Australians at War Film Archive

I envy people who can

talk about their parents. My father died when I was three, we lived in Ballarat. I don’t have many memories of that at all.

The first memory was living at Westgarth or Northcote but I think it was Westgarth close to the Northcote Football Ground where my brother and I first started school. I

was six and he was five. I remember there was an Uncle Bill, and he was also a returned serviceman, my mother’s brother – he lived with us. There was Grandma and Grandpa, Uncle Bill

and my brother Max and me. My brother was thirteen months younger than me. We both started school together and we used to have to cross the railway lines to go to school. Our second or third day, we couldn’t

go to school, because we couldn’t cross the railway line, because someone—I think it was a man they said that threw himself under a train—and they were washing the body parts off the line.

The introduction to the school wasn’t a happy one. The Northcote Football Ground was close, handy, and after school we used to go across to the football ground and watch

football and they’d train and they were very happy memories of talking to Doug Nicholls. He was called ‘Darky’ in those days. He became, I think, Governor of South Australia. He never used to mind people calling him Darky, that was the way of life in those days.

He was an aboriginal, part aboriginal so I can say I rubbed shoulders with a dignitary, it seems like a long time ago though. It seemed to be the thing to do in those days for people to move from Ballarat to Melbourne because my father’s brother also moved down and

they moved over to Essendon. I didn’t see a lot of them although I had two grandmothers, Grandma Cartledge and Grandma Brown, my mother’s mother. We lived with Grandma Brown. On rare occasions, in those days we didn’t have the transport that we have today,

it was rather difficult to visit each other, but it was quite a thing to go from Northcote to Essendon. I think we would have had to go into town and then catch another tram or train out to Essendon. I used to enjoy our tram rides,

the old cable tram I used to like to sit out in what they used to call the dummy, that’s where the driver sat, and it was all out in the open. They were driven by cables under the ground. A lot of people never did know how they were driven, the driver, I don’t know what he was called, other than the driver.

He was able to engage the wheel onto the cable under the ground and it made the tram go or stop. I don’t know where I went after the Northcote School,

I vaguely remember there being someone somewhere again and we lived in Yarraville, and I was seven and my brother was six. I had the reputation at the school for being the fastest runner and probably two years ago I was

playing golf down in Spotswood, the West Gate Golf Club, I’m a member down there and a chap called me by name, I can’t think of his name. He said “I remember you, you were the fastest runner in the school.” I don’t know if that is something to be proud of or not. It’s just that some people can run and

some people can’t run. It wasn’t because of any particular training but I’ve certainly slowed down since then. In 1935,

my mother died. She had remarried so I had a stepfather and by that time I also had a stepsister. I haven’t seen her for six years and I only saw her then, because my brother passed away

and she was at his funeral, and I haven’t seen her since. My brother – before he died, he had a hardware shop in Yarraville,

and my sister—I call her sister but she is my stepsister—she used to go to my brother and borrow money but she would never come to me, but if she did I would always demand it back. But my brother he would because he was a softy and he would let her get away with it.

The war came along. After my mother had died we lived with an aunty, my father was able to build a bungalow in the back of her yard so my brother my stepfather and I, we lived in the bungalow. I used to go to the Footscray

Technical School and I was paying my way, because I don’t think there were apprentices in those days, I don’t know. I paid my own way to do a fitting and turning course, but they were happy days. After school we’d go to a dance, school would come out and I forget what time, maybe nine o’clock, and we’d go to a dance to maybe half past ten or eleven o’clock.

Walk home, there was no other form of transport where I was living at the time. I used to like dancing and I still do, my wife she doesn’t dance very well and I won a couple of competitions before the war.

But I never had a steady girlfriend before the war. My friend Herbie, he and I were members of the Yarraville Mouth Organ Band and I joined there, and we used to go to various venues to put on concerts and play in competitions. I remember one important

competition was in South Street in Ballarat. Mouth organ bands from all over Australia used to attend there. It used to go on for a week, I have photographs of me and the band when we were in South Street,

I have the photograph outside, it’s one of my treasures. I had a good friend, Herbie McFetrish he was part Maori and a very good friend. We decided we’d join the air force. I was working at the time at the ammunitions

and when I decided to join the air force everybody said no you will never get out because ammunitions is a restricted industry. But lo and behold, another chap and I, Vic Kernich—he was the Bantam Weight Boxing Champion of Victoria, he and I used to work close together. We both decided

we’d like to join the air force and Herbie my friend, he wanted to join the air force. Herbie didn’t get in, but he joined the navy eventually. But Vic, he and I joined the air force. I lost him, he went to Sale and I didn’t hear from him again for many, many years. My brother in his old age took on bowls

and lo and behold he went down towards Sale, but it wasn’t Sale and he struck this chap, Vic Kernich, and Vic was doing quite well at the time, but the poor devil has passed on now, so I believe.

I joined the air force. I joined on the Friday and Saturday morning I was in Adelaide, that’s how quick they send you around. They sent me around and I was nineteen. The reason they sent me to Adelaide was I had been doing an engineering course at the Footscray Technical School

and they thought I’d be alright on aircraft engines, so they sent me over to Adelaide to do a special course over there. As well as learning how to march and carry a rifle and swear, I met a lovely girl. I’d just turned nineteen and she’d just turned sixteen.

We are married now. Then after some training I was sent up to Parkes in New South Wales to Air Navigation School. There is a funny story attached to that—it was an observers’ course teaching aircrew to be observers,

I supposed to be able to calculate where they were at any one time. But the funny part about it was that the pilot would take them out to Broken Hill on the railway lines and tell them to find their way back. All they did was just follow the railway line back again. That’s how they trained some observers. As I said earlier I liked

to dance, ballroom dancing. I met a lass up in Parkes, at the Country Women’s Association—used to put a dance on every Saturday night and one of their policies was the girls weren’t allowed to leave with a boy. That was easily overcome, you could meet the girls down the road,

which I did. I became very friendly with a lass. Then I was sent to Mount Gambier to open up a second school of air navigation. I wasn’t there very long, probably two or three months and the girl in Parkes asked me could we become engaged. I didn’t know how I was going to come

and see her. To cut a long story short the next thing I knew I was on embarkation leave to be sent overseas. I was given a ticket to go to Sydney where we were to catch a ship to go overseas. I diverted, instead of going straight to Sydney, once we got to

Albury where we had to change trains, because in those days the common line didn’t go from Melbourne to Sydney. You had to change at Albury. Instead of catching the train to Sydney I caught the train to Parkes, and I’ve told this story many times—it had flat wheels, and it was a terrible journey but I got to Parkes and lo and behold it

was a half holiday for everybody. The girl and I couldn’t buy the engagement ring so I gave her some money to put away and we classified ourselves as engaged then. I eventually got back to Williamstown in Sydney, just out of Sydney and on the 15th September

1941 we set sail on a ship called the Orangi—it’s at the bottom of the sea now. My first eleven days out at sea I was seasick, in my diary, “I’m still seasick.” I was for the first eleven days. As I said

we left Sydney and we went down to the Cook Strait between the North and South Islands in New Zealand. I call it the Galapagos Island but some people call it the Galapagos Islands and there all of a sudden the ship vibrated like hell, and we were told we were full steam ahead. A German raider was after us.

Let me digress for a minute, like I said I played golf down at the West Gate Golf Club and one of my best mates is a German. He was in the signals, he wasn’t a POW [prisoner of war] at that time, but later he did become a POW. We think, comparing our

diaries, we are convinced he was the one who sent the German raider after us. We became very very close friends ever since, as I said we play golf together every Sunday. We got to Panama safely, but we couldn’t get any air support from the

Americans because America wasn’t in the war at that stage. The Panama is an eye-opener if anybody has the opportunity to go through there. All the workers carry umbrellas because five minutes the sun’s out and then the next minute it’s raining like hell. You go through what they call locks, the doors close behind the ship and they pump the water in and the ship goes up. One minute

you are on A deck, which is level with the ground and then the next minute B deck is level with the ground, the ships been risen up. You go through I think three locks on the Panama City side in Balboa. That’s all commercialised on the left-hand side, but on the right-hand side it was natural jungle.

You have never seen such colorful birds and animals in all your life, it’s beautiful. A lot of people don’t realise there is a big lake in the centre of the Panama Canal, or the strip between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. It took us all night to go through the lake, that’s how big the lake is, and certainly the ship wasn’t going very fast.

I think you go up three locks into the lake, and you go down four locks to go to the Atlantic Ocean. We could see the lights of New York when we went up past to Nova Scotia.

Halifax Nova Scotia where we took on French Canadian troops. There were fewer than one hundred of us on the ship to start with, and all of a sudden we were inundated with hundreds of French Canadian troops. We went across the North Atlantic, the crew of the ship said it was the roughest seas they had ever seen and they

said, thank goodness. They said the North Atlantic was infested with German submarines, which cannot operate in the heavy seas, so we got to Scotland safely. We were sent down, as you know Scotland is right up top, Eastbourne is right down at the bottom end, so we were sent down to Eastbourne

for a week’s holiday or leave, sea leave so they said. I had an invite that was through the comforts fund people I think it was. They came around and asked did we want to visit the locals. The locals that I chose were in the middle of

England, at a place called Walsall, not far out of Birmingham. They were a lovely couple, the father was a school teacher and there was a daughter, and she was a beautiful dancer, and we clicked. Whenever I got leave, I’d go there and she was such a lovely dancer. To cut a long story short, she married.

I saw her again just before we left to come home, but I’m jumping the rails here a bit. We went different stations in England, on different types of aircraft. Finally we were all assembled at a place called

Holme-on-Spalding-Moor, my golly, those moors get cold. When I say we assembled, I left home as a member of 458 RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] Squadron. Prior to our group leaving, there was a ship, which had what they called the Blue Draft. There was a group, which was the Yellow Draft.

The three of us went away but we joined as 458, we were the only ones that went away as 458, the others went away as Blue Draft and Yellow Draft. We formed at a placed called Holme-on-Spalding-Moor, and as I said my golly those moors get cold, not far out of York, it was in Yorkshire. Japan came into the war,

but I’m jumping the gun again because I’d only been in England a week when I received a telegram to say that my stepfather had passed away. Why can’t I stay on something happy?

We came from different stations and we all joined up at Holme-on-Spalding-Moor. We were known as the 458 Squadron, although I went away as a member of the 458 Squadron, but that was the first time that

we assembled. Our aircraft were Wellingtons, Wellington Bombers. We could either carry bombs or torpedoes or put overload tanks in the belly of the aircraft—we called it the bomb bayment [?UNCLEAR bomb bay] —but the belly of the aircraft, and that would give enormous range to the aircraft.

They had Asdic [Anti Submarine Detection Investigation Committee, radar] gear, or submarine detection gear on the wings, it depends what was required, if they wanted to try and detect submarines or not. We left England as a squadron. We had put in a petition to come home, because Japan had only just come into the war. We went down to Durbin,

we had called into Freetown, which is the capital of Sierra Leone, in West Africa. We spent a couple of days there, the mosquitoes were so bad we weren’t allowed off the ship, the malaria was too bad. We had to wear long clothes all the time while we were onboard the ship.

Even though they reckoned that the mosquitoes would come out as far as we were on the ship, but it was a safety thing. We got to Durban and put in a holding camp, as I said we put in a petition to come home

because Japan had come into the war. The 6th Division, the army, had come out of Greece and Crete and we were in Durban at the same time. We were quite happy to see them board ship and we waved and they headed east to Australia across the Indian Ocean, which

we thought we’d be next. The next ship came along and they put us on it, we thought, “Good, we are going home.” But, we headed north, through the Straits of Madagascar up towards Mombasa and one day out of Mombasa I celebrated my twenty-first birthday

on board ship, nothing to do. I said I celebrated but I didn’t celebrate at all, I just thought that I did. One day in Mombasa they picked up food in Mombasa, East Africa up to the Red Sea you are into the Suez Canal.

A lot of people say that you get off ship at Cairo but you don’t, there is a port, Port Tufic and we disembarked at Port Tufic. We went out to Fayid, we had a couple of other places out there that we went out to also.

One place we weren’t far from was Heliopolis, Heliopolis is the airport to Cairo. It’s interesting if you analyse the word Heliopolis, Helo meaning air, and polis meaning city. It was the air city of Cairo, goodness knows how they arrived at Tullamarine,

it must have been an Aboriginal name. I like to look at how they arrived at a particular name, Heliopolis was an air city in other words. It’s rather similar to Tullamarine to Melbourne because you had to get a taxi to go from one to the other. I think the next important point was

El Alamein. There was a bright moonlit night. We were sitting outside our tent, the moonlight was so

bright, I was learning how to play bridge and we didn’t need any other illumination, just the moon. Our aircrafts had been loaded with flares, with the idea of lighting up the enemy lines, and they had the same idea. The Germans lit up our lines and we didn’t know whom we were bombing, so that was a failure.

The rest is rather history that we followed Rommel right through, we had another Australian squadron, the fighter squadron, the 3 Squadron that was generally in front of us.

Places like Tunis and Benghazi, what were probably beautiful places, were just rubble. I remember I had a look at what was left of the Benghazi, a cathedral which was a church but I think they called it the Benghazi Cathedral

and some of it was still standing. But one of the outside walls was plastered with human bits and pieces, people probably had been sheltering when the bomb went off.

We continued on from Benghazi,

and the next thing I knew we were being sent to Sardinia.

We had a good run and we had gone through Cairo right through to Tunis, beautiful roads right through there. Italy took over Egypt and North Africa

which I’d never heard of it, but there was a big war apparently. Italy took over, and they made beautiful roads right through the North Africa right along the coast. If I could digress a moment, on the Suez Canal—it is ninety miles long, it’s ninety yards wide

and ninety feet deep. Alexandria at one end and Cairo at the other end. As I say I digress. After Benghazi I think we went to a place called Prosper, I think it’s on the map outside. Then we had various detachments,

it was the detachment that went to Prosper, and I was one of those fortunate. I remember a bloke called Bill Brown, and a group had been sent up to join us. I was up with two aircraft to start with and then they decided to send some more aircraft up. This Bill Brown, he stayed in our

tent, and there were German fighters coming over and they used to strafe the place a lot. And Brownie said, “Good, I’ll have a look at this, I’ve never seen it.” The shell landed not far from Brownie and he dived under a bed and nearly broke his neck. He hit something and we don’t know what was underneath, he hit something under the bed,

so that was the end of Brownie—he didn’t want to watch any more bombs fall. The aircrew and ground crew decided to have a football match, Australian Rules and it had probably never been played over there before.

Primarily it was engineering training, which I had been doing at the Footscray Technical School prior to joining the air force. What they

were asking me to do was something that I’d already done at the Footscray Tech, and that was to make a square hole and then make a square piece of steel to fit the hole and see how neat it could be. It was no problem, because I’d already done it at Footscray Tech. I felt sorry for some of the intake who probably hadn’t seen a piece of steel before, let alone

know how to drill a hole in it and make square and find another bit of steel and make that square and make sure that it all would fit. Some of them had daylight all the way around it, which was not the aim of the exercise at all. You had to try and see how neat it could fit. Not only was I able to do mine, but I was also able to help the others as well.

If I thought about it, I was an instructor at the same time, not officially of course. I think the fellows used to appreciate that I was trying to help them, the instructors even. They couldn’t keep their eye on everybody, but we were billeted at

the exhibition buildings, that’s at North Terrace—that’s almost in the heart of Adelaide. If we weren’t at school, we were doing drill exercises, we called it a parade ground but I don’t know what they would have called it, just a part of the exhibition building.

There certainly wasn’t any trees or flowers or anything like that there. As I said, it was suitable for a parade ground. We used to go on route marches, carrying a rifle, playing silly buggers I suppose. We used to get leave Friday and

Saturday nights. Do you want me to tell you the story of how I met my wife?

My birthday is on the 7th May and her birthday is on the 5th May, three years difference in our ages. I had only just arrived in Adelaide and

two other airmen and myself we were near the Adelaide Post Office, and outside the post office you could buy what they called a ‘pie and floater’. It’s a meat pie floating in pea soup, I still don’t know if I enjoyed it or not. At that time a lass came along with a basketball and we said “Who won?”

or, “Did you win?” or something, I forget now. She said, “We are just going off to play.” We came along and after the basketball game, the girl said, “Would you like to go to a dance?”, and I used to love dancing. There were three of us—me, the two chaps and this girl and we jumped on a tram and away we went.

From one end of Adelaide to the other, it was almost to the foothills, I don’t know if you know Adelaide or not, it was Glen Osmond. It was a guide’s dance, apparently they used to have them monthly or something like that. So this girl introduced me to her sister who is now my wife, she was sixteen and I was nineteen.

I’d turned nineteen on the 7th May and she turned sixteen on the 5th May and this was in June, and it was the middle of June when we met. We kept corresponding and I went to Parkes and I met another girl who was a very good dancer

and I didn’t ask her but she asked me if we could become engaged. It was a nasty thing to do in retrospect to have told Marie that I was engaged to another girl. I didn’t buy her a ring because the shops were shut, so I gave her some money to buy the ring.

While I was away I got a letter, I suppose you have heard of the ‘Dear John’ letter [letter informing that a relationship is over] to say that she had to get married. I was a school teacher down at Williamstown Technical School and the chap down there said he had a caravan on site up in Stockton in New South Wales.

So Marie and I said we’d go up to Stockton and stay at his caravan. I went into the shop to buy a Tatts [lottery] ticket, but who was in the shop but the girl that I had met in Parkes, who I was supposed to be engaged to.

But in the meantime I had received the ‘Dear John’ letter, while I was overseas. She invited Marie and me back to her place, and we went, but that was the last that I ever heard of her. I don’t know what happened to her. I know she had half a dozen kiddies, some of them were grown men not children, I never heard

of her again and I don’t want to.

Mainly the function of what they call the ‘auto cycle’ which is the four stroke engine, induction, compression,

firing and exhaust. The fits and clearances are necessary for the engine to function. That type of training is exactly the same as what a motor mechanic would do, because it is the same principal except our engines were rotary all around, whereas the motor mechanic today does what they call a inline engine, so that’s basically the difference,

the fits and clearances.

Check the rings, you pull the engine to pieces and check the rings, and the gap has to be in tolerances otherwise the gases will get pass the rings, but of course they can’t touch because when they get hot and expand

they’d burst. So that’s what I said about fits and clearances because there are limits to the gaps in the piston rings, you never have them all in line otherwise the gases will still come through, you turn it around and then the other one around. We had a lot of trouble with the sand, the dust in North Africa with what they called the overhead gear, that’s the rocker gear

working the valves on the engines, the dust and sand would get in. It wasn’t until almost at the end of the war that they solved the problem with a rotary engine, no valves at all. It was just when the piston rotated it opened up certain ports and expelled the gases and wouldn’t allow the new gases to come in. That’s about as

simple as I can put it.

Probably three months, that’s to do the engineering tests, as well as doing the rifle training and that sort of thing.

Yes, because they are basically all the same, it doesn’t matter if they are a rotary engine or a twelve-cylinder inline engine or a four-cylinder engine, the fits and clearances are about the same and the timing mechanism is about the same. So yes, once you’ve learnt one, you’ve

learnt the others. Any Tom, Dick and Harry that is a motor mechanic today could do and work on a aircraft engine, the fits and clearances are just the same. With a radial engine

you have cylinders at the bottom, of course there are always valves opening and closing and the rings can’t be perfect, so there is always oil which will bypass, or drain from the cylinders right down to the bottom and eventually they go through what they call the head

of the cylinder. I noticed if you left the engine two days and try to start it you would probably blow the head off the cylinder. The oil which is drained through down to the bottom cylinders.

What we used to do was hang on to the propeller and push it through, and wait for this one to come down and push that through and that would let all the rubbish drain from the bottom cylinders.

I had been studying at the Footscray Institute engineering, and yes, I suppose that’s what I wanted to do until the war, and of course I’d never thought of aircraft engines.

As a matter of fact I don’t know why we ever thought of joining the air force, when I come to think of it, it was a case of conversation. I was happy that I joined up, and the chap Vic Kernich, he was happy that he joined the air force. My friend Herbie who finished up joining the navy, he didn’t pass the medical test for the air force, but he got into the navy.

We corresponded a couple of times and through him and through his sister who married my brother, several ports along the Mediterranean where he was I’d either just left or he’d only just left when I got there, so we never did see each other while we were away, and that was unfortunate, and I never did see him again.

He married a girl from Queensland and I don’t know why he died, I never did ask. His sister is my sister-in-law but I never did ask what killed Herbie, so I don’t know what happened to him.

I beg your pardon?

On board ship?

There is one funny story,

someone, but I don’t know who had a record player—one record, My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean, My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean, that stopped for a week. It had been thrown overboard, no they didn’t throw it overboard they

threw the handle overboard. The next thing, My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean started up again, they replicated a handle, but it eventually stopped. I think it must have gone overboard. I lost—Marie, before I went away, she gave me a boomerang, a small boomerang and I thought that it was a very nice token. I don’t know why I opened my wallet, I was

on the side of the ship and I was looking overboard and I opened my wallet for some reason and the boomerang fell out and I lost it, in the deep blue sea somewhere. That was one of the saddest parts of going away, losing that. I think I told you that I proposed to her while I was away and

I asked her to become engaged on her twenty-first and I got a reply back – ‘on my birthday’. Her birthday is on the 5th May and mine is the 7th May, there is three years difference. I used to have some photographs in here but they are outside, taken before I went away and when I came home.

She was a very immature girl when I went away and when I came back she was quite a young lady, because sixteen to twenty one is a big difference.

I think there must have been, I don’t know, I couldn’t have figured anything. I guess I was more worldly wise, because of the experiences, something would have to have changed.

I suppose I was very tolerant when I came home, but I don’t know if I wasn’t tolerant before I went away. When you are away with chaps, it’s always give and take, I can’t have anything my way and my mates didn’t have it his way so it’s give and take. I don’t know if that was the same in civilian life.

I think in civilian life people are very selfish, I even found that down at the golf club. As I say I play golf every Sunday morning. Some of the boys down there are very selfish, if they can’t have everything their way, there is no such thing as give and take in other words. I enjoy going down there with the boys and as I say

I like playing with this German chap, Helmet Kirkhart. It’s just so coincidental one day we had finished play on the Wednesday and in those days I used to play Wednesday mornings as well. We just finished playing and we didn’t have our diaries and we were just talking from memory of what we used to do and where and when and that’s how

we came to the conclusion that he was the one that had sent the German raider after us, but it may not have been true, as I say we are relying on our memories. I often have a go at him about it, he often says, “Don’t tell anybody.” I don’t tell anybody, it’s got nothing to do with the fellows there at the golf club, I just enjoy playing with him, he doesn’t play very well and that’s probably why I enjoy playing with him.

We had two enemies—one would be firstly the Italians, then the Germans. I had quite a lot to do with the Italians because those would come to do all the odd jobs, bury the toilet facilities, the toilet things that was their job.

Another group of them were the cooks, or would help the cooks.

Yes. We got on quite well with them until they wanted to put Australia on their shoulders, we had Australia on our shoulders and they wanted to do the same, no thanks, no and that was the finish of that. They built their own compound and they’d lock themselves in it at night and they’d let themselves out

in the morning to go and get the meals ready, or do the chores around the place. Once they locked themselves in for the night, they’d sing, it was beautiful singing, not only in the Middle East but in Gibraltar too. They never had much to do in Gibraltar because the war had basically finished, but they had their own compound and they seldom left it. To walk from the aerodrome

into Gibraltar itself, we had to pass the Italians where they were camped and it was a pleasure just to walk past and listen to them singing. The point of interest in Gibraltar, you have to bathe in sea water, the troops.

Can I talk about Gibraltar for a minute?

We found that shaving soap was one way to get a lather when you have a shower. You can buy sea water soap but they didn’t have enough of it to suit us, so we found that a stick of shaving soap you could have a good shower with that. Your hair was always sticky as though you’d just come out of the beach. The locals,

they had fresh water. There was only one catchment of fresh water, one catchment on the rock for fresh water and that is the complete east side of the rock had been cemented, because the prevailing rains come from the east and hits the wall and runs down into the catchment area.

The rock is a hive, it was riddled with alleyways, and their hospital is inside the rock, gunning camps inside the rock. I’ve got a thing

outside there if we wanted to go into Spain we used to get a pass, I have the pass out there. The nearest part of Spain to us was a place called Le Linea, once again if you break it down, linea means ‘line’, that was the line between

British, Gibraltar and Spain. So Le Linea was the town on the border line of Spain and Gibraltar. There was another place that we could go to a place called Iglesias but we had to use a ship to go across to there. A couple of times, not often, we’d get a boat to go across to Iglesias and

get a bus back to Le Linea and hoping to see a bull fight there. Gibraltar itself at the outbreak of war, there was a complete blackout. As I say next door, a couple hundred yards away was Le Linea, Spain, which was neutral, it was lit up like a Christmas tree.

A lot of our shipping was blown up in the bay of Gibraltar. The opposition, I don’t know who they were, maybe German I don’t know. They used to be able to go out in a boat to put the bombs onto our ships and they’d blow up later on. There might be a two

hour delay, or until the boats got back home again. They realised then that Le Linea then was a neutral country, Spain was neutral and with all their lights on, if you have lights on over there but no lights on here only twenty yards away, how silly it was for Gibraltar to be blacked out. They even illuminated the bay and that stopped a lot of the ships being blown up.

No, I’ve got a little chit [permission slip] out there and you had to get permission and you had to wear civilian clothes. The civilian clothes were just a shirt with your ordinary trousers, what we called our drab trousers, that’s our summer trousers or out khaki trousers, we’d just buy a shirt and we were right then.

I’ve got a little chit out there and I must show you the permission to go across and it even has your photograph on it.

I haven’t got a date. I’m trying to think where I was at the time, probably at the Melbourne Showgrounds, where I was doing a course on aircraft engines.

As soon as I was posted overseas I knew I was going to 458 and I knew we had to go up to Williamstown in New South Wales to catch a ship, that was when I first knew I was in 458. My wife uses 458, she uses my

regimental number which she still remembers and the squadron number, that’s her Eftpos [electronic banking] number 10419458, and she’d never forget it.

Yes, to Nova Scotia.

To pick up some Canadian troops to go across to England. The ship wasn’t even half

full when we went through the Panama until we got to Nova Scotia. When we got to Nova Scotia, all the French Canadian troops came on board. It’s funny, you’d start to talk to a chap and they’d say, “Pardon, pardon.” because he didn’t speak English, then you’d see another French Canadian and he spoke English, you didn’t know who you were talking to half of the time, but they were nice chaps. They were going across

to help England. Jeez, there was some devastation with the bombs that were dropped in England. I have some photographs. The best photographs that I have are up here, while I was travelling around England, of what I saw. I didn’t always photograph what I saw, at a place called Reading,

it was just flattened. Germany had the Doodle bug it was the first of the jets. They knew exactly how much fuel it would take to get from launch to London. As soon as the fuel ran out they could bomb London.

When they came over, as long as you could hear them you knew that you were safe, as soon as they ran out you knew that you had to go and hide for cover. I mentioned girls one time, they came from London. Each time we’d go to London we’d call around and say hello, not that we went there often, it might have been only three or four times. Travelling

from where our camp was to Walsall we were billeted out and the lass, she was a beautiful dancer. I called there one time and saw these girls in London, not only wasn’t the house there but the street wasn’t there, that’s how quick things changed over there. London was devastated,

most people here would never see the photographs of what it was really like. When we first arrived there, we arrived in Glasgow, let me diverse a moment. I also went to Edinburgh

one time while I was down south. I put a kit bag on the railway, which I knew was going to Edinburgh and a couple of times I was challenged on the train by an inspector. I always travelled second class, because I didn’t have any tickets, the ticket inspector

would get on and say, “Do you have your ticket?” I’d say, “No, the sergeant’s got the ticket and he is in first class.” I always had a kit bag that I could put on board the train and you were looking for it, somebody had put it on the train but I couldn’t find it. We finally got to Edinburgh and I’d been told about Princes Street, which is the main street of Edinburgh and it’s supposed

to be the longest main street in the world, and I walked it just to say that I’ve done it, and my word it’s a long way. We often seen on the television the Edinburgh tattoo and we could see from Princes Street, you’d see up on the hill the castle where they have the Edinburgh tattoo. To get onto the platforms you’d have to sometimes buy a platform ticket, but if the

porters weren’t looking you’d just nick onto the platform when they weren’t looking. We never travelled anything other than second class, you were always second class because if they asked you, you’d always say, “The sergeants got our ticket and they are in first class.” and there was always plenty of officers on board the trains.

No. It was on-the-job training, I’d never worked on such large aircraft.

The Wellington bombers. You soon learnt. I remember one instance but I don’t remember the name of the aerodrome there, but we had an English corporal, who was very efficient,

or officious—I don’t know which is the correct word now. I had to change a propeller, no an air screw, do you know the difference?

The propeller like a boat and it’s at the back and it propels you along, and the same as the airplane that has the propeller at the back, such as the

flying boats. The air screw is in the front, it screws through the air.

Yes. It’s an air screw, but that creates a problem which I found out. I was up in Protville in North Africa, I may digress for a minute here. I was up in Protville and I had to go down to Cairo to get

some bits and pieces and I didn’t know what the bits and pieces were. The two aircrew that got on board to come home, we didn’t want any air crew we wanted an air screw. We got mixed up with air crew and air screw. Let me continue this story,

I was only a corporal and the rest of the crew were at least sergeants. I always had a spare sergeants mark that I could wear, that would get me into the sergeants’ mess. “I’d eat with the pigs instead of the others.” that’s what we used to say . I got back to Protville and I finished up in hospital, I had

yellow jaundice, I had malaria and dysentery, so I wasn’t well. The chap next door to me was a German chap and I couldn’t talk to him because he didn’t know any English and I didn’t know any German.

He was still there when I left so goodness knows what was wrong with him.

Yes, he would have been. Apparently he was in such a state that he couldn’t run away. I never did find out, I was too damn sick to find out anyhow.

Probably one week. As I say I had dysentery, malaria

and yellow jaundice, and that created a problem for the dietitian. One thing that you could eat for one, you couldn’t eat for the other. The yellow jaundice that was the problem one, what I couldn’t eat for that. One of the interesting points of night time flying, a lot of our

flying was night time flying. You’d take off in the dark and you’d come home in the dark. We’d either have long range tanks on our aircraft or we’d have bombs or two torpedoes. We might get a call at three o’clock in the morning or four o’clock in the morning that there’s been a change—bombs off, torpedoes on.

So we used to have to race out to the aircraft and that was the silliest thing that you could do. The guards were South African Negroes and they were as black as the ace of spades. They just had to stand still and you couldn’t see them, and we had to get out to the aircraft and they were guards. They didn’t know we were coming out to do something with the aircraft, by golly we had a couple of close shaves with those fellows.

They meant business. With those fellows, if you wanted to discipline them, you’d take them off guard duty. They prided themselves with being good guards, they were the South Africans. We didn’t always have them. We also had a South African squadron of aircraft and I never did see them fly.

Their tanks were full of germ warfare and they never did fly fortunately, but they would have gone over enemy territory and that would have been the start of a terrible thing. It was a full squadron of South African aircraft there.

Yes. I’ve got a photograph over there of Major McKenzie, he was our commanding

officer for a little while, a great big mustache and our aircraft never had any forward guns so the ‘mad major’ as we called him, he had some 5 millimeter cannons mounted in the nose of our aircraft, whether we ever used them I don’t know. We used to say how silly it was that we couldn’t go strafing with our aircraft, as I said, he was the

‘mad South African’.

Yes, that was in Bone in North Africa, the aircrew against the ground crew. The chap by the name of Ian Laming was a VFA [Victorian Football Association] umpire but he was also our disciplinary instructor. Why we needed him, I don’t know. Nobody worries about discipline when you are in the Middle East.

Anyway Ian Laming was our disciplinary instructor and an ex-football umpire. I have photographs out there of us playing in Bone in North Africa and they asked me if I would umpire the game. I have never umpired a game in my life before. We had bell ringers to tell us when it was quarter time and half time.

I used to forget to blow the whistle. Ian Laming used to run over to me and say, “Blow the whistle, blow the bloody whistle.” That way my one and only encounter with umpiring a football match. But we had some fun. I almost say, and I don’t know if I’m the only one, there wouldn’t be too many international football umpires around the place.

In Sardinia, we had swimming competitions between the ground and air crew and I was with the ground crew. I don’t know why they did it to me, they put me against a chap by the name of Bob Linden, he was a big chap. The bell

went and I took off and when I came up he was finished. I found out later he was in the Olympic swimming team before the war, and there’s me swimming against Bob Linden. There is a sad story to conclude on Bob, he was a Queenslander. After the war he was up on the beach and there was a little runabout. Bob saw a kid

fall out of the boat and Bob ran into the water and swam out to it and the chap who was in the boat, he jumped out too, to try and save the kid. That means that nobody was steering the boat and that meant that the boat went wild, and when Bob got to the kid, the boat swung around and he lost his arm. You try to help people. I will always remember Bob, not only because he beat me and he beat me well. By the time

I had surfaced he had finished, how sad this can touch you, one minute you are on top of the world and he had retired, probably ready to lead a comfortable life for the rest of his life, and he lost his arm from there because the boat swung around and grabbed him. But he saved the kid.

In the ocean, on the beach it was. Over there the locals couldn’t get beef or meat that they liked, but they could get plenty of crayfish, and you can guess what happened. We swapped crayfish for bully beef. It didn’t last long but while it lasted the crayfish was lovely.

That was in Sardinia. We move onto Corsica, I don’t remember the exact name of the place we were in, in Corsica, but we went up to Ajaccio which was Napoleon’s birthplace which is on the west coast of Corsica, which is controlled by France, whereas Sardinia was Italian.

We went up to Ajaccio and we struck a wine bar. Normally I didn’t drink, but I will tell you a funny story about having a drink down in Corsica, never mind that’s another story. We had a few drinks in this wine bar and we were talking to this chap, and he gave us the impression

that he was on a world tour when war broke out and he was stuck in Corsica and for something to do he opened up a wine bar and that was why he was there. We went back another time and talking about things and I think he forgot about what he told us the first time, and the next time he said he was in the underworld in Australia and he had to get out and that’s where he finished up, in Corsica.

If one’s true I don’t know which one, they both might be fabrications.

Yes. I was never a connoisseur of wine, but he had a wine there a Bin Rosa, just a red wine and it was beautiful and I’ve never been able to find it since.

Right through the desert, I don’t know where they got it, but they could always get plenty of wine, but we couldn’t get water. We had a water tanker which used to follow us, but that was a terrible taste that stuff, but the wine wasn’t too bad. But I don’t know of anybody who over-indulged. If they were thirsty they’d have a drink of wine and that was about the finish of it. I don’t think I ever struck anybody who

became inebriated. Getting back to Corsica, I still don’t know what happened to that chap whether he was in the underworld and had to get out of Australia or whether he was on a world tour. If I went back another day he might have a different story.

I will have to have a look at my diary for that one. I think the very first one, as a matter of fact I’ve

forgotten a lot, my memory is terrible these days. Fayid was one place.

We generally had eighteen operational aircraft and two on standby, A Flight and B Flight.

I was going to tell you a story, the Yanks hadn’t come into the war at this stage, but there were plenty of German bayonets available, because Rommel had left them, or Rommel’s troops had left them. In the sand it was terrible to find a tent peg to hold in the sand. The German bayonets are lovely,

so we had German bayonets used as our tent pegs, well some of us did. When the Yanks came into the war they’d pay anything for a German bayonet, I’ve never seen tents fall down so quick in all your life. The Yanks got their bayonets and we finished up with tents flat on the ground. The Sweetwater Canal wasn’t too far away, now that’s a dangerous place to go to. People who

got into the waters of the Sweetwater Canal were said to have developed elephantitus. Elephantitius could be, let me be crude about it, a fellow walking around with his privates in a wheelbarrow, everything grows extraordinary. We went down to the sweet water canal to the trees there, that’s how we finished up

being able to bring our tents back again by getting these branches from the sweet water canal. We didn’t have anything to hammer the sticks into the ground, I found what I thought was a nice big rock and the tent was behind me and the rope coming through the legs and I went to hit the tent

peg, with what I thought was a rock, and it turned out to be sandstone and I collapsed and I was hospitalised for two days with a crook back. When I came home I had a crook back and I still have a crook back. I finished up at Heidelberg Hospital when I came home and they made me a brace which I have inside but the latest ones are the best where you just wrap yourself

around with a couple of sticky bits on it. The original brace that the [Department of] Veterans’ Affairs made me was too bulky. As I said, the Yanks they loved the German bayonets. That might have been Fayid. Sharufa was another place that I went too and I’m not sure exactly where it was but

I do know it’s in Egypt, but I don’t know if it’s close to Fayid, but I can’t think of the name of the base that I was on when El Alamein started. Did I tell you about when El Alamein started?

It was a bright moonlit night, very bright and I couldn’t play bridge and I didn’t know the rules of bridge,

the chaps were teaching me to play bridge outside. At night time and I was learning to play bridge, in the moon light that’s how bright it was. Then all of a sudden hell broke loose and a bit of a rush then to get our aircraft into the air.

No not at this stage.

El Alamein had just started that night. Our job was to send over our aircraft with flares to light up the enemy lines and the only trouble was the Germans did the same thing, they lit up our lines. When the aircraft got into the air they didn’t know where, whose lines they were to bomb. They had to come back and didn’t drop their flares at all, so that was a

bit of a whitewash that one. I will never forget the noise of when El Alamein started. Somewhere along the line I found a German bag, empty and I could hardly carry it, it was a plastic and it was a magnificent bag. I was finally about to get it onto a truck wherever we went.

When I got to Gibraltar and I went across to Le Linea in Spain, and I swapped it for a couple of watches, a men’s watch and a ladies’ gold watch. I wrote to my girl, my wife now and told her that I brought her a gold watch. Know what happened? What did I do? I swapped the watch for

something, I forget now, but as I said I brought her a watch and told her. When I came home, I didn’t have the watch. I wasn’t in the good books for a while. I brought her this gold watch, I didn’t even have one of my own.

I remember this German bag, if it had anything in it, it would have taken two men to carry it, it was so heavy and it was a great big thing.

Yes,

the scramble generally applies to the fighter aircraft off in a hurry, ours was always predetermined, when it was going off whether if was three o’clock in the morning until ten o’clock at night or something like that. When you come back though yes, if possible you can service it there and then and make sure it was ready if it had to go off first thing in the morning. Generally speaking once you put it into its dispersal point it was generally there for the night,

then you’d service it the following day. I think it was mostly the air crew, they weren’t allowed to fly two sorties in the one night, something like that. We were able to work in with them when they wanted to fly, if it meant an engine change. I worked two days and two nights

without a break, changing engines just to make sure that the aircraft was serviceable. I only did it once to my recollection. I remember working many hours at times to get the aircraft back into the air, especially if it was an engine change warranted and it was very different to try and do it at night time. You had limited illumination

so you generally try and get everything so that when it was daylight you could whiz the engine out and put a new one in quick smart.

Generally reconditioned. One of the big problems with the engines in the desert is the sand, in what they called the rocket gear, although

there were covers over them, it wasn’t one hundred percent satisfactory. A lot of people may not believe that you can freeze in the desert, by golly it would get cold at times in the desert. Although it was hot in the day time, most of us all that we’d wear were a pair of shorts and our fur felt hat turned down

all round, no shoes, so when the sand got hot you’d put your hat down and stand on your hat until your feet cooled down. You’d pick up your hat and away you’d go again until your feet got too hot again, you’d put your hat down again. That was going from the mess to where ever your aircraft was. It wasn’t uncommon if your shorts were dirty, you’d wash them in petrol and hang them on the aircraft, you’re not wearing anything else,

that was quite common.

Yes, nothing else, there wasn’t any water, because they were covered in oil, it was the only chance that you had and let the fumes dry out of them and they were alright then.

No not from that.

You’d get a rash from some of the toilets. It used to be funny, you’d go to the MO’s [Medical Officer’s] tent and sit outside and all you’d hear is, “Oh yes, you’ve got it, you’ve got the crabs.” or something like that. They never used to hold back, “Oh yes, you’ve got it.” Everybody outside would damn well know what’s going on inside. We had

a monkey—a chap by the name of Bill Watts, a Western Australian chap and he found a tanker for oil, sort of dispensed with oil, plenty of petrol tankers around to supply petrol. It was a German tanker for oil.

Bill Watts, he confiscated it. He gave himself the job of being the chap who did all the oiling, it must have satisfied everybody else because he kept doing it. I don’t know where and how he got a monkey, we don’t know. Nobody would dare go near Bill Watt’s oil tanker, that monkey was fierce.

One day it got into the MO’s tent, the chemists area, and pulled everything to pieces. The monkey went down onto the edge of the water with a rope around it’s neck onto a brick, and four of us with our rifles neither of us know which one killed it,

but one of us did anyhow. So that was the end of Bill Watt’s monkey—it had destroyed everything in the MO’s tent. Some people with ingenuity, it would get very cold

in the desert and during some of the winter months one chap devised a heater, a forty-four gallon drum with a bit of a window cut in the front of it and inside there was a four or five-gallon drum with a window cut in that and a steel plate on that. Now feeding into that was a copper pipe,

one eighth, with a drip of water with a steady flow of oil. Once the hot plates were hot and as soon as the oil would hit the hot plate it would explode and the water would boil, the heat—it was beautiful. That went on for quite some time,

and quite a few of the tents got one. Until one chap was careless and put it too close to the fly of the tent and of course the tent went up in smoke and a couple of other tents close handy and we weren’t allowed after that, we didn’t have our heaters. But if you talk to people and say it was cold in the desert but the cold doesn’t mean much. It’s the same as hot, to say something is hot, you have got to experience what’s hot

and what’s very hot and what’s cold and what’s very cold. I’ve worked on engines and tried to do knots up with two fingers and we also had a four-gallon drum with petrol and set fire to it and you’d put your hands in it to warm up your hands, not only in the Middle East but also in Italy, we used to do the same thing. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to change an engine and you couldn’t undo the nuts,

you couldn’t use your tools. That was in North Africa and also in Italy. Doesn’t matter where you were, whether it’s in England or in Italy, the snow—I don’t know if you have been in a situation where it’s going to snow and it gets bitterly cold. When it’s going to snow you know you

have to put the main plane covers on the aircraft. The maintenance crew for the aircraft are divided into fitters and riggers. It is the riggers job to put the main plane covers on if it’s going to snow, but it’s too big a job for two. There’d be four of you working on it, two engine fitters and two aircraft fitters doing it.

My fingers used to get very cold putting those on. It was the difference of being able to fly out after the snow had stopped, and being not able to fly because once the snow is on the main planes it’s very hard to get it off, because the bottom part of it turns to ice and our aircraft were fabric covered. You couldn’t afford to scrap it because you’d dig holes in the fabric.

If you had holes in the fabric, they used what they called dope, it was a paint for a better word. They’d paint some fabric over the hole and it was as good as gold. I have a leaky spout out here and I just put a bit of material up there and painted it, it stops the water leak then, it gets rid of the water leak, and that’s the same with the aircraft.

Our aircraft covering is linen and they used to patch it up if there were bullet holes in it, patch it up with this dope and put a bit of paint over it and put a bit of canvas over it, and away you go.

More than that because you’ve got instrument fitters as well as armours, generally two engine fitters, two airplane fitters and then you’ve got the instrument makers and the armours looking after their areas. I suppose one of the nasty jobs is if you have to hose a person out of the gun

turret— the person, the poor devil got shot up, and he was dead. They pulled him out of the gun turret and they just had to hose out the gun turret and try to clean it up and the next poor bugger would go and sit in there. The Yanks, they used to lose a lot of their rear

gunners, apparently. If their numerics were shot out, they never had a mechanical device whereby the rear gun turret could turn around, so the fellow could get out into the main plane into the aircraft itself. Consequently, if the aircraft had to crash and everybody baled

out, the poor bugger in the tail he couldn’t get out. He used to go down with the aircraft, he couldn’t get back into the main body of the aircraft because the hydraulics were shot out. We only struck it once or twice but that was mainly with the Yanks. I heard of another situation with the Yanks, which I don’t know whether to believe or not. When their Flying Fortresses

first came out, you always had a belly gunner, a chap in the belly of the aircraft with a blister underneath, and they all work on hydraulics. If you wanted to get out, to get out of the belly, you had a lever to turn so he could get out into the body of the aircraft.

When the first of them came out and the hydraulics were shot up, there was no way that they could turn that turret, and if the aircraft had to crash-land, the poor bugger in the blister in the bottom, you’d say ‘ta ta’, and that was the end of him. It would crash-land with him in the belly of the aircraft. He’d probably be the first to hit the ground.

We had a chap by the name of Bill Brown, everybody called him Bill but we found out after he died that his name wasn’t Bill at all. We called him Killer, Killer Brown—he had anger and he pushed a chap into the

canal, but Killer didn’t see us pull him out. We kept telling Killer that he died, and that’s how Killer got his name. Billy Brown we all called him, and it wasn’t until about twelve months ago that he died and we found out that his name wasn’t Bill at all. These are just some of the things that come out.

The same Bill Brown he was a engine fitter. He was off ill, and one of the other chaps took over his aircraft and found I think it was a screwdriver, found a screwdriver in his cowling. “Ah good.” he said, “did you find the hammer too?” It was a screwdriver or pliers, I forget now, it was one or the other.

He was so calm about it, he didn’t care that he’d left something in there, not that it would do any damage because it was all down the bottom of the engine.

Yes, but I can’t think of any mistakes that we ever made. Most engine

changes were in a rush and do you know what a four two BA size is? About five sixteen, a bit heavier than a pencil, twice as heavy as a pencil. There are four of those that held onto an engine in the aircraft, people couldn’t believe it. When I say that’s all that held it on, there were hoses and goodness knows what else that held it too, but a

lot of people wouldn’t believe that there were four two BA bolts that held each engine on. If I had it all over again, I don’t think I would change a thing, if I had to do it all again. I know I couldn’t do it all again. It was an experience that words can’t express I’m sure,

words can’t express feelings.

Jackie Cobb, he was a renowned billiard and snooker player,

gee I lost some money. Whenever we could we’d go play a game of snooker. All he wanted was my fifty cents or five dollars or whatever it was. Jackie Cobb, he was probably the oldest of our group—Brownie, Cribby, Cobby, Carty,

Burgy and Footy. So there was Bill Brown or Killer Brown, Jack Cobb, I was Carty, Massive Foot, and Killer Brown. They were our group and we seemed to stick together no matter where we went, whichever station we were on. We were generally in the same tent or next door to each other.

Yes, we were all engine fitters. They used to kick a football with a chap by the name of Nick Singe, his wife recently died this side of Western Australia, but I’d never seen a man kick a football as far as this fellow, but he could only ever punt a ball, he could never drop kick a ball.

I don’t know if he ever played football with anybody, but by word he was a nice chap. He used to be our president of our squadron for our Anzac Day march. Every Anzac Day our squadron forms under a banner that are the last of the original members who went away on the 9th of September.

Most of the chaps now are ex-air crew, or people who come over as reinforcements, some of our chaps had to come home on compassionate leave and there replacements were called re-os or reinforcements. At the Anzac Day march I was the only one this year, and will be for now on if I march,

the last of the original members of the 458 that went away on September 9th 1941. There was another chap but his wife died, a chap by the name of Nick Singe, his family lives in Western Australia, so he’s gone to Western Australia now.

One of my granddaughters has marched ever since she was a toddler, I don’t know if my son thinks I can make it these days.

Yes.

No, they only used to do about two or three operations with us, then they’d move on. They were allowed to go home, so we didn’t have much chance, although we did get to know two. I won’t mention his surname but there was Boomerang, he was a pilot and we knew damn well after

an hour or two hours, old Boomerang would be back. Each cylinder has two plugs, two sets of plugs and if you switch off one set of plugs, they oil up and you have a drop in revs. Old Boomerang, he’d go out on maybe a four-hour journey. After

two hours he was back again, there was a drop in revs. What the bugger used to do was he turned off one bank of magnetos which was feeding one set of plugs, consequently there was only one magneto working, and one set of plugs working and he had a drop in revs. “There’s something wrong with the engine, there’s a drop in revs.” that’s what the bugger used to do, he’d turn off one magneto on each engine and

he didn’t want to go out, he just wanted to come home.

Of course. I don’t know how we found out about it, we knew but we couldn’t prove it. I think they put in a dummy observer with him,

they swapped and let another observer go and they saw him switch off a bank of plugs and that’s how we found out about it. We couldn’t understand why he was the only one that ever had plugs foul up on him, and that’s what it was. But anyway Boomerang came back everyday, he didn’t have any trouble. An Englishman by the name of Dick Pryor,

he was probably the worst that we ever did see to try and land an aircraft. He used to take about ten or twelve hops before he’d put her down, bounce bounce bounce.

The people who used to look after the undercarriage, they hated Dick, but he used to land it quite well on about the twentieth time. Poor old Dick Pryor. We had another chap come with us, he just joined us, he came out of the blue. He was a trained Spitfire pilot. He said, “No,

there’s not enough room in them.” so he came with us. The bombers, there would have had to have been more behind it than that, but that was all that we were allowed to know. He was a big chap by the way, but the story was he was too big for a fighter plane so he came with us. There was always a fighter squadron near us, the 3 Squadron, the Spitfire squadron

and I believe—I can’t remember his name—he came from the 3 Squadron to us.

I’ve got it outside, the actual letter. It might have been two years, it might not have been that long. I have the actual letter out there.

That was who I was writing. Recently I went through my diaries, it was last week and I put a cross through ‘wrote to Jean, wrote to Jean, wrote to Jean’, so that nobody would know who Jean was, to whom I was writing. I was writing to my wife and that was after I’d finished with this Jean from Parkes in New South Wales.

I received a ‘Dear John’ letter and I wasn’t the only one. It’s surprising how many of our boys did receive them.

Not really, they just wanted to know the spicy parts, so you’d fabricate something. No, they were personal we never passed them around at all. The only thing that we passed around was any parcels that we received, but they were few and far between. We used to get cigarettes, did I tell you about getting cigarettes?

V for victory was the name of them, even the Arabs wouldn’t smoke them, oh they were vile and today—I used to smoke them because there wasn’t anything else to smoke. We never had a canteen with us. Occasionally we’d catch up with an English squadron; they’d have a canteen there all the time,

I couldn’t understand why we couldn’t have one, but we were on the move all the time anyhow. We couldn’t buy cigarettes, but I used to smoke these ‘V for Victory’, consequently I’ve got the breathing apparatus up there. I’ve got some more in the bedroom and I’ve got some more out in the playroom,

but I haven’t got any in here.

Yes. I was living here at the time, I woke up one morning and I couldn’t breath. It was raining cats and dogs and I went outside and I was hanging onto the clothes line,

I couldn’t breathe, and I thought, that’s the finish, I didn’t think I’d get back inside. I haven’t had a cigarette since. By hell I thought I was a goner.

With all the aids in the world wouldn’t have helped with it, but I’m gradually getting better but I will never really get better. In the car I have breathing equipment, behind my bed, behind my chair outside in the kitchen, in the car,

in my golf bag. Fortunately I don’t have to call on others urgently. I can feel the problem coming on, I can take remedial action, which involves sitting down for a while, because there is nothing I can take that helps much.

One of my biggest problems is to have a shower, I’ve got the ventilator up on top because even when I dry myself I run out of breath,

so I have to keep the ventilator close handy. When you go across No Mans Land, you have heard of No Mans Land—this is an actually No Mans Land, this is the division between Spain and Gibraltar, it’s five hundred metres probably, deep. When you get

to the other side, what we struck and me and my two mates we went across that way. We had been around Ajaccio, there were two girls at the other end, they wanted to get their photograph taken. That’s their livelihood to have their photograph taken with the troops. As I say it reminds me of two stories. The other one was in Egypt, two boys generally work in harmony, I mean in cohesion

for a better word. One would come along and throw muck on your shoes and he knows damn well that you are not going to walk around Cairo with muddy shoes, so his mates behind him with a shoe polishing outfit, so that was quite common. The third one that you had to watch was with the kids, “Paper, mister, paper, mister, have you got a pen there? I could offer you a paper.” and I’d flick it out, that’s how you lose your pens—

“Paper mister.” then the next thing, your pen’s gone.

Yes. I’ve always been a non drinker and the boys decided, I don’t know who decided but I do know there was three or four of us. The Black Horse

Canadian Beer, it’s very strong and in a twenty-six ounce bottle, a big bottle, and the boys decided to have a competition to see if they could drink a full bottle of beer between tram stops. My word I was sick, I didn’t finish the bottle,

I don’t know who did and I didn’t care, that’s the story of having a drink on the tram in Cairo. As I say the other story was the boys there with the shoe polish and the paperboy taking your ballpoint pen. I had a beautiful ballpoint pen, it was the old type fountain

pen and it had a rubber tube to hold the ink. While I was in Italy I bought a new nib, a stylist nib. It was the spiral one, it was in two pieces, but this was just one piece, it was a beautiful pen to write with. My mate and I went and

saw Madam Lisker and Madam Butterfly, plush box up on the side looking down, no charge, it was free to the troops. We saw both Madam Lisker and Madam Butterfly. I dropped my pen on plush carpet, this was terrible compared to what was in the box. The glass nib broke and I could never

get another one, it was a beautiful pen to write with. It was almost inconceivable that a spiral nib could hold the liquid, whereas the old style pen needed the nib plus something else on it to hold the ink in. I was very disappointed that I lost that stylist nib and I believe they are peculiar to Italy, but I couldn’t find any anywhere else.

In Rome, Teatro Roma, Teatro means ‘theatre’, and Roma means ‘Rome’.

I used to write frequently, I’ve got in my diary every letter that I wrote home.

Yes, and unfortunately I used to write on both sides of the paper, consequently

they cut out on one side of the paper, but on the other side it could have been as good as gold. There were holes all over the place, and you had to use your imagination what I was trying to say. I brought a lovely photo album in Cairo, which I sent home to my brother. I never did get around

to sticking any photographs into it, as a matter of fact I had too many photographs so I just bundled the photographs into the album. I have emptied the album out now, I did it sometime ago now. When I went to see about my rheumatoid arthritis, the specialist I see he came from Cairo, his receptionist came from Cairo

and they have blood tests on site there, and lo and behold the lass doing the blood test is from Cairo. So I emptied all the photos out of the album and I took the album in to show them, it’s an Egyptian album and they’d never seen anything like it before. I might have something unique out there.

No, once El Alamein

started, I think I mentioned when Japan came into the war we left England and then when El Alamein started we just kept moving on and on and on right through North Africa.

Once again I can’t say, but I’ve got it in my diaries.

I suppose in two and a half years or it might have been three years we went from Shallufa,

we had an aerodrome over near El Alamein, then we went through Judea, Sphinx, to answer in months I don’t know but it certainly wasn’t years because we covered so

many places in such a short time. I’m not sorry, as a matter of fact I feel very contented, maybe that’s not the word either, I’m certainly more wise to know the way that the other side of the world lives compared to how we live here.

To go to the Vatican City for example, people would give their right arm to go to the Vatican City. I’ve got photos out there of me there. We struck an Australian doing a

course, called an apprentice priest or something like that over there. This was in the Vatican City and he took us through places, the corridors and rooms, places that a normal person would never see. I have photographs of us all up on top at St Peter’s Cathedral—I usually get confused with

St Paul’s and St Peter’s. They have measurements up there of big bronze pillars which support the main altar, eighty feet in diameter the pillars, something like one hundred ton each

and there is four of them holding up the main.

No this is inside, not the main dome, the main dome is something different again. We weren’t up there, I do have photographs of there, out in the balcony of the dome overlooking [St Peter’s] Square or something like that.

A lot of people with that faith would have given their right arm to have been able to see what we saw over there. Even to see, just out of Rome was Pompeii, it was opened but not to tourists, so we went in. They said we weren’t allowed in, but that didn’t matter. We think of air conditioning being a modern innovation but they had cavity

walls with hot water running through the walls that were temperature controlled. If you wanted to know where the butcher was you would have to look on the cobble stoned floor to see which way the bull was facing. They had a bull carved in the rock to show you where the butcher was. I won’t tell you what was carved in the rock when you wanted a girl of ill repute.

I don’t know if it is still there, but we could see faces imbedded in the lava, you could see the agony on the face. I forget what they used, the scales but I can’t

remember what they used the scales for, and for the life of me I can’t think what it was. I remember there was no dial, I think it was just a balance scale. I remember there was something special about it but I can’t recall, it doesn’t matter anyhow. It is nice to say that I have seen the results of Vesuvius, or Pompeii

which is the mountain which exploded. I saw two operas in Rome at the Theatre Royal, and the Vatican. The Vatican City is a city all of its own, a lot of people say that it’s a part of Rome, but it’s not, it doesn’t have anything to do with Rome at all. They have their own police force.

Yes.

Yes. It’s a self-contained city.

Michelangelo, I can’t say yes and I can’t say no, there was so much to see going through the place.

The same as in Jerusalem, we were supposed to see the crypt where Jesus was born, they could tell visitors any story and you’d believe it. What was interesting was the short street along which Christ was to have carried the cross, it was only a short street, a narrow street, but on each corner you could buy bits of the original cross. By hell it must

have been a big cross, and I suppose if you were to go there today you’d still be able to buy bits of the cross. I’m trying to pinpoint some of the interesting points that everybody would know about.

It was only visits, whenever we got leave we’d go somewhere like that, we used to jump on the train

and away we’d go, we never had any tickets or anything. It’s probably in my diary out there with all of those sorts of things.

No. I went through it a week ago when I knew you were coming out. As I said, I was engaged to another girl, and every letter that I wrote to her had a number

one or one hundred and one and ‘I wrote to Jean’ and I crossed it out, so my diaries full of strokes now where I crossed it out with a big pen. What was your question?

No. The only thing as I said I crossed that out. I’m not ashamed of it but I’m not proud

and I suppose it could have happened to anybody.

There were a few of our boys that had lost their girlfriends. There was one chap who lost his wife so he was sent home, a fellow by the name of Jack Cobb. He was the chap who used to like playing billiards with me, and he could beat me all the time. I talked about the Vatican City,

[?St Peter’s] Square, I went up on the dome. I’ve got a photograph outside there, there was a photograph on the wall of St Peter’s Cathedral, the sun was shining through onto it and I took a tiny exposure of it with a camera I had, which was a folding camera which I still

have in the garage and I’m frightened to open it now because the bellows are probably stuck now. I took a tiny exposure of it and lo and behold, it’s come out beautiful.

The war had almost finished by then, I can’t give you any dates

as I have no idea of dates, except to say that while I was in Gibraltar my wife and I became engaged. I wrote to her and received a letter back to say yes she had accepted me. We were engaged in Gibraltar on her twenty-first

birthday which was the 5th May. Her birthday is the 5th May and mine is the 7th May and she hated it because Mother’s Day is then too, the first Sunday in May is Mother’s Day. The interesting fact about Gibraltar is that they don’t have car horns, they drive with their door open and they bang on the side of the door to let you know, but

there are so few cars there it doesn’t matter. It’s all uphill and down and if you want to go uphill you generally climb up stairs, not a road way. The grease monkey’s are very savage in Gibraltar, they do come close to the roadway at times but they are generally in the bushes, there are not many bushes there either. There is an old saying ‘As long as there is

greased monkeys in Gibraltar, it will remain under the control of Britain’. Goodness knows who would take it over if Britain surrendered it. I couldn’t ever see Britain surrendering Gibraltar because they have put so much money into it. It’s a city into itself inside the rock, with the shops and hospital. I don’t know how many years supply of medical equipment they have hidden in the rock just in case.

I’ve never been right through the rock, as a matter of fact you can’t get through there because it’s a military area and they have guns pointing out over the waterfront. The interesting point of that, and I don’t know if it’s true or not. The Strait of Gibraltar, a submarine can come from the Bay of Biscay or from England through the Bay of Biscay into the Mediterranean Sea but it can’t get out again.

The undertow is so great that everything has to come into the Mediterranean Sea but it can’t go out to the Bay of Biscay, whether that’s true or not, I don’t know, but that was just one of the stories that we were told over there.

The changing of the keys, I don’t know how far back it dates but the keys—and you should see the keys, enormous things—they are the keys to the main gates to Gibraltar. They are enormous wrought iron gates, the padlock, I couldn’t lift the padlock, imagine the keys they need for it. I don’t know how frequent or how often

they have the ceremony for the changing of the keys and the changing from one guard from the next, it may be monthly, I don’t know. There might be three or four regiments on the Rock of Gibraltar, British regiments and one regiment would have it this month and another regiment would have— They have a ceremony and it’s only a marching ceremony with drums and horses and that sort of a thing.

The people who have the keys, the guard calls. “Who goes there?” The reply – “The keys.” “Whose keys?” In those days, “King George’s keys.” “Advance to be recognized.” and that’s when they hand over the keys. So that regiment, they might hold it for a month, it’s never been done by any other bodies—the English army.

When we were there, and I don’t know who arranged it, we were fortunate that we were allowed to do the ceremony of changing the keys, as far as I know we were the only troops that had ever done that ceremony. Whether it is still performed today I don’t know, but of course today they would be Queen Elizabeth’s keys. I wouldn’t have liked to have carried the keys too far, they were

enormous things and of course the big wrought iron gates, and I don’t know if the keys have ever locked the gates, they might. It’s an interesting story and it was interesting to have been part of it.

Towards the end of the war. We were there probably for a month to six weeks. We came across from Fogila in Italy

and probably there for one month to six weeks before the cessation of hostilities. We had to dismantle our aircraft, make them so that they couldn’t fly. Each engine has two magnetos, one for each set of plugs. We took the magnetos of each engine parked the aircraft against the wall and there they were all lined up nice. What we didn’t

realise was the air crew still had their verey pistols. I don’t know if you know what a very pistol is? Sometimes they have them on boats to fire a flare, not only did the air crew have their verey pistols but they also had the flares too. In the celebrations of the cessation of hostilities, the silly buggers were outside firing off the verey pistols.

We couldn’t move the aircraft because they were disabled, and I was corporal of the guard. I was trying to work out how a corporal could tell an officer to get inside, but it had to happen otherwise they would have set all the aircraft on fire, firing these verey pistols. Whether they ran out of cartridges I don’t know, but we didn’t loose any aircraft to cut a long story short.

No, I was corporal of the guard. I had to make sure that every other silly devil did the right thing. Not only me, I had others with me helping me. We never had any trouble other than these silly devils with these fairy pistols because we were all scared stiff that these aircraft would go up. The aircraft were fabric covered because they would have caught fire very easily if a flare

had landed on them. As I said we did a silly thing and we lined them up like little things in a row, like little dolls in a row. If one had caught fire the whole lot would have gone up, twenty of them. After that, we went back to England.

From Gibraltar we went by ship. The Bay of Biscay is to be reputed to be one of the most savage seas that you could cross, it was like a mill pond when we went across. None of us were seasick at all, and I was probably one of the worst soldiers that ever took to sea and according to my diary, “Seasick, still seasick.” and so it went on. Generally across the Bay of Biscay it was like a mill pond

and we got to England and everybody was quite happy then, expecting to go home. We were given leave if we wanted it. The boys didn’t want it because they didn’t have anywhere they wanted to go. I was lucky because I had made friends with people in the Midlands at a place called Walsall. I’d met them when I first went to England. The young

lady of the house, she was married by this—her husband was in India and she was expecting. She had met someone else, it certainly wasn’t me. Her baby was born in late November or early December I think it was, I don’t know exactly, no. I do know that I was home here when

the baby was born. She wrote to me, I don’t know if my wife approved or not, sometimes I sensed that she didn’t like me writing over there, but it was just a friendship and nothing more as I say. She was engaged when I first met her and then she was expecting when I met her again. There was nothing more than a platonic friendship.

I’ve still got photographs of her out there, as a matter of fact I’ve got a couple of them. She was a lovely girl and a beautiful dancer. There used to be I think five strath boats—Strathed, Strathian, Strathmova,

Strathallen.

I don’t think so, it doesn’t matter. We came home on one of those and we had a very good run home. We came through the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean and down to Perth

where we let off the Western Australian boys. We had some English crew on board and one of them finished up with a very sore mouth. When they got ashore they were told that pineapple was a very nice fruit to eat, nobody told them to skin it or peel it, and that’s why they had very sore mouths.

They were trying to eat the pineapple without peeling it, they certainly learnt how to eat pineapple. We let off the Western Australian boys and we came to Melbourne, we didn’t call into Adelaide. A bus met us at Port Melbourne and took us into the Melbourne Cricket Ground—

no run around town and shouting and flags waving or anything like that—just straight to the Melbourne Cricket Ground. We were told then, I forget where we had to report back, Melbourne Town Hall in a fortnight’s time, so we got a fortnight’s leave straight away when we came home.

We went to the Town Hall or it might have been the exhibition building I don’t know, where we were totally discharged then. I came home to Melbourne by boat, to travel from Melbourne to Sydney to save being around the world by boat and I don’t intend to do it.

No, never had the ambition to travel at all. When I say travel my wife and I we used to like to go up on the Murray for a holiday or something like that. Then we used to go quite frequently because Marie’s mother once her father died, Mum went up to Loxton

which is on the Murray, to an elderly persons’ home. It’s a beautiful place up there, they look after her very well. We had frequent trips from here to Loxton, and that was our outings, our holidays, everything all rolled into one. Unfortunately she passed away eventually. In fact, the last time I saw her, I didn’t say to my wife but I could see

that we probably wouldn’t see her again. Her funeral was in Adelaide and that was the last get-together of the whole family as far as I know. When I say the whole family, we see Marie’s brother and his wife. They are from Adelaide. One of her sisters is here in Melbourne, another sister is up in Broken Hill and the other one

is up on the Murray, Bamra, and she’s still

in Bamra, her older sister. I think we’ve been around the world and we have solved everybody’s problems and now where do we go?

I applied to the AEU, which is the Amalgamated Engineering Union, and they accepted me as a qualified engineer, after my war service and the studying that I was doing before the war. I was able to get a job then as a fitter and turner, mainly a fitter

with Commonwealth Fertilizers and it so happened my brother, he worked at the same place. He didn’t join the services because he served his apprentice with Commonwealth Fertilizers and he was classified as reserved occupation. He was in one area, what they called

the phosphate area, where they were making super phosphate and I was down in what they called the roasters where they burn the priorties which come from Tasmania to extract the sulfur fume which when condensed made sulphuric acid, which then mixed with the phosphate rock then became super phosphate, which the cockies [farmers] use in the garden as you know. I was there for quite a few years.

Yes, we married and we were supposed to go to Victor Harbour which is in South Australia for our honeymoon, but it rained cats and dogs and the trains were washed out. We still went to Victor Harbour but we had to take a taxi, it cost me a fortune with the taxi.

That’s where we spent out honeymoon. I used to like to play darts in England and when we got down to Victor Harbour, there was a carnival and if you throw a dart into something you would get a gift. Marie finished up with an arm full of gifts until they banned me and wouldn’t let me play anymore. I used to like darts and it’s a very popular pastime in the pubs in England.

We were able to get a train back from Victor Harbour, then we came straight back to Melbourne. We had trouble finding accommodation to start with. We had two rooms with an elderly couple, they had a big house in Seddon.

Then it was time to get a car. The car I liked at the time was a Marmon Straight Eight, so we brought the Marmon Straight Eight and it was almost too big to turn in the street, because the street that we lived in at the time, it was single fronted houses in the street. We had a single fronted house there eventually. The street was so narrow it was hard to turn the car around, it wasn’t a straight

through street, it was a dead end street. After the Marmon I brought a Chrysler, it used to be a New South Wales police car according to the papers. It was fitted with a hotbox for kerosene, and my word did it stink. You ran it on powered by kerosene because petrol was hard to get, it was possible to get powered kerosene

but if you ever forgot to turn the petrol on before you turned the ignition off there was God’s own job to try and get the car to go again. It had two carburettors, one for kerosene and one for petrol so I changed that around and put a hotbox in, and only had one carburettor then. Our daughter came along

and she was the first. Two years or three years later our son came along, after that we lost twin boys, Brian and David, and no—we never did see them.

We don’t talk about that. Our next year was education I suppose, but it wasn’t just education for the children. I went back to night school; firstly I did a course in supervision then that lead to a diploma of management.

Then I went teaching, I got a diploma of teaching then, no—they didn’t call it that.

No, it wasn’t called a diploma.

The teaching certificate,

there is a lot more to it.

No, technical.

At Footscray Technical College, then I went to Henry McPherson College which is now in the city. I had to do a course in teaching to be qualified to teach, a Technical Teachers Certificate, which I have out there.

I wasn’t feeling too good, running into town and back everyday, I wasn’t happy about it. I used to drive in and drive out again and I was always up-tight, I was always tense. I knew a chap who had opened up a get fit class for want of a better name,

but he also had a sauna. So every Friday night I’d call in and have a sauna—everybody on the road was pretty good, they weren’t terrible drivers at all, because it relaxes you. I met a chap there who was one of the big bosses down at the bottle works at the time, and we were talking and I said about my son leaving school.

He said “What’s he going to do?” I said, “I don’t know.” he said, “If he is interested in engineering tell him to call me.” I thought he might have been interested because I was always working around cars and talking about engineering. My son decided then that he’d like to do his engineering apprenticeship. So he did it down at the bottle works. He hadn’t been down there long, when I say long he might have been down

there for two years, when the bridge fell down, the West Gate Bridge. The bottle works sent all their apprentices over there to see if they could help. Help alright, my son still suffers. Him and a mate were given a bag or a sheet and were told to pick up body parts. It affected me,

and I’m sure it’s affected my son for the rest of his life. To think that they’d do that to an apprentice, and make him pick up body parts. I knew what it was like during the war so I know what he went through.

He even had his photograph in the Herald, of course we could pick him out carrying body parts. He will never forget that. Every now and again he has moments –

‘don’t care’ – but I know what’s caused it, and I know what did cause it.

She married ... she married a chap unfortunately who had a lover, a boy. His lover was a boy. So the sooner they split up, the better. She didn't have a happy life, really, with him. He was an ex-Vietnam fella.

She has done very well. She hasn’t married, she doesn’t even have a special friend but she has her own office at the Footscray University. She organises a lot of the overseas students, nursing students coming in from various parts of Asia and those sorts of places.

She organises trips for the veterans who want to go overseas, she does all their itineraries but she’s quite happy except, she was only saying the other day that she is just over fifty. She has got a long way to go before she retires.

I started off at Footscray and I did part-time down at the air force base in Laverton teaching a man management course. Teaching people who were ready to go out into the wide, wide world, hopefully to get a supervisory position. Most of them were officers

and they were great IM’s, they thought they knew everything, but we soon pulled them into line. Henry McPherson College which is part now of RMIT, I was seconded to there and I had been to Footscray to start with

and then I was seconded to the girls’ school, Henry McPherson College and I set up a man management course there, for method study. Which was a forerunner of the hospitality management courses with their

plant layout, best methods of plant layout.

They used to call it the Diploma of Food and Food Service, but then they wanted to widen it and they didn’t know what to call it, so we called it Man Management. As a matter of plant layout it was a method study with

two main parts needed there. Once upon a time they’d just set up an area without thinking what facilities they have available. I remember one situation they wanted to set up a kitchen in a hotel, but there was no power anywhere near the place, and no likelihood of getting any power or water,

but that’s how they used to think. So we setup this Man Management course, and jumping backwards and forwards to town going into town from Footscray, I had the sun in my eyes going in, and coming home I had the sun in my eyes. Which I think I might have mention, or I tried to mention before when I

called into have a sauna. After the sauna everybody on the road were lovely drivers, it’s surprising how that would calm you down. After setting up a few courses

on man management, it’s RMIT now, so we will call it RMIT and sick of going into town into the sun and sick of going into the sun on my way home, I thought there must be something better than this. I made enquiries at Williamstown Technical School and yes, they had a vacancy in their commerce department helping with

accountancy, and general maths in other words. In fact there was one chap there and he wasn’t very bright, he was getting to the age where he had to leave school. This was at the parent teacher night, two thirds of the way through the year, and his mother asked me, “What about

Ian, what will he do?” I said “I don’t want to be rude, I don’t want you to feel that I’m having a go at anybody but I’d like you to take Ian out of school now and try and find him a job.” She said, “There’s a long way to go before the end of the year.” and I said “If Ian tries to find a job under normal competition, he wouldn’t have a hope.” I said “If he goes out of school

when nobody else is applying for jobs, he will probably get a job.” He lived in Williamstown or Newport I’ve forgotten which. He applied for a job at the Newport workshops; he got a job that suited him down to the ground. He had a little office all of his own and people; it was the rule down there if you were off sick you had to have a doctor’s certificate. Who do you take it to? You take

it to him. Of course Ian’s got an important job now. He collects all of the doctor’s certificates and takes them up to the pay office and that’s the end of Ian’s job, that’s all that he is capable of doing, that type of work. I met him, it must have been ten years afterwards and I said, “How’s it going Ian?” As a matter of fact he approached me,

I didn’t recognize him. He introduced himself and I said, “What are you doing now?”, and he said “I’m an arranger in a band.” and I said, “Ian you can’t read music.” He said “I don’t haveto; I arrange their music on the stage.” So he was a musical arranger, so that was the story of poor Ian. He was that type of chap that had no hope of

getting a job under normal competition. Sometimes as a teacher you have to be cruel to be kind, put the facts on the table for Mum and tell her what’s going on. Then I took ill, I was ill for quite a long time. I’m alright now, I think. I had to leave school,

they retired me, but I have helped a couple of others. An Italian chap who used to live opposite me, his son wasn’t doing too good so I helped him a bit. Some people they want to show their appreciation,

but they don’t know how. This young lad, he was an Italian chap and his father, he was Italian. They were very appreciative that I was helping his son and I didn’t want any money for it. He brought over some Italian bread, I know that it meant good, but I didn’t like it, so that sort of a thing goes to waste.

You try to help people and sometimes you get the benefit that you are looking for, like the results that you are looking for and sometimes you don’t. As far as I know this young Italian chap, he went on to do better things. Marie and I, we went down to the Racecourse Hotel in Werribee to the pokies. “Hi Mr Cartledge.”

this was ten, fifteen years ago that he remembered me from. Freddie, I got Freddie out, he used to bring small snakes to school, he used to scare the daylights out of everybody, and I always remembered him as ‘Freddie the Snake Boy’, goodness knows what his surname was and I don’t think that I really did know. He used to delight in these little snakes,

not for me, thanks! I remember a case up at Footscray, a couple of the senior boys and they were throwing coins up against the wall to see who can get the closest. “Oh, whose money, you better not leave it there or better take it in.” I picked it up and took it into the office. When I came back I said, “Just in case you find the owner of this, you

can give it to them.” The poor kids, if you treat them right, they treat you right. I’ve had some happy memories, happy memories during the war, happy memories during teaching and happy memories in my retirement, and looking forward to many years to come.