Australians at War Film Archive

I was born at Coraki on the Richmond River New South Wales on the 18 June 1922 and it was a farming country.

I went to school at the local primary school at Coraki and then went to Lismore High School, very little opening for anybody from the country in occupations.

No my father had been a school teacher and he was on very poor pay so he became a general agent and auctioneer and that sort of thing in the town and

during the depression years he was a sort of pivot for people around the countryside for people to bring in papers and try and hold things together so that during the depression we scored a lot of handouts from farmers and that sort of thing. My sister was on a farm and of course I spent a lot of time riding horses and that sort of thing. Lismore High School five years, as I said

little openings for people coming from the bush so I applied for a scholarship and went to Armidale Teachers College, did a two year course there and then following that I was appointed to relief staff and I had one year of teaching at two or three schools. One of them was Kentucky South and another one was Glen Innes and

another one was a little school called Miltardies. That was interesting in the sense that it had been a settlement area from diggers back from the First World War and they went by the surname of Partridge so that my little tin pot school which I operated all alone one teacher school. I could say ‘stand up Partridge’ and all but one person would stand up because they all went by the name of Partridge.

Anyway it was sheep and wool country there and following that year I joined up and that 6 February 1942.

First of all I went to Moore Park, maybe I better say that I applied for the air force during that year when I was teaching

and they were so slow calling me up I would have liked to get into the air force but however because they were a bit slow and I thought, “Golly the war was going on.” I thought I had better do something. So I joined the army and came down to Moore Park and was drafted immediately up to Bathurst with the 9th Pioneer Training Battalion there. That was a bit of a shock to the system

because I had been a country fellow and suddenly I found myself going up in a train with a lot of rascally expressions that I hardly knew and that sort of thing. Up to Bathurst fairly cold in corrugated iron huts and the sergeant major would get a stick out in the morning and go along the corrugations and bawl out, ‘”Drop your cocks and grab your socks and get out on parade.”

That was interesting because if a dispute arose between a couple of fellows they would give them boxing gloves and take them down to the boxing ring.

No when I was at Moore Park I said I would like to get into the artillery? and they said, “Well you tell them up at Bathurst.” When I get up to Bathurst nobody asked me what I wanted to do or anything else so I just drafted from there.

It was soon discovered that having been a teacher I ought to be able to take some physical education. About the third or fourth morning out they said, “Fall out Allison, Private Allison, you take over the squad.” Out of the blue I had to take this mob and put them through some physical workouts.

All that went off OK there was one day when we were not being properly fed and the boys decided to jack up. It was interesting there that the captain on deck said to the sergeant major, “Put them under arrest.” so the sergeant major said, “You are all under arrest.”

and that was that and we had a good meal that night. I think it was there, it must have been meningitis about two or three people went down with meningitis and I experienced the thought of doing night duty just outside a quarantined area right through the bleak part of the night and that was kind of new to me.

It probably would have been about three months I think.

From there still as part of this training outfit we were sent to Dubbo. We were camped at Dubbo where the present zoo is. Interesting enough when I got with the 2/2nd Pioneers later one of the guys in it, Wally Baird came

from the family that owned the property of the Dubbo Zoo and point of fact we were camped right where later on I had encountered this guy who had a bit of a stake in the zoo property. All I can remember there it was pretty jolly hot. I can remember lining up for the taps and tabs, the injections they give you to make sure you don’t get all sorts of diseases

and blokes were going over fainting in the queue because it was so darn hot.

That only lasted six to eight weeks or something like that and that was Dubbo. Then the 9th Pioneer Trainee Battalion as far as I was concerned was finished at that stage and we were ready to be posted and they considered we were ready because we were trained and that we could do a few things.

At that stage I was posted to Wagga with the 2/2nd Australian Pioneer Battalion. First of all we camped in the showground at Wagga and we were the first troops into Wagga.

I think we went in there about 13 June 1942

and point of fact the battalion had been reformed there on 1st June 1942. Before that the 2/2nd went overseas and they were in Syria, Merdjayoun and Damour I think it was and they lost about fifty two fellows and about seventy two casualties there battling it out over five weeks with the Vichy French

and anyway that was to their success. I can remember the colonel we had later who had the reputation of being pretty aggressive and I don’t know but he sort of fought his way into Merdjayoun so goes the story but I wasn’t there with a tank attack gun you know a personal tank attack gun, I will tell you more about that later. They came out of that successfully

but then it was a case of come back to Australia because Curtin the Prime Minister had said ‘we want more protection back in Australia’ because things were hotting up in Australia then with the different incidents round about. May/June I think was the Coral Sea and Midway they were two big events of course that was going to stall the Japanese

invasion into New Guinea but as far as we were concerned the battalion was reformed after it had left Syria, came back they were put aboard the Orchadies and not knowing their destination they were dropped in Java except for the baggage party. There are eight hundred and fifty soldiers went in there with only the ammunition

they carried with no supplies, no transport, nothing because they became prisoners in no time. I think something like only two hundred and fifty odd came out of that later on, that was the first. The baggage party had come back to Australia and became the beginnings of the reformation of the battalion again and that is when I joined them in June of 1942.

The general outline was we were supposed to be training for the Middle East

and it would be about September of that year we were sent over to Western Australia because of the threats to Broome and Darwin and we went over there for about three or four months. Most of the time we were inland from Carnarvon and then down to Perth. Perth was only about six weeks still continued our

bits of training there then from Perth back to Victoria and it took us twelve days to get across the desert because the train in front of us had broken down and they had to build a bit of a line around it. We went to Seymour in Victoria and we there only for a limited time, then up to Woodford in Queensland again only for a limited time

and then up to the Atherton Tableland to really prepare for going to New Guinea and that is when we sort of a military association with the parachute regiment from the United States and this was the 503rd Parachute Regiment.

We trained with them in that they would do airdrops and we would sort of reconcile things on the ground and we went from there up to New Guinea.

When did we go to New Guinea? That had to have been around July, I could give you the detail later of that

year 1942 and I was up there until February 1943 [actually July 43 to Feb 44].

First of all to Moresby for only for about a month and did a bit of training there. From there we are going to be air lifted up to a place called Tsili Tsili and from there we had to do an unusual march

over some great mountains to join up with some field engineers that had sent down a number of floats that were joined up to allow us to get over the Markham River. It was a case of set up the airstrip for the 7th Division and we were first there and had to dig in for a bit and I will tell you more later and then into the back of Lae. The operation became

that of taking Lae so the whole of the advance became up the route to Lae. I would hardly call it dignified by a road but it was interesting to see all the unfortunate refugees coming back. That was followed by pushing us up the valley back to Nadzab where the airstrip was and we were air lifted to a place called Kaiapit

and only just temporarily there and then up to a place called Dumpu in the Ramu Valley now and the two join up. Our operation from Ramu was to prevent the Japanese coming down from Madang on the north side of New Guinea and they were making some headway and it was up to us to do a lot of

patrolling and what not and see if we could stall any effort coming that way. That kept us busy for some time and eventually the battalion had to make an advance on Shaggy Ridge and I’ve got a picture of that in their and I might show it too you later. I only started on that last bit because I had gone down with malaria and had to get myself back to

Dumpu and was air lifted down to Dobadura at the back of Lae. I had six weeks there of recovery from MT, malaria and jaundice and just before I got out of that the battalion had come back to Australia. I came back then I had a few weeks with them and I went down with malaria again and into Cairns for a couple of weeks.

Then the idea was to go to Trinity Beach to take on amphibious training, this was obviously for a landing which was in the nature of Borneo which would came up later of course. Because my lieutenant had run into trouble

and I had to take the platoon up through all that that I have been telling you about in New Guinea, they must have thought I was worthy enough to send off to an officers training school so that was down to Seymour in Victoria and that might have lasted two months or so. I qualified from that and was commissioned and then put to Australian

reinforcements, which landed me at a place, called Canungra for jungle training, and came just over the border in Queensland. The general idea was that I had to be put through a course over a twenty eight day course that they were running, it was preparation jungle training, pretty accentuated real jungle training over twenty eight days. Then blokes like myself would have to take on twenty eight

recruits and put them through the training. This was getting a bit wearying and we could see our future was going to be at Canungra and the war is happening away up there. We studied the notice boards and ‘Do you want to join up with Z Force?” or “Paratroop regiment’ or ‘Go to the RAAF’ [Royal Australian Air Force] were looking for it or ‘The British Army in India.” We had a couple

of weekends down in Brisbane to be looked over and one of them was in connection with the British Army in India. I didn’t think any more about it and we enjoyed the weekend and got back there. After that I was posted to Moratai to take over the charge with another chap of the running of the reinforcement depot the 1st Australian Reinforcement Depot at Moratai.

I was only there for about four to five weeks and the Borneo show was due to come on and my battalion in the meantime had come up and taken post on that island at Moratai and I couldn’t get back to them because I was tied up on this job that they had given me. Suddenly I got notice to return to Australia for movement to India which horrified me of course but

back I came to Australia and I was given ten days leave and I had about five of them and got recalled because there was an American troop ship due to pull into Melbourne so I had to thump an air ride

down to Melbourne. I got up to Amberley airbase and used by thumb got down to Melbourne joined this WF Hayes, great big troopship full of Americans with ninety Australian lieutenants who had been selected to go to India because they wanted to train a number of recruits coming out from England in

India because they wanted jungle experience. There were seventy of us went aboard that particular boat, it called at Fremantle and we stopped through overnight there. That appeal to them too much because we were supposed to be confined below deck for ten days but it got so hot we had to get out of that and then to Calcutta.

I went down with malaria straight off and then to a place called Lullabihar in Bihar State. I joined the 2nd Battalion of the Queens Royal Regiment. They were being reformed having come out of Burma. The Burma operation was drawing near to an end when they recalled and mind you they had suffered a big number of

casualties and illness got them riddled so Tenets had to withdraw from there and they were an amazing crowd and I hope to tell you more about them. We reformed and we were posted to Poona not very far from Bombay and the unit was given the charge of internal security

with a special reference to Bombay which meant that if Bombay got out of control at all it was up to our battalion to try and get down there and settle things down.

Under British command yes so I spent a year or so with them. Two occasions we had to get down to Bombay to

help out because of the Muslims and the Indian Hindus didn’t like one another very much. With the quit India atmosphere on British Raj we have finished with them, so the Muslims didn’t like the British nor did the Hindus. We copped it both ways as far as that goes but I was

made the high officer of the battalion then and I was at the Bombay Police Station for some little time on one of these occasions. Then it was back to Poona when things had settled down and of course we had a training series there where we trained in the western gaps. One of my jobs was to try to find an alternative route

supposing that the road between Bombay and Poona became closed in some way or other through military activities I was supposed to find another route down so I went off with a Jeep and a driver and that was a bit of an adventure that I might tell you about later. I finished up there when the atomic bomb went up in Japan.

It was a case of what do you do with the unit and what do you do with Jack so I was made the educational officer for the unit. That meant that I had to first of all fit the place out and find out what talent we had for teaching English and Maths were going to be the big scores. They gave me three thousand rupees and I got down to Bombay and had a good time buy some books

which were pretty helpful. Then that carried us through to the end of the time but we still maintained training of course for military purposes but in fact it had been for the retaking of Singapore and after a while we had been given amphibious training on a Lake Vaseler there in India and all this was finished when the bomb went off so

we continued just to do normal training. I could have been demobbed in England but the thought of getting back to Australia would have taken a whole year’s waiting and of course we hadn’t seen that much of home so civy street was starting to look pretty good and we decided to come back to Melbourne. We came back here in August and I think I went

out about 27 August 1946 or something back home. Then I was on the officers’ retired list because they kept me there for some years I had to put in my name every year.

CRTS was set up as a training arrangement.

Commonwealth Training Scheme set up to allow for training of people who had come back from the war and needed to get back into professions or trades or whatever.

First of all I had taught at Kyogle a little bit but not for a great length of time and I taught out the year there.

Yes back to teaching and then I opted to do a course at Sydney Uni, I did an arts course and while I was on that I was teaching English at

one of the tech schools in Sydney near Broadway and I would teach English there at night. I remember it horrified me when television was coming to Australia and in the room next door to where I was everybody was getting the low down on what television was all about and here I am in here talking English and I knew I wanted to be

in that other room.

That was pretty soon after the war. At the same time I was also doing evening school teaching at Chatswood but apart from that I was attending Sydney Uni and doing an arts course, which was rather comfortable over three years I think it, was.

Following that I went back to teaching of course and I taught at Manly Boys High School and I was there for only two years and they must have been running a bit thin on staff in English at Sydney Teacher’s College so they wanted to collar me to go over and do a bit of teaching there. I then spent thirty years

at Sydney Teacher’s College and it became Sydney Institute and Sydney CAE and I spent thirty years working in that direction.

Yes and in fact I married one of my students Barbara is about thirteen years younger than me.

Five kids.

Two boys and three girls, one has just gone off to Canada and he is a teacher and he’s gone off to do an exchange.

It was a farming district and the farms were all round about it. My father had a share farmer on a little bit of a farm across the river from there and it was very much a little village really and my sister was on a farm nearby. It was well known for its floods and

it was the junction of two rivers and floods would come up there and cause a lot of havoc from time to time. I liked horses and I used to exercise horses for nearby farmers from time to time.

No not really I would be handy about from time to time and I did some of the not so pleasant things

I’d do a bit of duck shooting and chasing rabbits and that sort of thing.

It is pretty normal to own a pee rifle or something just a little twenty two and I had a very good friend there and his particular family were right into hunting, fishing and shooting

and I used to knock about with him a bit. We had some wonderful fishing excursions because they would go to outlandish places down the coast like Diggers Camp where we would fish night after night until the moon came up or whatever and carry back some beauties because they knew all about it and they would take me duck shooting which later on I guess I regretted. I remember

I am not too proud of the fact that I knocked a few wild ducks out of the sky.

My secondary schooling was at Lismore High School and people would go to Lismore to shop and the road wasn’t that good in those days but I used to have to

travel up and down from Coraki on the bus and I would get home about five o’clock and I would have to leave at about eight o’clock in the morning. When the floods came up we wouldn’t be able to get there or otherwise we would be at school and we were told ‘ok you have to bail out the waters are coming up get out’ of course it appealed to a lot of kids so there was that sort of thing happening.

Nil. My father had a pushbike and he would

push his way around but he was the secretary of the Agricultural Society and that meant that he turned on the local show pretty well because my sister would have to be taken in hand and we would have to prepare all the judges books and they gave us a little outfit like that and I was just knocking

about enjoying the sideshows and things because I was only a bit of a kid then.

My father’s family, getting into grandparents now. They came out from England on my fathers side and first of all attempted gold mining up above the border of Queensland

it proved unsuccessful and then he set up a bit of a business a butcher’s shop and I think the Cobb and Co used to call traveling north to Glen Innes and they would call at his little outfit to be reset for the next leg of the Cobb and Co journey. He then came down to Drake, another mining area and he took a hotel there

and then after that he was at a hotel at Tenterfield. My father was trekking in about in behind that until he realised he would have to do something with his life and he trained for teaching and he had to teach himself really. He was taken in 1900 as one of the naughty boys and they call them

naughty because of 1900 anyway after that he became a teacher and as I say other things he had to do.

My grandparents no not all. On my mother’s side I do recall a grandma

yes and she spent most of her time at Lismore and Lismore is just above Coraki and periodically we would see a little bit of her.

No he had asthma and he couldn’t be taken on no.

What sort of upbringing would it have been for my father.

The British Empire was something to me in the sense that you would see the flags around and at school you would have to get out there and salute the Queen and all that sort of thing and it all seemed to mean something.

I sort of understood how Australia had sent troops over to the First World War and we could have stayed quite wide of that but there was quite enough sentiment in the 1920’s/30’s that would have said to me that you know the old Brits over there have got something going for them and I hope they take some interest in this good outlining part of the

globe because we are only a bit of an island way down there with the kangaroos jumping about.

Playing tennis I use to play tennis. I don’t know if there was anything very distinctive because I was too light a build to enjoy football

and on the academic side I liked English, History and Science I could have pushed a bit in Science I suppose but I didn’t.

Influential, strange to say I suppose the principal who had very little to do with me

but I had gone down with whooping cough in my final year of high school and he tried to put me on line in what to read up on and he tried to do something about it, it was a fellowship interest that caught me. I had other teachers that I would almost like to forget about they were a breezy lot. There was one guy I used to meet surfing down at Evans Head

not far away where we used to often go at Christmas time for a week or two and it was good to catch up with him he was quite a friendly sort of a bird. Strange to say the principal I was talking about at Lismore High School he was as a retread taken onto the staff of Manly Boys High, here am I on the same staff as the guy who had been teaching me earlier on

of course and that was a curious state of affairs.

We did a very very general course it didn’t hone in on it Australia half enough I recon.

I suppose most of what I learnt about the First World War was what I did in the way of reading afterwards. I think history teaching in those days was pretty much a matter of ‘here is the dope get the dope under your belt and be able to regurgitate it and you are in business.” Nowadays of course there is a totally different way of handling it. They very often put manuscripts in front of you and say ‘this had

to be signed by the Japanese in the presence of MacArthur’ or something on the present world war, World War II I mean and things like that would never have occurred in my teaching time in relation to the First World War.

Only one sister who is older than myself and still living in Coraki.

She went through Lismore High School but she was almost out the other end when I started.

I went home in the evenings yes and it was always a trip up to school and back again. In fact that was a bit of block on these sports undertakings and studying and that sort of thing because I would be away at eight o’clock in the morning.

I would enjoy a swim in the river, which was down in front, and the boats playing the river from Sydney used to come up. My father knew the skipper of the Nimbin, I think it later on got sunk but as it was coming up the river it would give a toot as it passed our house on the banks of the river and Dad would flash the lights of the house in answer to the blast we had.

Only that swaggies were quite common coming through the district and as far as putting goods on our table I can remember having to go across the road to the butter factory to pick up some pigs trotters and that sort of thing.

Living was very simple as far as what you ate; vegetables and fruits were usually commodities and that sort of thing.

I can’t remember there would be sandwiches and a bit of fruit.

She was a good cook

in those days it was a case of fuel up the stove and cutting wood out in the backyard. We had some fowls running about that we would have to knock the head off now and again so all of us contributed to putting something on the table. She quite often would have some sweets or a damper was the thing she could make and it wouldn’t cost a lot. Talking

of the show, when the show would come on annually and she would be charge of what they called the tea tent because it was the only way of getting a cup of tea was being in this big outfit where our copper the great big outdoor copper the big outdoor business like this, had to be fuelled up to be able to provide the hot water and so she got involved with that sort of thing.

My father had some funny experiences because he had to collect the rent from the different sideshows and he was chased by a fellow with an axe one time not wishing to pay up things could be a bit lively. We had some money go astray because somebody received the takings at one point and

had to be pursued by police before he got to the casino, which they caught up with.

We had lamps but were didn’t have any electricity no.

Just with good lamp. When it came to for instance later on when I was teaching and I was teaching at that little school and I was in the wool country

they had the Alladin lamp there, it was pretty good to me and that lamp throws quite a good light and I got on fine with that one. We made out all right with torches and things and the old ice chests, you’ve seen the old ice chest where they put a lump of ice in because we didn’t have any refrigerators.

No but I will tell you what I was interested in cricket.

One of our neighbours not very far away had a wireless they called them a wireless and I would go over there and listen to the broadcast coming from England when they use to tap something on the desk when the bloke was supposed to have hit a six and it would all come through in the telegram, what’s his name

he died a few years, he was one of these great guys, and I have lost his name.

Yes that is right I think it was. Of course one of them would carry on while he was more or less under the table taking a bit of a snooze if you could gain something because the cricket went on all through the night. I used to enjoy keeping up with the cricket but not on our radio.

I think I was a first rate idler, I can’t remember doing anything brilliant at all if there was something happening I might. For instance, sugar cane I took on a bit of a vacation slashing of cane

and I don’t suppose I did anything except being a general help around the place.

There was nothing much happening so there was quite often a cricket competition,

the hillies versus the townies. We used to live on the hill section of the town and the townies were down in the valley as it were towards the river going north and we would have a weekend match. Ours would be low key because the cricketers would come on on a concrete pitch great stuff.

It was interesting because some pretty good cricketers came from there and it was a great hockey district.

Nothing there at all. Strange to say when I came down to Sydney I was first of all living at Glebe and a army friend of mine from the 2/2nd Pioneers

he was very keen on hockey and he said, “You had better come along and play with us.” I started playing hockey for Eastwood not knowing where Eastwood was in Sydney. I liked the hockey there and I played hockey in India so I did like a bit of hockey.

With the?

Yes. I loved the sea it was a case of twenty odd miles and we could get a bus down and quite often at Christmas time my mother, my sister and I would be staying at a kind of a boarding house

there and my Dad would come down at the weekend and he would come down by bus carry an old Gladstone bag full of grapes because we had some grapes in the backyard. Surfing really got me I used to love surfing and the first thing I wanted to do when I got back at the end of the war was to find my way to the sea.

Only body surfing because

surfing with a decent board had hardly come into being. In fact an uncle of mine had modelled a very light board and he had been seen surfing up there and it would only be about this long and he realised this was the way to go to have something to hang onto and I used to envy him in a way but it led me to want to get more into

body surfing I suppose.

The early years you mean? I suppose I felt I was a kind of a bit of a loner in some ways. In Coraki there might have been a couple of balls during the year,

partly religious balls and people would come in for the country for these and dress up. Even as a bit of a kid I remember they put together for the sake of the ball they put together a squad of little kids pretending to be the cricketers that were going overseas. I was a great bowler

but dressed up in stuff.

Yes my mother was an organist at the local church and my father he would conduct the choir in one or two places that he went to

yes church going was a regular thing.

Music nil I am afraid and that is probably why I married somebody who could play the piano and the organ. My mother was a very good pianist.

As from Coraki direction you mean early years?

I liked to hear a bit of news. I was always interested in news coming from Sydney because my father had a couple of aunts living down here and a brother living out at Campsie and he was a doctor.

I had two occasions to come down to Sydney with my father. My father was the secretary of the Agricultural Society we get a complimentary ticket to the Sydney Show and of course he only took it up once ever blue moon because it cost a bit of money but he took me down on two different occasions. On one of them I well remember seeing the Harbour Bridge the span stretching out

like that and people were speculating will it or won’t it. As far as contact with the world in general we were always interested in new comers to the town.

This is

approaching world years, Second World War?

I think there was pretty much a bit of concern about Germany growing in strength and this sort of information was coming through. All the lead up to Chamberlain trying to comes to terms with Germany

that sort of news rang a pretty strong bell around the place and we would get that out of the papers.

Neville Chamberlain yes, peace in our times when he got back to England and he thought he had sealed the deal was the Nazi horror.

Could I remember that?

Putting my mind back to it I don’t know whether I carried the image out of the papers or where I got it from but it is there.

I suppose the transfer to Armidale was pretty

rapid. I know the big thing going to Armidale I think I was sixteen or something pretty young when you got through the learning and the leaving certificate then. I remember this was my first time leaving home pretty well and I remember my mother gave me a

new rug and I thought this was great because we sure needed it up at Armidale.

There were six fellows staying in one household all attending the Teachers’ College and they were nice fellows to get along with. One guy could play the mouth organ very well

strange to say one of the guys that writes the reviews for the Reveille, the RSL [Returned and Services League] thing, he used to play the saxophone. We would have a Friday night dance in the gymnasium and a boy, girl accompany would come together a bit there. The dance was always something to look

forward to. The girls had to be home by eleven o’clock otherwise they would be cast aside. We were taken to see Goodbye Mr Chips the film down to the town of Armidale from the College and it is a bit of a hike. Coming back two of the fellows found their way to a pub

and in those days they were pretty careful about these things and we were checked out when we got back and there were two characters AWL [Absent without Leave] they hadn’t got back to the college. I think they were quite readily off loaded, finished, even the discipline there was quite strong. You wouldn’t strike that around the universities nowadays.

I can’t recall any other one no I couldn’t really. It was the early days of getting the New England University off the ground. The Principal of the college

I had his photo here a while ago I just gave it back to the New England University there. I remember somehow or other I got myself over to the university in its early setting and Edgar Booth was the vice chancellor and whatever this dinner I had been invited to

I remember Booth sat up one end and there was a chair alongside of him for the cat and his cat sat there. We went through this lovely dinner and it was pretty OK because we were not living in luxury I suppose in our boarding house, a bit of this comes back I suppose.

I well knew the niece of the principal who died recently and she lives in this neighbourhood here and she left me all the relics that she had of the Armidale Teachers College through the principal who had an awful lot to do with setting up the university this is so called Pop Newling CB Newling.

It might have been the back page of the Woman’s Weekly or something; there was always a page to do with some vampires or something or other so I’d probably go for that page. Comics I never had much of them I don’t think my father encouraged them very much.

Books I used to like to get at but didn’t have much time to get into them.

Nothing much to be told really. However I remember it was the gym so the floor used to spring a little bit but because

everybody knew everybody else it was not a case of any wallflowers for the girls everybody would go ding dong from the start. The music was what we could put together, not on my account but fellows like Geoff Falkenmeyer.

No, strangely nothing particular came out of that but a friend of mine

later became an inspector of schools and he got his eye on a young lady down in the choir down in the cathedral and of course I used to go down there from time to time for services. It started to get through to me this guy has got something going for him that girl is pretty hot stuff but he won her by a long shot.

No I didn’t have eyes on her really,

but the eyes tilted a bit and that’s all.

It was only a two year course.

I would get home in the middle of the year at Christmas time.

No not really

I think there was too much happening. The old college was a wonderful old building and it had been endowed by Howard Hinton endowed the college with some wonderful artwork. I think for many years afterwards Norman Lindsays and one thing and another and

I think it became an art object and people would go there to look it over. I think they now have some place set up in the city of Armidale itself now.

Just about nil in that I could see to stay in Coraki was to become

kind of a farm hand, a jackaroo or something and this had nothing going for it and I just thought I would put in for this teaching and see what it is all about and so I did. Mind you the appointments in those days were not too free I don’t know how the Government purse was but people would qualify

teaching and it could be sometime before you got appointed. I was lucky enough to be appointed straight off when I finished.

This was to a relief staff and I taught at South Kentucky a wonderful district for growing apples. I remember it annoyed me to think all these beautiful apples

that are wind falls you know, if anybody could only march in with a truck they could fill it. As far as teaching at the school was concerned I had a nice little bunch of kids and they would often land me a beautiful apple on the desk but there would be no flowers or anything. Have you ever encountered the twenty ouncer? It was a beautiful apple it was more like a pumpkin.

Yes I enjoyed it. When I got down to this little school I was talking about I had about five months with that little school and I think I only had thirteen kids. It was a provisional school and it was called Miltardies because of the fellows coming back from the First World War were settled in that district four brothers by the name of Partridge and they had

travelled back home on the Miltardies, the boat so they must have laid a plug for calling the little school that. It was only a very small thing I would be the school in general and cleaner and all the rest of it. I would have to clean out the toilets and make sure it was snake proof we used to get a few brown

snakes around that area. I remember I got a garden going with the kids and put a bit of a fence around it and I was rather proud of this. It so happened there was a snow storm one night and we had some beef cattle there too and when I got to school the following morning because the snow had been beating down and there was a bit of shelter they had pushed the fence over

and my garden was absolutely wrecked.

One good thing that happened when I was there, when you are a new person in a new setting the acid is on you as far as the locals are concerned who is this guy? One young fellow came along and I had a bit of a yarn when I was doing something around the grounds after school and he said to me, “What sort of a

shot are you with a rifle?” and he was carrying a pea rifle, a .22. I said, “I suppose I could use one.” and he said, “Come on you will have to prove this.” He said, “I will put a shell up on top of this post and we will see if we can knock it off.” and he said, “You can have a go.” and blind me if I didn’t knock this thing off and

as far as status goes that set me right. I was staying a one family where the party line was conducted from this one unit and the lady that conducted the four lines she was the know it all of the district but a nice person but well loaded with local information. Anyway this young fellow

he said, “Would you like to come rabbit shooting with me at night?” and I said, “Yes that would be great.” He had a couple of telephone batteries on the side with a light up on his forehead and that was the way that we got rigged out. We were going down the paddocks at night and I up with my rifle like this thinking I had a rabbit lined up and he said, “Hey take it easy that is a sheep.” You know the

eyes of an animal at night when you put the night on them. I got me about three kilometres away from my base and he said, “I live not very far from here you can find your way back can’t you?” I was lucky enough to notice where the telephone poles had been and I thought well I think I can and I told this bloke

“I’m OK.” So I scratched around until I could find a telegraph pole and I made my way up along the line.

No I don’t think so.

No too little time for that sort of thing.

One thing I did discover at that school when I first went there I had to tell the parents of two kids who thought they were sitting for what they called the intermediate it was in those days and the leaving. I had to say, “Your two kids can’t sit for the exam because they don’t have enough subjects.” and they were horrified at this.

I thought about it and I said, ‘Maybe the only way about it was to put up a hoax subject.” I said, ‘Are they any way capable at art.” not that I knew about art. I got in touch with the correspondence school and this is an extraordinary thing because nothing much happening at the weekend, I said, “OK the kids will have to come down to the school on Saturday morning and I will

teach them on Saturday morning.” These two girls were at intermediate stage and that’s year 9 and here am I this young fellow at school with two girls now this would never pass in today’s world the mums would be alarmed as everything else. The plugged in on this and had to send off their work for assessing and

blow me down they got through so I was very pleased that they had made it.

I was nineteen when I joined up so I’d be at the early part of nineteen.

The Second World War?

In

1938 I was in my last day at high school, 1939 in September that is when war started I was then at the college at Armidale. I remember the principal used to read off the names of all the students who had been through the college who

had joined up and some special thing was made of this. At the back of my mind it might have suggested that somewhere along the line you had better think about this.

Yes. I was on the road

leading out to the big scrub out from Walcha, I was two thousand feet above Walcha in some high country there the road led out to the big scrub. A lot of the timber trucks carrying logs would pass by and I could say good day to the guy or get a paper from him or something.

The place that I was staying at was just an ordinary house where this party line was. The father of that house he was veteran from the First World War and I had talked to him a bit about it I suppose and

that is when I thought that I’d put in for the air force and I did near the end of that year. That would have been at the end of 1941 and nothing came through so that is why I decided to join up with the army.

I don’t know, I

don’t know whether I fancied a lot of marching and soldering seemed to be mainly marching and that is why I thought the artillery might be a bit more interesting. Mind you this crowd I finished up with they were wonderful infantries so all my pre-thinking was wrong. I just decided I had better get in

to the army.

Sure I was teaching I could have taught on really but I think I would have been uneasy, I could have been restless in my mind I think and I thought what about all these other guys that are over there doing something and

our little town sent off some very fine fellows to the war. Two fellows that I admired particularly they joined the air force so maybe I got a bit of a drift from that one too.

Keen would hardly be the right word I think. I think

it was adventure obviously was one of the cues and when I look back on my career in the forces it was the unpredictability was just so extraordinary no matter where you go and no matter what arm of the service you get in or which one it happens to be you have got no idea where you are going to finish up. Certainly you are going to go places

and for a guy who had just come out of the backwaters of somewhere like Coraki and mind you it was a dam good place but this had a little bit of charm no doubt the adventure side of it.

I don’t think I was

so much a patriot that I thought Australia’s future lies behind this, I don’t think I can carry it away to that extent.

I guess I applied for the papers filled them out and was called to Moore Park a big number in the queue and my number was NX87743 so

eighty seven thousand I’m well down the track by the time I got into it. I was in this queue of fellows and they march you in to look you over. There were two medicos checking you out, one alongside the other one and the fellow that was having a look at me, because I was pretty spindly you see and he had a look at my chest and what not and he said, “You see very few

decent chests these days don’t you?” this was his remark to his fellow doctor on the other side and I though “Cripes is he going to let me through this bloke or not?” In no time we were thrown a bit of gear and away we went.

No I think I went straight in and my parents were good letter writers they did keep in touch but there was nobody there to say, “Whacko, cheerio we are getting rid of you.” there was none of that going on.

They knew what was happening there was no objection. I knew

mothers are always a little bit sensitive about these things.

No not at all they were excellent people to get along with. So excellent that I remember one afternoon there were some beautiful cherry trees growing round about and one of the pupils I used to teach was

along this particular road but there were some lovely cherry trees overhanging this. One afternoon I was up the cherry tree getting a few cherries when the parent’s car came back along the road they didn’t collar me anyway so they were very friendly in the district.

No

they seemed to allow me to get a leave of absence or whatever it was called. There was no embargo just go right ahead.

No I don’t think so. Mind you at that time there were women folk, I know one lady who was not long out of college

and living in a caravan and in charge of a one teacher school, it was as grim as that and it was pretty tight on for teachers in some respects then.

Well yes, I was always eyeing off the big buildings, where is the green grass?

In the army?

One person in particular I seemed to get on well with at Bathurst and he and I were sent from there to some sort of a little school, training school and that made a bit of a friendship

there. Strange to say when it came up to breaking the training battalion down and sending us off into different directions he was sent off to the 2/3rd Pioneers and they went off to the Middle East and we didn’t.

Darwin had been bombed on 19 February 1942 so that was

early after that made a great impression of course back in Australia. Very soon after I joined up there were sightings of submarines off the coast and the invasion of Sydney Harbour.

I had some aunts living over at Mosman so they were well aware of that and when that was on I was in camp and as far as that was concerned Coraki wasn’t very far from Evans Head and there was a bombing training centre for the air force.

I well remember that being told that the planes that were on the strip at Evans Head had to be taken off and got rid of quickly before something landed on top of them there so they were sent out the back of Coraki, quite a number of them and landed on some flat country out the back there. I don’t think they knocked any bullocks over but that sort of a thing.

There were quite a few planes that were involved.

We could detect an atmosphere of concern

amongst people in general it is similar to the kind of scare that got up immediately after September 11 as far as the Americans were concerned. There was a concern and it was building such that we were concerned naturally. For instance on my mother’s account up there at Coraki she had bags packed ready to go back inland because

the subs had been sighted off Evans Head off where the airfield was and the fishing boats had spotted them because there is fishing activities at Evans Head. In fact one of the Evans Head fishermen this is Evan Spadden who was a world scholar

and after the war was finished they employed him to survey the entire coastline of Australia on the east coast here looking for prawning grounds. The fishing boats would ply out there and they spotted one or two of these subs so the atmosphere was building.

No I think it was all subsequent that I was

joining because a lot of this information wasn’t coming through immediately what was happening in New Guinea.

At Bathurst it was the 9th Pioneer Training Battalion and having been trained we were then dispatched to a unit here

and there and in the case of quite a number of us we went to Wagga to join up with the 2/2nd. The 2/2nd reformed which took place in Wagga and a lot of them came from Victoria so as far as my company was concerned we were mainly New South Wales. We were Dog Company but some of the other companies were mainly Victorian.

Was it there that I was introduced to a 16 holer or a 14 holer when it came to toileting I think it might be there.

I sort of happened, everything happens almost in lock step in the army so everybody

would be diving for their so called house at the same time so there would be a majestic setting of people seated there.

It was a sheltered area I think I am talking of Bathurst because things had to be done fairly quickly because the war was taking shape and

there was a great long boarding in the middle of this for these openings so you get a battery of a bang, bang, bang but it would be a different sort of bang.

It was enclosed with a bit of hessian.

The armies are peculiar and they talk of army the general feeling of a body what do they call it?

It’s in that line. They do have their values to some extent and there was one

guy there and they used to call him the Judge because he had his jaw a bit twisted down that way and he wasn’t being as clean as he might have been. I remember the boys mustered off one morning to the showers with all his clothes on and applied as much water as they could to him. The Judge changed his habits a little bit after that, that is the kind of thing, I was thinking of morale more than anything.

It is funny how a body of people can find a level that is acceptable and if you fall below that you are not acceptable and often people will do something about it. Morale is very important when you have a body of troops.

Yes and that was something

that I rather enjoyed because when I later got to being with the battalion, for instance I had a barrow man one of my fellows was a barrow man around the streets of Sydney. He was a pretty tough customer and another chap was studying Vet [veterinary] Science at the University and they used to call him the human

kangaroo because he just about held the state record for hop step and jump. Quite a wonderful guy and of course he finished his vet training and I think he has been a good deal connected with Randwick and checking out horses to make sure that they don’t have drugs or anything like that so

you had that sort of grouping. There was an accountant and one fellow he was a journalist from one of the papers here and he was such an excellent fellow but of course he had become attuned to the different language habits of the army. I remember him telling me that he went home one weekend and his wife wanted a

piece of furniture shifted from point to another and he said, ‘Get hold of the fucking end of this and shift it across here.” and she rebelled and I don’t think she was going to talk to him again after that but it would be different nowadays and the word really stuck out in those times. One of the fellows that was with us was a great bushman

and he became my forward scout and he came from the bush. There was another guy on the land from Dubbo and we used to call him by the name of Dubbo that was his nickname and he was a farmer you had a great range of people.

I suppose I was a bit timid at the start because the show rolls along in terms of a buccaneering crowd you know what they are. I guess I was a little bit sensitive of how I was fitting in that sort of thing.

It was just breaking the ice in the early bits there.

To some extent yes, but a very good friend that I have and I rang him the other night and he lives up at Ballina now his favourite word was ‘flogging’ and he wouldn’t use a swear word at all

but the ‘Flogging thing has done this.” or something like that. He taught me how to use a rifle, he was a crash hot marksman this fellow and when I came to training he was my sergeant in the very early stages.

Kevin Raywood.

It was a bit of shock to find yourself sleeping on a palliasse and there were no pillows. I remember I used to use two pairs of socks; the socks were pretty thick the ones they issued you with and that would be my pillow under the palliasse. The sergeant major that I might have mentioned earlier he would wake you up with a stick along the corrugated iron. Then you

would go for the chance of getting a wash but as you passed the fire bucket as you went out of the building you would see whether it had ice on the top or not. That would give you an idea of how hard the water was going to sting you when you got under the shower.

To some extent yes

but not large.

Timber flooring, most of them were off the ground and there was an alert raid when it was called

and of course you had to get used to being called by a number, Private Allison NX87743 and they got us used to that sort of a thing after awhile and not always the number but fallout so and so and you got used to what it was and you’d take a pace forward and go crash, crash and look like a soldier. Pack

drill hardly came into it there we encountered pack drill further down the line in our experiences.

Yes and no some of them fell into it pretty well, some of them you could see it was a bit of wrench they were obviously disinclined to do it. If you had to fold your blankets with the role facing

battalion headquarters and the blanket had to be rolled in such a way. You could get pack drill for getting one of the blankets, they would probably give you three blankets and if you had one of the not according to Hoyle, you maybe would get pack drill for that.

It was the way of expressing it, that in your

domestic setup with the palliasses on the floor they had to faced the battalion headquarters is out there so you have got to face that way.

I can’t remember a great deal about Bathurst actually I do remember the fact of having to take physical education which was a shock for me to to getting

fellows out there and doing a crab walk or something. I had to think back to what I got kids to do that I am now asking a lot of fellows to get out there and so that was a bit of a wrench but we got through that out all right. Drinking out of a tin pannikin, two arms come together and get a drink, it didn’t taste a bit like tea of course but that was tea so

a few things like that were a bit hard to get used to.

No I suppose there were embargoes on it I can’t remember really but from there we went onto to Dubbo and it was much the same sort of thing there but by the time we got there it was very hot.

I imagined how we were inoculated there and we carried on with the training.

In the main it was infantry because at this stage we are in a training battalion and it was mainly training to be an infantry person.

Later on when we became a part of the battalion intending to go places the field engineering came into it a bit because the pioneers they had the reputation of being the first in and last out but quite often there was a bit of engineering that had to be tackled somewhere. Now that didn’t

occur at Bathurst or Dubbo that didn’t come on deck until we were training for the Middle East. We would have to construct barracks using poles and join them together and know how to handle pulleys and various things. Only very rugged engineering and very little but that happened as Wagga when we were down there.

Plenty of parade ground stuff, how to march, how to do different formations on the ground and that was it. Then the instructors would be giving you rifles training, I don’t know that we had any on the Bren gun

but certainly the 303. We were taken out to the range and decided whether or not we could hit the target and we would have a go from two hundred yards and three hundred yards and about eight hundred yards I think. Where is the target you would be feeling that.

Yes

I preferred the double barrel often enough not much but I knew what it was to impact the shoulder so the 303 I was OK. I knew you had to get a stance whereas some of the fellows knew nothing about it so if they stood like this they would almost go overboard. I was taught how to and the sergeant would

get down on the ground alongside you and he had a way of seeing what your aiming was like. There was nothing in the barrel we hadn’t put any ammunition in but he would be able to tell what your aiming was like. You would have to discover which shoulder you were firing off which was your superior eye and all that sort of thing.

9 lbs.

Shouldering arms and this sort of thing, you get used to throwing it around but to begin with it was a bit of a novelty. I used to just throw it over my shoulder because it had a band on.

I can barely

remember any experience of Bathurst but obviously we did have it. I suppose I was reassured that I could use a rifle and I was moderately accurate I suppose, moderately in adverted comers.

Kevin Raywood he was a very tall fellow and himself he had a wonderful idea of how a weapon should be felt and how it should be handled and how to aim so all that was goodo.

He was a sergeant and I was only a private then.

A bit more the same, only a bit more boring that is about all.

Yes where the present zoo is. One of the fellows in the battalion his family had owned that property and I guess they sold it

to first of all the army because that is where we were camped and later on the zoo took it over.

I think we were under canvas there that probably made it hotter. The impression was very barren it must have been a dry season I think. I

thought I hope we are going to be too long here but it was just routine training a lot to do with a rifle. Maybe it was there that we were introduced to some of the other arms from the First World War, the repeating one I forget what it was called now. Anyway we would be

told what it’s use would be but probably we wouldn’t be using it.

The old Vickers yes.

Yes we had bayonet training there and I think we had bayonet training wherever we went.

I always felt that you have certainly know how to handle this but I can’t see myself actually in battle trying to do this sort of thing. You were aware of the fact that it was a bit of a weapon. In fact I went to a school with a fellow and it might have been from

Bathurst and we were in this big dormitory at night and they had a canteen on the place and he had a bit of experience in peacetime army and he was a bit of a buccaneering guy. We were actually on bed there so it must have been Dubbo

he would come in at night quite late and he would put up a bit of timber and he would take his bayonet out. He was a pretty good knife thrower except he was using a bayonet and you would hope he didn’t have too much to drink

and I was number four bed down there. He was quite a guy the sort of fellow you would like to have in the army when it was doing things.

Not very much because it is another item of the day’s routine but now and again it might pass through your mind

wonder will we ever have to use this thing in earnest. Your mind would go back to the recollections of the First World War how the bayonet attacks were the ones that really carried it with the fellows fighting on the Somme.

That’s true.

Not at all well because I was always so much of a believer in peace that surely negotiations can get the situation out of this without having to resort to blood lust. It would get through to you now and again that

could you see yourself in this position, you’d say ‘by golly I think this might be fair dinkum one day’ but it wouldn’t put the shudders through you.

It is a bit of an anomaly isn’t it? Fortunately

in those days in my career I had a bloke lined up there and it is either you or me. The enemy, and this will come up later but we were often a few feet or a bit in front and I wasn’t caught in that situation but it went through my mind in my training that this can get fair dinkum.

I think in the main they were a peace loving crowd the lot of them but they realised there was a job to be done and if it has got to be on the end of rifle well let’s get at it.

It didn’t surprise me to learn that some of the old fellows that I had associated with, one or two of them had gone to the no war rally just recently over Iraq.

It is strange I mentioned a bail man that we had

with us and he was pretty aggressive sort of fellow, pushing and I thought a fellow like that would be a pretty good soldier material in battle well it turned out quite the other way. If you wanted a disciplined fellow working under you, you would dodge him.

If he was out on a patrol or

something and I know the fellow who took over from me he realized he was a too indifferent a bloke to handle. I remember Snowy Dodd who took over my platoon when I went down with malaria and he went out in one of the patrols and this Curley Martin said, “I would be going with that.” and Snowy Dodd said, “Your place is here, we have got a

job for soldiers out there you stay here.” He told me that because discipline called for that, you couldn’t have one fellow running the war on his own.

No I think he inclined to be an up front bluff. I think he just felt that he would like to go along with it but I didn’t have the calibre of some fellows

who is half less pushing.

Yes I could tell you one incident up at Moratai and I don’t think you’d want that now.

Well when I was up at Moratai at this reinforcement depot blokes would come in and they would spend a few weeks and they would be sent to a unit

and they would be arriving from Australia and of course the war clouds are thickening a bit when you are up there. One guy I didn’t know how to handle because he tried to pretend he had gone off the board with religion, he was trying to make out he was Christ reincarnated and sounding off and hallowing and I don’t know what and I could see

that it was a put on show not wanting to be caught up with anything that looked a bit serious. Fred Barker who was my helper this job is too much we have got to hand this fellow over to a psychiatrist we will send him to some higher authority to deal with, I don’t know what happened to him that was one of the cases that I struck

where a bit of recall.

Yes I was up at Moratai..

First up they’d throw a few questions at him to see whether he did have his mind somewhere near actuality or not and as soon as you proved

that by a number of questions he would say, “What do we do? Do we have to put up with this guy around the place so what’s going to happen to the rest of them?” You have only got one stirrer and certainly if it is in the direction of cowardice you might have the whole lot going, that’s an exaggeration but you know what I mean. It is a case of where we get him but he doesn't belong here if he is going to act like that, that’s all it meant to me.

No I think as far as the training battalion was concerned everybody qualified I don’t think anybody was kept back any longer. I think the need would arise for a unit to take over some more troops as happened in our case they were reforming this unit at Wagga so what do they do they call on the training

battalion, OK we need a company strength send us down one hundred and twenty people and that happened as from the training.

I suppose I had become more disciplined in how I deported myself, how I

handled the day, how I kind of put things in order eventually and because you always had to meet up to a time schedule which started to mean something. I suppose in the teaching situation I knew what it was to finish a lesson on time but you become aware of that in the army sure.

Well

maybe that is an exaggeration to put it against time. If you were sent on a mission, for instance when we were at Wagga I had to take a

section I had become a corporal by then, I had to take a section down the river and we were given a number of days and we had to do a bit of map reading and make our journey run with a few little thoughts of the land that had to be used for army purposes. I had the ten fellows and we were off loaded

down the river and I cant remember where but we had to make our own way back whatever and it was a case of the quickest way. I knew it was a case we were battling against time and I remember going across one property and there was some wild ducks on the lagoon there and I said,

“Crikey this looks good.” but I think a farmer turned up before we could do any good there. It was the first time I saw a platypus just looking over the side of the bank there. We marched our way back and it took a few days and I knew we had to get there by a certain time so I would have them click, click, click

to get rolling in the morning and that sort of thing. We picked up a drink of milk at a few places where they were milking a cow. One other crowd managed to cop a truck at some outlandish place and got a lift along and of course they won the competition. One thing I must remember, this might be jumping it a bit I suppose.

When we first went into Wagga we hadn’t got into proper training the camp was just being set up I was supposed to Cootamundra to pick up a prisoner so called, one fellow who I don’t know what dastardly deed he had done. I was to bring him back to camp to be looked over by the CO [commanding officer] and what not

as to what happens from here. I had a Jeep and an escort and up I went to Cootamundra got hold of this fellow and we were coming back and he wanted to go to the toilet and I said, “Yes we can pull in here at such and such a time.” The escort and there were two fellows and I told them keep an eye on this bloke

he went in one end and he was too quick for them and he went out the other end. We had to get back to camp, we lost him completely so we went back to came so he said, “Well where is here?” and they made me a corporal not very long ago and this is my first big mission and I have done my lolly [lost his temper], he’s gone and I don’t think that went down very well.

No doubt I got matted pretty

horribly in civil terms but they didn’t sack me, one thing in the army they are not too ready at sacking.

I get on with a lot of fellows really but it’s just a case of calling the score every now and again because by the time you are that far along the track you

expect them to respond so it almost comes naturally and you turn on them if they are a bit slow, I don’t mean viciously or anything, give them a shuffle.

I was always a bit sensitive about having an obligation of some sort and I never fit so naturally into these things I could play the whole thing by ear. I

was sensible enough to be weighing it up, am I getting this right or.

I think on the 1st June the first elements of the 2/2nd reformed got into Wagga and we got there as a complement sent down probably

from Dubbo I guess I cant remember to Wagga on about 15 June. By then they could get a whole battalion together it took that time to get the officers together to get the people coming in from the different directions, as I say quite a big number were Victorians and

then we went into training because the general object was to go to the Middle East. They gave us pretty solid training and we had our sights on going to the Middle East there was something quite interesting at the back of that of course.

No not at all.

Things settled down very quickly and when they drew the officers to make this up. One came from Darwin down who had been in service up there, they needed different people to carry out different functions depending on what their military experience had been to that time I suppose. They got the compliment together and put a colonel in charge of it

he was there from 1st June of course getting everything together.

We saw very little of them in fact our company would have hardly seen any at all it might have been only two or three people in the company.

Yes one of them was.

That would have been, I’ve forgotten.

No he was an officer. He would have known a bit about the campaign in Syria and he had come back with the baggage party.

It was just something that was happening way over there where a lot of our troops were involved and things had been going reasonably well for the allied forces up to a certain point. Then when Rommel got into it with the Africa corps and started rummaging across country there, as from Tripoli he came across and

knocked the troops back as far as Tobruk and that is when they felt that they had to hang on. You have got El Alamein came up later of course. In the association I belong to some of the 2/1st were old Tobrukites they have got a reunion from time

to time for the Tobruk Rats.

Where it came from I wouldn’t know. It was generally felt that was what we were tuned up for. Probably it was handed down from the officers but you have got to be pretty spank on because you are going places.

Well we didn’t know that things were going so unhappily for Darwin and I don’t know when that information got through to us because that was kept under the blanket for awhile I think. This colonel we had he imposed pretty good discipline, I meant to tell you about him.

His name was

Lieutenant Colonel JT Lang, OBE [Order of the British Empire], MC [Military Cross] and that sort of thing. He was a twenty two stoner a fine stamp of a man; a big bloke and he had a big thundering voice. One of the things about army is you get all your orders come in a prelim bit

and the executive bit like ‘attention’ sort of things. Old Joe the colonel would stand out in front and he’d be able to say ‘atten-shun’ and there would be no mucking about. This is the guy who was a pretty lively character up in Bujaim[?]. He was the engineer of the Storey Bridge in Brisbane, an engineer

and he was also renowned for having been a heavyweight boxer in England amongst the forces at one stage so quite a character to deal with but he was a very forceful fellow too.

They would toe the line for him for sure. I remember at a later stage when we were camped at Atherton I think it was

you would get out of the tent in the morning and do the shaving and what not and the colonel would be there having a shave with a bit of a mirror up in the tree and the fellows would like to tantalize him and they are coming along and saying, “Good morning sir.” because the poor old colonel would have to stand to like this with a razor and everything but I think he won rather than us.

There was a lot of that went on and I thought that it was all pretty hopeless superficial dress that was quite unwarranted but I think it all helped with discipline.

No I usually swung my arms up at the right time. We had an

excellent company commander Bill Robertson he died only about a fortnight ago at the age of ninety eight and he was such an excellent fellow and he had a marvellous salute, he is a fellow that I could admire endlessly. In fact he was given a wonderful funeral out at the Eastern Suburbs cemetery recently and people came from South Australia because they had this

feeling for him and that sort of thing. We were lucky to have such a caring but disciplined sort of guy he had been in the citizens forces at Casino up near Coraki not very far away before the war broke out so he fell quite naturally into the military setting.

Immediately we got to Wagga he was in charge of Don Company that was the company I was with.

He was a Rat of Tobruk in other words he had been with the 2/1st at that stage and he came to the 2/2nd later on so

for purposes of our joint association getting together he was in the happy position to be in the 2/1st and 2/2nd Pioneers. He got around amongst the fellows and befriended them, but although he was handing the discipline down he was in a sense one of them.

Yes.

In that we were suppose to be infantry field engineering we did have to know what it was to try and put a bridge structure together, not that we got very far with any training like that. Certain things were expected of us but if you look at the training we had

there was hardly anything in the way of training as far as field engineering it was pretty well all on the interests of hardening you up for what might come. For instance route marches and we’d start off doing quite general ones in full battle order with a couple of grenades, pack and everything ready to go. We wouldn’t have a sling of rifle rounds across our shoulder, bandolier, but we worked

the distance for the marches up until we got to thirty miles in a day and this was quite a bit of an exacting thing. In fact I can well remember one of them, we set out in the morning beautiful day and of course you get ten minutes every hour lying back to stretch your legs and whatever and it was nearing the end of the day,

the daylight was almost fading. We are on the other side of a range of hills, you wouldn’t call them mountains but hills and a lot of us who had a little bit of sense or bush craft or whatever we knew the camp was over there and the guy out in front was leading us further down this way and the camp is over there. “When are we going to get over this thing and get back home again we have had enough of this?” Why I remember the guy who was leading us he was feeling it too and

you get the smoko ten minutes in every hour and I remember he was flat on his back yelling out ‘smoko’ not giving it as an order but lets all collapse sort of thing. I think while he was down they got at him enough to say, ‘”isten sport the camp is over the hill.” We must have come in about

nine o’clock at night and the band had been waiting for us and we are just slogging in and the band picked us up and of course we came onto the parade ground just like soldiers.

Yes there was a band that belonged to the unit. Wherever we went we had that band.

Well what did they do I hardly ever caught sight of them but you’d

hear them in the bush and they would tune up and I always envied them and I thought ‘crikey’ and here are we slugging it out perspiration off the forehead. If there was anything a bit ceremonial they would find an excuse to use them.

I don’t know but

I can remember the band was with us, I can’t remember when we got over to the west when we were out country for a while but when we came back from Perth I can well remember them being quite significant there. We had a bugler who played the reveille and the last post and that sort of thing. There was a field for a band I suppose on occasions and no doubt they had there

military training but it was nicely weighted the instruments too.

No and I suppose it was a bit unusual in a sense. One of the group marches we had I don’t know

in the Wagga area but Uranquinty is a little, I know there is a pub there I know that much. One of our marches we finished up and the colonel had it arranged that we were to have a barbecue there. We came in feeling a bit slogged and we had this rather beaut barbecue and then we had to make our way home from the Uranquinty pub towards where the camp and

and it a very black night and we knew that the camp was over there and we had to feel our way along barbed wire fences to get back, that was quite a bit of navigating that was. Later years, ten years ago I think there was a reunion of ours at Wagga and the Uranquinty pub turned it on again. That wasn’t

very far from the Forest Hills airstrip where the elementary recruits for piloting and that sort of thing were being trained. I remember we used to play hockey against them, I can’t remember whether we beat them ever but I know they put a darn good meal on the table and it was a jolly sight better than the one we were enjoying, ‘enjoying’

back at our camp.

What sort of food? It was so unmemorable I couldn’t tell you it was enough to sustain you that is about all I think. Except I do remember that the sergeant’s mess was just there and my tent was just down there from the sergeant’s mess

and Wagga can be pretty cool and wholesome in some respects I suppose. I well remember a Sunday afternoon we were supposed to be on make and mend they give you a housewife, a little roll up of cottons and things and you can darn your socks while you are given make and mend. Anyway while we were down here you could hear the sergeant’s mess enjoying an uproarious

time in the mess I thought ‘there must be something to this rank after all’ not that I had ever wanted to aspire but I could see there were some dividends.

Relax? I don’t suppose there was much opportunity around Wagga we would get into town now and again and

I can’t remember much of that at all.

You are expected back at a certain time and there would be trucks providing transport back at a certain time and you would have to catch them. For instance in Bathurst they had the Knickerbockers hotel was pretty renowned around there for providing the right sort of entertainment

for soldiers and of course there would be a patrol going round just to see that everything was orderly and you could get caught for duty and of course the trucks would bring a few of them back at night. I suppose the same thing was happening at Wagga but I can’t remember it.

I wouldn’t say that, I just enjoyed a drink I didn’t become

what you’d call a drinker.

It was always a diversion and you associated certain relaxing attitude when you could grab something in your right hand.

In fact at a later stage I can remember at Atherton and I had my 21st birthday there and I was given two bottles of grog, and that was a big deal and that is all I can remember about my 21st birthday by. I think all that happened was in a tent with a few of the fellows round about. Up at Atherton we

had a ration so often they would give you a bottle but I was given two on that occasion.

Not stubbies or anything just a regular bottle.

No I couldn’t. Grog.

Just Grog, yes.

No I don’t think so, foods were rationed back in Sydney for instance. We didn’t seem to have any trouble least of all the army was always seemed to be able to get it and if anybody got privileges it was the army.

I don’t think so I might of got, I can’t recall going home at any point there between changeover from Bathurst, Dubbo and Wagga I think all that happened in succession without going home. It suddenly came about that we were due to move from Wagga and it was close to

going over to the west but we didn’t know about that until we got down to Melbourne and then we suddenly realised we are not going onto a troops ship we are going onto a train that is going to take us over to Western Australia so that was a pretty flattening.

I suppose they gave us something I just can’t remember getting any from Wagga because it all happened

very suddenly. I think the alarm on the eastern side of Australia was strong enough to feel that we needed a presence over in the west so we were the most convenient to send over and over we went.

With high disappointment. We got on the train to go over to the west and

people were dispirited you could pick it. I don’t know whether you’ve been on a train going over to the west but there is a stretch there over three hundred miles where the train doesn’t diverge one degree it is a dead straight line. I can remember the day was hot one day and if you looked at the train there were rifles sticking out of windows everywhere and

bayonet fixed and underwear on the other end of the bayonet. Out in front of the train there would be a blanket of rabbits going in front of the train and it was as though they were cutting a furrow. The train went that way and you could see a complete movement on the ground in one area it was just amazing.

Yes. The efforts they had made to contain rabbits had not proven any success at all. I guess you have seen a rabbit proofed fence they take these various sorts of steps over in Western Australia with a rabbit proof fence. They had one somewhere else but I have forgotten exactly where but until myxamatosis [a disease that killed rabbits] came onto the scene

they really had a first class rabbit problem.

Not so much on the coast where I was brought up, no you would see rabbits from time to time but they were just part of the landscape.

That is where you would never forget rabbits. They so weak

when the train was stopped you could get out for a leg stretch and grab one.

It was a troop train. Going over quite a reasonable sort of time because there was no interruption but going back it took twelve days to come from Perth to Sydney.

I think we had set up bunks in the carriages and we must have been allowed a leg stretch somewhere or other. First of all we went to Kalgoorlie and we had been closed up for a length of

and we had been disappointed by the thought of not going to the Middle East and OK we found ourselves at Kalgoorlie in an area where it was pocket holed with mining shafts and of course we were given leave straight away after a long trip like that. The fellows got into Kalgoorlie township and being dispirited the way they were they had to take some offsets and they

got on the grog a bit. The following morning we were due to move on and get back on the train at some later stage, I had to check out my fellows. I am counting them out whereabouts is Rocky Ned he is not here OK we are one down. There are mine shafts here and there and

I remember a fellow called Steve. Steve was a real hard case and he was a good bushman and he had an unusual walk a real bush walk and he went round some of these shafts calling out, “Rocky are you down there mate?” and this sort of thing. Eventually Rocky turned up very late looking very droopy I think he had got a rather good night of it.

We got a full complement together and on we went.

Yes that’s right. There were mining huts on the outside quite an old fashioned looking township and of course they relied on the water supply coming up from the coast and

you would pick up the story of how the engineer who was responsible for sending the water supply up in the pipeline. I think he suicided about the day before the water arrived and the point being that it took so darn long to get there that this unfortunate story had to hold and the city went on as normal.

We had so little of it I didn’t have to think about it we were so much put exclusively infantries that it wasn’t an issue with me at all. I am a loner and if you asked me anything about engineering the answer is negative.

No.

We went to Perth and from there we didn’t go to Fremantle we went straight up country to Carnarvon and from there we went by train out to Strawberry Hills Station and to a place called Menu and we were camped there in sandy country and

the object was to be on that side of the continent a bit in case anything turned up. It was very hot and the endless flies, I have never seen the likeness of flies. When your stew was landed on a plate in front of you, you could barely see it unless you kept on waving your hand over the top of it because of the flies. The other thing was we were camped

on the ground and I can remember one or two cases of snakes coming out of it when you undid your blankets and had to be done up of course how I was explaining and these lovely little bandi bandi snakes only about so long and stripes little ringlet

stripes along them. There were two or three cases of that while we were there. We did some night training because it was not known whether we would be required to do things at night. To some extent camouflaged with trees and things because they were afraid of Japanese Wrecking aircraft coming over the place and the less presence we could indicate the better.

While I was there I remember a couples of incidences, do you want to hear about this?

On one of the night adventures there was an unholy bush fire went through a lot of that country it was pretty dry. We were called out to put a stop to the fire so we had a few days fire fighting and this is a whole army fire fighting. We had

a few mobile water tanks that helped a bit but of course we were camping out every night with a great glow of illuminations round about but that was quelled.

We were within one hundred yards of it and we had to do some back burning but we got the swing of it.

We heard about it later but we had heard that the property we protected was owned by the brigade major so this was a bit of an inducement to put in the whole army into putting a stop to it I think.

No I guess they wondered where this thing would finish up because there was a lot of timber along the sides of the river

and of course you know what our gum trees are they jump and whatever and it was quite a bush fire it really was. The other thing I can remember was we had a very big combined military exercise there, aircraft and the entire battalion, the entire brigade I think and motorized side of

things any engineering stuff or artillery the whole thing was put under one big exercise and there were umpires moving about and this is where we were playing the infantry game every now and again. Then an umpire would knock somebody off with the white badge saying, “OK mate you are finished now you can no

longer participate.”

Somebody on the ground had to decide is this a successful exercise or not and can you expect under the conditions under which you are required to be acting now would there would casualties and if there would be it would be up to the umpire to say, “OK.”

Obviously all the fellows wouldn’t get away with this we will have to knock a few off so a few would get knocked off.

I think they took them with a great deal of amusements as much as anything and something different a bit of aircraft over the top, much activity I think they had to pretend that some of the

gear had to be taken down in Perth direction it was a major exercise. So the transport authorities were mixed up with it pretty well the whole caboose was tied up in this entire exercise.

I suppose so because

what were we doing we were getting up in the morning and looking at a beautiful purple landscape because a lot of this low shrub country produced nice little flowers. The time we were there you could see endless purple and it was lovely except red kangaroos would start jumping through it. Talk about the practical guys that you have in the unit. There was one big fellow in my crowd

he was a wonderful rifle shot, a big bloke and I think the first time I had kangaroo soup was when he lined up this kangaroo at some big distance and picked it up with a rifle and that was that. I remember we were a little bit further on we were walking along the side of the creek,

a creek I’d suppose you’d call it and we came on a tree where there was a hive of bees and he knew how to handle the bees in spite of him not having a net or whatever and we all had a little bit of a feed of honey out of that. That is the practical know how that comes from nowhere. I admired the practical side of the fellows when you get a bunch of them together.

How do you word fumbling? You’d be told to move to a certain point, you’d be told to take certain gear and adopt such and such a formation and OK we have done it get back to bed. Although you didn’t get back to bed because they would keep you going all night. Then you would

so called go to sleep by day only it was so deadly hot that it was very difficult to get sleep. I think we might have only had one week of that but that was quite memorable.

No idea and it didn’t get through to us at all that Darwin had been bombed not once but more than once

that it had been bombed and they had lost some Catalinas [flying boats] up there, I’ve forgotten. We knew nothing of that obviously the top brass knew all about it but the troops knew nothing about it we were just playing soldiers over in the scrub which had its limits we were very pleased when they said you can go down to Perth for a bit.

I think it just went through problematically through our mind what the hell is this all about and how much longer is this going to go on, are we going to be shifted up to the coast somewhere because we were a little bit inland and of course they could have air landing and trains any everything from where so just what

we were there for. In 1994 I went back through all that area you would never believe it. Many of them had taken a roll of where all the units had been camped and they could tell me the precise reference as to where to find it. None of the trees remained and the area had been given over to growing wheat no that’s amazing because it was sort of scrubby country now how

that was achieved I’d like to know?.

Dry yes.

I wouldn’t have any idea because I can’t remember any well or anything like that. It was a relief to get down to Perth and I have forgotten the little suburb of Perth we were out the back of

it was very convenient for getting into Perth at night and the troops appreciated that because they had been pretty close living through time. We were there only for six weeks in that little camp and some of them got to know some of the young lasses in the village. One case is a

friend of mine now and he lives in Lismore Ken Wilson and he befriended a little lady over there in Perth and then of course he had to come back to the east. Only about fifteen years ago I think he was visiting Perth again and just by accident he met this very same lady except she had lost her husband and he had lost his wife

and they spent a little time together and they decided it was for them still so they are quite happily married for some years now and living down in Lismore.

Yes it happens quickly and I think people are a little more giving under normal circumstances. They play it up in a film like

Pearl Harbur and great signs of embracing before you take up and do something. I think women folk were more inclined to be a little bit more outgoing with fellows and fellows had a pretty good sense of time fading perhaps that sort of thing so romances did get up. There was another friend of mine who is a great guy but he befriended a

lass over there and I often wondered how far that would have gone because his wife was living in Sydney and I will tell you more about him but he was a good singer.

While in Perth a Christmas came up and it was interesting to see that the public reaction in the mess there was a big notice board and

on this was a great display of people who were offering an invitation to the soldiers to come for Christmas dinner and you could pick one out and take it on and they’d get in touch. I took on one of these and I landed at a very lovely household and there was a nice daughter in the household too and that was quite by the by and we were there in no time because Christmas dinner doesn’t

offer you very much. It was at Cottesloe where I went this particular day and they had a tennis court out the back which was great and it was no distance down the street to where Prime Minister Curtin used to live, we often associate the name of Cottesloe with him and it was

Curtin who was calling the score about bringing the troops back to Australia and that sort of thing. It was lovely to see the hospitality of people like that and they couldn't do enough for us and ‘come back as soon as you can’ and that sort of thing. One of the attractions is that Cottesloe is a seaside spot. I don’t know that I had more than one go at the surf

there maybe I had a bit of a yearning and that is all I could say about the association there.

No I didn’t those were things that happened quickly and you forget them. Out of the back of Perth where we were camped we were given some training on living off the land

we had one of these specialists like Bush Tucker Man [a television character] and one of these guys came along. He sat us down in an area in all sorts of bush land, you’d appreciate it with a lot of greenery and stuff about and some of it was low lying and mossy stuff about. He said ‘squat down wherever you can’ and I got down against the back of a tree,

and he waffled on about what you can eat and can’t eat. Suddenly I became very irritable and I realised I was bursting out in hives all over the place from top to bottom I was suddenly covered with this allergy. I had to bail out of that one quickly and get the usual remedy in the army, which was a couple of Aspros or something.

I soon recovered from that and it disappeared as quickly as it came. Part of our training was getting across a little creek that had run dry and they had put a rope across to find your way across on it and first of all they would ask you to go hand over hand

like this and make your way from one side to the other. I never had any strength to speak of in my hands and I well remember getting a few yards from the other end of it to where I was going and not doing too badly. I had to throw my legs over the rope like this and get going because I knew I had little time to go or these would give.

It has left me a scar because it burnt my leg there and luckily the big fellow that I might have been talking about he could see I was in trouble and leant out and just grabbed me for the last foot or too and got me over. While all of this was happening the band was playing on up in the bush there. The training was little more restricted there but a lot of parade ground and when they didn’t know what to do with you

they got you pulling down the rifle.

Nothing in Perth, nothing at Menu, in fact absolutely minimal the amount of training in that line. We just wondered what was happening but the next move was to come over to

the east again.

We had to board up the train and it took twelve days to come across we got way out in the middle of the desert somewhere and there had been a derailment a goods train had come off the rails in front of it. Their answer to this was to build a railway line around it not to try and shift it because

it was too much heavy gear so it took a few days until they built the line around it. There was a spring or well some little distance away and the cattle or some sort of livestock there they could get to it and we wondered across and saw what was happening there

rabbits still about. It might have been just when we were starting to move again there were tribal aborigines come alongside the train and indicating they wanted something to eat and I remember throwing an aborigine a bully beef tin, you’ve seen them the square tin that the army

issued. He got hold of this tin and put his teeth through the little hook and went around it and then grabbed it out like this about three handfuls and wiped his hands on his hair. It looked a bit tribal to me. We got round that one and back to the east and went to

Seymour in Victoria.

No, except up in New Guinea you might have heard of the name Diver Derrick he was a Victoria Cross winner and he was in a neighbouring unit somehow. I never ever met him but they used to talk about him.

It was more a less a fill in because we were really intended to go up to Atherton I think.

Not very far from Puckapunyal. All I can remember there were the things that stand out. We were there for a few weeks and the best thing that could happen to me was to go looking for a feed on

it might have been Sunday night I think and we would walk about three kilometres to the little village where they sold steaks and eggs and I remembered we ordered a steak and four eggs, four eggs mind you and we would lash into that and walk back afterwards to

camp and that was interesting. I remember one Sunday afternoon and we had nothing to do it was a lay day so a friend of mine Dubbo by name I mentioned his name a while ago. Dubbo said, “Let’s go and do a bit of fishing.” I don’t know how he got a bit of fishing line

we went down to the river to do some fishing and we caught two or three of them and looking across the river we saw a beautiful spread obviously the most marvellous country establishment and it occurred to us that if we swum the river we might be able to pick up a bit of bread a maybe a bit of butter and maybe some tomatoes or something. So we swam across and

as we were going up towards the back door, which was the way to go we passed the most magnificent stable, this was in keeping with the manner of the house. Looking at the stable I noticed at the top it had Windbag over the top of it, and I thought well they have named this the big stallion after the Melbourne Cup winner. I went up to the backdoor and we were in swimming togs

full stop and the lady was very co-operative and came good with some bread, tomatoes and there might have been a couple of potatoes. I said, “We just passed that beautiful stable you have back there did you name that horse after the Melbourne Cup winner?” and she said, “No that is Windbag it is now twenty five years old and it is still working at the stud.” We had to accept that one

and carry on our way and swim back across the river of course with our stuff on our chests like this. Whereupon Dubbo who was one of these resourceful characters, he had set up a fire so that the coals had gone down and we were able to put mud on top of the fish and put a mud skin on the fish, and throw them in on the coals and we had quite a nice little feed of fish.

I think it might have been

bream.

No I don’t know if they called me anything in particular but probably a lot behind my back. Jack was so simple to handle and they couldn’t do much with that.

No it never grabbed me but I will tell you about that up at Atherton if you like.

Then only a few weeks there and then to Woodford in Queensland just across the boarder from Caboolture out in that part of the world and Woodford only for a matter of six weeks or so. I will remember there that we were camped in beautiful timber. We had green leaks[?] in the morning and they’d

kick up a terrible din, lovely to see and there was a lagoon nearby so we had a lovely swim after parade in the afternoon. You would look over the fence and there were pineapples galore and we could buy a pineapple for thruppence or sixpence a time and we did a bit of training there and only there for a short time and then up to Atherton. Leaving Woodford

we had this slow old Queensland train and it had so many carriages behind us it found it difficult to handle one hill in particular and it made a bit of a run at, no luck, came back again and a bit further up steamed up again and eventually it felt it was ready it gave it a charge. But before that happened we realised that

there was a little shop over there and this was going to take a bit of time so of course the fellows were out of the train in no time. One guy got behind the counter of this shop and he put his hat on the counter like that and he said “Tell me what you want and I’ll put it down and you put your money in.” In no time the entire shop was skinned in edibles, absolutely skinned. The third time

up the train and choo choo choo and over we went.

Yes exactly.

No, stew was the great old standby of course but you could always get your share of bread

and butter as a rule or it might have been butter most of the time and fruit would be OK. It was always the chow line you would come along with your aluminum [dixie] and they would slop something in it and away you would go.

I might have started one about there only just a little book about so big

but I remember carrying it up to New Guinea because I can remember drawing one or two things in it that suggested where we were and that sort of thing.

Up to a point but you have heard me talk of the

journalist the Sydney journalist, he was obviously a well educated fellow and I remember he had a limited time in the navy and I gave you that incident a while ago about going across a rope and of course him having been in the navy he went across like nobodies business. There was a

real estate fellow, he turned out well and he became a sergeant. I mentioned earlier too that we had this vet student but I can’t remember any that were, a very good friend of mine had being another

teacher called Jim Fairland, he was quite a dignified sort of guy. I think he might have found it a bit difficult to fraternize with people because he was one of these guys who had lived a pretty exclusive sort of existence I think.

Yes I was enjoying it.

We got up there and we were under canvas and I can remember them setting it up and it was decided that company headquarters or it might have been battalion headquarters had to look a bit more dignified so

one of the tasks that my group was given was to get some of these rocks and make a rock path up to the battalion headquarters. In doing so I remember picking a lump of rock up and he was a beautiful scorpion on my hand but I was able to flick it off before it came to anything. The other thing I remember was we were seated at a tent

it might have been late afternoon and we had put our rifles up against the upright in the middle and had something to hold them there. Suddenly there was a ping as a rifle bullet went through the tent and struck the woodwork of one of the rifles, temporarily we thought ‘cripes has the enemy arrived’ but it was a one off somebody must have been

cleaning something and got it wrong. Our training there was with the 503rd American Paratroops Regiment and they were doing airdrops and we had to work in with them and know what it was to get hold of gear. It was interesting to see them, only the old DC3’s coming around with the big wide open

doors and pushing stuff out at a low elevation. What was amazing to see the paratroopers themselves coming down and the accuracy with which they could handle it. I don’t know whether it was the sergeant major or the fellow who was in charge would land right down in the middle of them somehow

and then of course he would have to be supervising the care of their parachutes and all that sort of thing.

Can’t remember a connection at my level at all no.

No not personally just the soldiers we exchanged a few waves that is all.

They seemed to be a decent enough crowd. You hear of all these incidents of a troop train of Aussies being on one side of the station and the Americans being on the other side and a bit of sparing up taking place.

No not at that time. We found they were very good fellows.

Pretty well next to nothing, it didn’t come through in terms of aircraft because all we could see about was the old DC3’s no nothing in that line at all.

At that stage no.

Obviously at this stage it was pretty clear we were headed for New Guinea but necessarily told to us. I remember we were taken down to somewhere near Tully Falls

and I remember sketching in my little diary book that we talked off and of course we had a wonderful swim and whatever there. It was formations you had to take up in the jungle and how you would move forward and what it was to look out for snipers.

Hardly anything got through

to us except I think it might have got through to us that it was pretty frightening that these little fellows could make an attack and a lot of them are borne along on bicycles as they came down a lot of Malaya in the direction of Singapore. When you think of it there were thirty thousand Japanese there and one hundred and fifty thousand troops down the very bottom there

supposedly defending Singapore. Of course things went hopelessly wrong and the Japanese to quite an extent ignored the causeway apparently.

No not at all.

I think that

General Gordon Bennett who got away and was under considerable accusations as to whether he should or should not have got out of Singapore I think he must have taken it pretty seriously. There is a certain warfare here to deal with the jungle, it is pretty characteristic of certain circumstances and you have to attack it this way from strategies and formation

and all that. It could be that he had a lot to do with setting up appropriate training in Australia in jungle training.

I can’t specifically recall anything like that but no doubt it was put to us.

At that stage nothing which when you look back on it was a vacuum.

It wasn’t until we got up to Moresby that we came up to the thought of Atebrin tablets.

You would have to say that

I think a lot of it depended on pharmaceutical research, could they come up with a tablet or something or other that would prevent this and by the time we got up to New Guinea certainly Atebrin tablets were available.

Nothing, not a thing.

We didn’t need them there it was a different matter when we got to New Guinea when we were outfitted with a little one man mosquito net which would roll up to next to nothing and that was great. Other than that I had this 21st birthday that I was telling you about.

We had a beer issue periodically and I had been delivered two bottles of beer on that particular day so they were a bit thinking about fellows. Admittedly the ration was about one a week I think of a bottle of beer but somebody saw to it that I got two because it was

my 21st birthday.

No I can’t tell you anything there except I’d have to say while we were there the 7th Div were going to be obviously given the task in New Guinea and

it was decided I think by General Vasey who must have been the over riding general working under General Blamey to go to Mount Garnet where we would have a bivouac and a rodeo sort of thing. Our company was sent on to Mount Garnet to build a stand so that we

could observe what was happening on the ground because they intended to have races, athletics and various things. In fact I remember that quite well because being field engineers we needed stands so what do you do? You get out and cut down some lengths of timbers that might do it so we had to do that sort of thing. We had to cut enough of that to then start building this thing.

I remember I was steadying a log I was sitting on with somebody with a cross cut saw there were two fellows behind you know how a cross cut saw has an upright and held at either end having done a cut behind me they had to lift it over my head to do a cut in front. Anyway one of the ends of this came off and just missed my nose

and landed down here but I had my thumb down here, I still have a scar where it nearly took my thumb.

So I got feeling back after some time. It was a great rodeo if you would call it that. They had to have

horses got from somewhere so anything that looked like a nag was got to run a race meeting and of course they had to have colours and all the jazz. We had been paid, this was one of the big deals, before this happened we were paid and we were paid in notes, real live money. There were bookies there fellows there

out of gangs set themselves up as bookies.

No I can’t really. Then the games of two up got going and this is where all the gambling came into it and two up really got a hold on there. I remember a very big ring and one fellow handling the kip, he was doing pretty well because he was raking it in

like this and he had a big brown paper bag and he was stuffing all these notes into the big brown paper bag. The parade, General Blamey came to that because I can remember seeing on the hotel

landing on the top floor of the hotel at Mount Garnet where we were on the road down below looking very important. Probably recollect the statue of General Blamey and that was quite memorable because that was a 7th Div turnout. With the actual look over of the parade we had to be out

at daylight and anything had to be polished and spanking on and we had to be drawn up really like soldiers and play the part.

They knew nothing of him you might as well say except that he was a hot shooter, or supposed to be but I think they came away later on when they got to know a bit more about him

Blamey I think he did some good things. I think some of the decisions were not necessarily the best for the Australian forces at times because I am sure it became a bit competitive with what was going to be the role of the Aussies and what was going to be the role of the US troops. I think some of our military didn’t think

he was holding out enough I couldn’t specify it because it is just one of the things that seemed to have cropped up.

I can’t remember being mixed with them at all.

Our limited function of being field engineers was only amongst ourselves.

No, we were the one thing, as pioneers we were infantry plus field engineering when it was needed. For instance building that stand

that was about the only item of field engineering that was taken on for months and months I expect.

I don’t know whether it was there, I think it would have been that we were introduced to the two inch mortar this could be carried by the individual person and of course the Bren guns

we could pull them apart like nobody’s business by then but I think that two inch mortar might have been a new one.

It fired a mortar, the three inch mortar of course has a big base plate and it has funnel at least three inches in diameter whereas this was a little one maybe a two inch and if need be

it could be fired off the shoulder. You would have to line it up, it was kind of a reckless thing but if you were close quarters with the enemy it was such a thing that it might do a bit of damage.

I can’t remember because it never occurred to me to do that I think the thing that I might remember is trying to fire the tank attack,

the personal tank attack weapon. That is a thing that had a great long barrel and I forget what size and it certainly wasn’t a 303 but it was pretty magnificent you know. You would have to be full length on the ground and you would line up your target and it could impact light armour I suppose. The thing

was you got your line up and you pull the trigger and you finish up two feet further back because it had one hell of a impact with your shoulder. The other thing that I can think of there was it made such a noise that I think it could have affected my hearing. We did have the extra bits of weaponry

given to us there but it wasn’t until we got to Moresby that we came up on the Owen gun that had just been discovered or invented and that came up on that stage there.

No not at all. I think that is the pity of it we should have been.

It didn’t seem to be lengthy I think it might have had more a connection with the people higher up than the actual ground troops. As I say we saw them come down but they were a band of their own

and we were doing our thing and they were doing their thing.

No not at this stage that was after we came back from New Guinea.

From

Atherton I forget where we were camped but it was convenient enough to get down to the township down the bottom and I can’t remember its name. I do remember that the soldiers would be in the back of the truck and it would be filled to standing room only on the back of the truck. It would give us a night in the town down the bottom and that happened a few times there.

Nothing very significant I think in the main we probably saw a film or something like that it was nothing spectacular. The pubs run hot of course and there would be a bit of that but a fairly tight reign was kept on it I think we’d all land back in time.

Perhaps I better tell you there that we were visited by the guy who was going to be our brigade commander this was Ivan Dougherty, MBE, MC and that sort of thing, Sir Ivan Dougherty but at that stage he was the brigadier. He

met us somewhere near Tully Falls and he had come from being up Buna and Gona on the other side of New Guinea but he was going to take over the 21st Brigade. He came down to meet us and to try and tell us there is a job out there to be done and I would like to tell you all about it. He was up on a platform and we knew earlier in the day that we were gong to be addressed by

the brigadier so all the spit and polish we could come up and out we went and stood out there waiting to be addressed. He said, “I’ve got to tell you some interesting things.” and he said, “I want you to hear about it because you have got to know exactly what’s going on.” He said, “I would like you to know, now just you have a look at who is along side of you.”

and he said, ‘Exactly where you are standing on the ground now that is where you will go back to but I want to talk to you.” He said, “Come up here and seat yourselves around in front of this platform.” We had never encountered anything like that from top brass before so it was great to hear him laying it out so specifically. I could appreciate this because Ivan Dougherty had been a teacher

and when he was in the Armidale area I did some practice teaching on his 6th Class. In a sense I had met him but now he was just a salute guy right out in the front there. I knew he was a very human fellow and of course he had a distinguished career he had done very well in the Middle East and as I said he had already done a job in

New Guinea. Then he had come to us to be in charge of the Lae, Markham, and Ramu campaigns. He wanted to know personally what sort of demands would be placed on us. In jungle conditions you can get lost, you can lose your command, who do you look too there were all sorts of things he would have to tell us.

We took off from Townsville in the Duntroon it was, the fellows were a bit excited we knew where we were going to Moresby and that was pretty simple, straight forward.

I wouldn’t know but it wasn’t one of the bigger ones it was a moderate size. If you are comparing it to the Victory ships that American put together I’d say more or less comparable.

No we seemed to go on our own.

It was obviously a different race of people who live there. We went out to Ward’s drome [aerodrome] I can’t remember but we were handy to where all the aerial activity that was going on and that was interesting to see happening. We were camped there and you mentioned Atebrin a while ago the malaria thing they were starting to

do something because they had already encountered it on the other side of Lae and Buna and Gona. It became a drill, you’d line up and you’d be given a tablet while you were under supervision you’d put it on your tongue and swallow it and that was that and it became an Atebrin parade. That took over that was a good thing.

Not very fancy but you would get it down in one hit, it wasn’t a big tablet.

You could have rattled it around in your mouth and got rid of it. The other thing I wanted to talk about is the Owen gun had been invented and we were lined up to be told all about it and the demonstrator got out in front and he said, “You have got to take

an aggressive attitude with these repeating weapons, you have got to look as though you are going to hold onto this thing because it is likely to throw up.” That is OK we were put through the drill on how to put the safety catch on and that sort of thing. He said, “It is interesting, a fortnight ago here some guy was demonstrating this and the safety catch is not terribly reliable.” See it was

new and it was a quickly turned out weapon and he must have had the magazine loaded and he was demonstrating this around the squad and it went off. He downed one fellow and I don’t know whether he was wounded or killed I wouldn’t know but that is the story given to us probably to tell us that these are a bit deadly and you have got to hang onto them.

It is only about that long,

very easy to carry and it looks like a toy rather than a heavy weapon, it fired about thirty rounds so you could fire it off in bursts.

I think we might have had some practice there just to know what it was like.

I cant remember what the issue was some would carry it and some not and in my case when it was a case of going up my lieutenant had run a bit of coal into his foot and he was incapable of going with us so I took over the platoon number 16 Platoon. I was given the alternative of

taking a rifle or an Owen gun and I settled for a rifle and that means it’s more heavy to carry of course and that was OK. We spent about a month there.

I suppose familiarity with the rifle and knew what it would do you could aim it and it would finish up where you aimed it and that sort of thing was comforting.

Yes that’s right, exactly.

No, grenades were just the same as any old grenade and the 303 rounds were just the same as usual.

We had the two pouches in front that would take the ammunition. We had the pack that you carry on your back and it would take

between sixty and seventy pounds I guess. When we did actually go up it was a case of one-man mosquito net. Before I go into that one of the incidents that I saw of the aerial activity there was a couple of DC3’s flying in formation around the airstrip and they misjudged or there might have been an air pocket or something, they got too close to one another

and the wing tip of the lower craft was cut off and immediately the crew came out I could see them bail out. The pilot had turned this out to the sea, I thought that was extraordinary what happened to it I don’t know. At least the other plane would have come down in normal order.

On the other side of the strip, I was over here

and it was happening on the Moresby township side.

We had the old Wirraways of course that was our fighting weapon, poor fellows. It became quite evident that we were intended to go forward and get to the Nadzab area,

the Markham River and we were to go to Kirkland’s Dump and we were to be air lifted to a place called Tsili Tsili. The padre of our outfit I was him on his back one day and he said and I think he used the word bloody too, “This is a bloody silly silly mission this is.” We had to head off into the mountains, which were about

twice the height of Kosciusko and we had to carry this heavy equipment. There were seven hundred and eighty of us and there were seven hundred and sixty native carriers. They were absolute gems and they even had to carry 3 inch mortar base plates. You can imagine the 3 inch mortar base plate the weight of it and they had forked sticks and as they were going up some of these

steep pinchers somebody would move a bit and the others would move a bit with their sticks just to get them up and they were good.

On the 3 inch plate?

When it came to that there were four of those native carriers they were doing the heavy stuff there. They were much more lightly packed up

because they were so used to the country.

I suppose they had some food stuffs for us. It gave us about a fifty five mile trail over the mountains as best we could have it.

We headed out from Tsili Tsili and we cut the handles off our spoons for instance we wanted to minimize weight because we knew we were going on a very big climb. Toothbrushes we probably even cut the handle of the toothbrush off anything that you could toss a bit of weight aside you would. We took off and if you can imagine fifteen hundred people trailing

up the trails through the muddy trails and you have seen that in the Kokoda images absolutely slush, slush, slush and of course they used to turn the front platoon over on every change that we had so that everybody would have a chance at being up front and not being up the back. It was very exhausting I remember Kevin Raywood, this big gentleman friend

of mine he actually had to take over somebody else’s pack not only carry his own but that one too which he did. He carried a very nasty ankle injury because he had all this weight to carry and getting over things he must have knocked it.

After that

it was our ammunition and something to eat out of. We must have still had the aluminium dixie and of course we were on hard rations I think on that walk over. We had been trained to use hard rations on our route marches earlier than this. We did encounter a very nice sample of a

python, there were some interesting snakes up that way. Somebody said it was about sixteen or seventeen feet long. If you can picture the coils of a tyre laid one on top of the other and that is how we came on it. It had to be moved because we were going that way.

Bully beef and biscuits that is all. It’s very taxing on the crowd and I

remember lying down at one point and everybody was absolutely done in. Humour still comes out because I think it might have been Kelly who went over to the length of vine on the outside of a tree and he bellowed out, “Anybody for a beer?” and everybody was flat on their back and suddenly it picked everybody up and they went “Hoorah!” that sort of thing there was

always a bit of humour about the place.

I guess we had a few of them it would be hard to differentiate. When we got over to the top and to the bottom end of the valley there is the Markham River flowing at about six or seven knots, we looked down into the valley onto this beautiful morning and

of course suddenly from nowhere over came the planes and there was going to be this airdrop and there were twelve hundred paratroopers dropped and it was a wonderful piece of air display.

They came over I think in DC3’s but there were twenty four in a stick and twenty four of them would have to come out

of the plane and I think there were the two engineers from the 2/4th they dropped two twenty five pounders one of which they got up firing up the road the first night I think. The other one the bits and pieces they couldn’t send it down in one lump and they landed a bit in the scrub and whether they ever located the other bits for the second one I don’t know. We

went down the bottom and overnight there had been twelve barges floated down from Watut River and they were joined up so that it made a pontoon connection for us to walk across so that was the easy bit. In the mean time there was plenty of aerial activity the Marauders came over and they were a beautiful aircraft and went up the valley and they put up smoke

screens and everything was quite lively.

I think it was just to deceive the enemy as to where the actual drop was and by the time they hit the ground where would they find them. There was a little decoy group not actual troops on board but just model humans

if you could call it that coming down over there just to put the wind up them.

It was magnificent. At the very top there was one of these New Guinea natives near me and he thought it was marvellous and I thought that it was marvellous enough. He said, “Umbrella man, umbrella man.” in Pidgin English.

It was

just staggering because I think there were four hundred and fifty planes somebody said afterwards there were that many and at the very end of it Macarthur went through the valley, you could see this because we were just going down the slope to join up with the banks on the other side and his silver Fortress [B17 Flying Fortress] came up the valley and we distinctly saw that. The little

glory flight I suppose at the end of it. We got ourselves on the other side and we were quickly told to dig in. It became immediately obvious that the Japs had got a bit scared of this and they had took off, too much happening here so boom.

I could give you an incidence of that because just after we left the airstrip

mind you somebody had to supervise that and the fuzzy wuzzies did most of the cutting of the kunai grass and that sort of stuff so the 7 Div planes could come in at a later stage but we had to get there first and get hold of the strip and make it possible for the planes to come in. We took up defensive position a little bit further up the track in the direction of Lae and I think

my platoon happened to be the very front one at that stage and I was a bit sensitive of what was happening but the Japs had disappeared thankfully. Then it was some other company of the battalion that was sent out to chase them so I didn’t have to chase them there. I made the discovery that I no longer had my field glasses, thinking back on it after being, things had settled

down after about a fortnight and I said to my company commander, “Look can you do without me for a day I am going back to where we landed and where we were suppose to dug in because I think I might have left my field glasses there. Can you let me be off field limits for a day?” He did so I had to make my way back. It was just a bit scary on character going on and I came upon

a little group of the paratroopers, the Americans and they were seated at the butt of a big tree probably having done a bit of hiking. I got talking with them and there was one little incident that I suppose I’d tell you. One of them said, “You Aussies are pretty good shots aren’t you?” he said “You see that hawk up there?” and I said “Yes I can see.” and he said “Well see if you can bring it down.”

Anyway here I am going around like this off my shoulder and not thinking that I’d do any good but point of fact I brought it down and he said, “Wow you fellows can use a rifle.” that was one of my great flukes I’m sure.

The Americans had a good regard for us. After that I had to walk on back to the other side of the

river, top side of the river and before I got there I am walking through sac sac which is like sugar cane but not as high and suddenly I can see approaching me a helmet through the sac sac, I thought here is a Jap I had better get a move on. When I got closer I realised it was the helmet that the paratroopers were wearing so it wasn’t

the enemy at all and of course I went out and accosted him. He had been four days out from the drop, no four days he told me he had been getting out of a tree because he landed in a tree and it was very difficult and he injured his leg and he had tried to swim the river because he knew it was safe on the south bank and found that the river was flowing at such a rate,

no go so he was just hovering along hoping to run into some of his group somewhere. I have never seen an American enjoy bully beef like that fellow, I gave him a bully beef can I had with me and he got into it. I lumbered him back to the nearest grouping of 503 Paratroopers that I could find.

Well how

seriously I don’t know he was able to stumble along with me sort of helping him. I never kept in touch with him he was quite pleased I picked him up but those contacts don’t last of course.

I walked right onto them, it’s just amazing they were right there I picked them up and I was the happiest bloke in town.

From time to time you needed to know the nature of the country and where will we go next. If you had the advantage of field glasses you could see well ahead pick directions and that sort of thing so I was very happy to have those.

None at all they all shot away. The first three weeks we were stalled my company in a banana plantation and the next day our foodstuffs had come through to us so they were eating bananas right left and centre and I think some of them cooked them. Then

we moved forward and the other companies had made through and they were making contact. A company was the first company to make contact and one of the first fellows they lost was a young boxer and they were very sad to lose him.

I don’t think there were very many at that stage they had to move into the back of Lae and they had to go right up that road

and that was done with a lot of aircraft protection. As we pressed on the road became impossible because they were sending traffic out from the airstrip along this road to service the fellows in the forward positions. One of our jobs as field engineers we had to cut some saplings and things to make the road useable for the traffic. I

can remember at night I think the Salvation Army came good with some coffee along the track. I can remember at night now and again there would be a Betsy Bomber a Japanese Betsy Bomber come over and they would drop about eight personnel bombs and we could count them, one, two you could count them getting closer. I remember one night

this is getting close and I went over the bank into a little bit of a creek that was out letting there and I had no time to alert any of my fellows but when I got there they were nearly all there so they’d picked it the bangs coming along.

It is big enough noise, when they replay some of these terrorist bombs

going off nothing like that, it was an anti personnel bomb that they were dropping and one that scatters of course and it impacts and therefore it wasn’t too strong. Personally I made no contact with the Japs in along there at all.

No not really I couldn’t say that I did. They got into Lae

that was July, in September they actually got into Lae. Lae was on the coast and a considerable township and so the mission was over as far as getting hold of Lae. It then became a matter of going up the Markham and Ramu Valleys.

Yes I remember the first guy that came back I think had been carried by fuzzy wuzzies and I remember he yelled out and he was lying on his back and I think he might have been smoking a cigarette and he yelled out, “I’ve got a homer!’ In other words this one is bad enough injury to get me back to Australia but he was really skiting [boasting] about it.

No I had never heard it before and I never heard of it since. They had to send us up the valley and the first thing was to get back to Nadzab where we had put that airstrip in. We were airlifted

to Kaiapit up the Markham Valley and landed at a little village there where they had an airstrip. I remember we were on the edge of the airstrip overnight and I can remember my little spot was in between some 3-inch mortar bombs, on that side of me and on this side of me, so I had a fairly comfortable night feeling

safe one way or the other. From there it was from Kaiapit and another airlift to place called Dumpu. From there the exercise was to try to prevent the Japanese from getting down from Madang, you see they had been stopped on the coast now, they had been stopped at Milne Bay right out at the end of New Guinea on the east now

the chances of them coming through Madang had to be short cutted so it was up to us the 7th Div to get in there and do that. At Dumpu we had to go out again into the very mountainous country up the Ramu Valley. The Ramu joined the Markham and a large

part of it was making no contact with any Japanese it was just getting to where the area was where they had to be found and push them back. Again quite a bit of marching over unusual mountains and Finisterre Ranges I think it was and it was getting a bit more hairy from time to time. I remember at night we would have to put

out trip wires around our spot because we would save the bully beef can and managed to get a few pebbles or nuts or something and put one of these around our position so that if anything came in the middle of the night you might hear a bit of a rattle.

We were never ever

taken at night but we did have spots of amusement of course we had to dig a hole for the toilet. It was one of these humours, I waited until Ned got over the hole and then he let a little rock go over near it, frightened the life out of him because things were a little bit quiet and eerie.

Everything would be utterly silent at night and no use of cigarettes or anything like that. There would be a sense of any animal or bird movement or screeches or whatever. Then the next morning there would probably be marching on further or being sent off if we had taken a position

then some mob would have to go out and do a little of reconnoitering and take out a patrol and see if we could come up with something.

It makes its noises of its own.

You might get screechy noises and I suppose there was a certain amount of digging into the soil and that sort of thing but you wouldn’t hear a lot of this sort of thing.

In New Guinea there is over two hundred inches a year and I don’t know what that would be in millimetres.

But at three o’clock every day it started to rain, you could set your

clock by it almost.

Pretty heavy. In fact I can remember one point there the colonel wanted to know, he thought there had been a report of some movement out on one of our flanks and he said ‘come with me’ so I went with him. If you can imagine twenty two stone of Joe on the hillside there with one

slid why down here. He said, ‘Give me a map.” so I gave me a map but the trouble is it is raining and I had my map beautifully tucked away under plastic and Joe pulls it out like this and it is raining, I am suffering retreat[?] only to discover it was another movement of our troops down there it had nothing to do with the Japanese at all.

I managed to

piece it together as best as I could. Of course it was all aerial maps so the contours were important so you would pick out whether it was going to be steeper or what was happening.

You could nearly always pick a trail. Trails most of the time ran between villages or there was a bit of a track and

you could pick the general direction of the track. I had a beaut compass, an oil based compass and you could pick where you were going. If you were out on patrol you could get a very good idea of where you were going.

Pretty good, my word they were excellent, one thousand yards to the inch I think it was so

you could certainly pick when they were bunched you new it was the contour lines going up or down so on with the patrolling and that sort of thing.

It was a constant bugbear of course. If we landed at a place a bit before dark if we could get ourselves clear of the ground, which was mucky

almost all the time, we would cut a few saplings or something. Some of the time we were able to put a couple of logs together with saplings across. We had our mosquito nets we would push that across between a couple of trees and you would have your rifle along side of you and you would be right.

Yes quite a bit.

There was a case of sometimes being dry I think but a lot of the time you would be wet but we did have groundsheets that would go right over the top of things and we used them to good effect. The trouble was when you put them on the ground or underneath there wasn’t much to put over the top.

I think we were so tired that we would sleep and

when patrolling that sort of thing was eerie the Japs were mainly still in front of us. I got close to them one day where I came up on a fire where they had just been and gone and they might have seen us coming but they had disappeared. We could see their footprints and everything of course and I felt there was no point in giving chase because we were on a certain

mission and we had to get back at such and such a time but at least we knew that was a point of contact there.

We took soundings without committing ourselves into the thickness of the jungle because you would be afraid of a sniper. As soon as the air cleared a bit we knew there was a beautiful little waterfall a little bit further back, the temptation to have a

clean up under the waterfall was great so we posted a couple of fellows up top while some of us got down below and enjoyed a little bit of a clean up.

That was just a case of do the best you can, cleaning teeth and that sort of thing would go by the board a lot of the time.

That side of it was very difficult but you put up with it because of the nature of the circumstances. I do remember at one point along came General Vasey, that was extraordinary because I think General Vasey was in charge of the whole thing and he was there moving amongst us with the ribbon around his

cap. I couldn’t believe it if somebody sighted this guy well what a strike this would be. He did want to get up front and see what was happening talk to people and I think the fact that he was in behind it making a show of presence he felt was helpful.

He had a cap on and he had I think a red band just around his cap, quite distinctly marked him out as not one of the ordinary guys.

Not at all but everybody had a great regard for him and there were some Vasey Retirement homes not very far away from here

taken up in his name. Sad to say and I think it was near the latter stages of the war he was being flown back to Townsville and his plane went into the big cliff and I think it was that cliff at the back of Townsville and he was killed. I do remember the story of him coming down with the plane it was a Qantas plane, it must have been from Moresby

and they told the story of how there was a certain amount of luxury seating and there were just two benches. They discovered later on that one of the fellows sitting on the benches over here was the general in command of it all. Here are they sitting back in their comfortable Qantas seats actually it was a flying boat. He

was a wonderful guy and everybody respected him.

Very much it fell to the local colonels in charge, where do we go from here? Except for instance after all our bits of patrols and things

to discover what we could. I sent one guy down almost over a cliff because it was said, TThere could be a presence of Japanese just down there so send the section down.” I thought, “Wow which one do I send?” because you may or may not see them again. I got hold of a fellow from up the north coast there a good bushman and he did the job

and he went down and he did get back again, no presence of Japanese it was all negative so that was that. As we got a bit further up Joe Lang our colonel was recalled and Major Aitkin took over the battalion and at that stage he was told on 10 December to occupy the ridges

of the country overlooking the Mooney Mooney Valley. The ridge he was talking about was Shaggy Ridge in particular and I’ve got a painting of that and I will show you afterwards and it was very much a ridge situation. I had developed a very heavy problem with malaria so it wasn’t for me to be there

at the attempted occupation of this area. Our fellows were right in the middle of that because there were casualties and what not and that was really a major campaign of the war. How they did it was just amazing really because if you look at the ridge if you look down this way it is thousands of feet and then the Japanese up here with their command post

looking out a little slit.

I would have been three miles away at least. I had to get my way back on my own and that was just a little bit hairy because I was down and out really physically and just to lug myself along.

I had one moment of excitement.

Yes I was absolutely done in in fact on the very day it was said, “You take your mob our there and see if you can clear this little village.” I could barely get along let alone go a number of kilometres or more

to go to this little village and they could see straight away that I wasn’t the fellow to send.

Yes still with the pioneers.

No I hadn’t used it once, no.

Yes, well that is why I thought I had missed something when the actual attack on Shaggy Ridge which was a pretty good showdown and

I missed all that because I had this malaria business. I had to make my way back from up on the heights up on the hills. The only incident was on the way down I saw a wonderful dog fight. The nature of that part of New Guinea you find tremendous jungle thick as can be and then you find a plateau with hardly a single tree and well grassed.

Anyway I’m just on one of these plateaus and apparently a number of Zeros coming down to do some damage on bridges and things from the Japanese end of it met some of the Lightnings, some of the American Lightnings going the other way and it led to quite an aerial display up there and I didn’t mind watching

this. I must say thinking of it I saw two of the Zeros go in and they were shot down and instead of feeling sadness I thought well good on it, its funny feeling isn’t it?.

Not very long because they were zoom, zoom, zoom all over the place chasing one another, and

inside ten minutes the sky would be clear again but I was still on my way down.

By myself yes. When I got down to the very bottom near Dumpu I think they called the field ambulance it wasn’t really an AGH [Australian General Hospital] a hospital of any size they did have slit trenches and things there. I was only a few hundred yards from the

so called hospital and from Dumpu airstrip there was a flight of Kitty Hawks, eight Kitty Hawks taking off and these were up market on the Wirraways. The Wirraways did about one hundred and ninety kilometres an hour and the Kitty Hawk would do about two hundred and fifty.

The eighth one of these taking off its engines started to putter and the guy tried to turn the plane around and come down on the strip but he didn’t make it he had to come down just in front of me and this was an emergency landing. I was highly amused because first of all I could see that he looked as though he was going to get out of this and he crawled out of the thing and he didn’t

get wide of it. I thought the thing would go up in smoke but it didn’t and in no time he was sitting on the wing and I went over to him and he said, “I’m going to tell them about this one.” he was so calm about it all and I couldn’t imagine it.

He was an American. I got myself to there and while I was there for a few days before they could airlift me to a hospital further down.

It would have taken me four or five days at least and I probably had some rations but I wouldn’t be eating them I suppose.

Just wherever I pulled up.

First of all it used up all your energy and you’d find

it hard to just keep walking but the motivation was pretty strong so I kept at it. While I was in that little bit of a hospital there were a couple of evening attacks, call it that if you like and I think the second time we might have gone for the slip trenches. There was a Japanese plane that would come over just on nightfall when the light was fading and he

switched off his motors and he had a bomb on each wing and he would come over, he was trying to get the hospital I think but anyway he wasn’t too clever. Have you ever watched MASH [television series set in the Korean War] that thing to do with the Americans and I always remember they’d talk of Charlie coming over in the late afternoon and stir things up a bit, this was a Charlie really this fellow but

only on two occasions did he drop an egg.

I think one hundred and five or something you ran a very heavy temperature.

No I don’t think I got to that stage, it is a wonder I didn’t but they had found Quinine at that stage

so when you got into hospital they would start treating you with Quinine and pull you out of it after a few days. I was flown down to Dobadura on the backside of Lae to an airstrip there to some sort of a hospital much more respectable and I had to spend six weeks there getting over MT malaria and jaundice.

At that time

I was the only one in that airlift.

What I am saying is when I had reached the bottom and spent about three or four days in the hospital there they must have thought I felt well enough to take me down to the hospital where they could treat you better down near Lae so that is what happened and I spent six weeks there. I remember they had

you could say a whole ward of people who had skin troubles and the skin diseases were just enormous.

Tinea and in those days they only had purple dye, I naturally had it and nearly everybody had a bit of it

but some of these cases they were really really tough.

If you could picture these guys with their skin in a frightful state of irritation and you couldn’t touch it because if you touched it was tender. They would put this dye on you and

of course they couldn’t cloth you very much then because the clothing would only annoy it.

A whole lot of deadbeats as you can imagine but the nurses were wonderful. There was one guy there by the name of Barney, a Victorian he was such a cheerful fine fellow and he would pretend that he had nothing wrong with him.

One lass got to know him pretty well but he got himself caught in a nasty situation because he was a married man and he didn’t want to show any affection to her and she understood things too so it was awkward for them.

Actually there was one from up in Northern Queensland there a dark headed one and she seemed to be taking a bit of interest in me, from Millaa Millaa I think it was.

Gwen I think it might have been but nothing ever came of that of course. My battalion had been taken down from New Guinea to Australia only maybe a week before I was ready to get back into action again to become full strength I mean and then

my first object was to get down to Moresby.

I just think that when you get into the jungle with the endless moist condition those things that can normally attack irregularly they attack regularly and scrub typhus you

would say almost half of the ward was cases of scrub typhus and that could kill you in very quick time unless that was caught up with and treated.

No I don’t think so.

Yes just ordinary shirts and whatever.

Again I was a loner and because they were finished with me I could get back. I went out to the airstrip at Dobadura and I had to try and thumb a ride down. I think it might have been about four days I was hanging about the airstrip because I couldn’t get a lift.

No they didn’t organise anything and I wasn’t very far from the storehouse for some of the American foodstuffs that they had put in this storehouse and I was able to get condensed milk tins and I think for at least four days I lived on condensed milk. I eventually

picked up a plane to get back to Moresby and it was a Silver Fortress a beautiful big plane.

That would be right I think a B29 [B17] I think so but I’d have to check that because I’m not too sure.

It lacked the gun positions so I could get into

a gun bubble and look out nicely and that was great. It had to do about three times before it could go over the ranges to get back to Moresby but I enjoyed that trip because it was something different.

At that stage I’m still only a sergeant

in charge of a platoon. My lieutenant hadn’t come back to join the unit so somebody else, it was a corporal took over from me and looked after my boys but I was still a sergeant when I got back to Australia.

I could have shot through I think. I got on a boat at

Moresby and this was the Kanimbla and I think they named some of the war ships after that name now a days. That took me back to Townsville and from there I discovered my battalion had been located at Trinity Beach this is above Cairns for amphibious training and I joined them for about two weeks

and then I came down with BT [benign tertian] malaria and that landed me in the AGH in Cairns for about a fortnight and back to Trinity Beach. Then my name had been given for an officer’s training school so I attended the 13th OTU [Officer Training Unit] down at Seymour in Victoria.

No, they had gone back to Australia before I was released from the hospital so then it became a matter of going down to attend the officer’s training school which must have gone on for about two and half months or something I think it was pretty solid training.

Well

you were sort of up for review all of the time. If you walked across to the canteen you would have to be perfectly upright and doing the right, amazing the physical efforts in the morning. We had a sergeant major from Queensland he would start you doing this sort of thing and your arms would be dropping and he had

he such a voice he’d be on you and you couldn’t possibly put them down, but that is only a minor one of course but that was good training. You did everything there you went out on all sorts of training with different weapons that is where I fired the twenty five pounders for the

first time there. We had all sorts of field training and that qualified me for going to Canungra because I was a reserve officer I was commissioned and my job was reserve so I didn’t know where I was going. I was sent to Canungra that jungle training school in

Queensland.

No not at this stage I had mentioned it this morning but this was the first time I was there. I went through on one twenty eight dayer and then I had to put another group of recruits through on a twenty eight dayer and we had Mr Victoria giving us physical training there.

Mr Victoria he liked his prowess he really did. He is just as likely to say ‘Do you see that hill up there? I will give you 2½ minutes ready set go!’ and look out if you are not there. He laid it into us but I think that was the whole idea. Canungra was pretty good training because

the jungle assault course was remarkable really. There would a jelly going off here and there as you went down through all sorts of gear, the fences and through barbed wire.

Yes.

It was used off, not behind you or anything.

Probably a lot would be blanks.

I wonder if it was only blanks? I can’t remember that too vividly it might have only been blanks. I was thinking of another incident where in fact they had been back in Australia and we had been to a school. I didn’t tell you about the time back in Australia where we were dug in on a hillside and the Bren gun carriers were

going through a bit of an attack beforehand and I don’t think I told you this but it was one of the schools I went to, quite amusing.

We were given a certain amount of time to dig in up on the hillside and we were told that the attack was expected from such and such an angle down here and there would be the Bren gun carriers leading the tanks, there would be a couple of tanks

that would come through behind them and you have got such and such a time to be dug in because the tanks will come right up over your position. We got up there and do you know the little shovel they issued you with we went to work and tried to dig in. This friend of mine and I mentioned his name earlier Barney, was he was digging in behind me and he was a big fellow and he would need a big hole to

dig himself in and I could see it was going to be touch and go with him. Of course they fired the live rounds off either side of our position or over the head as well just to get the feel of it all. The tanks went through and I made it OK I was deep enough down but Barney got imprisoned, the walls what little he had there

crumbles and when I looked around there was only a head peering out and I had to dig him out.

Right over the top of us yes.

Yes that’s right.

I can’t picture it but it might have been at a school I went to from Kapooka

in the early stages. Canungra was a close to the war situation as you can imagine. You have probably heard the story before where we would use flying foxes across the creek and at night and up a tree here and down by the vine and in fact I baulked at that one. I wasn’t at all sure of my wrists and the first part of the tree you would climb there would be a ladder

very respectable. The next bit would be a number of slabs nailed onto the tree, which was not bad going, but you are thirty feet up now. Then the last bit might have still been the same sort of thing to a platform. From the platform you are supposed to lean out and take a vine a good solid vine and make your way down the vine like this. Well

I got up the top and I thought this no good to me so I baulked on that and they let me get down, they let me get out of that. I understood what it was to ask some of the fellows I was putting through, I said, “Look we are up on a tower overlooking that stretch of water down there over that bit of a river, you have got to get up on top of this tower and jump in.” I think they had limited

equipment on but they had to know what it was to encounter that kind of a condition. Some of them couldn’t swim and to be taken up to a height and told to jump off. A few fellows baulked at that and I could understand it. For the main part you were suppose to push them and they would have a couple of fellows down in the water ready to grab them so

the thought of drowning was not possible at all but as I say Canungra was pretty lively. It finished with an eight day mission where they would send your group out in one direction and you would have to encounter another group sent out from the other direction and you would have to try and meet one another and have a mock skirmish at such and such a map reference. You would have to find

your way to that map reference after doing a couple of things during the four days out or something. I will remember that it was going on nightfall; I shouldn’t be telling you all this I suppose, it was going on nightfall and I thought, “This is no good we haven’t quite reached the point, but I think we will have to stop here.” Fortunately we did because the last bit I had them hanging

onto the scabbard hanging down here in front like a caterpillar getting along. I said, “This is it stop we are not going any further.” so that was OK. When I woke up in the morning and had a look we were only about thirty feet from a great cliff. Had we gone on much longer with the darkness just about black I don’t know we

would have all gone off, we were hanging onto one another anyway that was Canungra.

They were just new recruits and there were a big number of them there. Red Robbie was the general brigadier I can’t remember in charge of the entire camp and he was the fellow with the great

reputation and he only stood about this high but he would blister anything within range. He was probably accountable for the stiff nature because nobody had any regard for him at all.

At that stage they were quite young fellows and they were pretty pliable and I think they gave me credit for knowing something about the jungle

so I felt they respected me enough to be able to pass on an order or two. They were co-operative if you told them, “OK this is it you have got to find a place to squat overnight do the best you can.” you know native Australian know how.

Just the mere thought of looking ahead and deciding where all this is going and realise that it requires a certain discipline to get there and the obligation falls on me, I think I felt the obligation side of it pretty strongly the same as a

teacher in a classroom of course

From Canungra I was sent down to a hygiene course somewhere near Coogee. It was a fortnight course to get to know all about Atebrin

and particularly the anopheles mosquito. We were quartered very comfortably there and of course we were in the hands of people who were not necessarily terribly soldier minded and they knew nothing about physical education but they knew that they had to give it to us so there was a lot of floor boards up in one corner of the paddock. Physical education in the morning would be

getting the floorboards from this end of the paddock and carrying them over and putting them in at that end of the paddock. The actual course was very course was very good in that some of it happened at the Sydney University at the Tropical Med School and Professor Harvey Sutton was the brainstorm, the great lecturer there and he had a real reputation and it was good to hear him in action.

Just got sent because somebody had to lecture the troops on the anopheles mosquito and what prevention measures were necessary and why do we have all this Atebrin thing and it was mainly that sort of a thing. I would get caught at night up there at Canungra in a big sort of a mess hall trying to tell people all about

the anopheles mosquito.

By now they were, they had woken up to it that everybody has to be aware of the fact that it is pretty important for you to take this thing and we are not just pushing it down your neck for nothing.

It only requires one stab and it can do an awful lot of damage and you

can suspect them in that kind of a climate up in New Guinea almost anywhere and of course it was after the event as far as I was concerned. Canungra finished up and then I was appointed to Moratai then to do a job there.

Just two courses in length, twenty eight days measured one course and twenty eight days measured another that amount of time plus a little bit of arriving and finishing..

Yes it must have been between that that I went down and did the course

and came back again between the two courses I guess.

It was clear enough to be able to carry on and take the training so that was good so somebody must have treated me right.

That didn’t put the wind up me because I hadn’t

encountered too much of the enemy I been on the back end of them quite a bit but hadn’t confronted them so it didn’t shake me up that much. I went up there knowing I would be looking after this reinforcement thing.

I had a wonderful trip up there in the HMS Ainsworth I think it was.

The officers were getting top line treatment so I had meals served to the table, napkins and the works. I remember it was a delightful trip just coasting off the Barrier Reef and going up there in perfect conditions. There was no protection from nasties under the water, no submarines or anything that

they had to think about but there were some sharks. One morning we were having a church parade out on the deck and I could see five fins going alongside the motion of the ship, I thought, wow that looks good I’m so glad I’m up here and not down there. That was a great trip and we called at Biak on the way up and from there on to Moratai.

Only just a day or two, nothing at all just a port of call really. The reinforcement thing was only administration people coming and going that’s all being sent to where they had to go. While I was there, I mentioned the case of this fellow who I went to school with

but not very far away from us was a topographical model of the Borneo landing area it was unnamed because nobody wanted it to get around as to where we were going to land. Obviously the big brass had it in mind where the Borneo landing at Tarakan would take place and they developed this very interesting model so obviously the big shots could come down

and say, “Well now we will establish here and we will do this that and another.” but that wasn’t very far away from where I was so I thought that I will have to get back to my unit they are over on the other side of the island but I haven’t had a chance to get to them and whether they would send me back. A lot of the time once you were trained as an officer they were not keen to send you back to the same unit where you are known it is maybe better if you come

into a unit where you are unknown where you can chuck your weight about.

Yes I would have liked to get back to them.

No I was too tied up with running the show. There was one of our Aussies who was on the make had managed to get a couple of whiskey bottles from Australia

some of the fellows flying in from Australia they could bring a bit of liquor or something now and again. For two bottles of whiskey he bought a Jeep from the Americans. How he did it and how this Jeep could be written off in the records of the Americans I would like to know, just imagine that. We were under canvas and the Americans are over there in much more promising looking

tents with floorboards and with refrigerators now war was never like this and I was only there for about four or five weeks.

I guess I was too busy and I had been away from them for quite awhile because from Trinity Beach where they were doing the amphibious training and obviously

that was a preparation for an operation like Borneo later on I only saw a sample of that, I didn’t have much of that at all. I went to the officers’ school and then I went to Canungra so I was away from them for quite awhile before I went to Moratai.

Well

you are talking of I think it was April, May it must have been 1945 I was

up at Moratai and by then the war was starting to go our way considerably. While I had been at Canungra because it looked as though you might get caught there for the entire war and it wasn’t that much fun anyway we had volunteered to go to various things. One of the things I put up for was the British Army in India not thinking that it

meant anything. From Moratai I was recalled to movement to Australia pending transfer to India so I had to be flown out of Moratai and I landed at Jacky Jacky at the very top of the Cape. There was an American holding there we had some wonderful Barramundi or something overnight a terrific meal.

The trouble was next morning we had to run the length of this strip, which wasn’t very long anyway in this DC3, and it was full up in the aisles we had two wounded fellows. It had to clear the trees so everybody was aware of the fact that this thing has got to gun it as strong as it can and go for it’s life up

the runway and take off and we are looking down there, there are trees but we cleared it of course and everything was right so that got me down to. I had to get down to Melbourne, I was given ten days leave and five of which I had and then I got a recall notice to go to India and I had to get there in a hurry.

I got

home and it was wonderful.

They were pleased to see me and I think I got the treatment. Then realizing I had no time to get to Melbourne I thought no use going down by train I will go to Amberley airstrip across the border in Queensland. I used my thumb and I picked up

a British naval plane a little one, quite a small one heading south with just a pilot and co-pilot and we are flying over the top of Taree on the way down and not that hard of course. The fellow says, “What town would that be down there?” and I said, “Have you got your map there?” and he passes me a bit of a map of New South Wales that you would tear out of a,

well that’s what it looked like anyway so I said, “We are here and we have got that far to go.” That startled me a bit that it could be so reckless I think. I safely got myself down to Melbourne and joined this American troop ship which was a big one, General WF Hayes

and it was loaded with American troops and there were seventy of us Australians. Officers who had experience in jungle warfare and the object was to go over there and join the British Army and do whatever they were doing so it was a case of pulling in at Fremantle. We knew that the

ship wasn’t leaving until the following day so we were given wharf exercise you could go down the gang plank and of course knowing that Fremantle is there and Perth is just across there most of us shot through overnight to Perth. We are coming back at some advanced hour and the guy at the top of the gangplank is saying, “What is your name?” The guy in front of

me said, “Abraham Lincoln.” the fellows were not giving their proper names at all. We got confined below decks, I can still see the note I got from the captain of the boat telling me that I was confined to below decks for ten days but we started out and because it got so hot that he had to reprieve that one.

I don’t think that was very positive I think we just had a look around as much as anything and had a drink that would probably be all that we did.

I don’t know Ken Wilson whether he had a chance to look up the girl he had seen when we were over in the west.

I wouldn’t be surprised if that hadn’t of happened in his case.

No that’s quite wrong he wouldn’t have been amongst that crowd it was a later time he got over to the west. We headed out from Fremantle and headed for Calcutta.

Along the way it was getting hotter because we were approaching the tropics but I was leaning over the railing looking out dazedly across the ocean and we were turning every seven minutes or something. I think we were changing direction up until then and up came a periscope no distance away and it appeared to be straight in line with

us and I thought, well do I count the seconds.

Yes I saw the periscope I was looking in the right direction and saw it and up surfaced the submarine and it was to be our escort. It was a shock but it couldn’t have turned out better.

No. As I said it had

probably turned up with us at that point because we were quite some time out and then we went up to Calcutta.

I suppose it took five or six days not a real lengthy time.

Drinking Coca Cola, the Yanks were

absolutely sold on Coca Cola. When it got hot in the middle of the day you would join the queue and it went round two or three decks and you looked down there and they were serving it down there but I have got to go down here.

I might of but I doubt if I had.

No had I known I would have taken some shares straight away.

Quite OK. I got down to the gullies and somehow I must have met the cook onshore the night before we left and he showed me round down below so that was good and I considered him very friendly. Then got to Calcutta where

we were suppose to be met for dinner by the Ambassador or something the Australian Ambassador and it turned out I had malaria again and couldn’t attend that one so that was a pass up. We were headed for, I don’t know if it was there that we were given the election for which unit we would like to go to, you could pick a number of British units which one

you want to go to. I had a friend amongst the seventy that went a chap who now lives in the ginger country in Queensland and we used to do a run down from Dover Heights where he lived down to Bondi and I knew him quite well. He had

been in the Middle East and he met up with the Queen’s Regiment in the Middle East and he said, “Of these we could have gone to the Buffs or this one and that one.” and he said, “I think I will settle for the British Army.” meaning the 2nd Battalion of the Queens Royal Regiment and that took us to lower Darga the name of the place

in Bihar state and that is a bit west of Calcutta. The thing about Calcutta that first struck me on the way in was there were two thousand people living on the platforms of the station. At Lower Darga we had to join up with one of the Chindit columns,

the Queen’s 2nd Battalion had been broken up and one section of it was sent with Brigadier Orb Wingate, you might have heard of the name Wingate and he was to take a big mission into the back blocks of Burma. The war that was going on in Burma was mainly coming down from the north

and the object of the Japs coming down from the north was to get through to India of course. It was decided by high command that they should send a mission into the back blocks of Burma and they formed up some columns about three of them I think and the 2nd Battalion, the Queen’s had been one of the columns. The

tactic was to set up a number of what Wingate called strongholds and to get there to clear a bit of ground where they could air drop supplies because they had seventy donkeys or mules I suppose you’d call them to carry heavy equipment and food supplies and then they would rely on the next stop to get an air drop. From there

they would keep that as a post and do guerilla work and they developed quite a reputation. They walked four hundred and fifty miles inside ninety days and under those conditions over mountains and what not that is pretty good going and I joined a group that had come back. Some of the officers

went back to England because they had served there and were given a length of time they were allowed leave and got back to England. Some of the officers were kept back to sent up to set up the Queen’s Royal Regiment again while they sent out troops from England, young fellows to be trained and obviously to be trained as we learnt later was for the possible retaking of Singapore.

The thought was that if we get enough troops built up used to amphibious and this that and another, I don’t know whether it was Churchill’s or Blamey thinking or whose it was. We became part of the 2nd Battalion, which was reformed as the usual four companies. A proper British Regiment you know

they were a lot of, they tried to be first class soldiers anyway in appearance.

To start with we were sent to Poona going across India and you’d appreciate this because there trains were any old how and I remember waking up in the morning somewhere near Hyderabad I think

on the way across and I said, “This is a bit slow we haven’t moved for I don’t know how long.” There were two carriages abandoned and the rest of the train had disappeared and we had to be picked up later. As you looked out I remember looking out the train window and seeing people step over a dead body lying there. It was the biggest drought they had had for about one hundred years.

In fact in the top part of India, not right at the top over to the east of Calcutta now what is that?

It would be to the right of that and above anyway the loss in population was five million through

that drought. You would probably call it Bengal I suppose or getting that way.

I wouldn’t say I was accustomed to it, I always took it as a shock and I didn’t see that much of it in New Guinea.

They were extraordinarily respectful of us.

I think they looked up to us because they figured we had some sort of background but they might have been misinformed about that. They were very respectful and in fact they tried to be as helpful as they could.

I was 2IC [second in command] of the Company for a while and I was that for

quite a bit of the time and then when trouble broke our particular task was internal security with a special reference to Bombay. When Bombay got out of gear, riots and things, it became our job to get down to it.

I think it was mainly this animosity between the Muslims and the Hindus

and in particular the first time we had to go down in October 1945 the Indian temples were in a Muslim area and of course for them to go into the Muslim area there was a time whey they were not seeing eye to eye because the general feeling in India was quit India, quit India was well

strong, in other words the British Rajahs were dirt. As far as the British Rajah was concerned we were on the outer with the Muslims and the Hindus. When we went down in October there were riots that had broken out because the Hindus trying to get to their temples in the Muslim area

led to clashes and they were pretty lively clashes I can tell you.

I think it was about then I was made the intelligence officer and IO and I can remember putting my troops in position down where they had established their headquarters in Bombay and I was the 2IC I think

at that stage. The general idea then was that when a great demonstration was being staged and a stop had to be put to the advancing mob, our crowd would put up roadblocks and our platoons would move separately and with

each platoon there would be a magistrate and he would announce they would have to disperse and if they didn’t disperse then he would turn around and call on the troops to disperse them. Of course they went in with a bit of butts and rifles and things mainly.

Our troops I’m talking of they were quartered in Bombay for the length of time that this was upside down.

They were British nationals.

No they were the young fellows that had come out from England and reformed the 2nd Battalion, quite a few of the officers had come out of Burma but you would say that the whole of the

non commissioned ranks were new recruits from England so we had all the accents. I had a lovely little Batman who came from Liverpool I think.

Perhaps they would have liked to translate it as that but I think

in a sense, as soon as the Thacker’s took place and there were clashes the looters as you have seen in Iraq came in straight away and started belting up shops and looting right left and centre the more they could do that the riper it got and this lasted for a while until peace was established. Things had settled

down quite peacefully because we went back to Poona and we had a victory parade there of the 36th Division and they were in some other part of India at the time and I know the 2nd Battalion, the Queens, lead the parade and I will show you a photo of that if you want me to.

Yes I will finish that off.

That was October in 1945 leading into November I guess and then everything was quiet through until about February and things were getting out of hand again. But before that happened I had been made the I officer.

That is right and the colonel decided

that we would have an alternative route down to Bombay just in case the main road became unusable. I headed off with a Jeep and a driver and a map and tried to find out which way we can go. I didn’t get very far with that because I got recalled but it might have been the next emergency. In between times we

were doing training in the western parts, jungle training and I remember an alarm went up when they said there had been two tigers had been seen in this area in recent days. You would sleep with a rifle pretty handy and that was part of the training. Back on this trip that I was taking to try and get a secondary road. I came to the most amazing

underground temple and I don’t know if you have seen that film Passage to India. You might recall that the incident that the book and film focus on is the echo that was set up in the cave. I think there were about one hundred and twenty cells the fellow told me in this underground set up and there was a big assembly hall where there were columns

along the side with elephant heads and trunks leaning down and looking in. Most of these had been pillaged and obviously the big podium up the far end would have been a significant thing and that would have been taken altogether. One little thing while I was there I paid him a rupee or two and he turned to me and said, “You have got a couple of warts there on your finger

do you want to get rid of them?” I said “Yes.” just to humour him and I had a couple on there and a couple on here and he said, “I will get you some holy water.” He set a pitcher down into a well, which was well underground now and pulled it up and poured it over there. I thought that will keep him quiet and I didn’t bother about this hand with a couple of warts on anyway these disappeared. My mission didn’t take me very much further on that

road because somehow I got recalled. Then there was the February time when things got out of hand again.

The riots were all starting again between the Muslims and the Hindus and things were hotting up. Gandhi was a pretty prominent figure because I remember when I went down this time I was some big distance from a great mass of Indians. There was a

big platform or other and there was a white robed figure right in the middle of this and this was Gandhi. I had some glasses so I could pick it out but that was as close as I got to Gandhi. The Quit India movement was getting very strong.

The second occasion we went down

there it was in February.

I think it was probably at the end of the time that we got things quiet again and I think that was when there was a rally.

Yes I was the I officer on that second occasion and I was stationed at Bombay Police Station and one of the things I would have to do

was to keep in touch with what is happening in the areas and the stabbings overnight. I remember putting up flags for where the stabbings had occurred and I remember putting up seventy two flags one morning after it was reported where the stabbings had occurred.

To some extent because one of our platoons from B Company they were made hostage at the police station and somehow they were able to surround them and we had to send another force to get them out. I went down to look this over after it happened and I was spat at because some of the bars that contained

the prisoners were just near the entry and a couple of prisoners that were there saw me arriving wearing British gear and they spat at me, that sort of thing would happen

Yes that is right; it is kind of a strange feeling because

you realised that the quietness had to be achieved, everything had to be quieten down and you had a job to do and this has got to happen. We’d put a presence in the streets and the Bren guns would be visible so they could see what was happening. At night we had to bring in an eight o’clock curfew where everybody had to be off the streets or we would bump them off

the streets. I would have to go out and talk to the magistrates at these different places and probably had some rocks thrown at me on the way back. It was interesting how they treated the British, I would go up and see a magistrate and he would try and be very welcoming he would say, “Come in and sit down here and I will get a cup of tea or would you like a whiskey?” and

that would happen straight off. With the curfew that would be brought in at eight o’clock at night. The ladies of the night didn’t appreciate this because that is when their clientele came around and Sand Hurst Road there were some of our patrols going up the street at night and the ladies of the night on their higher landings would empty their piss pots or send down rocks

on them and they didn’t appreciate the fact that we had stalled their trade. We were camped at Poona no distance from the summer quarters of General Wavell and Wavell was the Viceroy of India and he distinguished himself in North Africa

and he was in charge of the British troops in North Africa and he

got rid of the Italians from that area but from there he was immediately sent to Viceroy of India. Our camp was not very far from Uruli and this mate of mine from Dover Heights

he and I used to get on a motorbike and go over to the great place where Wavell had his little establishment. He had a beautiful lagoon out the back and he had tennis courts and he had a squash court and Roy and I would play a bit of squash and have a swim in this natural pool, beautiful pool out the back of

this elaborate looking establishment he had there. Roy was a great friend because the two of us, are you interested in the story or not?

The colonel who was quite a distinguished figure, HG Jacobean Duvalon [?] and he must have had some French background

and he was decorated fellow you know MBE, MC or something or other and he had a five year term in India before so he knew what it was to be in India and he had been in the artillery before hand. To get anywhere in artillery in the British Army in the earlier times was to play polo so he played quite a bit of polo

before he came to us when the war bit was on. He had three horses and Roy and I managed to put a trade in with him that instead of taking physical education in the morning we would exercise his horses. We had a nice little canter around the place in the morning and see the troops grinding away at it over here.

I think it was mainly a matter of jungle experience. Certainly they had this compliment that came out of Burma but they were hardened troops and they were due almost to go back home again. Whereas I am sure they had their thoughts on Singapore so they sent out young fellows to be trained in

jungle warfare and one of the ways to do it was to get seventy officers from Australia I guess.

We haven’t reached that stage yet this is 1945.

Yes the war was still going because I remember

and it must have been half way through that year the atomic bomb went off and I was in hospital at the time that this news came through and of course everybody was quite cheered to think that the war had ended.

I had some haemorrhoid condition that came from all the marching and playing soldiers I think.

I remember one thing while I was there that I struck one of these chess masters and he would have ten chess boards set up and he would come along and he would give each person behind the board about three or four minutes to make a move and then he would come along and he would look at the first board and he would go plop, and then the second board and he would go plop just like that one of these absolute chess masters.

The war was finished so what did they do with Jack, I was made the education officer because I had this teaching background and I had to set up a library and set up some arrangements right through the length of the battalion to give them some training in English and Maths.

This came to us from the authorities that this is what is needed because a lot of these young fellows didn’t have proper schooling and this might be an opportunity. They didn’t want to keep them just doing parade ground and drills and one thing and another, the war had finished.

Had I been with my unit I would have been at the landing of Tarakan and Balikpapan but not to be.

I think I did at the time because suddenly I am translated to a

totally foreign situation but that side stepped me a little bit I have to admit. You get absorbed in what is going on they had all sorts of off sets to keep us interested.

I used to play a bit of hockey and I remember once the old boy, which is the colonel

decided he would like to go pig sticking this is one of the things they do in India in those days the old pucka Englishmen. He had three horses and he was a beautiful polo pony and we had been riding these of course. The notice went up on the notice board that this was coming up on the following weekend and if anybody would care to volunteer and come out and enjoy the weekend

pig sticking then come along. It got to about Thursday and Roy said to me, “There have been no names gone up there.” and we have been looking after his horses all this time so we decided to go on the weekend. He sent the horse out on the Friday to do this little bit of sticking and he sent the Shakari troop, they were about thirty paid

Indians to clear the low shrub supposedly to set up any animal that might be there and we were supposed to be on the horse with a spear to go chase the pig. This was quite amusing because there were three horses and one was a retired racehorse and we had to draw lots to see which horse we were going to have. I got the retired racehorse

and he was very prancy so as soon as I took a spear up in my hand he was all over the place. We went along with the Shikaris and they were beating in three different positions there along the expanse and it looked very promising but all that happened was I think there was cougar or

something like that one of those creatures that look like a jaguar something in that line went up a tree in front of me. I know my golly horse chased after a little animal that went over the edge somewhere and I had a difficult job to prevent my horse from going over. All that came of our beating was a little feral cat and I think one of the

natives had probably grabbed the tail out of that so that was a bit of a farce. The old boy had a peahen and we dined on the Sunday with peahen which I didn’t appreciate very much I always thought pretty well of peacocks and peahens so it was quite a different experience that one.

I got to know what an Indian curry tasted like, if I took my wife to an Indian curry place back of town here I can go for the pretty strong stuff and she would rebel at it but I suppose I got to know what a good curry was like and what were those flat bits of bread?

That is right.

Just about negative because they were doing their own thing in Borneo and all that and it was a way over there as far as we were concerned.

Montgomery?

Mountbatten had been there earlier on but we had no knowledge of him there at all, none what so ever.

We were aware of the fact that he was a man of peace that he was trying to get in behind the political scene there were

great players in those days what were there names? Nehru and Jarra no not Jarra a name awfully like that but they were sort of opposing sides of what would happen to India is was it going to be petitioned was the big issue because the Muslims were saying and this was Jinna, Jinna was saying

“No we are not going to have a uniform India we want a definite what we can Pakistan India and a Muslim India.”

I suppose we got a bit of the drift of that in the mess.

I don’t know but

the old boy decided that we ought to have a debate now and again.

I don’t think you got onto political stuff I think he wanted to get people relaxed a little bit. Everything would get formal about once a month and they’d have a proper dinner, and there would be passing

the port and that sort of thing all this business and a toast to the Queen and so on.

Yes that’s right but a bit raw at the front end of it.

Perhaps I will take you back to Bombay for a second. At Bombay because we had cleaned things up a little bit

we were invited to go to the Bombay Yacht Club, that was very select in fact there is something there and I put it out when I knew you were coming and that was quite accidentally. It was indicating that only a squadron leaders or above or majors or above might be allowed temporary membership of the

Bombay Yacht Club. I was there and at least one there that I can remember and every seat at the Yacht Club table had a bearer an Indian bearer you know all rigged up in white behind you. If you wanted to reach for the salt there would be an arm come over your shoulder and bring it back you and that sort of thing, amazing.

While I was there a couple of things stand out. When things had settled down there was a race meeting held. This was quite startling because it was led off by an elephant or two with the howdah on top and all the things they can put over the elephants to make them look good. Nobody knew anything about the horses except they are properly done

and the colours were there and bookies and what not and of course we had no idea of the merits of any one horse against any other. I think I won seventy two rupees and that sort of thing can happen. While I was there the war had finished and it might have been

Poona I think, Poona had quite a magnificent racetrack and all that. Some of our Australian cricketers had been serving in the air force and what not in England, were due to come back to Australia and they were able to muster a cricket team of Australians, and cricket was pretty big in India

even in those days. They had gone to a lot of trouble putting screening around the ground because when the Indians want to have a look at something they will climb up anything. When the actual match took place there were people dangling from anything within cooee, but since some of it was not properly surrounded they had to put hessian around it. The team was

captained by Lindsay Hasset you might have heard of him he was one of our great cricket captains and Miller, Keith Miller was an outstanding hitter he was one of the guys who hit a ball right over the grandstand at Sydney Cricket Ground, a mighty hitter. Anyway I was looking forward to seeing Miller play and it turned out

that I think he had been given an invitation overnight to stay with the Maharaja and I think he was so well treated he didn’t appear for the game.

They were commanded by Brigadier Wingate, Wingate had a long reputation and he fought in Syria and North Africa he was

with the SAS, pretty in behind the Rommel’s lines and that sort of thing. He was always working off the front foot in 1943 he took an exploration into the back blocks of Burma himself and I don’t know how that was handled but his strategy was and he was going to sell it to higher ups that he would settle up these strong holds

in various parts of Burma and work gorilla tactics from there. He had to reconnoitre this beforehand and when he came back out of that he trained people for about six months, these people in the columns. When they got in there they had to go hammer and tongs and do what they had to do and they caused casualties right, left and centre. They were able to do things like

cut the road between China and India, the Ledo road or whatever they call it and they were able to get in there and do that. Wreck railway lines and generally play havoc and rely on the airdrops to keep them going. My only contact with that was through the officers that came out of that and were

asked to reform the unit.

They were pretty quiet about it a lot of these people don’t like talking about it unless they get an interview crowd like you.

I never met Wavell I would have liked to and see what sort of customer he was.

Looking back on that I have got no idea we must have gone in by the back blocks I am sure we would not get a front invitation for anybody like us.

Maybe he wasn’t but

we were there pretty a year so he must have been there some of the time. It depended on what time we had available to get over there and what was happening back on the unit just occasionally there would be a loop hole and we would say, “How about a game of squash?” and away we would go.

It was a second of foot and I like to keep on telling you this sort of thing because they were founded way back in 1661. The circumstances behind that were Charles II had just come to the throne in England and he was thirty years old and he didn’t have a Queen so if you are going to have a King you have got to have a Queen.

They did a bit of research around Europe who is a likely customer who we want to make a political alliance with and they eventually decided on Portugal. He married Catherine of Braganza and she brought with a dowry to Charles II,

Tangiers in North Africa, and it required a garrison to keep it to look to maintain it as a kind of a fort situation and they had to get the Queen in the name of the Queen and they had to get a unit going to put over there and that was their first experience. Just recently

the 1st June passed by in the unit that was always a holiday in the unit because it had the name of the glorious 1st of June for the reason that way back, this is the historical jots they kept throwing at you. Way back in 1803 there was I think seventy or more Queens Regiment fellows were put as

marines on board the Lady Charlotte I think it might have been, one of the British ships that was sent out to contest with the ships of France because Napoleon was intent on getting to England and it was a case of stalling Napoleon. Admiral Lord Howe was a pretty clever seaman amongst other things because he got in there

and I think he discovered that the ships were coming out from Brest and he got his crew of ships to get out there to contest with them and I think he put down seven ships and of course they lost some marines but not an extraordinary number. When they got back to England they were met at the dockside I think by Charles or

the Queen I don’t know but this is a glorious day this 1st of June and this is due to you Admiral Lord Howe so since then they have always called it the glorious 1st of June. They kept up the holiday if you were in the unit now and it still exists you know but it is called Queen’s surrey now instead of having the present Queen Mother, looking

at the present Queen’s Regiment she handed over to Diana, Princess of Wales and she became the Claval in Chief of the Queen’s Royal Regiment for a number of years and after that it had to of course pass onto somebody else and I don’t know who it is now.

Mainly in the mess occasion probably no parades or nothing that looked like training but it depends on where you were and if you could have a relaxed day it would be allowed into the nearest city or village. In the unit I think they allowed the mess to be opened pretty liberally.

I would have to say yes to that one. I do remember one parade where we turned out and it was a very hot day and one of the big shots was going through looking us over and I cant remember who it was but we were called to attention because this slow parade joined us I think and maybe the guy was up in a

jeep or something and wasn’t working too hard himself. We are standing like this see with our rifle and we had to give the salute beforehand but at this stage we were like this with the rifle tucked in. It was so hot that different fellows were fainting and you would hear plop along the ranks somewhere,

plop and it got that way when is it going to be my turn very unsettling but nobody took any notice just too British good and just pretend it is not happening until the parade is sort of finished and the chiefs have gone by and they started worrying about who hadn’t recovered. That sort of thing was a bit more rigid I think than in our outfit

and I’m sure our ranks would have broken and done a bit of good for the fellows down.

It was mainly demonstrations and there would be a mass crowd of people going up the street and pitching rocks and

handling what havoc they could, partly knocking shops about and upturning traffic or anything. It was the looters that were doing a lot of damage to the shops. Our crowd would have to disperse them somehow and the main tactic was to put up roadblocks when we saw them coming, we had intelligence feed in and we would set up the roadblocks and we would looked pretty threatening.

In those days they didn’t have rubber bullets or anything like that. I can’t remember anybody shooting over the top of them. Handling rifles and pushing them around whatever you could and the best way you could. They didn’t have horses as they sometimes do here with the crowd that they have got to disperse. The magistrate first of all had to call on them first to disperse and if they wouldn’t disperse it was

up to the army to move in.

Yes.

I couldn’t very well because they were taken off to hospital pretty quickly after all we were working a city. The second occasion which was the fiercest one that was when there, I think I told you was when a frigate came right

up and it had its three inch gun trained. it came up to the gateway of India and it was opened when the George V I think was the first King to visit India or something or something was built but right next door to that was the Taj Mahal Hotel and they had this three inch gun on the frigate trained on the Taj Mahal Hotel. I know my friend

Bill Coon was in charge of the three inch mortars and he had to get his mortars down ready to pop something on top of the frigate. Before they did any damage, the crew on board this naval frigate had mutinied and they had sailed it up to there and at the same time the naval barracks had rioted

they had mutinied too. There was no discipline from that corner at all and that is when our crowd had to go into the naval barracks and absolutely settle things down there and there were casualties out of that. At that stage I was still at Bombay police station or somewhere making contacts for intelligence purposes so I wouldn’t have seen any casualties there.

No I wouldn’t say I saw people down but you wouldn’t call them casualties you’d have seen them carted off on a stretcher, not in my experience but it was happening sure.

Yes it did because

what can you expect what is the next turn of events here. In view of the fact that it was out the British you didn’t quite know which quarter it was coming from. When we were training for amphibious purposes in Lake Cove Vaseler, climbing up net work to board a ship or something like that. Then we would be on the way home and they would know we were coming because we had gone

that way and if we had to pass a village they would pitch rocks at us, you could expect that sort of thing along the track. I probably had my head out of a, you’ve seen these trucks with the loophole for somebody to poke out the top, I would have probably pulled the lid down at that stage.

No

I wouldn’t say that because the military strength was strong enough and after all they hadn’t fired any live bullets around to any extent at all. At Antwizer I think in an earlier generation I think there was about two hundred and fifty Indians killed when the British then under some captain and gave the order to belt them when they didn’t disperse.

A lot of them dived down a well and were drowned that way but it nothing like that, that was really fallen times.

I didn’t see it and as I say I was in hospital

when the announcement came through. Sure amongst the British everybody would have been happy and they would have been turning things upside down with joy.

No very minor we couldn’t under those circumstances. Of course then came the end of the thing and it was time to go home and I think I’ve told you this but we could have been

demobbed in England or demobbed in Australia.

As soon as the atomic bomb had dropped our term in India wasn’t finished and the battalion still held together there under the same duty of keeping Bombay under control

because it was in 1947 it became independent so it was still likely to get out of hand. Although the war had finished the local problem in Bombay was still there, there would have been a job for the 2nd Battalion the Queens, but from our point of view they allowed us to be demobbed at that stage.

That’s right. It was just simply a matter of election and we were offered various things by the Brits we will make you permanent army which has certain sidekicks that comes with being permanent army. In fact had we stayed with them I think some of the 2nd battalion would have gone to

Japan and they did different duties. For instance they traced them down the years and I can remember when the Berlin Wall was on just much more recent times. The Dormander I think was where the planes were bringing supplies to Berlin and the

planes were landing at Dormander I guess and the security of all that operation was under the then present Queen’s but of course we had nothing to do with that. Had we stayed with them we would have been withdrawn to England and maybe that.

Just a toss up in the air

it was very momentary because there is nothing like home sweet home. When you have been away for more or less four and a half years and not getting a proper run of what it was to enjoy a bit of steady life it looked pretty attractive. Then what happened coming home I got a ship down to Singapore

had a look at Changi camp while we were there and then from there I took a Qantas plane, which was a converted Liberator, a converted Liberator mind you, and I remember we landed at Darwin. We had to take off in the middle of the night from Darwin with the old Liberator and he was leaving a line of fuel behind one of the motors, a line of fire and I thought,

“Crikey what’s going to happen here?” but he seemed to be quite undisturbed about this and I think it faded out after a while. That was flying home to give you an idea we came down over Java or somewhere but there was a great crater I remember and the pilot said, “Look I will take you around the top of that crater it is an extraordinary feature just have a look at this while I

take you round it.” and this Qantas plane flew round the jolly crater and kept on its way and that’s unbelievable in modern terms isn’t it?

No just looking at it from the outside I just couldn’t picture what it might have been the fellows there were behind it because it looked pretty uninviting. To think that

these guys had been treated so harshly it was just unthinkable.

Not so much, not nearly as much as we learnt afterwards. It was rather like the treatment the Jews got in German a lot

of it came through in the later years that information.

I think I was official demobbed in Melbourne and then it was a case of get back to Sydney.

From Darwin to Melbourne maybe the

Qantas plane went straight through to Melbourne because I can’t remember landing in Sydney it must have been Melbourne I think because that is where they handled all the documentation side of it.

Nobody I got home quite unannounced.

It was great to get back into the

old scene again and I was silly enough to be still dressed out as an officer of the British Army because we hadn’t got rid of our togs. Here I am getting around in the Australian scene with two Queens across my shoulders, I knew how that would go down.

I got a few sidekicks and a few jibes.

No we handled all situations all right. When I got back the local scene gives you a bit of a welcome the local politician what’s his name came down to Coraki and had us up on the stage and produced a song and dance act

on what we had done and all this sort of stuff.

Where was I?

Nothing much it was just a matter of getting to develop a few of your old contacts and there was still a younger set around that I could relate to even four and a half years later

and they were still about. In fact we held together quite well a number of us for some years afterwards.

That was quite wonderful because the only contact was through letters and my father in particular was a wonderful letter writer. He was a sort of inspiration behind it all he really felt that things were happening out there and

maybe fellows like you are contributing a bit and I think he must of felt a bit that way like a bit of nonsense patriotism I suppose or something.

It all felt a bit strange what is all this about? Here am I dressed up in fancy dress because I still had my

British togs on and that sort of thing and it all felt a bit remote somehow but never the less it was good to look forward to what happens from here.

Yes it was almost a slap in the face because life isn’t like that any longer it has been quite different and where I had been and that sort of feeling.

At that stage I was on leave until and I don’t know how long we were left on leave but we had to front up to something or to the education department in my case, no doubt we were given leave. We were given deferred pay

and stuff. You start off earning six shillings a day and I don’t know what we were earning it might have been seven for all I know. All the time a little bit went in to deferred pay so there was a bit of lolly there at the end of the time probably around a few hundred pounds in those days.

Yes and no. I guess I was a real country boy when I left pretty self-effacing and reserved if that is what you’d call it and I might have been a bit more outgoing after that I might have wanted to shove people around a bit but I don’t think so. I didn’t carry any of the sentiments of

the glory out of ordering people around there was nothing in that.

No I think they were a very accepting race of people and even if I came back looking like a witch they would have probably taken me on.

No I didn’t have a moustache or anything like that but

I did have a bit of hair, but I had a bit of hair before I went away. Physically I was pretty OK because we were fairly well treated in India and I was eating in the officers’ mess all the time and we had plenty of exercise and that sort of thing so I was pretty fit except for the malaria

because that caught up with me a little bit afterwards.

I might have had three or four incidents of trouble when I came back and I also had digestive troubles and I know they put me in Concord [hospital] and nowadays they have a very good way of testing

your digestion by swallowing some sort of a tube. In the days when I had to have this testing at Concord they put something like a broomstick down your neck and you had to keep on swallowing this thing to get the camera down there, that is another aspect of camera work and I might have had a couple of weeks in there. It took quite a long time for my

internal arrangements to settle down properly.

They were kind enough to say, “Where do you come from?” and I mentioned north coast and they said, “We can get you a spot at Kyogle

and how would that suit you, it’s primary [school] would that suit you? and I said, “Yes.” and they said, “OK you will start on such and such a day.” and that was it. I taught out the rest of 1946 in Kyogle and then at the beginning of 1947 I came down and taught at Rose Bay for a few weeks.

I might have been because I had applied for leave to do the CRTS [Commonwealth Rehabilitation Training Scheme] training at the university probably for that reason.

These dear little creatures I think it as a 3rd class like a little flock of pigeons. It was nice to relate to them.

I had to devise ways to get their wave length because this was something different so I had to get them interested in art and I was only there a couple of days and I got a timber on the outside and you could see the timber struts on the inside to supports I said, “OK we will have a

frieze.” so they got into helping me and we put a frieze right around the top. Little things that got them involved and motivated them a bit.

Yes it was certainly different I had to mentally tackle it, it didn’t sort of come naturally.

I think

along the track you could see the war was coming to an end and I think everybody was looking forward to saying, “This will be great we can go back to normality.” Knowing that was coming that put us in the state of mind ready to go and when it happened we were ready to throw up our hat. You probably recollect how Sydney took it now and again they put that shot of George Street with the

fellow dancing with his hat up in the air it was that kind of spirit back here. By the time I got back all that was over so I didn’t see any of the fizz that took hold of the nation.

I don’t suppose so just occasionally I might have a dream that took me back into that area. I think one of the planes came in with once I am very hazy on this because I think it was when I was under malaria. The plane was doing a landing on a sloped

piece of ground and it was one of the tyres exploded and a dream like that is a bit of a shake up and that sort of thing would come back in a dream but it is so misty is just out there it almost didn’t happen.

I would surface and it was right behind me and that sort of thing. As far as some of the patrolling that wouldn’t come up to my mind. I remember for instance relative experiences

a sort of an unholy storm when you are right on the top of the very top mountains and it was the first time I saw a fireball. I was down in a foxhole and it was a very heavy storm and I had never seen a fireball before that or after it but it went across in front of me. I guess that was a bit shattering

because the enemy were a little bit out in front there. I think that sort of image would probably come back for some useless reason.

No very much. My eldest boy is down in Wollongong,

he is always very interested in the fact that I seemed to be tangled up with the war and he will tape the Anzac marches and probably send me a copy and that sort of thing and I might throw him just a little item but I have never had a talk or anything like the talk I have had with you.

Because I have been invited to talk to you.

There are certain things that are so memorable and so comfortable to relate that I might tell about them. For instance being at the Bombay Yacht Club I might tell somebody about that because you go into a restaurant nowadays and if somebody puts a napkin on your lap you think, “By crikey there is something

good about this restaurant.” but when you think of it. It might come to my mind this is happening somebody putting it there, my mind might go back to dining at the Bombay Yacht Club when we had a bearer behind me anxious to do everything for me and I might remark on something in that line perhaps.

Yes

I guess I don’t talk about much other than the patrols on occasions up in the Finisterre Ranges there.

I was one of the merest cogs in the works. I suppose I couldn’t help

feeling that I was lucky enough to be in with a wonderful lot of fellows so much so we still keep in touch with one another when they have little get togethers or reunions. They feel there is a little bit that we were all doing something and get out there and wear a few ribbons or something and somehow we all seemed to manage to be

there on Anzac Day and that sort of thing but it is only a bit of fancy dressing really. Behind it all its camaraderie that still exists and you can’t help feeling that what inspired it was the fact that there was a job to be done and it wasn’t easy and we had to get along like brothers I guess.

Above all it is something to be avoided if at all possible. How do you justify shooting another person is pretty hard to take on. If you get some of these demon anything but democracies but the very opposite where you get a domineering fellow like

Uganda or somewhere causing all sorts of disasters, poverty and all the rest of it. You can’t help saying to yourself, “This has got to be brought to a stop.” If they had to get a United Nations group to stand on the sidelines and do a bit of negotiating not rush in a do something

but to make a presence sufficient visible that the other party this domineering party has got to front up and more or less to the point of reaching the situation it is an either or. Either you get round to doing some of the things that we think is appropriate or look the nations of the world are lined up against you, we will just have to act,

its up to you. If it becomes a threat situation like that I wouldn’t be against it.

As from the Second World War you mean?

When you say we do you mean the democratic nations of the world or do you mean?

Yes we are not fighting for the ascendancy of Britain, we’re fighting for the protection of Australia and I feel that we have enjoyed numbers of years of peace.

There was Vietnam and the other one and these wars have occurred along the track. I wasn’t in behind the Vietnam episode it seemed not at all calling us to act so

I feel that peace is so much to be safeguarded that people have got to go to great lengths and the bigger the United Nations group that can get behind in establishing and maintaining peace the better the world is going to be. I feel first of all the League of Nations tried to get somewhere and then the United Nations came along the track

afterward and they have all been moving in the right direction but not establishing the peace feeling that is smooth going all the way from here.

Thank you