blokes. One's still alive, the other one's not. Down in Victoria, and both from Victoria originally.

So that paid off. We sailed on my 25th birthday from Brisbane in a Victory ship. An old Liberty ship renamed Victory ship. About 2000 troops on board and only enough life boats and rafts for about half of us, which did not please me at all because I don't like deep water. The first two days

there was no sign of any escort. There could have been submarines of ours around or there could have been submarines of the Japs around. We certainly saw no aircraft and no other shipping. So I decided I'd sleep on deck, which is most uncomfortable. It's very hard to sleep on a steel deck but it was better than being down in the hold. If we got torpedoed at least I could float off.

Well we had breakfast at first light in the morning. That went through until about 11 o'clock. Queues going through. Then they had a cup of tea and a bun for lunch. The Yanks would give us these. They were Yankee ones of course. As soon as that was over they started the evening meal about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and that would be going until dark. Of course, no lights on deck after dark.

First thing in the morning the officer of the watch would look around and say something like, "Smoking light is lit," which meant you could smoke on deck.

I'm trying to remember the exact wording. Something like, "Lamps are lit," which meant you could light up. We

understood what he meant anyway. We arrived at Morotai which is the northern island of the Halmahera group, north of the Celebes. We went into a camp site.They had driven the Japs off a few months before

and had a couple of work battalions who were all Negroes. They set up a safe perimeter but the trouble was they didn't make it big enough. The area was full, so we had to go outside the perimeter and there were live Japs still running around loose down below; I think they realised and we realised, it was best left alone. They didn't worry us and we didn't worry them.

To build a safety

perimeter for the units.

They held it. I don't know about patrolling it, but they had stations all around. The idea was to stop these Japs wandering in. But the interesting point was the last unit along the line was the casualty clearing station where all the girls were, the sisters. In Jap land.

Well no. The Japanese didn't have a perimeter. They were just down in the bush, somewhere down in the scrub.

Absolutely. But apparently they weren't worried about it. They didn't seem to be too alarmed. I think the Japs realised that if they started to get out of hand, some of our troops would come down and wipe them out. So live and let live was a better thing. We finished training the gun detachments on

the fire control orders in the new role; eventually the guns arrived, and the ammunition arrived on separate ships. I was told to take the ammo down to the landing hards where the landing tanks dropped their ramps. I think the battery commander didn't like me, I'm not sure,

but I also had to take the guns down. We had to go across a bridge, a suspended bridge, not a very strong one with a load limit of 10 tons. Our tractor laden was 10 tons, the gun was 10 tons. Not all the tractors were loaded though, some were empty. We only took the loaded ones with us to Borneo.

The others came along loaded a few weeks later. So I briefed all the sergeants in charge of these guns and told them that when they got to the bridge, dismount, disconnect the gun, drive the tractor across on its own and then man handle the gun across, which you can do quite easily on the flat; then hook up and drive to join the convoy.

I got a little vehicle and drove in front of them. I drove across and up on the bank and walked back when to my horror, right in the middle of the bridge, was a tractor and a gun together and the bridge was very depressed. I nearly had pups on the spot. I could see anything up to 20 tons on a 10 ton limit. So I prayed it was an empty tractor. Anyway,

I stopped the next one early. I started waving at them and then waited for the first gun to come off. It came through and it was an empty tractor. Did I have a go at the sergeant. Anyway that was it. Now the point was that if they had broken the bridge, it could have held up the invasion of Borneo while they repaired the bridge.

I don't know about a standard one but it was one that did this, floppity floppity when you drove

on it. They said it was a 10 ton bridge but it probably would have taken 15; but I didn't know that.

Yes. Anyway, if we had broken that bridge I would have been sent home the next flight. I would have had no future in the army at all. All because the rotten sergeant let me down.

Well the rest of them did the right thing. They unhooked and after we got them all across, all 8 guns and tractors, we went down to loading hards and put them in the compound there with a picket on them. Later we put them on to the LST [Landing Ship Tank]. I used to know the number, 697 I think it was. I've got it written down somewhere. Then we sailed

on the 1st or 2nd of June. Two convoys; the assault convoy which went in first and did all the fighting around the beach; the second convoy was non urgent. When we anchored in the harbour near Labuan Island, our battery commander who had gone ahead in the first convoy to get his orders, swam out to our LST.

He climbed up to where we were. He said "We're deploying the whole battery as a field battery in action". I thought “you beauty”, after all the work I've put into it. It paid off.

Well some officers didn't want to play field guns; they wanted to be anti aircraft gunners, so there had been a certain about of resistance. Chaps who had been in ack-ack for years didn't want to be field gunners.

Instead of being deployed in different spots to cover the airfield, the whole eight guns were put together to be used as field guns to protect infantry or to help them somehow. After about a week the other troop went up to the airfield and we stayed where we were. There was still a Jap pocket on the island

of about 150, very well dug in with palm tree logs with little slits and we couldn't get them out. They fired everything at them. They dropped Napalm from the B25 [Mitchell], bombers. We had tanks but every time they got near, the Japs used their killing area.

So anytime our men got anywhere near that, they got wiped out. That went on for weeks.

A few of them did. Those who tried to get in. They were prodding.

Yes.

The Japs were firing at them through the cracks between the logs. One day I was on our gun site and our chaps had been down at the wharf doing some work.

When they came back I said to the sergeant "What on earth's going on? There are shells going over the top here which sound like trains." He said "That will be the [HMAS] Shropshire, the 8 inch guns firing at the pocket." An 8 inch gun would have a shell weighing 250 pounds. I would be guessing. I don't know exactly.

Yes, and they weren't infantry. They were Japanese Service Corps troops, butchers and bakers and candle stick maker type of people. But they still fought like demons. Eventually, they did get them out. They rushed them, tanks and all. They had to do something.

Probably none at all. Unless they dropped one right in front and a few bits got through the logs.

No. The pocket was several hundred yards from us.

Oh yes. They had a spotter with a radio directing the fire.

About 150. They held off two battalions plus a commando.

I don't know. No idea at all.

Their action?

We weren't involved. They wanted us to be. In fact I got a message from the battery commander one day. We were lined up to fire across the channel onto the mainland, which seemed the obvious place to do it. Our bearings were about 90 degrees due east. He said "We want to be able to fire to the north", which meant pulling

our artillery board to pieces and resetting it up, which meant we could fire right around instead of doing only half the circle. It meant changing the scale and everything. It was a hell of a job. So the young chap and I got to; we changed it all around. No idea what the target was. I thought perhaps they're worrying about Japanese landing on the north end of the island.

I couldn't think of any other reason. Anyway, he came round the next day and he said, "Are you all set up?" I said, "Yes sir, we can fire to the north and all around." "Yes, right." He said, "Line your guns up on the pocket, the Jap pocket."

I said to the battery commander, "I don't think we can hit it; in fact I'm sure we can't hit the pocket from here." He said, "Why not?" I said, "I'll prove it to you." So we got the map out and we worked out the bearing and range from us to the pocket and we produced the angle of the elevation and bearing of the gun to get a shell into the pocket. I got one of the guns to take post and I called out the bearing and

the elevation; they put them on the dials and layed the gun. I said, "Open the breech." They opened the breech and he and I looked down the barrel; all we could see were the air force tents on the side of the aerodrome with a bit of sky at the top. I said, "One shell in ten might get over the top but the rest will clean out the air force tents." "Oh!" I felt like saying, "Why didn't you tell me before? It would have saved me all that work."

Yes, that's what we were doing. That was the idea. They wanted to send the 2/43rd Battalion in small boats across to the mainland, across a 10,000 yard water gap.

But they realised that the 25 pounders from the 2/12th Field Regiment which were just near us, could just about reach the beach and not much more. They got onto us and they said, "Look, your battery can go to 19,000 yards," which was another 8000 yards further on and do the covering fire. We said, "Yes, we can do that." First of all they got us to fire five rounds at a given target and we missed it by

800 yards. We checked all our figures; they came down from headquarters and checked them. Being anti aircraft people, they thought we had probably got it wrong. So then they decided that the map was wrong. The air force had flown sorties up the coast but they hadn't flown one sortie which included both the island and the coast, so they

must have guessed and put the island where they thought it would be. They were out by half a mile. I forget now but we were either too far in or too far out. That caused the error. So having realised that, they thought we could probably hit the targets they had asked us to.

It was inaccurate from the air force point of view? Yes it was. The map making.

Soon the battalion was ready to go; the day before HQ sent us a lot of targets on the mainland; they told us how long to shoot at each one. We had to be ready by 10 o'clock the following morning by which time the infantry would be part way across the bay.

So we did all we could that evening, transferring target data onto forms. Then we couldn't do anything more until the following morning because we had to wait for the meteorological telegram from the air force. That gives you all the wind and temperature information. You need that. The targets were so far away from us, one couldn't observe the shots falling. You can't see a shell bursting at 10,000 yards.

Particularly in trees, you have no chance at all. So it was all done by calculation. Once we had the telegram, we had to work like beavers, the three of us and the troop commander, myself and two of the gunners. We were churning out the programs for the guns and we just made it with ten minutes to spare. Boy it was a gallop.

An awful lot of calculations had to be done. Not being field guns we didn't have range cones on our guns; we had to lay by clinometer, which is a slow process; Also we had to work out the angle which a field gunner doesn't have to do because they have got it on the gun anyway. Secondly, we only had time fuses in which case we had to work out exactly what fuse length to set on them to burst the shells 50 feet in the air

above the target. That was another column we had to work out that the field gunners don't have to worry about. So you can see we had quite a problem.

Oh I was. I felt responsible for training in the first place. Anyway, we got them away all right. I was just about dead on my feet by about 11 o'clock after the shoot was finished, so

I said to my troop commander, "I'm going to put it down for a while. I've been up half the night." He said, "Go for your life." So I lay on the stretcher and about five o'clock when another officer came along, he said, "Stop kidding, you're not asleep." I said, "I was asleep, mate." He said, "I can't believe that," and I said, "Why?" He said “2/12th Regiment have just opened fire with

10 rounds gun fire from 24 guns;” he said, "You didn't hear it?" I said, "Not a sound." They were just up the road.

I was, yes.

Well you've got gunners called gun layers.

Now when you first come in to a new spot, you go to the nearest tree and look for some survey data that the survey people have put there for you. That tells you the direction due north, the correction for magnetic variation, and the fixation of where you are on the map. That was done by the survey company, the 9th Division in this case. So I got that and set the guns up on that information. When I knew they were pointing north, the dials are set

pointing north. Do you see what I mean? They've all got dials that are adjustable. To get the bearing right you have to have that right for a start. If you're firing at a target you have to work out the bearing and give it to the guns. Secondly, you've got range to worry about. Therein is a great complication. The range or the distance a shell goes depends on the wear of the barrel etc.

We had brand new guns and they were firing a lot faster than the range table told us. We had hot cordite because we were in the tropics. The air was humid, so it was thin, and it was very hot; we had a following wind. So the corrections were minus a 1000 yards for meteor correction. That's a big change. We could have fired up to 20,500 probably, while

the range table would tell us 19,600. But we could have fired another 900 or 1000 yards. We didn't have to because all the factors were pushing the shells further on and that had to be corrected. Once that was corrected we then had to look up our tables and find the elevation of the gun to get the right range.

The data is all on a piece of paper. Each gun gets a sheet of paper

with the serial number of the target, the bearing and the elevation, and the fuse length. Then they take it from there. They set their fuses at the length you tell them to. The sergeant gives the orders and they fire when they're told to, every so often, twice a minute or whatever the rate is.

Yes, gunnery is. That's why I loved it. I loved gunnery.

Well that's predicted fire. That's the most complicated part of it.

Well that was the last of the action. The atom bomb dropped in August. We heard about it of course.

Oh yes. One night everything was nice and quiet when all of a sudden a hail of bullets came tearing across our gun site above our heads. I hit the deck and pulled out my .38 and thought, what's happening now. Anyway, nothing happened. They just stopped after a while. So we sat there waiting with eyes watching.

There were no Japanese. We always had pickets on of course right around the perimeter. Two men at a time. If one man gets frightened and sees bushes moving, he says to his mate, "What's that?" We had 15 of these posts around this big perimeter with two men on at all times. Thirty men on duty out of about 130 that we had there.

So the following morning, I went over to the radar set. Now our radar sets in those days had great tall masts and they used to use a wave reflection off the ground to measure the angles. I thought if anything got hit it would be those masts; even the cabins were fairly high and I thought they might have broken a valve, and we would have had it.

The cabins hadn't been hit and one or two of the masts had chips off the wood and that was all. So I realised it was the unit up the road with all these machine guns and rifles that fired over our heads; I thought if they did it again they might hit our radar. I said to the troop commander, "Can I go up and talk to them about it

and tell them we're here?"? We had this 8 foot grass in between us and you couldn't see a thing on the other side of it. They were about 100 yards away and you could hear them but you couldn't see them. An anti tank regiment without any anti tank jobs to do. Goodness knows why they were there; there were no Jap tanks. So I went and found the adjutant, telling him the sad story and said, "For goodness sake stop your blokes from shooting across my area.

You'll hit the radar." "Oh, OK," he said. "Come on I'll take you down and show you what happened last night, why the firing was on." He took me down and they had the most amazing idea of self defence in this unit. Their idea of regimental defence was one man on his own patrolling up and down a path and that was it. I took my sergeant with me and we both looked at each other and said, "What?" We've got 30 men on duty all night,

changing over every two hours and waking each other up with the pull on a string, so you don't make any noise; here's this man walking up and down in the middle of a path. That's all. Anyway. The adjutant said "He was walking last night and he put his foot on something soft; looking down at a Jap's face". He had put his foot on a Jap's face lying on the track. He said, "Of course the Jap jumped up and

the sentry shot him but he disappeared into the jungle." No one was game to go in after him because they thought he might have a weapon and shoot them in the dark. So they left him there and he was moaning. Eventually at about 3 o'clock in the morning the moaning stopped as he had died. Then they went in with their rifles. They found him.

The first man who found him let go with a burst of an Owen gun but all he did was to blow half his foot off. They dragged him out and there he was lying on the track. Poor little devil. He looked more like an overgrown monkey than a man. He really did. Small, wizened face and very dead of course. So that was the only time I saw a dead Jap

during the whole war.

Well he must have been a pretty poor specimen to be in the army at all. That's what I thought. But I was more impressed with the inefficiency of this other unit than the fact they had killed a Japanese. One man had fired, the rest of the regiment started to spray all round the perimeter with bullets.

They came over our way. You're always told in jungle training, if you think there's something moving you don't fire because it gives your position away. You grenade the place where you think the noise came from. The grenade does an awful lot of damage when it goes off. That's the training.

Well I didn't see any of them. My batman used to go up and be a naughty boy with one of the 16 year old Chinese girls once a week. He offered to take me up and I said, "No, thanks very much." Goodness knows how many Japs had been there before him. I said, "No". I couldn't stop him from going on his day off if he wanted to do silly things.

Just a teenage girl. She might have been a pro, I don't know. Probably the Japs helped themselves and my batman decided he would too. That's the only contact I had. I never met the local population at all. There was one

unfortunate incident we had and I was mixed up in a Court of Inquiry on our own searchlight unit. A man was shot in the leg by one of his own soldiers. So we were sent there to see what had happened and to conduct a Court of Inquiry. Their idea was not much better than the regiment's next door. They had one man sitting on a little mound with his rifle over his knees. He was the picket. He

guarded the searchlight. All his mates were in an iron hut, sleeping. One of the men in the hut apparently had to relieve himself. He walked out of the hut and the picket up there got nervous, being on his own, and shot him; hit him in the leg. Then he found out he had shot one of his own men. So we went up there to check up on their training and we could

see they had hardly had any training at all, only how to work a searchlight but nothing else. In fact all their grenades were still in the original box packed in grease. They had never been cleaned and made ready for use. All the grease was still on them. They come in protective greasy stuff to stop them rusting while they're in transit. But of course you have to get all that off and make sure they're useable. They hadn't even done that.

Our reports went in and it was rather scathing about the battery commander's lack of training. Never heard what happened after that.

We heard that that had gone off and on the 15th we heard the news of the Armistice.

Well of course at that stage, all I knew it was something nuclear. I didn't know anything

about nuclear physics. I knew about the nucleus. I learned that in physics. But I didn't know anything about nuclear physics. That was a new game. So we didn't have a clue as to why there was so much damage except it was a new type of explosive. Anyway the troop commander got on the PA system in the command post and said, "Well the Japanese war's over. It's the Armistice today." One very sleepy voice said, "Hooray" and went back to sleep

again. Whereas back here in Sydney of course everybody went mad. Up and down the streets screaming and yelling while our man said "Hooray." That was it.

They couldn't care less. They knew it was coming to an end, so good; they had been in for five years.

Oh of course it was.

See we had planned, if that hadn't happened, to go to Singapore and try and rescue some of the POW's [Prisoners of War]. That was part of the reason that 9th Division was moving that way. But this stopped us in mid track.

Well there was a system in the army at that stage where those who had served for five years and two years overseas, could

go home and be replaced with reinforcements. That applied to a large proportion of this troop. About 75% had done that tour; so had all officers and in fact all the NCO's and most of the others were going back to Australia. I was the reinforcement officer, a regular army officer. "You'll take over; you'll be the troop commander,

and he'll be your sergeant," and all this sort of thing. I was saying, "Oh yes." But what they didn't know was that I had applied to go to a staff school in Queensland. I had had three years of regimental duties, counting people's socks and issuing their pay and doing their hygiene and so I thought some staff work wouldn't go astray. I might get myself a job on the staff, by going to the Staff School.

So on the 29th of August:- "Report to the airfield with all your kit, you're going home." So instead of being the last one out, I was the first one out.

It may have; I don't know. Most of them said, "Good luck to you." That was usual with that sort of thing.

We flew from there to Zamboanga, which is on the southern side of Mindanao, an American base for refuelling. We couldn't go direct because

the Japs may not have surrendered in the area of Borneo where we would have had to fly over. So we went around to the north to get to the Philippines. Then from there to Morotai in a RAAF plane; from Morotai to Biak, which is off Northern New Guinea, in an American plane which was highly overloaded. He gave us an awful fright

because we had only been out for about 10 minutes when one of the engines cut out. It was a DC3 with only one engine and 300 miles of water in front of us. Everybody went the colour of that wall. He got it going again but it was a scare. We got to Biak, and at Biak an interesting thing happened. Already, so soon after the Armistice, there was a tractor on wheels;

I can't describe it but it had a vertical saw, about as high as half of this wall. Elevated. There were a lot of American aircraft there; this thing was going up to each aircraft and just sawing it in half. They didn't want them and they didn't want anybody else to have them. So they just destroyed them or made them impossible to use. That was interesting. Then we took off from Biak one morning.

We went over the range to the south coast of west New Guinea and landed at Merauke. We had morning tea and then we flew on to Townsville; had a meal there and then we flew from there to Brisbane. The trouble was on the way between Townsville and Brisbane, we had to go to 11,000 feet to get

over a storm and we were all still wearing shirt and shorts; believe me - September at 11,000 feet is very cold. It wasn't a heated plane. It was an army transport. Everybody was shivering. Luckily I remembered I had an old raincoat in my kit which I dragged out and put on. So it wasn't too bad. So that was my home coming.

We got to Yerongapilly at about 11 o'clock at night. The only reception was; no customs, just a chap warming his hands over one of these little coal braziers. That was it. We could have brought all sorts of stuff in.

No. No chance of getting anything in the aircraft. Not like the infantry going through

Brunei. The ruler is a Sultan. They went through his place pretty thoroughly and removed a lot of silk. No, I didn't bring anything back.

It was just a short course for junior staff officers. The idea was doing simple staff work. It only lasted a few weeks.

Then I was sent back on leave to Adelaide. I was on leave there for a few weeks until the end of 1945; I was then attached to the local hospital to give some of the psychiatric patients some physical training, which was quite an experience. They weren't barmy; they were just psychiatric troops who were

being treated.

Oh just exercises. Gymnastics without any gear. Just running around the block sort of thing. Put your arms up and down, jump up and down, very simple. Just for half an hour to give them some exercise. That's all I did. At the beginning of March I got a letter saying “report to the school at North Head

to do a long radar course of 17 weeks”, This suited me down to the ground because I love technical work.

Yes. It was the Australian Staff Corps from Duntroon in those days.

It was a very long course. 17 weeks - you can imagine. It was basic in the beginning.

It was 4 weeks before we even looked at a radar. We had been doing the theory of electrons running around tubes, valves, capacitors, resistors and other things. At the end of the 4th week we were doing superheterodyne radio to give us some radio background and then we started on the radar proper. Cathode ray tubes and so on. I can't remember exactly

how many were on the course. I think there were about a dozen, but everyone was so fired up about the idea of a new subject, that five of us got distinguished passes and that meant over 85% in everything we did. The five of us got through that way. An officer named Eric Nowill and I were equal top of the course.

That being so they put me on the staff as a radar instructor.

Yes there was one called a GL Mark 2. It was in two big boxes which you climbed into. One was a transmitter which sent out pulses of energy, 70 times a second.

This energy pulse was also sent on a cable across to the receiver, so one could fix the time. Then the pulse bounced off an aircraft and came back again; it was picked up on the receiver which had special high aerials. It fed through the ceiling into the main compartment where there were dozens and dozens of valves.

A picture came up on a CRO [Cathode Ray Oscilloscope], which had a circular face. The operators had to learn how to traverse and elevate to get the maximum effect and when they got on a target they turned a hand wheel until they got the little thing called a strobe on the target blip; then they could read the range, the bearing

and elevation to it.

I had had a brief look at them when I went over to Sydney on a short course from Western Australia. I hadn't had the depth of training there. We had them in Borneo too.

But this was the first time I really learnt what was inside and behind the panels.

Well troops used to come to the school to do various courses and because radar was a new thing, every one had to do at least one week on radar before going on to the rest of the gunnery course. Everybody had to be radar conscious and have basic knowledge. So it was only a short week's course but

a chap who knew radar would be able to teach it.

Yes, I met her up there.

She was trained during the war. She was out by this time of course. She was back in civilian life. She had been a non-commissioned officer with the 52nd Battery of AA Searchlights.

She enlisted here in Sydney and her unit was sent up to Townsville. They worked up there with the radar. After the war moved far north, she was sent up to the Tablelands to help with the farmers' claims, the damage done by troops. You would always find you damaged things around the place when you had big exercises, and the farmer's would put in a claim. She had to help with that and do the typing

for the investigations.

Well first of all, in early 1947 when I was really enjoying my radar I was suddenly sent to Queenscliff in Victoria to the Australian Staff College for post graduate training.

If you qualified you automatically became eligible for promotion to major. I was still a lieutenant at the time and being anti aircraft I didn't know much about tactics, which was a handicap. Anyway, I did manage to pass. Everybody passed the first course. At the end of the course we were waiting for our postings and the military secretary who looks after officer postings,

came down; he said, "You're not going to a staff job." He said, "You're going to Woomera as the radar and trials officer." I said, "You beauty. That will do me!" I was going up to a new unit which had only been formed a few months ago. When I arrived there, we were all under canvas. There was only one building and that was the officers' mess. We slept under canvas.

The first morning I woke up, I got out of bed and there was a 20 knot wind blowing off the desert. This was on the 30th of June and the middle of winter and being a 100 miles from the sea, it was a continental climate. I decided to have a shave but I couldn't. My hands were too cold. There was ice on the bucket at the kitchen.

The toilet had a metal seat on it, situated in the open with a Hessian strip around it. Really basic. I think I touched it for about a millisecond and leapt off just as fast as I sat down. We had the toilet paper in a butter box that someone had sent some groceries in, so I took a plank off that and balanced on it. It was the only way you could survive. You couldn't sit on the metal. It was zero degrees.

It would almost burn you. That's how it started. I found out that the radar wasn't up there. It was at a town close to Elizabeth. There was a scientific group with the LRWXE. So after a week they sent me down to inspect

the new radar which was called an Auto Follow Radar. That meant that once you locked onto the plane, you pressed a button and the radar just followed it automatically. We used to go outside and watch it. We used to think that was great fun. Watching something chasing a plane around the sky without anybody in it. That was my first experience of Auto Follow. Very accurate output of course because it was all electronic, whereas a man using a hand wheel can get a bit in front or a bit behind.

Electronically there are no errors at all; that's the beauty of them. They had similar ones in England for the blitz bombing by the V1s [Flying Bomb]. With those and the new electronic predictors they were shooting down Doodle Bugs at a fast rate. Some good days it would be 90% hits.

Well I met my sergeant down there with his team of operators and we were all learning about this new equipment. It wasn't ready for deployment. The idea was a number of them would go on the range and measure the rockets travelling across the range towards the West Australian border. This was part of how

the scientists work out how fast they were going and where they were going.

Well the rockets would be fired and then the radar would pick them up and track them; they'd pass the data on by cable to the next radar station up the range a few miles. How they did that I don't know. I didn't get around to finding that out.

But they could apparently pass the data along to another radar.

Maralinga some years later.

Yes well I was only at Woomera for about six months, when a vacancy occurred at army headquarters for a major on the staff; I went there and about two months later I became a major, which was a record short time. A captaincy in July, major next January. Temporary of course at that stage.

I hadn't done my ten years. In those days you had to do ten years before you became a major and I had only done six and a half. I was on the staff there for about 18 months.Then I was sent to Larkhill in England to do a 13 month field gunnery course, so I had field guns training as well as anti aircraft experience. That was great.

I took my wife and by that time we had a daughter. We travelled on the Orion. A very nice ship. We had special allowances for spending on board. It was a pound a day. It doesn't sound much but we could buy a couple of martinis for two shillings, so you could get pretty tight on martinis for a pound.

We were in the English channel when a letter arrived from my mother to say "My grandmother had died and I had come into some money from my grandfather". We went to Larkhill to do this long course. I came top of the first leg, because it was all theory. Mathematics, guns, carriages and

ammunition which were all up my alley. It wasn't very hard to do. It was bread and butter to me. I didn't go over too well with the rest of the chaps because the Kiwi major came second. So the two dominion officers beat all the Brits and Pakistanis. They didn't like that much.

We didn't do it deliberately. But when the two names came out, the Australian and New Zealander came out one, two on the list; there were 24 on the course. I then topped two more parts of the 13 month course.

Oh after Woomera, yes. Well at the end of the course I was given attachments to a lot of units around the UK; not interesting because they had no use for an Australian Major wandering in. If I had been a lower rank they probably could have used me.

None had a job for me, so I had a lot of spare time. When I was down in Cornwall for a month I had nothing to do. As I had my car with me, I used to drive around Cornwall. The last week I brought the family down and they spent a week there as well. While we were there, we were given the chance of going to see the "Trooping of the Colour".

Of course we applied, and in due course we got a letter saying where to report and on what date. It was the real thing, not the rehearsals; you have to be there at a certain time. We thought good, we'll see the "Trooping of the Colour" and the Queen for the first time.

She wasn't even crowned then. We had two children, so we fobbed them off onto a neighbour at the place where we were staying; then drove to the tube circuit and walked across Green Park. At the Parade we found a colonel whom I knew. We sat down and looked around. No other Australian army members there.

Filling up, filling up and I said to him, "Where's the rest of the Australian Army?" He said, "We're all here, six of us." They gave us six seats. They had a draw at headquarters and our names were drawn out of a hat. We enjoyed this very much seeing the guards doing their drill and then we drove home again. We had bought a Vauxhall in England

and did all our travelling around in that. We did about 18,000 miles in a year. Scotland and back. So that's our trip over there. Then we came back and I went to the School of Tactics as an instructor. It wasn't at all exciting there. Just a routine job of teaching. Then they sent me

to Sydney to raise a new CMF formation called the RAA [Royal Regiment of Artillery] 1st Corps, which was a new formation. I was to get experience raising a new CMF headquarters. I had never served in the CMF. I was a militiaman as a gunner, so this was a learning curve, a steep one.

I had no experience in raising units or CMF administration. There I was as a major

to produce this HQ and I had a CMF brigadier to answer to who was experienced in the game. It was his second tour as a brigadier. He knew what he was doing. He was very helpful and so were the regular staff around the barracks. So that went off all right. We had the headquarters going and we got a whole lot of officers from the reserve list, trained them, and then raised a couple of units from the conscripts.

That lasted for 3 years, quite successful. This is where the Maralinga trip came in 1956. A letter came around saying they wanted officer volunteers to go to Maralinga as conductors. We thought, “what the hell is a conductor?” It was to conduct other officers around the area. I was picked, luckily. I was very pleased with that.

I'll explain all that. When we arrived at the range at Maralinga, which incidentally was surveyed by Len Bedell, you've probably heard of Bedell, haven't you? He chose the area. They said "Well, 13 of you will have 20 visiting officers each. Your job is to take them around and brief them

on all the equipment we're going to have around the site of the explosion, and then take them back afterwards to see what happened to it". So we spent the first two or three weeks working on the range, partly to help them get it ready and secondly to find out where all the bits and pieces were so we could give a good briefing. We couldn't brief after the device exploded because we had respirators on.

They said "We're ready to go, take the officers around". So we did that and it took about an hour to give them a thorough briefing on all the aeroplanes, guns, small arms, vehicles, jeeps, tractors and all sorts of gear in a great big arc around the tower. An aluminium tower because the radioactive fall out from aluminium quickly disintegrates,

whereas steel would be longer lasting. One of the interesting things was that we used to go out on these voluntary parties almost every day. One day they asked “who can use a theodolite”; I put my hand up straight away because I could guess what was coming. A British Army

major, put his hand up, being an engineer. So we got the theodolite.

A theodolite.

It's an instrument for surveying. It's on three legs, you level it, you measure angles this way and that way; you calculate how far from here to there. So you make a map. This job was not nearly as complicated as that. We found when we got up there that

they wanted to carve a new lane through the low lying timber, the mulga. They wanted to place a new listening device or watching device; maybe a camera, about a mile out from Ground Zero. So they wanted a straight line out to it; so we had to make sure the line was dead straight. The other 20 men

who were in the back of the truck spent the whole time with axes, saws and chains clearing the scrub. In the heat and with flies, it was a rotten job. We went along with our theodolite, just walking along, telling them where to put their posts in and that went on for two days. That was quite good.

They issued us all with a thing like kids’ combinations. A top and a bottom all in one. I don't know if you've come across those. That's what we were issued with, a cotton combo. They had to do the test either

in the twilight of the morning or the evening, so they tried two morning ones. They would measure the winds and say "Yes, we can do it tomorrow morning". They would get us up at about half past three, very early in the morning. We wouldn't stop for a shower. We would wait until we came back because it was dark at 3.30

We had a really slap up breakfast, bacon and eggs, toast and marmalade, tea or coffee. Then we would all pile into a truck. My 20 officers would get into the back of a three ton truck with seats along each side, while I would be with the driver. Then the 13 vehicles would go up the road which took about an hour, 20 odd miles. We couldn't go fast because it was a narrow road.

We got there after first light but before dawn, before the sun came up. That was the time they had to use. Once the sun's up, they can't do it as the sun light ruins the camera shots and the rays of the sun interferes with instruments. So it had to be done before dawn. The first time we got up there they said, "Sorry the wind's changed. It was blowing to the north but now it's blowing south east towards Adelaide, so we can't do it."

Otherwise, the fall out from the cloud, which contains two elements from the split atom, giving you Strontium and Iodine, both radioactive. Now the Strontium has the same chemistry as calcium, which means it goes into milk and into the bones, into kiddies’ bones, so that's not on.

The iodine goes to your throat and having gamma rays in the middle of your throat isn't a good idea either. So they couldn't let the cloud go over the city. They had to make it go up through the desert. Well that happened twice. The second time we went up there all full of hope, "No, the wind's changed again." It's blowing from the north west.” So back we go again. They decided it was too hard to get a good wind in the morning so

they thought they'd try an evening one and that worked. They got us up there just after sunset; it was still quite light but the sun had set. The light was orange in colour which you get from evening light, where the blue rays go up to the sky and the red ones come across the ground, due to refraction.

They lined us up with our backs to the tower at five miles, (8 kilometres) away. The control building was there with about 10 men in it, all with binoculars and telephones. It was very tightly controlled; a man eventually climbed down from the tower having set the device ready to go. He had a master key. Until he put that in the machine at the control building, they couldn't fire the

device. Everybody else working on the range had to have their keys too. It worked on this system to make sure they didn't blow up anybody up by mistake. Then they briefed us. They said "We will give you a 30 second countdown when the time comes. On no account are you to look around. If you look at the flash you'll be permanently blind. So that's why you've got your back to it.

We'll tell you when to turn around." The countdown started and it got down to three... two... one... Flash.. turn... around. Flash meant that it was successful. At the same time that they said "Flash", the whole of the area

turned brilliant white, changing from the orange colour of the twilight. It was an incredible difference in colour. At the same time it felt as if someone had passed a blow torch across the back of my neck. It was quite hot and I was glad when it stopped after a second. Then we turned around,

the flash had gone, the fire ball had risen a little. Beautiful colours coming out of the ball, a lot of smoke and dirt etc that had been sucked up from the ground, as the fire ball had touched the ground. It went up into its usual mushroom shape. Not a very good mushroom. I've seen better ones. Then the wind started to move it around. After about 17 seconds, the

blast hit us, and it ruffled our clothes. If you watch some of the films of the time you'll see how all of a sudden everybody's clothing will flap. The blast wave travelled slightly faster than sound and it took 17 seconds to get there. So we watched the cloud for a while, got in our trucks and went back to base. The following day we had to wear our combos; we came to the medical centre where we

took all our clothes off, except our combos. Then we climbed into what I call a space suit. It was just like the ones you see in the moon shots except we didn't have a great pack on our back. That's for making oxygen. We had respirators and could breath oxygen. Otherwise exactly the same, gloves, respirator, boots with everything tucked in. Medical people

going around making sure there was no exposure to dust of any sort. Once we were cleared they gave us a Geiger counter. I told the captain who was holding it "To keep it near me at all times because I wanted to listen to the clicks to see how fast the rays were hitting it". We all had a dose metre on our jacket. If we received more than 3 Roentgens, we had to be sent home.

It measured the number of hits it had from the rays. After we got that reading we would have to go. My total reading was nine tenths of one R. So I was quite safe. In actual fact the safety factor was very high because below 150 Roentgens, one rarely gets sick.

They weren't taking any chances, were they? We got our group together. We went in at hourly intervals. I took my group from the medical tent towards Ground Zero. The big aluminium tower was gone. As we approached the 300 yard mark,

which was the nearest they had any equipment, the Geiger counter started to tick over a bit faster. When we got to 300 yards, it was ticking quite quickly; when we went past that it really started to sound like a machine gun, so I said, "We're getting out of here, it's getting too hot". So we turned around and went up and down the aisles in between all this equipment looking to see what had happened to the various exhibits. Guns were turned over, rifles burnt,

but I can't remember everything.

Yes. We had already showed it to them in great detail several days before and now we were looking at it after the device had gone off. So having taken them all around there, we returned; we stripped off our space suits and combos; in the nude we were given a shower straight away. Then one man came along with a little hand held Geiger counter and

moved it all over us looking for hot spots. But they didn't find any, or not that sort anyway. They said, "Right, you're clean, get dressed in your uniform and go back to base."

No. They didn't test us for anything except accidental radiation. The whole aim of our activities was to show these visiting officers, mostly from Britain, what an atom bomb could do to army equipment and aeroplanes. It had nothing to do with testing us as guinea pigs.

Well the safety was so strict that it was hardly that. It was almost impossible to get any radiation; in fact I saw

a letter in the paper about how somebody reckoned it made you sterile and so on. I got annoyed and I wrote to the paper and said "It's a lot of rubbish because I had a perfectly healthy daughter the following year". Which I did.

I have no idea. I have only met one or two of them since. Odd ones.

The next day they flew us home in a British transport aircraft with the seats back to front; I said to the pilot, "Would you fly us down over Ground Zero, so we can have a look at what it looks like from the air?" "Oh yes, I'll do that," he said. So I don't know how high we were, not very high. He also banked, so we could look out the window at the ground.

What we saw was a circle, about 200 yards in diameter, of “green glass”. Outside that, it was just as if a giant had swept the area with a great broom. All the trees had gone, just dirt everywhere swept outwards; apart from the bits and pieces like guns that were still lying there. It was cleaned out. All the mulga was gone for about half a mile or more. That is what this great blast

had done. The green glass I decided was, when the fire ball hit the ground, it melted the dirt which then solidifies. Well dirt is silicone, it's like sand, so it formed glass. The green we put down to the fact that there was still dirt under the glass and this brown with the blue sky giving you green. That's why it was a pale green colour. So that was the end of Maralinga

as far as we were concerned.

Oh yes, absolutely. We were thrilled to bits to be there. They had four explosions at that time but we only stayed for one. I had to go back to my job because the CMF headquarters I had raised were going to camp and they wanted me back very quickly. I was Chief of Staff at the headquarters.

I have no idea. No idea.

I don't know when it was held.

No. They didn't ask me to come. I was concerned about troops at base camp putting in claims for money when they were nowhere near the action. They were 20 miles away. There was no risk at all to them.

I thought there were a few clever ones who could prove they were there alright, but they weren't at the test sight. At 20 miles you don't get a lot of radiation!

Oh yes, one of my 20. Yes he did. He said, "I'm going into the centre." I used all the language I could,

let fly through the respirator to convince him that he would be dead the following day, so he didn't go. Otherwise I would have had to get somebody to hold him down I suppose; I don't know what I would have done. You see, going into the centre he would have been getting 1000 Roentgens or more a minute which would have torn his insides to bits. Killed all parts of his body and I doubt if he would have lived more than a few hours.

Quick suicide.

Oh yes.

Well the data we were given was marked confidential but the info that was in it wasn't secret. We were all tested to a standard of secrecy called Top Secret Atomic, which is higher than Top Secret.

I suppose that's the highest you can go. All the people who went there were tested for that, but how good these tests were, I don't know.

Oh yes, we talked about it. We could tell people about it, no trouble. We asked the boffin after the test "How big was the explosion in terms of kilotons?"

and he said "About the same as Hiroshima". That's all he would say. We didn't even know what Hiroshima’s size was at that stage. I gather it's about 15 kilotons of TNT [Trinitrotoluene].

No, I don't think so.

Soon after I left Corps Artillery I went to 1st Field Regiment as a battery commander with 25 pounders which was a great year. I had about 80 troops and 11 officers. I had 8 guns. It was a command where you got to know everybody in your battery. I used to have little meetings of the whole battery whenever I could. I would tell them what was happening.

Once I went out of my way to help one gunner and I think that went over quite well. They went up the range without me to be used by the School of Artillery for training observers. On the way back I walked up from my office to the Gun Park, to see how they got on. The officer in the lead vehicle went past and did this you see. (points behind him). Right behind him was a provost

on a motor bike, so I thought ah, trouble. I didn't know what, just trouble. When they all got in I called out to this provost; I said, "Come here. What are you doing in my gun park?" "Oh, I wanted to speak to one of the drivers." I said, "Did you report to the RSM [Regimental Sergeant Major] when you came into our regimental area?" "No sir."

I said, "Well you go down back and report straight away; otherwise get the hell off my area." Away he went to find the RSM to report to him; as soon as he was out of sight, I yelled, "Right, all of you, get lost!" Everybody disappeared. The provost came back about five minutes later and there wasn't a soul to be found, just a whole lot of guns and transport. He was going to charge the bloke who was driving the front vehicle for speeding.

He was doing about 5 miles an hour over the limit. He was doing 25 instead of 20 when towing guns. Anyway, the chaps rather thought mine was a good idea. It always helps to help the chaps because they respond.

Well the following year I became second in command of the regiment, which was great because

I was deploying each of the batteries when I got orders from above by radio; this was quite fun, giving them coded map references to go to. While you're driving along at 30 miles an hour you're talking on the radio and they were picking up sticks and moving. I quite enjoyed that part of it, for the first two or three months, but after that we had no deployments and all.

I finished up doing paper work which nearly drove me crazy. That's the 2IC's job to supervise the adjutant and quartermaster. At the end of that time they posted me to the 2nd Division as the Brigade Major, Royal Artillery, which was a staff job, a senior major job at headquarters. I was there for 19 months.

They formed a new division called the 1st Division but some brilliant bloke in headquarters said that "Majors must be less than 40 years of age". Now there was no war on, no sign of a war, and here was I with all the experience behind me, yet they took me out and put in a young bloke to take over

a new formation in 1st Division. We were helping the rest of the headquarters get on their feet because coming from 2nd Division to 1st Div, we just changed the numbers on our stationery. It was still the same show. Very good staff, extremely good staff.

I was a bit annoyed with it. I thought I could have done so much more with all the experience I had. He had no experience at all. He was

a pilot. Anyway I went into quartering, which is a very dull job going out to unit depots which need a new concrete path or have some painting done. That nearly drove me up the wall. So I got to the stage where I thought I've had this army. I couldn't get back on the guns; I loved the guns, so I found out I could get my

superannuation after 22 years’ service . So I fixed my discharge date for the 4th of July which is American Independence Day, 22 years and 3 days after I had been commissioned. First of all, I studied mathematics by

correspondence to bring myself up to date. I couldn't think of anything I could do except teach. Going into the business world would have frightened the hell out of me. I passed all the exams in mathematics, the leaving exam and the Matric Exam. If you passed your exams, your five pounds entry fee was refunded by the army. Also it gave me confidence.

Next year I did chemistry and I had to go to North Sydney Tech [Technical College] to do the practical work and the lectures. It was my favourite subject at school, when I got a very high pass at the university. Just for the heck of it I thought I’ll study for the honours and see how I get on without any assistance from the instructor because they were only teaching the basic

leaving [certificate]. So to cut the story short I got a First Class Honours which rather tickled me and the next year I did the same with Physics and got a Second Class Honours in Physics. In meantime I was corresponding with Knox and they said "They wanted me" because they were short of Maths teachers. I knew that maths teachers were very short right across Australia, particularly in Sydney in Maths and science, but mainly Maths.

Knox took me on without any formal training as a teacher at all except with what I had done in the army. But they accepted that I had taught at the School of Tactics and I had taught radar. The headmaster was quite happy with that. So I got almost the same pay there that I did as a major. Instead of paying in about 17% of my pay into superannuation I was now drawing it out; also I joined the CMF and got paid by the army.

So financially we were a lot better off. A lot better off.

A bit yes but then I joined the CMF and I was there several times a month. Night parades weekend parades. I was teaching the CMF officers' course military law.

Then after about a year of that they offered me the position of commanding officer of 9th LAA Regiment; I said "Yes please". I got a promotion to lieutenant colonel and was there for three years. I said, "When I turn 50 it's the end of the road unless you get a red hat." I didn't get my red hat until I retired.

A colonel or above gets a red band around his hat.

So they had a scheme that when you retired and you're a lieutenant colonel, you're given the title of full colonel; you can wear the rank and badges at suitable occasions, like Anzac Day. So I got my red hat that way. That was over 30 years ago in 1970.

Yes, I joined the RSL way back when I was in Geelong at the Staff College 1947. Then I lost touch because I was moving around a lot, overseas and so on. When I came here I then joined up at North Ryde and I've been with them for 40 years now. I also joined the Liberal Party up here at the same time. They raised a

new branch, the Gordon Branch, so I joined that; that's been handy once or twice.

Very important. We do it for the memory of the people who gave their lives,

and those who served and kept their lives. In my case I'm still alive. I just think of my two school friends who died in the air force. They've got their names on pavers up at North Head now.

No, not the war so much.

Oh yes, up to a point. You see it was a Victorian unit which I went to Borneo with, so there's only about 20 or 30 people from Sydney who were in it. We meet four times a year, men only, and twice a year with the wives, and we eventually settled on Hornsby RSL for our wives' day in August and February which is jolly good.

So that one, yes. The Duntroon graduates; our class has had several reunions. Starting in 1980. Our top boy, Don Dunstan I travelled with in the train to Duntroon and went through the interview with him in uniform which I told you about earlier. He became the Chief of the General Staff as a lieutenant general, and soon after that he became

the Governor of South Australia. I saw him in 1997. We were over there late in the year; they have a Staff Corps Mess function in December. I found out about this and asked if I could come. They sat me on the top table with Don and we had a great chat together.

I hadn't seen him in donkey's years. I got a lot of information out of him which I hadn't had before about different people. He being at the top of the army, he knew a lot more than I did about what was happening around the place.

I wasn't in charge. I was one of the officers. I wouldn't have been in charge of them, no way.

Well after you've commanded a regiment you don't like detail. The officer in charge of cadets is more or less a quartermaster and he spends most of his time looking after stores and that sort of thing, which would drive me mad. It was the only job I didn't do in the cadet corps actually. I was an acting OC when the boss was away

for a term. I took the ceremonials as the CO just for the one term. I was training officer, I was 2IC, I was company commander, I was signals instructor, I was survey instructor, I had all the other jobs but I wouldn't touch QM, not ever.

Yes, I did most of the ceremonial training. When we first went there, the officers

and the staff used to be in charge of the big parades; later a new master was in charge and he said "Right, the cadets will run the whole parade". Well that was alright but one year the cadet didn't know his commands well and it didn't go over well at all. From then on at my suggestion, I used to take the cadet in charge of the parade, plus his 2IC, and the company commanders,

and taught them up on a separate hill by the chapel, exactly what they had to do on the parade until they knew it backwards. After that we didn't have any trouble at all. We always had a visiting officer, usually a general there for the march out. The year I left Knox they gave me the job of being the inspecting officer, which was nice.

I think it's a wonderful thing. Knox has the biggest unit in the whole of Australia. There are over 500 cadets Its very popular. It teaches them leadership, camaraderie. The young ones are helped by the older ones. They go to camp. They have 7 days in camp.

They get the idea of organization, and also I used to teach them signals. At one stage I used to teach them survey; borrowed some theodolites from the army. I had a survey section running there for a few years until the army dragged them back again. They were the main things. I wasn't any good at teaching them tactics up hills. I couldn't do that. I was about 50 by that time.

I did start the rifle team. When I was in Adelaide, Prince Alfred College, I was in the rifle team which used to shoot against all the schools in the British Empire as it was then. In 1934, our school won it. So when they found out I was a fairly good shot at school they put me in the rifle team. So I had two years in that.

So when I came to Knox, I asked if the competition was still running. They said "Yes" and I said "Can I start rifle team?" They said "Yes" and in the third year we won the State Trophy and kept on winning it. Kings used to win it year after year, but then, every time they put their name down and every year they squibbed out and never turned up. They didn't like being beaten.

The first year when we had won, the officer in charge said, "We want to get the brigadier out with the prizes to both schools on the same day. Would November so and so be any good?" A Kings boy said, "No, the HSC's [Higher School Certificate] on." He turned to me and said, "Would that upset you?" I said, "No, my cadets are in fourth form." They were two years younger and that didn't go over too well with Kings.