Australians at War Film Archive

I was born in Bathurst, NSW came to Sydney at the age of three to Naremburn, then to Burwood. I went to Croydon Public School then Sydney Boys High School in Fort Street where I got my Leaving Certificate, my father was

the hstory master at Fort Street. I joined the Commercial Banking Company of Sydney in 1934 stayed there till March 1940 when I enlisted in the AIF [Australian Imperial Force] accepted for the air force in the first batch of Empire Ai Training Scheme

but I discovered that was going to be a ten month course in Sydney and thereafter I’d be used as a training officer, that didn’t suit me because I thought the war like everyone else would be a glorious adventure and after six months I turned around and went to Victoria Barracks, joined the army, I was posted to the 2/1st Machine Gun Battalion. I was there for three years and then I went to a

commando unit for about a year.

We went overseas, went on the first voyage of the Queen Mary, went up to Colombo, this is before we left Sydney in May 1940 and Italy hadn’t declared the war, they didn’t want the Mary blown up going through the Suez Canal so they diverted

us right angles around South Africa up into Scotland where the Queen Mary of course was built, thence down into southern England. We had 4,700 troops onboard, it was the maiden voyage as a troop ship of the Queen Mary and altogether an exciting experience. We stopped a week in Cape Town on the way and a couple

of days for water offshore in Freetown and up into Scotland where we were greeted by Sir Anthony Eden and the Mayor of Glasgow and thence down to southern England. We stayed on the Salisbury Plain at a placed called Tidworth and it amused me and others that we were called the foremost troops of the British

Empire when we had scarcely fired a nasty shot, some were still in civilian clothes, they couldn’t be fitted out in Australia in World War One uniforms, got on the ship without them. So we did our training in England, we were there in south of England for four months, winter come upon us and we

had a month in the east coast of England and permanent army barracks at Colchester. From Colchester we moved up to Glasgow again and got on the Otranto a troop ship, absolutely laden, had eight thousand people onboard and there was a slight mutiny, some troops they were packed down below and conditions weren’t the best and they took a thousand off

and we sailed up towards Iceland because the German wolf packs [submarines] were around at that time and come down to Freetown again for water, then we come in to Durban and we were very short of fresh water by then and from Durban up to the Suez Canal disembarked at Canto, and went up into the desert in Egypt,

place called Ikingi Mariut, we were there for three months, nearly three months we embarked for Greece.

No, we had no fighting in the western desert, the 16th Brigade had done an excellent job at Bardia and Tobruk

and we weren’t engaged whatsoever, it was very dusty, I remember really bad sand storms but we embarked for Greece and moved northwards. I think our unit was as far north as any AIF unit, Servio Pass and we

came back to Greece when we were beaten, oh defeated, and I got off on the southern most port of Greece, Kalamata and we got on a ship that was eventually sank as we got off, hit by a torpedo

and I got off on a navy ship the Hereward, HMS Hereward which took us to Crete, we were in Crete, well the unit was split up there, the machine guns were left for the battalion, were given to two companies and they stayed and we embarked again from

Crete three or four weeks later, I don’t know what, and landed in Port Said and from Port Said we trained up to Palestine, we went into prepared barracks there in Palestine for six months training, we’d been re-equipped, and from

Palestine we went up to Syria. We were later than the Syrian campaign but we went into Beirut and Damascus which had been freed and went up to a place called Zabud it was called “The valley of the winds” and we struck the heaviest snowstorm in

that part of the world for eighty years.

It was on Christmas Day actually, a big storm ,it blew the roof of our hut but it didn’t matter to anyone because we had been given a rum ration and plenty to eat and people woke up on this morning all this, been literally dug out of the snow, quite happy

in their sleeping bag and that and we were told we’d be moving back down into Palestine which we were in I think, February in 1941, perhaps rest there for awhile before moved down to…. told we’d be returning to, leaving the Middle East and we went down to Kantara

then where we to Suez, actually to Suez where we embarked on the USS West Point, it was beautiful ship it was the SS America and later I found out it was one of the Chandos lines. We were, I think we were bound for

India or at least Burma when the things got bad over there so we went at right angles and shot through by ourselves without any convoys, any destroyers and come up into Perth and Perth to Adelaide. We were billeted in private homes for three weeks

and then went on leave to our respective states. We re-assembled at Ingleburn after our leave and from there we moved up into Queensland to a camp which we made ourselves at Peachester which is up in the hills just up from Beerwah, north of Brisbane, which is now the Sunshine Coast.

We did amphibious training. We knew that the war was over for us in the Middle East and that we’d be concentrated in the South Pacific and unit by unit or company by company we went up into New Guinea.

I started as a private and then a lance corporal

I was a lance sergeant, back to a private, I was AWL [Absent Without Leave] in London and then I left the machine gun battalion before they went up to New Guinea, I left in March 1943 and joined a commando training battalion at Queensland in Canungra. I did the first

course which was conducted there and from there I was sent to an officers’ training school at Woodside in South Australia I was commissioned from there and come back to Canungra as an instructor of jungle warfare.

I didn’t fancy instructing and I asked to be posted, I waited for a posting to a unit which was the 2/6th Independent or the 2/6th Commando Squadron, we went up to Ramu Valley and did

patrols from there, that is the hardest work I think I did in the army. You were allocated a section of about fourteen to sixteen men and each patrol that went out, we were right up in the mountainous features called five hundred, and five eight hundred, that was the feet above sea level and we did our patrols mainly from there. The officer had to go out on each patrol

so whereas the boys had a bit of a rest in between two three four day patrols and officer had to be on the move all the time, it was just a plain hard slog and I think we had a hundred percent malaria or typhus or dengue, I think most everyone was struck down and we came out to Lae and

from there we were fattened up, I remember they gave us four meals a day because there was an election on in Australia and we were coming back to Australia, didn’t want us looking too poorly and everyone lost weight of course, we come back on I think it was the[HMAS] Kanimbla or the [HMAS] Katoomba and come back to Aussie in May 1944.

I’ll never forget it, it was a beautiful morning the sun was sparkling on the water and we come through the Heads and Sydney never looked lovelier and from there we were given some leave and reassemble up on the Atherton Tablelands we didn’t do much there, we

reassembled and formed into a regiment of 3 Commando Squadron and I was told I would be going down to Canungra to be an instructor on jungle warfare with three others of our unit. I bitterly resented this but I had no choice. We went down to Canungra and was given a company to

train. On the noticeboard one day for about two months I think might have been a bit less and I had a bout of malaria beforehand took a bit of time out, there was a notice on the board, “Wanted. An officer for volunteer unit for short duration off the New Guinea coast.” and I applied for this,

and should have experience in wireless and/or radar. I was interviewed for this, they asked me what experience I had had and had none in either, I still got selected however, I went up to replace an officer who had developed blackwater fever, wasn’t allowed in the tropics and that unit was called Field Unit 12 AMF [Australian Military Forces]

or Section 22 GHQ [General Headquarters] because we’d been seconded or taken under wing of [General] MacArthur’s headquarters, we were a counter-radar unit which meant we sought out radar and located them and this work we did, we moved up to New Guinea.

Oh yes quite a lot. Sent it to headquarters cross beamed it, go to an island, went from New Guinea up to the Philippines and we landed in, bloody hell what was the first island? No, Mindoro was the second, can’t remember now.

Our job, we were the first troops, I was the first man ashore on Mindoro with some Americans. I had an American with me and my job was to set up camp for the rest of our unit which comprised as I said one other officer, captain, and about thirteen, fourteen other

ranks which had been trained in radar counter measures. We went over to a small island off the coast of Mindoro called Elin [?] which went up to 760 feet which the highest point on the island and set up our detection things and picked up several Jap radar and there was a big battle going on

at the time. I remember being up in the fork of a tree and we had the Japanese battle fleet on one side, could see the belching of their guns as the shells went off went over our heads with a big “Whish” and landing on the island of Mindoro. Mindoro was particularly a target because it was the first island; Lati was the first island,

it was the closest island to Japan or to the Philippines from where aircraft could land so that they bitterly fought out, tried to stop the Americans from setting air fields in Mindoro because that meant that aircraft could operating off that bombing

distance of Manila. The first seven ships that tried to bring aviation gasoline to Mindoro were sunk by the Japs, the eighth one got in, by this time we were moving from different islands and we moved up to another island, Marinduque

and with our detection equipment we were able to locate where Japanese radar were operating from. That was our main base there, we came back to Mindoro and part of our group went down to an island called Tawi-Tawi

This was January, February ’45. They went down to Tawi-Tawi and they met some opposition there but they went down by Catalina flying boat, I went down once and dropped them some supplies, in the meantime

Borneo came up and I was called up from the island of Mindoro up to Manila where I had been while the Japs were retreating, they were building, they’d set time bombs in their building and the Americas were creeping around on the streets and next thing you would hear a big bomb and a big concrete building was there. I remember one incident there, I was following a group

of Americans along this street, all of them with their guns each side and a group of Americans, SeaBees [US Navy Engineers] drilling with jackhammers a big concrete plinth on the thing and I said “What are they?” “They know what they are doing, they are the distributors for black and white whisky.” and that was the warehouse and just before Manila fell

they buried all their stocks underneath this big plinth outside the cinema and underneath that plinth and for weeks and weeks afterwards there was black and white whisky was available equivalent ten pounds a bottle, yes they got the lot but the war was going on and they were just busy with their jackhammers on concrete to get at the whisky. I was called up from Manila on an occasion

said just frankly, “How would you like to join your Aussie boys again?” And I said “Good, what’s on?” And he said, “They’re going into Borneo, a place called Balikpapan.” this is an Australian squadron leader that was on MacArthur’s staff, a liaison officer and I said, “When’s this happening?” “Oh we got it scheduled for the

so and so of August.” and that. I said “What do you want me to do?” and he said, “Well, once a week the Americans from Lati have been sending over Liberators on biscuit bombing [supply drops] every Thursday morning and every Thursday morning they’re losing a plane, they must have a very good radar down there, we want you to go down there and get it and bring it back so we can see

what it is, it sure is accurate it though because we are losing a Liberator every Thursday.” and I thought “You silly bloody fools.” and I said, “All right, how do I get down there?” “We’ll send you down in a special plane, take two of your men and give you authority to be one of the first off on the beach.” And….

At Balikpapan. “Race there before it;s destroyed, before they start blowing it up.” so I went down on a ship, went down to Morati, flew into Morati from the Philippines, they gave me a jeep and a trailer and I was one of first ashore at Balikpapan and I had it by this time or

as soon as I joined, a letter which I think I have a copy of it there, which gave me first priority in air, sea or land transport so I just had to flash this and I could get what I wanted and as I said I had an aeroplane waiting for me to take back what I could get from Balikpapan.

I had a map reference where this radar, this super radar was and made my way there, didn’t take long, to a place which was later called Signal Hill and located this radar that’d been badly smashed up by our people because we’d stood off Balikpapan I say for thirty six to forty eight hours, just

pummelling it and pummelling it, they were sending it portside so everything was really smashed up. I got up to this radar, rescued what I could of it, quite a few spares, listed what I got, got it crated up, took it back to their headquarters, it was set up, they picked it up immediately and flew it back to

Manila with quite a lot of spares for it. I stayed on and did a patrol over to an island offshore, I wanted to do a naval support thing, to take an island with grandiose and whatever it was called, formed a little, I wrote this [UNCLEAR] up force and anyhow went over to this small island, we were the first

Allies that been there for three years and they welcomed us, but the Japs had a nasty habit of getting up coconut trees and tying themselves there and shooting down at you, I have a photo there which I will show you later of me looking anxiously up the coconut tops to see if there were any Japs up there.

I got back, I think I did another patrol for 7th Divvy [Division] in charge of Balikpapan and they turned down my offer to go over this island and you know free it. 7 Divvy banned, eventually I got back to Mindoro which was my base and from there

I went up to MacArthur’s headquarters in Manila.

No. I saw him several times. I thought he was a great, great man but I said to my squadron leader, Arnold, his name was, “Did you get that stuff I sent up?” “Yes, yes.”

I said, “Arrive in good condition?” “Yes, yes great condition.” I said, “What did you learn from it? Was it super?” He looked a bit shamefaced he said, “Matter of fact it was one that the Japs took from us when we left Corrigedor.” I said, “You bugger!” but the story when I was on this little island to revert back to when I firstly went up

to the Philippines, on this small little island Elin, and I was sending our reports back in a watertight bag, couldn’t get right into the island of Elin, it was a coral reef around it so you had to strip off into underpants and canvas boots and wade over this very sharp coral with your stuff on your head

and wade to shore. PT [Patrol Torpedo] boats were supplying us and I was taking some reports back to the island, to Mindoro from the island of Elin which was about 3 miles away and in the middle of this was a big dog fight and I’d say in three minutes there were eight Zeroes shot down and two Lightnings and the

Japanese were supposed to go down off their plane and from one of the planes that’d been shot down I saw this, I was on a little LCP, Landing Craft Personnel which had a ramp down and I was dressed in a pair of khaki American underpants and boots and a Owen gun strapped across my chest and I said, “Gee look at that, there’s a bloke coming out.” I didn’t think they

had any and the bloke, a chap had bailed out of a Japanese plane and was coming down waving and I remember the Lightning making passes at him and shot him a couple of times, once across the neck and once across the arm, he flowed down. I said to the coxswain of this boat, “Hey steer over I’m going to grab this bloke.” Cos’ it would have been the first Japanese

POW [Prisoner of War] in that part of the world and I thought, “What the hell is he coming down in a parachute for?” – they’re not supposed to carry parachutes. Turned out he was an observer, an officer observer to see, there were so many reports of Japanese that had spirited parachutes with them that he wanted to see what was going on because they

weren’t supposed to do that, he was an observer and his plane was going to observe and hopefully get back to Japan

He carried a parachute. It was the first ones the Americans had seen too, anyhow went down and I said “Go over as far close to him, I’m going to get this bloke.” as he was about 55 feet away

he pulled his pistol out and I was astride of this landing ramp on this LCP, Landing Craft Personnel stride like this and looking at him, wanting to get to him, he pulled out a pistol and had a pot shot at me and hit the back of this landing ramp and I thought, “You bastard.” And, “I will get you now.” and he had another pot shot at me

but it didn’t go off, it jammed in his…. came down to sea and I dived over and I think he tried to drown himself, he had burns on the neck, solid man and I pulled him up, I went down about 8 feet, 6 to 8 feet and I thought going down this water, these blokes play doggo [pretend to be dead], I wonder if he is playing doggo with…..

just a thought went through, anyhow I went down and grabbed him with his parachute and pulled him to the surface, he looked lifeless and solid, very solid man and by this time the LCP had drawn alongside, quite excited the Americans, and they said and they pulled ropes down and they said, “Attach him,

attach these ropes will you, we want to pull him up.” and he had a map case on and I attached them and they pulled him up they just left me and I said, “Hey what about me?” because I couldn’t clamber back on the thing, the sides were too…. anyhow they threw something at me and I got back on this thing and the Jap’s body was laid out and I said, “I will try and resuscitate him.”

and I said. “Give me a knife.” and I cut the shirt off his back and started to resuscitate him because I learnt in Queenscliff Surf Lifesaving Club and he’s very greasy body, very solid chest on him and after about three minutes I heard a gurgle and water started coming out of his mouth and I though, “By jeez he’s alive.” and I worked a bit further

on him and he come to. By this time a PT boat had come up, an American PT boat and took him away. I continued on my voyage back to this little island Elin and next trip I had across to get me reports in, get some supplies or get some

money for paying our boys to set up camp, probably had about twenty-five boys, Filipinos, we were paying them so went over I think to get some money and take back some reports. “By the way how is that Jap I brought in?” He said, “Oh he spilt his guts you know, he told us everything.” And I said

“Did he, he got well all right?” He said, “Yes we took him to a hospital and nursed him around.” he said. “He told us things that we never knew before.” I said, “Oh good. Where is he now?” And the chap looked a bit sheepish. “Yes he’s not with us anymore.” “Where’s he gone?” He said, “Actually he’s dead.” I said “He’s dead? What happened?” He said, “He stood behind the door,

we put him in a small room, he stood behind a door and tried to smother one our chaps as he tried to open the door to give him something, probably his meal, so the bloke turned around and shot him.” I said, “You bugger, I risked my life for him.” “Oh sorry.” Little incident of Elin

In Elin four weeks, four or five weeks I could tell you by looking at my diary later.

Yes. I kept a diary in the latter part when I was with the 2/1st Machine Gun Battalion. I kept an excellent diary from the time I left Sydney to the time

I got out of Crete which I entrusted to a so-called mate of mine who was going back to Australia from Palestine and I said, “Will you give this to my.”.. “Yeah sure Max, anything else?” and it never did reach home and I caught up with him later and I said “What happened to that diary of mine?” Tip Ryan

his name was and he said, “Oh I sold that for a hundred quid.” and I thought, “Oh yes, so such is the people you think….”

Well a couple of years later, I was out of Australia at the time but my brother-in-law was offered the diary for a ridiculous amount, I think it was six hundred

pounds and he contacted me, I can’t recall when this was. I said, “It’s not worth it, no don’t.” and that was the end of that. Who had it at that time I don’t know but I faithfully kept that from the time I got on the Queen Mary right through

Greece and Crete, on a ship, I mentioned a ship that we left Greece on, the Costa Rica - was sunk and I was in a cabin down below with about eight others and I was up on deck when this happened, we knew the ship was sinking and I raced down to get my pack where this diary was

and there was all blackness and whishhh of the water coming through the ship and the ship was listing and I thought, “I will go down this.” and I was feeling my way and I borrowed some matches and I was striking a match and thought,” I’m sure I’m in cabin about this far.” and I stuck a match in this alley way and there was a ship’s officer, big pistol,

a great big pistol and he said, “Get up on top or I’ll blow your brains out.” he thought I was looting. I said, “Bugger you I’ve got something, I’ve records in my cabin that I’ve got to get.” he said, “What cabin?” I said “It is along here about mid-way.” He followed me down and I got my diary and my pack and got back on deck, I had difficulty getting back on deck this bloke stayed down below and I couldn’t see a glimmer of light and I thought, “Oh crikey

I’m going to go down with this ship.” finally I got through and got out and the Heroine came alongside it to take off those that were left and I was one of the last I think to leave that ship and I threw down my haversack down onto the deck of the Heroine and jumped, they said, “Well jump, jump!”

it looked about 6 feet to jump but the seas were going like that so it was probably in the air 10 or 12 feet. I remember I landed, a big big fall and saw never my pack again, never saw it again.

After the Philippines I was our base was on I said on this island as I said Mindoro and the war come to, half our unit was down in Tawi-Tawi, in Sula Archipelago which is part of the Philippines and I suppose

was left with 6 or 8 of our unit, war was finished, we had a very powerful American wireless set where we used to get our news from and I was sitting in front of this and they announced the bombing of Hiroshima and the bombing of the….

second bombing and then they announced the Japanese surrender, far as I know we were the only Australian Army unit operating in the Philippines, there was some Australian Air Force squadrons operating with the Americans but I think we were the only army unit, Australian Army unit

up in the Philippines or operating in the Philippines at all. When the armistice was declared I immediately asked, probably very rudely of me, could I represent the Australian contingent in the Philippines on the surrender signing on the American warship and this was

denied me but I thought, “Well I’ll have a go.” but nothing come of it so I eventually packed up our stuff, told MacArthur’s headquarters that we were ready to return to Australia, got on a Liberty Ship I got on a Liberty Ship with two others

the rest of the others flew back to Australia. I packed up our stores come back and there was a ship, I think it was sixteen days it took us to get to Lae and we were to report to the Australian forces and put in a transit camp there. I still had my jeep and a trailer, my two blokes and I went and reported in

to regimental sergeant major, I said, “How soon can we get out of this?” He said, “The usual clearing time is four weeks, about four weeks.” I said “I don’t want to spend four weeks here.” He said, “Bad luck, you are. Fraid you have to.” I thought for awhile, I said, “How’d you like a jeep and trailer?” and his eyes lit up, he said,

“You will be out at dawn tomorrow.” so we flew out on a plane from Lae with my two men and we were in Brisbane late that day. Yes from Brisbane, spent a night in Brisbane down to Sydney, this is not for the record, I didn’t report in for a month

no one knew who we were or what we were doing and I went down the south coast of NSW and got on a fishing trawler, I was pretty down in the dumps, I didn’t want the war to finish the way it did, I wasn’t elated or anything like that at the end of the war, I thought we hadn’t really done our job, and come back mucked around Manly,

my home for a while, reported in I think exactly a month after I got back and sent for discharge to Marrickville depot where I was put in charge of the, I had to report in everyday, they wanted you for some duty, you stayed, if you didn’t you went home. This lasted for about a week and then I found I was put in charge

to call out the draft, people who were called up to be discharged, their final day of discharge. There was a whole heap of things and they add to them each day and you put those at the bottom. I went right through the list and found my name so I put that on top and I was out two days later - yes I don’t think that is for the record either.

So I returned, I was discharged on the 6th January 1946. I returned to the bank, the Commercial Banking Company to city branch and they asked me where I would like to go and I picked my old branch. I was there for two weeks when

the opportunity came. I knew that the Americans GHQ [General Headquarters] wanted to question me and finish up their dossier on our activity up on the thing, it was a matter of getting over there but I had been back in the bank, ledger-keeper for two weeks when word come they could get me on a

ship and get me over to the States and finish up. I could give them what information to conclude their dossier on activities. I got on a tanker called the Ohio in Sydney at Pulpit Point one grey February morning, it was raining like hell I remember

and the Ohio was the largest oil tanker in the world at the time - 27 thousand something

’46. February ’46, as I said I went back to the bank for a couple of weeks. I went on this and there’d been a fight onboard between

two lovely queens [homosexuals], cabin boys, and one had stabbed the other no, one had stabbed the crew member and I said went up to the captain and I said, “Look can I go in, I don’t want to be the only passenger on this ship, you know, what would I do all day?” He said, “Are you fit?” And I said, “Yeah.” Norwegian crew and

I signed on as an ordinary seaman, worked my way from Sydney to San Francisco as an ordinary seaman over nineteen days. My biggest thrill was I was on the twelve to midnight to four watch which was the worst watch, ‘cos I was most junior person there. One of the biggest thrills was Golden Gate

Bridge on a lovely starry night, being on the wheel steering with the pilot behind me he called “48” and so on whatever it was and going right on and looking up like that and seeing the beams of the Golden Gate Bridge. We landed at place called Richmond, about 10 miles up San Francisco Bay and I got my discharge as

an ordinary seaman from the Ohio and mucked around the States for four months. I probably went to about eighty…. oh before I left the bank I told the bank what I was doing and they said, “Will you do some work for us?” and I said, “If I can, yes.” and they gave me nineteen letters of introduction to banks there, Asian banks throughout USA and Canada so I was treated like a lord the whole time I was in the States.

I started in San Francisco, went down to the bottom states, New Mexico, Florida, Georgia, caught a train from Miami up to Indianapolis, Indianapolis to Chicago, Chicago to Detroit, Detroit to up to Canada, Bank of Montreal, Toronto down in to New York,

two banks there, Washington down into…. and I was treated like a lord by these, I would give these letters of introduction and so I saw a lot of the States, I still had my travel pass, first class first priority for air, sea or land and I’d just go up to…. it was very hard to move around the States in those days it was weeks and weeks if you wanted to get to say

Florida from Miami say, up there you would wait weeks I would produce my letter I would get a pass straight away, oh it was a most wonderful time in my life, I was thoroughly spoilt. I did that, picked up a couple of hearing agencies in the States, one for “Zenith”, a hearing aid and the other one was for “Otarian.”

Zenith was the cheapest hearing aid available in the States. I thought this something good to get on to because a lot of serviceman had been deafened during the war and I thought, “That’s a good idea.” so I got the cheapest, the Zenith, thirty dollars and the most expensive Otarian was retailing at seventy-nine dollars and I got the agency for Otarian to sell in Australia.

I remember taking out the sales lady for dinner at a club I could scarcely afford Sears in Chicago but impressed their executives. I drew a map of Australia and said, “Now if someone’s in the middle, plonk there, there’s a town there, if someone’s there and their hearing aid goes we won’t bother sending them by our….

we’ll get a plane and drop it down there for them.” and anyhow I got that agency, got about a thousand of these smaller, tiny little batteries I had never seen anything so small to fit into a hearing aid, a hearing aid was about a 6 by 3 [inches] thing in those times and I came back and thought, “Right I’ll go in with somebody

here.” and there’s a man called Tito Tossi in Martin Place, right hand side above the Commonwealth Bank who was a hearing aid specialist and I went into him and said, “I’ve got two hearing aids and I’ve got the agency for one of them and I think I can get the agency for the other if I wanted to and I’ve got a thousand Minimax batteries.” He said, “Gee whiz.” he said, “Like to come in with me?”

I said, “Yes, let me see how I can go on my own firstly.” The tariff on hearing aids coming into Australia was 60% there gee, and I wrote a plaintive letter and said, “What about all the serviceman coming back being deafened with gun fire and round the world?” bring that down and I was writing letters

to [John] McEwen who was the Deputy Prime Minister, also the Minister of Trade and after awhile I got a letter, nice letterhead from him saying, “On consideration will bring that down to forty percent in the case of veterans.” whatever they called veterans, returned serviceman and I wrote again and said, “No, want more than that.” and I was single at the time

mucking round town and I thought, “Why am I bashing my head I don’t want anything out of you know….. I don’t want to be a big shot in the world, why can’t I let somebody look after me?” so I tossed it all up and went to Tossi and sold him my two sets plus the agency and I don’t know, the figure of a thousand pounds

which is a lot, I don’t think it could have been that, but I know I got quite a good…. at the time for selling him the agency and the batteries and the two sets. I went back to the bank, I’m ready for work and went back to my branch. I left Castlereagh Street this was six months after I left it and then I said, “Look after me.”

The only other thing I did shortly after the outbreak of war, I kept thinking of New Guinea and the fine people, we had bearers there that would lay down their lives for you and I thought, “I want to do something for them.” I could be a, you know, go to a village and teach, you know hygiene and a bit of carpentry or set up

things and sanitation and get water for them. I thought, “Oh well I could be a sort of working missionary.” so rang up the Anglican Missionary Society whatever the name was at the time and they arranged an interview with me which I remember was in the Bank of Australasia Chambers in Martin Place and a group of about five clerics

were seated and they sat me down and queried me and I told them what I could improve life for people, didn’t mention religion at all and they said, “Oh well, you would have to go through the Moore Theological College at Sydney University to do a three month course there.” and I said, “I don’t want to preach the word of God so much.” I said, “I just want to be a practical man

and help people.” and they looked at me for awhile and then someone shot a question at me, “How much money have you got?” I was so disgusted I got up and walked out I said “Thank you, goodbye gentleman.” walked back to the bank, this was during my lunch hour at the bank and applied my self to the job of ledger-keeper.

No. I did for two years, about eighteen months just before the war I asked to be placed on leaving staff. I was at Mosman branch, very suitable for Manly where I lived they said, “All right, will put you on relief.” I said, “I want country relieving staff.” so I knocked around the country, probably did 14, 16, 18 branches, I went from Temora to West Wyalong,

to Forbes, to Quandialla, to Bowral, to Mandurama, Gilgandra, Condobolin, oh it was good, wonderful life, you go from wool to wheat to cattle to dairying you knew you could put up with anything, you know, I remember at Quandialla there was no one there to talk to, I played football there

for them but a really good experience, most you are going to be there is two, three, four weeks next place, great experience in life

Life was very pleasant for me in the Commercial Banking Company they were very good to me. I left there went over to the States. come back again, worked for another eighteen months, I made up my mind to go to the Olympic Games. I was with a lady friend from

Sydney Hospital who also wanted to go over to the games, we met at Kosciusko in a skiing holiday and we were at a Manly football dance and one of the people I danced with happened to be a lady by the name of Claire Dennis who’d been over the Olympic games in 1932 and won the breaststroke title, 220 breaststroke and she impressed me

and I said I was thinking of going to the London Games next year, in July 1948 she said, “Oh you’ll love it.” and I went back to my wife to be, she didn’t know that at the time nor did I, and I said, “I’m going over to London for the games.” and she said, “So am I.” so we got married, we met in Kosciusko in August

‘47 and we were married in December ’47, I was still in my bank I said, “I’ve got to save some money for this.” I went into our head office, put me on to the leaving staff, “I want to save some money, here’s my resignation. I want to leave on 25th May.” True to their word they kept me in the country until the 25th May.

I saved some money and I resigned from the bank, went over, saw the Olympic Games and got work as hotel porter in a hotel in Kensington, my wife got the job as a telephonist in the same hotel, save some money, rose to head porter after ten days and the best part of that was that I could choose my white coat, I was given one before

I chose one, which had round holes and long sleeves and we worked there until November, decided to see the continent, went over to Switzerland hoping to get jobs as ski instructors, we were both reasonable skiers, couldn’t get job as skiing instructors, purely for the Swiss, looked after young Winston Churchill once,

he was there with his mother Pamela, lovely lady who had married Randolph Churchill.

His grandson. Winston the second, his father was Randolph, Randolph was the son, but Pamela was in St. Moritz at this hotel, The Charles Badrets [?]

and I’d pick him up every morning and take him skiing, he was a nine year old then, he fractured his kneecaps playing rugger at Gibbs School, Gibbs School was this exclusive place out at Kensington so I used to take him out and bring him back to his mother and she waited for him one day and said, “Hey stop, I want to have a word to you, stop turning his head.” I said, “What do you mean turning his head?.” she said, “Winston came

back yesterday and you told him what a brave boy he was.” we’d come down in snow storm, we had gone up quite a steep slope come down in a crevasse like that and hid and he was about to bawl and I said, “Now don’t you cry, don’t you cry, you’re a brave boy.” and he went home and told his mother, but she was a lovely lady.

After Europe. Followed the snow,

stayed in St. Moritz for six weeks, got a room for two quid a week, heated room, did all the slopes, used to do the Olympic run everyday and followed the snow up to Norway and I kidded myself I could go down part of this great big ski, run the Hummel column,

and to my relief there wasn’t enough snow to even go half way up it. I’d met in the meantime in London a [UNCLEAR] man and he said to me, “You don’t talk like these goddamn limeys [Englishmen].” this is when I was a porter at the hotel. “I’m not a limey Sir, I’m Australian.” “Oh.” I said, “What are you

doing over here?” He said, “I’ve got this goddamn sun spot on my face and they’ve sent me from a hell hole called Kuwait to get it fixed.” and I said, “What is this place Kuwait?” and he said, “It’s the arsehole of the world.” and he said I’m out there and I found out later he was an Oklahoman, he’d left school at eight years of age and followed his

pappy, mule train, dragging pipe around Oklahoma and his name was Denning, Albert Denning, and so I wrote down, he said, “They can’t get people to go out, there we draft people.” by Gulf I learnt later and I wrote down this Kuwait oil company, anyhow from Scandinavia I don’t know which country, I think it was Norway, I wrote a letter to

the Kuwait oil company and addressed it the letter Q and the figure 8 behind Cumberland Hotel, West End London and it got there and they wrote me a courteous, a very courteous note that, “When you arrive back in UK please contact us and we will discuss your position further.” I think we got back to London two to three weeks later.

I looked them up fairly promptly, we were getting short of funds. I had an interview with them and they asked would I do accounts, I said, “I don’t want to do accounts.” They asked me my background I said, “I don’t want to do accounts.” they said, “Well the only job we’ve got is the lowest paid employee… we’ve got is an oil storage oil export

and storage operator, go down and see captain so and so.” I went down and saw this captain so and so, “What sea experience have you?” “Practically none.” and they offered me a job as a clerk I said, “ I don’t want that.” “No sea experience?” I said, “Yes, I have actually I worked as an ordinary seaman on the Ohio once

between Australia and the USA.” he said, “The Ohio? That’s the most famous tanker.” that was the biggest tanker in the world, biggest, most famous tanker afloat, he said, “Don’t you know the skipper got the George Cross for getting into Malta?” it was one of three ships that left the UK bringing much needed supplies into Malta and that was one of three, of forty one or forty three ships that got through, the

skipper got the George Cross, that was bringing all the planes had been put underground there because they had no fuel at the time he said, “I will take a risk on you laddie.” I said, “That’s very good of you Sir, I won’t let you down.” so I went upstairs, “Well how did you get on?” “He’s going to take a risk on me, gave me sixty pounds kit allowance.” I said I would like a couple of weeks off; I want to go and look around Ireland.

Go over to Ireland, came back to England, didn’t spend any, I bought a tin trunk for four pounds and had fifty-six pounds left for kit allowance, he took me down to Southhampton on a flying boat, four day journey out to Kuwait via Sicily, Alexandria, Basra and I started work in Kuwait in

April 16th 1949.

I finished up spending nearly twenty-one years and liked it

My father was a schoolmaster,

history master and he was at Bathurst High School and he was appointed to Fort Street Boys High School, hence our transfer to the city

Yes he was.

No he did not take part in the war

Yes I had two uncles

in the First War, one was aged 16 when he enlisted but didn’t speak much of it, I vaguely think I remember him in uniform. I might be kidding myself because I’ve got a portrait of him in uniform, actual often merges into fantasy

Very little, the only first hand experience of Anzac Day was that I’d been to the Trocadero but the young lady that I had taken lived out at Coogee so it was four o’clock in the morning before I got back from Coogee to Martin Place and I had

to go dow,n I think the trams went along Elizabeth Street and I had to get out at Martin Place. A crowd was there, walked down, so I stood on the step of the GPO [General Post Office], someone put a hymn book in my hand and sang hymns for half an hour before I could catch a train, that’s right, a tram from Wynyard and across via the Spit yes that was

1928, ‘27-28 that was my brief brush with Anzac Day.

I was impressed by the singing of the hymns very much so yes.

No not reall,y my

father didn’t drink or smoke, he was the history master as I said, they weren’t paid a great salary so we were careful and I was the youngest of four children so we didn’t, we wanted for nothing but I can’t remember ever being short of anything

He was a good father yes, he was a strict father, he had a

cane in the study and anytime there was a misdemeanour, “Go to the study.” and I was caned but you know I deserved it, never caned.

I’d say once a fortnight.

Oh yes, I was spoilt probably being the youngest in the family, but oh yes, never thought I didn’t deserve it.

Four

I had two brothers and one sister.

My sister was two years older ,my next brother was four years older and my eldest was six years older he was born in 1910, 10, 12, 14 and I was born in 1916

Yes I was close to my family

Yes,

my eldest brother was in the air force, my second brother was a doctor, he was the superintendent of Sydney Hospital and joined up in the 2/5th AGH [Australian General Hospital] and was caught in Greece, he was the last Australian officer I think to leave Greece, he was looking after wounded and injured. Quite ironic how he came to stay in Greece - they evacuated

all the nurses firstly and the rest of hospital they left them a truck, a nice hospital just north of Athens and left them a truck and finished up all their work and got the patients away and they had their bags and they threw them on the back of this truck they’d been left to drive away and they saw a hospital train coming round the bend, the steam hospital

and just looked at each other, pulled their bags off and went back into the hospital, taken POWs [prisoners of war]. He was a POW until the end of the war.

Yes he was in Poland I think, Silesia and then Stalag 8B was his last one, released in I think July 1945.

Not for about six months then my parents got… he wrote to me and he wrote to my parents and they seemed to get…. though I’d say once every couple of months.

Other brother was in the air force, he was in the South Pacific, nothing startling about his career. My sister’s husband was in the air force in Britain, he got a DFC [Distinguished Flying Cross]

he was on bombers.

Yes.

Yes. He did more than his quota, I think they used to pull them off after 31 missions or something and he did his quota

Yes up in Queenscliff, lived opposite

the surf and got my bronze [medal] there in 1934 and was in their different teams the R&R [Reel and Rescue] team, beat Shelley [Beach] in usual events, good little club, small little club then.

I was in the Manly Rugby Union Club, I was in the Manly Athletic Club, I was in the Manly Swimming Club but it was normal for any bloke of my age to be in those clubs,

part of Manly, so you were the surf club, the swimming club and the athletics club, football club, rugby club.

No not outstanding, just run of the mill, used to compete in the inter club athletics, inter club surf carnivals, football, never got into first grade, I was always reserve grade, kept in reserves.

No just easy, went from one to the other, summer to winter.

Oh yes, there were people around the surf club, we used to have a dance practically every Saturday night at the surf club, meet girls yeah, naturally.

Oh normal thing that a young bloke would do, take them out.

Main thing was to walk in your blazer down to the band. On a Sunday night at Manly they held bands down there and used to play there every Sunday night, walk your lady friend down there and walk back, nothing ... usual thing

Yes.

I was in the Prince Edward

Theatre with a companion, lady companion and across the screen they flashed, “Australia is now at war.” I went out and caught the Manly ferry and gee fancy that, I applied for the air force more or less straight away thinking, “It’ll be good, I’ll be a pilot.” and didn’t think I would ever be in the army. I was with the bank on the leaving

staff, I was Mandurama and then Gilgandra I used to write to the air force, “Hey what about my application?” and I was at Condobolin when I heard the whisper of the first contingent of the army were leaving that was 10th of January. I sent a telegram, “Am fit, well, may I be a late minute replacement please?” thinking I’d get on this, I didn’t

but I thought, “Oh well, wait for the air force.” and it came up that was going to be a long journey and I thought the war would be over so I went back to the army.

No. No. Quite a good film, quite a good film that’s when they had the organ there, Prince Edward’s, about the last theatre

that had an organ that would come spiralling up but no I don’t.

You didn’t when you in are that stage of life, you take things as they come, you don’t sort of think deeply over anything like that what comes comes but

you didn’t go into or whether it was right or that, you wanted to be in it, it’s an exciting sort of thing to do, you didn’t think what hardship would eventually lead into other people might be killed, you didn’t think of those things.

Yes it was, very much so.

Yes. It certainly was and I joined the Empire Air Training Scheme as I said, yes it certainly was, I don’t think there was any big noble thoughts of going to do this for the Empire, just that we were part of the Empire. It’s like your brother, if your brother gets into trouble you go and help him, but I don’t think…. you didn’t think, “Oh, I’ve got to go and do this for the

old country.” or anything like that. You just wanted to be in it. Excitement.

That was the main training unit for the 6th Divvy, for all troops actually, and I was only there for six weeks before we sailed.

I remember only firing a rifle once at Liverpool, you know live bullets, drill mostly drill. Getting fitted for clothes, I think leave was fairly liberal, you could go away at least once a week.

It might don’t know, route marches, nothing very out of the ordinary.

No, coming from a surf club and being interested in sport you were pretty fit and used to mixing with other people so when you are put in a hut with another thirty odd people

it was just another mate, could’ve been in the surf club or the football club, no it was a good transition for the other people that should’ve all signed up

No. Not really. I was a bit

horrified when a kid that had pinched someone else’s forage cap was locked in a hut and they sent in a big bully to belt him up, that surprised me a bit.

Well the company commander, “You go in and teach him a lesson.” and the chap they sent in was an ex-boxer, a big heavyweight boxer, this little kid he wasn’t worth much ,little kid he

deserted later on ,he really hit him up and that surprised me a little bit.

No no. Rifles were the main things, whether we had machine guns or we had them probably still packed in grease. At that time there wasn’t any great

amount of training with machine guns. At that time rifles Lee Enfield rifles which are from the First World War, the boots we wore were World War I, sent 1917, hardest thing was getting the grease out of them, they greased them for the keeping.

Yeah, in some storeroom, probably they used them for reserves,

but they were certainly full of grease. No, just the normal training

No. When I was in the country in the bank, used to go out shooting, trying to shoot rabbits with a shotgun

and that was probably the first, oh yes that would be the first time I’d fired a weapon yes, and that was the only occasion of four times I think and my duties in the bank were to go out to a little agency, to a place called Neville and I’d take the bank revolver and put up a target and put a couple of shots, go off there and come back and sign the

register, “Two shots practised.”

Every branch has a revolver which a teller brings out his cash and the revolver is usually in the same tray and put it under the counter. Every single branch has a revolver.

Yes. It certainly did. Yes, carried it out with your cash and put it underneath,

each teller box had his own revolver

Yes, looked up in the archives, so and so was held up and that, but I don’t know what you’d do if someone come into the bank, if someone came in and put a shotgun in your face you certainly wouldn’t reach down. I suppose the deterrent was there

to let people know you had a revolver, not that you had any training in shooting it.

Well as I say, at Mandurama it was the first time shoot out at the bush, put up a target on a tree and have a pot at it, other than that, never.

No they gave you a rifle, clothing, your rifle, your bayonet, your webbing, your pouches, your pack and your clothes and you went there, laid that next to your palliasse and sorted things out and got your badges and got those, put them on your shoulders and your badge on your hat, no it was nothing dramatic

you just did what as you were told but you knew you were in the army, but you didn’t think, you don’t think, you do as you’re told, you think, “Well they know best, they know what they’re doing.”

Yes, you did bayonet training on chaff bags stuffed with straw, did a lot more when I was in

training for the commando unit, a lot of bayonet training, in the early days they used to, which was wrong, they would throw bayonets at trees, and unofficially you weren’t supposed to but you made sure your bayonet was kept sharp which is against the Geneva Convention, you don’t sharpen bayonets.

Probably were, it was mentioned in lectures, if it was a wet day you’d have a lectures it might, if we did it went over my head, took things as they come

When we arrived down at Darling Harbour and saw it sitting there

Well there were

seven ships in that convoy two of which had come from New Zealand, Andes and one other one, and we knew we’d be on the Aquitania or the Mauritania or the Empress of Britain the Empress of Canada or Queen Mary on one of those and fortunately it was the Queen Mary on its maiden troop ship voyage

No. but we presumed,

the first batch that left Australia had gone to the Middle East, we assumed that we’d follow, we certainly never thought of England but the Middle East like World War I, they went to Egypt where their training camps were, we thought we’d do the same

No not really. Not really, you were interested in the

sporting things, sports meeting on board and I happened to be in the winning team of that and had boxing onboard. No didn’t think much of war, didn’t even think of who you’d be fighting strangely enough.

Food. Food, Two-up and sport yes and what you’d do

on the next parade you know, we were all cooped up and companies couldn’t take up a large section of deck so they sub-divided us into different groups and you met there and had a roll call at least once a day, probably twice a day, some duties were allocated then you know, cleaning this or chef, not chef but kitchen helpers

Excellent, we were in a cabin, we were in B106 I still remember it, I think bunks had been built in it and I supposed a dozen people in the two or three two-decker bunks, no, they were good conditions. I will show you later some menus from the officers’ mess which I got my hands on,

but they lived well, we lived adequately.

Yes. Plain, enough of it, no complaints you know, it was wartime, one of my fond memories is just before we

had a sports meeting on a deck between the different units and we won our heat in something and in between the heat and the final and they arranged for to go down and get a massage from the masseur and I went down to the gymnasium and I was lying down there and the chap was working. He said, “You’re a lucky bugger you know.” and I said, “Why?” he said,

“Do you know the last person I massaged on the table you’re now lying on?” and I said, “No, who?” and he said, “Marlene Dietrich.” Jesus, that’s good little thing you remember, no, conditions were very good.

No they were navy, Royal Navy Reserve the ship’s staff, plus

from the army they had a ship’s army staff to help, there was an adjutant on board and a quartermaster and yes, so they supplemented it, the ship was run by the ships’ officers and the crew and the little thing that people remember on the Mary, we had a mutiny on it because

the Queen Mary was at Liverpool on the 3rd or 4th of September, 3rd September ’39 when war was declared and they thought what a target you know for Germany if they came over and bombed the Queen Mary, so they grabbed whatever crew they could get from Liverpool where a great number of Irishman are, it is a great mercantile port, grabbed what crew they could get and shot off at full speed by itself to New York where it laid in

New York harbour and we fitted it as a troop ship, that’s when it came out to Australia and picked us up, but on our trip the Irish crew mutinied, sixty nine of them mutinied and refused to do anything to work, they had royal marines on board and no, they did not have royal marines, these were rounded up and put into one of the

lounges, cornered them off and they were spoken to by the ship’s officers and finished, nineteen of the sixty-nine, I think it was nineteen, refused to do anything, so when we landed at Cape Town just before then we made a call at Simonstown which is a naval depot and a jail and they brought

these nineteen people, the MPs [Military Police] from onshore got these nineteen people and with rifle butts they pushed them down that gangway and the Irishmen,little swanky chaps, but soon knocked that out of them ,that was the last we saw of them, they tried to burn the ship down.

Course you were. The Irish did not want the British to go to war.

It’s as simple as that. We were all for…. I believe they got up to twelve years jail.

Yes, we had a week in Cape Town, week in Cape Town going about, week similar time in Durban but I wasn’t onshore at

that time ,I think we were given leave every second day in Cape Town. I befriended a family, took me to their home and we remained friends for thirty years after that.

Well we were eating in a restaurant, a Tudor restaurant in the main street and sitting next to a chap who said, “Why don’t you come home with us?” went home

up in the hills with his wife and two kiddies, that started a very nice friendship went back again the next day and possibly the next and we kept up a correspondence right throughout the war until I’d say 1970, might have been ’65, ’70. Yeah nice people.

No none, none and there’s bit of difficulty in recruiting there

because a big German population, they weren’t over keen in volunteering to fight for the British Empire, but no we saw, I don’t think we saw any troops, I can’t remember seeing a South African troop.

No, we went up to

Trincomalee which is a naval port and the Queen Mary was too big to go there, that’s when we suddenly, I don’t think we even drew into Trincomalee, were twenty-four hours off, I have a little note on that, due at Trincomalee tomorrow blah blah , you’re not allowed, won’t be having any

shore leave, I think it was just a re-fuel and then we got news that they wouldn’t take the risk of taking the Mary through the Suez Canal because Italy had not declared war at that time so we went around the…. that’s when we came to Cape Town.

No, no one else, all seven of us went.

Yes.

The warships were especially after we left Africa , and the [HMS] Hood was one our escorting ships it was great to see that, but oh no changed and zigzagged pattern, no we had very good escorts right into Scotland.

Came up, it was a lovely morning, beautiful weather, beautiful weather

whole time we were in England, one of the best years they had for months, but we came along and no one knew where the Mary was, they knew it left Liverpool and had gone somewhere and to see their own ship that was built in their own dockyards come back up the Clyde and land back where it started from and as I said, Sir Anthony Eden

came and addressed us and the Mayor of Glasgow came and addressed us and he said, “See yonder those bonnie hills, they’re the bonnie hills of Scotland and a lot of bonnie belles waiting for you to get off this ship so that you can meet them.” Yes, and all the boys cheer “You beauty!” yes lovely, we got off and went by train down to

the bottom of England, the Salisbury Plain ,we had a chickenpox outbreak just before we got off the ship and we had quite a few people that were taken to a hospital from the ship instead of coming down with us and it happened to be quite a few good sportsman these people that got chicken pox and we didn’t see them

for about three months, they were recruited to play in the Duke of Apple or Duke of someone’s cricket team and north of England and playing one-day cricket matches, going back to the abbey and yes, two of my mates were there and I thought, “Gee, it took a long time to get back from your chicken pox.”

Before, well before the Battle of Britain, the week after Dunkirk fell and we were taken down to Salisbury Plain and put in tents there and the people putting up the tents for us I think they were from the Cheshire Regiment and I think eighteen of their whole battalion

had got out of Dunkirk, the rest of them were over there.

Tense, you kept in the army group, we got leave, I got leave, I was in London about four days after we landed. Tense but determined, very determined.

There’s a hotel at Tidworth which was the nearest town to our camp, that was about a mile and half across the field and the first night or second night I went down I said, “Let’s go down and have a beer at the pub.” “The Angel.” We went down and there were hundreds milling around, all Aussies there with the same idea.

I said, “Look I heard, I’ve been told there’s another pub up the road, a mile and a half up the London Road called Lagershaw, the Prince of Wales, Lagershaw.” I said, “let’s hitch and go along there.” so we were on the main road and we could hear a bus coming, turned around, hitch, and they pulled up about fifty yards ahead and back towards us and it was a blue bus,

the Devon line and I said, “Can you drop us? Thank you for stopping, can you drop us off at Lagershaw, the Prince of Wales Hotel?” he said, “No laddie this is non-stop London.” and I looked at the bloke I was with, Claude McNamee and I said, “You’re on Claude, how much money have you got?” I think we had about thirteen shillings between the two of us and I said, “Take us there.” and so we landed down out at Hammersmith

for some reason, didn’t go into London, hitched into London, of course it was nine o’clock at night and we landed right up at the top of Oxford Street and we walked down Oxford Street to Piccadilly Circus and then we walked down further down Charleston Avenue to Trafalgar Square and I thought

gee, and we were both in giggle suits, your work suit not your uniform and had our gas mask, you couldn’t move anywhere without your respirator. We walked and I said, “Let’s find a pub and have a drink.” we walked along Northumberland Avenue which is a branch off Trafalgar Square, walked about seventy yards, saw a nice pub there and made our way there and they couldn’t have been,

they were lovely people, we made that our headquarters all the time we were in London, we had an air raid the first night and were just about to go as the pub shut down and they said quite joking, laughingly, “Ha ha. You can’t leave us now, you can’t go out in the alarm, we’ll go down the circus.” so they picked up the big ham which was under the cover on the table, bread rolls and spirits and beer and you went down the steps into the cellar and stayed there

until five o’clock in the morning when the all clear went, got in a bit of trouble getting back late but we were 87 miles from London.

People covered for us and they weren’t that strict, they checked who was there, I don’t think they checked who wasn’t there, we got in about eight o’clock ,might have been half past eight,

roll call’s at 6 o’clock, no it was a wonderful experience. I’d say we were the first people in London that I know of.

Wonderful, lovely people, wonderful spirit, you knew they weren’t going to get beaten, knew they wouldn’t be beat.

We had two camps in England, it was getting a bit cold for tents and we went over to a permanent establishment on the east coast, Colchester, and we were in barracks there and they were heated with I think a coal stove, or wood stove

so it was quite good and we had beds in camp in Salisbury Plain, we had palliasses but we had iron beds and it was all quite civilised, very good.

Marching mostly, didn’t do any

much training didn’t do much training, can’t remember, not much.

No. We knew that the 6th Divvy were in the Middle East so we assumed we’d be joining them

but no, they would never tell you that because in pubs every where, “Loose lips cost lives.” “Careless talk costs lives.” and you just didn’t discuss how many or even what unit you were with. but any smart person could tell from your colour patches. but oh no. when we came out we had no idea but we expected it to come

back around the Cape, we knew we couldn’t go through the Med [Mediterranean] and we went right up around Iceland and that’s why we ran out of water

Yes, they used to publish on the Queen Mary going over, there was a daily newssheet put out. In England

we didn’t have access to newspapers, there must have been newssheets coming out, you could buy a paper in London when you went on leave if you happened to go on leave, no, just filtered through. They’d warn you that a movement was imminent and

say, “Write letters home.” things or like that

Yes yes, wanted to see as much as you could, they gave us seven days, leave each of us got seven days leave in the UK, on the free rail, you go anywhere you liked. I went right up to Scotland, Inverness and back again,

beautiful, lovely.

Oh yes I had a fight with a bloke, I started with a good mate of mine and we left in Edinburgh, no it was good, people couldn’t have been nicer.

Firstly we had sausages and mash at Kantara where we disembarked and we all went by train

through a place called Zagazig, then by truck to a camp in the desert called Ikingi Mariut and we put up tents there, there was a blinding sand storm you used to get, later on I saw some good sand storms in the Middle East but this was fine dust, you could wrap your rifle

up fifteen times and it would still cover it full of sand, bad sand storm. You had one case summoned to the mess at half past twelve and we were inside a big tent as big as this room and the little, cooking tent was five yards away and a

chap called George Smith, he was the orderly who served the meals, one of the orderlies who served the meals, he had a dixie full of boiled spuds and he was bringing it from the tent five yards away to the table set up, we were all waiting with our dixies and he had to cross this thing, a stand storm was so much he lost his way and five o’clock that night we found him

still wandering around with a dixie full of cold spuds, yes he was an Englishman, George Smith, nice chap yes, but that’s how…. you could not go five yards.

Oh well they seemed to blow most of the time. We got leave to go into Alexandria a couple of times, they send us in three

ton trucks and they had a rest camp, the Australians had a rest camp where you had a shower, change your shirt and beer for ten pence ha’penny, had sawn off bottles, large bottles of beer, they sawed them off just where the neck turned, they were called Lady Blameys for some reason or other, they were ten pence ha’penny, it was good.

And they had brothels organised by the Australian army, inspected by Australian medical staff and anyone that got VD [Venereal Disease] there it was their own fault for going outside those places.

Well they set them up and they inspected them, the Australian Army medical people, there was a special hospital put away for the VD patients, number 1AS8 in the special hospital, but that was in Gaza but oh no.

Always given protection and

you had a little pocket inside your jacket to keep your contraceptive and if you were going on leave, all you had to do was go up to the medical officer and say, “Can I have three more or four more?” put in your little pocket sewn inside your jacket.

Yes. Mostly African.

When I say African, Egyptian, dark Egyptians, they were the ones that we’d see, they’d have special officers’ places as well.

Quality I suppose and in price, our was a fixed five shillings, five bob, cos I had a mate there who knew someone he would ask for,

Bella or whatever her name was, cos you’d always pipe forward, so, “All I’ve got is three shillings.”

Yes he mainly did. He was an auctioneer out at Cobar and he had the gift of the gab.

Cafés,

yes Alexandria was a very, very good place, very nice place sometimes, and I formed up an association with a group of ladies that had a hat shop and she was hat maker to the Queen and every now and again she’d be called down to Cairo and she stayed on King Frederick’s houseboat while she measured up and

fitted out the Queen, for new Queen with a new hat, but we got quite friendly there, nice girl, Rochelle, she thought I was going to marry her, well she hoped and she was a nice girl, she would not walk outside with me in the dark, I had to take my hat off, my gaiters off and my belt off and roll them in something so that the silhouette didn’t recognise I was an Australian

soldier, very nice girl and eventually the driver that took me into Alex [Alexandria] this time I said, “Come in, I’ll introduce you to some girls Norman.” and he was a Jewish boy, taxi driver from Melbourne before the war, went in and he looked at this girl Rochelle and his mouth opened he said, “I’m going to marry you.”

and he did, moved to Melbourne, this is a sad story, I went through Melbourne in 1948 on the Stratheaton bound for the UK and looked him up in Melbourne and she was a sad, sad lady, she had two or three children, two children, and the next I heard of them he was up for murder,

he killed her with a knife and so what happened I don’t know, he was an extremely jealous man, but I feel a little bit guilty in a way that I ever introduced the two of them, but she used to write to me in French, I’d write my schoolboy French back to her

She was from Alexandria,

she was a Greek Egyptian, a lot of Alexandria’s population of eight hundred thousand, two hundred thousand bigwigs, another friend I made there, I knew quite well, kept up an association with him, he was a wine seller, a wine man, Lucas Manalakakos, formerly of Lackie Street

I looked him up when I came back going to the Kuwait oil company, stopped in Alexandria the night and I went down to his cellars and it was the biggest hangover, all he had were big barrels and you’d go along and have a sip and then next one, I still remember it, was the biggest hangover, got on the plane the next day, it was a

flying boat and I just draped over the thing, from 8 am till 4pm I could not lift my head

Red wine, he came from the island of Santorinim his family more or less owned Santorini, they got a lot of their wines from Santorini and into Alex, but it was a couple of friends like that go in,

know who are you going in to see, the comforts one had, this rest house where you could have a shower and I think they provided a good meal for another shilling, or one and threepence or something and a good break, you cleansed yourself

Because a girl walking

out with an Australian soldier was thought of as a prostitute, so we’d go down to the waterfront and sit in the place, it was all blackened out in Alexandria at Zeppelin Café, and have a glass of wine each, she was a good gentle girl.

Well, they were more distinguishable

because of their turned up hat I suppose and there were plenty of British soldiers in Alexandria, they had there own club probably, but they were mostly sailors, they had the Fleet Club. Australians probably had a bad name from the First World War, no you had to walk at night without your hat

and without your belt and with gaiters off so your trousers fell straight down.

As far as I remember at that stage yes, the first shower I had in the army, an army shower, a special shower unit, it was up in Syria, it was cold and we had hot showers.

The snow was very, very deep where we were and you’d trudge across into this bath house put up galvanised hot showers and have a glorious hot shower, but in Egypt I can’t remember having a shower other than when you we went to Alexandria.

No I don’t think so, you

washed in your steel helmet or your basin of some sort, in Palestine they had set bathhouses, very good.

Yes. Certainly were yes. Couldn’t come quickly enough.

After Alexandria we went over to Greece

from Alexandria then Greece to Crete, Crete landed back in Port Said caught a train from Port Said might have crossed to El Kantara again, I know we got a meal there and then train up to Palestine and there we were re-fitted, didn’t have much equipment.

I think I went to a museum, I went down to Cairo, met my brother down there who was with the 2/5th, he came down from Palestine, we met there, I remember him lending me his coat

so as we could eat at an officers’ eating place at the Mena House I think, at the pyramids, because pips on, I wasn’t one of them, lance corporal or corporal at that time, so we ate, it was fairly hot and I remember sweating and I had to do that to show that I was an officer.

Yes I was, that’s why I wanted to see Cairo. Yes my father was an historical person as I said, he was the history master at Fort Street Boys for over thirty years and….

Every week and he kept my letters and my letters are now in the Mitchell Library

I’d like you to see his letters to me because he would write air letters to me and finish up the sides, up the top, down the thing and on the back in very tiny little writing, he had a very nice hand but he used to ask to send him some souvenirs, some labels.

Not sitting down thinking of it, of course you do, you know, you’re fond of your family and you think of them but missing them no, I don’t want to appear callous but you knew, you were practical about it, you were with your mates

and they all missed their families too, they were all in the same boat, nothing you could do about it.

No. Never.

Yes I did yes, certainly thought this is something not to be missed, as I said at the end of the war I heard Japan was flattened. I just felt flat,

I didn’t want it to finish that way, I wanted it to finish up in Tokyo. I still remember to this day the flatness on hearing this.

Excitement, adventure is the word, what’s happening next, where are we going next? I mean you didn’t say, “This is a bloody old truck we’re in .”

or marching here or, “Why are we doing this?” you didn’t question, I didn’t. It’s just life, I’ve been like that all my life.

No. As I said I travelled in the bank all around New South Wales, I think after the war I visited every one of the

branches, 286 branches, I loved going up in the country I liked it, I’d never travelled outside Australia before.

He was the head superintendent of Sydney Hospital, he was a surgeon, just an ordinary medical officer with the 2/5th AGH but he finished up doing

a lot of surgery, he was at foot with the POWs, a lot of them, Russians, when he himself was captured. I remember him writing saying he had done more than 2,000 major operations in six months and that the instruments he’d been given by the Germans were the finest he’d ever seen

and he had ever hoped to use.

Yes. Yes. Only once I saw him in the war and he stayed a couple of days at the Metropol hotel I think ,that was an officers’ only thing too, we were both in Greece together, but we were up north

and he was down 29 miles, Kifissia I think was the place he was at, just 29 [miles] north of Athens Base Hospital

Well. I could because if you play sport in any battalion and I was in the football team, the swimming team, athletic team,

you were pretty well in with your officers, but mine particularly because he came from Manly, he was a fine gentleman, he had been ADC [aide de camp] to Sir Hugh Willoughby, the Governor of South Australia for ten years, permanent officer, he’d been the adjutant of the 1st Machine Gun Battalion which was formed in 1916 in France, Claude Esdaile Prior,

and once in Alexandria after a football match I finished up by myself for some reason and I pushed into a officers’ only nightclub at the Hotel Cecil, big doorman outside and I pushed him aside, I was about two stone heavier then than what I am now and

pushed him aside, bleary eyed, there was a round table of red tabs, all general staff officers in there. Through the haze I could see my old CO [Commanding Officer], Claude Esdale Prior, I staggered up to him, I shouldn’t have been there in the first place and I put my arm around his shoulder and I said, “Claude this is a permanent

soldier, the best type of soldier you can get, a pucka solider.” and he rose from his table and the other officers looked like that and he rose from his seat and put his hand out and said, “Rose how nice it is to see you, yes, won’t you join us?” and in Normandy the thing hit us, these other red tabs and I said, I was at most a corporal might have been a lance corporal then ,

and I said, I shook my head and said, “No thank you Sir.” the gentleman he was and I went out the door and thought “Crikey.” and as it was got out the door, the doorman had summoned the British Military Police, they are bastards, lowest of the low, waiting for me and got me and hurled me into the back of the truck

and took me to the lock up and kept me there all night and one of them took off my hat, threw it down just outside the door the cell door and said, “Pick that up!” just jammed his fist down the back of my neck, that was the type of person they were, so you don’t have much time

for the provo [provosts - military police], less for the British provos but that was a perfect gentlemen, this Claude Prior and he was our CO.

No, why I got into the machine guns when I joined the army on a

Friday I got into my kit and went into my usual drinking place which was the Carlton Hotel, might have been the day after because I don’t where I changed, I was at my favourite little possie [position] there, a tiny little bar called Eve’s Bar,

couple of mates and a chap came in that I recognised from North Bondi Surf Club, his name was Leo Liddy and he was a detective in 21 Squad which was the elite police plain clothes squad at that time and he was a standard bearer for North Bondi Surf Club which that year had won the Australian championship and Tooths or Tooheys or Reschs [breweries]

brought out one of these big glass things you used to see in hotels, ‘See Australia first’ they had on them and had Leo Liddy larger than life carrying the banner for North Bondi and he was the model for that and we got talking and I said, “I’m Max Rose, you’re Leo Liddy.” “Oh yes Max I seem to know your face.” and blah, blah, blah and he was in uniform and I said, “Who are you with?”

and he said, “I’m with the 2/1st Machine Gun Battalion.” and I said, “Good unit?” he had his colour patch, I didn’t have colour patches on at that time and he said, “Why don’t you join? I think I can get you in.” I said, “I’m with the 6th Division supply column.” and he said, “No come over with me.” so I thought that’s got to be level either the next day or two days later I was called up to the orderly room

of the 6th Divvy supply column they said, “You’ve been applied for by the 2/1st Machine Gun Battalion.” and you could do that if you had a brother or a friend in another unit they could apply for you and you’d normally be released. I said, “Oh yeah.” “And we’ll send you over in a truck.” this is all at Ingleburn, so I went from one camp to another and joined

the 2/1st Machine Gun Battalion just because of Leo Liddy, I’ll tell you a story about Leo probably nothing to do with this, but we came back to civvy [civilian] life, went back to 21 Squad which was a raiding squad in plain clothes and his first day on duty was up in Kings Cross and from they were going round in pairs, you never go by

yourself and a chap from about three storeys up goes, “Help, help they’re throwing me out!” and Leo said, “You stay here, I’ll go up and see what’s happening.” he was a very fit man and he bounded up the stairs and came in the door what he thought was this door where the noise was coming from. As he raced in the open door where this man was at the window, a man was

behind the door, hit him over the head with an iron bar, knocked him out and was dragging him over, he was a heavy chap, at least 15 stone, heavy chap and they were dragging him over and the policeman down below, his fellow 21 Squad member thought, “Geez he’s up there for a long time, better go.” and he found they were just about draping his body out of the window, they had a rotten reputation the

21 Squad for raiding premises and raiding sly grog [alcohol] and raiding betting shops.

Yeah, they were going to throw him out the window.

Vickers machine .303s.

Not too much, it’s rapid

firing, its best distance is over fourteen hundred, probably bit more, fires .303 bullet, fires at a rate of six hundred rounds per minute which is not recommended for long periods, it’s a water cooled gun so you had to have water in the surrounding barrel

around the gun, the gun is set in a barrel that is water cooled.

You carry it with you.

2 gallon can

Four usually, you had a number one, you had a number two, you had a number three, three to four.

One was the actual gunner, two fed the bullets, come in from the side, the belt of bullets come in, third was making sure there was enough water and getting more belts ready

it’s all I can tell you about the machine gun.

Nothing much, administering that

Yes.

Yes, we landed at Piraeus which I think is about eight miles from Athens. Fine day, it was either late March or early April, we marched up to a hillside from the ship, we were on a ship, the

Lossy Bank [?] which is one of the Bank Line from the UK and we were on this hillside, mown lawn quite short grass, that night we were all singing our heads off

Oh any old song, just happy songs

“Tipperary” the usual things, we had very little gear if any, we probably had a blanket each.

They were all stored up in the docks still to be unloaded, all our heavy gear. I don’t think I had a pack, might have had a pack because I had a blanket and suddenly a big bomb went off

a real big one, said it was a two thousand pounder, whether they had them at that time, that was what we were told the next day, a two thousand went up near us, very close to us on the hillside, then there was stunned silence, I remember one bloke called Clement who was a dairy farmer from the North Coast and he was in our pioneer platoon that

used to set up latrines and whitewash things and that and he had an offsider by the name of Clark, Clement been in the First World War and they were both together, this voice came out of the stillness wondering if there was another bomb and no one spoke or anything and this voice come out, “Jesus Clarky, feel my pants lets see if I’ve shat myself.” so that broke up everyone else.

There was laughter, that was the only bomb that night and we got into our trucks and offloaded and we went north and got a wonderful reception going up by the people thinking we were going to rescue them all, couldn’t have got a better offering you know, flat bread coming out, was a different thing coming back.

Didn’t know from one day, until that time we knew that the Italians were only in Germany when we first landed, within days the Italians had come over from Albania where they had been, within days the Germans knew that the Italians wouldn’t be able to hold Greece

and they started to come in and once we knew they were in, it was only the 6th Divvy and not all units of that artillery didn’t move 2nd, 1st, 2nd or 3rd did not go

No it didn’t concern you, you just took in your stride.

No, you have got confidence in yourself, you’re finished, but I have always been fatalist, but it wasn’t only me, I’m not unique ,but oh no, coming back was a little bit different, you didn’t know if they were bombing ahead of you and behind you….

Yes, we had a couple, the Italian Stukas were coming, coming back was worse because they were Messerschmitts and if you were in it, we were coming back in fifteen hundred by trucks you know and the tailboard down,

I think the tailboard was left down, any time you’d hear a plane you knew it was a German you’d just get out and dive under any trees that were there. Greece was very, as you probably know, a very leafy place and I remember we dived under one just as a Hurricane or just as a Messerschmitt came by and came down so low he just went like that to us and he probably used up his bullets and just coming back

and I remember seeing his face do that and he went like that, that was probably 20 feet up, 30 feet up.

3rd April. Going up there we were in Valos

coming back on the 25th because we thought we are going to go up. Valos is a coastal port, there are ships there but we looked at the ships and they had all been hit and they were going up in smoke. I remember we were in a wine bar on Anzac Day and that’s how I remember the 25th and this had been abandoned now, regimental sergeant major took control and so as we wouldn’t all race for the wine and

he said, “I’ll do this.” and he got behind and just poured it out of the big barrels into our dixies, that was on Anzac Day morning as we watched out the window on the two ships that we were supposed to be going on, one had a lot of explosives on, a lot of ammunition because it was pop, pop popping, the other one was fully alight so we thought, “Oh well.” and kept on going, we went down,

crossed Corinth canal I’d say the 26th or 27th. We’d thrown most our equipment away.

Our guns, destroyed them, we threw a lot of them away.

Coming back.

Well see we were a

machine gun battalion and the battalion deploys through the whole division, a company goes to a brigade, there are three brigades, three of our companies would go to 16, 17, 19th Battalion Brigades so you weren’t in contact with them and the trouble is the ones that were with 16th Brigade

that’s the 1st, 2nd, 3rd Infantry Battalion were attached there, it was through the infantry battalions but there was no one to tell the machine gunners platoon that they were to come too, so we were left like a shag on a rock [on our own] up at Cervi Pass, had to make our own way

Yes, we were the last ones to be retreating

No, no they had one good battle, we were the only ones to capture Germans, when I say we I’m talking as the battalion, only ones to catch Germans and we got about 160 of them, all storm troopers, beautiful, high polished boots

all laughing, knew they would be released soon as the big mob were coming and these were the elite, the blokes that landed by plane and one of our Section C Company you never give decorations for anyone that loses a battle, in this case company officer was in command of C Company

got the MC [Military Cross], we rounded up of 160 of these storm troopers, all of them all well dressed to impress, this is how the Germans worked to impress the local populace, how big and strong and how good they were, but we had to release those after the following day.

We had to get out ourselves.

Well that’s what I say, it come in different ways, usually through the units you were attached to, they’d say, we’ve been ordered to take up a position, always coming back, always south of where you’d been and hold that

till further instructions, next instruction will be make Cervi your next stop and we’ll put up a resistance there, we’ll man the bridge and that and you’d find the bridge had already been blown or manned by Germans or something, so make a deviation, it was just day by day

Worrying I suppose,

you never thought you were going to, well you thought this is going, this one somehow…. but you never gave great forward thought to anything.

Yes, a lot

No, no. We acted sensibly and

remember we stopped at a blown up Australian canteen place that was loaded up with cases of beer so we weren’t that worried

Yeah I remember the 2 IC [Second in Command] of the battalion, Major Baker, went white in the face when we stopped, got out of the convoy the truck I was in and we veered over to within 100 yards of where we saw

this canteen blown over, could see cases of beer and staggering back they had forty eight large bottles so they weren’t light, but white-faced that we had done this which was quite wrong, he was quite right out of the convoy to do this

Yes I certainly did.

No, I wont’ say it was my idea, it was a unanimous decision,

taken unanimously

I don’t know, I know we were going as fast as we possibly could but there was a lot of chaos there, that chap Leo Liddy I spoke about, he’d been in the police force, they teach them traffic things and he was at one really busy intersection

doing the signalling, go that way, go that way, it was one of the things you remember. The old truck had only 6 to 8 people in it which should have only had about four

We distributed the beer.

No, not really

well we knew we were retreating, that we couldn’t be winning

No. We did not know they were being taken prisoner at that time see, they were taken prisoner further south around Kalamata and before that but there weren’t many Aussie prisoners

taken early, as I said my brother was because he voluntarily stayed behind in the hospital, a doctor, but the only prisoners taken we lost, we had probably thirty prisoners lost, but different ways,

so if you were wounded you either went to hospital or you left them with somebody and they’d be caught.

No I can’t describe it, it went quickly after

Valos and Anzac Day we had to cross, we scouted Athens and crossed the Corinth Canal, this is a very narrow isthmus, it goes…. down the bottom of that is a town called Kalamata and that’s where evidently the Australian forces were told to gather and war ships were coming in and taking warships and ships were

taking people off. there was a lot of people hiding in bushes down there, I think we were the last vessel, we were on the last vessel, the Costa Rica was a nine thousand tonner, Dutch, but come in and took all the remnants that were left in Greece, the others had got out before and some more ships had taken them.

No. Make an orderly retreat, so you were trained to make an orderly retreat. No you followed orders, you trusted your officers, but troops aren’t taught how to retreat, officer maybe, that’s part of their tactical things.

You just follow officers or NCOs [Non Commissioned Officers], the line of command would come down from the GOC [General Officer Commanding] of the whole division to different units right and what route to take and make so and so your next thing, it wasn’t a rabble it was a

nice, organised retreat.

Yeah. Costa Rica, I forget if we were detailed into probably a group saying well, that’s your part of the ship. I happened to get into a cabin but a lot of them were up on deck, in fact there were eighty one guns mounted

on the top deck of the Costa Rica, all our machine guns plus other guns, anti tank guns.

I wasn’t but our machine guns were mounted by our people

Yes. And I remember I went back for a banana but we probably had six or eight, probably more, ten attacks

from dawn until about 2pm in the afternoon, clear sky and we were able to shoot them all off or deter them, none of them dropped a bomb near us.

They were Heinkels mostly, the bombers, the Italians had some too, I don’t know what they were called but

probably, I’ve got the book there I would have to read up and see the number of attacks, but I was on open deck and I saw a single plane coming out of the sky and I said to the bloke, “Jesus, this blokes gliding in.” everyone was watching the planes they chased away, and this single plane hit us, dropped a torpedo

and it went right under the stern of the ship, didn’t kill everybody as far as I know, only one person was killed in that and he was crushed between two boats, but didn’t kill anybody just hit the propeller and immediately it started to take water and list.

Well we all went forward,

the ship was like that and so we were up this end, the forward part of the ship and I think he jumped, he was swinging off ropes, they put ropes out so you could swing off the rope and land in to the water so as to get away from the ship because the ship would suck you down and he jumped too early or something, or he wasn’t one of ours,

one of our soldiers, but not with our battalion.

I knew it was coming in to do that, whether I actually saw a torpedo I can’t tell you I forget, but I knew once it was hit because I was going around, they made an announcement just before this flight went over, there would be a distribution of oranges.

I think I had a banana for some reason and I was walking along and I turned the bloke next to me and said, “Look at this bloke coming in by himself.” because everyone was aiming their machine guns to the retreating planes and this is the bloke that hit us.

Fairly big, we knew we’d been hit, we knew it hadn’t missed us and

that’s why I went down to get my souvenirs.

Not on at that time, we might have taken them from some storage area

The sirens sounded I think, the order did come to abandon ship

but the British destroyer sank it when we were all off, put some shells into it and sank it

How did I get off the ship, jumped on to the deck of the destroyer, the Hero next door to us and the seas were going up and down and jumped on there and helped into a mess room and given the best meal I’ve had in my life, it was crusty old stale bread

with corned beef, tinned corned beef and mug of hot cocoa and I remember sitting there, a lot of them didn’t have… I had boots but a lot of them didn’t have boots they stripped off in the sun and a lot of them had no shirts ,but marching that night, when we landed we

marched through the night, some without boots,some without shirts, we sang our heads off and sang all night until we got out of the place and went into the bush.

Oh yes and you know it was a lovely feeling, light-hearted, the nicest feeling in my life walking at midnight

going along the road and singing our heads off.

After the destroyer dropped us off in north

Costa Rica, none except for that one man. They just stopped the ship there was no one killed, no bomb hit the personnel part of the ship.

I went down and told a bloke who was going to shoot my head off and went and got my pack and couldn’t find my way out until I, I think I smashed a glass and got into a salon because I took an English topcoat that was hanging in the, I remember getting it out like that, but there weren’t many left on that ship then.

At Port Said, I beg your pardon where did the warship land, at Suda Bay in Crete.

Not many, there were troops there already, I can’t say the number, there were British there as well as Australians and Cretans of course

No not really,

you can say no, I saw the results of it but not the….

No, Crete for a period of three weeks that was part of the battalion I was with, others stayed behind and where there for the full campaign

Good, good

Oh yes and didn’t have any arms that’s why we left, we had nothing to fight with and we concentrated on what equipment we did have; the two companies of our battalions remained behind, the rest of the battalion was shipped out from Crete to Port Said.

No, none whatsoever. Couldn’t be helped

Yes, as well as a retreat can be, you’re destroying…. we were coming down we had to dispose of trucks over the cliff side and reduce the number of vehicles on the road and destroy quite a bit of equipment but I presume,

not having experienced a retreat before, I presumed it was orderly as it could be.

All I know is there is a marked difference in their attitude between the period when we were proceeding northwards in Greece to the period we were retreating southwards in Greece, it’s like that egg that you draw a smile up here

and you turn it upside down and there’s a gloom down here

Quite a few as much as shaking their fists, there were some Fifth Columnists [spies] around to diverting signs they had arrows pointing different areas and Fifth Columnists would change the direction signs around. No it was I presume it was as orderly as could

be expected.

No panic, just move quickly

In Egypt just for, I think it might have even been overnight, I think we got straight away onto trains that took us up into Palestine from Port Said, had a

feed at Port Said. Yes got onto cattle truck type of trains and arrived in fair Palestine

Well the sun was shining, it was peaceful, camp sites were waiting for us so you could….

No I hadn’t, it wasn’t on my agenda as I mentioned, it was the first time I had been outside Australia.

Yes, very much so, it’s got a good history and we got leave at different periods and I travelled quite extensively, as much as I

could throughout Palestine up to the north and to the east

The cities Haifa, Tel Aviv, beaches, Gaza. We had two surf carnivals there which I think had won them…. forty two thousand troops, our unit happened to be successful in that carnival.

Gaza was the area which we knew most but there wasn’t much in Gaza, best places to go were Tel Aviv where there was an Australian Comfort Funds hostel and also Jerusalem, they had taken over a hotel, I think the Fast Hotel.

Yes, certainly Bethlehem and

no, it’s quite impressive.

That was pretty evident.

No. We were playing a bit of rugby at the time and we went to the compounds of the Palestine police,

British Palestine police and the way they were walled up you knew and the compounds in which they and their families lived, you knew that there was tension between the locals and you felt it and you knew it by mixing, even when you went for a haircut or something like that whilst on leave, no you knew that something was coming, I think by then too

that Britain had promised, I might be wrong on this, promised Palestine and Israel would be separate states.

No, we felt no tension, we were very well received by both Arabs and Jews.

Very little, very little

the Jews were running of course Tel Aviv, no didn’t have that much to do with the Arab population, there were hawkers around the place

Oh yes, you bought trinkets whether they were looking out, you know trying to find out

how big our camps were I don’t know.

Well if you went on leave you’d treat yourself the luxury of going to your own Comforts Fund hostel, having a shower and then going out and getting a haircut and an Arab would cut it or a Jewish, they had Jewish ladies’ barbers there which most people went to.

We were retraining, whether Syria was on the books at that time I don’t know, we were not only retrained but re-stocking and being re-equipped.

Mostly forced marches till some equipment come up, I remember they’d pit one company against the other, you’d have a forced march of twenty miles to Gaza and back again and time and that thing and PT [Physical Training] a lot of PT.

You marched to the beach and had a swim there, that was one of the things, kept fit, good to be back again

No, beautiful, beautiful sunshine like the best of Sydney days and doesn’t rain, it didn’t rain at all, I can’t remember rain falling whilst we were there.

No. It could be about six months

No, I don’t know when but it’s always interesting and stirs you up that you’re going to see a

different place. I had already been up around the Lebanese-Syrian borders, I was attached for a ski school, the snow was so thick that we couldn’t get up there and had two attempts to get up to a place called The Cedars, which is a famous ski resort up in the hills of Lebanon but because of the thickness of snow

we tried to climb straight up it and didn’t get within I think, thirteen miles was the closest, so our detachment was going to form an AIF ski unit and that was nipped in the bud and we came back to our unit with our tail between our legs

I wouldn’t know but I knew one of the instructors there who’d been instructing at Mt. Kosciusko. Johnny Abbot-Smith was his name, he was up there already

Because they asked for people with skiing experience and I had been to Kossie several times and naturally put my hand up and

thought something different rather than sitting around camp.

None whatsoever, we drove up as far as we could and just marched up, tried to get up the mountain side, left the vehicle and I think we were stuck for about six hours and we saw a couple of people coming down from the

mountain side who tried to get out and one was General Hamblin’s wife who was a French general and their twelve year old son and we took them in tow and they were very distressed and brought them back into Tripoli that night.

The Free French general, Hamblin I think

No it was the general’s wife and their son.

Oh yes, AIF had a news channel and we had our I think our daily newssheet and we knew what was going on I can’t remember radio broadcasts, could’ve been

No, not at that stage, this was in early January when we were still up in Syria but I think we were brought back in anticipation. When was, oh December 7th

wasn’t it? Yes we must have been known they must have been planning then to take us back, to bring us back to Australia

We must have been yes, I can’t remember.

Oh it was big certainly a big thing because we knew our 8th Division were there

I’ve have in the diary the date that we heard and where I was when I heard it, but I’ll have to refer to that.

No. we were getting news of the doings of the 7th Division and there was

a machine gun battalion involved in that, we knew it was bitter and it didn’t make you like the French anymore because of it.

It’s like in Iraq now, now that the winning side’s

is known they all come over yes, but the reception we had, there was a hotel Australian troops again, the Australian Comforts Fund and we get an excellent meal and Australian beer and I think it used to operate from 11 to 1 and 3 to 7 of a night and people would be given leave to come from there camps, three or four days

in Beirut was a very nice break .

No none whatsoever. I didn’t

Snow yes

That was in the area in which we were camped, they put up Qantas huts which were galvanised iron

huts and they weren’t, shelter certainly had to be, I remember going along a road and I met a bunch of Bechua or Bechuanalanders from West Africa, big black, fine looking troops and they were just really struggling and I thought you poor B’s, you’re not used to any of this, at least we get our bit of cold weather in Australia

but they were doing road works building the road.

Oh yes ,we had good… oh I think we might have given an extra thermal underwear, when I say thermal underwear, long johns, which you wouldn’t have needed elsewhere I don’t think, so most people had one of the Comfort Fund parcels that come from home, seemed to always put a

balaclava in it so you had different balaclavas and think I had a pullover that had been knitted and sent over to me, but you wore your greatcoat and they’re fairly thick items.

I suppose so yes.

I hadn’t seen it so thick

I suppose once every three months possibly, I don’t know whether we got any in England, not too sure but I remember we got one as soon as we arrived in Egypt,

but coming back soon as we landed one up in Syria certainly, I don’t know, I can’t recall how often they were but they were always very acceptable

Yes soap shaving cream, maybe a jar of jam

I think maybe some writing paper, anything that come in them was gladly accepted.

I can’t remember at this stage but if there was you wouldn’t express it because you knew the work that had gone behind…. these ladies that usually packed them, widows

and wives and relatives of people and you realised the thought behind it and you didn’t belittle them.

I think I got one up in New Guinea which tickled me a bit, again you don’t doubt the feeling, the thought behind such an item, in fact I did get one in New Guinea

Don’t know what I did with it. Put my feet in it I think, I don’t know, I forget

Yes there were lapses and I course got nothing in Greece or Crete and in England there was a lapse after we arrived but it was reasonable,

it was a big day when the postman called out “Mail” and you got letters from home, that was always very acceptable.

Maybe a couple of girlfriends, my boss at work wrote me a couple, people that joined the forces

say the air force, been in Canada training, general people.

Always yes, if you receive a letter you acknowledge a letter I was always told and I followed that concept.

No, no. There were people whose wives would write them every

single day so they’d get a bundle like that in the mail that would arrive from Aussie because there wasn’t much means of getting mail from Australia you had to wait for ships and ships didn’t necessarily sail with mail, they had to wait for a reinforcement convoy or food convoy to come so it wasn’t sort of a regular service.

You would receive often two or three or four or five a day and you would line them up. If it was from my father for instance, I would line them up in date order so I wouldn’t…. if he would refer to something that he told me he had written earlier I would know, it was always a big thrill to get mail, it was a big thing in the forces, it’s your touch with home

I think I got some from South Africa, the couple…. or several from South Africa, no because myself I had not other contacts other than in Australia.

Yes on the way going over to the UK from here.

Yes, again but she wrote to me several times

No I didn’t but it was rumoured of course, rumours, camps live on rumours, there was a rumour that we would be

returning to Australia, I think there was upstairs fighting about pulling Australians out of the Middle East, I don’t think British controlling bodies wanted it and I think there was a fight then between I think Curtin and Churchill, but we thought once our people in Malaya

had been attacked that we would be going back to Australia and I think these rumours as we moved southwards to camp in Suez, we knew were at least leaving the Middle East so say some of the troops went straight into Burma and were captured within twenty-four hours.

Very keen to get back to Australia because you’re fighting for Australia you’re fighting for your own country or the possibility of that.

But Australia meant more as the war got closer to Australia and we just had to look at map and see how the Japanese coming down the

Asian peninsula islands and we knew that they wouldn’t stop at Malaya.

I don’t, but I have a note of it, February, I think I was onboard ship I think I was onboard ship

that was a dramatic announcement yes.

No, I think we were heading for possibly Burma early in the piece and as the situation was deteriorating as I think I mentioned before, the ship did a right angle to ninety degree turn and shot through at

23 knots to Fremantle.

No no, I think we were pleased that we didn’t land and be in trouble

There’d be a daily bulletin on what was happening

how far you know, how up to date it was I do not know, I can’t remember.

I think we might have landed some Western Australian contingent there and then we come across to Adelaide or Port Adelaide and the rest of the unit got off and we were billeted in private homes for three weeks

and then moved, went on leave.

You’d meet in the main street outside your house, you’d leave your landlady or the lady the people that were putting you up and we would just assemble for roll call, I don’t think there were any, there might have been some duties, there were some offloading duties of ships

that had come in with war material on, but most of us had nothing to do.

No, they were good times, people were extremely good and kind and generous to us and we were about seven miles I think out of Adelaide itself on transport routes so it was an

easy way to get around.

No, we had no idea ,we expected to be moving northwards, possibly New Guinea, I can’t sort of phase in the timing of this whether the troops were already in New Guinea I doubt it,

it was April, May ‘42 that’s a….

No, we went to Ingleburn firstly, reassembled at Ingleburn. I don’t think there was any training there, we got the unit together after leave and went up to

and trained, we were at Peachester, Peachester was the first camp in Queensland that was quite up in the mountains

You were issued tropical uniforms, you were training down on the coast, you were given training

on landing from landing craft what was the, we were trained in a place called Toorbul Point I remember, lots of getting fit, tropical kit was issued.

Well just khaki shorts, khaki

shirts, I don’t know…. we did have steel helmets still but long socks, but shorts instead of long trousers would be the main thing and shirts instead of a uniform jacket

I think so although

the Tommy guns were being issued at that time. The Lee Enfield guns hadn’t more or less come into force but sub machine guns because they realised that machine guns weren’t much good in jungles so the unit was being mainly given small machine guns

None whatsoever. There was no need to in the desert, it was a totally different warfare.

Small arms training at targets, bayonet training I think

main thing was getting fit because we realised that there would be a lot of walking and a lot of marching

Not that I can recall no. Landing from landing craft was a bit of a shock because the times was all new to us

and at times the landing craft didn’t come close enough into the beach landing, going from your landing craft with all full equipment on including a steel helmet and people couldn’t swim they’d sink in over six feet of water and you’d have to hook them out these poor chaps, “Off you go you know, go, go, go!” and as I say there were a lot of

people, some people who couldn’t swim and you had to get up to the surface and it was just only a few yards, possibly it didn’t happen

Landing craft…. like a flat bottom punt with a front that works on a lever that goes down, they had several types, you had landing craft personnel

which only took personnel, was just a hollow shoebox inside with an end that hinged down, where the landing craft infantry which were bigger still and the landing craft tanks LCMs, LCTs which are the big fellows where vehicles would go on and even as I say weapons carriers, you’d drive on those, they all

worked on the same platform - hollow inside and ramps giving you access whether it be coming on or going off and they were, being flat bottomed, or could go quite into any beach in the Philippines that’s all they used.

You went in as close as you could and

put your ramp down but sometimes it wasn’t quite far enough as you’ve seen in films there, you splashed ashore

Oh yes, quite realistic there.

You’d have your full gear ,as you got on you moved as you would be expected

to move under any conditions.

You’d have your pack, a haversack, you’d have a steel helmet you’d have a weapon, you’d have ammunition, you’d have your own personal change of clothing a spare pair of boots, spare socks etc and you would have a pack, haversack and a water bottle and they’d all be full

and whether we had a gas mask at that time I don’t know, I forget, certainly had a steel helmet

Well it was, say it was enough to sink a chap if he couldn’t sort of flounder around a bit, not often that happened, most craft,

you often stumbled and people who can’t swim are quite panicky of water and it doesn’t sort of set their mind at rest that there is someone who lived around the beaches and around Sydney who were used to the beach but you get a country boy that’s never been near the ocean it’s different.

No, not to my knowledge, possibly there could’ve in

actual landings, I’m sure people did.

No, not then no. I don’t think we did then.

I had left the unit then I arrived later with another unit

the 2/6th Commando Squad Independent Company

Not with that unit, trained as a commando in the training battalion then posted to a Independent Company as they were then called.

Mostly patrolling, nearly all patrolling, you didn’t go looking for a fight.

Our particular role was to go along a valley and in advance of the infantry and report what opposition there was.

No, it was just arduous was the main thing, areas where troops had never been before, in fact I doubt if anyone had been before but amazing thing, go to areas there where

there’d never been personnel, rats would come along, chew your toenails, yes, absolutely virgin as I say, we were up about 5, 500 feet I remember you couldn’t…. the rats were going to chew things.

Yes

Training,

done a two or three month training course, March, April, May, three months at Canungra and they trained you pretty hard, the same as I think they copied their British counterparts. They did some very silly things early on, like deprived you of sleep and that but when I say silly, that’s a silly word of mine but you practised

throwing bayonets at trees it was the first commando battalion site up at Canungra came up from Victoria I think from Seymour and oh no it was good training.

Well they would wake you up in the middle of the night and we’d work all night at times and

try and sleep of a daytime they were quite good hard conditions when you did you eventually get posted to a unit there were seven units, yes seven commando or independent companies at that time you know you’re fit your main thing is fitness

Month at a time.

I wanted to, we were sitting back doing nothing, I realised machine guns were finished in jungle warfare and I think I started in July 1942 to get into a commando

unit, I have correspondence in my records there of where I applied and I was finally accepted in March ’43

No, three month period of training, I was released by my battalion, I was very sorry to leave them after three years, your mates, they gave

me a good send off and I went to Canungra. We were based at Deception Bay, machine guns at Deception Bay north of Brisbane and I reported to Canungra and immediately I was five days late for a course but the course I took on was a three months course

I was on my own

Very much so, I missed my battalion very much.

Yes, since the beginning of war December ’39.

Yes, I wanted to do something, I wasn’t content to, wasn’t happy just sitting back doing nothing, other people….

I knew I was fit and I thought I could do this job.

Went on an ex-civilian ship, I think the Katoomba off the record I could…

Well looked after and went into a camp

at Moresby, very wet, very muddy and I remember trying to get over to my unit which was over in the Ramu Valley, four attempts and we could not get over the hump the planes we were in, C47s going over and we had to turn back ,it was a Monday I think,

a Tuesday, a Wednesday I think Thursday might have just scrapped over the mountain because the mountain, I forget what I was going to say, the mountain range gets up to fifteen thousand feet high and these planes weren’t made for that sort of thing, they were absolutely fully laden with as well as reinforcements with supplies.

Finally made it and landed at an airstrip in Ramu Valley called Dumpu, from there was a climb up the mountain side to where our unit was so that hard work because at the bottom I reported into our base camp they said, “Going up will you take this and will you take this, take an extra 200 rounds?” and that’s strapped around you climbing up a mountain and I was by myself too.

Finally I reached the unit, posted to where they wanted, in B company number 8 section and took over from there.

No, it was just a general reinforcement. I can’t remember anyone going from the unit to the 2/6th Independent Company but when we land at Dumpu there were different onesdispersed to

different battalions, different….

Whilst waiting at Canungra we knew what each unit had done and where they were. There were eight independent companies at that time

and the number 1 unit had been chased out of the Solomons I think ,about four or five of those left, number 2 were up in Timor and did a wonderful job there, 3 unit were at Wau, four unit ?, five unit were round Wau/Bulolo, now sixth unit were up in the Markham Valley which

bleeds into the Ramu Valley.

The role was to do patrols and report on the position of the enemy who were the other side of the valley and often in full sight of you and we were in full sight of them but it was clearing

the way for others, usually infantry troops to follow and it was hard work and it was constant work.

Oh you could see them, I killed one at point blank range with a machine gun, we were doing a patrol we knew that there was a Jap

group at a certain position because we could see them through binoculars and I think I was told, “Go up and see.” I might have said, “I’ll go up.” and how many are there, took a patrol of eight or ten men and got up to the opposition except

you had to be very cunning, we’d been watching them and we’d noticed they knocked off for lunch. They had a machine gun posted on a little tripod of an area, it was quite visible, we noticed each day, watching them each day, they seemed to knock off for lunch and I thought that would be a good time, so we crept up under cover of trees and that to about 200 hundred yards

and when they knocked off for lunch we made a dash for it. Unfortunately the chap that was in with me it was his first patrol with a Lee Enfield rifle and his creeping along this little track just like that his finger pulled this and I thought, “Oh Christ!” so we made a dash for the top just as the two that’d been manning this strategic machine

gun post come slouching down the track had evidently you know gone for something to eat and come back and met them at point blank range.

Just the two of them were coming back to this gun, I don’t know what was behind them, it was quite a reasonable from what we gathered from what we could see through binoculars there was quite a few of them, we used to kid them like they probably kidded us.

There were about twelve or thirteen or less, say twelve of us, we’d go out stripped to the waist in an open sort of area and just parade and then go inside and quickly put a jacket on or put a hat on or something and parade and hoping we were confounding them that we were stronger than what we were and all this sort of

nonsense and they were probably doing the same to us, though it looked as if their campsite was much larger than my little one.

Well we knew that a rifle shot would attract something and so it was a rather tense moment

Just let go, I had a Thompson machine gun 45, it took the top half off, his bottom half and probably wounded the second set

As I said this machine gun

was posted and he was coming from that way and we were coming along this track and saw them come round the corner towards their gun, going out we kicked the machine gun over the cliff right down to the valley down below, I threw it down and made for our lives cos’ the tree line had stopped, that’s what I say, we had about

200 yards of bare mountain to go down and we slithered down that, the chap that had accidentally fired a shot, he scrambled down, he dislocated his ankle, had to carry him back then but we hid that night down the bottom, we thought

they might follow, pretty sure they would follow us but they didn’t so then we to back to our original base.

We used to booby-trap our position every night, laid instant trip wires, half buried them around your camp out about 30 yards from where you were

so if they made any attempt to come during the night, which they usually did work at night, they’d trip over and blow themselves up. We had, instead of mills bombs which we had laid down, exploding when you pulled the pin of a gun, you got either seven seconds or four seconds for the fuse to burn down, we substituted those with instantaneous fuse, gave them no click.

With a Mills bomb you can throw yourself down if you’ve got the time to do it, but we made instantaneous fuses, say if something tripped up they tripped up and we heard several screams during the night. At different times they used to come and try and look at our position

Well certainly gave us warning.

You were very, very light sleepers so I say you didn’t know what was happening there.

Just along…. five eight hundred was the feature that’s called, had no name, it was just the height of the….

Feet.

Was the camp, we were on five five hundred and then up further, slightly up further we were on five eight hundred so people who had not been traversed before, it was all new land

Well we knew that they had come.

If they had any dead or wounded they would drag them away but they left bits of equipment or maybe a shoe, a soft shoe, they wore canvas shoes with just one toe in them and one of the patrols I did, it nearly killed my feet, I put on Japanese shoes and they have one big

toe and fit you, they must have very small feet, it was agony, threw them away afterwards.

So they thought there were Japs walking along instead of British, instead of us and they think, “Oh well its only our footprints.” because you looked all the time down and we had two native guides, two wonderful, loyal New Guineans who

had led us.

Slowly, when I say constantly on the move we were moving… you had a base place where you can come back to but doing patrols out from there most the time, but that’s in the Ramu Valley,

Markham I think would be the same where our troops were before I joined them.

Japanese were in the Markham Valley and I have photos which…. just after there was quite skirmish between our 2/6th and the Japanese troops, I think eighty or something were killed

on that occasion.

No, I wasn’t that was three weeks before I came.

Tense yes, you had to be quite aware all the time, out looking both ways.

No. You didn’t relax much when you were out on, well you relaxed none at all when you were out on patrol, couldn’t afford to because we knew the Japs were in around that area, our job was to ascertain what strength of the Japs were in and report that back.

Had walkie talkies, we must have had radio back from our base camp to our main camp yes, see we worked in…. I went to a reunion down in Wagga and I probably only knew half a dozen people cos’ you work in little groups, you never

worked in like an infantry battalion where you knew each other, you worked in little groups, I looked around very, very few, you don’t come in contact with another little section and the section I think was about thirteen, fourteen men.

Yeah they were, they had to be.

Not through enemy fire

or that, the only thing was dengue or malaria or typhus affected which nearly all of us at different times.

Yes, I remember sitting under a tree, next thing I woke up in the hospital, I just collapsed.

Blacked out and that was dengue, malaria you felt coming on you took pills for that, Atebrin pills they might have been called, something before then but that didn’t prevent you from getting malaria.

Because we come

from our camp down to Lae and remember the day we…. the same day as the big battle of Shaggy Ridge and I’d been up to see that and I came down to Lae and I was just sitting under this tree and how I got there, no idea.

You always had some of your men

affected by fever of some sort

Possibly, we get them, take them back, you might even use a native guide to take them back, it was certainly incumbent on you when had to

be prepared to move quickly.

Yes.

Yes

Let’s get out of this place as quickly as possible as I said, we slid down that mountainside, threw their gun over.

No not really, just thought we were lucky as I say, we slept uneasily that night

and we thought they might come after, send a batch after us but no, not really pleased to be back because you took the minimum of food with you because you had to carry everything good to get back and have something different.

Not haunt me,

I remember it vividly.

Similar happenings yes, certainly prepared for it yes, because the Japs were in our vicinity, were around us around where we were.

Date every now and then but I’ve never read it through for forty years, fifty. I will now

You expected it. I don’t think so.

Yes always in the training I just referred to,

there was all this grappling, how to grapple a chap and how to throw him to the ground that was part of your course.

Possibly yes, at Canungra yes, we were given piano wire, short little thing and how to slip it over someone’s neck.

Make a noose and if you crept up behind them and put it round tighten it.

Never had to do it but I remember piano wire being issued to us and we had silly things like bayonet throwing, you never throw a bayonet, you were throwing away a weapon

I wasn’t in it whatsoever; I went at eight o’clock in the morning,

it must have been the end of a patrol because it was some miles distant from us, why I was there at that particular time I don’t know, but I saw the 2/8th and the 2/4th coming out of the…. Shaggy Ridge was like a

currant pudding, the Japs had dug in holes from the side and it was just honeycombed like a beehive with Japs and it was quite a formidable place to take because you had to storm it, but I was with members of the infantry battalion

so I think the 11th were there, certainly the 2/4th and 2/8th infantry battalions and they were the ones that captured Shaggy Ridge and the soldiers were very delighted.

Up to three or four days

Yes you were always told to, instructed

what to do.

The one I just quoted is a prime example, it was just to preferably not engage, you were never told to engage, instructed to engage people, but it was to bring back information as to the strength

of your opposition so as we could pass that onto infantry or even pass this onto the air force to bomb. You often saw bombings of places that we reported on by Australian Beaufort bombers mostly and that information was used, but our task was not to engage.

No, no Japs were captured in my time but as I say the earlier battalion three weeks earlier, the battalion had engaged in a very bloody battle at Shaggy Ridge,

not Shaggy Ridge, at Kaiapit.

No never, because you gave yourself away, where you were.

Times you thought you were but you

had to have a good sense of map reading to make sure you got back, it was always a relief to get back from a patrol

There were sort of no lines but you’d have to re-track the way you’d come and that, where if you had them,

a local native boy would have his feet down, would pick out footprints or broken ferns or that where you’d been before but all your patrols were very, very silent, never spoke.

Just simples ones like ….and stuff

or and that. No, it was just nothing glamorous ,about a hand signal you just froze without a word.

I don’t know where these guides come from, they were wonderful, local boys.

Well you’d have one in front of you and one behind you one would be looking around and looking for footprints and the other one would be guarding your back mostly, they were wonderful, wonderful boys. We’d feed them at night, sometimes all they would take in payment was a handful of salt and we’d say, they’d stand there

you’d fill up their hand and go right down, they were big boys I was surprised when I later returned to New Guinea, the north part of New Guinea up near the Dutch border how stunted the Dutch natives were in the Dutch part of New Guinea, they were about five foot three and miserable looking whereas our boys had to be noble men.

No, you were probably taught in lectures about them but I can’t remember too much talk.

Oh yes, rogue natives there. The natives weren’t all on

our side, Japs used to intimidate them too.

No I don’t. I do not. I had the utmost admiration for them.

No not nicknames, I just can’t recall.

Boongs, that was an affectionate sort of thing, that’d be town people you know. down around Moresby but I couldn’t speak more highly of the guides that I

encountered, I had with me.

About four months I think, December I arrived think it was.

No, no such thing as leave but it sort of

bemuses me that someone’s here of the navy would be on record ten months away from Australia or that and first say the 16th Brigade and that left Australia April 1940 didn’t get back till 1942 even then they were taken straight up to all this in New Guinea.

No, you despised them and you certainly didn’t trust any of them, not only me but you just despised the Japs, you admired secretly what they’d done but as people you just, you knew you couldn’t trust them.

Germans seemed fair game you know, like in a boxing ring talking of the Germans one of the people we temporarily captured in New Guinea in Crete was Max Smelling [German boxer]and he said “Oh this will do me, you can send me to Canada.” where they were sending a lot

of their prisoners of war and, “That will do me.” that night there was a counter attack and he returned to his own side

No I didn’t but part of our unit did, D company did

Yes,

putting out, gouging out the eyes of any natives that wouldn’t cooperate with them, cutting off their tongues, I saw that again when I was up in the Philippines.

I saw a man, first time I went into Mindoro

the Japs had only left there that morning and left a man tied up to a tree and his tongue had been cut off and his eyes had been put out and that morning too, I didn’t see the body, they paraded an American POW, they bound him up and dragged him behind oxen and flogged him,

the locals told me that.

Yes very much so, I was just determined I wouldn’t be captured, I would rather kill myself than be captured.

Yes I was quite definite about that.

Well I always had a pistol.

A Colt .45 to start with and a

Smith and Wesson .38, but I was determined I would never be captured, never be captured, just knew it would never happen.

Oh well, I hoped someone would come and get me.

Yes I have helped wounded people out.

No

certainly our unit did but me personally no, except that incident I sighted, chap went over the mountain side and did his ankle and carried him out, when I say carried, I put my arm around him.

The chap I just mentioned burnt himself to death and I think wrapped him in yes and on the Queen Mary one of our Don company, McLeod his name was, died of what I don’t…. just all assembled, wrapped in canvas and slipped him over the side, that was

the first one, just leaving after Aussie in the Indian Ocean

Yeah that was probably week or ten days after leaving Fremantle

Well the body is wrapped and sewn in canvas and rested on the ships rail, I think we had a padre, I’m sure

we would’ve had a padre onboard who’d commit them to the deep there’s certain wording like that. They do balance on the rail, they just tip this into the sea, tipped the body into the sea, it’d be strapped to some board I should imagine, that was my first.

No, on the way you wouldn’t dare stop. Once the ship stopped

you were just laying in wait for a torpedo.

It was hard work, hard yakka and I don’t know, there was no sport, no leave no sport, nowhere to go, just rest in between

patrols as I’d say, I think an officer did it a bit tougher than the others cos others could have a rest but on each patrol there had to be an officer take a group out.

I was an officer when I joined the…. I went to an officers’ school in South Australia and posted to the independent companies as an officer.

Lieutenant.

Now looking through an old diary of mine here I came across a letter received from a lady lived in Darling Point as we embarked on our troop ship Queen Mary in Sydney Harbour.

Very excited and I wrote a note and threw it as several did and threw it over in a bottle. A cruising launch picked it up and sent it to my mother at the address, that I was least departing overseas.

“Dear Mrs Rose, On Saturday we were lucky enough to be along side the Queen Mary and this letter was enclosed in a tin (a tin was it) and thrown down to us. It fell into the sea and eventually we claimed it. I’d thought you be interested in

having it back etc. I think it’s best that you have this, sincerely, Molly Toogood. The notes I’d written SS Queen Mary: “To all. I’m very excited as this time on being on this marvellous ship. I knew it would be magnificent it almost takes my breath away.”

I went on to say that, “We got on at 11.15am and sailed at high tide. Regards to all, Max 3.30pm four five 1940.” I’d forgotten that, it was just in the back of the diary I was going through

Well I’ve moved around a bit in different countries.

Oh, at that stage you’re talking, no, you were a bit too tired and you were moving more or less by yourselves, very few of us whereas you know whereas in a normal battalion you’ve got

your mates to frolic with at the end of the day usually, no it was just hard work doing constant patrolling, only in the latter part of the war I did probably just as much work but I was attached to the Americans at that time, latter part, and I used to look on that as a

piece of cake compared to what the AIF had been doing in New Guinea.

No, we had a few daredevils perhaps like to be considered commandos; no you have to be a reasonably good

soldier to be a commando.

They might have thought we were a bit you know flashy; certainly our actions didn’t give that impression.

No we had different coloured patches, double diamonds

and we wore berets which were different to hats, I suppose they chiacked us a bit [teased us], your friends you knew in other battalions didn’t do it.

We were protecting infantry, we were the forward eyes of the infantry

Not in New Guinea, not in New Guinea at all, there were no other units near us, I can’t remember seeing any other troops or any other units

until Shaggy Ridge when we got at and returned back to Lae.

Half a toothbrush, you took down everything of weight, half a toothbrush, I think I had a sharpened spoon, didn’t have a knife or fork,

sharpened one edge of the spoon to cut things but weight was the big, big thing for you when you were climbing around mountains up and down and that, if you can save a couple of ounces you will, as I say I think we had half a blanket at one stage and a ground sheet but no more, never had a full blanket.

Yes.

Troops had rifles, some had rifles

Yes. Some had Thompson guns, the Owen gun come in later which is a decidedly lighter weapon.

Ammunition, water bottle, first aid kit, pills, spare pair of socks sometimes if you going you would carry a spare pare of boots if you were wading through water. I remember one patrol I went on I crossed the same little stream twenty eight time and that

water logging and gravel just wears, I wore a pair of boots out once in four days, the Aussie army boots. So if you could you had a spare pair of boots but you certainly didn’t go on patrol on those, you left those at your base camp, food of course, iron rations.

Biscuits and bully or M&V, meat and vegetables not much choice. I always managed some pepper in a pot which I’d pinch from an officers’ club in Townsville I think it was, I had that for a long while. You ppreciate a bit of pepper, salt always, you had salt as much as you

could, you always made sure your troops had it because you perspire that much you needed replacement pills. There were times we were ordered to line up your troops and make sure they took their Atebrin pills, put it in their hand, take it up and watch them swallow if you wanted to see you could, but silly to do that,

you were only doing it for their own sake.

Oh yes wash in streams always, had to be careful where you took your drinking water because it could come down from you know, flown a long way through a native village, not that was in the latter part there’s that much chance

you washed in streams when you go, it wasn’t a big thing in the agenda.

Yes, you’d shave occasionally, never on forward patrol or that, when you come back you’d have a shave.

Yes. No I wasn’t actually, it was just that we were brought back and we had a fair stint of constant patrolling and we were given leave in Sydney.

No. But we had the upper hand.

We got right through from Moresby over the hump and finished up in the north coast around Lae, Lae and Solomons had fallen, Finschhafen I think was about to fall or had fallen, Wewak was about to fall or had fallen and the Japs were retreating. In New Guinea there were no more landings of Japs, certainly hadn’t been for some time.

They were on the retreat, you knew we had the upper hand, I doubt if they would have pulled us out and given us leave.

No I didn’t, as I mentioned we arrived in Lae and the next thing I remember I must have been a bit late because I remember in Lae I was on the guard of honour.

I was on the guard of honour opened the Lae War Memorial Cemetery so I must have got over my dengue which I had at that time returned to the unit in Lae and we just waiting on a ship to take us back to Aussie.

Yes as I say I woke up in hospital you go very quickly snap like that,

the hospital in Lae and I must have come back and been on that guard of honour for the opening of the Lae War Memorial Cemetery and got on the ship

Yes it was good, we fired a volley into the air but the graves

were new, graves or headstones, always a war cemetery is a very, very touching thing. I’ve been to a few of them, there is always some name you know that’s in there.

I can’t remember who, I remember one in Darwin, this particular friend of mine in Gaza,

another one killed in a car accident there, a nursing sister whom I knew that died there, yes always but cemeteries a very touching thing, all the Australian governments have kept those cemeteries in excellent condition.

No Lae was quite well laid out,

they recovered bodies from different parts, from different campaigns and laid them to rest in Lae.

You might have said a little prayer to yourself.

Luck.

I’ve always been lucky.

I don’t know, not only in war you know, lucky in life - being in the right place at the right time or another occasion being somewhere you should be and that’s the right place to be in

it’s a….

I don’t know, I was always thought I would make it, never had any doubt about it.

Don’t know. Way you look at life I think. Life you know, if you’re snuffed out early so be it. I remember I was courting a girl and we were very much in love at the time or so we thought and I think I was twenty-one maybe,

twenty-two, twenty-one and I said to her, “Life can’t be better than this.” and I said, “I’d hate to go downhill.” and she said me to and we even planned, we were going to have an evening at Jonahs at Church Point, get a hire car, knew where we were going to get it from, from Pikes Hire Car Service at Circular Quay, drive….. wouldn’t have a drink

or anything and we’d drive over a cliff together, life was so good it was seriously planned, don’t know what put us off whether we fell out a little bit but that’s how life was, it was a lovely little time, I never thought I would reach thirty.

No

She married. It was getting a bit too intense. I went up to the bank and said, “Send me to the country, I want to get out of the city.” and I got out of the city and the first Easter that came they said, “You will have to sleep in the bank premises, the manager wants to go away and has asked me to sleep there why don’t you come up?” and next thing

I’d been staying at the hotel, this is down in West Wyalong, she said sent me a telegram, ‘Arriving on Friday night’s train.’ which came in Saturday morning at West Wyalong: ‘Please meet me.’ and the railway station at West Wyalong is a mile and a half away from the town. All the people go up to

get the papers and get the mail and meet anyone coming and they are all on the platform there and this carriage, this railway door opened and this girl in a full length fur coat got out and she was a platinum blonde and threw herself in my arms and said, “Darling.” all the crowd from the town little town of West Wyalong

looked at me and I whispered, “You’re my sister, you’re my sister.” I told people in town that my sister was coming up to visit me. Sent her packing two days later said, “You’re too hot for me.”

Had leave and we assembled up in Atherton Tablelands.

Further training and await our next mission

I don’t think we did any, I was only up there for eight days, played a rugby match up there in the same side as the later captain of the Wallabies Bill McLean, we were being reformed.

They changed the name from independent companies to commando squadrons and they were going to make three commando squadrons into one 7th Divvy Commando Regiment, the man that was doing all this was Lieutenant General Flay who was the son in law for Sir Thomas Blamey.

I’d met Lady Blamey

and no, didn’t think he was forward enough you know and he sat it out and most people thought he should be up, if you have an officer he should be up with you, I realise in hindsight his place was just like in this [Iraq] war, [US] General Tommy Franks was down in Gaza.

Oh no you didn’t worship him, I thought the world of MacArthur, the same feeling like that for our own GOC [General Officer Commanding].

I was called up after days, I think we might have had to do a couple of mock up battles

or something, I did one I think and I was called by Colonel Flay and said you been selected to go to down to Canungra and train and be an instructor in jungle warfare, there were four of us, three of them had got awards MCs [Military Crosses] or MMs [Military Medals] and I was the only one wasn’t

and he said, “I’m letting the cream of my people go.” I said, “I don’t want to go.” he said, “I’m not asking you I’m just telling you.” so four of us went, two of them went down by train another chap with myself, I said, “I’m going to hitch-hike down.” so went into Cairns airport and sat around all day waiting

for something to go south because the planes were coming down from New Guinea and refuelling at Cairns and going further south and the CO was sitting around, lounging around there and the head air force person, an Air Vice Marshal I think he was, said, “Hello what are you army boys

doing?” I said, “I’m hoping to hitch a ride down to Brisbane.” he said, “Oh yes.” he said, “Do you come from there?” and, “Mate does here but I come from Sydney.” he said, “Oh yeah what part of Sydney?” I said “Manly.” he said, “Oh my wife comes from Manly, oh well the end of Manly beach, Queenscliff.” He said “That’s where my wife….” “If I said what’s her name?” he said “Her name was Lorna Mitchell.” I said, “I used to

take her out.” he said, “What’s your name?” I said, “Max Rose.” he said, “Oh you’re the great Max Rose, I’ve always heard about.” He said, “I’ll get you on a plane straight away.” so the next Mitchell bomber that come down with a Dutch pilot, we got onboard that and landed in Brisbane, spent the night at this chap’s parents place and got down to Sydney the next day, stayed a few days there then got a

rail pass back up to Brisbane and then Canungra and back on time.

Training commandos yes.

Yes it is at Canungra, very much so and I used to take them out on two, three, four day don’t think I did more than fa our day patrol

and go through there instruction, teach them the same course that we’d been instructed.

No I don’t think so, live as well as you can while you can but didn’t push them too hard, but I bitterly resented being down for at least three months or might of even been six

months I could look forward to instructing you, my mob would probably be drafted somewhere else.

I wanted to go anywhere, I wouldn’t mind, New Guinea was good, I didn’t think I’d go anywhere else. There wasn’t anywhere else to go, we had some Aussies in Solomons, they’d been pulled out I wanted to go back to New Guinea.

I got into this volunteer unit for a six weeks job, just a break to get away from here and six weeks led to 12 months.

A counter radar measure unit

to locate Japanese radar, there’s a unit that had been training, had a house in Ipswich for two years and the second officer of this had contracted Blackwater fever and he wasn’t allowed to go into any tropical area and the place we were going was

an island called Long Island which is off the north coast of New Guinea to test out the equipment, this counter radar, we had sets that could locate contact Japanese radar and they wanted to try it out so I volunteered for that.

Yes in conjunction with the Americans

It was Field Unit 12 AMF but it was also known as Section 22 GH

Yes very much so I’ve got my orders telling me ordering me, telling everything secret and signed, by order General MacArthur.

No they

wanted someone that had could lead someone to a certain position you know, could lead someone to set up equipment to try and contact enemy radar, my main job was to lead them there to get the group there which remained my job all the time I was never involved in actually tracking Jap radar.

No, the group who were learning to operate radar that could locate other radar and they’d been there since I think, sometime in ’42. I have their history with me but as I say, the officer who had been with them couldn’t go on this tryout incident

they were going to do so that’s where I came in and I was bit of an outsider, and they regarded me like that. I had had training in you know, reaching places by map reference and I got the job.

We were sent to

Hollandia which is on the border of Dutch New Guinea and British New Guinea and set up there waiting for the Philippines campaign to start with the Americans we were under the GHQ headquarters was 20 miles away where MacArthur’s headquarters were and we came under his control.

All Americans from now on.

We were the only Australian land unit up in the Philippines at any time.

Sixteen of us.

At where?

We were there for about 5 or 6 weeks,

4,5,6 weeks I think and got on a ship and started for Lati, the island of Lati, there for a while and then were sent up to Mindoro, Mindoro did a couple of little islands, Elin and Marinduque

Soon as

I went forward to establish a camp and went and picked this little island which is three miles off the coast, I thought this will be all right, as I say I measured the height, how I did it I don’t know, must have got it from a map; it was seven hundred and sixty feet high and the remainder of my group came

about three days later and set up camp there and set up location, radar location sets.

Radar will pick up another radar within…. so long as there’s, when I say line of sight, so long as there isn’t a big mountain in between and then you can, by cross bearings from here, could locate that.

We’d move and get a cross bearing and check again with another cross bearing and say, “There’s a radar.” By cross bearings.

Send all that information back to the GHQ headquarters who’d then I presume send out to their bombing units

and wipe that off, send a bombing sortie out for it.

Well you could tell, these sets could pick up the distance and you could pinpoint on a map, you would draw a line and then do the same exercise from a different location and get a line where they intersect and as a double check

do another one and say, “Right there’s a radar there.” and on a map you could locate with a pretty good degree of accuracy where a Jap radar was set up and that information was passed on to GHQ headquarters who would send it down to their nearest air base

but we never knew what happened after that, we just passed that information on and I think in one place we had 428 different location bearings, that’s from the island of Marinduque which is reaching right into the whole of the Philippines

No, such a relief and we were well…. food

was good , we could run up get cash if we wanted, well clothed, well fed and we had orders if we wanted LST or we wanted an aeroplane we’d get it so easy, very, very relaxing last twelve months of the war, thirteen months I think it was

No.

No, we liked our independence, we were smug that we were the only Aussies there and I could draw clothes from American PX [Post Exchange - canteen]. I remember drawing a bale of blankets once and gave it to the locals

oh the freedom of being with that was good.

Oh totally, totally different.

No, you knew you could always come back to them, you missed them of course, you missed them yes, write endearing letters to them, yes you missed them.

Oh yes, Morotai was completely taken, Balikpapan was completely taken.

Yes I went down to Balikpapan, first bunch

of my structural attachment 2/6th to the commando squadron spent a night with them

No. I was in the landing, I think I was the first Allied person ashore at Balikpapan.

This is during the Philippines, I came down from the Philippines to Balikpapan and I returned after Balikpapan back to the Philippines.

Yes, my job was to get a radar unit that the Japs had been using for three years with great success and bring it back to

MacArthur’s headquarters so that they could dissect it and see what made it tick and that is the time they found out to their embarrassment that it was one of their own that had been captured in Corrigedor.

No, it’s a mobile thing that can be broken up and put in packs carried by persons and assembled on site when…. no there was nothing needed. Fuel was the heaviest thing, worked on a generator and that was split up into different parts, everyone

had a load to carry.

We weren’t troubled by Japanese, we saw Japanese being captured and taken away. I did a patrol once, the locals

complained that they were being harassed by Japs and they were coming in stealing their food and would I please make a patrol so I thought, “All right.” and went out on a four day patrol, took two people and a Filipino guide with me, found nothing, found a great big torpedo, huge thing, must have been thirteen feet I think unexploded

but it had come ashore, but found no Japs. Another patrol I did up the coast I stripped down to underpants, put colouring dark colouring around me and went and did a patrol on a small little canoe, local native canoe and that was another

three dayer.

Well again the head man of a village had said Japs were coming up and harassing their people and I went up and saw this bloke, that’s right, I borrowed a little native canoe, I think I was by myself and dressed in a pair of American underpants,

jungle boots and a machine gun, a Tommy gun or an Owen gun I think an Owen gun and went up the coast but couldn’t find anything. In Marinduque something that tickled me later on I used go to a lovely little island and I used to go down about a three hour

trek through the jungle down to a landing place and we’d get our money from there and some supplies but mainly money, I’d go down to pay the native people we had and there was a little shack right at the end of this wharf, a two-storey shack and the first time I went down there I went around it

and looked all right, looked safe and wait at the end of the wharf with the PT boat to come along with my little package and I read after the war that two people had been living there for ten months, I went down there three to four times, must have served me each time they stayed in that shack for another year after the war and that,

they finally picked them up they didn’t know war was over.

I thought, “Cripes, they could’ve potted me off there if they wanted to.” probably happy and they were hiding from their own men.

We were under American command they gave us one of their unit

designations, which was section 22 GH

“Lavish” is one word I can use to describe it, we had authority to draw on all American quartermaster stores what we wanted whether it be food or

blankets or anything at all, whereas in the Australian Army if you wanted a pair of boots you’d have to produce your old ones. First it was very, very easy to get food there was plenty of food, and a greater variety of it although you did get sick of the packs of food we called “C packs” [combat rations] from memory,

you had wishy washy….

C pack was, they even gave you razor blades from memory, the prepared foods, I think even jellies, certainly a greater variety of foods, breakfast foods for

instance, than you got on the Australian Army but sickened of them after awhile.

Oh no, you got to places as I mentioned, on Christmas Day we had turkey in Syria, no food was generally, I’ve got no complaints about the Aussie Army food whatsoever but it was different, softish food to the Americans.

They acted in bulk what an Aussie unit would take a company of people to do they’d send in a battalion, plus I remember in Mindoro they sent in I think a whole brigade of people to take one small little town, they overdid things.

To compare the two, the Americans thought they were really hard done by and no, I’d had probably more experience than the Americans that were landing in the Philippines.

Yes they kept together. I remember them lining up a road into the village of San Jose more or less a little township on Mindoro when we first landed and they were in bulk and an aeroplane could’ve come and sprayed them, caused maximum casualties, never thought spreading out, one of the key things they

teach you in the Australian Army was to spread out and don’t put yourself in a bulky position but they had a whole road, that was my first experience, I had been with them in Lati but Mindoro it pressed home, they thought might was right.

Mindoro is an island, there are seven thousand islands I think in the Philippines group and Mindoro was an island where if the Americans could set up a air base there, Manila was within bombing distance and therefore it was a crucial island to take. It’s a biggish island because I think it is about the third biggest island in the Philippines, they [the Japanese]

did their best to stop the Americans and they did this by sea power and air power but mostly sea power although there were some big air battles for Mindoro. I think the [USS] Nashville was hit in our convoys, actually hit I think the [HMAS] Australia

were hit, they were abreast with the LST I was travelling on, they were hit but the Nashville I remember distinctly that a dive bomber just dived straight onto the bridge we saw all that.

Yes, because it was level with us.

Yes.

Flying around for…. I think I said we’d left

New Guinea and I don’t thing we’d called anywhere else, we were on our way to Lati and there was the Australia and I think the Canberra that time and they were the only Australian ships, might have had some small frigates but there was certainly daily attacks, the kamikaze just come in low, you knew they weren’t going to veer off

and we saw several crash into the seas nearby, within I’d say a quarter of a mile from us.

Missed their targets, aiming weren’t good enough or the ship was zigzagging enough for them to miss, they were certainly going to crash there and as I say, at least two that I saw do their job and crashed

into war vessels.

Yes it put it out of action I think from memory.

Yes, that one hit the bridge, couldn’t have hit a worse place and I think it had stopped the ship there we did not

we didn’t stop of course.

They were new, certainly devastating to those, you wondered how many they had of these that could continue doing such a job as I said, when we landed in our destination

they had seven attempts to land supplies and to build an air strip and the first seven ships were blown out of the water, the eighth one got in at Mindoro, the Japs were determined not to let an air strip

be built there and they did not succeed.

Yes. In action

No they put a good broadside into

the bay but the main damage was done by aircraft, from aircraft carriers, they just bombed and bombed and we landed at Brown Beach or one of the name beaches but I think it was Brown Beach and I followed this column of paratroopers

5/32nd Paratroopers they were all clamming with their rifles cocked and that and I thought, “Christ they’re all bogged down waiting to see what happened!” and I just traversed there and walked past them so I think I was the first person into that village of San Jose and just looking up a book there I got the name of the person

with whom I stayed, she was a princess from a family that had been of royalty and it was the best little house in San Jose and she offered us some wine, the family offered us some wine, we had that and I slept there that night under mosquito nets but during the afternoon the Americans started to enter the town

and they were creeping each side of the road, one line was that side with their guns pointed at the house the other one…. I did a very silly thing I said, “Look out the window, come and see this, the troops have arrived the Americans have arrived.” and I yelled out “Boo!” and the next thing I got a big splatter of bullets across the thing, yes I thought I was being smart, I was ultra cocky.

Because I was first there and the people come out and said “Baga buhi” [?], a new life has come and that and welcomed us, “Ah come in here.” and we were led to the head house of this person and I think I stayed three nights there because I went to two church services, they took me to church at 6 o’clock in the morning, I’m not a Catholic but I went to their church and joined in their thanksgiving

then I thought I’d better do some work, find an island find somewhere where I can set up. I had this island in mind and had a map of the area I got someone to take me over there got a PT boat I think it was, to take me over there and drop me, surveyed the island thought, “This will do.” and come back, the rest of our group had come up by then

and we transferred to the island, I think it might be an LS, small little landing craft and there was a coral reef right around the island, you couldn’t get close to it and we manhandled our stuff and swam the stuff ashore and got to the top of the island and had plenty of guides, they hadn’t seen a friend for three years either, plenty of locals

wanted to show us the way, said wanted to go to the top, I’d met some of them a couple of days before and we set up camp there, I think we were there for three to four weeks.

We all went up to Lati

but I went ahead on reconnaissance up to Mindoro to set up a place so as they could come up with their stores and equipment. They didn’t want to come to a place where they didn’t know where they were actually going to finish up at so I did reconnaissance which was my job with that unit, my job was to put them in a place, a suitable place, look after them, get them fed and let them carry out their

radar business.

Oh I was on several islands as I said “New life had come” the word was “Baga buhi ungadadalaga.” [phonetic] yes

Yes yes, welcoming me, of course you let someone down really because you can’t give them

anything. What we travelled a lot with was plenty of medicine for them, they all had malaria, all had malnutrition and all had gangrenous things, you could see bones in their legs and bones in their arms just…. yaws, they call it yaws, the flesh is eaten away and just leaves the bone there so you dust that with Sulphanilamide drugs that the Americans had, we wouldn’t have seen them in New Guinea, the Americans had

them, dust that and give them a little eyeglass full of pure alcohol, their eyes would blink, we got people we started off treating twenty, thirty, forty and finished off queues of two hundred not so much getting any of their injuries done but to get the little nip of alcohol afterwards, it was pure alcohol, medicinal alcohol,

they’re good drinkers the Filipinos.

Good, good of course we were treated as liberators and we had food which we’d share with them as I said, we had this medical clinic any place we’d go to oh no, good.

Yes, see

they were an American colony until 1895 or a Spanish colony until then and they all had American schools, had no trouble whatsoever.

You never a hundred percent trusted them,

I had an excellent boy or guide that would die for me, he went out in patrol this one, might be a bit difficult you know, they might kill us he said, “If you die I die.” simple as that and I tried to contact him

after the war to try you know and do something for him and his village. He disappeared into a village that I didn’t know, the name was Setapinohalpina, dressed him up in Aussie clothes, gave him a beret and an Aussie shirt and Aussie shorts you know, American jungle boots which he liked but I used to take him out on patrol with me, a good boy.

Hard to judge, I’d say anything between 18 to 25.

Had a guide as soon as I got to Mindoro, smart little chap, David Santos, and he left us for some reason, had him for about two months, he recommended or got this other

guide from ANGAU [Australia New Guinea Administrative Unit] it was called no not ANGAU, the civil administration just like they’re doing now in Iraq, the civil administration moved in and I went along and got this chap and he moved in with us and built himself a bark bed you know, from trees and leaves and that and

slept at the bottom of my bed all the time. If I had a similar thing, but he was right next to me, gave him an Owen gun and any patrol that we went on he’d proudly bring his Owen gun and he was a wonderful chap I was very, very sorry to see him go, sponsored him to come to Australia if I could have got him.

He got paid yes

no idea what it was but I had an open chest as far as money was concerned but they were on a fixed rate of, I can’t think of what, the civil administrators peak hour thing was the Philippines civil administration unit and we got it through him but they laid out rates that we should pay the people and food was the big thing they were fed all the time

at one stage we had up to 160 people on the payroll was hard to keep up with them.

I did through an arm called Peak Hour [?] Philippines Civil Administration Unit

Yeah well when I say up to a hundred, if we moved camp which we did several times to get to different locations

and different bearings and things, we’d get all those carrying the stuff and setting it up place for us, probably had a permanent group of about thirty at that time, I know on the island of Elin we had sixteen but they were pleased because they hadn’t seen decent food for a while and to get a bit of money, being with friends and not having to hide.

Cash, I put it in their hand, brand new silver dollars, bags of silver dollars

Well when I say silver dollars, we got some pesos as well, they were peso notes,

they were all silver dollars, I could go along and say I want so much, sign for it at American headquarters, get it.

No. don’t think so no, we had guns they didn’t, I don’t think it worried us.

No. never

Owen guns I think our war equipment, you got those in New Guinea I remember that Percy Spender was the Minister for War and I was at a demonstration, he brought these up and he had this Owen gun and it was shown on

cinema in Sydney and he fired this gun and didn’t know it recoiled and didn’t have much of a recoil and this barrel went up in the air and that started us.

Man from Wollongong, from BHP Anglo Aussie steel, Australian

steel by the name of Owen, hence the name Owen gun, it was only three parts - a stock, a barrel and the firing pin and you could take the stock off and sport it to that thing, it was such a delight and so much easier to use. I think .27 bullet as against the pistol of a

.38 or .45 so you could carry more bullets if you were doing a patrol, you swing it around your neck and forget about it, oh no they were excellent things and in the jungle that was all you want, you don’t want any fighting shoot someone 200 hundred yards away you wanted something you could turn the corner and it could be of use to you.

Beautiful joy, lovely joy.

No they had Tommy guns, it was only my little group that created a lot of interest. I also had a Thompson machine gun, it’s heavy stock, that was a .45.

No, all Australians.

Yes from different walks of life.

I remember all of them, we had a reunion four or five years ago in Sydney I think, people come from Western Australia, South Australia, Queensland, I organised that and we had a dinner at the Occidental Hotel in town.

Firstly they had to volunteer, secondly it was only temporary, they intended it to be around Australia but they had a try out on this island, Long Island which by all accounts was a dismal failure for different reasons and they come and licked their wounds again and they decided to use them with the Americans and use American radar equipment

As far as I know we were the only Australian land forces in the Philippines, I do not know of any others and as I’ve said there were some Aussie pilots around but don’t know of any land forces and Aussie

Navy ships of course were around.

Yes we were curious - didn’t know what to make of us and we kept it that way, we liked being different to them.

Yes I did, yes we did.

Oh I don’t know,

most of the troops that went up in the Philippines came straight from the States, they didn’t go through New Guinea, didn’t go to the Solomons, they went straight from the States to the Philippines and they didn’t know, they were like little farm boys a lot of them, they didn’t know what to do and they were pressed [drafted], whereas the Aussie were, the AIF were volunteer, they were just pressed serviceman, a lot

of unhappy boys, but they were homesick boys the Americans, a lot of them you know unless you get a tough unit…. no we felt superior to them a) that we were volunteers firstly b) we were trained and Americans depended on

you know force rather than quality I think, boosting our ego up.

No. There were some Sea Bees and some navy personnel American navy personnel, PT boys were excellent, no not many

no, we held our own.

Not with our own men, none whatsoever, in fact I was very proud of them but I remember going down to

catch a boat somewhere, some little place and they brought….the PT boat boys had picked up, captured two Japanese and brought them back and they were all really trussed up, really trussed up and I thought, “Gee they’re pretty tough on those.” and went along a few paces and two

Americans lying on the grass and they were trussed up and they both had wooden bungs in their mouth so they wouldn’t bite their tongues. I said, “Gee!” I went down and one of them rolled his eyes at me and I thought he wanted water so I bent down, got my water bottle to give and next thing it was bashed out of my hand and a chap said, “Don’t you give him anything.”

They were being charged with desertion, they just cracked under pressure and as I said they had these ugly wooden big bungs like you put in a beer keg in their mouths and really trussed up and I said, “What will happen?” He said, “They will be charged with cowardice.” I remember

this bottle being knocked out of my hand.

They were funny crowd the Americans.

How did I get the Balikpapan job?

I was in Mindoro and was summoned up to Manila. I’d been in Manila before just as it was falling and I went up to the Manila Hotel which is MacArthur’s headquarters, a squadron leader, an Australian squadron leader was attached to headquarters and some intelligence job I didn’t know said, “Hello Rose,

brought you up here would you like to do a job for us?” “Yeah.” I said, “Yeah I will do a job for you.” “One you might like for the American forces.” I said, “Oh yeah good, where?” He said, “Going down to a place near Borneo called Balikpapan.” he said. “Your boys have already been up the coast.” and I said, “Oh yeah and what am I to do?” He said, “Well we got this super, super radar set.” he said,

“They’ve been knocking our planes about a bit every week on every Thursday we seem to lose a B-24.” and I said, “Oh yeah” and he said, “We want you to get it back if you can get it up and we’ll dissect it and see what makes it tick.” I said, “Oh yes that’s good.” he said, “We’ll send you down a plane, take a jeep and a trailer and bring that stuff back

and we’ll send you a radar specialist down with you, a New Zealander, a chap called Bob Unwin, a New Zealand lieutenant.” and he said he will be able to locate and he will be able to know what’s good and what’s bad. and I said, “All right I’ll go down.” so I went down, flew down to Moratai firstly I think it was,

up on a warship to Balikpapan and waited there for a couple of days while the Americans shot up big gunfire, a lot of naval vessels, battle ships pounding into Balikpapan and how I was one of the first ashore I knew where I had this map reference,

where super, super radar set was damaging so many American planes and I got to it and it was all smashed up, quite smashed up, it was not certainly not useable and I gathered the pieces around and had a lot of spares there in a nearby cave dug in

which I got, put it in a crate and got it crated up, went back, got it crated up that was sent off in the plane that I had come down in and straight up to Manila to the GHQ, they sent a plane back for me and I stayed for another couple of weeks I think,

two or three weeks and eventually went back to Mindoro and back to went up to Manila a few weeks later and that’s when they told me they’d found the radar set was one they’d left in Corrigedor.

Oh no, it just

tickled me.

Yes they had taken. Balikpapan was an oil town in every way, luxurious houses for all their officers, for their oil company personnel officers, it was a Shell [oil company]

installation but they had barracks where their labour which were very poor there, very poor conditions, but that’s how the Dutch were in the East Indies, the life for the rich and a life for the poor with them.

Their houses

were well kept houses, probably three or four bedrooms, kitchens were well stocked with food, drink was there, saki was there, the Japs had lived well in those houses.

I think they were just offloading more troops and stores and equipment, heavy guns possibly because afterwards there was quite a bit of activity with the Australian troops, they had met quite a bit of opposition inland.

No, we softened them up and as soon as the naval guns as I said, there were seven air craft carriers there

and eleven destroyers all pounding away so that’d put the fear of hell into anybody.

Yes.

It was night time, the sky was alight, you could’ve read a newspaper but also the black smoke going way up

in the air, hundreds, hundreds of feet up even…. you see Balikpapan was oil and a good quality oil, it was said you could almost use the oil in a diesel engine straight away without being refined I doubt that but it was a…. later having been getting in the oil business the gravity of the oil was something like 48 degrees which is a very, very light oil indeed,

precious oil as far as getting petrol out of it.

It’s just a matter as in New Guinea, it’s a matter of clearing as you go whereas in New Guinea I used to

hop from one place and cut off the Japs retreating, so you had to clear island by island in the Philippines, the Philippines and in Borneo and having moved right up to Manila in the Philippines so they were clearing behind them

and Borneo was one of the big places where Japs still were and it was also a strategic place to take over so as the oil production could be resumed, it was a very rich place Borneo at that time.

That was in August from memory in ’44 yes.

’44 yes. ’45.

You knew you were on the winning side but you didn’t know how bitterly…. my idea of the job being done was the capture of Japan, was Japan to capitulate, I certainly didn’t think the job

would be finished until there was fighting in Tokyo, that was just my own concept at the time and I was hoping to be part of that.

Yes it deflated me, yes the second atom bomb I knew that it finished.

In fact the Japan actually did surrender almost immediately.

No, having started on something you like finishing it. I do.

No. There was a job three quarter done like building a house.

I suppose you put the walls up and the roof and you quit before you put the tiles down in the bathroom.

No, deflated would be the word I’d say.

Oh no, the blokes were pleased, around me pleased to be going home it was just my own personal feelings.

No.

No, I was like, the job now is to get you boys home and we sent them off in batches and that was the break up of

our unit.

Oh yes, the boys were pleased to be on their way and all laden with souvenirs of their episode, their time up in the Philippines.

Through a radio set that could pick up most places in the world. I think we listened to the States, very, very powerful radio set

Yes, we used to hear that

but I think we were also in receipt of American Stars and Stripes which was the forces’ newspaper although I can’t see how we would’ve got them there but….

Yes, near Iwo Jima it was, Okinawa was….

Oh it’s like setting your sights on something.

I thought we would finish up in Japan and that would be the end of the war, I don’t know why it was always in the back of my mind and I think a lot of people thought that cos we’d been pushing back ever since New Guinea in 1942

and pushing back and pushing back and I thought when we pushed right back to Luzon in the Philippines, I thought we’d continue pushing, it was such a shock that the war should be abbreviated by something like an atomic bomb, it wasn’t in your mind, you thought you keep on going, the momentum was there, meant that it would take us right up to Tokyo.

Yes I thought so, I thought it was conquest, one bloke’s beaten and the other one’s not, the other’s the conqueror

Not a game, well it was a pleasant game when you were winning which we were, which the Allies were, but I thought this momentum would keep on, would finally finish.

The idea in the back of my head that Tokyo would be the final and they’d surrender and that was my ideal of the end of the war, what I thought would happen.

Yes, like once Berlin fell in the European war you thought, “Oh well that’s the end.”

Well it came as a tremendous shock to everyone I thought, “Geez what a weapon!” When the second one came see I thought, “Well they can’t keep on doing this.” the Japs I think immediately surrendered, they might have surrendered the next day but it was finished, it was just the declaration.

We didn’t know if the Americans had a whole string of them, would keep on bombing, bombing, bombing and I think the thought went through my mind, “Are they going to do this all the way?” it was a bit of shock, well quite a shock when the Japs gave in after cos’ their previous conduct had shown in a lot of places

that they fought to the death, but anything, giving in was a dishonour.

Well it made our unit obsolete yes, certainly lot of people that was just evidently the selfish thought of mine, nothing else.

Probably yes, say yes definitely.

Movement, seeing different places, different surroundings, not in any one place for any length of time, having complete freedom over what we did. As I said if we wanted a plane for something we had

the authority to get one, it was just such a relief after New Guinea I think where you were confined and things were more difficult, possibly that’s why I myself felt that it was not a piece of cake but it was certainly a definite improvement over….

No. See the other boys I was with, it was their first adventure into war from Australia. I had been in the Middle East and New Guinea before, that’s why they were pleased the war was over, we now go home finished.

It was sort of a roller coaster ride, I’d say that was still with me I wasn’t enamoured, didn’t jump up for joy or anything like that.

Well there was work to be done. I wanted to get our chaps

back to Aussie as soon as I could. I think they started to go in a week after that, the first batch went. I think they went in three batches, flew up to Manila and flew from Manila I think down to Lae, I stayed behind with two others and packed up our stuff

and got our stuff crated up and waited for a Liberty Ship to come and pick us up and it did with all our boxes, I think there about 48 crates by the time I finished.

Oh yes I applied for that and

it was denied me, whether I didn’t get an answer or whether they said no you can’t…. but being the only AIF contingent up in the Philippines and well I thought, “Well there is a chance that the Australians can be represented.” but there were Aussies there, Aussie naval personnel there and represented

Australia, I thought there is a chance take it, and being on MacArthur’s headquarters I thought you know, it might help but no it didn’t I would have very much liked to have been up there for the surrender.

Well what he did he got the forces to protect Australia firstly and that was quite a battle I understand because the war was still on in Europe, in my time, well history shows that he did not lose a battle,

that everything he took on… therefore he was a good calculator, calculated of men, calculated of material, not one of ….his process of leap frogging was brilliant by cutting off Japanese troops, his ability to get the ships,

the aeroplanes that he wanted to do a job, main thing is success, if you’re successful you’ve got all the camp followers in the world with you ,once you drop like in any football team they’re quick to drop off you, just the same success and having seen him and been associated with his headquarters I thought he was a brilliant

tactician, very aloof man evidently a very vain man, step off and just marked the crease of his trousers as he got off.

I think that might have been in Mindoro but I can’t remember that occasion, I’ve seen him land twice, once waiting in

and beautifully dressed up and getting his trousers…. just waded ashore. The other one stepping ashore I can’t remember, I wasn’t up when…. the first could have been Manila when he retuned to the same suite of rooms that he lived in before the war, he had the whole top floor

of the Manila hotel where he lived with his wife and child before the war and his first thing was to clear that and that was his headquarters in the same suite as he had.

Oh he’s a glamour boy, but you have to sell yourself to be great, you have to some characteristic, this is going back to Alexander

the Great or Genghis Khan any of those you have to have a personality that matches your deeds and he certainly had them as did Winston Churchill.

Yes, I contacted the headquarters in Manila, this is from memory and said there were X of us, there were three us, I’d be ready to move on a certain date, shipment would be preferred

because I said we had a lot of equipment, even took cases of their special rations with me and had a jeep and a trailer so sea would be the way to move, they eventually informed me that the ship The James D Phelan was the name, an LST.

The James D Phelan would be arriving on or about and be ready down at the embarkation point, load our stuff, this is in Mindoro, their port it was San Jose, and this I did, transported everything down in the jeep and the trailer and ship arrived more or less on time, taken onboard, stowed,

we had cabins as a Liberty Ship we leisurely made our way down from the Philippines, called at Lae and then called at Hollandia where we set off from north of New Guinea, Lae then Port Moresby.

No they weren’t, they were built quickly, but I think they carried sixteen passengers but they built, Chrysler built them of course in the States, they used to turn out 1.28 or something a day, they had two types, Liberty and Victory, Victory I think was solely a

goods cargo and the Liberties had sixteen or something passengers, I think that was the difference, about the same size.

Nine thousand tons I think, guessing.

Yes, war was finished, war was finished. Food was excellent, I think you ate twice a day, American ships mainly had two meals a day but the food was good.

No. I can’t remember any. Mindoro was Jap free

as far as I know, San Jose was the big port there

I stayed one night actually, we landed and went to a transit camp, a big transit camp with Australian troops and I produced my orders and said, “We’ve come down from

the Philippines.” and said, “We’ve been attached to US forces in the Philippines we’d like to get back to Aussie as soon as possible, I don’t know how many were in the camp or what the procedure was.” he said, “Oh yeah, that will be about three to four weeks.” I said, “No.” I said, “Gee why is it that long?” He said, “Because there are others before you.”

and I thought for a while and I was thinking what would I do with a jeep and trailer and who I’d give it to when I got home.

Took it from the Philippines on the Liberty Ship and then landed with our goods, that’s the way we transported all our crates.

No, they had no idea what we had,

that’s what I say this deliberate non-mixing with the American forces, we kept aloof for ourselves with an order I could go along to an ordnance setup in the Philippines and, “Give me a trailer.” as simple as that, I had a jeep as a battle wagon as they call them, but as I say the orders we had

were just out of this world for obtaining equipment. Anyhow it finished up it was an RSM I was talking to, a regimental sergeant major, “Look I’ve got two boys and myself, we want to get back to Aussie as fast as I can, can you use a jeep and a trailer?” His eyes almost rolled, “Be ready at 6 o’clock in the morning.” and we were on a plane

which I just checked in that little book there, we landed at Cairns and Brisbane. The ship brought our stores to Sydney just so I wasn’t encumbered with them, had a night in Brisbane and caught the train down from Brisbane again on my pass, Brisbane to Sydney,

end of the war for me then took a month off and reported in.

I went back to my home which was in Queenscliff at the end of Manly Beach right opposite the surf. I don’t know what I did, I just poked around until I received word from the

baggage shipment part where I knew somebody that our crates were arriving on such and such a date, got them delivered to my home, put them all in the backyard ,these big crates of stuff had clothes and food and equipment and everything and sorted those out in the little packs of things, sorted them out in sixteen lots, I

think there were sixteen of us left and lived all over Australia and did them up in boxes, got boxes and got the army to pick them up and dispatch them to these boys’ homes addresses and they each got a box of what was left of our stores in the Philippines.

No I can’t.

No. War was finished. Finished.

I wanted to start mixing up with people for awhile. I went down the south coast to Eden and got on a trawler for awhile and wound my way

back slowly to Sydney.

Felt like being alone I think. Felt like being alone. Catching flathead [fish] too out of Eden, geez big fellows, no I just felt like being alone that’s all, just probably

didn’t want to rush back into civilisation again or normality and took a month off and then reported back exactly a month later.

Well is was about two weeks I think, I think it was, or ten days, went out to Marrickville

which was the discharge centre in Sydney and I was out in ten days

No. Don’t think so, it might have crossed my mind a couple of times but don’t think so.

No. I don’t think, again I hadn’t noticed.

You don’t sort of compare things, well I don’t you know, you take things as they are and I don’t think Australia had changed, the only thing that upset me once on a leave I was in the Carlton Hotel up in the lounge where they serve drinks for two hours a day and there’s an old girlfriend of mine walked past with an American

and that upset me, I was about to call out and this American came and took her arm she looked up at him with a winning smile and I thought, “Gee whiz.” yes that was just one little thing you remember.

Good experience.

None whatsoever,

none whatsoever.

I’m not for or against it, it’s just to me something that happens, war has been going ever since our civilisation as we know it

was started and it will continue to go on, people get big ideas, they get above their heads, they get grandiose ideas, you always get jealous men, you always get men who want power, it doesn’t matter, we were here in 2003 you get I think the same state of the world there.

I’ve never thought of it that way, I just think of it as five or six years of my life, it was

a very enveloping experience of different things, of things that happened, of being outside Australia, of different nationalities, of different lands.

No I don’t think so, as I say I went over to the States for awhile in early ’46.

I did see a lot I of mid-life crisis shall we say, when the war finished I was 23.

No I wasn’t…. when I say mid there were a lot of boys, a lot of chaps 18 had joined up

and their eagerness and all that, supposed I was the medium, you drew a graph and they seemed to be the ones that impressed more cos’ they were probably some of them straight from school, some of them from farms, some of them from their first job. I had knocked around the country a bit before the war which probably seasoned me, put the salt and pepper on me.

Did I?

No they never, never, things moved too quickly after the war to talk to them about it.

My son was interested, when I talk about it he wants…. I gave a diary to my

commanding officer, a resume, wrote up a history of what had happened in the Philippines to my CO who’d been recalled to Australia and eventually finished up in the Australia military mission to Washington, and he brought up only the other day, he said “You have all that write up

to Don Tier.” who was my commanding officer. I said “I’ve still got some stuff for you Alan.” he’ll be pleased to get it but I don’t think he’s ever read any of these.

No never. Once when I was coming out of the cabaret at the Trocadero was the only time because it happened to be on

when I came out, but the only dawn service, I only went to one dawn service between 1946 which would be the first and 1970 and that was in 1947 and I was in Sydney, but ’46 I was out of Australia, ’48 I was in the bush.

I think it is good,

it’s a good place, a good occasion in which to meet old friends, don’t live in the past too much, don’t live in it all the time, I missed Anzac Days til the first one, other than in 1946 was in 1970 and I think I’ve been to

each one then since then but as I’ve said once is enough because you can’t live in the past all the time, you have to move on to the future or the present make the most of your present things not just the good ol’ days and I’m quite frankly, end of a Anzac Day you know, I’m pleased the day is over.

It’s a touching day again but I’m pleased that it’s only once a year.

Marching along it does, marching along and for some reason you get light-hearted and you’re not down in the dumps, there’s a big band behind you, that’s the thing that moves you

are the people each side of you cheering thinking you’re a great big hero.

Oh yes always.

I don’t go to the dawn service, I’m in a group that lays a wreath on the Cenotaph after the dawn service and then we reassemble for the march that happens at eight o’clock each Anzac Day

and we lay the insignia of our badge on the Cenotaph in flowers and then we break off and meet again at 10 o’clock and do the big march, the proper march, the earlier march is just from Wynyard Park around the block to Martin Place, lay the wreath and disappear.

Reunion once a year, oh no I look forward to it, if you ask me to break that down I’ll have to sit down and work that one out, it’s a nice day

once a year, meeting blokes meeting people I can’t explain it no, I’d have to think that one over but it’s good, you feel good to march.

Australian actions early in the piece certainly occurred before the American bulk came to New Guinea, the troops that did come to New Guinea were very raw

and inexperienced and our people I think, had to teach them a lot.

I think it was necessary, yes it had to be done sometime or other, there was still quite a few

Japs left in Borneo and it was just a matter of the clearing out process and I think looking back now and comparing it to Iraq is to get the oil fields working again because they were very, very valuable oil wells.

Everyone in my unit got malaria I think it was a 100%. Quite a few dengue, I got dengue and quite few got typhus which was a very serious thing to get, could be life threatening, scrub typhus

and you get that through the tall kunai grass you go through.

No, I don’t think so. Everyone had rash and that and you’d drink water and you’d sweat it out straight away, but that wasn’t a discomfort, that could be offset by a lot of salt no, just the normal discomforts

which you must expect or come to expect there living the way you did.

The whole time I was with it certainly they had their victories early in the piece, but we knew they were tenacious

fighters and they’d fight to the end, you didn’t know what manner this would be, whether they’d set booby-traps or blow…. that’s why in New Guinea in the caves and that a lot of the clearing of Japs was done by flame throwers you know, you could not take the risk, very deceitful race the Japanese that we were in contact with the people, after I

left the unit there was a case of sixteen year old soldiers that was in an attack against the Japs and a Jap that he thought was dead or been badly wounded was feigning he was out of action and as our man walked past him he rose

behind with a bayonet and our chap happened to see them and our man had a kukri or a sharp knife and chopped his head off he fell down and this is the story in the 2/6th Commando Squadron, this sixteen year old said, “That will teach you a lesson you bastard.”

No, they were part of a plan and hopefully it fitted in there, what was done was part of a winning team like any football team you can only play a part in it, you can’t play the whole caboose.

Didn’t they think, didn’t they on Broome and….?

Because they quit on Broome completely

It should if it was my country. It’s like someone moving into your backyard or invading your house - you’d certainly take action and for any ordinary person I’d say the incentive to lift your game or improve your game.

Probably did because that’s why

coming back to Australia from the Middle East we thought, “Gee it’s on our own doorstep.” certainly got more serious.

New Guinea was an individual thing, you weren’t one of the last mass,

New Guinea was split up especially in…. the units I was in contact with split up and it was like being in a little cabin compared to being in a big dormitory, I presume it’s these things never

cross your mind at the time you know, you take it as you a soldier, if everyone queried, “Why is this and why is that?” nothing would be done, you had to have confidence in those above you and they were making the right decision.

No we coped, we were limited in food and ammunition, we were always careful about and you harboured as much as you could and you eat out I was never conscious

of being short of anything in the way of food or ammunition I never thought, “Gee, I wished something would come.” never, it could’ve happened to others.

Adequate for the occasion.

I can’t remember.

I can’t remember occasions where you sit down with a serviette tucked into you no but it was adequate.

The few times they that was necessary I

respected each other, very much so.

No.

It made….. a lot of men grew up in the war,

and broadened their outlook and it made them better men in my opinion.